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 A Reprint 
 
 from the pages of 
 
 The National Magazine^ 
 
 Published in 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
Jo ^ 
 
 Mammoth Cave 
 
 Is on the 
 
 Through Line ^et<ween North and South, 
 
 Louisville d) Nashville R. R. 
 
 ^P^HIS greatest of all of America's Great Natural Wonders is situated in 
 §3 Edmonson County, Ky*, about eight miles from the main line of the 
 Louis'ville & Nashville Railroad; ivith <which it is connected at Glasgo<w 
 Junction by a picturesque mountain railroad. Trains of this short line meet princi- 
 pal trains on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, making the trip in about 30 
 minutes. A trip through the Short Route in the cave occupies about four hours, 
 and the Long Route about nine hours. The trip can be made to the cave, both 
 routes through the cave can be taken, and passenger can be ready to resume his 
 journey vjiih a detention of not over 24 hours. 
 
 REGULAR RATES. 
 
 Board at Hotel, per day, . , ^ $2.25 
 Cave Fees, Longf Route, . . 3.00 
 
 Short Route, . . 2,00 
 
 These charges include services of guide^ lights, etc. 
 
 REDUCTION, 
 
 For a party of tO, reduction of 25 per cent, from above rates for ca'be fees; 
 for a party of 50, reduction of 33^ per cent., and for a party of tOO, reduction 
 of 50 per cent. For all information as to rates and accommodations at the cave. 
 
 Address, H, C, GANTER, Manager, 
 
 Mammoth Cave, Ky, 
 
 STOP-OVER ALLOWED 
 
 On all through tickets v^ithin their limits, and on all through tickets the destina- 
 tion of vjhich is a point on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 
 For other information as to railroad rates, routes, etc, address, 
 
 C, L. STONE, Gen'l Pass, Agent, 
 
 LouislJille, Ky, 
 
The Entrance to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, 
 
 IN KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 BY R.- ELLSWORTH CALL, PH.D. 
 
 FIRST among the caverns of the earth 
 the Mammoth Cave has long at- 
 tracted those who love the marvel- 
 lous and the unique. It has appealed to 
 their sense of the beautiful; to their love 
 of the strange and wonderful; to their 
 powers of imagination. The impressions 
 which casual visitors and long-time stu- 
 dents have gained have produced a great 
 mass of literature the titles of which, both 
 books and pamphlets, now make a list 
 which nearly numbers four hundred. Of 
 these most are the results of hasty visits, 
 others of borrowed material revised and 
 not always well authenticated; others still 
 are the result of gleanings by those who 
 have never seen more than a moiety of 
 the wonders which this great underground 
 region has in store. 
 
 In the early part of the present century 
 a hunter by name of Hutchins, or 
 
 Ilouchuns, gave through an accident ot 
 the chase the first information of the 
 great cave. In pursuit of a wounded bear 
 which, hard pressed, took refuge in the 
 entrance, then nearly filled with the 
 debris of the primitive forests, he found 
 the cavern. How far he ventured within 
 its forever open mouth, what he thought 
 as the great, gloomy hall became more 
 clearly outlined in the uncertain blaze of 
 his pine knot torch, will remain alike un- 
 known. Whether the Hutchins of tradi- 
 tion ever lived is now unknown. No trace 
 of the family name remains in that part 
 of Kentucky. It is certain only that the 
 cave was discovered. Its original finder 
 made haste to tell of his discovery and 
 soon the local world was talking of the 
 great wonder. 
 
