The World. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1891-1896, 1892-10-21
CAVES OF NATURAL ICE,
SOME WONDERS FOUND IN NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA.

utah Legend.
Up in some of the northern parts Of
the State they have an arrangement by
which mint juleps, ice cream and other
cooling things are possible, even in mid
summer, and there is no such thing as
an artificial ice plant within 800 miles,
says correspondent of the San Francisco
Examiner
There are holes in the ground-crevices
and cracks in the lava beds-where ice
forms the year round No one knows
how or why the ice forms there. There
is no water to be seen, and If there is
anything hotter than lava bed in July
1t must be the same place in June.
There are good many of these natural
ice factories in the remote corners in
Shasta, Modoc and Siskiyou counties.
The one that is most patronized is
about fifty miles east of Sisson, fifteen
miles from Little Hot Spring Valley.
Once upon time this country was
trembling, bubbling sea-not a sea of
water, but of boiling, seething molten
rock. And the waves, as they rose and
broke, became solid and fell back as
blocks of lava. And when the surface
was all cool the liquid fire inside burst
through and tore it apart, and now for
twenty miles or more the country is COW
cred with these torn, irregular Blocks
piled in fantastic shape ON every side, and
among them are strange gorges and cor
ridors out of which come vague, uncanny
sounds.
The blocks ring like metal when your
horses hoffs strike them 1t is a coun-
try of unexplained noises. From the
bowels of mountains comes the noise of
escaping steam Out of the seemingly
bottomless pits and gorges rises the rum
BILE of what may be rivers, but peer into
the depths until your head swims and
you cannot see the water.
The ringing ground sounds hollow to
your steps. 1t is hot walking over the
lava beds, for, of course. you cannot
traverse much of it on horseback.
1t is rather weird to toll over them
under the blazing sun until you are al
most ready to drop from heat and ex-
haustion, and then step down into
break and find yourself standing on ice,
no man knows how thick. 1t is cool in
the caverns-cool though the sun that
has caused you so much trouble and
fatigue outside shines right in upon the
CLASSY floor.
There is lava cliff thirty feet high,
and at the base of it is an opening right
into the rock. 1t is arched and generally
bears resemblance to a prospector's
tunnel. The floor of the tunnel inside
the cliff is hardly four feet below the
level of the entrance. You have to be
careful how you step down. Your cor
respondent was not and his feet flew
from under him. The floor was of per-
fectly smooth ice, and the sun beating in
at the open arch seemed to make alb
solutely no impression on it,
} From this cave the citizens of Fall
River Valley, Swazey and Fall River
Mills have for years taken their supply
of ice. Two days before over ton of
ice had been taken out, yet not trace of
the excavation could be found, so rapidly
does the ice form in these caverns.
The cave is probably sixty feet long
and third as wide. The roof is ten
feet above the floor, which is all of clear
ice
The mystery of its formation is what
first strikes visitor to the ice cave
There is no water there The ice is dry
and clear. You can strike match any
where on the walls There is a cool
draught that comes from you cant
say where 1t is refreshing after the
heat outside, but by no means chill
ing. Maybe the moisture-for, of course,
that deposit must be water before it is
becomes out Of the atmosphere.
The science sharps tell us that rain is
precipitated by the sudden contact of
warm and cold current of air. So pos
sibly the meeting of that draught from
somewhere in the cellars of this earth
with the sun-heated air that comes in
through the mouth of the cave wrings
the moisture from the atmosphere and
it freezes ON the floor But there is
another problem even if this is an ex-
PLANTATION of part of the phenomenon.
Why does it freezer
Of course, the Indians have story by
way of explanation of the mystery
though the skeptic white man may not
accept it.
Under the ice there is a chiefs daugh-
ter who, when the big pines We're little
shoots, was the most beautiful, feetest
and finest generally in the world. She
had lovers-oh any quantity of them
but she was as cold as the snow on
Shasta $ summit and she would listen to
none Of them.
One after another they killed them
selves in various picturesque Indian
fashions, but the deaths of the first ones
made her no kinder to their successors.
Indeed, she grew colder and colder. and
one night when she went to sleep in a
, cavern her breath froze around her and
she could not rise Her breath went on
freezing until the ice was thick above
her She has not died because she is not
that kind, but she is there yet and her
breath goes on freezing, and that is how
the holes cut by the ice hunters fill up
oOoin