Down In The Earth

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Let us take a little trip down under the surface of the earth. There will be something unusual about such an excursion. Of course, as we are not going to dig our way, we will have to find a convenient hole somewhere, and the best hole for the purpose which I know of is in Edmondson County, Kentucky.

So let us go there.

When we reach this hole we find that it is not a very large one, but still quite high and wide enough for us to enter. But, before we go in to that dark place, we will get some one to carry a light and guide us; for this underground country which we are going to explore is very extensive, very dark, and, in some places, very dangerous.

Here is a black man who will go with us. He has a lantern, and he says he knows every nook and corner of the place. So we engage him, get some lanterns for ourselves, and in we go. We commence to go downwards very soon after we have passed from the outer air and sunshine, but it is not long before we stand upon a level surface, where we can see nothing of the outside world. If our lanterns went out, we should be in pitchy darkness.

Now we are in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky!

This vast cavern, which stretches so many miles beneath the surface of the earth, has never been fully explored; but we are going over as much of it as our guide is accustomed to show to visitors, and if our legs are not tired before we get back I shall be very much surprised, for the trip will take us all day. The floor on which we are now standing is smooth and level, and runs back into the interior of the cave fully a thousand yards. This place they call the "Audubon Gallery"--after our famous naturalist who made birds the study of his life. His works are published in enormous volumes, costing about one hundred and fifty dollars apiece. Perhaps your father will get you one.

We pass quickly through this gallery, where there is not much to see, although, to be sure, they used to manufacture saltpetre here. Think of that! A manufactory in the bowels of the earth! Then we enter a large, roundish room called the "Rotunda," and from this there are a great many passages, leading off in various directions. One of these, which is called the "Grand Vestibule," will take us to the "Church."

Yes, we have a church here, and, what is more, there has been preaching in it, although I have never heard that it had any regular members. This room has a vast arched roof, and a great many stalactites hang from the walls and roof in such a way as to give one an idea of Gothic architecture. Therefore this has been called the "Gothic Church." You can see a great deal which looks like old-fashioned church ornaments and furniture, and, as the light of the lanterns flashes about on the walls and ceiling, you can imagine a great deal more.

After this we come to the "Gothic Avenue," which would be a very interesting place to us if we but had a little more time; but we hurry through it, for the next room we are to visit is called the "Haunted Chamber!" Every one of us must be very anxious to see anything of that kind. When we get into it, however, we are very much disappointed. It is not half so gloomy and dark as the rest of the cave, for here we are pretty sure to find people, and lights, and signs of life.

Here you may sometimes buy gingerbread and bottled beer, from women who have stands here for that purpose. It is expected that when visitors get this far they will be hungry. Sometimes, too, there are persons who live down here, and spend most of their time in this chamber. These are invalid people with weak lungs, who think that the air of the cave is good for them. I do not know whether they are right or not, but I am sure that they take very gloomy medicine. The only reason for calling this room the Haunted Chamber is, that the first explorers of the cave found mummies here.

Who these were when they were alive, no man can say. If they were Indians, they were very different Indians from those who have lived in this country since its discovery. They do not make mummies. But all over our land we find evidences that some race--now extinct--lived here before the present North American Indian.

Whether the ghosts of any of these mummies walk about in this room. I cannot say; but as no one ever saw any, or heard any, or knew anybody who had seen or heard any, I think it is doubtful.

When we leave this room we go down some ladders and over a bridge, and then we enter what is called the "Labyrinth," where the passage turns and twists on itself in a very abrupt manner, and where the roof is so low that all of us, except those who are very short indeed, must stoop very low. When we get through this passage, which some folks call the "Path of Humiliation"--for everybody has to bow down, you know--we come to a spot where the guide says he is going to show us something through a window.

The window is nothing but a hole broken in a rocky wall; but as we look through it, and hold the lanterns so that we can see as much as possible, we perceive that we are gazing down into a deep and enormous well. They call it the "Bottomless Pit." If we drop bits of burning paper into this well we can see them fall down, down, and down, until they go out, but can never see them stop, as if they had reached the bottom.

