CAVES NEAR WILLIAMSTOWN.
On the eastern slope of the Petersburgh Mountain of the Taghconic Range in Massachusetts, at a good deal lower altitude than the Williamstown Snow Hole and about southeast of it are some caverns, which are but little known. A five or six kilometer drive from Williamstown takes the visitor to the base of the mountain, whence a rather steep ascent of about a kilometer and a half brings him to the caves, which are in the midst of a dense, scrub forest.
The caves were first entered, and possibly discovered, by Mr. W. F. Williams, of Williamstown, when a boy. Since then, he has visited them many times and explored them a good deal. They do not appear to have any name as yet, and it would seem only fitting to christen them after their explorer: the Williams Caves.
There are several unimportant holes in the immediate neighborhood of the two main caves. The latter lie side by side. The rock formation is the same as that of the Snow Hole, a dark gray slate with a few veins of quartz, and they are due also evidently to the same geological causes. It would seem as though the mountain had tended to open or crack at these spots and fallen apart. This seems probable, because wherever there is a projection on one side of the cracks, there is a corresponding hollow in the opposite side. After this, water action has come, and erosion and corrosion have worn out and carried away earthy matter, and slowly deepened and widened the fissures. The remarkable point in connection with the main caves, however, is that one is a normal cave and the other a periodic glacière.
I went with Mr. Williams to these caves on the 6th of October, 1899, and partially explored the glacière. On the way up, just as we left the carriage road, a fine, three-year-old buck, in his winter coat, came bounding out of the forest; on seeing us he stopped, and after taking a good look, quietly trotted off into the bushes.
The glacière is rather peculiar in shape and may be described as two storied. A long slope, set at an angle of some forty degrees, and covered with mud and dead leaves, leads down into the crack, which is from one to three meters in width. The first half of the slope is open to the sky; the last half is covered by the rock roof, and is a real cave. In this the floor is horizontal, the place forming a little chamber in which the daylight has almost vanished. At the exact summit of the slope a big tree grew most conveniently; and we tied to this one end of a twenty-meter Austrian Alpine Club rope, and by holding fast to it, and kneeling or sitting down in the mud in two or three places, the descent was easy enough. It was rather difficult to scramble up the slope again, however.
Fig. 10. Vertical Section of Freezing Cave near Williamstown.