 The finding of this cavern had more 
 than a passing significance. In 1809, 
 
IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 when tbe cavern was made known, 
 gunpowder was almost worth its 
 weight in gold in Kentucky. Far 
 away from the great centres of civili- 
 zation that necessary part of the back- 
 woodman's paraphernalia was hard to 
 procure and was treasured carefully 
 when obtained. Several years previ- 
 ously, in 1805 and 1806, a roving Phil- 
 adelphia chemist had investigated the 
 nitre bearing caves in the vicinity of 
 Lexington, then the Kentucky metrop- 
 olis. As Latinus first taught the 
 Latins agriculture so Doctor Samuel 
 Brown first taught the early Kentuck- 
 ians the value of nitre bearing soils 
 and the process of gunpowder manu- 
 facture. Caves, over-hanging cliffs, 
 shelving rocks, were alike examined 
 and the loose debris on their bottoms 
 or faces was examined for lime nitrate 
 to use as the basis of the manufact^ire 
 of saltpetre. A great industry v.as 
 soon inaugurated in Kentucky, made 
 more generally useful till by the em- 
 bargo which tho war of 1812-14 put on 
 our foreign commerce, and cave-hunting 
 for this purpose became more than a pas- 
 time. Every open hole was entered; every 
 suitable location exploited. Mammoth 
 
 lt:&te^J 
 
 The Path leading up to the entrance of the Cave. 
 
 Copyrighted by H. C Ganter. 
 
 Lover's Leap, 
 
 Cave was visited with this purpose in 
 view and vast quantities of soil, charged 
 with lime nitrate were found. Soon Phil- 
 adelphia and Lexington capitalists con- 
 trolled the cavern and its exploita- 
 tion went on with a view to secur- 
 ing its great mineral content. 
 Every accessible part of the cave 
 was soon visited and from the 
 miners came wonderful stories of 
 extent and beauties; nor were these 
 accounts entirely free from the inci- 
 dents which Aivid imaginations 
 sometimes give to unusual places. 
 Occasional vague accounts, agree- 
 ing only in the statements as to the 
 great extent of the ca«rern, soon 
 found their way into the eastern 
 press and the great cavern was a 
 fact of history. But not yet of 
 science. More than a quarter cen- 
 tury passed before any scientific 
 account of the cavern was pre- 
 pared: and this was not unmixed 
 with the improper use of the im- 
 agination in science. About the 
 year 1840 marks the time of the 
 first fairly accurate account of the 
 scientific aspect of Mammoth Cave. 
 The history of the various maps 
 of this cavern would prove interest- 
 
72V KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH GAVE 
 
 fng reading to the antiquarian. Tliey 
 begin in 1814, with a brief and 
 inaccurate sketch map, by a certain 
 Mr. Bogert, followed two years later 
 by the impossible map of Doctor 
 Ward, in the Worcester Spy, and by vari- 
 ou- modifications of these in the mag- 
 azine literature of the period. The first 
 and only published instrumental survey, 
 presented in map form from the time of 
 discovery to the present date, was Lee's 
 map, made in 1835. Neither compass nor 
 chain have been employed in any other 
 survey and all others are largely products 
 of a rather lively imagination. Distances 
 and areas are often misstated; something 
 in the crude methods of illumination gives 
 on magnified ideas of dimensions. The 
 ^ exact truth is sufficiently wonderful and 
 J no one who has seen any part of its laby- 
 • rinthine wanderings, its grand halls, its 
 'marvellous rivers, its abysmal pits, In 
 , '''•vaulted domes, wishes for statements 
 other than facts. 
 
 The visitor to Mammoth Cave reaches 
 It after a most pleasant ride over the won- 
 derful region of west central Kentucky, 
 traversed by the great Louisville and 
 Nashville railroad, whose palatial coaches 
 loito since displaced the lumbering stage 
 by which only, formerly, could the cave 
 be visited. Half-way between the metro- 
 politan cities of the twin states of Ken- 
 tucky and Tennessee the cavern invites 
 all north or south bound travellers to in- 
 spect its wonders during a brief period of 
 real rest from the toil of travel. If the 
 traveller be an observing man he will 
 have noted a peculiar feature in the re- 
 gion through which for some time he has 
 been travelling. With infrequent excep- 
 tions, and these the very largest streams 
 like the Green and the Barren rivers, the 
 valleys will have no running waters. 
 Neither creek nor brook will greet his eye. 
 Nor will he fail to note the ^,eculiarly 
 broken character of the surface. Here 
 and there a larger pit, or depression, may 
 attract his attention but he will soon dis- 
 cover that he is sweeping across or along 
 th- margin of greater depressions, some 
 of which are hundreds of acres in extent. 
 He will see these peculiar places on every 
 hand. As he approaches the vicinity of 
 the cave itself these depressions will be- 
 come more characteristic of the land- 
 scape. He is riding swiftly along in the 
 
