Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills

by Luella Agnes Owen

All exposed surfaces of pillars and walls inside the cave are of clay or a soft porous rock having the same appearance, and are covered with curious little raised markings like the indescribable designs of mixed nothing generally known as "Persian patterns." This is, of course, easily explained; the clay being the residuum from disintegrated limestone, the markings described are the harder portions of the rock remaining after particles of clay had been carried out by flowing water while the disintegrating process was yet incomplete.

The Drinking Fountain is considered the great attraction of the cave, and appears to have been fashioned to suggest a model for the handsome soda fountains belonging to a later period. The water bowl is a large depression worn in the top of a rock which seems to have been built into the wall. In front it is five feet high and nine feet across, with artistic corners approximately alike, and at the back ornamental carving extends upward towards the ceiling with an opening through the wall at the center. This opening is divided by a short column down which water trickles to supply the bowl. The ceiling here is about thirty-five feet high and most of the exposed surface is a blue-gray limestone. Only one portion of Gentry Cave has received a deposit of dripstone and even that is of limited extent, and located at the end of a narrow slippery passage between high, slippery walls.

The fine entrance is of grey limestone in undisturbed horizontal strata, and this is so plainly marked in the roof-supporting pillars as to give them the appearance of having been prepared by skillful hands, in several blocks, and afterwards arranged in place without the aid of mortar. Unfortunately, all efforts to photograph this wonderful portico have failed to give satisfaction—its position above the river being such as to afford no point for the proper placing of the camera; but a second visit made for the purpose of trying was far from being a loss, and part of the reward consisted of finding among the sheltered rocks, scarcely three feet above the floor, two humming birds' nests with their treasure of small eggs, and our little companion who discovered them was pleased to leave them untouched.

SUGAR TREE HOLLOW CAVE.

The name of this cave is due to the fact that the approach is through a "hollow" well wooded with sugar maple trees. It is two miles from Galena and the drive a beautiful one, as much of the way is through the forest without a road, but with a charming little rushing, crooked stream of clear, cold water: and in places the green slopes give way to mural bluffs of grey limestone in undisturbed strata.

The entrance to the cave is through a hole about two feet high by three in width, into which we went feet first and wiggled slowly down an incline covered with broken rock, for a distance of fifteen feet, where a standing depth is reached. A flat, straight, level ceiling extends over the whole cave without any perceptible variation, and this is bordered around its entire length and breadth with a heavy cornice of dripstone, made very ornamental by the forms it assumes, and the multitude of depending stalactites that fall as a fringe around the walls. The line of contact between the cornice and ceiling is as clear and strong as if both had been finished separately before the cornice was put in place by skillful hands.

Dripstone covers the walls, which vary in height from one foot to twenty feet, according to the irregularities of the floor, just as the width of this one-room cave varies with the curves of the walls, which are sweeping and graceful, the average being twenty-nine feet, but is much greater at the entrance where the entire slope extends out beyond the body of the cave. The length, from north to south, measures two hundred and thirty-three feet exclusive of an inaccessible extension.

The south end of the cave rises by a steep slope to within a foot of the ceiling with which it is connected by short but heavy columns of dripstone, and another line of pillars of graduated height meets this at right angles near the middle and ends in an immense stalagmite that stands at the foot of the slope like a grand newel post.

There is no standing water in the cave, but everything is wet with drip, and consequently the formation of onyx is actively progressing and the south slope already mentioned shows a curious succession of changes in cave affairs. By the slow action of acidulated waters, the grey limestone deteriorated into a yellowish clay-bank, and now its particles are being re-united into solid rock by the deposit of calcium carbonate from the drip.

A careful test of the temperature of the atmosphere showed it to be fifty-eight degrees.