Some crystal specks in the black ceiling high overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this magnificent effect. Our musical friends sung with much feeling a pretty song, "The stars are in the quiet sky," &c., and I sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene picture. All the party were touched with astonishment and pleasure. On arriving at what is called the "Star-Chamber," our lamps were taken from us by the guide, and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking upwards, I saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with stars glimmering more or less brightly over our heads, and even what seemed a comet flaming among them. But I then took notice, and still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the cave had to offer was an illusion. I remarked, especially, the mimetic habit, with which Nature, on new instruments, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic day, and chemistry to ape vegetation. The sights and scenery of the cave had the same dignity that belongs to all natural objects, and which shames the fine things to which we foppishly compare them. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could make in the dark. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits heard the voice of unseen waterfalls paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish crossed the streams "Lethe" and "Styx" plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming galleries saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers,-the icicle, the orange-flower, the acanthus, the grapes, and the snowball. We traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit,-a niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's Bower. Some years ago, in company with an agreeable party, I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |