Caves—the world of rock-ribbed darkness
under our feet—have always formed a subject
on which my imagination delighted to
dwell; and to this day, the name seldom
falls upon my ears without conjuring up a
thousand grimly captivating associations—
thoughts of the wild and supernatural, the
strange and terrific—which are the more enticing
for being so unlike the usual phantasms
of a day-dream existence. To my boyish

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

conceits, Epimenides gathering wisdom in a
brown study of fifty years in the cavern of
Crete, was a much wiser personage than the
other seven sages of Greece, who merely
hunted for truth at the bottom of a well; while
Bassus, the Carthaginian, digging, with a
Roman army, for the lost treasure-cave of
queen Dido,[1] was a greater hero than the
mightiest Julius wading in blood at Pharsalia.
For the same reason, if the truth must be
told, I even held that the dark Hades—the
inamabile regnum, as Tisiphone so emphatically
called it—the domain of Pluto, which,
as every body knows, was only to be reached

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

through the dismal antres of Cumæ and
Tænarus, was a decidedly more interesting
habitation for curious spirits than even the
sun-lit and privileged tops of Olympus. The
Troglodytes were my beau ideal of a sensible
and happy nation.

Some tincture of my own peculiar propensity,
however, I think may be traced in
the mind of the world at large. It is certain,
there are few subjects on which men have
given, and still continue to give, a greater
loose to their imaginations than that of caves.
The time has indeed gone by when they believed
that devils and condemned souls had
their appointed place within the hollows of
the earth, accessible, even to mortal foot,
through each cavern, each alta spelunca that
yawned on its surface; the Pythium no longer
breathes its oraculous vapour; the cave of Trophonius
whispers no more the secrets of fate;
and even the modern hags of the broomstick,
that once

“Plied in caves, th' unutterable trade,”

“Dug the mine and wrought the ore,”

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

are no longer expected to be found quiring
around the infernal caldron, or dancing amid
their heaps of gleaming treasure. But if
Truth—the murderess of Fancy—has been
at work on the classic mythos and the Gothic
fable, she has still left us enough to wonder
at in the world below; she has robbed it of
the supernatural, but not of the marvellous.
The Mundus Subterraneus of old father Kircher,
however exploded in most of its particulars,
among scientific men, contains nothing
too incredible for the mass of mankind. Fortunately,
as it happens, for the good old
Jesuit's sake, as well as mankind's, there are,
as far as mere caves are concerned, so many
wonders already established as undoubted
facts, that a man may be pardoned for believing
almost any thing.—But let us glance
at some of these authenticated marvels.
They will form a proper introduction to the
subject of the present description—the limestone
Pandemonium, with which I desire to
make the reader acquainted. A propylon of
wonders becomes the Mammoth Cave, and
should lead the way up to its gaping door, as
rows of sphinxes conduct the traveller to the
front of an Egyptian temple.

The famous Eldon Hole of Derbyshire

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

(who has not heard of the Eldon Hole?) has
been sounded with a plummet-line of nearly
ten thousand feet in length—that is, within
but a little of two miles—without reaching the
bottom; and the Pit of Fredericshall, in Norway,
it is inferred from the number of seconds
a stone consumes in reaching the bottom,
must be more than two miles in depth.
Whether the sound of a falling stone, rever-berating
through a tube even smoother than
than we can fancy the pit of Fredericshall to
be, could be actually heard at the depth of
eleven thousand feet, I leave to be conjectured;
but I may aver, in reference to the
Eldon Hole, which was really sounded by a
line to the depth mentioned, that if the doctrine
of internal fire, resuscitated by modern
Vulcanists, be true, and the scale of increasing
temperatures adopted by them be just,
there ought to ascend from this same convenient
flue, heat enough to warm all Derbyshire.
The internal heat of the earth is
said by philosophers to increase 1° Fahrenheit,
for every 100 feet of descent. If the
mouth of Eldon Hole were on a level with
the general surface of the earth, the bottom
ought to be at a temperature 100° above the
mean temperature (say 50°) at the surface.

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

Two miles under ground! With these facts
in view, who shall quarrel with his neighbour
for believing, as many a man does, that he
has eaten his dinner, in the Mammoth Cave,
under the bed of Green River? or with the
monkeys of Gibraltar for having made their
way from Africa to Europe, as every body
knows they must have done, via the Grot of
St. Michael, under the foundations of the
Mediterranean?

The extent of caves is a subject upon
which men are still more inclined to be glorious.
But here we have facts enough on
record to countenance any stretch of magniloquence;
besides opinions, which, as the
world goes, have, in general, with mankind,
all the weight and consequence of facts.
Thus, the people of Java are of opinion that
the sacred cave of Samarang affords a submarine
passage from their island to Canton,
in China—a distance of somewhat more than
two thousand miles, traced in a line as straight
as could be winged by an albatross. But
leaving opinions, let us refer to a fact of philosophic
celebrity, which, besides being quite
a settler of all difficulties, possesses some peculiar
features of interest. In the year 1752,
the Rio del Norte, one of the greatest rivers

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

of America, (its length is reckoned at full
two thousand miles,) suddenly sank into the
earth, leaving its bed dry for a space of fifty
leagues; and in this condition it remained
several weeks, the waters flowing into some
subterranean abyss, which it required them
so long a time to fill. Allowing the river at
the Paso del Norte, where the incident occurred,
to be but a quarter-mile wide, and its
depth but five feet, with a current of two
miles the hour, and supposing it continued to
sink into the earth during two weeks, we can
give a pretty shrewd guess at the extent and
capacity of the cavern in which it was swallowed
up. According to my calculations, to
dispose of such a body of water, would have
demanded a cave one hundred feet wide and
high, and just five hundred miles long! Nor
must this statement, however lightly made,
be considered absurd. Let it be remembered
that the channel of the river for a space of
fifty leagues, was absolutely robbed of its
waters. Supposing their disappearance had
been only momentary, it is easy to perceive,
the abyss that received them must have been
vaster than we can readily figure to our imaginations.

