Part 8

The Great Cavern was discovered in 1898. The parts open to visitors extend in a generally easterly direction for some 600 yards, and consist of natural chambers and passages, connected here and there by artificial tunnels. We began work early in the morning, carrying into the cavern a large quantity of ropes, ladders of wood and rope, and plenty of illuminants, including a 2000-candle-power limelight, which with its lens or condenser is one of the most valuable aids in subterranean work. Many openings are seen overhead and in the walls of the cavern as the visitor advances, some of which end abruptly, whilst others lead into small grottos and galleries. One of the most conspicuous chimneys, or perpendicular caves, has at its base a peculiar staircase of stalagmitic basins, formed by the deposits of a calcareous spring that is now dried up. These basins are known as the "Fonts." Our conductors had been in the habit of climbing about 50 feet up this lofty chasm, over the crust of stalagmite, and a wire rope had been fixed to assist visitors in ascending to a broad, deep ledge. Above this point the rocks were much steeper. No one had ever succeeded in seeing the top, and at first we thought it would be impossible to ascend any higher without some sort of apparatus. We sent for a ladder, and meanwhile Dr. Sheldon and I tried to clamber over the jutting arch of rock that formed the first obstacle--a cave-pitch in a gully or chimney we should call it in climbing parlance. To our surprise, we succeeded in reaching the continuous channel or gutter above it, which ascended at a high angle, with sheer walls to right and left, and the other side of the huge shaft overhanging it. The holds were shallow and slippery, and with one hand grasping a candle we found the ordinary difficulties of a rock-climb multiplied enormously. Half-way up my candle went out, but my companion was now well ahead, and I groped my way after him with confidence. When a shout from below announced that the ladder had been hoisted up to the platform above the "Fonts" we were within a few yards of the top. At a height of 120 feet (by the aneroid) above this platform and of 170 feet above the floor of the cavern we found the shaft completely blocked up with débris and clay. We were in a subterranean pot, or swallet, of large dimensions, formed in remote ages by a big stream, which had worked through its Limestone bed, and continued its path at a deeper level. Whether this was the main stream that now flows in an unknown course hundreds of feet below, or only a tributary, it is at present impossible to tell. Mr. Bamforth's limelight was now projected up the chasm, revealing grand masses of superincumbent rock on the farther side, whilst the view downwards, past our friends into the dark bottom of the pit, was very curious. Roping ourselves together for the descent, we kept near each other for fear of a slip, and took the utmost precautions not to dislodge any stones on the heads of those underneath. The limelight was a great advantage, although many dark reaches had to be carefully inspected with a taper before we could secure foothold. When we got to the critical bit at the bottom we found the ladder placed ready for us.

Not far from the entrance to the "Fonts" is the mouth of a low passage on the other side, with a hole at the far end of it, that our guides thought must communicate with the underground river which, they conjecture, has its channel not far below this spot. We crawled into this burrow and fixed ourselves in the confined space round the black pit, which we found, by throwing in stones, had water in it. With a rope round my waist I climbed down the fissure, whose sides were of sharply corrugated rock though they looked like wet clay. About 30 feet down the hole grew so narrow that I could not turn round; I could just reach the water with my foot, but found that it was quite a small pool. Another "well," nearer the cave mouth, was explored after our further operations had been carried out. It was situated at the extremity of another burrow, but was much larger in circumference. Steadied by the rope, I climbed to the bottom and found a large pool of great depth about 30 feet below the edge. No current was perceptible, and its connection with running water is hardly probable. Some years later, a perfect skeleton of a man was exhumed from the clay beneath the stalagmite in this burrow; accompanying it were numerous flint flakes. Some peculiarities indicate that the find was that of a man of early Neolithic age. It is shown by the Gough Brothers at the entrance of their cave.

While some of the party were photographing the "show place," a lofty dome-shaped cavern with its sheet of stalagmite poured over the cliff like a petrified waterfall, two of us retraced our steps from "St. Paul's," as this beautiful sight is nicknamed, to the branch leading to the other principal shows. "Solomon's Temple" is a wonderful grotto, walled, roofed, and floored with gleaming white and ivory calcite, and set at the top of another great fall of stalagmite which has flowed on and on in a gentle stream and covered the floor of a lofty cavern with dimpling waves of crystal. Nor are these all its attractions, for on turning round the spectator sees on the opposite cliff a broad and voluminous sheet of stalagmite, rippling down, spouting and foaming over the rocks like a waterfall, but still as marble and white as frozen snow. We had seen all these things before, however, and were anxious to move on to new ground again.

