Part 35

Game, such as quail, rabbits, wild turkey, and even deer, is abundant there, which, with the good fishing in the Green River, less than a mile distant from the public house, should recommend the vicinity to sportsmen, and would unquestionably, if the accommodations were what they ought to be. As it is, most visitors get so vexed with the obnoxious arrangements appertaining to the Cave that they hurry off after exploring it, and seldom go back. Even their memories of its grandeur are infected with the Little Peddlington spirit of its management, and the poetry of the place overlaid with the prose of its accompanying sordidness.

Nearly all the old guides familiar to visitors before the War, when Bell’s Tavern was the starting-point for the underground journey, have yielded to nature and to circumstance. One of the ancient band, however, Sam Meredith, still lingers,—at least, he did a year or two ago—and is a genuine autochthon. He has been a guide for a quarter of a century; was born on the spot, and has never been twenty miles beyond the limits of the county. He is naturally intelligent, though he can neither read nor write; but he makes up for these slight defects of education by his skill with the rifle. He is regarded as one of the best shots in Kentucky; has a wife and children, and a small farm; receives fifteen dollars a month; does not know that the world is round; believes Paris, in Kentucky, is the capital of civilization, and is, on the whole, as contented a mortal as I have ever met.

[Sidenote: TEMPERATURE OF THE CAVE.]

In addition to the short and long routes already mentioned, the great cavern has a vast number of avenues and branches, many of which remain as yet unexplored. All these ramifications, taken together, would give a length to the cave, it is said, of nearly three hundred miles. Its temperature, all the year round, is 59° Fahrenheit. The interior air is believed to be much purer than that of the outer world, and, on account of its elasticity and sweetness, to be remarkably invigorating. There seems some foundation for this opinion, inasmuch as tourists can make much more exertion, and endure much more fatigue, in that underground region than they can on the ordinary surface of the earth. I have observed weak men and delicate women perform acts of pedestrianism which astonished themselves, and of which they would be incapable outside the mouth of the cavern. I know that I have done thirty miles in those sombre recesses in a few hours without being jaded in the least, and on one occasion I accomplished the last mile of the long route—the roughest and most difficult of all—in eleven minutes by a stop watch, which the guide pronounced the best cave time on record.

[Sidenote: DRESSED FOR THE EXPEDITION.]

My last visit to the cave was during the spring of 1870. Early as the season was, I found at the hotel about a dozen persons bent on the same errand. Seven or eight of them were anxious to traverse the long route, and as that was my purpose also, we rose betimes, and prepared ourselves for the journey. There were several ladies in the party, and they were obliged to part with their hooped skirts and city attire, and put on water-proof cloaks, with the simplest possible arrangement of their hair and toilet. We tyrants of the race donned some old clothes, heavy boots, and caps, each taking a lamp attached to long wires, so that we could hold it easily and swing it as we walked along. Our conductor, who was no other than Sam Meredith, looked very carefully after our lamps, to see if they were properly supplied with oil and properly trimmed, since the consequences of having one’s light go out in those desolate chambers, and of being left in awful solitude and darkness,—perhaps forever,—are in no manner pleasant to contemplate. At different parts of the cave, small tanks of oil are kept, from which the lamps may be replenished in case of accident, and these have proved to be invaluable in numerous instances.

Eight o’clock in the morning was our hour for starting, and though we had become acquainted the evening previous, we were so changed in appearance—thanks to our simple attire—that we were scarcely able to recognize one another when we assembled for the march.

The masculine excursionists had not undergone such a metamorphosis as our feminine friends, whose mothers would have been excusable for not knowing them in the Spartan severity of their costumes. One young lady, whom I had thought quite pretty, was anything but pretty in the absence of her usual chevelure and modish robes. Another girl, still in her teens, who had appeared decidedly plain, really shone with comeliness and grace in her water-proof and generally dishevelled state. Her common raiment so set her off that I was obliged to conclude that none of her personal charms depended on her wardrobe, and that the less she wore the lovelier she seemed.

[Sidenote: A GROTESQUE COSTUME.]

A bright and intellectual widow, to whom years had brought a breadth of figure in which Hogarth’s line of beauty could not be traced, looked positively grotesque in her unique garments. Agility acknowledged no kinship with her, and symmetry was unquestionably of alien blood. She expressed, from the beginning, her scepticism as to her endurance, and particularly inquired of our rustic fugleman if she could rest a little on the way, provided she should happen to be spent. As we set out, she evinced a lack of physical elasticity and clearness of movement that foreboded ill to her success. But for the gallantry due to all her sex, I should say she waddled, and presented such a figure that, if Cruikshank had caught a glimpse of her, he would have claimed her for his own.

