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Standing again upon the verge of the declivity
of the First Cataract, facing toward
the mouth of the cave, we perceive on the
right hand, a wide and lofty passage running
from the Grand Gallery, which we did not
before notice. This is commonly considered
as a continuation of the Grand Gallery, or
Main Cave, and may be followed for a distance
of fifteen hundred yards—nearly a
mile. Half a mile from its entrance at the
Cataracts, it is crossed by another wide cave,
the right and left hand branches of which are
each half a mile long, and called, respectively,
Symmes's Pit Branch and the Branch of the
Blue Spring. Each has its curiosities and its

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interest. The end of the former is the farthest
point from daylight yet reached in
the Mammoth Cave, being but a few yards
short of two miles and a half. The pit from
which it takes its name is of unknown depth,
and peculiarly dangerous to approach; its
funnel-shaped mouth being strown with
loose rocks, that, at a touch of the foot, roll
into the chasm: it is such a trap as the lion-spider
digs in the sand for his unwary prey,
which a single false step slides headlong into
his expanded jaws.

Into these branches it is not my intention
to drag the reader: it is sufficient if he will
follow me six or seven hundred yards into the
Main Cave. Throughout this distance, the
floor is still rugged; the path runs over fallen
slabs, that rock and clatter under our feet
with incessant din—in some places to such a
degree as to have gained for certain long but
not lofty mounds over which we must pass,
the name of the Clattering Hills.

But to what a chamber this wearisome and
painful road conducts us! We have expended
our breath, our epithets, our enthusiasm,
upon the smaller glories of the Vestibule and
the Hall of the Black Chambers, and we
have nothing left wherewith to paint the vast

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vault into which we have now found our way.
Yet with even a wilderness of fine words at
command, I doubt whether I could convey an
adequate idea of the scene, or of the impressions
it produces on a spectator's mind. If
the reader will fancy an oval room extremely
regular in figure of the enormous dimensions
of one hundred and fifty yards in length, by
eighty yards wide, (feet are here too trifling
for our purpose,) crowned by a dome one
hundred and twenty feet high, and of an oval
shape, corresponding throughout with the
figure of the room, he will have a better idea
of the den and its horrible grandeur, than
could be conveyed by the most laboured description.
On the floor, which is actually
two acres in area, lies a mountain of great
rocks—fallen from the dome, and reposing
chiefly against the left wall. From this mountain—
a pile of ruins such as we have seen
in the Grand Gallery—the chamber derives
its name of the Chief City—a name that I
infinitely prefer to the trivial one of the Temple,
under which it figures in Mr. Lee's map.
The great dome above is of a peculiar and
striking appearance, being formed by the
giving away, one after the other, of the great
horizontal strata of rock, the perforation of

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each in the ascending series being less in
dimensions than that in the stratum immediately
below, until the top of all, in place of a
lantern, is closed by a flat oval slab symmetrically
cut and placed with the figure and axis
of the chamber. This noble dome, as Mr.
Lee justly observes, “in passing through,
from one end to the other, appears to follow,
like the sky, in passing from place to place
on the earth.” From its height, it could not
be otherwise.

It must not be supposed that all the vast
dimensions of this prodigious chamber can
be embraced by the eye at once. The darkness
of the rock of which all is composed,
not to speak of the boundless extent of the
chamber, forbids that. It is only by ascending
the mountain, collecting the pieces of
cane—remnants of old Indian torches—and
building fires with them, that we can see any
thing, except a few yards of rocky floor
around us;—all else is the void of darkness.
When the fires are in flame, the torches all
freshly trimmed, we can, from the top of the
mountain, discern, dimly it must be confessed,
the dome above us and the opposite wall;
but the ends of the chamber are still veiled
in midnight. It is only when a guide and a

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companion are placed one at each end, with
their torches, that the whole immensity of the
scene begins to break upon our minds.