 very heart of the "sink-hole region'* -or 
 Kentucky, whose entire country rock is 
 traversed by underground channels; and 
 here and there the surface rocks have 
 tumbled in and the pits and depressions 
 he sees are the indications of caverns 
 without number and without end. Eight 
 thousand square miles of this region are 
 around him. Master of all the other of 
 the hundreds of caves now known in the 
 region grand Mammoth Cave is at last 
 reached, the goal of his journey. 
 
 The entrance to the cavern is romantic 
 in the extreme. Garlanded with noble 
 chestnut oaks and tulip-trees, and fringed 
 with graceful vines, among which flashes 
 out the vivid green of ferns, while the 
 damp rocks about and below are covered 
 with the brightest of green liverworts, 
 and in the midst of them all the cavern- 
 ous opening, descending sheer fifty feet, 
 under arch of rock from which leaps a 
 perennial spring, the outlines of the whole 
 shading off into impenetrable blackness, 
 such is the scene upon which the visitor 
 looks on sudden turn lo the right at the 
 base of the hill in which the opening, by 
 freak of nature, is placed. Ideal place 
 this for artist, for lover, for wooer of na- 
 ture! Primeval forests, brilliant birds, 
 unaccustomed flowers, new emotions! Lit- 
 tle wonder is it that some there ire who 
 here turn back, forgetful of the wonders 
 below and fain to stay above in the land 
 of flowers and sunshine. Once well 
 within the entrance the new scenes and 
 frequent attractions soon make one for- 
 get the upper world so intent does he be- 
 come on the things about him. 
 
 Not far within the avenue which leads 
 to the first great hall, the rotunda, the 
 visitor will pass by a wall of loose rocks, 
 regularly arranged and fringing the path- 
 way on either side. These were thus 
 placed by the miners of 1810 and are the 
 sole monument of an Indian woman and 
 child which here lie buried, on the left, at 
 a spot near Hutchins' Narrows. Few 
 there are who know that this spot is thus 
 honored, for while signs of primitive visita- 
 tions abound far within the cavern, even 
 to Chief City, in the old cave, no other 
 human remains were ever found in Mam- 
 moth Cave. The woman and child have 
 been several times particularly described 
 by early antiquarian writers, but with the 
 descriptions there have been given a num- 
 
JN KENTUCKY'S^ MAMMOTH CAVhl 
 
 m 
 
 Copy- 
 righted hy 
 H.C. Ganter. 
 
 The Bottomless Pit. 
 
 Discovered by Stephen Bishop, the original colored guide, 
 
 and first crossed by him on a cedar sapling. 
 
 ber of statements which have no other 
 basis than the imagination. 
 
 At the Rotunda, the first magnificent 
 hall, and with but two or three rivals in 
 the cave, the great work accomplished by 
 the nitrate miners first appears. Huge 
 piles of lixiviated dirt greet the eye on 
 every hand, some untouched during all 
 the four score years which have passed 
 since first they were heaped from the 
 
 vats. These testify to a work of patriot- 
 ism that we had well-nigh forgotten; had 
 it not been for these dusky toilers in eter- 
 nal midnight the war of 1812 might have 
 ended quite differently, for us! But on 
 every side are the remains of vats, and 
 pipes, and tanks, and framework, used in 
 the clumsy chemistry of that day. To 
 this place, first of all, was brought the 
 nitre-bearing dirt from Audubon Avenue 
 