The hole through which we are looking is cut through one side of this well, so that there is a great deal of it above us as well as below; but although we hold our lanterns up, hoping to see the top, we can see nothing but pitchy darkness up there. The roof of this pit is too high for the light to strike upon it. Here is a picture of some persons dropping lights down into this pit, hoping to be able to see the bottom.

We must climb up and down some more ladders now, and then we will reach the "Mammoth Dome." This is a vast room--big enough for a gymnasium for giants--and the roof is so high that no ordinary light will show it. It is nearly four hundred feet from the floor. The next room we visit is one of the most beautiful places in the whole cave. It is called the Starry Chamber. The roof and walls and floor are covered with little bright bits of stone, which shine and glitter, when a light is brought into the room, like real stars in the sky. If the guide is used to his business, he can here produce most beautiful effects. By concealing his lantern behind a rock or pillar, and then gradually bringing it out, throwing more and more light upon the roof, he can create a most lovely star-light scene.

At first all will be dark, and then a few stars will twinkle out, and then there will be more of them, and each one will be brighter, and at last you will think you are looking up into a dark sky full of glorious shining stars! And if you look at the walls you will see thousands of stars that seem as if they were dropping from the sky; and if you cast your eyes upon the ground, you will see it covered with other thousands of stars that seem to have already fallen!

This is a lovely place, but we cannot stay here any longer. We want to reach the underground stream of which we have heard so much--the "River Styx."

This is a regular river, running through a great part of the Mammoth Cave. You may float on it in a boat, and, if you choose, you may fish in it, although you would not be likely to catch anything. But if you did, the fish would have no eyes! All the fish in this river are blind. You can easily perceive that eyes would be of no use in a place where it is always as dark as pitch, except when travellers come along with their lanterns.

There is a rough boat here, and we will get into it and have a row over this dark and gloomy river. Whenever our guide shouts we hear the wildest kind of echoes, and everything seems solemn and unearthly. At one time our boat stops for a moment, and the guide goes on shore, and directly we hear the most awful crash imaginable. It sounds as if a dozen gong-factories had blown up at once, and we nearly jump out of the boat! But we soon see that it was nothing but the guide striking on a piece of sheet-iron or tin. The echoes, one after another, from this noise had produced the horrible crashing sounds we had heard.

After sailing along for about half an hour we land, and soon reach an avenue which has its walls ornamented with beautiful flowers--all formed on the rocky walls by the hand of Nature.

Now we visit the "Ball Room," which is large and handsome, with its walls as white as snow. Leaving this, we take a difficult and exciting journey to the "Rocky Mountains." We go down steep paths, which are narrow, and up steep ones, which are wide; we jump over wide cracks and step over great stones, and we are getting very tired of scrambling about in the bowels of the earth; but the guide tells us that if we will but cross the "mountains"--which we find to be nothing more than great rocks, which have fallen from the roof above, but which, however, are not very easy to get over--we shall rest in the "Fairy Grotto." So on we push, and reach the delightful abode of the fairies of the Mammoth Cave. That is, if there were any fairies in this cave, they would live here.

And a splendid place they would have!

Great colonnades and magnificent arches, all ornamented with beautiful stalactites of various forms, and glittering like cut-glass in the light of our lanterns, and thousands of different ornaments of sparkling stone, many of them appearing as if they were cut by the hand of skilful artists, adorn this beautiful grotto. At one end there is a group of stalactites, which looks to us exactly like a graceful palm-tree cut out of alabaster. All over the vast hall we can hear the pattering and tinkling of the water, which has been dripping, drop by drop, for centuries, and making, as it carried with it little particles of earth and rock, all these beautiful forms which we see.

We have now walked nearly five miles into the great cave, and there is much which we have not seen. But we must go back to the upper earth. We will have a tiresome trip of it, but it is seldom that we can get anything good without taking a little trouble for it. And to have seen this greatest of all natural caverns is worth far more labor and fatigue than we have expended on its exploration. There is nothing like it in the known world.

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