We obtained evidence that the horizontal passage, immediately below the first vertical descent, had been inhabited at a very remote period. At the spot where Mr. Beard, of Banwell, obtained a fine tusk of mammoth, we found a molar of bear, and a fragment of flint, which were imbedded in red earth, and were underneath a crust of stalagmite of about two inches in thickness. It would follow from this, that the date of the formation of this part of the cave was before the time when the traces of elephants, bears, and of man were introduced.
The cave is the resort of numerous badgers. On hiding ourselves in one of the transverse fissures, and throwing our light across the horizontal passage, these animals ran to and fro across the lighted field with extraordinary swiftness, and had it not been for the white streaks on the sides of their heads, which flashed back the light, they would not have been observed. Though they are rarely caught, they must be abundant in the district.
Like all the other large caverns in the district, it has its legends. The dwellers in the neighbourhood, who have never cared to explore its recesses, relate that a certain dog put in here found its way out, after many days, at Wookey Hole, having lost all its hair in scrambling through the narrow passages. At Cheddar the same legend is appropriated to the Cheddar cave. At Wookey the dog is said to have travelled back to Cheddar. Some eighteen years ago, while exploring the limestone caves at Llanamynech, on the English border of Montgomeryshire, I met with a similar story. A man playing the bagpipes is said to have entered one of the caves, well provisioned with Welsh mutton, and after he had been in for some time his bagpipes were heard two miles from the entrance, underneath the small town of Llanamynech. He never returned to tell his tale. The few bones found in the cave are supposed to be those which he had picked on the way. This is doubtless another form of the story of the dog; both owe their origin to the vague impression, which most people have, of the great extent of caverns, and both versions are equally current in France and Germany.
The Water-caves of Derbyshire.
The celebrated cavern of the Peak, at Castleton in Derbyshire, presents the same essential character as that of Wookey Hole. It runs into the hill-side at the end of the ravine, and is traversed by a powerful stream of water, which has been met with in driving an horizontal adit in lead-mining at a considerable distance from the entrance, and finally traced to a distant swallow-hole. At a little distance from Buxton a smaller cave, known as Poole’s Cavern, is in part traversed by water, which has found an outlet at a lower level, and allowed of the present entrance being used by the Brit-Welsh (Romano-Celtic) inhabitants of the district as a habitation in the fifth and sixth centuries.[28] There are, besides these, very many others, some known, others unknown, that debouch on the sides of the dales in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and are all well worthy of examination, since they illustrate not merely the history of the formation of caves, but also have been proved to contain works of art, pottery and flint implements, and the remains of animals, such as the mammoth and rhinoceros.
The Water-caves of Yorkshire.
The caves in the mountain limestone of Yorkshire rival in size those of Carniola, or those of Greece, and they are to be seen in all stages of formation. In their gloomy recesses all the higher qualities of a mountaineer may be exercised, and there is sufficient danger to give a keen zest to their exploration. The mountain streams sometimes plunge into a yawning chasm, locally known as a pot, and at others emerge from the dark portals of a cave in full current. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where the subterranean circulation of water may be studied with better advantage.
Ingleborough forms a centre from which the rainfall on every side finds its way into the dales, through a system of caves more or less complicated, which during the last forty years have been thoroughly explored by Mr. Farrer, Mr. Birkbeck, and Mr. Metcalfe. On the south it collects in a ravine, and then leaps into a deep bottle-shaped hole called “Gaping Gill,” into which Mr. Birkbeck unsuccessfully attempted to descend, the sharp edges of the rock cutting the rope, and very nearly causing a serious accident. In depth it is about three hundred feet. The stream thence finds its way through a series of chambers and passages until it reappears in the famous Ingleborough cave, that was explored by Mr. Farrer in the year 1837, and proved to pass into the rock between seven and eight hundred yards.
The present entrance of the Ingleborough cave[29] is dry, except after heavy rains, when the current reverts to its old passage. The following admirable account of the interior is given by Professor Phillips:—[30]
“From Mr. Farrer’s plan and description, as given in the ‘Proceedings of the Geological Society,’ June 14, 1848, and from information obligingly communicated to me, a clear notion of the history of this most instructive spar grotto may be formed. For about eighty yards from the entrance the cave has been known immemorially. At this point Josiah Harrison, a gardener in Mr. Farrer’s service, broke through a stalagmitical barrier which the water had formed, and obtained access to a series of expanded cavities and contracted passages, stretching first to the N., then to the N.W.; afterwards to the N. and N.E., and finally to the E., till after two years spent in the interesting toil of discovery, at a distance of 702 yards from the mouth, the explorers rested from their labours in a large and lofty irregular grotto, in which they heard the sound of water falling in a still more advanced subterranean recess. It has been ascertained, at no inconsiderable personal risk, that this water falls into a deep pool or linn at a lower level, beyond which further progress appears to be impracticable. In fact Mr. Farrer explored this dark lake by swimming—a candle in his cap and a rope round his body.