Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 Part 1

Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844.

by Alexander Clark Bullitt.

CHAPTER I.

Mammoth Cave--Where Situated--Green River--Improved Navigation--Range of Highlands--Beautiful Woodlands--Hotel--Romantic Dell--Mouth of the Cave--Coldness of the Air--Lamps Lighted--Bones of a Giant--Violence of the Wind--Lamps Extinguished--Temperature of the Cave--Lamps Lighted--First Hoppers--Grand Vestibule--Glowing Description--Audubon Avenue--Little Bat Room--Pit Two-Hundred and Eighty Feet Deep--Main Cave--Kentucky Cliffs--The Church--Second Hoppers--Extent of the Saltpetre Manufacture in 1814.

The Mammoth Cave is situated in the County of Edmondson and State of Kentucky, equidistant from the cities of Louisville and Nashville, (about ninety miles from each,) and immediately upon the nearest road between those two places. Green River is within half a mile of the Cave, and since the improvements in its navigation, by the construction of locks and dams, steam-boats can, at all seasons, ascend to Bowling Green, distant but twenty-two miles, and, for the greater part of the year, to the Cave itself.

In going to the Cave from Munfordsville, you will observe a lofty range of barren highlands to the North, which approaches nearer and nearer the Cave as you advance, until it reaches to within a mile of it. This range of highlands or cliffs, composed of calcareous rock, pursuing its rectilinear course, is seen the greater part of the way as you proceed on towards Bowling Green; and, at last, looses itself in the counties below. Under this extensive range of cliffs it is conjectured that the great subterranean territory mainly extends itself.

For a distance of two miles from the Cave, as you approach it from the South-East, the country is level. It was, until recently, a prairie, on which, however, the oak, chestnut and hickory are now growing; and having no underbrush, its smooth, verdant openings present, here and there, no unapt resemblance to the parks of the English n.o.bility.

Emerging from these beautiful woodlands, you suddenly have a view of the hotel and adjacent grounds, which is truly lovely and picturesque.

The hotel is a large edifice, two hundred feet long by forty-five wide, with piazzas, sixteen feet wide, extending the whole length of the building, both above and below, well furnished, and kept in a style, by Mr. Miller, that cannot fail to please the most fastidious epicure.

The Cave is about two-hundred yards from the hotel, and you proceed to it down a lovely and romantic dell, rendered umbrageous by a forest of trees and grape vines; and pa.s.sing by the ruins of saltpetre furnaces and large mounds of ashes, you turn abruptly to the right and behold the mouth of the great cavern and as suddenly feel the coldness of its air.

It is an appalling spectacle,--how dark, how dismal, how dreary.

Descending some thirty feet down rather rude steps of stone, you are fairly under the arch of this "nether world"--before you, in looking outwards, is seen a small stream of water falling from the face of the crowning rock, with a wild faltering sound, upon the ruins below, and disappearing in a deep pit,--behind you, all is gloom and darkness!

Let us now follow the guide--who, placing on his back a canteen of oil, lights the lamps, and giving one to each person, we commence our subterranean journey; having determined to confine ourselves, for this day, to an examination of _some_ of the avenues on this side of the rivers, and to resume, on a future occasion, our visit to the fairy scenes beyond. I emphasize the word _some_ of the avenues, because no visitor has ever yet seen one in twenty; and, although I shall attempt to describe only a few of them, and in so doing will endeavor to represent things as I saw them, and as they impressed me, I am not the less apprehensive that my descriptions will appear as unbounded exaggerations, so wonderfully vast is the Cave, so singular its formations, and so unique its characteristics.

At the place where our lamps were lighted, are to be seen the wooden pipes which conducted the water, as it fell from the ceiling, to the vats or saltpetre hoppers; and near this spot too, are interred the bones of a _giant_, of such vast size is the skeleton, at least of such portions of it as remain. With regard to this giant, or more properly skeleton, it may be well to state, that it was found by the saltpetre workers far within the Cave years ago, and was buried by their employer where it now lies, to quiet their superst.i.tious fears, not however before it was bereft of its head by some fearless antiquary.

Proceeding onward about one-hundred feet, we reached a door, set in a rough stone wall, stretched across and completely blocking up the Cave; which was no sooner opened, than our lamps were extinguished by the violence of the wind rushing outwards. An accurate estimate of the external temperature, may at any time, be made, by noting the force of the wind as it blows inward or outward. When it is very warm without, the wind blows outwards with violence; but when cold, it blows inwards with proportionate force. The temperature of the Cave, (winter and summer,) is invariably the same--59 Fahrenheit; and its atmosphere is perfectly uniform, dry, and of most extraordinary salubrity.

