On the left of Silliman’s Avenue is a hall with fine acoustic properties, thirty feet wide, forty long, and twenty high, where the famous Norwegian violinist Ole Bull is said to have once given a special performance; and hence it bears his name, Ole Bull’s Concert Hall. The wild and rugged pass which, on the map, seems to be a continuance of Silliman’s Avenue, is really on a lower level, and is well named “El Ghor” (The Gorge). It winds about like a forsaken river bed, which it undoubtedly is, and offers many surprising sights. One such is the Fly Chamber, in which swarms of house-flies seem to have settled on the walls and ceiling. Examination proves them to be so many crystals of black oxide of manganese. The Hanging Rocks, the Sheep-shelter, and the Victoria Crown are formations whose names suggest their shape. Immediately over El Ghor is Corinne’s Dome, nine feet wide and about forty feet high. The guide points out what he styles Suicide Rock, and when you innocently ask him “Why?” his ready reply is, “Because it hung itself.” The Black Hole of Calcutta is an ugly black pit on the left of the pass. El Ghor continues on for some distance, but we leave it after refreshing ourselves at Hebe’s Spring, a clear pool four feet in diameter by a foot and a half deep, and said to be impregnated with sulphur; a fact of interest—it might easily come from the reduction of gypsum or Epsom salt.
Stevenson, who was here in 1861, says, “There is a short avenue, or rather a hole, leading from El Ghor to a sheet of water called Mystic River, which has not been explored, as they have never been able to get a boat in there.” Other early writers mention Mystic River, but Dr. Call and myself were unable to find it. Possibly it is identical with the stream in Martel Avenue; but no one would ever think of a “boat” in connection with the latter.
Boone Avenue, diverging from El Ghor to our left at a point five thousand eight hundred and twenty yards from the mouth of the Cave, was for many years blocked by a stone stairway, recently removed. Important discoveries were made in this direction in 1907, to which we shall presently give attention.
Now, however, we climb up through an uninviting hole at our right that admits us to an upper tier of caverns. When the last man is through we burn blue fire, and are surprised to find ourselves in a stone vineyard. Nodules and globules simulate clusters on clusters of luscious grapes, gleaming with parti-colored tints through dripping dew. No covetous hand is allowed to pluck the marvelous vintage of Mary’s Vineyard; which, after all, the mineralogist explains as simply calcium carbonate coated with the black oxide of iron.
Washington Hall, smoke-stained and its floor strewn with relics of hundreds of lunch-parties in former days, is mainly interesting as the place whence two grand avenues diverge, namely, Marion Avenue, not included in our route, and Cleaveland Avenue, so named for the late mineralogist of that name. This avenue is one of the great “lions” of Mammoth Cave, and many think more of it than of all the other Cave lions put together. It has indeed a marvelous beauty peculiarly its own. Walls and ceiling everywhere are decorated by mimic leaves and flowers, in an infinite variety of form. There is hardly a plant known to botany that does not find its counterpart here; but roses, camellias, and chrysanthemums are the most common varieties. In many parts of this treasury of crystals there is not a space as large as your hand that is not decorated by dazzling blossoms; and even the floor sparkles with bright fragments of flowers demolished by vandal visitors. Dr. John Locke, of Cincinnati, gave these Cave rosettes the name of “oulopholites,” meaning literally “curled-leaf-stones.” Among descriptive names assigned to different parts of this enchanted realm are Snowball Room, Flora’s Garden, Orpha’s Garden, the Cross of Flowers, the Last Rose of Summer, Crypt of Jewels, and Charlotte’s Grotto. These are not all of them in Cleaveland Avenue, but some are in its vicinity. It is a vast crystalline region, through which one may wander for fully two miles and occasionally find, in some secluded nook, the trailing vines, stalks of celery, and stag’s antlers described by early tourists.
