The summer tourist, conducted through the three principal chambers of Wookey Hole by a guide armed with a can of benzoline, for making stalagmites into torches, comes out having a very imperfect knowledge of the geography of the cavern, and a totally inadequate idea of its beauties. I well remember how little I was impressed by my first visit, under these conditions, many years ago. The weak illumination seemed to reveal only the proportions of some rather large cellars, pervaded by oily pools, into which the contents of the can were poured and set on fire, producing an unearthly glare through the darkness and the waters; and a number of dingy and unconvincing natural effigies, black with the accumulation of soot. Our exploring party in March 1903 saw these things under an illumination such as had never been kindled there before, and I for one was quite unprepared for the revelation of brilliance and spaciousness and beauty that we were to witness.
"Wokey Hole," says Bishop Percy, "has given birth to as many wild, fanciful stories as the Sybil's (sic) Cave in Italy. Through a very narrow entrance it opens into a large vault, the roof whereof, either on account of its height or the thickness of the gloom, cannot be discovered by the light of torches. It goes winding a great way underground, is crost by a stream of very cold water, and is all horrid with broken pieces of rock: many of these are evident petrifactions, which, on account of their singular forms, have given rise to the fables alluded to in this poem," the story, that is, of the blear-eyed hag who was turned into stone. This quaint description is true in every particular. The first cavern, or the "Witch's Kitchen," has a weird similitude to Gothic architecture. Arch springs from arch up to the lofty summit, and the walls and vaulting are full of canopied recesses, with wild foliations of glistening calcite wreathed from niche to niche.
Below us, as we enter, a broad deep pool stretches away into darkness. Could we follow the gently moving current in a boat, we should enter another great vault, whose existence the ordinary visitor never suspects. There, in a small passage beyond the water, Mr. Balch discovered human remains. Whilst we peered into the gloom, the limelight was burning up, and now it flashed across the cavern to where the black scowling head of the Witch overshadows terraces, basins, and wild imageries of spectral stalagmite.
"A glow! a gleam!
A broader beam
Startles those realms of endless night,
While bats whirl round on slanting wing,
Astonished at this awful thing.
The rocky roof's reflected rays
Are caught up in the waterways,
And every jewelled stalactite
Is bathed in that stupendous light,
One moment only; then the caves
Are plunged again in Stygian waves;
The fairy dream has passed away
And night resumes her ancient sway."
The Vicar of Whiteparish, near Salisbury, wrote these expressive lines after seeing Wookey Hole lighted up with magnesium. Our beam of light was less transitory, and gave us ample leisure to contemplate the glories of this magnificent chamber. Its walls for the most part are coloured a rich red, which absorbs light readily and makes photography a slow business. The first exposure took half an hour. Against the warm red, the pearly streaks of stalactite and stalagmite shine in exquisite relief. There is a superb mass of stalactite near the Witch; to say truth, the eye is confounded by the wild grouping of fantastic piles of dripstone around that uncouth head; the colours of the rocks and the flashing crystallisations are reflected in the pellucid water, and confused again with our glimpses of the river-bed, smitten by the moving shaft of light. On the nearer side of the cave, where a narrow arch leads into an incrusted grotto, a gentle stream has deposited a fairy-like series of fonts and stoups, ending in a pure white sheet of dripstone, over which the water murmurs. The surface of all these fabrications is diapered over with a network of delicate pearly ridges; so that here you see a mass, as it were, of polished brain coral, and there madrepores and alcyonaria, where the deposits have continued their growth under water. Some of these efflorescences are like petrified filaments of water weed. The foul scurf and soot that covers the Witch's cooking apparatus and other accessories would, doubtless, disappear under a fresh deposit of pristine white, would the guides but cease for a twelvemonth to drench them in benzoline, for the delectation of such as love conundrums in stone. Still, these things are but a small part of the scenery, when all is lighted up as we were able to light it. Our work done, a Bengal fire was set off, and the glimpses it gave us along the waterway to the inaccessible chamber beyond added vastness and mystery to the scene.
STALACTITE TERRACE, WOOKEY HOLE.
Photo by H. E. Balch.