After this, no one need doubt the veracity

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

of those travellers who relate their moderate
rambles of “twenty miles or thereabouts” in
the great caves of the West. No one need
even be astounded at the grandeur of that
renowned cave of Tipperary, discovered in
1833, with its chambers—“wider than angels
ken”—one “nearly a mile in circumference,”
another “of about three miles in circumference”—
so paddywhackishly described by an
enthusiastic correspondent of the Tipperary
Free Press; though, sorry we are to confess,
in the hands of a malicious surveyor, the hall
of a mile in circumference is said to have
suddenly shrunk into a room of ninety feet by
one hundred and fifty, and that of three miles
into one of one hundred feet by just two hundred
and fifty. This is a climax somewhat
similar to that of the story of the seventy
cats—“our cat and another one!” But what
if it be? There is

“Something yet left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon:”

Let us accompany Humboldt, the profoundest
of chorographers, the most veracious

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

of travellers, to the cave of the Guacharo,
among the mountains of Cumana, in South
America. It opens on the face of a precipice,
a grand abyss seventy-seven feet high
and eighty-five wide. A river, born of darkness
and night, like many of the streams of
Carniola, rolls from its mouth; while festoons
of creeping plants, the ivies of the tropics,
hanging from the rocks above, and glittering
with flowers of every gorgeous dye, swing
across the chasm like so many boa-constrictors
on the watch for prey. A grove of
palms and ceibas—the tropical cotton-wood—
rises tall and verdant at the very entrance,
with birds singing, and monkeys chattering,
among the boughs. Through this grove you
enter the cave; and in this grove you continue,
even when the world of sunshine has
been left some distance behind. The palms
still lift their majestic tops, and the ceibas
rub their green heads against the rocky roof;
whilst flowers—the heliconia, the dragon-root,
and others—bloom under your feet.
The palms and ceibas at last cease to appear;
but not so the flowers. As far as man has
penetrated—a distance of more than a quarter
of a mile—you still see them growing,
and all in darkness; on the hill of the cascade

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

(for a hill there is, and a cascade too,) and
beyond, you find them flourishing among
pillars of stalactite, as pale, as sequlchral, as
fantastic, yet as beautiful, as the growth of
spar around them. One might here dream
of the grove of Aladdin, with its trees bearing
fruits of diamond and ruby, of sapphire
and emerald; and the more especially as
every rub of your iron lamp against a spar
calls up before your affrighted eyes a thousand
horrible genii—not the mighty sons of
Eblis indeed, but black and dismal guacharos,
birds bigger than our northern screech-owls—
that with fluttering wing and thrilling
shriek, repel the invader of their enchanted
abode. Compared with such a subterraneous
elysium, the garden discovered by Don
Quixotte, in his memorable exploration of the
cave of Montesinos, el mas bello, ameno y
deleitoso que puede criar la naturaleza—the
most beautiful and delightful that nature ever
made—is but a kitchen garden.

But what is even the cave of the Guacharo
to the Flaming Caves of Cumanacoa—two
wonders of nature hidden among the same
mountains? In the face of a tremendous precipice
looking over the savage woods that
skirt the mountain below, are two immense

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

holes, visible at a great distance, even in the
day-time. But it is at night that they are
seen to the best advantage; and then, if his
star be propitious, if the Indian Cyclopes in
the bowels of the Cerro start from their slumbers
to renew their oft interrupted toil at
forge and bellows, the traveller, leaping from
his own uneasy couch, beholds with amazement
the mouths of the caverns lighted up
with flames; he sees, high on the sable cliff,
two mighty disks of fire that glare upon him
from afar, like the eyes of some crouching
monster—a tiger-cat as big as a Cordillera—
or those more portentous orbs that might
have blazed under the brows of the archenemy,
when he

“Dilated stood
Like Teneriffe or Atlas,”

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

the herd, and tramping victorious off, and
would, of course, think still less of swallowing
a herdsman who should come in their
way. Hence, as it happens, mortal man has
not yet disturbed the solitude, or explored the
wonders of the Flaming Caves, which he is
content to admire at the distance that lends
safety, as well as enchantment, to the view.

Of an equally, perhaps of a still more,
wonderful character is another cave of South
America—in Peru or Bolivia, I think—of
which I once read, though I cannot now tell
where to lay my hands on it, that gapes on
a mountain side, as black and gloomy as
cave may be, until the close of the day; when,
the shades of the mountain having fallen over
it, and over every thing else in the neighbourhood,
on a sudden, warm sunshine gushes
from its jaws, lights up the objects around,
smiles, trembles, fades, and then expires.
This must be the entrance to the Elysium of
the American races—the Happy Hunting
Grounds, which all the tribes, savage and
civilized together, believe the Master of Life
has prepared for the souls of the brave and
just. But, unfortunately, no Humboldt has
yet visited the spot, and we know no more of
it than I have mentioned. Within its

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

unknown chambers we should perhaps find such
Hesperian Gardens and Elysian Fields as
must leave even the cave of the Guacharo in
the shade—crystal wildernesses, overgrown
with phosphorescent cryptogamiœ—those luminous
plants, which, in the coal-mines of
Dresden, and some other places, hanging in
festoons from the roof and pillars, and stretching
in tapestry along the walls, diffuse a
glorious lustre on all around; until the visiter,
amazed and delighted, fancies himself in the
palace of the Fairy Queen, or a cavern dug
out of moonlight. The South American cave,
to whatever cause it may owe its resplendent
emanation, is, undoubtedly, a great wonder;
but the rocks of the Nile and the Orinoco exhale
music—why should not others breathe
sunshine?

According to old Mezeray (or rather, according
to some of those philosophers who
quote him, for I myself could never light upon
the page that records the marvel,) there is a
cavern in Dauphiny, near Grenoble, famous
as the seat of a subterraneous Erie and Niagara,
famous also for the exploring voyage
performed in it, in his youth, by Francis I, in
royal person. At a considerable distance
from the entrance was a sheet of water of

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

unknown bounds, which had previously arrested
the steps of all visitants. But what
shall restrain the curiosity of a king? A
barge was constructed, illuminated with hundreds
of flambeaux, and launched into the
flood; into which the gallant Francis, attended
by a party of his bravest courtiers, struck
boldly out, the Columbus of the caverned deep—
taking good care, however, to leave a huge
beacon-fire blazing behind him on the rocky
beach, to secure his safe return. A voyage
of three miles (cave-distance, be it recollected,)
conducted the royal adventurer to the opposite
shores of the ocean; whence having
landed, and, I suppose, taken possession in
the usual style of discoverers, he turned his
prow in another direction, determined to
fathom all the mysteries of the lake. By and
by, an experienced boatman declared the
barge was no longer floating on a stagnant
lake, but in a current that was perceptibly
increasing in strength; and a courtier called
the attention of the monarch to a hollow
noise heard in the distance, which, like the
current, was every moment growing stronger—
nay, even swelling into horrific thunder.
The navigators rested on their oars, while a
plank, to which several flaming torches were

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

tied, was committed to the water. It floated
rapidly away, became agitated, tossed up
and down, and finally pitched down the unknown
cataract, to which the rival of Charles
V. was so ignorantly hastening. “Back
oars!” was then the cry; and all rowing for
their lives, the monarch had the good fortune
to regain his beacon, and the upper air, with
which, it appears, he remained content for
the rest of his life.

