Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy Part 3

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 sh.o.r.e, 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 stalact.i.tes of various forms, and glittering like cut-gla.s.s 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 stalact.i.tes, 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.

THE LION.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LION'S HOME.]

I do not desire to be wanting in respect to the Lion. Because I a.s.serted that it was my opinion that he should resign the throne of the King of Beasts to the Elephant, I do not wish to deprive him of any part of his just reputation.

The Lion, with the exception of any animal but the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Hippopotamus, and such big fellows, is the strongest of beasts. Compared to Tigers and Panthers, he is somewhat generous, and compared to most of the flesh-eating animals, he is quite intelligent. Lions have been taught to perform certain feats when in a state of captivity; but, as all of us know who have seen the performing animals in a menagerie, he is by no means the equal of a Dog or an Elephant.

The Lion appears to the greatest advantage in the midst of his family.

When he and his wife are taking their walks abroad they will often fly before a man, especially if he is a white man.

But at home, surrounded by their little ones, the case is different.

Those cubs, in the picture of the Lion's home, are nice little fellows, and you might play with them without fear of more than a few scratches. But where is the brave man who would dare to go down among those rocks, armed with guns, pistols, or whatever he pleased, and take one of them!

I do not think he lives in your town.

We never see a Lion looking very brave or n.o.ble in a cage. Most of those that I have seen appeared to me to be excessively lazy. They had not half the spirit of the tigers and wolves. But, out in his native country, he presents a much more imposing spectacle, especially if one can get a full view of him when he is a little excited. Here is a picture of such a Lion as you will not see in a cage.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Considering his size, the strength of the Lion is astonishing. He will kill an ox with one blow of his great paw, if he strikes it on the back, and then seizing it in his great jaws, he will carry it off almost as easily as you could carry a baby.

And when he has carried his prey to the spot where he chooses to have his dinner, he shows that no beast can surpa.s.s him in the meat-eating line. When he has satisfied his hunger on an ox, there is not much left for those who come to the second table. And there are often other Lions, younger and weaker than the one who has provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. But, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. They roar and growl and grumble until their turn comes.

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Lions have some very peculiar characteristics. When they have made a bound upon their prey and have missed it, they seldom chase the frightened animal. They are accustomed to make one spring on a deer or an ox, and to settle the matter there and then. So, after a failure to do this, they go to the place from which they have made the spring and practise the jump over and over until they feel that they can make it the next time they have a chance.

This is by no means a bad idea for a Lion--or a man either.

Another of their peculiarities is their fear of traps and snares.

Very often they will not spring upon an ox or a horse, simply because it is tied to a tree. They think there is some trick when they see the animal is fastened by a rope.

And when they come upon a man who is asleep, they will very often let him lie undisturbed. They are not accustomed to seeing men lying about in their haunts, and they don't know what to make of it. Sometimes they take it in their heads to lie down there themselves. Then it becomes disagreeable for the man when he awakes.

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A story of this kind is told of an African who had been hunting, and who, being tired, had lain down to sleep. When he awoke there lay a great Lion at a short distance from him! For a minute or two the man remained motionless with fright, and then he put forth his hand to take his gun, which was on the ground a few feet from him.

But when the Lion saw him move he raised his head and roared.

The man was quiet in a second.

After a while it began to be terribly hot, and the rocks on which the poor man was lying became so heated by the sun that they burned his feet.

But whenever he moved the old Lion raised his head and growled.

The African lay there for a very long time, and the Lion kept watch over him. I expect that Lion had had a good meal just before he saw this man, and he was simply saving him up until he got hungry again.

But, fortunately, after the hunter had suffered awfully from the heat of the burning sun, and had also lain there all night, with this dreadful beast keeping watch over him, the Lion became thirsty before he got hungry, and when he went off to a spring to get a drink the African crawled away.

If that Lion had been a Tiger, I think he would have killed the man, whether he wished to eat him or not.

So there is something for the Lion's reputation.

BOB'S HIDING-PLACE.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Bob was not a very big boy, but he was a lively little fellow and full of fun. You can see him there in the picture, riding on his brother Jim's back. One evening there happened to be a great many boys and girls at Bob's father's house. The grown-up folks were having a family party, and as they were going to stay all night--you see this was in the country--some of them brought their children with them.

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It was not long after supper that a game of Blind-Man's-Buff was proposed, and, as it would not do to have such an uproar in the sitting-room as the game would produce, the children were all packed off to the kitchen. There they have a glorious time. Jim is the first one blindfolded, and, as he gropes after the others, they go stumbling up against tables, and rattling down tin-pans, and upsetting each other in every direction. Old Grandfather, who has been smoking his pipe by the kitchen fire, takes as much pleasure in the game as the young folks, and when they tumble over his legs, or come banging up against his chair, he only laughs, and warns them not to hurt themselves.

I could not tell you how often Grandfather was caught, and how they all laughed at the blind-man when he found out whom he had seized.

But after a while the children became tired of playing Blind-Man's-Buff, and a game of Hide-and-Seek was proposed. Everybody was in favor of that, especially little Bob. It appears that Bob had not a very good time in the other game. Everybody seemed to run up against him and push him about, and whenever he was caught the blind-man said "Bob!" immediately. You see there was no mistaking Bob; he was so little.

But in Hide-and-Seek he would have a better chance. He had always liked that game ever since he had known how to play anything. He was a good little fellow for hiding, and he knew it.

When the game had begun, and all the children--except the biggest girl, who was standing in a corner, with her hands before her face, counting as fast as she could, and hoping that she would come to one hundred before everybody had hidden themselves--had scampered off to various hiding-places, Bob still stood in the middle of the kitchen-floor, wondering where in the world he should go to! All of a sudden--the girl in the corner had already reached sixty-four--he thought he would go down in the cellar.

There was no rule against that--at least none that he knew of--and so, slipping softly to the cellar-door, over in the darkest corner of the kitchen, he opened it, and went softly down the steps.

There was a little light on the steps, for Bob did not shut the door quite tightly after him, and if there had been none at all, he would have been quite as well pleased. He was not afraid of the dark, and all that now filled his mind was the thought of getting somewhere where no one could possibly find him. So he groped his way under the steps, and there he squatted down in the darkness, behind two barrels which stood in a corner.

"Now," thought Bob, "she won't find me--easy."