THÉRÈSE YELVERTON.
[Among the many marvels of nature in the United States the Mammoth Cave holds a prominent position, and we feel it incumbent on us to accompany some of our company of travellers into its depths. The “Teresina in America” of Thérèse Yelverton (Viscountess Avonmore) affords us the opportunity, of which we avail ourselves in the following selection.]
We arrived at the Mammoth Cave on one of those heavenly days which earthly words fail to depict. It was the second week in November, the “Indian summer,” the most charming season in America. If anything were necessary to convince me that a future beatitude is no fiction, it would be this foretaste of bliss in such days as these, when the whole being—mind and body—seems lapped in a state of peace and beatitude combined. Anxieties and worldly cares seem to float away into the dim distance; our love is free from feverish excitement, and hate has lost its gall and sting. The golden light which floats around mellows our soul to repose. There is that exhilarating, yet balmy nourishment in the atmosphere which lifts the weary spirit from its damp and earthly coil, and makes it glad, and light, and gleesome. The heavy “heart bowed down by weight of woe” suddenly imbibes some of the joyous elasticity which fills the insect tribe,—the bees and grasshoppers, the golden fly, glittering and humming in pure ecstasies, and the merry little beetles revelling in one continuous contra-dance. Rarely, indeed, can we overcharged human beings feel as blithesome as the insect world; we seek to taste the apples of delight which turn to ashes in our mouth, and neglect to sip with them the nectar in the breeze. What can we do? these breezes come so seldom. The insect sparkles to-day in the sunshine and to-morrow it dies. We of the superior race have to live and labor through sunshine and shade, and can only catch these rosy minutes as they fly.
Some of these halcyon moments we enjoyed on that fortunate day we arrived at the Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. The earth was covered with its autumn carpet of dry dark leaves,—brown and glossy on one side, deep violet on the other,—and crinkling and crushing beneath our tread, they kept up a staccato treble to the dulcet sighing of the wind through the yellow leaves still lingering on the trees. A delicious concert of sweet sounds, and one that Mozart and Mendelssohn must have studied well and carefully. The atmosphere was bright and clear as under a summer sun, but without the heat; the air as fine and bracing as winter, but without the cold. We lost sight entirely of the two great tormentors, heat and cold, and for the few days of our stay forgot their very existence.
I have heard of persons feeling, under the effect of laughter, as light and buoyant as if floating in ambient air. The atmosphere during their “Indian summer” must, doubtless, be strongly impregnated with oxygen, for we experienced a similar sensation; which was probably deepened by the fact of our having come from Louisville, where those hotel stairs had seemed a perfect toil to us.
The country around the caves, for eight or ten miles, was a series of deep ravines, studded with projecting cliffs and rocks, and covered with oak—principally the English oak—and another gigantic species, with leaves from a quarter to half a yard long, but of the same form as the ordinary oak-leaf. Up and down the ravines we scrambled and roamed, as happy as goats or wild chamois. These ravines, or glens, have no doubt been the beds of some ancient river, now, perhaps, flowing through the bowels of the earth; for this part of the country is intersected by underground rivers, a stream often suddenly appearing, which, after flowing on for a few miles, plunges rapidly into the earth and is lost to sight.
An anecdote is told of two millers who had their mills on two different rivers, thirty miles apart. There had been a long drought, and neither mill had been working; but one day miller No. 1 heard his wheel going round at a tremendous pace, and going to examine it perceived a quantity of water, although there had not been a drop of rain for some time. He went over to communicate his good luck to his neighbor.
“Oh!” exclaimed miller No. 2, “you’re gettin’ my water unbeknownst, for a cloud burst over us the other night and nearly drowned us all.”
It was evident the millers were working the same stream, which ran for thirty miles underground, similar to the lakes in Florida, called sinks (for Americans call everything by gross-sounding names), which suddenly disappear, leaving all the fish stranded. Sometimes the water returns, sometimes not....
Independent of the caves, the scenery around, to a lover of nature, is well worthy of a visit, and for a summer resort is unsurpassed; shady, romantic walks through the woods; a delicious air breathed from the gigantic mouth of the cavern, whence, in the hot months, it blows cool and refreshing; in the cold ones soft and warm; the actual temperature of the cave never varying. The sensations of heat and cold are produced by comparison with the outer air.