A singular story was formerly told of a
cave in Upper Canada, in the ridge that
bounds the western shore of Ontario, from
which it was but seven or eight miles removed.
It bore the awe-inspiring title of the
Devil's Wigwam—Manito Wigwam—so called
by the Indians, who seemed very devoutly
to believe that the father of lies had there established
his head-quarters. (Had they put
him in the Irish cave, previously described,
the residence would have been more appropriate.)
The Manito-Wigwam was reported
to be of vast depth, consisting of several terraces
separated one from another by precipices
of more than a hundred feet perpendicular
pitch, the last terminating in a fathomless
gulf, into which no human being had ever
endeavoured to penetrate. From this cavern,

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

once a week, issued a terrific din, an earthquake-like
explosion, of such force as to
shake the hills for five leagues around. The
Manito-Wigwam was therefore a very wonderful
cave. I say was, for I know not
whether it is now in existence. The same
enterprizing spirit which has converted Niagara
into a mill-pond, might as easily have
modified the Devil's Wigwam into a hole for
storing winter potatoes.

To this catalogue of wonderful caverns,
which I might easily swell to greater length,
it would be unpardonable not to add a notice
of the marvellous one discovered a year or
two since by two scientific gentlemen of
Philadelphia, in one of the mountain counties
of East Tennessee; in which they lighted
upon the petrified bodies of two men and a
dog, of races manifestly older by many thousand
years than the men and dogs of the
present day. Those venerable remains it
was said to be the intention of the discoverers
to remove from their rocky dwelling to
the more appropriate shelves of a museum, to
take their places among mummied moderns
of the time of Pharaoh, and divide with Javanese
dragons and mermaids the admiration
of a discerning public. It does not,

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

however, appear that these petrified ancients
have yet left their cavern, not so much as a
finger having been received in any museum
in the land; a circumstance that can only be
accounted for by the ingenious and veracious
editor, to whom the public owes the first notice
of the discovery.

eaf018v2.n1

[1] V. Tacit., l. xvi, c. 1, et seq.—This wonderful cavern,
which, according to the representations of Bassus, made to
the emperor Nero, was upon his own estate, near Carthage,
he declared, “contained immense stores of gold not wrought
into the form of coin, but in rude and shapeless ingots, such
as were in use in the early ages of the world. In one part of the
cave were to be seen massy heaps, and in other places
columns of gold towering to a prodigious height; the whole
an immense treasure, reserved in obscurity to add to the splendour
of Nero's reign.”

The effect of this crackbrained schemer's representations
was not confined to the emperor, who despatched him to
Africa in state to fetch the buried treasure, but was felt by
the whole Roman people. “No other subject,” says Tacitus,
“was talked of;” and during the quinquennial games, it was
“the theme on which the orators expatiated, and the poets
exhausted their invention.” It was the “Mississippi Scheme”
of the day.

CHAPTER II.

THE MAMMOTH CAVE: ITS EXTENT—CAVES OF KENTUCKY—
THE BARRENS—BULL, THE DOG—CAVEHOLLOW—
MOUTH OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

Among so many wonders and prodigies,
the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, it may be
supposed, must sink into insignificance. It
reveals no subterranean gardens, no Stygian
lakes, no stupendous waterfalls; it discharges
no volcanic flames, it emits no phosphoric
sunlight; it contains no petrified pre-Adamites,
and no hollow thunders are heard resounding
among its dreary halls. It is not two miles
deep; it is not five hundred miles long—nay,
it can no longer boast even the twenty miles
of extent, which formerly contributed so much
to its glory. The surveyor has been among
its vaults; he has stretched his chain along
its galleries, he has broken the heart of its
mystery, and, with cruel scale and protractor,

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

he has laid it down upon paper. He has illustrated
the truly remarkable fact, which none
but the most cold-blooded of philosophers
were ever before inclined to suspect—namely,
that when you would know the true extent
of any antre vast in which you have journeyed,
the admiring of all admirers, you
should first take the shortest extent you can
possibly believe it to be, and then divide
that length by the sum total of your
thumbs and fingers, being satisfied that,
if the answer be not exactly right, it will be
extremely near it. Thus Weyer's cave in
Virginia—the Antiparos of the Ancient Dominion,
one of the loveliest grots that fairy
ever, or never, danced in—was, until recently
surveyed, pretty universally considered as
being full three miles in length. By the rule
above, we should bring its true extent down
to between five and six hundred yards; a result
that very closely coincides with the admeasurement
of the surveyor. By the same
rule, we should reduce the Mammoth Cave to
two miles; which comes but little short of the
truth. Nevertheless, the Mammoth Cave is
still the monarch of caves: none that have
ever been measured can at all compare with
it, even in extent; in grandeur, in wild,

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

solemn, severe, unadorned majesty, it stands
entirely alone. “It has no brother, it is like
no brother.”

What I have said of the length of this
cave, it must be observed, applies only to a
single passage. It is a labyrinth of branches,
of which the principal one is two miles and
a half long. There are two or three others
of nearly half that length. The extent of
all the passages, taken together, is between
eight and nine miles. There are, besides,
many which have never been explored, and
perhaps never will be—some opening in the
sides, and at the bottoms, of pits that would
appal a samphire-gatherer or an Orkney fowler;
others, of which there are countless
numbers, opening by orifices so narrow that
nothing but blasting with gunpowder can
ever render them practicable; and perhaps as
many more, accessible and convenient enough,
but whose entrances, concealed among rocks
and cranmies, no lucky accident has yet discovered.
The Deserted Chambers, forming
a considerable portion of the whole cave, and
now accessible through two different approaches,
have only been known for a comparatively
brief number of years; and the
Solitary Cave, with its groves of spar, its

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

pools, and springs, and hollow-sounding floors,
is a still more recent discovery.

