KING SOLOMON'S CAVE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1160, 21 February 1874, Page 10

KING SOLOMON'S CAVE.

Some interesting discoveries have just been made in a cave called " King Solomon's Cave," Montana, United States, and an account of them is given by a correspondent of the Deer Lodge Independent, who formed one of a party of explorers of the cave in question. After crawling through several narrow passages into " a most magnificent chamber," the attention of the explorers was attracted by a massive shield made of copper, 57 inches in length, and 36 inches in width, leaning against the wall ; about 10 feet beycnd the shield, and eight from the floor, was a cavity in the wall. One of the party, by aid of some stones, climbed up to this aperture with a light, but quickly descended in such a state «f alarm that he was for some moments unable to explain that in the niche lay a petrified giant. The other explorers immediately climbed up to the aperture and gazed in. There, sure enough, was the monster man, whose dimensions on measurement were found to be 9 feet 7k inches in length, 38 inches across the breast, and 2 feet deep. A helmet of brass or copper of gigantic proportions was on his head, which "the corrosive elements of time had sealed to his brow." He seems to have been "a disagreeable customer," and it is perhaps as well that he ia dead and petrified, for

near him were two mammoth spearheads one of them with a socket of silver, into which to insert a large pole or handle. There was also a large hook made of bone, apparently manufactured from the tusk of an extinct " leviathan of the land. 5 ' On the wall were some strange-looking letters and pictures of three ships, each having three masts, the middle mast being only two-thirds tke height of the outward ones. There was also on a flat stone in the wall the picture of a large man with a spear in his hand, and of another ship. On removing this stone another chamber was discovered, in which wera the bones of several more giants, a primitive quartzcrusher, and a number of tools made of copper. It is supposed that these poor giants were at work a thousand years ago in the cave when a slide from the mountain above immured them in a living tomb. The search is to be further prosecuted ; and in the meantime the explorers are described as "almost wild with the strange and curious things" they have discovered. This beats the " sea serpent " to fits.