Upon this mountain we will end our journey.
It is a favourite place with visiters,
and was a favourite with the Indian inhabitants
of yore. The interstices of the rocks,
from top to bottom, are full of the half-burnt
remnants of their cane torches: you may, in
any place, collect, in five minutes, fragments
enough to build a fire. Hundreds—I might
almost say, thousands—of fires have been already
built by visiters; but the supply of fuel
seems yet inexhaustible. The presence of
these canes—the growth of the river-banks
near—in such astonishing, such unaccountable
quantities, is all that remains to prove in
what favour the Red-man held the ruins of
the Chief City. Visiters of the pale-faced
race have left still more surprising proofs of
their regard. The chinks of the wall, at the
top of the mountain, are stuck full of written
papers, in which sundry full-hearted personages
have acquainted the Mammoth Cave
with the state of their affections. Here a
confiding, and, I doubt not, youthful personage,
who signs his name in full—it may be
Charles Henry Tender, or Allheart, or any

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thing else—assures Miss Lavinia Small,—
Peabody,—or Pettibones, that he visited the
Mammoth Cave at such a date, and that he
adores her, and will continue to do so as long
as the rocks hold together; there another son
of soul, who writes a good hand, somewhat
the worse for bad paper and mouldered ink,
and spells nothing aright except his own
name, proclaims that he was educated at
such a college, declaring that he will hold his
Alma Mater in honour and affection, and
also Miss Angelina B—, diffidently leaving
her name to be guessed at; then comes another
edition of Mr. Tender and Miss Small,
under other names, and then another, and
another without end—memorials of fond
hearts and foolish heads.

From these frank confessions, whispered
in pen and ink into the rocky ears of the
Mammoth Cave, and the representations of
the guides, there seems to be every reason
to believe that the Mammoth Cave—and
particularly the Chief City thereof—has a
wonderful effect in awakening the tender
passions; a phenomenon which, however interesting
it might be to discuss, I must leave
to be solved by the philosophers. I felt
somewhat of an inclination, at the first peep

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into them, to pocket a brace or two of these
precious records; but they were secrets
breathed in the confessional—offerings made
to the benign (so we must conceive him)
genius of the cave; and I returned them to
their places, to rot and moulder, as perhaps
have already done some of the idle hands
that traced them.

In the Deserted Chambers, we made an
effort, and a successful one, to find out what
solitude was. Let us, in this fearful vault,
upon this mound of rocks, two miles away
from the blessed light of heaven, prove what
is darkness;—a thing, I devoutly believe, quite
as little known in the outer world, even as
solitude. Let us blow out our torches. What
should we fear? We have our pockets full
of Lucifers, and `can again our former lights
restore,' whenever it repents us. What, indeed,
can we fear? Man is not with us: we
are alone with God. Is darkness so very
terrible?

“He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day.”

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that those who dream that Heaven, in visiting
them with a little affliction, a little desolation,
a little gloom—the darkest that was
ever infused into the sparkling dew-drop of
life—has quenched the light of hope and happiness,
leaving the spirit in midnight, should
sit with us upon this rock, and say if such
darkness as this ever lay even for a moment
upon the mind! Never: such darkness were
annihilation. It is awful. The atmosphere
is a rock, palpable and solid as the limestone
walls around; the very air seems petrified—
condensed into a stratum of coal, in which
we sit encased like toads or insects—fossils—
living fossils. Such it is to us—to man;
all whose skill exhausted in the most ingenious
devices, could not collect from it light
enough to see his own fingers. Yet the bat
flutters by at ease; and the rat, which has no
such fine organization as his airy cousin, or
as a somnambule from the digits of an AnimalMagnetizer—
creatures, as we all know—the
bat and the somnambule—that see through
their bodies, or, rather, see by instinct, without
the intervention of visual apparatus of
any kind—the rat scampers over the rocks
with equal facility and confidence; and, doubtless,
if a cat were here, she also would find

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light enough to make a bold dash at his ratship.
But we are in gloom—gloom unparallelled
by any thing in the world. Truly,
indeed, man knows nothing about darkness
there—Alas! none but those to whose eyes
Heaven has denied the blessing of light altogether.
The blind see such darkness; and
here we can learn (for during a period we
can feel it) the depth and misery of the privation.

