Part 8

This church of the Mammoth Cave is a singular phenomenon. The roof, which is not lofty, is supported by a number of pillars, in many places forming Gothic arches, and running at somewhat regular distances, dividing the church into aisles. These columns are actually enormous stalactites, and the fresco of petrified water upon them has all the appearance of the most rich and elaborate carving. In some places the pillars of stone have not quite reached the ground, and remain suspended from the roof. Other and smaller condensed stalactites resembled the drooping rosettes which unite the spring of Gothic arches. In one portion of the church is an enormous stone, carved out exactly like the bishop's chair, or throne, usually seen on the high altar. The altar itself is very like those primitive stone edifices sculptured by the early Christians, when driven to celebrate their worship in the catacombs of Rome.

This chamber is a marvellous freak of nature imitating art, for the hand of man has never touched it or worked it into shape; yet if any one were transported here unconsciously, he would, on looking round, imagine himself in the chancel crypt of some old cathedral of the ninth or tenth century. Some romantic lovers, evidently influenced by this idea, had actually, a few weeks before our visit, arrived at the cave, accompanied by their friends and the clergyman, and caused the marriage ceremony to be performed in that very church. It was a whimsical idea, and must have been a cold, comfortless, clammy affair; but the feelings and sentiment about weddings totally differ in America from our European notions on the subject,--rarely is it a joyous merry-making, rather the reverse, as I have mentioned in a former chapter.

A few miles farther on, we came to the great natural marvel, the subterranean river, with its buried water and eyeless fish, its beautiful parterres of stone flowers and shrubs, like a garden covered with morning hoar-frost. On this dismal river we were launched in a little skiff, not the most seaworthy in the world,--and I must confess to having experienced a feeling of dread of being upset on that mysterious stream, whose outlet might be, for all we knew, in a region we did not care to visit, or even to contemplate the possibility of visiting. The echo had a thrill of awe that made one's flesh creep and hair stand on end. If one called spirits there from the vasty deep, and they did not come, yet they certainly answered from the dark shadows of the rocks falling around the lurid glare of the torches,--the only light on the river of Erebus. It was quite easy to believe there were myriads of spirits flitting around, and stretching out their weird arms to carry us down to bottomless Hades.

There is another very interesting cave, which is not so frequently visited by travellers, who when they have seen _the big thing_, are only anxious to rush away again. It is not so extensive as the Mammoth, but infinitely more beautiful and more inaccessible, the descent having to be accomplished by ladders; but once down, it is a fairy-land, a continuous scene of rapturous enchantment. The stalactites simulate the most exquisite parterre of flowers, the most magnificent forest of crystallized trees, the most wondrous marble carving, even to that perfection of art which shrouds the figure in transparent drapery, like "the statue of the Dead Christ" at Naples; nor was Apollo's charm unknown there. Our guide tapped upon these magic crystals, and produced the sweetest harmony ear ever heard, or at least it sounded so.

The walls of the chambers and passages were encrusted with the stalactite flowers. They could be broken off their stems, and as so few visitors ventured down, the guide allowed me to take one. One chamber was absolutely curtained with this marvellous formation of petrified water, and when the guide held the light behind the scene, it produced the effect of being draped in the purest amber. These drooping curtains, some fifty feet in height, emitted the most musical tones when struck. If the physician had brought his patients to these fairy bowers, he might, I think, have succeeded in sending them home quite cured, but I believe the cave had not been discovered then.

With a brilliant light the spot was perfectly lovely, and the atmosphere was that of constant, unchanged temperature, which puts the human lungs in a state of beatitude. I should not in the least object to live in that paradise of crystal flowers and adamantine forms, the most beautiful that the imagination of man has ever conceived to be curtained in living amber, and pillowed--well, I must admit that--in dust; but it was such _clean_ dust.... The texture of these stalactites, when examined by daylight, resembles alabaster, thus the leaves, flowers, sprigs, are perfectly beautiful. Nor are these caves without their incidents of life's drama. The grave and the gay have been enacted here as elsewhere. The episode of the physician and his patients was sad enough, but a more terrible tragedy resulted from a wager.

The guides are particular on entering the caves with a large party to beg them to keep together, as it would be impossible for a person to find his own way out of the labyrinth of passages, chambers, etc. Two gentlemen of a party made a bet that they would accomplish the feat, and, taking their opportunity, slipped away from their party, without the guides being aware of their absence, and it was not until late in the evening that the other party to the wager remarked that those two foolhardy fellows had not found their way out of the cavern. This coming to the ears of the guide, he exclaimed, "Then they are dead men!" Nevertheless they went in full force to do everything that was possible to find them, but spent the night in vain searches. Sometimes they came upon their track in the soft dust, then lost it again.