IX KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 the great hall which sweeps away to the 
 right with graceiul curve aud roof smooth 
 as artificial ceiliug. In winter there may 
 here be seen great clusters of bats, in 
 hibernation, hanging head downwards 
 from boss and point. They are here by 
 myriads and make the walls black so 
 thickly do they sometimes gather. For 
 full three fourths of a mile the bottom 
 has been dug over and the loose soil car- 
 
 est great hall in the cave, Chief City, now 
 rarely visited by the tourist. But the 
 journey to this immense hall of nearly 
 three acres extent is well worth the toil; 
 while on the way the several more cele- 
 brated features may also be seen. The 
 Giant's Collin, the Star Chamber, the 
 Black Chambers, the Whale, the Cata- 
 racts, the Snow Storm, the Salts Gallery, 
 all afford their several attractions and 
 
 Copyrighted by H. C. Ganter. 
 
 The Bacon Chamber, showing how visitors have made themselves known 
 
 ried on the shoulders of brawny slaves to 
 the vats in the Rotunda. At this point, 
 and beyond, the little spring which gave 
 the mimic cataract to the over-springing 
 arch at the entrance, which we saw as 
 we came in, did duty as a solvent for the 
 lime nitrate which this soil contained. 
 Ihen by pumps it was lifted through the 
 entrance to the outer world to there be 
 made to yield its powder-making treas- 
 ures to the cause of commerce and inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 From the Rotunda the Main Cave 
 sweeps on to the left with arch fifty feet 
 overhead and more than that in width. 
 Two and one-half miles away is the larg- 
 
 tell their story to the careful observer and 
 the trained chemist. 
 
 Far different from all other parts of 
 Mammoth Cave the Gothic Avenue has al- 
 ways been attractive to the visitor. In 
 few other places, excepting only the 
 newly opened Olive's Bower, may stalac- 
 tites be seen. Here they are numerous 
 and some of them very large. Fact and 
 fancy, mythologic lore and historic and 
 biographic reminiscence have alike con- 
 tributed to their naming. In no portion of 
 the great cavern ha^ caprice i- bestowing 
 names been so free as here. The Oak Pil- 
 \ar, Cfesar and Pompey, the Bee Hives, 
 the Bridal Altar, the Arm Chair, are a 
 
IN KENTUCKY'S MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 Copyrighted by U. C. Ganier. 
 
 The First Saltpetre Vats used In the early part of the century In the 
 production of Nitrate for Gunpowder. 
 
 few of the names suggested by visitors 
 and adopted by guides in past years. Tliis 
 portion of the cave is a rather low avenue, 
 and leads to the Lover's Leap, three- 
 fourths of a mile away, where the Dome 
 Route usually ends. But beyond this 
 point, down the Hill of Difficulty, through 
 the Elbow Crevice, past Jacob's Pit and 
 through Napoleon's Dome 
 under which is Gate- 
 wood's Dining Table, 
 and the visitor enters 
 
 Gratz Avenue, a tortu- 
 ous, narrow way which 
 
 leads to Annette's Dome 
 
 and Lee's Cisterns. All 
 
 naturalists who visit the 
 
 cave should make this 
 
 trip for in Annette's 
 
 Dome is Shaler's Brook 
 
 and in the brook are 
 
 myriads of small white, 
 
 blind crustaceans; here 
 
 also are to be found the 
 
 snow-white leeches, both 
 
 rare and blind. Here 
 
 water actively at work 
 
 in carving domes and 
 
 pits may be seen, better 
 
 perhaps, than in any 
 
 other portion of the cave. 
 
 The beautifully fluted 
 
 and irregular walls, the 
 
 dome widening below, 
 
 the rapidly running 
 
 brook which leaps from a. 
 higher channel midway in 
 the wall, all tell of the work 
 of undergound waters in 
 sculpturing; they further 
 testify to the process of 
 solution as that which na- 
 ture here employs. Gratz 
 Avenue is named for Hy- 
 man Gratz, of Philadelphia, 
 who, conjointly with 
 Charles Wilkins, of Lexing- 
 ton, conducted in this cave 
 the manufacture of salt- 
 petre during the troublous 
 times of 1812-1814. It is 
 one of the middle level ave- 
 nues, the Gothic Avenue, by 
 which it is entered, being 
 at the highest level of the 
 cave, about on a line with 
 the present entrance. 
 At the Mummy's Niche, in Gothic Av- 
 enue, the guides usually recite the fiction 
 of the Indian Mummy of royal blood, said 
 to have been found in Mammoth Cave. 
 Though long since the real facts were 
 made known romance yet permits the 
 tale to the faithful guides from whom 
 cold science has taken so much during 
 
 Copyrighted by H. C, Ganter. 
 