The survey of the cave, as far as it is now
known, we owe to Mr. Edmund F. Lee, an
engineer of Cincinnati, who has executed his
task with skill and fidelity. The difficulties,
labours—I might even say, the dangers—of
his enterprise (in which he was occupied, I
believe, three or four months—the whole winter
of 1834-5,) can only be appreciated by
those who are familiarly acquainted with the
cave. The exploit of surveying and levelling
eight or nine miles of cavern appears to me
unprecedented. Mr. Lee's Map, with the libretto
of “Notes” accompanying it, published
in Cincinnati by James and Gazlay, interesting
alike to the lovers of romance and of
science, is a curious and valuable production,
which I cordially recommend to my readers
and the public.

The Mammoth Cave lies upon Green
River, in a corner of Edmonson county, Kentucky,
in the heart of the district long known
as the Barrens—a vast extent of rolling hills
and knobs, once bare and naked—prairies, in
fact, as they were sometimes called—but now
overshadowed by a young forest of black-jacks
and other trees that delight in an arid

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

soil. The whole country is one bed of limestone,
with as many caverns below as there
are hills above, both seeming to have been
formed at the same moment, and by the same
cause—some primeval convulsion by which
the rocky substratum was torn to pieces, and
the knobs heaped up. That earthquakes had
something to do in carving out the caves of
the West, no one will doubt who has clambered
among those prodigious blocks of stone—
masses which to move would have puzzled a
Pelasgian builder of old—that lie strewn about
the floors of the Mammoth Cave, shivered from
the roofs and walls by some violent concussion.
The earthquakes that formed them, seem
however, not always to have opened the ragged
fissures to the air: that was left to another
agency—the infiltration, in most instances,
of water, by which the thinner and
weaker portions of the crust were gradually
disintegrated, and finally swept into
the interior. The Mammoth Cave itself
was evidently opened in this way, in remote
times, after remaining sealed up for
a long series of centuries; and in this case,
as in most others, the mass of falling rocks,
sinking across a spacious excavation, has
been sufficient to block it up in one direction,

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

while yielding easy access in the other. The
Horse-shoe Cave, however, a grotto twelve
or fifteen miles distant from the Mammoth—
is an instance in which the roof has fallen,
without obstructing the passage on either
side: you enter the cave, as it were, by a side
door, and may penetrate with equal ease to
the right hand or the left. In many cases,
there seem to exist caverns with no roof of
rock at all, the fissure having extended to the
top of the limestone, where it is covered over
only by a thin layer of soil. It is not altogether
an uncommon thing for a traveller in
Kentucky to play the Curtius, and plunge,
horse and man, into the bowels of the earth
at a moment when he feels neither patriotic
nor heroical, but very much like any other
mortal. It was but two years ago that a
gentleman of Lexington, ambling over his
fields, in the neighbourhood of that city, surveying
his stacks of hemp, and speculating
perhaps, like a philanthropist, upon the number
of rascals his crop might be expected to
hang, suddenly found himself sinking into the
earth, whirling in a Maelstrom of clay and
stones; from which, however, he succeeded
in extricating himself by leaping briskly from
his horse. The animal sank to a depth of

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

one hundred and fifty feet, where he became
wedged between two rocks, the sides of a
cavern, and perished. A similar accident
happened in the Barrens of which I speak, as
early as 1795, when a planter of West Tennessee
lost his horse, and saved himself, in
the same way; only, that on this occasion,
the animal tumbled into a more spacious
cavern, in which he walked about until starved
to death.

But let us hasten to the cave. It is midsummer.
It was at that season, several
years ago, I made my first (it was not my
only) visit to the cave. It was the close of
merry June—merry, yet not merry, for the
pestilence was then abroad in the land, and
men were thinking and talking of nothing
but cholera—when I, with an excellent friend,
(alas! now no more,) who was as eager as
myself to escape to some nook where cholera
was unknown, where our ears should be no
longer pained, nor our souls sickened by
“every day's report” of cases—made my way
to the heart of the Barrens, and in good time,
one bright morning, found myself approaching
the Mammoth Cave. The air was hot
upon the hill-tops, hotter still in the little valleys
that, with their lowly cabins of logs, and

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

smiling, though half-cultivated corn-fields, presented
here and there a few demi-oases in
the desert of black-jacks, through which we
were jogging: there was no breeze in the forest,
but there was note of preparation among
the white and sable-silvered clouds aloft, that
now sent a heavy rain-drop pashing in our
faces and now woke the woods with rattling
peals of thunder. But what cared we for shower
or bolt? We were vagabondizing among
the knobs; and, by and by, we should be
under the canopy of the cave, deep in vaults
where the rain beats not and the thunder
is never heard. We are even now riding
over its labyrinthine halls: each of these rocky
hills is arched over one of its gloomy vaults;
and it is in a glen upon the side of the very
knob, on whose flat, plain-like summit we are
now coursing to our journey's end, we are to
find its darksome portals. Under this mouldering
stile of logs, where we leave our Rozinantes,
rejoiced to escape their excruciating
backs, under this venerable, rickety porch,
where we pause a moment to look around, at
a depth of a hundred feet below, is one of
the hugest chambers of the cave. The guide
prepares his iron torches, his bucket of oil—
or, to speak less poetically, his bucket of lard,

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

(for here the fat of Leviathan is unknown,)
and his basket of provisions; while we, exhorting
him to despatch, set off to explore
the mysteries of the glen, the redoubtable
Cave-Hollow, ourselves.