Surfeited at length by such floral splendors, we suddenly emerge into Call’s Rotunda and clamber up the loosely piled blocks of limestone called the Rocky Mountains, from whose summit we look down into the Dismal Hollow, whose gloom our red fires hardly succeed in dispelling. Three avenues branch from Call’s Rotunda; one to Sandstone Avenue, which Kaemper considers to be in proximity to Violet City; another, Franklin Avenue, ends in Serena’s Arbor; and the third leads directly to a large room named, for the former owner of the Cave, Croghan’s Hall. It is sixty feet in diameter and thirty feet high. Here we find, the yawning chasm known as the Maelström, which by my measurement is eighty-eight feet deep, though often described as far deeper than that. It is claimed that W. C. Prentice was the first to descend to the bottom of this abyss. According to Mr. Procter the same feat was afterward accomplished by Mr. Richard Babbitt. Mr. F. J. Stevenson, of London, in his letters to his mother, tells the story at great length of his own descent into the Maelström in the presence of thirty witnesses and with the help of two guides, Nicholas Branford and Frank de Monbrun. On the 15th of May, 1905, Mr. Benjamin F. Einbigler and John M. Nelson, guide, were lowered by ropes held by Edward Hawkins and Levi Woodson, guides, the rope-length being exactly ninety-seven feet eight inches. Their account differs materially from the former descriptions, but we will not try to adjust their statements in this manual. The most that the visitor will be apt to do will be to peer over the brink and wonder that anybody should venture down such an awful abyss. This is estimated to be ninety-six hundred yards from the entrance to the Cave, and is often spoken of as “the end of Mammoth Cave.” But who can tell where the real “end” of so vast a labyrinth may be? At any rate here we turn and retrace our steps through the paradise of Cave flowers until we reach Mary’s Vineyard and descend to the level of El Ghor.
Here, if we have the time, strength, and inclination, we may enter Boone Avenue, which has been known for many years, and visit what is practically a new part, of the Cave, though there are signs of its having been explored long ago by unknown visitors.
A well-worn path leads us to a chasm, down whose slope we pick our way to a lower level known on Stephen Bishop’s old map as Miriam Avenue. A narrow and winding way, called Pinson’s Pass, leads into a long and noble avenue which is named Martel Avenue, in honor of the famous cave-hunter of France, Edward A. Martel. The point where we enter it is called, from its peculiar shape, Bottle Hall. Were we to go to the left in Martel Avenue we should find the path rugged and difficult, but would be rewarded by seeing Helictite Hall, where abound those curious twisted and distorted stalactites known as helictites. Several small passages branch off from the avenue, which finally terminates in Galloway’s Dome.
The right-hand portion of Martel Avenue brings us soon to the bed of a brook that must at times be deeply covered by flowing water. Ripple marks of sand alternate with flat masses of jet-black polished flint. Knots of wood, roots of corn-stalks, and other objects indicate that they were recently swept down hither from the surface. Two adjacent domes are named for the intrepid guide, John M. Nelson, but beyond them some hardy pioneer had inscribed on a rock the date 1848. Mr. Norman A. Parrish came as far as this in 1904, but the distinction of availing himself of footholds over a risky limestone slip and crossing where others had turned back belongs to Mr. B. F. Einbigler, already mentioned as having descended the Maelström. For him the great overhanging dome is named, while a still grander one about a hundred yards beyond was named by him “Edna Dome” for his sister, who subsequently visited it. Instead of narrowing to an apex, as most domes do, Edna Dome broadens at the top, seeming to open into a cross-cavern. This conjecture remains to be verified by some climber.
Edward Hawkins scaled the wall of the pit underneath Einbigler’s Dome, May 15, 1907, being followed by Einbigler, Bransford, and at another visit by Mr. H. M. Pinson, who took along the head-light of an automobile for illumination. This searchlight was still there on the occasion of my own visit, on the 18th of June, 1907, a month afterward, in company with William Bransford and Frank Barry, guides. Passing through Hawkins’ Way and scaling a wall at its end, we were on the level floor of a dome sixty feet in diameter and from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high. A tall arched gateway opened from this into a second dome of equal size; and through similar gateways we entered in succession five vast domes arranged as a sigmoidal group. From the fifth a window opens into an irregular room, where a downfall of rocks blocks further progress. In this fifth dome also a waterfall leaps from the apex to the floor, where it vanishes into a chasm. The majestic walls rise in horizontal tiers, each tier about ten feet in thickness and fringed by beautiful stalactites. The mighty masonry ascends in narrowing circles till the powerful searchlight barely enables us to discern the oval white tablet forming the apex, girt by onyx pendants. Vertically the walls are richly corrugated from top to bottom. The entire series of five united domes is four times the magnitude of Gorin’s Dome. Ages on ages were needed for the chemical and mechanical action whereby this surprising cathedral was carved in silence broken only by the wild, pattering waterfall or the heavier cataract. Let me anew express my obligation to the Mammoth Cave management for having marked their appreciation of my long-continued and enthusiastic interest in their wonderful cavern by naming, with the approval of the discoverer and the guides, this remarkable group of domes “Hovey’s Cathedral.”