We were off at last, and in a few minutes were before the mouth of the mighty Kentucky marvel. There is nothing remarkable in the mouth, which conveys the impression of a decayed and abandoned culvert, and such I should take it to be, had I not known otherwise. The path by which you enter is damp and slippery, unless in very dry weather, and the opening of the cavern promises none of the wonders that the interior reveals.

After going less than a hundred yards, we lost the spot of daylight which the mouth furnished, and were wrapped in such shadows as might have marked primeval chaos. Our little lamps displaced so small a part of the thick darkness that the vast volumes which remained grew blacker than ever. The air was so full of oxygen as to be sensible at once, and I could not help but notice an inflation of my lungs and a lightness of my limbs, such as one feels on mountain-tops. My spirits rose rapidly, and my mood grew involuntarily hilarious. I jested constantly, I laughed at the smallest trifle. Buoyancy was in every breath, and a mercurial quality, by a strange paradox, in the surrounding gloom. The cave, if not delightful, was exhilarating in the highest degree, and I fancied it would be agreeable to spend nights there. I should say days, if the word did not convey an impression of light. The effect of the place on me was entirely different from that of the Paris Catacombs, owing, doubtless, to the oxygenated air. The peculiarity of my temperament, however, which, by a principle of antagonism, reflects the opposite of surroundings, must have had something to do with it. Society which is considered the gayest oppresses, and graveyards enliven me. It is not strange, therefore, that the Mammoth Cave, apart from its atmosphere, should animate my spirits.

[Sidenote: A REFUGE OF BATS.]

We noticed that the walls and roof of the cavern were frescoed with bats hanging by their claws, heads downward, though some of them were flying nimbly about in the darkness, evidently disturbed by the glare of our torches, and the noise of our speech. During the winter they assemble there in such quantities that the curves of the cave are black with them. Their flitting through the thick gloom, relieved only by the flare and glare of the lamps (added to the hollow and dreary echoes awakened by our voices, and succeeded every few moments by an oppressive stillness), made those vast limestone chambers appear so dismal that the women of the party declared they should go mad if forced to remain in them for any length of time.

Very soon we came to the remnants of a number of rude habitations erected in 1845, and inhabited by certain consumptives who had been recommended to try the equable temperature and pure air of the tunnel, with the hope that their lungs might be healed. The poor patients had high expectations from living there, and though their first experience was not favorable, they remained several months, unwilling to believe that they would not be ultimately helped. The longer they remained, the worse they grew. After a while their faces became livid; the pupils of their eyes expanded, and darkened until the iris was invisible, having the appearance of two spots burning above a deathly pallor. They lost every particle of flesh; crept gloomily about, coughing so hollowly as to suggest the sound of the first earth falling upon a coffin-lid; and added to the natural dreariness of the vault a hundred-fold. Everybody saw and knew that they were tottering on the brink of the grave; and yet, such was their hope—a distinct and inseparable accompaniment of the disease—that they could not be persuaded to quit that purgatory. They even imagined they were improving, and insisted that they were stronger, when they could not drag their leaden limbs after them.

[Sidenote: AN UNSUCCESSFUL SANITARY EXPERIMENT.]

The preciousness of existence (to most persons) was strikingly illustrated in those poor consumptives who had no hold on life, and still could not be resigned to death. One would think that serious trouble with the lungs would disarm the grave of most of the terrors it is popularly supposed to have (those who have had much familiarity with death are aware that this is an error), since it destroys all physical comfort, and all mental peace. And yet quite the contrary is true. Generally, no man is so unwilling to order the undertaker as the man who has long suffered from consumption, which shows how inconsistent and unreasonable human nature is, especially after it has been badgered by doctors and dosed with drugs.

Finally three or four of the consumptives expired in the cavern,—there were nearly twenty of them in all,—and the remainder having it borne in upon them that neither consumption nor the Mammoth Cave could insure immortality, they consented to be removed. Every one of them died—if they could be considered to have been in any true sense alive—within a few weeks after their return to the sky and the sunlight. But the history of their residence in those dreary chambers will be remembered for generations, and in 4873 will have become one of the traditions of the cave, so altered and exaggerated that very few of the positive facts will be left or allowed to mar the poetic and romantic version then current.

The cavern varies greatly in width and height, and so many avenues branch off from it, that it would be almost impossible to thread your way without a guide. A large part of the passages have been explored at different times; but some of them are virgin yet. The majority of the branches end on the bank of the river, and it is very strange that new mouths to the tunnel have not been discovered. It is not improbable that they have been; but the owners of the property, as I have said, are so fearful of suffering from a rivalry in the show business that they would be the last to disclose any such fact. Different quarters of the cavern are differently named, according to their actual or fancied resemblance to the titles they bear. It requires a deal of imagination to trace the similitude sometimes, though at others it is apparent at the first glance.

[Sidenote: UNDERGROUND CHURCH.]