In the fork between the main passage and this big cavern is a large irregular opening, with disorderly blocks of Limestone heaped up on its floor. We picked our way across these, and at a height of 40 feet reached the edge of an abrupt rock some four yards high. We dropped over on to an earthy floor, and going a little farther found ourselves in a domical chamber with three low exits. First of all exploring that on our left, we had a look at a slanting shaft filled with a "ruckle" of big shattered blocks wedged insecurely, above which are two small chambers incrusted with stalagmite, but with no apparent exit. We climbed down again, and tried the third opening. It led through a series of caves and narrow clefts into a larger chamber, all maintaining the same easterly direction, and there we found two possible ways onward. The first of these brought us in a few moments to the brink of a steep cliff, which seemed to be one wall of a considerable cavern. We preferred to wait for the limelight before venturing to let a man down into this unknown abyss, and meanwhile to examine the other passage. A few minutes' crawling brought us to a great pit, which sounded very deep when we threw in some fragments of rock. Apparently it was the chasm that had been described to us as 300 feet deep by one of our guides who had descended part of the way. We approached the edge with respect, and as a preliminary step let down a rope ladder into the upper part, which is strangely twisted. At a depth of 20 feet I found a possible landing-place; the second man joined me, and by dint of careful manoeuvring the third got down to the same spot. With an 80-foot rope tied on, I now explored the next section of the chasm, and was delighted to find that there was just enough rope to reach a slope of big rocks at the bottom. A little more scrambling brought me into a vast chamber, the floor of which was piled up with enormous blocks, while the lowest part seemed to offer two possible routes onwards. One of these proved to be a mere hollow, but the other was evidently the channel of a stream, and apparently led onwards into further caves. But the roof was extremely low, and it was quite impossible to wriggle through. One of my companions, who had now joined me, also failed to squeeze through the opening, and we decided to leave it until the hole could be enlarged with pick and shovel. The alleged 300 feet was found by aneroid to be exactly 100 feet. In a corner of this lofty cavern was a steep fissure which seemed to be well worth exploring. The bottom half of it was completely walled in by an enormous flake of Limestone that had come down from the roof, and looked as if a touch would send it tumbling on the heaps of rock at the bottom of the cave. We scrambled up the fissure at the back of this, and reached a promising gallery; but, to our disgust, this was entirely blocked up with clay and mud at the top, and it was impossible to proceed. Gaining the summit of the huge Limestone flake, we lit up the cave with magnesium wire, and were deeply impressed by its height and the grandeur of the shattered crags bristling on walls, roof, and floor. Everything was black, save one long, dripping cascade of stalagmite on the wall over against us; its unsullied whiteness shone weirdly out of the gloom as the fierce light fell on it. Just at that moment voices were heard, and from a rent in the rocky wall in front the intolerable beam of the searchlight came right in our faces. The remainder of the party had followed us up, and reached the spot where we had first looked over into the deep chasm. Revealed in all its extent by this penetrating light, the cave reminded us strongly of the enormous chamber that we had explored a few months earlier in the lowest part of the Blue John Mine in Derbyshire. On the way back one of the acetylene lamps fell down the pit by which we had entered, and was completely smashed. With no other mishap, we made our way through the tortuous passages and amongst the chaos of tumbled rock masses back to the cavern under "Solomon's Temple."

Two of us explored the openings above "St. Paul's" a few days later. A 30-foot ladder was placed against the corner of the stalagmite fall, and a yard or two of scrambling took us to the top. On the left was an ascending vault, with openings to right and left. Taking the latter to begin with, we found it gradually trend downhill and dwindle away into a series of holes scarcely big enough to let a human body pass. Squeezing through with a good deal of trouble, I reached a flattish cave with a floor of rock and stalagmite all cracked and fissured. The whole of this part seemed to have been shivered by some large movement of the rocky strata. One of the fissures gave entrance to a passage underneath the floor; but this speedily narrowed, and when it was impossible to get farther I found myself right underneath my companion, who was holding my rope and paying it out as I advanced from his original position in the outer passage. No other exit being discoverable on this side, we crossed to the passage on the right, and after a few yards of crawling under a depressed roof we found ourselves on the largest expanse of stalagmite either of us had ever met with. It had flowed down from fissures high up on our left and spread over a wide, rocky slope; it had then contracted and poured over a cliff immediately on our right. We still kept the rope taut, and moved about cautiously, for the crystalline floor was extremely slippery, and the cliff immediately beneath us would have made the slightest accident serious. A broad flat roof of rock overhung the floor of stalagmite closely, and was covered with thin pipes and reeds of stalactite. We soon ascertained that we had returned by a different route to the crown of the petrified cascade in "St. Paul's," although a craggy partition separated us from our route up the ladder. We explored the edges of this huge surface of stalagmite, which we could not measure, having no better light to guide us than a few tapers, but which could not be much less than 100 feet wide. Where the deposits came down through crevices at the top they had settled in jewelled and diapered masses of the most fantastic patterns. Our situation was, however, too precarious for lingering in this strange spot, and without another man to back one up it was impossible to explore the hole at the top. We gave up our quest reluctantly and returned towards our ladder, incrusted from head to foot with the thick, plastic clay. A convenient knob of stalagmite enabled us to give the rope a hitch whilst we scrambled down to the top of our ladder.

