Grotto in South Africa—Grotto del Cani—Grotto of Antiparos—Grotto of Guacharo—Snow Grotto—Cave of Fingal—Cave near Mexico—The Nitre Caves of Missouri—Okey Hole—Borrowdale—Needle’s Eye.
| ——————————Sweet interchange Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forests crown’d. Milton. |
Grotto in South Africa. From Thom’s account of his Journey to South Africa.—“In the country of Kango is the greatest natural curiosity of South Africa, a grotto of unknown extent. This I visited, and spent four or five hours in it. It was generally supposed that the end of it had been discovered, but we proved it to be still unknown; though, from the information I received, we proceeded into it further than any others, and our entrance into the third newly discovered chambers, or cave, was only prevented by a descent of fourteen feet. This great and astonishing work of God is divided into various apartments, from fourteen to seventy feet in length, and eight to one hundred in breadth. By measurement, I found that we had proceeded about nine hundred feet into the cavern of a mountain, of five hundred feet in perpendicular height; the grotto is about two hundred feet above the level of the river running by the hill.
“The stalactites, united or disunited, form a hundred figures, so that, without any effort of imagination, nature would seem here to have assumed the province of art: for her canopies, organs, pulpits, vast candles, immense pillars, heads even of men and animals, meet the astonished visitor on all sides; so that he supposes himself in a new part of the universe. Eye, thought, and feeling, are equally overpowered; and, to complete this remarkable assemblage, there are various baths, or cisterns of water, as clear as crystal, divided by partitions, as if a most ingenious sculptor had wrought for some weeks in this subterraneous place of nature. Ten young colonists, with two slave guides, and my servant, were with me. We had a flambeau and a number of large candles; but even these did not chase away the darkness which eclipsed the beauties of this great work of nature, which had been forming from age to age, and was first discovered in the year 1788. It is a remarkable circumstance, that no traveller appears to have visited it, or the various sub-districts which I have described above, since that time till we entered it.”
The Grotto del Cani.—This is a little cavern near Pozzuoli, four leagues from Naples: the air contained in it is of a mephitical or noxious quality; it is in truth carbonic acid gas, whence also it is called Bocca Venenosa, the Poisonous Mouth. “Two miles from Naples, (says Dr. Mead,) just by the Lago de Agnano, is a celebrated mofeta, commonly called La Grotto del Cani, which is destructive of all animal life that comes within the reach of its vapours. It is a small grotto, about eight feet high, twelve long, and six broad; from the ground arises a thin, subtile, warm fume, visible enough to a discerning eye, which does not spring up in little parcels here and there, but in one continued stream, covering the whole surface of the bottom of the cave; having this remarkable difference from common vapours, that it does not, like smoke, disperse into the air, but quickly after its rise falls back again, and returns to the earth, or hovers to a certain height, above which it never rises. This fact is ascertained by the colour of the sides of the grotto, which, as high as the vapour ascends, is of a darkish green, but above this it has only the appearance of common earth. As I found no inconvenience from standing in it myself, so I believe no animal, if its head were kept above this mark, would be in the least injured. But when, as is often the case, a dog, or any other creature, is forcibly kept below it, or the animal is so small that it cannot hold its head above this noxious vapour, it presently loses all voluntary motion, falls down as dead, or in a swoon; the limbs at first become convulsed and trembling, till at last no more signs of life appear, than a very weak and almost insensible beating of the heart and arteries; which, if the animal is left a little longer, quickly ceases also, and then its fate is irrevocable; but if it be snatched out and laid in the air, it soon revives, and, if thrown into the adjacent lake, resuscitation is still more rapid.”
We now proceed to the famous Grotto of Antiparos.—This grotto takes its name from the small island in which it is situated. The following is Mr. Charles Saunders’s account of his descent into this celebrated grotto.
“Its entrance lies in the side of a rock, and is a spacious arch, formed of rough crags, overhung with fantastic wreaths of climbing shrubs. Our party amounted to six, attended by the same number of guides, furnished with lighted torches. We presently lost every ray of daylight, but following our leaders, we entered into a low narrow passage, lined on all sides with stones, that, from the reflection of the torches, glittered like diamonds, and displayed the colours of the rainbow. At the end of this passage, our guides desired us to tie a rope about our waists, and then led us to the brink of a frightful precipice. The descent was steep, and the place dark and gloomy. The exchange of the lane of diamonds for this abyss of darkness was very unwelcome; but I had travelled far to gratify my curiosity, and I hazarded the event. The rope being held by the guides at top, I was first let down, and, after dangling a minute or two, reached the bottom with my feet.
“My friends, encouraged by my example, followed; and we pursued our way under a roof of ragged rocks for thirty yards, hoping every moment to see the opening of the expected grotto; but our guides plainly told us we had far to go, and much to encounter, before we should reach it, and those who wanted courage and perseverance had better return. None of us, however, would act so cowardly a part, though the sight of another precipice, much deeper and more formidable than the first, almost shook our resolution. By the light of the torches, we could perceive that we were to plunge into a place encumbered with vast pieces of rough rugged rocks, and that we should be forced sometimes to climb over, and sometimes to creep under them; while on the other side were numerous dark caverns, like so many wells, which if one’s foot should slip, would swallow us up. Two of our guides went before us, and as we stood on the edge, we were terrified to see them go lower, till they appeared at a frightful depth beneath us. When they were at the bottom, they hallooed to us, and we very reluctantly followed. In the midst of the way, we came to a place where a rock that was perpendicular, and a vast cavern, on one side threatened us with destruction, whilst a wall of rugged rock seemed impassable on the other. Here again we hesitated whether to proceed or not: but the guides assured us they had often gone the same way with safety, we therefore took fresh resolution, and on we went to a corner, where was placed an old, slippery, rotten ladder, which we ventured to descend.
“At the bottom we perceived ourselves at the entrance of another passage, which was rather dismal, but not wholly without beauty. A wide gradual descent led us into a noble vault, with a bottom of fine, green, glossy marble, over which we were to slide on our seats; and it was with difficulty we could keep ourselves from going too fast, and tumbling over one another. The walls and arch of the roof is as smooth in most places as if chiselled by a skilful workman, and are formed of a glistering red and white granite, supported in several places with columns of a deep blood-coloured shining porphyry. Here, to our terror, we lost sight of the two guides that went before us, and at the end of the passage found ourselves at the brink of another precipice, the bottom of which we reached by the help of a ladder, not much better than the former.
“Had not the dread of falling taken up my attention, I should have admired many of the natural ornaments of this obscure cavity. The rock to which the ladder was fixed was one mass of red marble, covered with white branches of rock crystal, and might be compared, from the hue of the rock behind, to an immense sheet of amethysts. From the foot of this ladder, we were compelled to slide, face downwards, through another shallow vault of polished green and white marble, for about twenty feet; and we then rejoined our guides, who prudently gave us some refreshment, to enable us to face the dangers we had yet to encounter.