USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 62
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But nature, as if unable to place all of the attractions designed for this imperial domain on the surface, has invaded the dark recesses of her mountains and given to Missouri caves of immense and wondrous magnitude and beauty. Say to an American tourist that Switzerland had discovered a cave finished in glittering onyx, and millions of American money would be spent in visiting it, and volumes would be written upon its fascinating beauty, yet in Missouri such caves, rivaling in magnificence and brilliancy the royal splendors of Solomon's Temple, designed and finished under the Supreme Architect to evidence the unlimited resources and wondrous skill of nature's God, are numerous and in the profusion of our dazzling wonders attract but little attention .- From an old Bulletin of the Missouri Board of Agriculture.
Hunters and early settlers visited Roark Peak before the Civil war. They crawled down the crater-like depression where had once risen the summit of Roark. They leaned over the edges of the long narrow gap in the rock bottom of the crater. They looked down into a hole which seemed at first to have neither sides nor bottom; it was without form and void. Strange noises came to the strained ears. Imagination helped eyes to see gleams of light and shadowy forms. "The Devil's Den," these early visitors called it. A closer acquaintance with his satanic majesty was not sought by them.
At the close of the war a guerrilla leader came back to his home on White river. He had bushwhacked. He had been a spy against his more loyal neighbors. Assassinations and house burnings and horse stealings and all the various crimes of that period were laid to his log cabin door. For self-protection the people of Stone county had formed themselves into a regiment of home guards. The guer- rilla's return was soon known. One night a company of the guards called at his house. When the guards rode away he was with them. Without talk or laughter the escort and the guerrilla walked their horses along the river until they
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came to the Old Wilderness road. They turned northward and fox trotted along the flinty trail which follows the ridge, one of the widest of the Ozark vertebra. Four miles from the river the party turned sharply to the east. The road was left for what was scarcely more than a bridle path. It curved to keep on the spur of the ridge and wriggled to dodge the trees. Straight up Roark Peak the captors and prisoner rode and halted on the rim of the crater. All dismounted. With his hands firmly tied and his legs hobbled so that he could not use them for defense, the guerrilla was made ready for a doom that was the refinement of the horrible. He knew "The Devil's Den." He had been familiar for years with the associa- tions and superstitions of the place. The time was early morning. When the sun comes up over the bald knobs to the east it makes this Ozark country look like a favored region of the gods. The home guards stood in a fringe on the rim of the crater, looking down at the narrow black gap in the bottom 200 feet below. By the appointed executioners the guerrilla was half carried, half dragged along the steep side of the great bowl. In the center of the gap dividing it into two parts there is wedged a great keystone. The doomed man was seated upon this stone. In front of him and behind him the cave yawned. There could be no pity for such as he had been. The memory of four years of terror and of murdered friends rose up to drown all pleadings. A signal was given by the captain of the company. A strong hand was laid on the guerrilla's shoulder. In a second the keystone was unoccupied. The sound of something striking the flint heap far below barely reached the gap. Those guards who stood above, on the edge of the crater, heard nothing but the morning breeze among the pine needles. The little squad climbed up out of the crater and the command moved out to the Old Wilderness road. The night's work was done. Stone county people slept easier after that.
Cremation by Ammonia.
Nearly twenty years after the guerrilla went to his doom a woman came to Roark Peak on a mission. The cave had been opened. Access to the interior was for the first time in that generation possible. News of this had spread along the Old Wilderness road and had reached White river. The woman was the sister of the man. She came to tell the cave explorers the story of her brother, and to ask for the bones that she might take them away and bury them. The perpen- dicular plunge from the keystone was measured. The place on the side of the cave where life must have been dashed out was found. There was not so much as a button. But as they tramped and prodded around the spot the explorers' feet sank in a deep black substance which looked like rich garden mold, but gave out no odor. This substance was the guano of countless bats. When analyzed it showed the presence of 13 per cent of ammonia. The powerful agent had eaten up all traces of the bloody work of the Stone county home guards.
After the guerrilla died this was more than ever "The Devil's Den." Natives were satisfied with semi-occasional peeking. Some told weird stories of things seen and heard around the gap in the crater bottom. The more sensible shook their heads and said to all inquiring strangers that the den was "a good place to keep away from." These pioneer settlers of Stone and Taney and Ozark were East Tennesseans, originally. They came here before the war. They brought their East Tennessee customs with them. They settled upon the creeks and the
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knobs. They were the bravest of men and would fight at the drop of the hat. But they had their superstitions and fears. No highlander was ever more sensitive upon the subject of the uncanny than these Ozark descendants of East Tennes- seeans. And so the Devil's Den went unexplored because these men who feared neither each other nor "varmints" were content to live and die with the under- ground mystery unsolved by them.