But first let us seduce honest Bull, the
great dog that has been wagging his tail at
us in token of friendship, to lead us to the
cavern. “You may get him into the Hollow,”
quoth the guide, nodding his head; “but you
won't get him into the cave; because dogs
are exactly the people that won't go in, no
way you can fix it.—They have a horror of
it.”—Verily, after we had ourselves got in, and
seen the last glimmer of fading daylight swallowed
up in midnight gloom, we began to
think Bull's discretion not so very extraordinary.
There actually is a point at which
dogs begin to think of themselves in preference
to their masters. I once saw a hulking
cur, who boasted the same name Bull—as all
big dogs, except Newfoundland ones, do—attempt
to follow his master over the bridge
above the falls of Niagara. It was a fine
sunshiny day, and Bull, being in a joyous humour,
had gallopped a hundred yards or so
along the bridge, without much thinking of
where he was or whither going. But on a

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

sudden the idea struck his mind, or whatever
part of him served for mind; he stopped, applied
his nose to a crack in the planks, and
made a dead set at the horrible green and
white billows beneath. “Come on, Bull!”
cried his master from afar. “If I do,” said
Bull, “I wish I may —;” not that he actually
said so much in words, but it was written
in his eye. His tail fell, his ears began to
to rise, he stole a sidelong look at the waters
above and the waters below; and planted himself
in the centre of the bridge, from which
he refused to budge, except upon hard jostling,
even to let myself get by. His master
called again and again; and I believe Bull
made some small effort to advance, stepping
slowly and carefully forward, as if treading
upon eggs. He did not, however, proceed
far; and when I saw him last, he had come
to a second stand, and was again surveying
the boiling surges through the gaps of the
planks, looking volumes of mute terror and
perplexity. How he ever got to firm land
again I know not; for he was evidently as
much afraid to return as to advance.

Were there indeed such horrors in the
Mammoth Cave as should make a dog a
coward on instinct? The thought sharpened

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

our expectations, and we were the more
eager to make its acquaintance.

And now let us descend the Cave-Hollow—
a ravine that begins a mere gully at first,
but, widening and deepening as you proceed,
becomes at last, on the banks of the river,
half a mile to the west, a valley that might
almost be called spacious. It is bounded by
ledges of calcareous rock overlaid by sandstone,
which, in some places, assume the appearance
of precipices, and, in others, are
piled together in loose blocks. Along the
line of wall thus bounding the valley, spring
tall oak-trees and chestnuts, rooted among
the rocks; while elms, and walnuts, maples
and papaws, and a thousand other trees, with
vines, weeds, brambles, and many a glaring
wild-flower, occupy the depths of the hollow,
shutting it out almost as much from the blue
heaven above as its rocky walls seclude it
from the habitable earth around. A brook
that runs when the clouds run, and at no
other period, has ploughed a rugged channel
down one side of the glen; and along its
banks or in its parched bed, as seems most
convenient, we make our way, looking for the
cave, which refuses to be found; hiding from
the sun, which, however, neither the scudding

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

thunder-clouds nor the embowering tree-tops
can wholly keep from our visages; and sighing
for something to “allay the burning
quality” of the atmosphere, some cool breeze
stirred by the wing of Favonius from fountain-side
or brim, some—But soft! we have
our wish; a cool breeze does at last breathe
over our cheeks; it rolls a gentle and invisible
stream, a river of air, down the valley.
On that grassy terrace above, we shall enjoy
it. On that grassy terrace we step, and
the cave yawns before us!—The breeze, at
first so cool, and now so icy, comes from its
marble jaws; it is the breath of the monster.

How dark, how dismal, how dreary! The
platform sinks abruptly under your feet, forming
a steep and broken declivity of thirty or
more feet in descent, and as much in width.
From the bottom of the abyss thus formed,
springs an arch, whose top is on a level lower
even than your feet, while the massive rock
that crowns it is on a plane which you can
still overlook. The cave is therefore under
your feet, you look down upon it; it is subterraneous
even at its entrance; and this is a
circumstance which adds double solemnity
and horror to its appearance. In other respects
its aspect is haggard and ghastly in

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

the extreme. The gray rocks, consisting of
thick horizontal plates, forming ledges and
galleries along the sides; the long grasses,
the nodding ferns, the green mosses and lichens,
that have fastened among their crannies;
the pit immediately under the spring of
the arch, loosely choked with beams, planks,
earth and stones; the stream of crystal water,
oozing from the mosses on the face of the
crowning rock, and falling with a wild pattering
sound upon the ruins below; the dismal
blackness of the vacuity, in which objects are
obscurely traced only for a few fathoms; and
the ever-breathing blast, so cold, so strange,
so sepulchre-like; form together a picture of
desolation and gloom inconceivably awful
and repelling. Indeed, instances not unfrequently
occur where visiters are so much
overcome by its appearance, as to fall back
upon their instincts, like honest Bull the dog,
and refuse to enter it altogether. A singular
addition is given to its dreariness by the presence
of several mouldering beams of wood
stretched across the mouth from ledge to
ledge, and two tottering chimneys of stone,
behind the cotton-wood tree on the right
hand; the ruins of old saltpetre works, the
manufacture of which villanous compound, in

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

the last war, was carried on to a great extent
in the cave. But peace came, and with
it those curses of trade, low prices, by which
the manufacturers were scattered to the
winds, and the Mammoth Cave again left to
its solitude. But that is its proper condition.
A city at Niagara, a factory in the Mammoth
Cave, are consummations of enterprising ambition
only to be hoped for by men whose
hearts are of gold and silver, and their nerves
and brains of the dross thereof.

How dark, how dismal, how dreary! One
would think that no living creature, save man
alone, the lover of romance and adventure,
would willingly enter this horrible pit. Yet
a swallow has built her nest under the grim
arch; and as she darts with flashing wing
through the thin waters of the falling brook,
and turns gamesomely about, and darts
through them again and again, her twittering
cries are as full of jocund mirth as of music.
What is it to her that all around is darkness,
fear, and desolation? The chirping of her
young from the shattered roof makes the
cave her paradise. And that little lizard, striped
with azure and scarlet,that dances around
the trunk of the stunted crab-apple growing on
the face of the descent—the most beautiful,

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

delicate, graceful, resplendent, mischievous
little rascal my eyes ever beheld—he mocks
me, but he will not let me catch him!—there
is something here, though what I know not,
to make the chill, moist entrance of the cave
more delighiful even to him than the gray,
heated rocks above, where his comrades are
basking. And yet the lizard and swallow are
frisking at the mouth of a sepulchre. The
nitre taken from this cave was dug from
among the bones of buried Indians. If we
can believe the account of those who should
know best, many a generation of dead men
sleeps among the vaults of the Mammoth
Cave. Perhaps this thought, busy in the
mind of the visiter, invests its aspect with a
more awful solemnity than it really possesses.

