once a week, issued a terrific din, an earthquake-like explosion, of such force as to shake the hills for five leagues around. The Manito-Wigwam was therefore a very wonderful cave. I say was, for I know not whether it is now in existence. The same enterprizing spirit which has converted Niagara into a mill-pond, might as easily have modified the Devil's Wigwam into a hole for storing winter potatoes.

To this catalogue of wonderful caverns, which I might easily swell to greater length, it would be unpardonable not to add a notice of the marvellous one discovered a year or two since by two scientific gentlemen of Philadelphia, in one of the mountain counties of East Tennessee; in which they lighted upon the petrified bodies of two men and a dog, of races manifestly older by many thousand years than the men and dogs of the present day. Those venerable remains it was said to be the intention of the discoverers to remove from their rocky dwelling to the more appropriate shelves of a museum, to take their places among mummied moderns of the time of Pharaoh, and divide with Javanese dragons and mermaids the admiration of a discerning public. It does not, how

ever, appear that these petrified ancients have yet left their cavern, not so much as a finger having been received in any museum in the land; a circumstance that can only be accounted for by the ingenious and veracious editor, to whom the public owes the first notice of the discovery.

THE

MAMMOTH CAVE.

CHAPTER II.

THE MAMMOTH CAVE: ITS EXTENT-CAVES OF KENTUCKY-THE BARRENS-BULL, THE DOG-CAVEHOLLOW-MOUTH OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

AMONG SO many wonders and prodigies, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, it may be supposed, must sink into insignificance. It reveals no subterranean gardens, no Stygian lakes, no stupendous waterfalls; it discharges no volcanic flames, it emits no phosphoric sunlight; it contains no petrified pre-Adamites, and no hollow thunders are heard resounding among its dreary halls. It is not two miles deep; it is not five hundred miles long-nay, it can no longer boast even the twenty miles of extent, which formerly contributed so much to its glory. The surveyor has been among its vaults; he has stretched his chain along its galleries, he has broken the heart of its mystery, and, with cruel scale and protractor,

he has laid it down upon paper. He has illustrated the truly remarkable fact, which none but the most cold-blooded of philosophers were ever before inclined to suspect-namely, that when you would know the true extent of any antre vast in which you have journeyed, the admiring of all admirers, you should first take the shortest extent you can possibly believe it to be, and then divide that length by the sum total of your thumbs and fingers, being satisfied that, if the answer be not exactly right, it will be extremely near it. Thus Weyer's cave in Virginia-the Antiparos of the Ancient Dominion, one of the loveliest grots that fairy ever, or never, danced in—was, until recently surveyed, pretty universally considered as being full three miles in length. By the rule above, we should bring its true extent down to between five and six hundred yards; a result that very closely coincides with the admeasurement of the surveyor. By the same rule, we should reduce the Mammoth Cave to two miles; which comes but little short of the truth. Nevertheless, the Mammoth Cave is still the monarch of caves: none that have ever been measured can at all compare with it, even in extent; in grandeur, in wild,

solemn, severe, unadorned majesty, it stands entirely alone. "It has no brother, it is like

no brother."

What I have said of the length of this cave, it must be observed, applies only to a single passage. It is a labyrinth of branches, of which the principal one is two miles and a half long. There are two or three others of nearly half that length. The extent of all the passages, taken together, is between eight and nine miles. There are, besides, many which have never been explored, and perhaps never will be-some opening in the sides, and at the bottoms, of pits that would appal a samphire-gatherer or an Orkney fowler; others, of which there are countless numbers, opening by orifices so narrow that nothing but blasting with gunpowder can ever render them practicable; and perhaps as many more, accessible and convenient enough, but whose entrances, concealed among rocks and cranmies, no lucky accident has yet discovered. The Deserted Chambers, forming a considerable portion of the whole cave, and now accessible through two different approaches, have only been known for a comparatively brief number of years; and the | Solitary Cave, with its groves of spar, its