The daily progressive-miner., 1916-01-14
FOUND A WAY TO
 REACH HADES
FIND BOTTOMLESS PIT
 WHILE SHOOTING" COAL
Huge Cavern Among Missouri
 Mines Is Located

MACON, Mo.,-A number of per ons of this city are tremendously interested in a discovery just re- ported by Jim Mote, farmer and miner residing south of town. While in the city recently Mote described m uncanny situation which he .ound in a coal drift few miles southwest of Exceilo. He says that he and some other men were en- gagged in shooting coal in a drift or hillside mine; that the shot brought down the coal and with it a lot of clay. The clay uncovered a slab like rock, beneath, and disclosed a symmetrically lound hole about the size of dinner plate. MT. Mote reached down into the hole, but could not touch bottom. Then he got long stick and investigated The hole widened put, Mote said as though it were an immense cavern directly under the place where they had been working. One of the men was about to widen out the hole so that he could drop down and see how big te cavern was, but Mote drew him back and suggested that first they had better learn it's depth. So they tossed big rocks down and listened with their ears at the hole. but heard no sound of the rock striking anything. Then they threw in mine prop and, listening intently, they heard noth- ing.
 "Things were getting interesting in that little mine," said Mote, "so we decided to investigate syste- matically. We got an engineers torch and fastened it to one end of long strand of wire. Down it went down, down, down all the while burning brightly, until we had run the entire length of the wire down. Then a rope was fas- tened to the wire and the light kept going down, down, down. The rope was run out to the end, and still no bottom. Two or three of the men left the place.
 "We began to wonder what might happen if the rock on which we Were standing should crumble away. The investigation stopped there and we went out, Nobody seemed will ling to experiment by going down on a rope. We must have lowered the light several hundred feet. in bring ing it up We would swing the light backward and forward, but it never touched sides anywhere; all under meath the mine seemed to be an inn mense vacuum. The air coming from the hole was pure and fresh, as though there were some subterrean- can current feeding into the space below.
 "The negroes of the neighborhood are somewhat alarmed, because they think the hole runs clear down to Hades, and that almost any time the lid is liable to pop off if we don't quit fooling with it."
 Mote explains that there is a lot of what is known as hickory gas shale in the neighborhood. That is porus material which burns brightly on contact with a flame. It might be, he theorfzes, that a large quantity of this material was ignited at some time and burned out through the little round hole that was discovered. James Her rington, who owns the land, and several other men were in the mine at the time the discovery was made.
 The neighborhood described by Mote is in the heart of the coal min- ing region, though there are no mines of anything like the depth he says he found. Everybody in Macon today is talking about the queer hole in the ground that has no bottom and it is more than iik- ely an expedition will start out to it within a short time to find out what it means.