CHAPTER III.

DESCENT INTO THE CAVE—THE NARROWS—THE
BLAST OF CAVES—THUNDERSTORM—THE VESTIBULE.

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

But let us descend. The guide has arrived;
the swinging torches are tied each to its
staff, and lighted; our canteens are filled from
the trough that receives the crystal brook,
and all is ready for the subterranean journey.
Enter the mighty portal—

Arch'd so high, that giants may jet through
And keep their impious turbands on, without
Good-morrow to

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

dry, smooth clay: so far we owe thanks to
the nitre-diggers, who have constructed a
path—it almost might be called a carriageroad—
half a mile into the cave.

Over this path, ringing with sonorous clang
to every footstep, facing full to the east—yet
what an east! an Orient that never knew a
dawn—the thunder roaring behind us, (for
the storm has at last burst,) and the gust of
the cave murmuring hollow in front, we
trudge along; until, sixty paces from the dripping-spring,
we find ourselves at the Narrows,
where the roof is but seven or eight
feet high, and the width of the cave not
much greater. The passage has been still
further contracted by a wall built up by the
miners, leaving only a narrow door-way, that
was formerly provided with a leaf to exclude
the cold air of winter. Here, if the nervous
visiter has not been appalled at the entrance,
he will perhaps be dismayed by the furious
blast rushing like a winter tempest through
the door. Its strength is indeed astonishing.
It deprives him of breath, and, what is worse,
of light; the torches are blown out; they are
relighted and again extinguished: we must
grope our way through in the dark, and trust
to flint and steel. It is done: once through

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

the narrow door, and the wind appals no
longer. All is calm and still, a few feet within
the wall; it is only at the contracted gap
that we feel the fury of the current. In the
winter, or at any other period of cold weather,
the blast is reversed; the current is then inwards.

There are numerous caves in America, as
well as in other parts of the world, which
exhibit the phenomena of the blast; and this
has usually been reckoned one of their chief
wonders. It has given rise among philosophers
to a deal of fanciful theory, which,
perhaps, would never have been indulged in,
had not observers in the first place mystified
the whole subject by recording facts that only
existed in their imagination. Thus, some
caves are said to blow in and out, without
much regard to the state of the weather, a wonder
which was only to be explained by supposing
the existence of intermitting fountains—
that is, of vast pools alternately rising and falling,
and so, by increasing or diminishing the
space within, expelling or inhaling the air;
while others again were reported to blow out
perpetually—as in the case of the cave at the
Panther Gap in Virginia, described by Mr.
Jefferson. This cave Mr. Jefferson, I

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

think, could never have seen, as he describes
it (in very loose terms, it must be confessed)
as having an entrance “of about one hundred
feet diameter;” whereas all travellers
represent the outlet as being quite small.
Allowing that he describes it on mere hear-say,
we need attach no great weight to his
assertion, that the current “is strongest in dry,
frosty weather, and weakest in long spells of
rain.” That it does blow in the summer is
well ascertained; that it blows at all in winter,
I feel strongly disposed to doubt, having
heard that part of the story contradicted
by a person residing in the neighbourhood of
the Gap. Our opinion is, that all caves of
any magnitude blow; that the blast becomes
perceptible only when the outlet is very small;
that it is in all caves alike—the blast being
outward in hot, and inward in cold weather;
and that to understand the mystery, nothing
more is required than to place a candle in a
door communicating betwixt a very warm
and a very cold room, holding it first near
the floor, when a cold current will be found
rushing into the warm room, and then near
the lintel, where a warm current will be
found rushing out. In other words, we think
that there is a double current flowing,

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

Mediterranean-wise, at the mouth of every cave,
and flowing always, except when the temperatures
within and without are the same;
a cold current at the bottom rushing out in
summer, and in during the winter, and a warm
one above flowing in the contrary direction,
a perpetual circulation of air being thus kept
up. This is an idea, which, being too simple
and natural to be readily conceived, did
not occur to us when it was in our power to
verify or disprove it at the Mammoth Cave,
as we had many opportunities to do. Our
mind, in fact, on all such occasions, was engaged
with a sublimer idea. We thought of
musical strings—a great æolian lyre—
stretched across the door, and waked to majestic
music by the breath of the cave—such
solemn strains as were poured by the “ingenious
instrument” of Belarius over the dying
Imogen.

Bur we have passed the windy gap, and
are in the cave, where all is silence and tranquillity.
The thunder is still raving in the
upper air, but its peals already come faintly
to the ear: a few more steps and they will be
inaudible. With a rock a hundred feet thick
over our heads, we can defy their fury, and
forget it. Armies of a hundred thousand

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

men might fight a Waterloo on the hills
above, and we know nothing of it. At least,
we should hear neither drum nor trumpet,
nor sound of artillery; though cascades of
blood, falling where we are to find only cascades
of water, might impart the hideous secret.
Our torches are relighted, making
each

“A little glooming light, much like a shade,”

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

“A strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast;”

What now do we see? Midnight—the
blackness of darkness—nothing! Where are
we? where is the wall we were lately elbowing
out of the way? It has vanished, it is
lost; we are walled in by darkness, and darkness
canopies us above. Look again; swing
your torches aloft! Ay, now you can see it,
far up, a hundred feet above your head, a gray
ceiling rolling dimly away like a cloud; and
heavy buttresses, bending under the weight,
curling and toppling over their base, begin to

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

project their enormous masses from the shadowy
wall. How vast, how solemn, how
awful! And how silent, how dreadfully silent!
The little bells of the brain are ringing
in your ears; you hear nothing clse, not even
a sigh of air, not even the echo of a drop of
water falling from the roof. The guide triumphs
in your looks of amazement and awe,
he takes advantage of your feelings all so
solemn and romantic:—“Them that says the
Mammoth ain't a rale tear-cat don't know
nothing about it!”—

With which truly philosophic interjection,
he falls to work on certain old wooden ruins,
to you yet invisible, and builds a brace or
two of fires; by the aid of which you begin
to have a better conception of the scene
around you. You are in the Vestibule, or
ante-chamber, to which the spacious entrance
of the cave and the narrow passage that
succeeds it, should be considered the mere
gateway and covered approach. It is a basilica
of an oval figure, two hundred feet in
length by one hundred and fifty wide, with a
roof, which is as flat and level as if finished
by the trowel of the plasterer, of fifty or sixty,
or even more, feet in height. Two passages,
each a hundred feet in width, open

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

into it at its opposite extremities, but in right
angles to each other; and as they preserve a
straight course for five or six hundred feet,
with the same flat roof common to each, the
appearance to the eye is that of a vast hall
in shape of the letter L, expanded at the
angle, both branches being five hundred feet
long by a hundred wide. The passage on
the right hand is the Great Bat Room; that
in front, the beginning of the Grand Gallery,
or the main cavern itself. The whole of this
prodigious space is covered by a single rock,
in which the eye can detect no break or interruption,
save at its borders, where is a
broad sweeping cornice, traced in horizontal
panel-work, exceedingly noble and regular;
and not a single pier or pillar of any kind
contributes to support it. It needs no support;
it is like the arched and ponderous
roof of the poet's mausoleum,

“By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable.”