Our lamps being relighted, we soon reached a narrow pa.s.sage faced on the left side by a wall, built by the miners to confine the loose stone thrown up in the course of their operations, when gradually descending a short distance, we entered the great vestibule or ante-chamber of the Cave. What do we now see? Midnight!--the blackness of darkness!--Nothing! Where is the wall we were lately elbowing out of the way? It has vanished!--It is lost! We are walled in by darkness, and darkness canopies us above. Look again;--Swing your torches aloft! Aye, now you can see it; far up, a hundred feet above your head, a grey ceiling rolling dimly away like a cloud, and heavy b.u.t.tresses, bending under the weight, curling and toppling over their base, begin to project their enormous ma.s.ses from the shadowy wall. How vast! How solemn! How awful! The little bells of the brain are ringing in your ears; you hear nothing else--not even a sigh of air--not even the echo of a drop of water falling from the roof. The guide triumphs in your look of amazement and awe; he falls to work on certain old wooden ruins, to you, yet invisible, and builds a brace or two of fires, by the aid of which you begin to have a better conception of the scene around you. You are in the vestibule or ante-chamber, to which the s.p.a.cious entrance of the Cave, and the narrow pa.s.sage that succeeds it, should be considered the mere gate-way and covered approach. It is a basilica of an oval figure--two-hundred feet in length by one-hundred and fifty wide, with a roof which is as flat and level as if finished by the trowel of the plasterer, of fifty or sixty or even more feet in height. Two pa.s.sages, each a hundred feet in width, open into it at its opposite extremities, but at right angles to each other; and as they preserve a straight course for five or six-hundred feet, with the same flat roof common to each, the appearance to the eye, is that of a vast hall in the shape of the letter L expanded at the angle, both branches being five-hundred feet long by one-hundred wide. The pa.s.sage to the right hand is the "Great Bat Room;" (Audubon Avenue.) That in the front, the beginning of the Grand Gallery, or the Main Cavern itself. The whole of this prodigious s.p.a.ce is covered by a single rock, in which the eye can detect no break or interruption, save at its borders, where is a broad, sweeping cornice, traced in horizontal panel-work, exceedingly n.o.ble and regular; and not a single pier or pillar of any kind contributes to support it. It needs no support. It is like the arched and ponderous roof of the poet's mausoleum:

"By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable."

The floor is very irregularly broken, consisting of vast heaps of the nitrous earth, and of the ruins of the hoppers or vats, composed of heavy planking, in which the miners were accustomed to leach it. The hall was, in fact, one of their chief factory rooms. Before their day, it was a cemetery; and here they disinterred many a mouldering skeleton, belonging it seems, to that gigantic eight or nine feet race of men of past days, whose jaw-bones so many vivacious persons have clapped over their own, like horse-collars, without laying by a single one to convince the soul of scepticism.

Such is the vestibule of the Mammoth Cave,--a hall which hundreds of visitors have pa.s.sed through without being conscious of its existence.

The path, leading into the Grand Gallery, hugs the wall on the left hand; and is, besides, in a hollow, flanked on the right hand by lofty mounds of earth, which the visitor, if he looks at them at all, which he will scarcely do, at so early a period after entering, will readily suppose to be the opposite walls. Those who enter the Great Bat Room, (Audubon Avenue,) into which flying visitors are seldom conducted, will indeed have some faint suspicion, for a moment, that they are pa.s.sing through infinite s.p.a.ce; but the walls of the Cave being so dark as to reflect not one single ray of light from the dim torches, and a greater number of them being necessary to disperse the gloom than are usually employed, they will still remain in ignorance of the grandeur around them.

Such is the vestibule of the Mammoth Cave, as described by the ingenious author of "Calavar," "Peter Pilgrim," &c.

From the vestibule we entered Audubon Avenue, which is more than a mile long, fifty or sixty feet wide and as many high. The roof or ceiling exhibits, as you walk along, the appearance of floating clouds--and such is observable in many other parts of the Cave. Near the termination of this avenue, a natural well, twenty-five feet deep, and containing the purest water, has been recently discovered; it is surrounded by stalagmite columns, extending from the floor to the roof, upon the incrustations of which, when lights are suspended, the reflection from the water below and the various objects above and around, gives to the whole scene an appearance equally rare and picturesque. This spot, however, being difficult of access, is but seldom visited.

