Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/779

1868.] travellers came to a small wooden door, hinged to the solid rock, in an angle of the passage. This, they were told, is the entrance to the "new cave," and is kept carefully locked. The outer portion, called the "old cave," has been known since the first settlement of the country, and at one time was extensively worked for saltpetre. The entrance to the new cave was discovered in 1850 by Mr. Henry P. Rothrock, and its passages explored to an extent of sixteen miles. The old cave extends two miles beyond the locked entrance. The professor and the doctor pushed on with one of the guides to the extremity;—the rest of the party waited for their return at the entrance, the ladies thinking it the more prudent course to reserve their strength for the new cave, which is far the more interesting, and the young men were too gallant to leave them. The old cave beyond this point is a winding passage of nearly uniform size and appearance, and containing nothing of especial interest until its extremity is reached. Here it expands into a spacious rotunda, its ceiling hung with immense stalactites and its floor covered with stalagmites of corresponding size. These are formed in precisely the same manner as icicles; the water, highly charged with carbonate of lime, percolates through the rock above, and drips from every point of the fretted ceiling. As the water evaporates the carbonate is deposited, at first in a small round knob, which rapidly increases in length and size as the water flows over it and drips from its point. Similar deposits, exactly reversed in position, are made wherever the water drops upon the floor below. Where the water is abundant, each stalactite has its corresponding stalagmite. Many of these pairs had their points almost in contact, and a few had actually united, forming graceful and lofty columns, slender in the middle and expanding regularly toward the base and capital. One of these, whose magnitude excited their astonishment, they undertook to measure. Its girth was easily taken with a measuring tape, but the massive column towered above, slimy, smooth, and inaccessible. The doctor groped about the cave, and at length returned with two poles, whose ends were quickly spliced by winding them with twine. The doctor mounted upon the stalwart shoulders of the guide and succeeded in reaching the top. By these measurements the column was found to be thirty feet in height, and seventy-two feet in circumference.

"The famous stalactites in the Mammoth Cave are nothing compared with this," exclaimed the professor. "All of them rolled into one would not make one equal to it."

The guide informed them, as they turned to retrace their steps, that the rotunda was called the "Senate Chamber," and the professor forthwith named the big column "the Pillar of the Constitution."

The professor and the doctor returned to their companions, after an absence of an hour and a half. The latter did not seem in the least impatient.

The door was now unlocked, and the party proceeded to explore the new cave. Descending a steep declivity, some forty or fifty feet, they entered a spacious apartment, on whose lofty ceiling could be discerned large, irregular, dark-colored clusters, resembling swarms of bees. The doctor quietly requested Sylvester to discharge his pistol. He did so. The cluster suddenly dissolved, and the air was filled with myriads of bats. The ladies screamed and pulled their hoods closely over their faces. Several of the candles were extinguished by their wings, and for several minutes the cave resounded with their rustling flight and sharp twittering cries. At length they settled again upon the ceiling; the ladies ventured to unveil their faces, and the party resumed their way. The