Five minutes more and the roughest and most slippery scrambling brought us to the banks of the Lethe River, where we found the rest of the party.
The river had risen since the previous day, and was at the most inconvenient stage possible. A part of the River Walk was overflowed, yet not deep enough to float the boats. Mat waded out and turned the craft, which was moored to a projecting rock, as near to us as the water would allow, after which he and Stephen carried us one by one upon their shoulders and deposited us in it. It was a rude, square scow, well plastered with river mud. Boards were laid across for the ladies, the rest of us took our seats on the muddy gunwales, the guides plied their paddles, and we were afloat on Lethe.
After a ferriage of about one hundred yards, we landed on a bank of soft mud besides a small arm of the river, which had overflowed the usual path. We sank to our ankles in the moist, tenacious soil, floundering laboriously along until we were brought to a halt by Echo River, the third and last stream. This again is divided into three or four arms, which, meandering away under low arches, finally unite.
As we stood on the wet rocks, peering down into the black translucence of the silent, mysterious water, sounds—first distant, then near, then distant again—stole to us from under the groined vaults of rock. First, the dip of many oars; then a dull, muffled peal, rumbling away like the echoes of thunder; then a voice marvellously sweet, but presently joined by others sweeter still, taking up the dying notes ere they faded into silence, and prolonging them through remoter chambers. The full, mellow strains rose until they seemed sung at our very ears, then relapsed like ebbing waves, to wander off into solitary halls, then approached again, and receded, like lost spirits seeking here and there for an outlet from the world of darkness. Or was it a chorus of angels come on some errand of pity and mercy to visit the Stygian shores? As the heavenly harmonies thickened, we saw a gleam on the water, and presently a clear light, floating above its mirrored counterfeit, swept into sight. It was no angel, but Stephen, whose single voice had been multiplied into that enchanting chorus.
The whole party embarked in two small boats, and after a last voyage of about two hundred yards, were landed beyond the waters, and free to explore the wonderful avenues of that new world of which Stephen is the Columbus. The River Hall here terminates, and the passages are broken and irregular for a short distance. A few minutes of rough travel brought us to a large circular hall with a vaulted ceiling, from the centre of which poured a cascade of crystal water, striking upon the slant side of a large reclining boulder, and finally disappearing through a funnel-shaped pit in the floor. It sparkled like a shower of pearls in the light of our lamps, as we clustered around the brink of the pit to drink from the stores gathered in those natural bowls which seem to have been hollowed out for the uses of the invisible gnomes.
Beyond Cascade Hall commences Silliman’s Avenue, a passage about twenty feet wide, forty or fifty in height, and a mile and a half in length.
Our lamps were replenished and we entered El Ghor, which is by far the most picturesque avenue in the cave. It is a narrow, lofty passage meandering through the heart of a mass of horizontal strata of limestone, the broken edges of which assume the most remarkable forms. Now there are rows of broad, flat shelves overhanging your head; now you sweep around the stern of some mighty vessel with its rudder set hard to starboard; now you enter a little vestibule with friezes and mouldings of almost Doric symmetry and simplicity; and now you wind away into a Cretan labyrinth most uncouth and fantastic, whereof the Minotaur would be a proper inhabitant. It is a continual succession of surprises, and, to the appreciative visitor, of raptures. The pass is somewhat more than a mile and a half in length, and terminates in a curious knot or entanglement of passages leading to two or more tiers of avenues.
We were now, according to Stephen’s promises, on the threshold of wonders. Before proceeding further we stopped to drink from a fine sulphur spring which fills a natural basin in the bottom of a niche made on purpose to contain it. We then climbed a perpendicular ladder, passing through a hole in the ceiling barely large enough to admit our bodies, and found ourselves at the entrance of a narrow, lofty passage leading upwards. When all had made the ascent the guides exultingly lifted their lamps and directed our eyes to the rocks overhanging the aperture; there was the first wonder, truly! Clusters of grapes gleaming with blue and violet tints through the water which trickled over them, hung from the cliffs, while a stout vine, springing from the base and climbing nearly to the top, seemed to support them. Hundreds on hundreds of bunches clustering so thickly as to conceal the leaves, hang forever ripe and forever unplucked in that marvellous vintage of the subterranean world. For whose hand shall squeeze the black, infernal wine from grapes that grow beyond Lethe?
Mounting for a short distance, this new avenue suddenly turned to the left, widened, and became level; the ceiling is low, but beautifully vaulted, and Washington’s Hall, which we soon reached, is circular, and upwards of a hundred feet in diameter. This is the usual dining-room of parties who go beyond the rivers. Nearly five hours had now elapsed since we entered the cave, and five hours spent in that bracing, stimulating atmosphere might well justify the longing glances which we cast upon the baskets carried by the guides. Mr. Miller had foreseen our appetites, and there were stores of venison, biscuit, ham, and pastry, more than sufficient for all. We made our midday, or rather midnight meal sitting, like the nymph who wrought Excalibur
“Upon the hidden bases of the hills,”