The Little Bat Room Cave--a branch of Audubon Avenue,--is on the left as you advance, and not more than three-hundred yards from the great vestibule. It is but little more than a quarter of a mile in length, and is remarkable for its pit of two-hundred and eighty feet in depth; and as being the hibernal resort of bats. Tens of thousands of them are seen hanging from the walls, in apparently a torpid state, during the winter, but no sooner does the spring open, than they disappear.

Returning from the Little Bat Room and Audubon Avenue, we pa.s.s again through the vestibule, and enter the Main Cave or Grand Gallery. This is a vast tunnel extending for miles, averaging throughout, fifty feet in width by as many in height It is truly a n.o.ble subterranean avenue; the largest of which man has any knowledge, and replete with interest, from its varied characteristics and majestic grandeur.

Proceeding down the main Cave about a quarter of a mile, we came to the Kentucky Cliffs, so called from the fancied resemblance to the cliffs on the Kentucky River, and descending gradually about twenty feet entered the church, when our guide was discovered in the _pulpit_ fifteen feet above us, having reached there by a gallery which leads from the cliffs. The ceiling here is sixty three feet high, and the church itself, including the recess, cannot be less than one hundred feet in diameter. Eight or ten feet above and immediately behind the pulpit, is the organ loft, which is sufficiently capacious for an.

organ and choir of the largest size. There would appear to be something like design in all this;--here is a church large enough to accomodate thousands, a solid projection of the wall of the Cave to serve as a pulpit, and a few feet back a place for an organ and choir.

In this great temple of nature, religious service has been frequently held, and it requires but a slight effort on the part of a speaker, to make himself distinctly heard by the largest congregation.

Sometimes the guides climb up the high and ragged sides, and suspend lamps in the crevices and on the projections of the rock, thus lighting up a scene of wild grandeur and sublimity.

Concerts too have been held here, and the melody of song has been heard, such as would delight the ear of a Catalini or a Malibran.

Leaving the church you will observe, on ascending, a large embankment of lixiviated earth thrown out by the miners more than thirty years ago, the print of wagon wheels and the tracks of oxen, as distinctly defined as though they were made but yesterday; and continuing on for a short distance, you arrive at the Second Hoppers. Here are seen the ruins of the old nitre works, leaching vats, pump frames and two lines of wooden pipes; one to lead fresh water from the dripping spring to the vats filled with the nitrous earth, and the other to convey the lye drawn from the large reservoir, back to the furnace at the mouth of the Cave.

The quant.i.ty of nitrous earth contained in the Cave is "sufficient to supply the whole population of the globe with saltpetre."

"The dirt gives from three to five pounds of nitrate of lime to the bushel, requiring a large proportion of fixed alkali to produce the required crystalization, and when left in the Cave become re-impregnated in three years. When saltpetre bore a high price, immense quant.i.ties were manufactured at the Mammoth Cave, but the return of peace brought the saltpetre from the East Indies in compet.i.tion with the American, and drove that of the produce of our country entirely from the market. An idea may be formed of the extent of the manufacture of saltpetre at this Cave, from the fact that the contract for the supply of the fixed alkali alone for the Cave, for the year 1814, was twenty thousand dollars."

"The price of the article was so high, and the profits of the manufacturer so great, as to set half the western world gadding after nitre caves--the gold mines of the day. Cave hunting in fact became a kind of mania, beginning with speculators, and ending with hair brained young men, who dared for the love of adventure the risk which others ran for profit." Every hole, remarked an old miner, the size of a man's body, has been penetrated for miles around the Mammoth Cave, but although we found "_petre earth_," we never could find a cave worth having.

CHAPTER II.

Gothic Gallery--Gothic Avenue--Good Road--Mummies--Interesting Account of Them--Gothic Avenue once called Haunted Chamber--Why so Named-- Adventure of a Miner in Former Days.

In looking from the ruins of the nitre works, to the left and some thirty feet above, you will see a large cave, connected with which is a narrow gallery sweeping across the Main Cave and losing itself in a cave, which is seen above to your right This latter cave is the Gothic Avenue, which no doubt was at one time connected with the cave opposite and on the same level, forming a complete bridge over the main avenue, but afterwards broken down and separated by some great convulsion.