One other passage from the main cavern was explored, with a curious cluster of vertical cavities near its extremity. The end of the passage was coated in every direction with tinted deposits, among which we noticed beautiful specimens of the branching stalactites that were called _anemolites_ by the explorers of the Blue John caverns, who thought they had acquired their abnormal shapes through the irregularity of evaporation caused by air currents. I climbed 30 or 40 feet up one of the openings in the roof, whilst Dr. Sheldon explored another. At the top we found no exits big enough to afford a man passage. A wider cavity in the middle of the roof looked more promising. A ladder was adjusted, but fell short; but my companion, with considerable risk of a dangerous fall, clambered up to the rocky slope and over the piles of jagged blocks that well-nigh filled it. This too failed to afford us a passage, and the daring climber had great difficulty in coming down, being forced to thread the rope and let himself down on it to the ladder. During the operation a flake of rock came hurtling down and hit the ladder, but luckily did nothing worse than smash a rung. These cavities in the roof were extremely interesting, and no doubt are connected together and have a common origin in some neighbouring fissure or waterway.

FIVE CAVERNS AT CHEDDAR

The Cheddar gorge, which is the deepest and narrowest defile, and on its south side presents the loftiest face of absolutely vertical rock in England, is not dissimilar, though far superior in height and grandeur, to the Winnats pass in Derbyshire. The huge chasm runs east-north-east across the dip of the Limestone beds, which are tilted up towards the saddle of Mendip; one of its sides, consequently, is formed mainly of shelving rock, and the other is almost continuously precipitous. If, as may be assumed with confidence, the original cause of the ravine was a stream or streams flowing through a chain of caverns, one would naturally expect to find openings on the abrupt side through which the underground waters were successively tapped, and followed the trend of the strata to a lower level. This view is confirmed by observation. Except at the jaws of the defile, where both sides are equally high and precipitous, there are no caves on the northern side, but on the south openings both large and small are frequent, some narrow and lofty--"slitters," they are called locally--the others low and wide, according as they originated in a vertical joint or a bedding plane. They occur at various levels, some on inaccessible shelves high up in the cliffs, others along the base. But the larger number of these openings have in the lapse of time become silted up with clay and débris, so that the entrance is either completely masked or it is impossible to penetrate far without toilsome work with pick and shovel.

After exploring the Great Cavern our party of four devoted some time to an examination of these openings, so far as could be done without excavating. There are three important caverns in close proximity to the Great Cavern, or Gough's. The best known is Cox's, a small but exceedingly beautiful stalactite cavern (see frontispiece). No one interested in caves would think of visiting Cheddar without seeing the Great Cavern, nor would any such person dream of missing Cox's. Each is the complement of the other as a piece of underground scenery. The spacious vaults and vast stalagmite falls of the one fill one with a sense of power and majesty; the other is a gem of fantastic architecture, embellished with the most lawless and fairy-like designs of the subterranean artificer, and unique in one respect--the wealth and diversity of the mineral deposits that have dyed its multiform incrustations with luminous tints. No sane man, however, would attempt to describe Cox's Cavern in detail, and a photograph can give only colourless glimpses of its kaleidoscopic beauties. The cavern seems, at first sight, to be a solitary freak of nature, having no connection with the general system of caves and streams. But since the visit just referred to, several new passages have been opened, among them the interesting water-tunnel with its ebb and flow corresponding to the movements of the Cheddar Water outside, which, as already described, flows at a higher level. Of three other good-sized fissures or ancient channels radiating from the same large chamber, two after a while dwindle away almost to nothing, but the third has indications of a channel striking downwards, which it might be worth while to clear of rubbish. All these passages were choked with clay until quite recently.

