“Martha Washington’s Statue”

COPYRIGHT 1908 BY H. C. GANTER
ROUTE I
ECHO RIVER, PITS and DOMES

OTHER FEATURES 1. PAYNE’S PASS 2. DARNALL’S WAY 3. SHELBY’S DOME, BRIDGE OF SIGHS 4. REVELER’S HALL 5. VALLEY OF HUMILITY 6. LIVELY’S PASS 7. BUCHANAN’S WAY 8. ODD FELLOWS’ HALL 9. SHAKESPEARE’S FACE 10. SNOW CLOUDS

ROUTE I
Echo River, Pits and Domes

A pathway from the Hotel winds through the garden, down amid the forest, crossing a wagon road to Green River, and then brings us to the only known entrance to Mammoth Cave. Evidently it is where the roof broke down long ago; for the lower valley was doubtless once part of the cavern, and so was what is now known as Dixon Cave. The present Cave mouth is seven hundred and thirty-five feet above sea level, one hundred and ninety-four feet above the level of Green River, and one hundred and eighteen feet below the crest of the overhanging bluff. The limestone stratum is three hundred and twenty-eight feet thick, measuring from the sandstone above to the drainage level below; and within these limits all the vast labyrinth extends its ramifications.

One of the first things noticed by the visitor is the strong current of cool air that flows from the Cave mouth, frequently too strong to allow the carrying of lighted lamps until a point is reached many yards within, where the gale dies away. As we descend the solid stone stairway we observe with pleasure a waterfall that leaps from the ledge, gleams in the sunlight, and vanishes amid the rocks on the floor. Around us hang festoons of vines and ferns, and before us is the noble vestibule to a temple of eternal night.

An iron gate is unlocked for us, put there to prevent unpaid intrusion and vandal spoliation. Passing through, we bid farewell to daylight, and depend on the simple iron lamps given to each of us by the guide. The legend that a hunter named Houchins, in 1809, chased a wounded bear into this throat of the cave, whether authentic or not, is perpetuated in the name given it, Houchins’ Narrows, made still narrower by the blocks of limestone piled in walls on either side, thus leaving a passage only a few feet wide. To the left is the tomb of two Indians found in early days and reburied here. No monument marks the grave of these nameless aborigines. Considering the fact that the Cave was resorted to by many generations of red men, it is remarkable that so few human remains have rewarded diligent search.

What are these wooden pipes along the floor? They were laid there by the saltpeter miners to convey the water from the cascade at the entrance down to the leaching vats that are now pointed out to us in the Rotunda. The ruts of old ox-carts are visible in which the “peter-dirt” was carried to the vats from the open avenues, while sacks were used for those more remote. The solution was pumped out to open-air boilers, run through ash-hoppers, cooled in crystallization troughs, and packed for transportation to the seaboard, mostly by mules. Thus did patriotic Kentucky supply the government with one of the ingredients of gunpowder, at a time when foreign sources were cut off. The yield of nitrate was four pounds to the bushel of soil, and the vast heaps of lixiviated earth seem to warrant the boast that Mammoth Cave alone “could supply the whole population of the globe with saltpeter.”