Early Explorations.
In 1869 Henry T. Blow, of St. Louis, and a party prospected through this region for mineral. They heard of the Den and came to see it. A saw mill not far distant tempted them with the means of outfitting for a descent. They put timbers across the gap, and lowered themselves with ropes. The better part of a day was spent in clambering around the great amphitheater, and a single one of the connecting rooms was visited. But with scarcely more than a glance at the wonders the lead-ore prospectors climbed out of the cavern and went on.
From that visit the Den remained closed for thirteen years longer. In 1882 a party of Grand Army men at Lamar, in Barton county, organized for an outing. An uneasy spirit named Beaver came drifting through the country and told the story of the Devil's Den. But he coupled with his version of the mystery a tale of hidden Spanish treasure, of secret charts and of traditions dating back beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants. Inspired by desire for adventure rather than by much credence in Beaver's narrative, the campers headed for Stone county, over a hundred miles southeast from Lamar. Thereby came about the discovery of the astonishing features of Marble Cave, as it was called for some years, but better known now as Marvel Cave. With the arrival of the Lamar party the exploration began.
The moving spirit in the Lamar party was Truman S. Powell, an officer in an Illinois regiment during the war. Powell had moved to Missouri years before, and was publishing the Barton County Record. That camping trip changed the whole plan of his life. The fascination of cave-exploring fastened itself upon him. After his first ramblings through the cave, the editor moved his paper to Galena, the county seat of Stone, and changed its name to the Oracle. He home- steaded a quarter section of land, the best and nearest he could find to the mouth of the cave. He devoted a great deal of time to cave study. Tradition has it that Harold Bell Wright had Truman S. Powell in mind when he described "The Shepherd of the Hills." Ten years after Mr. Powell began his explorations, Marvel Cave was visited with him as the guide. Upon the personal experiences of that visit is based the account here given.
The Great Amphitheater.
Leading down the side of the crater to the gap where the guerrilla sat on the keystone is a flight of steps. A ladder completes the descent of the crater to the long, narrow gap or cleft which is, up to this time, the only known entrance to the cave. The top of a second and much longer ladder comes up through the cleft. This ladder is almost perpendicular. Standing upon the topmost rung one looks around upon nature in her most charming garb. Grass grows upon the sides of the crater. Large trees are about its rim. The mountain rose clambers over the
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keystone where the guerrilla sat, and is one great cluster of bloom in the first days of real summer on the Ozarks. The sun filters through the heavy foliage. The sweet mountain air, for this is 1,375 feet above the sea, is full of ozone and glori- ous to the lowest depth of the lungs. Ha! down a round. Charming nature is disappearing. Down another round. Space, dark, gloomy space, in front. No limit on which to steady the vision and the nerves in that direction. To the right, quick. More space, and nothing but darkness beyond it. A look to the left. And one backward over the shoulder. It is all the same-space which can't be meas- ured and which disappears in unstable gloom in all directions. The grip tightens on the rung. If that ladder should sway a brain would reel just a little bit. But the ladder doesn't so much as quiver. It is not according to rule to look down- ward in climbing. But the temptation is too great. Just one quick glance. It is regretted. The flaring lamp wick re-enforced by a quart of kerosene is about as insignificant as a match. The man who went down first looks like a pygmy. It's a long way to the bottom. Look upward. There is promise in the rift of sunshine which comes through the gap and falls athwart the ladder. That is something to measure by. Further and further behind the ray is left, and sixty feet below the feet rest on the top of the great cone of debris in the very center of the vast amphitheater. The guide looks up at the ladder illuminated by the sunbeam and shows himself a mind reader by remarking in a casual tone :
"We call that 'the Christian's Hope.'"
The foot of the big ladder is a place to stop and get bearings. When the top of Roark Peak fell down through the hole in the roof it landed in the center of a great amphitheater and remained there. Had some prehistoric man been stand- ing on the highest point of Roark when the great event occurred he would have thought the bottom was falling out of creation. And when the mass stopped falling the prehistoric man would have found himself still standing on the highest point of the peak. but about three hundred feet lower than the altitude from which he had started. Instead of looking down great slopes and along the ridges of the Ozarks he would have been looking up through a narrow gap in a great roof of marble. One minute he might have stamped his foot and exclaimed: "I am monarch of all I survey," and the next his thoughts would have been "how in thunder am I going to get out of this hole?" It is sixty feet from the top of this interior cone to the marble roof. But so rapidly does the cone slope away that a few feet distant to a point directly under where the guerrilla fell, the drop from the keystone to the side of the cone is over 100 feet.
