“The Swords of the Titans are monstrous blades, eight in number, fifty feet long, three to eight feet wide, and one to two feet thick, but are hollow and drawn down to an extremely fine edge, filling the cavern with tones like tolling bells, when struck by the hand. Their origin, and also that of certain so-called scarfs and blankets exhibited, is from carbonates deposited by water trickling down a sloping and corrugated surface. Sixteen of these alabaster scarfs hang side by side in Hovey’s Balcony, three white and fine as crape shawls, thirteen striated like agate, with every shade of brown, and all perfectly transparent. Down the edge of each a tiny rill glistens like silver, and this is the ever-plying shuttle that weaves this fairy fabric.
“Streams and true springs are absent, but there are hundreds of basins, varying from one to fifty feet in diameter, and from six inches to fifteen feet in depth. The water in them is exquisitely pure, except as it is impregnated by the carbonate of lime, which often forms concretions called, according to their size, pearls, eggs, and snow-balls. A large one is known as the Cannon-Ball. When fractured, these spherical growths are found to be radiated in structure. Calcite crystals, drusy, feathery, or fern-like, line the sides and bottoms of every water-filled cavity, and, indeed, constitute the substance of which they are formed. Variations of level at different periods are marked by rings, ridges, and ruffled margins. These are especially strongly marked about Broaddus Lake, and the curved ramparts of the Castles on the Rhine. Here, also, are polished stalagmites, a rich buff slashed with white, and others, like huge mushrooms, with a velvety coat of red, purple, or olive-tinted crystals. In some of the smaller basins it sometimes happens that when the excess of carbonic acid escapes rapidly there is formed, besides the crystal beds below, a film above, shot like a sheet of ice across the surface. One pool twelve feet wide is thus covered so as to show but a third of its surface. The quantity of water varies greatly at different seasons; hence some stalactites have their tips under water long enough to allow tassels of crystal to grow on them, which in a drier season are again coated over with stalactitic matter, by which singular distortions are occasioned. Contiguous stalactites are often enwrapped thus till they assume an almost globular form, through which, by making a section, the primary tubes appear. Twig-like projections, lateral outgrowths, to which the term helictite has been applied, are met with in certain portions of the cave, and are interesting by reason of their strange and uncouth contortions. Their presence is partly due to the existence of a diminutive fungus peculiar to the locality, and designated from its habitat, Mucor Stalactitis. The Toy Shop is an amusing collection of these freaks of nature.
FARM SCENE IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH, VIRGINIA.—The war between the States found the valley of the Shenandoah an ideal pastoral country, of rich and beautiful farms, of wealthy and aristocratic families, where life in its ease and sunshine rivaled that in older lands. The war left it a bare, blackened and blasted region, its homes destroyed, its farms desolated, and its able-bodied population decimated in the field. But it has fully recovered again. Grass and grain have woven Nature’s beautiful covering over all the scars of battle, and once more the fields and orchards are laden with flowers, while the lowing of the cattle and the song of the contented husbandman are heard in place of the discordant drum and the ruthless clash of arms.
“The dimensions of the various chambers included in Luray Caverns cannot be given, on account of the great irregularity of their outlines. Nor can their size be estimated from a diagram, because there are several tiers of galleries, and the vertical depth, from the highest to the lowest, is two hundred and sixty feet. The tract of one hundred acres, owned by the Luray Cave Company, covers all possible modes of entrance, and the explored area is much less than that. The waters of this cavern appear to be entirely destitute of life; and the existing fauna is quite meager, comprising a few bats, rats, mice, spiders, flies and small centipedes. When the cave was first entered the floor was covered with thousands of tracks of bears, wolves and raccoons, most of them probably made long ago, as impressions in the tenacious clay that composes most of the cavern-floor would remain for centuries. The traces of human occupation, as yet discovered, are pieces of charcoal, flints, moccasin tracks, and a single skeleton imbedded in a stalagmite in one of the chasms, estimated to have lain where found for not more than five hundred years, judging from the present rate of stalagmitic growth.”
Accurate and beautiful as is Mr. Hovey’s description of Luray Caverns, yet words, however ingeniously used, fail utterly to convey a true idea of the incomparable splendors of this under-world palace which gleams with unspeakable glories, such as God alone can create. Aladdin, in the Arabic tale which so delighted our youthful fancy, was permitted to enter a cave which exhibited such decorations that its very beauty both dazzled and affrighted; and to his amazement was added the greater wonder, that the cavern thus wrought of precious stones was the work of a geni, who was slave to a lamp and ring. But the fervid imagination of youth, or the dreamer under influence of the delirium-inducing hasheesh intoxicant in India’s climes, never riveted gaze upon vision more wondrously beautiful than Luray’s intervals of divine architecture; nor was Aladdin’s Cave half so charming. The Throne-Room, canopied with curtains woven of pearls and diamonds; “The Saracen’s Tent,” in which more than oriental splendors of richest damasks and golden samite sweep round the crystal couch in festoons of magic beauty; Titania’s Veil of petrified spider’s webs and crystallized harmonies, behind which the queen of fairies hides from Æolus; and the Ball-Room, with best adornments, as if to celebrate a marriage between the gods; all these and many more, in fast succession of admiring surprise, compose the Caverns of Luray, of which it has been said: “Mortal hath not made the like, nor human fancy conceived a thing more magnificent.” Let the illustrations herewith convey an idea of the beauty which language cannot express.
The uniform temperature of the cave is 54° Fahrenheit, which is the same as Mammoth Cave, and as the chamber-floors are dry, visitors are not fatigued or discomforted by long walks through the labyrinthine passages, where every step taken brings fresh marvels into view. To the curiously inclined the inquiry, not often asked, will appear very interesting: How did the animals whose foot-prints were noticed in the tenacious clay, by those who made the discovery, get into the cave? The opening by which the chambers are reached is an artificial one, made at the point where Mr. Campbell detected the hollow by stamping on the ground, as explained. No other ingress is yet known, though the cave has not been thoroughly explored; so it is possible, or probable even, that other means of entrance have long continued open, but the possibility also remains that its entering passage-ways may have been sealed up by an invasion of glacial drift, since the flood; marks of that tremendous cataclysm are plainly to be seen in the cave, and not all of the diluvium deposit has been yet removed or ground under foot by the 10,000 persons who visit the caverns annually.
A trip up the Shenandoah Valley, though made in a luxurious coach on a swift-moving train, is attended by innumerable reminders of the great civil war, for the journey is over a succession of hotly-contested battle-fields; but the beautiful scenery, rich lands, and lovely farm scenes that now compose the landscape, cannot efface the recollection which monuments and cemeteries constantly revive. General Boynton has drawn a truthful picture of this war-famous section, in this wise: