Chapter 3 LURAY CAVERNS AND MAMMOTH CAVE

O! bear me then to vast embowering shades,

To twilight groves and visionary vales,

To weeping grottoes and prophetic glooms,

Where angel forms, athwart the solemn dusk

Tremendous, sweep, or seem to sweep, along,

And voices more than man through the void,

Deep sounding, seize the enthusiastic ear.

Or is this gloom too much?

Where creeping water ooze, and where rivers wind,

Cluster the rolling fogs and swim along

The dusky mantled lawns. -Thompson.

The Shenandoah valley is not only famous for its beauty, picturesque scenery and many historical associations, but here in Page county, Virginia, are located the beautiful caverns of Luray. Here we find caverns that for variety and beauty of their calcite formations excel many if not all caverns of the same kind in the world.

The valley at Luray is ten miles wide, extends from the Blue Ridge to the Massanutten mountain, and displays remarkably fine scenery. These ridges lie in vast folds and wrinkles, and elevations in the valley are often found to be pierced by erosion. Cave Hill, three hundred feet above the water level, had long been an object of local interest on account of its pits and oval hollows, through one of which, August 13, 1878, Mr. Andrew J. Campbell and others entered, thus discovering the extensive and beautiful caverns.

There is a house built on the entrance to these caverns and one does not realize that such a remarkable region is located here. The natural arch that admits one to Mammoth Cave has a span of seventy feet. It is very high and on its edges grow ferns, vines, and various wild flowers, and the phoebe builds her nest and fills all the space about with her sweet prophecy of spring. It is what the entrance to a place so vast should be.

At the Luray Caverns cement walks have been laid, stairways, bridges and iron railings have been erected, and the entire route through this most beautiful of subterranean palaces is illuminated by brilliant electric lights. On entering the caverns you experience a thrill of strange emotion and mute wonder. One speaks, if at all, in whispers. It is too much for your imagination to grasp at once and you are overwhelmed as much as you were on first seeing Niagara. Here is silence such as never came to the outer world, darkness that far exceeds the blackest midnight; glittering stalactites that gleam like diamonds from the ceiling above; massive artistic drapery which falls in graceful folds; cascades of rarest beauty formed by stone of marble whiteness, in place of falling water; tinted walls like evening skies; all these seen by the gleam of brilliant electric lights fill one with admiration and deepest awe. Here the Master Artist has carved spacious palaces of rarest beauty. Columns of yellowish-brown, resembling transparent amber, support great vaulting domes above you. These lovely pillars seem to rise toward their proper arches as majestically as those of Rheims, Amiens, and Cologne, only here we find "no signs of decay" and "they never knew the cruel ravages of war."

This calls to memory a visit to the Steen, the old Spanish prison built in the eighth century in the city of Antwerp. A crowd of English soldiers and American doughboys were viewing the time-worn relics of the place when they found an old map of the world dating from the year 1300, A. D., whereupon one of the Englishmen exclaimed, "Where is America? Why, your bloomin', bloody country was not on the map. at that time!" Such good- natured humor was borne with about the same patience as the bites of "cooties" or Jersey mosquitoes. As they journeyed on, a companion of the first speaker said, "You don't have such wonderfully old and interesting things in America." The fiery American doughboys accepted this remark as a challenge and could keep silent no longer. One of them, voicing the sentiment of all, exclaimed in a voice that fairly awoke the echoes of those aged walls, "No, we do not have much of this old trash in our country. Everything in America is new and up-to-date." But in Luray Caverns we have one of the world's great wonders "that was old long before the foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops." Here are columns of gigantic proportions, one of which has lain on the floor of the cave for more than four thousand years. Some geologists state that the glacial period was sixty thousand years ago. If their deductions be true; we have in Luray a cavern that was fifty-four thousand years old when Adam gazed on Paradise.

These caverns are carved from the Silurian limestone, although they are considered to date from the Tertiary period. Long after the cave was formed, and after many stalactites had been hung on those spacious halls with their down-grown crystals, it was completely filled with glacial mud charged with acid, whereby the dripstones were eroded in singular grotesque shapes. The eroded forms remained after the mud had been mostly removed by flowing water. Massive columns have been wrenched from the ceiling by this aqueous energy and lie prostrate on the floor; a hollow column, forty feet high and thirty feet in diameter, stands erect, but has been pierced by a tubular passage from top to bottom in the same manner; a leaning column almost as large has been undermined so as to resemble the leaning tower of Pisa; these are only a few of the many wonderful forms of Nature's architecture formed by no other tools than time and waterdrops.

We find no streams and true springs here as in Mammoth Cave, but there are numerous basins of pellucid water, varying from one to fifty feet in diameter, and from six to fifteen feet in depth. Crystal Lake is a clear body of water surrounded by sparkling stalactites. How long its waters must have waited to mirror these lovely formations! They gleam and sparkle, forming an arch of dazzling splendor; fit drapery for such a gem of water, which shows again their marvelous beauty.

Here these waters have lain for countless ages with never a breeze to ripple their surface. At Mammoth Cave the waters enter through numerous domes and pits in cascades of great volume, and are finally collected in River Hall where they form several extensive lakes or rivers, which are connected with Green river by two deep springs that appear under arches on its margin. The water has been known to rise sixty feet above low water mark when there is a freshet in Green river. The waters of these rivers are navigable from May to October.

The first lake approached is called the Dead Sea. Here you gaze upward at vast cliffs sixty feet high and one hundred feet long, above which you go with cautious tread, then up a stone stairway that leads to the river Styx, a body of water forty feet wide and four hundred feet long, which is crossed by a natural bridge. A beach of finest yellow sand extends for five hundred yards to Echo river, the largest of all, being from twenty to two hundred feet wide, ten to forty feet deep, and about three miles long.

