The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-08-03
GLOOMY PLACE TO LIVE.
The Caves. the First Houses In
hablted by Our Most Re-
mote Ancestors.
A Description Of the Mammoth
Cavern Of Kentucky and
It's Mysteries.
One Recently Fonnd In Oregon VIII
Probably Eclipse the Kentucky
Hole in the Earth.

Caves and "antres dire" are strange, I'M
canny, gloomy, but deeply interesting
things. We hear of them with curiosity,
and explore them when the chance occurs
with mingled feelings of terror and pleas
ure, says the London Telegraph. They are
the first houses that our race ever inhabited;
abodes built for them by the forces of ma
ture long before rates and taxes we're heard
of, and in the blessed days when ground
tents had no existence. When we see a
cave We see the primeval country residence
of our emote progenitor. Here is where
he sat in the shadows splitting bones to get
their marrow, making bone needles out of
the ribs of rats and sewing cotton out of
the sinews of squirrels, and when he was
quite at leisure, after eating his raw rein
deer steak, carving upon the antlers of stays
and the tusks of mammoths spirited and
artistic sketches of his animal world. In
ancient caverns dwelt the people of the
flint period" who split their knives and
forks and spear-heads out of stones, and ap-
pear to have shared the shelter of those
ancient domiciles pretty equally with anti
diluvlan animals of the queerest kind. The
biggest cave in the world is naturally in
America-near Louisville, in the state of
Kentucky. In 1909 a hunter named Hutch
ms was in pursuit of u wounded bear, She
took refuge Ill an unexpected gap of n forest
ravine above the Green river, and the as
founded sportsman. following her, found
himself Ia what may be called the yery me-
tioPolls of Gnome land. A natural arch
with a span of seventy feet admits one to
the Kentucky Mammoth cave, and from a
ledge above it a cascade leaps fifty feet and
then mysterlously disappears. Behind
1t IS Il narrow passage through which
the ar always violently PUSHES, and
then you come to she main cave four miles
long, with all sorts of branching chambers,
covered with white stars on a black ground,
and hanging columns. which NAV be thu
rocky drip forever petrifying. or clusters of
bats, hanging in festoons like swRrms of
bees. There are darkling domes that soar
aloft out Of sight and black pits answering
to them which can not be fathomed. In the
mammoth hall Il gloomy. ~thunderous cata-
ract falls $50 feet, draped with stony ia
pestry. Ihe Egyptian Temple" has SIX
massive columns, eighty feet high and
twenty-five In diameter. Lucy Dome" a
magnificent vault 800 feet high puts to
scorn, by its dimensions and effects of light
and shade, st. Pauls or st. Peters. The
localities named "Cleveland's Cabinet"
anG "Marion's Avenue'' are adorned with
myriads of ~rosettes and curiously twisted
crystals, looking exactly like bios
SONS of the rock or mineral gar.
dens. Great lakes sleep in these subter.
raueaa ahTsses, and a large river flows
through them, fancifully styled, respect
lveiy, the Dead sea, the river ''sStvx.' Lake
Lethe, and SO on. In the long vault throuch
which Echo rivei" runs the roof answers
to II certain keynote of its own, producing
harmonies of incredible deepness and sweet
neas. To traverse all the windin2s of the
kentucky cav 1t is estimated would be a
journey of 10 miles. The dark and still
underworld has its own fauna and flora, A