Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1880-08-07
fROM KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Mrs. SUE F. MOONEY


EDITORS CHRONICLE: Since writ
ing you from Hannibal, have Wis
tied the flourishing Missouri cities
of Macon, Chillicothe, and Kansas
City, where l now am.
Hannibal does a great business in
lumber. On visiting these extens-
i've lumber-yards, could not but
say here is enough plank to build
two or three cities of the size of even
GAINESVILLE. This will give your
readers some idea of the amount of
business done there in that line.
The lumber comes from the vast
forests of Wisconsin. After being
sawn it is thrown into great RATS
and floated or lowed down the Mis-
sissippi river.
1 was not little interested in this
fact, that Hannibal is the place
where the greatest humorist of the
age was born and reared. The
house where he first saw day was
pointed out to me. One of his char
acters, "Indian joe" (read Tom
Sawyer) still lives and drives a
street-sprinkler daily through Han
nibal. He is indeed character.
l might say much of the beautiful
and sometimes grand bluffs which
surround Hannibal, and almost, in
places, overhang the river, of the
elegant and refined society which
find their happy and healthy homes
among the hills alluded to, of the
large shops of the Hannibal IL st.
Louis railroad, or of the schools and
churches; but l ask the reader to
visit with me the greatest natural
curiosity of that region, the Hanni-
bal cave, a mile south of the city,
after which we will together board
the train and whirl westward thrO'
the splendid country of Northern
Missouri.
A correct general idea of the cave
may be had by comparing it to the
deep, broad, irregular cracks which
are formed as soil thoroughly wet is
dried out under July sun. These
cracks or assures have in some way
been made i'm what is now solid
rock, and average, perhaps, four
feet in width and twenty in height.
Sometimes these subterranean pas
sages are scarcely wide enough for
one to squeeze through /; again they
spread out into rooms ten or twelve
feet wide; they may close down
overhead till the traveller stOOps, or
they may rise grandly to a height
of forty feet. The sides of these pas
sages are everywhere smooth, as if
great volumes of water had formerly
rushed through them, polishing
their surface. A finer class of rock
1 never saw. At one place we came
to the ALLIGATOR" which was a mass
of rock projected horizontally forty
feet from the parent body and I'M
supported underneath. All the sup
port it has is where it joins the main
body. The entire length of these
passages, 50 far as. ut present ex-
plored, is about seven miles. At
one place we were shown where the
body of murdered man was found
in 1853. He had been invited to
visit the cave by one of his travel
ing agents, and when far from the
entrance, where neither pistol report
nor cry could be heard, had been
shot and his body hung to a pro-
jecting rock. The murder was after
wards caught, confessed his crime.
and hung in New York state. We
were also shown the den of a black
bear which for months roamed the
cave at its sweet will, keeping all
visitors ut bay. Finally two travel
ers who had come long way in
sisted that the guide show them
through. He (the very one who
was with me) said to them: "I'm
not afraid to explore it if you are
not" The three armed themselves
with pistols and knives and started.
They proceeded very well for three
quarters OF a mile, and the guide
was climbing a ladder necessitated
by the iFregularity of the passage.
When nearly at the top, the bear
with o terrible gr0wl sprang sud-
denly out Of its den at him, With
equal alacrity did he spring from