MADDISON’S CAVE.
The first apartment you enter is about twenty-five feet high, and fifteen broad, and extends a considerable way to the right and left, the floor ascending towards the former; here it is very moist, from the quantity of water continually trickling from the roof. Fahrenheit’s thermometer, which stood at 67° in the air, fell to 61° in this room. A few yards to the left, on the side opposite to you on entering, a passage presents itself, which leads to a sort of anti-chamber as it were, from whence you proceed into the sound room, so named from the prodigious reverberation of the sound of a voice or musical instrument at the inside. This room is about twenty feet square; it is arched at top, and the sides of it, as well as of that apartment which you first enter, are beautifully ornamented with stalactites. Returning from hence into the antichamber, and afterwards taking two or three turns to the right and left, you enter a long passage about thirteen feet wide, and perhaps about fifteen in height perpendicularly; but if it was measured from the floor to the highest part of the roof obliquely, the distance would be found much greater, as the walls on both sides slope very considerably, and finally meet at top. This passage descends very rapidly, and is, I should suppose, about sixty yards long. Towards the end it narrows considerably, and terminates in a pool of clear water, about three or four feet deep. How far this pool extends it is impossible to say. A canoe was once brought down by a party, for the purpose of examination, but they said, that after proceeding a little way upon the water the canoe would not float, and they were forced to return. Their fears, most probably, led them to fancy it was so. I fired a pistol with a ball over the water, but the report was echoed from the after part of the cavern, and not from that part beyond the water, so that I should not suppose the passage extended much farther than could be traced with the eye. The walls of this passage consist of a solid rock of limestone on each side, which appears to have been separated by some convulsion. The floor is of a deep sandy earth, and it has repeatedly been dug up for the purpose of getting saltpetre, with which the earth is strongly impregnated. The earth, after being dug up, is mixed with water, and when the grosser particles fall to the bottom, the water is drawn off and evaporated; from the residue the saltpetre is procured. There are many other caverns in this neighbourhood, and also farther to the westward, in Virginia; from all of them great quantities of saltpetre are thus obtained. The gunpowder made with it, in the back country, forms a principal article of commerce, and is sent to Philadelphia in exchange for European manufactures.
MADDISON’S CAVE.
About two thirds of the way down this long passage, just described, is a large aperture in the wall on the right, leading to another apartment, the bottom of which is about ten feet below the floor of the passage, and it is no easy matter to get down into it, as the sides are very steep and extremely slippery. This is the largest and most beautiful room in the whole cavern; it is somewhat of an oval form, about sixty feet in length, thirty in breadth, and in some parts nearly fifty feet high. The petrifactions formed by the water dropping from above are most beautiful, and hang down from the ceiling in the form of elegant drapery, the folds of which are similar to what those of large blankets or carpets would be if suspended by one corner in a lofty room. If struck with a stick a deep hollow sound is produced, which echoes through the vaults of the cavern. In other parts of this room the petrifactions have commenced at the bottom, and formed in pillars of different heights; some of them reach nearly to the roof. If you go to a remote part of this apartment, and leave a person with a lighted torch moving about amidst these pillars, a thousand imaginary forms present themselves, and you might almost fancy yourself in the infernal regions, with spectres and monsters on every side. The floor of this room slopes down gradually from one end to the other, and terminates in a pool of water, which appears to be on a level with that at the end of the long passage; from their situation it is most probable that they communicate together. The thermometer which I had with me stood, in the remotest part of this chamber, at 55°. From hence we returned to the mouth of the cavern, and on coming into the light it appeared as if we really had been in the infernal regions, for our faces, hands, and clothes were smutted all over, every part of the cave being covered with soot from the smoke of the pine torches which are so often carried in. The smoke from the pitch pine is particularly thick and heavy. Before this cave was much visited, and the walls blackened by the smoke, its beauty, I was told by some of the old inhabitants, was great indeed, for the petrifactions on the roof and walls are all of the dead white kind.
The country immediately behind the Blue Mountains, between Bottetourt County and the Patowmac River, is agreeably diversified with hill and dale, and abounds with extensive tracts of rich land. The low grounds, bordering upon the Shenandoah River, which runs contiguous to the Blue Ridge for upwards of one hundred miles, are in particular distinguished for their fertility. These low grounds are those which, strictly speaking, constitute the Shenandoah Valley, though in general the country lying for several miles distant from the river, and in some parts very hilly, goes under that name. The natural herbage is not so fine here as in Bottetourt County, but when clover is once sown it grows most luxuriantly; wheat also is produced in as plentiful crops as in any part of the United States. Tobacco is not raised excepting for private use, and but little Indian corn is sown, as it is liable to be injured by the nightly frosts, which are common in the spring.
LANDSCAPES.
The climate here is not so warm as in the lower parts of the country, on the eastern side of the mountains; but it is by no means so temperate as in Bottetourt County, which, from being environed with ridges of mountains, is constantly refreshed with cooling breezes during summer, and in the winter is sheltered from the keen blasts from the north west.
The whole of this country, to the west of the mountains, is increasing most rapidly in, population. In the neighbourhood of Winchester it is so thickly settled, and consequently so much cleared, that wood is now beginning to be thought valuable; the farmers are obliged frequently to send ten or fifteen miles even for their fence rails. It is only, however, in this particular neighbourhood that the country is so much improved; in other places there are immense tracts of woodlands still remaining, and in general the hills are all left uncleared. The hills being thus left covered with trees is a circumstance which adds much to the beauty of the country, and intermixed with extensive fields clothed with the richest verdure, and watered by the numerous branches of the Shenandoah River, a variety of pleasing landscapes are presented to the eye in almost every part of the route from Bottetourt to the Patowmac, many of which are considerably heightened by the appearance of the Blue Mountains in the back ground.
With regard to these landscapes however, and to American landscapes in general, it is to be observed, that their beauty is much impaired by the unpicturesque appearance of the angular fences, and of the stiff wooden houses, which have at a little distance a heavy, dull, and gloomy aspect. The stumps of the trees also, on land newly cleared, are most disagreeable objects, wherewith the eye is continually assailed. When trees are felled in America, they are never cut down close to the ground, but the trunks are left standing two or three feet high; for it is found that a woodman can cut down many more in a day, standing with a gentle inclination of the body, than if he were to stoop so as to apply his axe to the bottom of the tree; it does not make any difference either to the farmer, whether the stump is left two or three feet high, or whether it is cut down level with the ground, as in each case it would equally be a hindrance to the plough. These stumps usually decay in the course of seven or eight years; sometimes however sooner, sometimes later, according to the quality of the timber. They never throw up suckers, as stumps of trees would do in England if left in that manner.
TOWNS.