The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1882-03-22
THE cAvERNs OF LuRaY.

an hntsttateu paper IN the ttat1ay Meg
azine, by Ernest Ingersoll describing the nat
ural wonders of the recently opened caverns
of Luray, in Virginia, contains the follow
ing;
The ground rises only trine from the
level OF the valley to the hill, and ON the
open slope stands house with portieoes all
around, conspicuous in fresh paint, and hay
ing public air about it. There is the ordi-
nary appearance of public waiting rooms
about this house, but unlike most houses
the great interest Of 1t lies in the cellar.
Registering your name, your guide gives
you q tin frame much like a scoop-sboyel,
held upright by handle at the back, which
holds in front three lighted candles. He
opens an inner door, and you follow him
down a staircase Of masonry, and before you
grasp the idea that yonr adventures have De-
gun, you find yourself in the large ante
chamber of the caverns This unpremedi-
tated, unintentional entrance is as though
you had been dropped in the midst of it, or
had walked from a sleep there, and IN. sso~ss
effectual IN putting the stranger en- rapport
with the spirit of establishment which he
must feign, if (by reason of any sad defect
in his constitution it is lacking in order to
maintain his reputation in this locality as a
respectable person. At the same time the
truth is pressed upon your mind that this
cavern is not in the side of a mountain, as
your preconception of it would suggest, but
underneath one of the low hills which diver
sify fba ci,,.foaa IF fla 40 lta,, aud ,,,h;ah 40
main from the following out of all the val
leys, and the production of the mountains
four or five miles distant on either side and
the cave " has no obvious relation with them,
except that its origin was partly coincident
with their origin, and with the excavation of
the valley by erosion"
When the Campbels first entered this an
te-chamber, which is about as large as an
ordinary barn, they were able to follow a
narrowing extension of IL only little way,
when, as ] have said they were stopped by
water Some weeks later in order to make
second exploration, they took small boat
with them, but found that the water had
nearly dried away. We can now walk across
on eauseway of clay for twenty-five or
thirty yards, past the Vegetable Garden, the
Bear Scratches, the Theatre the Gallery,
over Muddy Lake on Il planking bridge,
which is itself spanned by stone arch
through the Fish Market and across the FL
fin Ramble-a plateau in which the roof is
generally within reach of the hand 80
come to Pluto's Chasm, an under ground "a
vine rooted with the strata which support
precisely similar gulches and chasms open
TO daylight, and owning their confguration
to the same slow and subtle agencies.
Leaving the Cathedral narrow, Jagged
passage, where one must continually guard
both his shins and his crown from painful
bumps, we get an outlook down into sort
of devils pantheon, full of grotesque shapes
and colossal earieatures of things animate
and inanimate, casting odd aud suggestive
shadows in whose gloom fancy may work
marvels of unworldly effect, and leads you
by stairway to well-onrtained room call.
ed the Bridal Ghanber. With nm aecess vi
that idiooy with which the strongest people,
perhaps, are tinctured when about to enter
matrimony, one or two couples have come
to this damp hole to be married; so the
place is put down in descriptions as ICON
seerated " The back door of the Bridal
Chamber admits to Giants Hall, just be-
You'd which is the Ball-room-both large
and lofty apartments constituting sepa-
rate portion of the cave, parallel with the
length of Plutos Chasm. In the Ballroom
we have worked back opposite the entrance,
having followed course roughly outlinedby
the letter u