The next cave also is of minor interest to the speleologist, although it contains many curious sights. It is called "Gough's Old Cavern," and its entrance is close to the mouth of the Great Cavern. It is an ascending cleft, apparently not linked at present with the other caves, although it was once probably a sloping aven draining into the big series of caverns that have been gradually cut back by the falling in of the defile. Whoever likes such things may find here plenty of those freaks and alleged similitudes that puzzle and delight the ordinary sightseer. On a stalagmite excrescence nicknamed the "Ribs of Beef" we had the luck to see a far more interesting phenomenon. The calcite mass was clustered over with a number of motionless black objects, which we found to be roosting bats, hanging head downwards by their claws. They were not disturbed in the least by our presence, and one that was lifted off gently just showed his teeth and claws, and clung on again as fast as ever when replaced on the rock to resume his patient sleep. A photograph of this curious sight was obtained by means of the flashlight. At the head of the cave are several incrusted grottoes, where the process of deposition is still going on, roof and walls streaming with moisture. This part is not unlike the show places in the Bagshawe Cavern in the Peak of Derbyshire.

In many respects the Roman Cave is much more interesting. Its mouth is situated about 150 feet up the cliffs, almost immediately over the cave just described. Quantities of Roman pottery, coins, bones, and other remains, have been discovered there, showing it to be one of the places that sheltered fugitives after the evacuation of Britain by the Roman legions. The entrance is a broad anticlinal arch, and the main passage, high-roofed and ascending gradually, runs east for perhaps a furlong. Then the floor, which has been covered with earth and stones, becomes rugged and rock-strewn, and suddenly we creep through a lowly portal into a high and gloomy chamber, the shadowy corners of whose roof our lights are too feeble to explore. To all appearances this was the end of the cavern; but we had been told that the passage takes a turn here and goes on nearly a quarter of a mile farther. We scanned every part of the walls as far up as we could see, but no accessible opening disclosed itself. In a recess on one side a number of fallen rocks were piled up and wedged between the converging walls. To examine the cavity from a vantage spot, we climbed with a good deal of difficulty to the top of these, and there, to our astonishment, a wide passage sloped up at right angles to the one we had entered by. A curious slit in the wall opened into a perpendicular fissure that was situated right in the roof of the latter, and through the hole we caught a glimpse of our friends following us up. Three men now pushed on up the new passage and entered a chamber whose sole exit was a small and uninviting hole. We crawled and scraped through, and on over sharp stones till at last we could get no farther. We had evidently doubled back over the main cavern, and that we could not be far from the open air was shown by the presence of a bewildered bat, who flew to and fro in the confined space and hit us in the face several times. And in the extreme recess of this narrow branch a steady draught of air blew in through a crevice and nearly put the lights out. Through an oversight we found ourselves at this point reduced to two tapers and a bit, and to economise we kept only one alight at a time, so as to have enough for the return journey. All went well, however, and the sole difficulty we met with was in getting down over the wedged blocks in the big chamber, a climb that proved extremely awkward when taken the reverse way. In many parts of this cavern we noticed prodigious quantities of moths on the walls, as well as many huge spiders. But a more interesting thing was the vegetation naturalised in the caves, examples of which we found in other Mendip caverns as well. It will be advisable to have them examined by a botanical specialist. All I can say about them now is that they consist of extremely slender branching tendrils, some white and translucent, others brownish, thin as cotton.

It was late in the afternoon when we entered the Roman Cavern; it was dark now, and the stars were out. Returning in advance of the others, I sat down just within the majestic gateway of the cavern, a flattened arch about 100 feet wide resting on enormous rocky jambs, and looked out across the deep wooded abyss where Cheddar lay, its lights reflected here and there by the dark waters of the mere, towards the craggy heights of Mendip opposite, just sinking down towards Sedgemoor. The Great Bear was shining brightly right in front--it almost spanned the breadth of the cave mouth; and the solemnity of the place and the hour could not but bring to mind the miserable fugitives who sat in this forlorn asylum, hemmed in by foes, and looked out on the same giant constellation thrice five hundred years ago. The place is admirably adapted for defence. A rear attack was of course impossible, whilst a frontal attack by way of the cliffs would be easily repelled; and a tolerable water-supply was to be found inside the cavern. The huge natural glacis of the fortress is covered to-day with a dense tangle of ivy and other climbers, through which we made our way heedfully, for a slip would have been easy in the dark, and a terrible fall the consequence.