The Methodist Church, one of the first localities of note, is a semicircular chamber, in which a ledge of a rock represents the pulpit. Theological service has been performed there, and the logs brought in for seats are still in perfect preservation, though they have been there more than half a century. More recently service has been improvised by enthusiastic itinerants of the Methodist creed, who, having heard that the groves were God’s first temples, may infer that caves have an equal fitness for divine worship. The imagination on which religious fervor so largely depends could not fail to be kindled by burning tapers, swelling music, and earnest appeals in those natural aisles and chancels, nor could they do other than remind the pious participants of the primeval Christians who fled to caverns and to catacombs that they might adore their Creator in secret, and be preserved from persecution.

Just beyond the church is a figure of gypsum on the roof, a sort of bas-relief called the American Eagle. Patriotism prevents me from indorsing this symbolic bird, which, whatever it may have been originally, is now sorely shorn and shattered. One leg, a wing, and part of the body are literally relieved, being no longer visible under the light of a dozen lamps; and the entire animal is so deranged that it might as well be styled a dromedary or a griffin. The American eagle is usually on such admirable terms with itself that I am confident this bird would be ashamed to pretend that it is what it is represented to be. If it be an eagle, I will be sworn it does not know it. I choose to consider it a unicorn, since a unicorn is a fabulous beast, and may be presumed to resemble anything, even that amorphous gypsum figure on the roof. If the likeness cannot be traced by ordinary observers, they may be reminded that it consists in the—or more properly in a—horn.

Minerva’s Dome is remarkable for its fluted walls and a honey-combed roof, though why it should be devoted to Minerva, who is not herself present in any form of natural sculpture, is an enigma not to be solved. The probability is, that Kentucky orators have so constantly referred to Minerva springing full-armed from the brain of Jove, that the goddess, even if she once had her image there, has removed it, lest its sight might induce the five or six public speakers in the state who have not used the time-honored simile to force it into their next brilliant effort.

[Sidenote: THE FAT MAN’S MISERY.]

Near the Dome, those who wish to traverse the short route only, branch off, while the long route is continued until the cave contracts, and Fat Man’s Misery is reached. This is a passage through the rocks so very narrow that a man of average proportions is compelled to go sidewise. It must have been worn by a stream of water in the dim ages past; and now the only stream of water visible is that which flows down the sight-seer’s face, as he toils along, and crawls through the Valley of Humility, where the roof is so low that you are obliged to bend nearly double. Persons with weak backs, or inclined to lumbago, have to return here with the fleshy people who have surrendered at the Fat Man’s Misery. The Great Relief is a broad passage, a little farther on, where tourists bring themselves to an erect position once more, and mop their brows with their handkerchiefs, so frequently brought into activity during their arduous journey.

[Sidenote: RIVERS IN MAMMOTH CAVE.]

There are numerous streams in the cave, the chief of which have been christened the Echo and Roaring Rivers, the Styx and the Lethe; the last often called Oblivion, because the unclassical public is resolved to pronounce the Greek title as if it were a monosyllable. The Echo River is renowned for its echoes. It is much larger and more striking than the other streams, and when it is high, as it usually is in the spring, it is difficult to cross. When I last made the passage, I had to lie almost flat in the little boat to get under the shelving rocks, and, only a few days before, the guides had to stop there in consequence of the swollen stream. After we had rowed out a little way, we shouted, and called, and sang, and had the pleasure of hearing our words come back to us again and again, with almost perfect articulation. Even the tone of the voice and the emphases are preserved, and I could scarcely believe sometimes that persons were not concealed, and repeating our phrases. The thick darkness, and the weird aspect of the cavern at that point, aid the fancy, and stimulate the feeling of superstition, said to exist, more or less, in every human breast. Two hundred years ago, countless witnesses might have been found to tell of hobgoblins and demons they had heard with their own ears, and seen with their own eyes, too, in the ghastly vault.

The Roaring River does not roar much,—indeed, not at all,—and is not especially noteworthy. It is a dark and turbid stream when it is high, though at its lower stage, it is as clear as any of the south-western waters. We rowed over it, as we had rowed over the Echo River, our little scow being as inconvenient, awkward, and dirty as its fellow.

The Styx flows about a hundred feet below the floor of the cave, and is passed by a rough wooden bridge. We could hear the murmur of the stream below, and tried, with the aid of our lamps, to see it. We did not succeed until the guide attached two or three of the lights to a long pole, and let them down over the bridge. Then we saw a great fissure in the rock (manifestly made by the water), the walls of which are tolerably smooth. The borders of the chasm were so slippery that great caution was necessary to prevent one from falling into the yawing gulf. Near the Styx is the Bottomless Pit—a nominal no less than an actual hyperbole, because it has a bottom not more than one hundred and seventy-five feet from the spot where we stood. We peered down into it as best we could, and concluded that it merited its title in point of gloom and dreariness.