The cave on the left, which is filled with sand, has been penetrated but a short distance; still from its great size at its entrance, it is more than probable, that, were all obstructions removed, it might be found to extend for miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENTRANCE TO THE GOTHIC AVENUE.

On Stone by T. Campbell Bauer & Teschemacher's Lith.]

While examining the old saltpetre works, the guide left us without our being aware of it, but casting our eyes around we perceived him standing some forty feet above, on the projection of a huge rock, or tower, which commands a view of the grand gallery to a great extent both up and down.

Leaving the Main Cave and ascending a flight of stairs twenty or thirty feet, we entered the Gothic Avenue, so named from the Gothic appearance of some of its compartments. This avenue is about forty feet wide, fifteen feet high and two miles long. The ceiling looks in many places as smooth and white as though it had been under the trowel of the most skilful plasterer. A good road has been made throughout this cave, and such is the temperature and purity of its atmosphere, that every visitor must experience their salutary influences.

In a recess on the left hand elevated a few feet above the floor and about fifty feet from the head of the stairs leading up from the Main Avenue, two mummies long since taken away, were to be seen in 1813.

They were in good preservation; one was a female with her extensive wardrobe placed before her. The removal of those mummies from the place in which they were found can be viewed as little less than sacrilege. There they had been, perhaps for centuries, and there they ought to have been left. What has become of them I know not. One of them, it is said, was lost in the burning of the Cincinnati museum.

The wardrobe of the female was given to a Mr. Ward, of Ma.s.sachusetts, who I believe presented it to the British Museum.

Two of the miners found a mummy in Audubon Avenue, in 1814. With a view to conceal it for a time, they placed large stones over it, and marked the walls about the spot so that they might find it at some future period; this however, they were never able to effect. In 1840, the present hotel keeper Mr. Miller, learning the above facts, went in search of the place designated, taking with him very many lights, and found the marks on the walls, and near to them the mummy. It was, however, so much injured and broken to pieces by the heavy weights which had been placed upon it, as to be of little interest or value. I have no doubt, that if proper efforts were made, mummies and other objects of curiosity might be found, which would tend to throw light on the early history of the first inhabitants of this continent.

Believing, that whatever may relate to these mummies cannot fail to interest, I will extract from the recently published narrative of a highly scientific gentleman of New York, himself one of the early visitors to the Cave.

"On my first visit to the Mammoth Cave in 1813, I saw a relic of ancient times, which requires a minute description. This description is from a memorandum made in the Cave at the time.

"In the digging of saltpetre earth, in the short cave, a flat rock was met with by the workmen, a little below the surface of the earth in the Cave; this stone was raised, and was about four feet wide and as many long; beneath it was a square excavation about three feet deep and as many in length and width. In this small nether subterranean chamber, sat in solemn silence one of the human species, a female with her wardrobe and ornaments placed at her side. The body was in a state of perfect preservation, and sitting erect The arms were folded up and the hands were laid across the bosom; around the two wrists was wound a small cord, designed probably, to keep them in the posture in which they were first placed; around the body and next thereto, was wrapped two deer-skins. These skins appear to have been dressed in some mode different from what is now practised by any people, of whom I have any knowledge. The hair of the skins was cut off very near the surface.

The skins were ornamented with the imprints of vines and leaves, which were sketched with a substance perfectly white. Outside of these two skins was a large square sheet, which was either wove or knit. This fabric was the inner bark of a tree, which I judge from appearances to be that of the linn tree. In its texture and appearance, it resembled the South Sea Island cloth or matting; this sheet enveloped the whole body and the head. The hair on the head was cut off within an eighth of an inch of the skin, except near the neck, where it was an inch long. The color of the hair was a dark red; the teeth were white and perfect. I discovered no blemish upon the body, except a wound between two ribs near the back-bone; one of the eyes had also been injured.