 The Entrance to Gothic Avenue . 
 
IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 these later years. The story goes that in 
 the earlier years of the century, while 
 knowledge of the cave was yet but frag- 
 mentary, the miners here found, resting 
 in the niche, the mummified body of an 
 Indian girl, which, from the variety of 
 accompanying paraphernalia, their ready 
 imagination clothed with regal place and 
 burial. But the facts are that the 
 mummy came from a neighboring cave. 
 Salt Cave, some few miles away but yet 
 on the Mammoth Cave estate. It was 
 placed here by Gratz and Wilkins, or their 
 manager, for exhibition purposes and kept 
 for some ti^ in Gothic Avenue. It was 
 finally taken to Cincinnati and the east, 
 and after having been exhibited in the 
 Metropolis at length found a resting place 
 in the American Society of Antiquarians 
 Museum, in Worcester. So well did it 
 rest that its very existence was forgotten 
 until a few years since when i-s where- 
 abouts and history became known and in- 
 terested persons took it to the World's 
 Columbian Exposition. Thence it was re- 
 moved to Washington and now has found, 
 let us hope, a final and useful resting 
 place. A recent photograph shows the 
 figure to be that of a woman, buried in 
 
 Copyrighted h>, H. C. Oanfer. 
 
 The Star Chamber. 
 
 the manner usual to the North American 
 Indian, in sitting posture, with arms 
 folded across her breast. The real facts 
 are none the less interesting than if the 
 mummy had, indeed, been found in Mam- 
 moth Cave. 
 
 Among the wonderful features of this 
 great cavern, where everything is won- 
 derful, the great domes and pits are not 
 the least. Some of these reach from the 
 base-level of the cave up to, and into, the 
 great subcarboniferous sandstone cap- 
 ping which is characteristic of the region. 
 Beginning as mere fissures these have de- 
 veloped into crevices, and the crevices 
 into vertical channels through which fell 
 the waters that gathered on the surface. 
 Little could have been effected by these, 
 as mere mechanical agents, notwithstand- 
 ing the great periof of time through 
 which they have been in action. But 
 added to the slight mechanical effects 
 were those chemic ones which belong to 
 carbon dioxide in solution. The result in 
 the thousands of years which have 
 elapsed since they began their work is the 
 great number of deep pits and domes. 
 Their bottoms are strewn with masses of 
 rock and finer debris from the sides and 
 roofs; on these incessantly fall the 
 waters from high overhead, mak- 
 ing still deeper these great halls 
 and chambers. Some of these, like 
 the Bottomless Pit, Gorin's Dome, 
 Washington Pit, the Maelstrom, 
 and Mammoth Dome, are well 
 worth careful study. It is impos- 
 sible to put into cold speech the 
 impressions which one will gather 
 as he stands at the margin or in 
 the bottom of the great chambers. 
 The sides curtained with alabas- 
 ter, folded and fluted in ten thou- 
 sand fantastic shapes, here and 
 there a boss of coral which casts 
 weird shadows from his flickering 
 lamp along the vertical walls, the 
 merry din of falling waters or the 
 patter of hesitating drops which 
 make a music unknown in the 
 outer world, all conspire with the 
 eternal gloom to make the place 
 and its surroundings uncanny in 
 the extreme. One hears his heart 
 beat in the great stillness between 
 the falling drops in some, while In 
 others where is the rush of falling 
 