[Sidenote: DESCENDING THE BOTTOMLESS PIT.]

Until within a few years the pit had never been descended; but several enterprising and rapid Kentuckians, who had done nothing to distinguish themselves, thought they would render their names historic by becoming acquainted temporarily with the region which, they feared, they might know permanently in the future. They went to the spot well prepared with lights, ropes, hooks, and ladders; but the place looked so ugly that only one of them had the nerve to go down. He came within an ace of breaking his neck several times before he was lowered to the base, where, after groping about for half an hour, and finding nothing but rough rocks, he expressed a desire to be pulled up again.

This was easier said than done, in consequence of the difficulty of managing the rope. On his upward passage he was jammed against the walls, and cut by sharp ledges, until he was exhausted, more from terror and pain than from loss of blood; and finally he was dragged to the top, just as the rope, in several places, held only by a few slight strands. He did not recover from his wounds and the shock to his nervous system for a long while, and he frequently asserted that he would not repeat the excursion for any consideration under heaven. He never recovered, I may say, from the indirect effect of his exploit; for it gave him a certain local notoriety, and he nourished his fame on such generous quantities of Bourbon whiskey, known in the state as Kentucky wine, that, after several brilliant seasons of imbibition at Frankfort, the delirium tremens and two undertakers took him to his eternal home.

Since then, the descent of the Bottomless Pit has been made not unfrequently, one of George D. Prentice’s sons having performed the feat, and furnished a two-column article of sophomorical extolment thereon in the Louisville Journal.

The Lethe has steep and rocky banks, and as we floated down its current, through the almost tangible darkness, with our flickering torches and the hollow murmur of our voices, it really seemed as if we might be disembodied spirits on the sad Plutonian shore. When we ceased to chatter, the dropping of water through the roof into the stream, and the dip of the oars, broke the silence with strange impressiveness.

[Sidenote: MUSIC ON THE LETHE.]

Sam Meredith was not musical: but I remember on a previous occasion, that our ancient sable guide treated me to a dirge on the flute, while we glided over the bosom of the river of oblivion. The effect was magical; the solemn strains were so in keeping with the sombreness of the surroundings, the flame of the torches was so weird and fitful, the faces of the tourists looked so pale and wondering, and the ebony player assumed such an impishness of form and feature, that I should not have been in the least astonished to meet, sailing along in another boat, spirits long departed from the world.

Would it had been Lethe indeed! How gladly I should have drank of its waters! how willingly have forgotten the earthly life and all its sorrows, including the bad breakfast I was to get at the hotel the next morning, and the boredom I was doomed to encounter for the fortnight to come!

On the long route the most noticeable localities are the passage of El Ghor, a long, narrow, covered causeway; the Brown Chamber, so called from the color of its walls, and its square, apartment-like shape; Martha’s Vineyard, the roof of which resembles clusters of grapes cut in marble; Snow-ball Grotto, showing a remarkable likeness to sculptured (floral) snowballs overhead; the Rose Chamber, a fine counterfeit of roses in rock; Silliman’s Avenue, a narrow gallery so regular that it might have been the work of engineers; and numerous chambers of different proportions, and marked by striking geological features.

The Maelstrom is an ordinary pool containing an eddy and a great disappointment at the same time. It is no more of a sham, however, than the famous (fabulous) whirlpool off the coast of Norway, which was supposed to carry down ships and whales, and which in reality is not perilous to vessels or even small open boats, except during winter and in time of violent storms.

The Rocky Mountains, the end of the long route, extend about a mile, and are nothing more than an extremely rough surface detrimental to the physical comfort and shoe-leather of those going over them. Women seldom attempt this passage, which has little to commend it except the difficulty of its execution, and the probability of fatigue in its accomplishment.

[Sidenote: EYELESS FISH IN THE ECHO RIVER.]

I should have mentioned the celebrated eyeless fish, peculiar to the Echo and other rivers. They have been the cause of many scientific theories and speculations among _savants_, who have deduced from them either that Nature does not furnish organs which are of no use, or that organs unemployed cease to exist. Abundant as the fish are, it is difficult to catch them, and I was considered extremely fortunate because I secured three or four in as many minutes. I gave them to a man who had dabbled somewhat in science, and he was very grateful for the present. I told him he need not be, for I would rather have half a dozen brook trout or a Spanish mackerel for breakfast than all the eyeless fish the Mammoth Cave contained. These sightless little creatures, generally about four inches long, resemble ordinary minnows, though of a rather darker hue, and more inclined to translucency.

On the short route, the Giant’s Causeway, the Gothic Chapel, the Grand Dome, and the Star Chamber, especially the last, have the most reputation and attract the most attention. The Causeway receives its name from its likeness to the Causeway on the coast of Ireland, and the likeness is considerable, as I can testify by actual observation.