“Old Arm Chair”
A strangely beautiful transformation scene is wrought for us in the Star Chamber, a hall seventy feet wide, sixty feet high, and several hundred feet long. The ceiling is coated with manganese dioxide, and through this black background emerge hundreds of brilliant white stars, made by the efflorescence of the sulphate of magnesia. These are invisible at first, and the magnificent archway sweeps above us in midnight blackness. Long benches are ranged against the right-hand wall, on which the guide seats us, while he collects our lamps and vanishes with them behind a jutting rock. Then comes the marvelous illusion. The roof seems lifted to an immense height. Indeed, we seem to gaze from a cañon directly up to the starry sky. Cloud-shadows are thrown athwart it by adroit manipulation. A meteor shoots across the vault. We behold the mild glory of the Milky Way. Suddenly the guide breaks in upon our exclamations of delight by saying, “Good night. I will see you again in the morning!” He plunges into a gorge. We are in utter darkness. The silence is so perfect that we can hear our hearts beat. Presently a glimmer comes from another direction, like a faint streak of dawn. The aurora tinges the tips of the rocks; the horizon is bathed in a rosy glow; a concert of cock-crowing, the lowing of cattle and other barnyard sounds, answered by the barking of the house-dog, seem to herald the rising sun; when the ventriloquial guide appears, swinging his cluster of lamps and asking how we liked the performance. Our response is a hearty encore; after granting which the guide tells us that the second route ends here, and he must pilot us back to the mouth of the Cave and to the Hotel. Those who have witnessed the wonders of the Star Chamber many times testify that the charm never wanes.
“The Acute Angle”
COPYRIGHT 1908 BY H. C. GANTER
ROUTE III
MAIN CAVE and NEW DISCOVERY
ROUTE III
From the Star Chamber to Violet City
Familiar now with the features of the first part of the Main Cave, we trudge along rapidly, till the guide cries “Halt!” We seem to hear the measured ticking of an old-fashioned clock. We find the natural timepiece to be but the dripping of water into a small basin hidden behind some rocks. The drops fall only a few inches, one by one, as they may have fallen for a thousand years; but such are the acoustic properties of the place that the musical ticking is heard for a long distance. The guide shows us also another pretty pool, made by a tiny rill gushing from the solid wall; and he tells us the story of a rambling blind boy, who won a living by his violin, and who said that he “wanted to see the Cave” for himself. Somehow he got apart from his companions, and when they found the little boy he was sound asleep beside this tiny basin, which has ever since been known as “Wandering Willie’s Spring.”
Hastening on to the Star Chamber, we resume our exploration of the Main Cave. Beyond that hall of constellations, the Grand Gallery—as it used to be called—sweeps to the right, and the starry canopy changes to a “mackerel-sky,” caused by the scaling-off of the black deposit on the ceiling, thus exposing the white limestone. This is the Floating Cloud Room. As we look aloft at the fleecy masses that seem to float along, we notice a stout oak pole jutting from an inaccessible crevice. When, why, how, and by whom was it put there? In Lee’s “Notes of the Mammoth Cave,” in 1835, ancient fireplaces are mentioned, which were also shown to myself by old Matt, in 1881, and which were hidden by broad slabs along the margin of the Cave.
Curious objects are pointed out as we walk through Procter’s Arcade and Kinney’s Arena, lofty and symmetrical enlargements of the passageway. One of them is another stout pole in a rift in the roof. The Keel-Boat (or the Whale) is an enormous rock seventy feet long, and a tilted slab of limestone is the Devil’s Looking-Glass. Presently it begins to snow; and our shouts make the flakes fall faster. Waving lamps and lighted fire-balls augment the storm. Seeking an explanation, we find that the ceiling is crusted with native Epsom salts, whose crystals are thus dislodged, as well as more silently by the growth of new crystals, falling, as saline snow till the brown ledges are whitened by mimic snowdrifts.