A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

The fee for a single person to see the cave is half-a-crown; for a party of eight or ten a shilling each. The guide, who is an old soldier, and a good specimen of the class, civil and intelligent, called at his house as we passed to get candles, and presently we were clear of the village, and walking up-hill along a narrow lane. Below us on the right lay cultivated grounds and well-kept plantations, through which, as the old man told me, visitors were once allowed to walk on their way to the cave—a pleasing and much less toilsome way than the lane; but the remains of picnics left on the grass, broken bottles, orange-peels, greasy paper and wisps of hay, became such a serious abuse of the privilege, that Mr. Farrer, the proprietor, withdrew his permission. “It’s a wonder to me,” said the guide, “that people shouldn’t know how to behave themselves.”

In about half an hour we came to a hollow between two grassy acclivities, out of which runs a rapid beck, and here on the left, in a limestone cliff prettily screened by trees, is the entrance to the cave, a low, wide arch that narrows as it recedes into the gloom. We walked in a few yards; the guide lit two candles, placed one in my hand and unlocked the iron gate, which, very properly, keeps out the perpetrators of wanton mischief. A few paces take us beyond the last gleam of daylight, and we are in a narrow passage, of which the sides and roof are covered with a brown incrustation resembling gigantic clusters of petrified moss. Curious mushroom-like growths hang from the roof, and throwing his light on these, the guide says we are passing through the Inverted Forest. So it continues, the roof still low, for eighty yards, comprising the Old Cave, which has been known for ages; and we come to a narrow passage hewn through a thick screen of stalagmite. It was opened twenty years ago by Mr. Farrer’s gardener, who laboured at the barrier until it was breached, and a new cavern of marvellous formation was discovered beyond. An involuntary exclamation broke from me as I entered and beheld what might have been taken for a glittering fairy palace. On each side, sloping gently upwards till they met the roof, great bulging masses of stalagmite of snowy whiteness lay outspread, mound after mound glittering as with millions of diamonds. For the convenience of explorers, the passage between them has been widened and levelled as far as possible, wherein the beck that we saw outside finds a channel after unusual rains. You walk along this passage now on sand, now on pebbles, now bare rock. All the great white masses are damp; their surfaces are rough with countless crystallized convolutions and minute ripples, between which trickle here and there tiny threads of water. It is to the moisture that the unsullied whiteness is due, and the glistening effect; for wherever stalactite or stalagmite becomes dry, the colour changes to brown, as we saw in the Old Cave. A strange illusion came over me as I paced slowly past the undulating ranges, and for a moment they seemed to represent the great rounded snow-fields that whiten the sides of the Alps.

The cavern widens: we are in the Pillar Hall; stalactites of all dimensions hang from the roof, singly and in groups. Thousands are mere nipples, or an inch or two in length; many are two or three feet; and the whole place resounds with the drip and tinkle of water. Stalagmites dot the floor, and while some have grown upwards the stalactites have grown downwards, until the ends meet, and the ceaseless trickle of water fashions an unbroken crystal pillar. Some stalactites assume a spiral twist; and where a long thin fissure occurs in the roof they take the form of draperies, curtains, and wings—wings shaped like those of angels. The guide strikes one of the wings with a small mallet, and it gives out a rich musical note; another has the deep sonorous boom of a cathedral bell, another rings sharp and shrill, and a row of stalactitic sheets answers when touched with a gamut of notes. Your imagination grows restless while you listen to such strange music deep in the heart of a mountain.

And there are pools on the floor, and in raised basins at the side—pools of water so limpid as to be treacherous, for in the uncertain light all appears to be solid rock. I stepped knee deep into one, mistaking it for an even floor. Well for me it was not the Abyss which yawns at the end of Pillar Hall. The guide, to show the effect of light reflected on the water, crawls up to the end of one of the basins with the two candles in his hand, while you standing in the gloom at the other end, observe the smooth brilliant surface, and the brightness that flashes from every prominence of roof or wall.

Although geologists explain the process of formation, there is yet much food for wonder in remembering that all these various objects were formed by running water. The water, finding its way through fissures in the mighty bed of limestone overhead, hangs in drops, one drop pushes another off, but not idly; for while the current of air blowing through carries off their carbonic acid, they give up the salt of lime gathered during percolation, and form small stony tubes. And these tubes, the same cause continuing to operate, grow in course of ages to magnificent stalactites; and where thin, broad streams have appeared, there the draperies and wings and the great snow-fields have been fashioned. The incrustation spreads even over some of the pools: the film of water flowing in deposits its solid contents on the margin, and these, crystallizing and accumulating, advance upon the surface, as ice forms from the edge towards the centre of a pond, and in time bridge it over with a translucent sheet.