On the following day the search was renewed by the guide who had escorted the party, and his description of the finding of one of the gentlemen was truly horrible: "It was the most tarnation cutting up job I ever had in my life," said the guide. "We are not much of cowards, we guides,--we get accustomed to awfulness down in the bowels of the earth; but when that _critter's_ shrieks first came to my ear, I just shivered all over and my feet rooted to the ground,--not that I did not wish to save him, the poor devil, but I got an idea that that shriek came right straight from hell and no mistake, and I had no fancy to go there before I was sent for! Wall, when I had wiped my brow and taken a drink, I went on in the direction of the sound, for it came every now and again, the echoes making like fifty devils instead of one. I found him sooner than I expected; he was a sight to behold; he flew at me like a tiger; he clutched me, and pulled me, and wrestled with me, yelling and howling like a wild beast. I thought he would have torn me to pieces. I should not have known him again for the same gentleman. His eyes glared, his mouth was foaming, and his hair on end, his clothes all torn and covered with dust. He was a real raving maniac, and so he remained, as far as I know. The work I had to get him out of that cave! He would stand stock still and shake all over, then suddenly clutch at me again. I was the stronger man of the two, and he was weak from long fasting, or I never should have got him out. The doctor said he was fright-stricken."

And this was the case, as they thought, with the other poor fellow, who was not found for weeks, it having been conjectured that he had fallen down a hole. One of the guides making some new exploration, discovered him sitting down, no sign of decomposition having taken place, and no sign of his having died of starvation, for a piece of biscuit was found in his pocket. He was supposed to have died of terror, the terrible darkness working upon the nervous system, and the hopelessness of penetrating it making the minutes appear hours. A guide who had once been lost there himself for some twenty hours, said he never could believe he had not been there for several days.

DOWN THE OHIO AND MISSISSIPPI.

THOMAS L. NICHOLS.

["Forty Years of American Life," by Dr. Thomas L. Nichols, is the source of the following selection, which gives a graphic and interesting picture of steamboat life on the great rivers of the West in the days before the war. It needs only one thing to complete the story, the race and the explosion, which was no uncommon incident at that period, but an example of which, fortunately for our author, was not among his experiences.]

We embarked on a little steamboat which drew twelve inches of water, and whose single wide paddle-wheel was at the stern, and extended the whole width of the hull. A succession of dams made the river navigable at that season of low water, and at each dam we were let down by a lock to a lower level. At the high stage of water dams and locks are all buried deep beneath the surface, and larger steamboats go careering over them.

What I best remember, in crossing the Alleghanies and descending this river, were the beds of coal. It seemed to be everywhere just below the surface. We saw it along the route, where the people dug the fuel for their fires out of a hole in the yard, ten feet from the door. Along the high perpendicular banks of the river there were strata of coal ten or twelve feet thick. Men were digging it down with picks and sliding it into flat-boats, which, when the river rose, would float down with the current to Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, and New Orleans. These frail boats--long boxes made of deal boards nailed together, and loaded nearly to the top--would many of them be lost. The swell of a passing steamboat, or a snag or a sawyer in the river, would sink them. They would ground on sand-bars. A sudden hurricane sometimes sinks a hundred of them. Perhaps a third of the whole number are lost, but the coal costs almost nothing--three halfpence a bushel--and brings a price proportional to the distance which it floats in safety.

At Pittsburg, a city of coal and iron, smoky and grimy as Newcastle or Birmingham, we took a larger boat, but still a small one, for Cincinnati. The Ohio was very low. We passed slowly down, getting pleasant glimpses of the towns upon its banks, and especially of the flourishing cities of Cincinnati and Louisville.

I was disappointed with the Ohio for a few hundred miles from its source, most unreasonable tourist that I was. I recall whatever I may have said to its disparagement. The Ohio, charming in all its course of a thousand miles, becomes grandly beautiful below Louisville for the lower half of its course. Were it but deep as well as broad and splendid in its great reaches and graceful curves and picturesque banks, nothing would be wanting to its pleasing souvenirs. But I have tried its current at an unfortunate period,--the river at its lowest point. At its highest it would be fifty feet deeper,--a great torrent pouring onward towards the sea.

