A Book of the United States. Various
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from the roof. Fahrenheit’s thermometer, which stood at sixty-seven degrees in the air, fell to sixty-one degrees in this room. A few yards to the left, on the side opposite to you on entering, a passage presents itself, which leads to a sort of anti-chamber, from whence you proceed to the sound room, so named from the prodigious reverberation of the sound of a voice or musical instrument on the inside. This room is about twenty feet square; it is arched at the top, and the sides of it as well as of the apartment which you first enter, are beautifully ornamented with stalactites. Returning from hence into the anti-chamber, and afterwards taking two or three turns to the right and left, you enter a long passage about thirteen feet wide, and, perhaps, about fifteen feet in height, perpendicularly; but if it was measured from the floor to the highest part of the roof obliquely, the distance would be found much greater, as the walls on both sides slope very considerably, and finally meet at the top.
‘This passage descends very rapidly, and is, I should suppose, about sixty yards long. Towards the end it narrows considerably, and terminates in a pool of clear water, about three or four feet deep. How far this pool extends, it is impossible to say. A canoe was once brought down by a party for the purpose of examination, but they said, that after proceeding a little way the canoe would not float, and they were forced to return. Their fears most probably led them to fancy so. I fired a pistol with a ball over the water, but the report was echoed from the after part of the cavern, and not from the part beyond the water, so that I should not suppose the passage extended much farther than could be traced with the eye. The walls of this passage consist of a solid rock of limestone on each side, which appears to have been separated by some convulsion. The floor is of a deep sandy earth, and it has repeatedly been dug up for the purpose of getting salt-petre, with which the earth is strongly impregnated. The earth, after being dug up, is mixed with water, and when the grosser particles fall to the bottom, the water is drawn off and evaporated; from the residue the salt-petre is procured. There are many other caverns in this neighborhood; and also farther to the westward in Virginia; from all of them great quantities of salt-petre are thus obtained. The gunpowder made with it, in the back country forms a principal article of commerce, and is sent to Philadelphia in exchange for European manufactures.
‘About two thirds of the way down this long passage just described, is a large aperture in the wall on the right, leading to another apartment, the bottom of which is about ten feet below the floor of the passage, and it is no easy matter to get down into it, as the sides are very steep and extremely slippery. This is the largest and most beautiful room in the whole cavern; it is somewhat of an oval form, about sixty feet in length, thirty in breadth, and in some parts nearly fifty feet high. The petrifactions formed by the water dropping from above are most beautiful, and hang down from the ceiling in the form of elegant drapery, the folds of which are similar to what those of large blankets or carpets would be, if suspended by one corner in a lofty room. If struck with a stick, a deep hollow sound is produced, which echoes through the vaults of the cavern.
‘In other parts of this room the petrifactions have commenced at the bottom, and formed in pillars of different heights; some of them reach nearly to the roof. If you go to a remote part of this apartment, and leave a person with a lighted torch moving about amidst these pillars, a thousand imaginary forms present themselves, and you might almost fancy yourself in the infernal regions, with spectres and monsters on every side. The floor of this room slopes down gradually from one end to the other, and terminates in a pool of water, which appears to be on a level with that at the end of the long passage; from their situation, it is most probable that they communicate together. The thermometer which I had with me stood in the remotest part of this chamber, at fifty-five degrees. From hence we returned to the mouth of the cavern, and on coming to the light it appeared as if we had really been in the infernal regions, for our faces, hands, and clothes were covered with soot from the smoke of the pine torches which are so often carried in. The smoke from the pitch-pine is particularly thick and heavy. Before this cave was much visited, and the walls blackened with smoke, its beauty, I was told by some of the old inhabitants, was great indeed; for the petrifactions on the roof and walls are all of a dead white kind.’
Wyer’s Cave is situated in the same county with the preceding, and is equally remarkable. Its entrance is narrow and difficult, and when first discovered was impeded by perpendicular columns of stalactites, which have since been removed. After advancing at first in a horizontal course, we descend into an echoing cavern, by a ladder fifteen or twenty feet in length. Over our heads hang silvery white stalactites, while we are surrounded by pillars of stalagmites, and rugged walls incrusted with a beautiful brown spar. The floor is composed of ledges of rocks, and presents rather an uneven pathway.
Advancing through a narrow passage in the rocks, we enter still other apartments, resembling the first in the beauty of their formations, but of different shape and extent. The sparry incrustations assume a thousand fantastic figures, sparkling with light, and more like the wonders of fairy land, than the original productions of nature. This cave is a mile and a half in extent, varying in perpendicular height from three to forty feet, and in breadth from two to thirty. Its dividing branches are numerous. Blue limestone is the base of the whole cave; every where covered with incrustations of carbonates. In some places the uneven sides of the rocks are quite covered with white crystals of the carbonate of lime, and appear like banks of salt. Sometimes the pavement sparkles as a floor of diamonds; and again the pathway is pebbled, and resembles the deserted bed of a river. It is impossible to convey any idea of the number and variety of shapes which the stalactites assume; resembling every thing in nature, and in the worlds of imagination, they are still unlike every thing but themselves.
The Nicojack Cave is situated in the Cherokee country, at Nicojack, the north-western angle in the map of Georgia. We believe it was first fully described by the Rev. E. Cornelius. It is twenty miles south-west of the Look-Out Mountain, and half a mile from the south bank of the Tennessee river. The Raccoon Mountain, in which it is situated, here fronts to the north-east. Immense layers of horizontal limestone form a precipice of considerable height. In this precipice the cave commences; not however with an opening of a few feet, as is common; but with a mouth fifty feet high, and one hundred and sixty wide. Its roof is formed by a solid and regular layer of limestone, having no support but the sides of the cave, and as level as the floor of a house. The entrance is partly obstructed by piles of fallen rocks, which appear to have been dislodged by some great convulsion. From its entrance, the cave consists chiefly of one grand excavation through the rocks, preserving for a great distance the same dimensions as at its mouth.
What is more remarkable than all, it forms for the whole distance it has yet been explored, a walled and vaulted passage for a stream of cool and limpid water, which, where it leaves the cave, is six feet deep and sixty feet wide. A few years since, Col. James Ore, of Tennessee, commencing early in the morning, followed the course of this creek in a canoe, for three miles. He then came to a fall of water, and was obliged to return, without making any further discovery. Whether he penetrated three miles of the cave or not, it is a fact he did not return till the evening, having been busily engaged in his subterranean voyage for twelve hours. He stated that the course of the cave, after proceeding some way to the south-west, became south; and south-east by south, the remaining distance.
There is a remarkable cave or grotto, situated on a bluff of limestone, on the south bank of the Holston river, in East Tennessee, which has been well described by Mr. Kain, in an article in Silliman’s Journal. The bluff is perhaps one hundred feet high, and fifty wide. The grotto is a large natural excavation of the rock, sixty feet high and thirty feet wide. It is very irregular, and to the very top bears marks of the attrition of waves. The river to have been so high, must have covered the valley through which it now winds its quiet way. The excavation gradually diminishes in size as you proceed backward, till one hundred feet from the entrance it terminates. A remarkable projection of the rock divides the back part into two stories.
This grotto, whose walls are hung with ivy, and the bluff crowned with cedars, and surrounded by an aged forest, on which the vine clambers most luxuriantly, viewed from the river which winds slowly around it, and reflects its image, is more than beautiful: it is even venerable. But what renders it most interesting to many visitors, is a number of rude paintings, which were, as tradition reports, left on it by the Cherokee Indians. These Indians are known to have made this cave a resting place as