IN KENTUCKTS MAMMOTH CAVE 
 
 waters the ears are dinned 
 by the sounds coming to one 
 intensified manyfold from 
 the resonator chambers all 
 about him. No work of art 
 so fixes the mind and so 
 occupies all the attention as 
 these great halls dug out by 
 nature in the very depths 
 of the earth. Alabaster 
 curtains are not to be seen 
 everywhere; they are rare 
 in Mammoth Cave but they 
 are glorious when seen. 
 One wishes to get a peep 
 behind the stony veil in the 
 hope that other secrets of 
 nature may thus be re- 
 vealed. But, after all, these 
 things which we thought 
 so secret become plain 
 when we make intelligent 
 questioning. There are no secrets in 
 Mammoth Cave which we may not un- 
 ravel by persistent effort. Time and in- 
 telligence makes all the hidden things of 
 nature to be pL in and open. 
 
 The Mammoth Dome is probably the 
 finest specimen of excavated hall in the 
 cavern. It is wonderful beyond power of 
 language to express. From bottom to top 
 the height is little over one hundred and 
 fifty feet. But viewed from below in the 
 faint light of the rude lamps employed, or 
 even in the glare of beng-1 lights, the top 
 seems much farther above the observer. 
 The distance is apparently increased by 
 the fact that a perspective effect is given 
 the nearly vertical walls because they 
 really approach at the top. Like all other 
 domes in the cavern this one widens be- 
 low until it becomes a chamber fifty or 
 more feet in width, winding in a sigmoid 
 curve more than one hundred feet hori- 
 zontally. At the upper and right hand, 
 midheight, great masses of alabaster 
 have formed, while surmounting them 
 are the giant columns, resembling works 
 of human hands, to which the name of 
 Karnak has been happily given. These 
 "ruins" antedate their namesakes on the 
 Nile; they are covered with sheets of pure 
 alabaster which re variously folded and 
 contorted, giving one the impressions of 
 vast curtains extending in fold after fold 
 away into the dim recesses which are but 
 imperfectly illuminated. by his lamp. Cer- 
 tainly this locality [Willi ^call to one the 
 
 ^^74. I 
 
 Copt/righted by H. C. Ganter. 
 
 At the Head of Echo River. 
 
 impressions of his youth when the folk- 
 lore tales to which he listened told ot 
 wizards and how they turned, by their 
 magic, the homes and persons of others 
 into lasting stone. We wish we could 
 speak the magical words which we feel 
 sure will loose the forms we almost know 
 are rock-cased here; 
 
 During frequent visits to Mammoth 
 Cave nothing in it has so deeply im- 
 pressed us as the famous Echo River. In- 
 timations of its acoustic glories may be 
 had at various points along River Hall, 
 notably near Shakespear's Masque, that 
 wonderful freak in the rocks which puts 
 to blush many a human artist. Certain 
 tones produced here come back to the lis- 
 tener softened and prolonged like music 
 from hidden choirs. But after the first 
 or second arch i passed, and the boat ride 
 well begun, then comes to one the full 
 realization of the wonderful symphony 
 which greets him as the result of every 
 sound. The very ripples are musical; the 
 waves send back a grand anthem; the 
 slightest intonation comes back from the 
 hidden recesses a chorus. It would seem 
 that an army of sprites takes up the 
 grosser sounds and remoulls them, makes 
 harmony out of discord and ten thousand 
 chords out of one! Listen to that simple 
 note sent out by the guide whose tuneful 
 lips understand how to frame aright the 
 sound for this great resonator, for such it 
 simply is. It comes back in a thousand 
 separate notes, each -one becoming fainter 
 
IN KBNWCKY'S MAMMOTB CAYB 
 
 and still more faint as they roll adown 
 the unknown chambers of this river of 
 night. The darkness about us seems alive 
 with invisible singers; we must be in fairy 
 lanu indeed! We have enjoyed this expe- 
 rience more than two score timt • each 
 time it seems as new and wonderful as 
 when its glories first burst on our ear. 
 