The finger and toe nails were perfect and quite long. The features were regular. I measured the length of one of the bones of the arm with a string, from the elbow to the wrist joint, and they equalled my own in length, viz: ten and a half inches. From the examination of the whole frame, I judged the figure to be that of a very tall female, say five feet ten inches in height. The body, at the time it was first discovered, weighed but fourteen pounds, and was perfectly dry; on exposure to the atmosphere, it gained in weight by absorbing dampness four pounds. Many persons have expressed surprise that a human body of great size should weigh so little, as many human skeletons of nothing but bone, exceed this weight. Recently some experiments have been made in Paris, which have demonstrated the fact of the human body being reduced to ten pounds, by being exposed to a heated atmosphere for a long period of time. The color of the skin was dark, not black; the flesh was hard and dry upon the bones. At the side of the body lay a pair of moccasins, a knapsack and an indispensable or reticule. I will describe these in the order in which I have named them. The moccasins were made of wove or knit bark, like the wrapper I have described.

Around the top there was a border to add strength and perhaps as an ornament. These were of middling size, denoting feet of small size.

The shape of the moccasins differs but little from the deer-skin moccasins worn by the Northern Indians. The knapsack was of wove or knit bark, with a deep, strong border around the top, and was about the size of knapsacks used by soldiers. The workmanship of it was neat, and such as would do credit as a fabric, to a manufacturer of the present day. The reticule was also made of knit or wove bark. The shape was much like a horseman's valise, opening its whole length on the top. On the side of the opening and a few inches from it, were two rows of hoops, one row on each side. Two cords were fastened to one end of the reticule at the top, which pa.s.sed through the loop on one side and then on the other side, the whole length, by which it was laced up and secured. The edges of the top of the reticule were strengthened with deep fancy borders. The articles contained in the knapsack and reticule were quite numerous, and are as follows: one head cap, made of wove or knit bark, without any border, and of the shape of the plainest night cap; seven head-dresses made of the quills of large birds, and put together somewhat in the same way that feather fans are made, except that the pipes of the quills are not drawn to a point, but are spread out in straight lines with the top. This was done by perforating the pipe of the quill in two places and running two cords through these holes, and then winding around the quills and the cord, fine thread, to fasten each quill in the place designed for it. These cords extended some length beyond the quills on each side, so that on placing the feathers erect on the head, the cords could be tied together at the back of the head. This would enable the wearer to present a beautiful display of feathers standing erect and extending a distance above the head, and entirely surrounding it. These were most splendid head dresses, and would be a magnificent ornament to the head of a female at the present day,--several hundred strings of beads; these consisted of very hard brown seed smaller than hemp seed, in each of which a small hole had been made, and through this hole a small three corded thread, similar in appearance and texture to seine twine; these were tied up in bunches, as a merchant ties up coral beads when he exposes them for sale. The red hoofs of fawns, on a string supposed to be worn around the neck as a necklace. These hoofs were about twenty in number, and may have been emblematic of Innocence; the claw of an eagle, with a hole made in it, through which a cord was pa.s.sed, so that it could be worn pendent from the neck; the jaw of a bear designed to be worn in the same manner as the eagle's claw, and supplied with a cord to suspend it around the neck; two rattlesnake-skins, one of these had fourteen rattles upon it, these were neatly folded up; some vegetable colors done up in leaves; a small bunch of deer sinews, resembling cat-gut in appearance; several bunches of thread and twine, two and three threaded, some of which were nearly white; seven needles, some of these were of horn and some of bone, they were smooth and appeared to have been much used. These needles had each a k.n.o.b or whirl on the top, and at the other end were brought to a point like a large sail needle. They had no eyelets to receive a thread. The top of one of these needles was handsomely scalloped; a hand-piece made of deer-skin, with a hole through it for the thumb, and designed probably to protect the hand in the use of the needle, the same as thimbles are now used; two whistles about eight inches long made of cane, with a joint about one third the length; over the joint is an opening extending to each side of the tube of the whistle, these openings were about three-fourths of an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide, and had each a flat reed placed in the opening. These whistles were tied together with a cord wound around them.

"I have been thus minute in describing the mute witness from the days of other times, and the articles which were deposited within her earthen house. Of the race of people to whom she belonged when living, we know nothing; and as to conjecture, the reader who gathers from these pages this account, can judge of the matter as well as those who saw the remnant of mortality in the subterranean chambers in which she was entombed. The cause of the preservation of her body, dress and ornaments is no mystery. The dry atmosphere of the Cave, with the nitrate of lime, with which the earth that covers the bottom of these nether palaces is so highly impregnated, preserves animal flesh, and it will neither putrify nor decompose when confined to its unchanging action. Heat and moisture are both absent from the Cave, and it is these two agents, acting together, which produce both animal and vegetable decomposition and putrefaction.