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

fact, one of their chief factory rooms. Before
their day, it was a cemetery; and here they
disinterred many a mouldering skeleton, belonging,
it seems, to that gigantic eight or
nine feet race of men of past days, whose
jaw-bones so many thousand veracious persons
have clapped over their own, like horsecollars,
without laying by a single one to
convince the soul of scepticism.

Such is the Vestibule of the Mammoth
Cave—a hall which hundreds of visitors have
passed through without being conscious of
its existence. The path leading into the
Grand Gallery hugs the wall on the left hand,
and is, besides, in a hollow, flanked on the
right hand by lofty mounds of earth, which
the visiter, if he looks at them at all, as he
will scarcely do at so early a period after
entering, will readily suppose to be the opposite
walls. Those who enter the Bat Rooms—
into which flying visiters are seldom conducted—
will indeed have some faint suspicion,
for a moment, that they are passing through
infinite space; but the walls of the cave being
so dark as not to reflect one single ray of
light from the dim torches, and a greater
number of them being necessary to disperse
the gloom than are usually employed, they

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

will still remain in ignorance of the grandeur
around them. In an attempt which we made
to secure a drawing of the Vestibule, we had
it lighted up with a dozen or more torches
and flambeaux, and two or three bonfires beside;
but still the obscurity was so great that
it was necessary, in sketching any one part,
to have the torches for the time held before
it. It was, in fact, impossible to light it up
so as to embrace all its striking features in
one view. We saw enough of it, however,
to determine its quality. It possesses not
one particle of beauty; but its grandeur, its
air of desolation combined with majesty, are
unspeakably impressive.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BAT ROOMS—THE CREVICE PIT—TRAGEDY OF
THE PIT CAVE.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

But let us enter the Bat Rooms—the Big
Bat room and the Little one—the latter being
a narrow branch of the former, remarkable
only for its two pits, one of which, the
Crevice Pit, is the deepest that has been
measured in the whole cave.

The Big Bat Room is about one third of a
mile long, counting from its entrance, which
is not half a mile as is generally supposed,
but just three hundred yards from the mouth
of the cave. It is interesting only from its
width and height, which it preserves nearly
to the end unimpaired. It terminates in
mounds of massive sandstone, that, with the
assistance of water ever dripping through

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

them, have crushed in the roof, leaving a
shadowy dome above them. The Little Bat
Room opens in its left wall, six or seven hundred
feet from the Vestibule. It is long,
winding, low, and deep; and was once the
bed of a torrent that has worn its walls into
a thousand figures, with numerous winding
holes which lead perhaps into other caverns,
but are too small to be entered. It is now
dry, like other parts of the cave, and blackened
by age, or by the smoke of the torches
of the ancient inhabitants of the cave and the
miners. Within but a few feet of its extremity,
there are two low-browed niches, one
in each wall, nearly opposite each other, the
blackest, ugliest looking places in the whole
world, particularly that on the left hand,
which is a hundred times blacker and uglier
than the other. One feels an instinctive horror
of this place at the very first look, and
perceives a crab-like inclination in his legs
to sidle away from it, if not to beat a retreat
altogether. There never was better occasion
for instinct. Under that niche, down to
which the rocky floor you stand on so treacherously
inclines, is a pit three hundred feet
deep—ay, by'r lady! and perhaps three times
three hundred more to the back of them, if

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

not three times three thousand—who can
tell? Mr. Lee struck bottom at two hundred
and eighty feet; but, as in the case of the
Bottomless Pit, to be spoken of hereafter, a
stone thrown down tells quite another story.
Bang, bang, rattle, rattle, bang, bang again,
down it goes; now loud, now low, now loud
again, and then softer and softer, until the
sound gradually becomes inaudible. One
false step on this villanous floor, and the thing
is settled. You roll over, as a matter of
course; and, as another matter of course,
that hideous niche receives you into its jaws,
ever gaping for prey, like the jaws of a sleeping
alligator in fly time; and then comes the
plunge of the three hundred feet, the crashing
of bone and flesh, the—pah!

But let us sit down by its brink; the guide
has many a wild and dreary story to tell,
which can be best told in such a place as
this.

And, first, he tells us that this identical
abyss—the Crevice Pit, as it is called—
sounded by Mr. Lee in 1835, with a string
having a stone tied to the end of it, was
sounded, many a long year before, by the
miners, pretty much in the same way; only
that, instead of a stone to the string, they

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

had a young negro tied to the end of it.
However, this highly original plummet, it
appears, was tied on with its own consent,
the lad being a bold romantic fellow, ambitious
to signalize himself by a daring exploit,
and perhaps a brilliant discovery. Down,
therefore, into the pit they lowered him;
though with an effect singularly resembling
that attending the Knight of La Mancha's
descent into the cave of Montesinos. The
rope suddenly became light, its burden had
vanished; though, in due course of time, it
again felt heavy in the hands of the miners,
who, drawing it up, found the adventurer at
its end as before. Some very wondrous
story he told them, with great glee, of his
having discovered, fifty or sixty feet below,
a spacious and splendid cave, in which he
had walked; but as he never after could be,
by any persuasions, induced to attempt a
second descent, it was thought he had imitated
Don Quixote to the letter, ensconced
himself on the first convenient ledge or shelf,
and dreamed the remainder of the adventure.