 The discovery of the Echo River fol- 
 lowed close upon the crossing of the Bot- 
 tomless Pit by the intrepid Stephen 
 Bishop, the original colored guide who 
 gave us so much of our knowledge of this 
 underground world. A cedar sapling was 
 liie sole support which allowed him to 
 cross the great gulf which had held back 
 people for ntarly half a century. In the 
 year 1840 he crossed the Pit at the level 
 now taken by the tourist and soon an- 
 nounced the wonders beyond. The great, 
 black stream was beheld by men for the 
 first time. Its waters told no story to 
 tliese earlier oxp.orers either of life or of 
 chemic work. To them it was only a 
 slowly ■ flowing stream, from night to 
 night. At the end of Purgatoi'y it stood 
 as a menace to all who should attempt 
 to unravel it? secrets. To us, even now, 
 the first venture of the frail and rude boat 
 upon its unknown waters without hint of 
 what could be beyond, was little short of 
 reckless. But the voyage was safely 
 mad„ and marvels scarcely to be believed 
 wei-e told of what the low arches hid on 
 the other side. It is over a half century 
 since this voyage was accomplished; the 
 tourist makes it now without once think- 
 ing of the gallant slave who took in his 
 hands his life to gratify the curiosity of 
 a master. 
 
 Beyond the Echo River the cavern ex- 
 tends nearly three miles i>resenting many 
 interesting features not to be elsewhere 
 seen. Near the Cascades, in Cascade 
 Hall, are two large avenues neither of 
 which is visited by tourists and in which 
 few persons have ever been. These are 
 Stephenson's Avenue and the Roaring 
 River. The last named is a portion of the 
 Echo River, or a sluggishly flowing 
 branch of it, and is named from the char- 
 acter of its echo. Only at lowest water 
 in very dry seasons can it be with safety 
 explored. It is then but a succession of 
 deep pools and muddy flats, with an occa- 
 sional cross stream of running water. 
 
 These pools are famous haunts for blind 
 fish and for the white crayfish, also blind. 
 The end of this avenue has never been 
 reached. Stephenson's Avenue has been 
 traversed by us to its end, near Croghan's 
 Hall, but at a much lower level. 
 
 After passing through the long, narrow 
 tortuous, avenue called El Ghor, which 
 connects Silllman's Avenue with those 
 sections of the cave in which crystallized 
 gypsum is found in greatest quantity, and 
 after climbing i:)ast Mary's Vineyard, 
 Washington Hall is reached where begin 
 these famous crystalline growths which 
 make the marvellous Cleaveland's Cab- 
 inet. This is a large, rather low, avenue 
 the ceilings and walls of which are com- 
 pletely covered with gypsum, "forma- 
 tions" of wonderful intricacy and beauty. 
 From this point on to near the Rocky 
 Mountains either calcite or gypsum crys- 
 tals abound. They simulate every known 
 form of petal, and are closely crowded 
 like mimic flowers; they spread and turn 
 in i^lain violation of the ^aws of gravity. 
 In the Snowball Room they are of fibrous 
 gypsum curling from a center and piling 
 up one on another giving completest im- 
 pression of a recent schoolboy battle with 
 veritable snowballs, thousands of which 
 still cling to the roof as if but just thrown. 
 The beautiful white masses now and then 
 fall of their own weight; but time grows 
 others to take their places. Some of the 
 "flowers" are as white as snow and quite 
 a foot in diameter, with bract, and petal, 
 and stamen, and pistil as in the real flow- 
 ers of the upper world. These beautiful 
 poems in stone seem too frail to touch; 
 they make the beauty of the trans- 
 riparian regions. 
 
 Our survey ends with Croghan's Hall, 
 where are a few small stalactites and the 
 wonderful Maelstrom, a pit which rivals 
 those we first saw near the entrance. We 
 gaze into its depths; we illumine for a lit- 
 tle its inky blackness; we hear the drop- 
 pings of the mimic waterfall which is 
 3'et at work digging the pit deeper still; 
 we wonder where and how those waters 
 again reach the surface, laden with their 
 mineral content. We cannot answer all 
 the questions which will arise and turn to 
 retrace our steps glad we have had at 
 least one view of the underground 
 of Kentucky. 
 
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