A bright and intellectual widow, to whom years had brought a breadth of figure in which Hogarth’s line of beauty could not be traced, looked positively grotesque in her unique garments. Agility acknowledged no kinship with her, and symmetry was unquestionably of alien blood. She expressed, from the beginning, her scepticism as to her endurance, and particularly inquired of our rustic fugleman if she could rest a little on the way, provided she should happen to be spent. As we set out, she evinced a lack of physical elasticity and clearness of movement that foreboded ill to her success. But for the gallantry due to all her sex, I should say she waddled, and presented such a figure that, if Cruikshank had caught a glimpse of her, he would have claimed her for his own.
We were off at last, and in a few minutes were before the mouth of the mighty Kentucky marvel. There is nothing remarkable in the mouth, which conveys the impression of a decayed and abandoned culvert, and such I should take it to be, had I not known otherwise. The path by which you enter is damp and slippery, unless in very dry weather, and the opening of the cavern promises none of the wonders that the interior reveals.
After going less than a hundred yards, we lost the spot of daylight which the mouth furnished, and were wrapped in such shadows as might have marked primeval chaos. Our little lamps displaced so small a part of the thick darkness that the vast volumes which remained grew blacker than ever. The air was so full of oxygen as to be sensible at once, and I could not help but notice an inflation of my lungs and a lightness of my limbs, such as one feels on mountain-tops. My spirits rose rapidly, and my mood grew involuntarily hilarious. I jested constantly, I laughed at the smallest trifle. Buoyancy was in every breath, and a mercurial quality, by a strange paradox, in the surrounding gloom. The cave, if not delightful, was exhilarating in the highest degree, and I fancied it would be agreeable to spend nights there. I should say days, if the word did not convey an impression of light. The effect of the place on me was entirely different from that of the Paris Catacombs, owing, doubtless, to the oxygenated air. The peculiarity of my temperament, however, which, by a principle of antagonism, reflects the opposite of surroundings, must have had something to do with it. Society which is considered the gayest oppresses, and graveyards enliven me. It is not strange, therefore, that the Mammoth Cave, apart from its atmosphere, should animate my spirits.
A REFUGE OF BATS.
We noticed that the walls and roof of the cavern were frescoed with bats hanging by their claws, heads downward, though some of them were flying nimbly about in the darkness, evidently disturbed by the glare of our torches, and the noise of our speech. During the winter they assemble there in such quantities that the curves of the cave are black with them. Their flitting through the thick gloom, relieved only by the flare and glare of the lamps (added to the hollow and dreary echoes awakened by our voices, and succeeded every few moments by an oppressive stillness), made those vast limestone chambers appear so dismal that the women of the party declared they should go mad if forced to remain in them for any length of time.
Very soon we came to the remnants of a number of rude habitations erected in 1845, and inhabited by certain consumptives who had been recommended to try the equable temperature and pure air of the tunnel, with the hope that their lungs might be healed. The poor patients had high expectations from living there, and though their first experience was not favorable, they remained several months, unwilling to believe that they would not be ultimately helped. The longer they remained, the worse they grew. After a while their faces became livid; the pupils of their eyes expanded, and darkened until the iris was invisible, having the appearance of two spots burning above a deathly pallor. They lost every particle of flesh; crept gloomily about, coughing so hollowly as to suggest the sound of the first earth falling upon a coffin-lid; and added to the natural dreariness of the vault a hundred-fold. Everybody saw and knew that they were tottering on the brink of the grave; and yet, such was their hope—a distinct and inseparable accompaniment of the disease—that they could not be persuaded to quit that purgatory. They even imagined they were improving, and insisted that they were stronger, when they could not drag their leaden limbs after them.
AN UNSUCCESSFUL SANITARY EXPERIMENT.
The preciousness of existence (to most persons) was strikingly illustrated in those poor consumptives who had no hold on life, and still could not be resigned to death. One would think that serious trouble with the lungs would disarm the grave of most of the terrors it is popularly supposed to have (those who have had much familiarity with death are aware that this is an error), since it destroys all physical comfort, and all mental peace. And yet quite the contrary is true. Generally, no man is so unwilling to order the undertaker as the man who has long suffered from consumption, which shows how inconsistent and unreasonable human nature is, especially after it has been badgered by doctors and dosed with drugs.
Finally three or four of the consumptives expired in the cavern,—there were nearly twenty of them in all,—and the remainder having it borne in upon them that neither consumption nor the Mammoth Cave could insure immortality, they consented to be removed. Every one of them died—if they could be considered to have been in any true sense alive—within a few weeks after their return to the sky and the sunlight. But the history of their residence in those dreary chambers will be remembered for generations, and in 4873 will have become one of the traditions of the cave, so altered and exaggerated that very few of the positive facts will be left or allowed to mar the poetic and romantic version then current.
The cavern varies greatly in width and height, and so many avenues branch off from it, that it would be almost impossible to thread your way without a guide. A large part of the passages have been explored at different times; but some of them are virgin yet. The majority of the branches end on the bank of the river, and it is very strange that new mouths to the tunnel have not been discovered. It is not improbable that they have been; but the owners of the property, as I have said, are so fearful of suffering from a rivalry in the show business that they would be the last to disclose any such fact. Different quarters of the cavern are differently named, according to their actual or fancied resemblance to the titles they bear. It requires a deal of imagination to trace the similitude sometimes, though at others it is apparent at the first glance.