Among the stalagmites are a few of beehive shape; but there is one named the Jockey Cap, an extraordinary specimen for bigness. Its base has a circumference of ten feet, its height is two feet, all produced by a succession of drops from one single point. Advantage has been taken of this circumstance to measure the rate of its growth. Mr. Farrer collected a pint of drops, and ascertained the fall to be one hundred pints a day, each pint containing one grain of calcareous matter; and from this daily supply of a hundred grains the Jockey Cap was built up to its present dimensions in two hundred and fifty-nine years. In six years, from 1845 to 1851, the diameter increased by two, and the height by three inches. Probably owing to the morning’s rain, the drops fell rapidly while I stood looking at the cap—splash—splash—splash—into a small saucer-like depression in the middle of the crown, from which with ceaseless overflow the water bathes the entire mass. Around it is the most drippy part of the cave.

In places there are sudden breaks in the roof at right angles to the passage—cracks produced by the cooling of this great limestone bubble in the primeval days—which look as if Nature had begun to form a series of cross aisles, and then held her hand. Some of these are nests of stalactites; one exhibits architectural forms adorned with beads and mouldings as if sculptured in purest marble. The farther you penetrate the loftier do they become; impressing you with the idea that they are but the ante-chambers of some majestic temple farther within. The Abyss appears to be a similar arch reversed in the floor.

Then we came to a bend where the roof rushing down appears to bar all further advance, but the guide puts a thing into your hand which you might take to be a scrubbing-brush, and telling you to stoop, creeps into a low opening between the rising floor and descending roof, and you discover that the scrubbing-brush is a paddle to enable you to walk on three legs while crouching down. It keeps your right hand from the slippery rock; and your left has always enough to do in holding the candle. The creeping continues but for a few yards, and you emerge into one of the cross vaults, and again sand and pebbles form the floor. Then comes the Cellar Gallery, a long tunnel-like passage, the sides perpendicular, the roof arched, which, like all the rest, has been shaped by currents of water, aided in this case by the grinding action of sand and pebbles. Continuing through thousands of years, the result is as we behold it. The tunnel appears the more gloomy from the absence of ornament: no stalactites, no wings, reflect the dim candle-flame; for which reason, as well as to avoid the creeping, many visitors refuse to advance beyond the entrance of the Long Gallery. But the tunnel leads you into the Giant’s Hall, where stalactites and draperies again meet your eye, and where your light is all too feeble to illumine the lofty roof. And here is the end, 2106 feet from the entrance—nearly half a mile. From the time that the gardener broke through the barrier in the Old Cave, two years were spent in gradual advances till the Giant’s Hall was reached. The adventurous explorers endeavoured to get farther, for two small holes were discovered leading downwards from one side of the Hall to a lower cave, through which arose the sound of falling water. They braved the danger, and let themselves down to a level, where they were stopped by a deep pool—the receiver of the fall. It must have looked fearfully dismal. Yet might there not be caverns still more wonderful beyond? Fixing a candle to his cap and with a rope round his body, Mr. James Farrer swam across the murky lake, and found it closed in by what appeared to be an impassable wall of limestone—the heart of Ingleborough. It was a courageous adventure.

I stretched out my candle and peered down the two holes. One is dry and sandy, the other slimy with a constant drip. I heard the noise of the fall, the voice of the water plunging for ever, night and day, in deep darkness. It seemed awful. A current of air blows forth continually, whereby the cave is ventilated throughout its entire length, and the visitor, safe from stagnant damps and stifling vapours, breathes freely in a pure atmosphere.

I walked once more from end to end of the Hall; and we retraced our steps. In the first cross aisle the guide made me aware of an echo which came back to the ear as a hollow moan. We crept through into Pillar Hall, and I could not help lingering once more to admire the brilliant and delicate incrustations, and to scramble between or over the great stalagmitic barriers to see what was in the rear. Here and there I saw a mass resembling a font, filled with water of exquisite purity, or raised oval or oblong basins representing alabaster baths, wherein none but vestal virgins might enter.