We were all of us in high spirits on the "Fort Wayne." The crew was firing up, and singing merrily below; and in the cabin we were sitting round our good coal-fire, chatting, reading, and some playing poker, calculating the next morning but one to wake upon the Mississippi. So passed we down merrily, until, sunk upon a bar, we saw the wreck of the steamboat "Plymouth," which two nights before had been run into by another boat, which sunk her instantly, and her deck-passengers woke up under the waters of the Ohio. Twenty unfortunates were drowned; and our passengers, accustomed to the river, spoke of it with perfect indifference, as a very common affair.

We passed this bar safely, touching bottom indeed, as we often did; but in passing over the next we grounded firm and fast. The engines were worked at their greatest power, but in vain. Efforts were made all day to get the boat off, but without moving her, and older voyagers began to tell pleasant stories of boats lying for three weeks on a sand-bar, and getting out of provisions and wood. For us passengers there was but patience, but for captain and crew there was a hard night's work in a cold November rain. They went at it heartily, and when we woke up in the morning the steamboat was afloat, and as soon as she had got in a fresh supply of wood we went merrily down the Ohio again, putting off by a day our arrival at the Father of Waters. So we went, talking on morals and politics, reading the "Wandering Jew," and playing poker, until dinner came; and just after dinner we came to another bar, on which we ran as before, giving our crew a second night of hardship and toil, and us a more thorough disgust of low-water navigation. We got off by morning as before, by great exertion and the steady use of effective machinery, the boat being hoisted over the bar inch by inch by the aid of great spars, blocks, and windlass.

There was still, but a short distance below this spot, the worst bar of all to pass.... Having been twice aground and lost nearly two days, our captain determined to take every precaution. He hired a flat-boat, into which were discharged many tons of whiskey and butter, and which was lashed alongside. A boat was sent down to sound the channel and lay buoys. This done, just as breakfast was ready, all the male passengers were summoned to go on board the flat-boat, fastened alongside, with the butter and whiskey, so as to lighten the steamer as much as possible, and when we were all aboard we started down. As luck would have it, the current carried the boat a few feet out of her proper course, and she stuck fast again. The wheels could not move her, and we jumped on board again to eat our breakfast, now grown cold from waiting.

This despatched, we went out on the promenade deck, and to our chagrin saw the "Louis Philippe," which left Louisville one day behind us, coming down, looking light and lofty, with a flat-boat alongside. She came down rapidly, and passed close by us, her passengers laughing in triumph at our predicament. The "Louis Philippe" had not got her length below us before she too stuck fast and swung round into a more difficult position, lying broadside upon the bar, with the strong current full against her. The laugh was now on our side, and the "Louis Philippe" gave rise to the more jokes, because her hurricane-deck was entirely covered with cabbages, with their stumps sticking up, giving her a droll appearance, while our hurricane-deck was filled with chicken-coops. It was time now to go to work in earnest. More freight was discharged into our lighter, and all the passengers, except the women and children, were sent on board her. We thickly covered the barrels of whiskey and kegs of butter, and the captain, to keep us off the steamer, cast us loose, and we floated off with the current, and were safely blown ashore on the Kentucky side, about a mile below, leaving the two steamers above to get off as soon as they were able.

When our flat-boat touched the Kentucky bank of the river, her ninety passengers jumped joyfully ashore, and with noisy hilarity scattered along the beach. The morning was beautiful. The clear sunlight glittered upon the river and lighted up the forest with golden radiance. The sky was blue, and the air cool and bracing. The land was high, well wooded, and fertile. Seeing a substantial-looking double log house a short distance from the river, about a dozen of us went up to warm our fingers at its fire....

In a few moments our lucky boat swung round and came down for us, leaving the less fortunate "Louis Philippe" to get off as she could, and her passengers to learn not to halloo before they got out of the wood. And now--now, by the first light of the morning for this grand, this terrible Mississippi!

It was a misty moonlight night when we came to the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi. We had come down a tedious, and in some degree a perilous, course of one thousand miles; we had still a thousand miles to go before arriving at New Orleans, which is the next stage of our Southern journey.

The Mississippi and the Ohio come together at an acute angle, and their waters flow down in unmingled currents, differing in color, for a long distance. Even at night we could distinguish the line which divides them. The Ohio water is filled with fine sand and loam; the Mississippi is discolored with clay besides, and the water looks like a tub of soapsuds after a hard day's washing.