The Mammoth Cave, as I observed, was
wrought for saltpetre during the last war,
when the price of that article was so high,

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

and the profits of the manufacturer so great,
as to set half the western world gadding
after nitre caves—the gold mines of their
day. Cave hunting, in fact, became a kind
of mania, beginning with speculators, and
ending with hair-brained young men, who
dared from the love of adventure the risks
that others ran for profit. As might be expected,
this passion was not always indulged
without accident; and several caves in Kentucky
and Tennessee obtained a mournful celebrity
as the scenes of painful suffering and disaster.
In some cases, caves have been entered
by explorers who were never again known to
leave them, and around whose fate yet hangs
the deepest mystery. Accidents, not attended
with loss of life, were of frequent occurrence;
and, as for frights, they were lumped
together in report, in the style of a constable's
inventory, as too tedious to mention.

Among the tragical incidents illustrative
of the time and the mania, told by the guide
at the Crevice Pit, the following I consider
worthy of being recorded, and the more so
as it occurred within the immediate vicinity,
and had therefore gained nothing by

“Travelling with increase from mouth to mouth.”

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

Four or five miles from the Mammoth
Cave, a few paces from the bridle-path over
the Knobs, by which the visiter coming from
Bell's at the Three Forks, reaches it, is a
cave known as the Pit Cave, though sometimes
called, I believe, Wright's Cave, after
the name of the person who first attempted
to explore it. This man was a speculator,
who having some reason to believe the cave
a valuable one, resolved to examine it; but
possessing little knowledge of caves and less
of the business of the nitre-maker, he applied
to Mr. Gatewood, the proprietor of the works
at the Mammoth Cave, and of course experienced
in both these particulars, to assist
him in the search. A day was accordingly
appointed, on which Mr. Gatewood agreed
to meet him at the cave, and conduct the exploration
in person. But on that day, as it
happened, there arose a furious storm of rain
and thunder; and Mr. Gatewood, not supposing
that even Wright himself would, under
such circumstances, keep the appointment,
remained at his own works. In the meanwhile,
however, Wright had reached the cave,
in company with another man, a miner, though
of no great experience in cave-hunting; and
with him, finding that Mr. Gatewood did not

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

come, and having made all his preparations,
he resolved to undertake the exploration himself.
This the two men commenced, and
pursued for several hours without accident
and without fear, seeing, indeed, nothing to
excite alarm, except a cluster of very dangerous
pits, which they passed while engaged in
the search. But by and by, having consumed
much time in rambling about, they discovered
that by some extraordinary oversight,
they had left their store of candles at the
mouth of the cave, having brought in with
them only those they carried in their hands,
which were now burning low. The horrors
of their situation at once flashed on their
minds; they were at a great distance from
the entrance, which there was little hope they
could reach with what remained of their
candles, and the terrible pits were directly on
their path. It was thought, however, that if
they could succeed in passing these, it might
be possible to grope their way from the cave
in the dark, as the portion beyond the pits
offered no unusual interruptions, and was
without branches. The attempt was made;
and as desperation gave speed to their feet,
they had, at last, the inexpressible satisfaction
to reach the pits, and to pass them in

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

safety, leaving them several hundred feet behind,
ere their lights entirely failed. But now
began their difficulties. In the confusion and
agitation of mind which beset them at the
moment when the last candle expired, they
neglected to set their faces firmly towards
the entrance; and in consequence, when darkness
at last suddenly surrounded them, they
were bewildered and at variance, Wright
vehemently insisting that they should proceed
in one direction, the miner contending
with equal warmth that the other was the
right one. The violence of Wright prevailed
over the doubts of his follower, who allowed
himself to be governed by the former,
especially when the desperate man offered to
lead the way, so as to be the first to encounter
the pits, supposing he should be wrong.
An expedient for testing the safety of the
path, which Wright hit upon, had also its
effect on his companion's mind; he proposed,
as he crawled along on his hands and feet—
the only way they dare attempt to proceed in
the dark over the broken floor—to throw
stones before him, by means of which it would
be easy to tell when a pit lay in the way. The
miner, accordingly, though with many misgivings,
suffered himself to be ruled, and

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

followed at Wright's heels, the latter every moment
hurling a stone before him, and at every
throw uttering some hurried exclamation, now
a prayer, now a word of counsel or encouragement
to his companion, though always expressive
of the deepest agitation and disorder
of mind. They had proceeded in this way
for several moments, until even the miner
himself, believing that if they were in error,
they had crawled far enough to reach the pits,
became convinced his employer was in the
right path; when suddenly the clang of one of
the stones cast by Wright, falling as if on the
solid floor, was succeeded by a rushing sound,
the clatter of loose rocks rolling down a declivity,
and then a heavy hollow crash at a
depth beneath. He called to Wright; no answer
was returned; all was dismal silence;
not even a groan from the wretched employer
replied to the call. His fate the terrified miner
understood in a moment: the first of the
pits was, at one part of its brink, shelving;
on the declivity thus formed, the stone cast
by Wright had lodged; but Wright had slipped
from it into the pit, and slipped so suddenly
as not to have time to utter even one
cry of terror. The miner, overcome with
horror, after calling again and again without

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receiving any answer, or hearing any sound
whatever, turned in the opposite direction, and
endeavoured to effect his own escape from
the cave. He wandered about many hours,
now sinking down in despair, now struggling
again for life; until at last yielding to his fate
in exhaustion of mind and body, incapable of
making any further exertions, a sudden ray
of light sparkled in his face. He rushed forward—
it was the morning-star shining through
the mouth of the cave! The alarm was immediately
given. Mr. Gatewood, with a
party of his labourers, hurried to the cave
and to the pit, on whose shelving edge
were seen evidences enough of some heavy
body having lately rolled into it. The offer
of a reward conquered the terror of one of
the workmen, who was lowered with ropes
to the bottom of the pit, a depth of fifty or
sixty feet; and Wright's lifeless body was
drawn out.

The above tragical incident I have heard
confirmed by the lips of several different persons;
one of whom, however, contested the
right of the morning-star to figure in it;
affirming that the miner made his way out
before night, and that it was the light of day,
shining at a distance like a star, which gave

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rise to that poetical embellishment. I believe
he was right. It is thus, like a star—the
loveliest of all the lamps that spangle the
vault of night—that daylight breaks from
afar upon the adventurer, returning from the
depths of the Mammoth Cave.