And now, while thus sitting in gloom ineffable,
a secret dread (notwithstanding the
actual assurance we possess of security) stealing
through our spirits, we can understand
and appreciate the horror of mind which inevitably
seizes upon men lost in caves, and
deprived of their lights; even when their
reason—if they could listen to that ever illused
counsellor, the victim and football of
every fitful passion—tells them that their
situation is not wholly desperate. Although
no fatal accident has ever happened in the
Mammoth Cave, men have been frequently
lost in it; or, at least, have lost their lights,
and so been left imprisoned in darkness. In
such a case, as proceeding in any direction
in the dark is quite out of the question, all
that is to be done is to sit patiently down,

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waiting until relief comes from without; which
will happen as soon as the persons outside
have reason, from your unusual stay, to suspect
that some such catastrophe has occurred.
This every body who enters the cave knows
well enough, and none better than the guides;
and, one would suppose, such knowledge
would always, in case of accident, preserve
from unmanly terror. The case is, however,
as numerous examples prove, quite otherwise;
guide and visiter, the bold man and
the timid, yield alike to apprehension, give
over all as lost, and pass the period of
imprisonment in lamentations and prayers.
It is astonishing, indeed, how vastly devout
some men, who were never devout before,
become, when thus lost in the cave; though,
as might be suspected, the fit of devotion is
of no longer duration than the time of imprisonment:

“When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he”—

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to stumble upon a worthy gentleman, who,
among his many virtues public and private,
was not supposed to lay any particular claim to
religious devotion; or if he did, took no great
pains to make it evident: on the contrary, I
heard it very energetically averred by one
who was a proficient in the same accomplishment,
“that Captain B— could swear
harder than any other man on the Mississippi.”
The Captain ascertaining whither we
were directing our footsteps, congratulated
us upon the pleasures we had in store, and
concluded by informing us that he had visited
the Mammoth Cave himself, and, with his
guide, had been lost in it, remaining in this
condition and in the dark, for eight or nine
hours. “Dreadful!” my friend and self both
exclaimed: “what did you do?” “Do!” replied
the Captain, with the gravity of a philosopher;
“all that we could;—as soon as
our lights went out, we sat down upon a
rock, and waited until the people came in
and hunted us up.” We admired the Captain's
courage, and went on our way, until
we had arrived within two miles of the Mammoth
Cave; when a thunder-shower drove us
to seek shelter in a cabin on the way-side.

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Here we found a man who had been born
and bred, and lived all his life, within so short
a distance of the cave, without having ever
entered it: in excuse of which unpardonable
deficiency, he told us, “he had a brother who
had been in it often enough,” had sometimes
officiated as guide, and had once even been
lost in it. “He was along with a gentleman
he was guiding—Captain B—: perhaps
you know Captain B—?” said our hospitable
host, “Captain B— of —. Well,
he was the gentleman with my brother: they
lost their lights, and were kept fast in the desperate
hole for nine hours—awfully frightened,
too.” “What! Captain B— frightened?”
“Just as much as my brother: I have heard
my brother tell the story over a hundred
times. They got to praying, both of 'em, as
loud as they could; and my brother says, the
Captain made some of the most beautiful
prayers he ever heard in his life! and he
reckons, if the Captain would take to it, he'd
make a rale tear-cat of a preacher!”—O philosophy!
how potent thou art in an arm-chair,
or at the dinner table!

But we have been long enough in darkness,
long enough even in the cave. We

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relight our torches, we bid farewell to the Hall
of the Chief City, and returning to the Grand
Gallery, retrace the long path that leads us
back to daylight.