Whoever looks upon the map with a utilitarian eye sees at the confluence of these great rivers a favorable point for a great city. A few years since an English company took possession of or purchased this site, and, with a capital of nearly a million of pounds sterling, commenced operations. They lithographed plans of the city and views of the public buildings. There were domes, spires, and cupolas, hotels, warehouses, and lines of steamboats along both rivers. How fair, how magnificent it all looked on the India paper! You should see the result as I saw it in the misty miasma, by the pale moonlight. Cairo is a swamp, overflowed by every rise of either river. The large hotel, one of the two buildings erected, is slowly sinking beneath the surface. Piles will not stand up, and, however deep they are driven, sink still deeper. The present business of the place, consisting of selling supplies to steamboats, and transferring passengers from the down- to the up-river boats, is done on floating store-boats, made fast to the shore. Cairo has since been built into a considerable town by dyking out the rivers, and was an important naval and military point during the Civil War....

This is my thirteenth day of steamboating,--the usual time across the Atlantic,--and I have four days more at least. You may well suppose that a hundred passengers are put to their trumps for amusement. The "Wandering Jew" did very well as long as it lasted. Some keep on reading novels, having laid in a stock or exchanged with other passengers, but cards are the resource of the majority. The centre-tables, as soon as breakfast is over, are occupied with parties playing poker or loo, and are covered with bank-notes and silver. Many who do not play look on to see the frolics of fortune. Several of these players are professional gamesters, and quite cool, as men who hope to win by chance or skill ought to be. Others, in their flushing cheeks and trembling hands and voices, show how the passion is fastening upon them. These are driven by weariness and tempted by the smallness of the game to commence playing. The passion increases day by day, and so do the stakes, until, before reaching New Orleans, the verdant ones have lost all their money, and with it their self-respect and their confidence in the future. Depressed by shame, disheartened at being in a strange city without money, they are in a miserable condition, and ready to throw themselves away. They become dependent upon the blacklegs who have led them on, are instructed in their evil courses, made their tools and catspaws, and perhaps induced to enter upon courses of crime of a more dangerous character. All this comes of playing cards to kill time on the Mississippi.

While those who need the excitement of betting play at games of bluff and poker, some amuse themselves with whist, and old-fashioned fellows get into a corner and have a bout at old sledge; and now at eleven o'clock the great cabin of our boat presents a curious appearance. Playing around the tables, with noisy, joyous laughter, are half a dozen merry little boys and girls. These have all got well acquainted with each other, and seem to enjoy themselves thoroughly.

I can give you little idea of this portion of the Mississippi. The river is very low, and does not seem large enough to be the outlet of the thousand streams above; for the waters on which we float come not only from the melting snows of the Rocky Mountains, but there are mingled with them the bright springs of Western New York, a large part of Pennsylvania, part of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and a large portion of the Western States. Yet, with all the waters of this vast area, our boat can sometimes scarcely keep the channel. Last night, running at her full speed, she went crashing into a snag, with a concussion and scraping which woke us all up, and made the timid ones spring out of their berths. Our safety was in our going down-stream instead of up,--the difference of rubbing the back of a hedgehog the right and the wrong way. These snags are great trees which cave off and are washed down the current; the roots become embedded in the bottom; and the stem and branches, pointing down-stream, and half or wholly covered with water, form a terrible _steamboat de frise_, which tears an ascending steamboat to pieces, but generally allows those going with the current to pass over or through them with safety.

The river is full of islands, so that you often see but a small portion of its waters; it winds along in so many convolutions that you must steam a hundred miles often to make twenty in a straight line. Many of these bends may be avoided at high water by taking the cross cuts, called "running a _chute_" when the whole country for twenty miles on each side is submerged.

Usually, on one side or the other, there is a perpendicular bank of clay and loam some thirty feet high, and here and there are small plantations. The river gradually wears them off, carrying down whole acres in a season. From this bank the land descends back to the swamps which skirt nearly the whole length of the river. These in very low water are comparatively dry, but as the river rises they fill up, and the whole country is like a great lake, filled with a dense growth of timber. These curving banks, the rude and solitary huts of the wood-cutters, the vast bars of sand, covered gradually with cane-brake, and the range of impenetrable forest for hundreds of miles, comprise a vast gloomy landscape, which must be seen to be realized....

While the scene is fresh in my memory let me describe to you my last morning upon the Mississippi. But why do I speak thus of a scene which can never fade from my remembrance, but in all future years will glow the brightest picture which nature and civilization have daguerreotyped upon my heart?