Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-28
Twenty Years of
Cave-Explorimg


under ground a badger.
l only seven years old when my father took
to the famous Grottoes of Han in the Belgian
Ardennes and as l stood awe-struck, gazing down
from great height into the very bosom of the
tain the nky, torct surface of the subterranean
lake, made up my boyish mind that would devote
my life to exploring these wonderful in the
earth.
And my country encouraged me; for two
three of the Central Departments of
the Lot-are fairly honeycombed with and
subterranean passages, many OF them extending
for miles underground, and containing strange swift
flowing rivers and sinister lakes filled with eyeess
fish and other queer creatures. Until [ made cave
exploring and climbing down" generally Alpine
hobby in France, these thousands of had
been explored, perhaps by supersttious
peasant, lowered by rope to recover the victim of
accident crime.
And the more I pursued my strange hobby, the
fascinated To lose oneself in any ordinary
great cavern is like getting out of the world alto
gether. The awful silence, the inconceivabe black
ness, the unaccountable sounds, the fathom1ess
abysses, weird cleaning forests of stalactites and
stalagmites-these make up experience which to
the devotee lures nothing the surface of the
earth lures
l have comfortable fiat in Paris, not far from the
Bib1iotheque Rationale, and lawyer by pro-
fession. My friends tell me, however, that caves,
rather than caveats occupy my attention, and the
profundities of the earth call me loudly than
those of the law. 1t is true cave attracts me
1nnr1Cely more imam new peak aCCracCS DrOCneT
AlpinlSt. He at least can see where he is going,
while l in ignorance of the terrors of my path.
For this reason, l too have to be roped though l
crossing the treacherous sunkssed glaciers of
the Dent du Midi
Between 1888 and 1898 my diaries show that l
explored two hundred and thirty great in the
countries of Europe from Northern England Eastern
Russia Since then have gone much farther afied
into China and the Bolivian Andes, and will
tackle the Colorado Rockies and Canada in search
Of with treac of
remains of all kinds.
Strange, how my boyish mind retained that idea
of cave-exploring! But it not until was twenty
nine that made this the hobby of my 1ife-that was
in 1855. mountaneer l have been all my life,
and climbing up mountains had equipped prac-
tically for climbing down caves. | would point out
too that my work is science as well as hobby.
Hundreds climb Mont Blanc in a year. for more or
less selfish pleasure, and the feat serves useful
purpose.
On the other hand, in a cave l can study geology,
mneralogy, NEUROLOGY and paleontoogy This
last science sounds little forbidding; but surely
it is interesting to remains of prehistoric
races of colossal skeletons of gigantic and ami
mails that inhabited these caves to fish in sub
terranean lakes for strange creatures that have
been upon the EARTH and to be thrown upon ones
resources and judgment every step in darkness
Any Alpinist will tell you cave-exporng is far more
dangerous than mountaineering. There are dark
abysses more perlous than any crevasse showers of
stones and rock than any snow-avalanche
besides the chances of being buried alive, drowned
in subterranean torrent, sufocated by carbonc-
acid gas
Now as to my routine of cave-exploring. When
arrive in "cave-country," l get full details from
the local people and set out with my party for the
nearest town village. With me go my friend
Gabriel Gaupilat who has been with me on most
important explorations, my two foremen Louis
Armand and Emile Foulquer, and eight or ten stall