Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1908-12-23

scars and terraced crags OF some OF
the grandest dales and moors. The
cool. gray rock, riven SO boldly, and
as though of its own pleasure, into its
precipices and cleaning scars, carries
in the midst of its rugged and solid
grandeur a sense of the strange cor
rOding forces which make it porous to
its very heart. The famous clover
valleys of Derbyshire and the Mendips,
and the many scars and crags of lone
l.er and more isolated moorlands, are
only the external cravings of vast
and secret process OF natural disinte
grafton which hollows the core OF the
rock. The clear and thyme-strewn
|sheep walks are raised to their open
place in heaven on an underworld OF
caverns and pillared assures. Compar-
atively few of these have yet been
discovered by man, though in many
of the worlds great limestone regions
the caves that have been tracked and
rendered accessible rank among the
greatest of natural marvels. Bearing
the acid from the atmosphere that eats
out the lime of the rock, the subter
ranean rivers are still endlessly deep
ening their profound recesses. Many
of the known ranges of caverns in the
Mendips and the PENNIES have never
yet been fully explored, and there may
be others even vaster to which NO ac-
cess is known. In the caves which
have from time to time been explored,
after leading the explorer on from hail
to hall, and shaft to shaft, the stream
may finally defy : him by plunging
down a vertical rift into unknown
depths below. Even in the outer sun.
On the sheep-cropped turf of the hills.
the swallow-holes, where the streams
descend by their avenues, have a |
strange and uncanny fascination. A
stream is never safe on limestone
soll;and though from the porousness
even of the more solid masses of rock. /
daylight streams are rare among the
higher hills, brook coming with a
light course from miles of less perme- |
able soil is often trapped and drawn |
downward as soon as it strikes the |
riddled zone. When the stream is an |
intermittent one, so that for MANY
months OF the year its channel is emp
ty and dry, the swallow-hole looks |
doubly strange. If the rock is overlaid
with a thick layer of soil, as is often
the case where it first rises from the
lower ground, the swallow-hole NAV be
at least 20 feet Deep nearly circular in
shape, and narrowing inward to the
bottom, where the actual orifice is
choked by loose earth and leaves. In
the long idleness of the drier months.
the sides of the funnel have been sown
by ashseeds and acorns, or threaded |
by the roots of some overhanging elm.
so that saplings have freely sprung.
and the hollow has become a nursery
OF well-grown trees, clinging to the
circular banks. Ivy hangs about their
trunks, with fresh green blossoms
springing from the brown fiood-mark
OF last year; and when the October
sun Tails warmly on the circular ho,.
low, the wasps suck their last BANQUET
by the neither portals, and the broad
Red Admiral makes sudden sallies into
the sun. But the week comes, in every
norman winter. when the earth is
awash with rain, and the brook which
runs by the plowed fields side comes
sweeping round the thorn-roots in the /
hedgerow, and crowned with earthly
foam. Then the swallow-hole is choked |;
70 the br1m, and the turbid waters
circle endlessly among the eIm-trunKs
in Its vortex, with core of floating lit. Ii
ter In their center that marks where ;
the cavern of limestone rock is strain.
ing them down.