FEARFUL ADVENTURE IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 380, 12 March 1859, Page 2

FEARFUL ADVENTURE IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

The hero of the exploit thus reported in the Louisville (U.S.) Journal of September 11, is William C. Prentice, the son of George D. Prentice, of Louisville :—: — At the supposed end of what has always been considered the longest avenue of the Mammoth Cave, nine miles from its entrance, there is a pit, dark and deep and terrible, known as the Maelstrom. Tens of thousands have gazed into it with awe, whilst Bengal lights were thrown down it to make its fearful depths visible, but none ever had the daring to explore it. The celebrated Guy Stephen, who was deemed insensible to fear, was offered 600 dollars by the proprietors of the cave if he would descend to the bottom of it, but he shrank from the peril. A few years ago a Tennessee professor, a learned and bold man, resolved to do what no one before him had dared to do, and, making his arrangements with great care and precaution, he had himself lowered down by a strong rope a hundred feet, but, at that point, his courage failed him, and he called aloud to be drawn out. No human power could ever have induced him to repeat the appalling experiment. A couple of weeks ago, however, a young gentleman of Louisville, whose nerve 9 never trembled at mortal peril, being at the Mammoth Cave with Professor Wright, of our city, and others, determined, no matter what the dangers and difficulties might be, to explore ! the depths of the Maelstrom. Mr. Proctor, the enterprising proprietor of the cave, sent to I Nashville and procured a long rope of great | strength, expressly for the purpose. The ropes I and some necessary timbers were borne by the guides and others to the point of proposed exploration. The arrangements beiug soon completed, the rope, with a heavy fragment of rock affixed to it, was let down and swung to and fro to dislodge any loose rocks that would :be likely to fall at the touch. Several were ; thus dislodged, and the long-continued reverberations, rising up like distant thunder from jbelovr, proclaimed the depth of the horrid

chasm. Then the young hero of the occasion* with several hats drawn over his head to protect it as far as possible against any masses falling from above, and with a light in his hand and the rope fastened around his body, took his place over the awful pit and directed the half-dozen who held the end of the rope, to let him down into the Cimmerian gloom. "We have heard from his own lips an account of his descent. Occasionally masses of earth and rock went whizzing past, but none struck him. Thirty or forty feet from the top, he saw a ledge, from which, as he judged by appearances, two or three avenues led off in different directions. About a hundred feet from the top, a cataract from the side of ths pit went rushing down the abyss, and, as he descended by the side of the falling water and in the midst of the spray, he felt some apprehension that his light would be extinguished, but his care prevented this. He was landed at the bottom of the pit, 190 feet from the top. He found it almost perfectly circular, about eighteen feet in diameter, with a small opening at one point, leading to a fine chamber of no great extent. He found on the floor beautiful specimens of black silex of immense size, vastlylarger than were ever discovered in any other part of the Mammoth Cave, and also a multitude of exquisite formations, as pure and white as virgin snow. Making himself heard, with great effort, by his friends, he at length asked them to pull him partly up, intending to stop on the way and explore a cave that he had observed opening about forty feet above the bottom of the pit. Reaching the mouth of that cave, he swung himself with much exertion into it, and, holding the end of the rope in his hand, he incautiously let it go, and it swung out apparently beyond his reach. The situation was a fearful one, and his friends above could do nothing for him. Soon, however, he made a hook of the end of his lamp, and, by extending himself as far over the verge as possible, without falling, he succeeded in securing the end of the rope. Fastening it to a rock, he followed the avenue 150 or 200 yards to a point where he found it blockaded by an impassable avalanche of rock and earth. Returning to the mouth of this avenue, he beheld an almost exactly similar mouth of another on the opposite side of the pit ; but, not being able to swing himself into it, he refastened the rope around his body, suspended himself again over the abyss, and shouted to his friends to raise him to the top. The pull was an exceedingly severe one, and the rope being ill adjusted round his body, gave him the most excruciating pain. But soon his pain was forgotten in a new and dreadful peril. When he was ninety feet from the mouth of the pit and 100 from the bottom, swaying and swinging in mid-air, he heard rapid and excited words of horror and alarm above, and soon learned that the rope by which he was upheld had taken fire from the friction of the timber over which it passed. Several mdmentu of awful suspense to those above, and still more awful to him below, ensued. To them and him a fatal and instant, catastrophe seemed inevitable. But the fire was extinguished with a bottle of water belonging to himself, and then the party above, though almost exhausted by their labours, succeeded in drawing him to the top. He was as calm and selfpossessed as upon his entrance into the pit, but all of his companions, overcome by fatigue, sank down upon the ground, and his friend, Professor Wright, from over-exertion and excitement, fainted and remained for a time insensible. The young adventurer left his name carved in the depths of the Maelstrom— the name of the first and only person that ever gazed upon its mysteries.

1 At an hotel in Cape Town, dinner is provided at ! one o'clock every day at one shilling per head. , After the arrival of the " Gipsy Bride," a party of Scotch immigrants dined at this hotel, and the two ) fiist days all paid their shillings without a murmur. » On the third day, one of the party, after having had his fill, put down tenpence only as payment. 1 "It is twopence more," said the landlady, " the 1 price is a shilling." Nae, ma'am," sajs Sandy, ? " that is too much." The lady indignantly replied | that he had had soup, meat, pudding, and cheese, 1 and that he could not be so well served at any inn ![ in the city. " Nae, ma'am," says he, " I did na , tak 1 soup, and therefore I deducted the twopence." 1 " But you might," said the landlady," "it was on f the table, and if you did not take soup you have g had your fill of other things, which is all the same n to me. You must pay the other twopence " " Faith, then," say 3 the canny Scotchman, " If I i maun pay the twopence, I will hae my soup." And he did, too, for he insisted on the return of 3 tureen, and he finished up the whole. — Argus. Sam Slick on Smart Trading. — Well, says I, * they ain't such an enlightened people as we are, , that's sartain, but that don't justify you a bit ; you :> hadn't ought to have stolen that watch. That was 3 wrong, very wrong, indeed. You might have traded with him, and got it for half nothing ; or bought T it, and failed, as some of our importin' merchants p sew up the soft-horned British ; or swapped it, and forgot to give the exchange ; or bought it, and given your note, and cut stick before trie note be- ' came due. Theie's a thousand ways of doing of c honestly, and legally, without resorting, a« foreign* c ers do, to stealin'. We are a moral people ; a re- '■> ligious, a high-minded, and a high-spirited people ; o and can do any and all the nations of the universal ,t world out of anything, in the hundied of million of is clever shifts there are in trade ; but as for stealin', c I despise it ; it's a low, blackguard, dirty, mean . action ; and I must say you are a disgrace to our great nation. An American citizen never steals, /> he only gains the advantage ! — The Clockmaker. A country squire lately remarked, in a coffee , room, that he had three fine daughters, to whom d he should give £10,000 eaoh, and no one had yet c come forward to marry them. " With your lave, " doctor, said an Irishman, who was present, stepn ping up atid making a respectable bow, " I'll take d two of them."