You never can forget your trip on this river of Stygian darkness. With oil lanterns that emit but a feeble flickering flame you see ghostlike figures, goblins and grim cave monsters that loom before you; your imagination peoples these subterranean halls and their titanic masonry with fantastic forms of its own creation. At this place these lines from Poe will perhaps flash through your mind:

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where the Eidalon, named night

On a black throne reigns upright;

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule,

From a wild, weird chink sublime,

Out of space and out of time.

When you speak loudly your words have a weird sepulchral tone that echoes far and near through the spacious halls and avenues that makes the black pall of mystery all the more uncanny. As you first enter on your journey on this stream of inky blackness you are appalled by the awful darkness, and the stillness so intense is like that of some vast primeval forest at midnight. The ceiling is so low at one place you can touch it with your hands. With rock above and on both sides of you and water beneath, you think you have a faint conception of Hades. You hear no sound but the gentle splash of the water struck by the oars, or the labored and rapid breathing of the more timid ones of your party.

Suddenly your boat stops and the guide utters a few tones beginning low in the scale and running higher, when, lo! the whole subterranean cavern seems filled with fairy tongues and becomes melodious with softer, sweeter tones until they die away among those avenues, like the music heard only in the realm of dreams. Some one suggests that a song be sung, whereupon an Irishman with deep sonorous voice starts, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," but he only sings but one line, for the clamor of voices insisting on another selection, is like that of a flock of crows in autumn who have discovered an owl. The multitudinous echoes, if not as musical as the voice of the guide, made more obvious harmony.

Thus do these aged halls send back rarest melodies for the discordant notes received. How like the noble souls one knows who take the discordant jeers and taunts of the world and by a life of serenity and steadfastness of purpose (which is ever to help mankind onward) build for them an admiration and devotion that returns from a multitude of grateful hearts like musical echoes, perhaps too late unheard.

The temperature of both Luray Caverns and Mammoth Cave is uniformly fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year, and the atmosphere is both chemically and optically of singular purity. For this reason stone huts were once erected for consumptives in Mammoth Cave. Thirteen was the original number and for the poor unfortunates who inhabited them it was most unlucky; the patients became worse, and on being taken from their subterranean homes in Mammoth Cave quickly died. Only two of the huts still remain.

"Those curious mortals who are always seeking morgues and graveyard scenes should come here." What a place for contemplation! "Into what vast unrecorded ages the philosopher could let his thoughts go back!"

On entering Luray Caverns one of the first of the many curious formations to attract your attention will be rows of stalactites resembling fish on market. Here are fish that were on exhibit before Noah entered the ark. How patient the old fisherman must be to have stood through innumerable years and not yet have had a sale. You will see other forms that represent hams and sidemeat. You will, perchance, detect the lean streak as most people do. This meat needs no sugarcuring or smoking and will keep many more years with no fear of the blue-bottle fly. Glittering stalactites. blaze in front of you; fluted columns and draperies in broad folds with a formation that resembles the finest hemstitching may be seen all around you, while Pluto's chasm, a wide rift in the walls, contains a spectre clothed in shadowy draperies. One wonders how long this grim, ghastly person has stood here. Long ages came and went in that shadowy and evanescent time with no record save these stony ghosts, and over all a black pall of mystery still broods.

One of the most remarkable formations as well as one of the most beautiful which may be seen in Mammoth Cave is the flower garden. Dr. Hovery describes its beauty thus: "Each rosette is made of countless fibrous crystals; each tiny crystal is in itself a study; each fascicle of carved prisms is wonderful and the whole glorious blossom is a miracle of beauty. Now multiply this mimic blossom from one to a myriad as you move down the dazzling vista as if in a dream of Elysium; not for a few yards, but for two magnificent miles all is virgin white, except here and there a patch of gray limestone, or a spot bronzed by metallic stain, or as we purposely vary the lonely monotony by burning chemical lights. We admire the effective grouping done by Nature's skillful fingers. Here is a great cross made by a mass of stone rosettes; while floral coronets, clusters, wreaths, and garlands embellish nearly every foot of the ceiling and walls. The overgrown ornaments actually crowd each other till they fall on the floor and make the pathway sparkle with crushed and trodden jewels."

We find several forms of life in Mammoth Cave, such as light gray or stone colored crickets, with antennae and legs twice the length of our black musician. If this cave dweller is a musician like our cheery outdoor fiddler, how the empty walls must ring! We found several of these odd insects near Echo river and on the walls of the cave near the well known as the "Bottomless Pit." White crayfish moved back and forth on the sand at the edge of Echo river and backed away from us when we tried to procure one for a specimen. His subterranean home has seemingly not affected his habits. This cave also contains a fish known to scientists as "Amblyopsis Speloens," meaning "A weak-eyed cave dweller."

At one place in the caverns rows of stalactites are arranged in lines of various lengths in reference to tone, just like the strings of a piano, in regular graduated system. A small boy who accompanies the guide will strike those stone harps in rapid succession which give forth delicious liquid tones, sweet and silvery as the chimes of Antwerp Cathedral. They waver and float through those vast halls until the ear catches only a faint echo from some far, dim aisle. "How many centuries elapsed before this subterranean organ gave forth its delightful tones!" It lacked only the soul of a Beethoven or Chopin to interpret them aright. How like many noble lives whose talents perhaps shall only bud "unseen" or waste upon the desert air of environment. One thinks of Keats, whose wonderful Ode to the Nightingale and lovely Nature Poems might never have been sung had he not gone out into the fragrant fields and woods, where the song of the lark and the breezes, "heaven born," touched his great soul like an Aeolian harp which dispersed sweetest melodies for all mankind to hear.