Space, space is the first impression at the foot of the ladder. Gradually the vision conforms to the gloom. The shadows roll back slowly. Directly above is the red marble roof, with the gleaming gap which leads to heavenly outdoors. The vision sweeps along the roof to darker portions and catches the first glimpse of the marvels. Great stalactites ten and twelve feet long fairly stud the roof and point downward with the suggestiveness of the sword of Damocles. The first survey of the cone from the top gives no idea of its size. A zigzag pathway down the southern slope is traversed over the broken rock half imbedded in the guano. From the bottom of the slope a backward look, shows a hill of 225 feet to where the ladder stands in its halo. And there, at the foot of the cone, the first ade- quate idea of the immensity of the amphitheater impresses itself. If the central
A FREAK OF THE OZARKS
AN OZARK CAVE ENTRANCE
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cone or dump of debris was out of the way the Capitol at Washington might be put down into the amphitheater. The roofs of the Senate and House wings would not touch the marble top of the cave. The dome of the Capitol would not disturb · a stalactite, and the Goddess of Liberty could poke her Indian headgear through the rift in the crater and see daylight. There is nothing in Mammoth or Luray, or any other American cavern, which reaches the dimensions of the amphitheater of Marvel Cave. Seen the second time it seems greater than upon the first descent.
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The Great White Throne.
"Well, there's the Great White Throne!" exclaimed the adventurous Powell as he halted with the original exploring party at the dump on the first entry in 1882. "The Great White Throne," it is today and always will be. The name which first came to the explorer's lips was singularly appropriate, and it sticks. Built out on one side of the amphitheater, but far enough from the wall to leave a wonderful passage, the throne rises sixty-five feet from the base. It is round and built up by successive layers of rock, each set in a little from the one below, so as to give a symmetrical, tapering appearance. The color is pure white- dazzling in the flame of the torches.
They got "a native" down into the cave on one occasion. He was a man who wasn't afraid of his weight in wild cats, but he had the awe of the Devil's Den, entertained by all of the old inhabitants. As he stood in front of the throne the poor man was seized with a trembling fit. In broken voice he cried that if the Lord would let him out that time he would never do so again. They put a rope around him to steady him, and hustled him up the ladder as fast as they knew how. The way to the top of the throne is around to the rear and up the back by a scramble. The top is spacious enough to hold half a dozen persons. It affords a view of the whole amphitheater save where the shadows unsubdued by the largest torches still linger. Back of the throne rises a bewildering collection of the most fantastic imagery. There are stalactites and stalagmites. The forma- tions from the top and the bottom meet and crowd each other. Elephant heads as true as Jumbo's look out from such a menagerie of freaks in water-formed rocks as the wildest dreamer never saw in fancy. There are moldings and carv- ings, devices of animals and of plants which nature never produced in living forms. Men who have seen this collection of bric-a-brac year after year still stop to study it bit by bit and to find new wonders in it.
The Great White Throne has an interior. Leaving with reluctance the bric-a- brac which rises above and to the rear of the throne, the visitor slides and bumps down to the path, and finds his way around to the foot of the throne and up further side to an entrance. Here the water has worked a peculiar wonder of its own. The roof of this interior of the throne is hung as closely as they can be placed with what looks for all the world like innumerable flicks of bacon in cold storage. In the sides of the pieces can be traced the streaks of fat and lean.
The Place to Register.
Out from the edges of the vast amphitheater lead half a dozen routes to as many strange features of the cave. In no two of the routes is there any sameness
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of travel or scenes. The most natural trip to make first is by a curving passage which begins almost behind the Great White Throne. It is a narrow alley, so narrow that two people of average size would find it hard to pass each other. The floor is of clay ; the sides and arched roof of rock. If the passage had been hewn out by human hands it could not have been done more perfectly. The height at the opening permits one to stand almost erect. Gradually it is found necessary to stoop more and more. The passage curves and descends. Stone steps take the place of the clay bottom. A warm current, 10 degrees higher than the tem- perature of the amphitheater, strikes the face. At the end of 250 feet the pas- sage comes to an abrupt corner and there is the Registry Room. A great hall opens out, and the torch must be swung high overhead and all around to get an appre- ciative idea of the dimensions. On one side is a high wall covered with a coating of soft but very tenacious red clay. In this clay names and dates and sentiments can be traced with the finger. And here the restless American tourist is turned loose to get his fill of making his mark. When the cave was explored for the first time with any thoroughness in 1882, upon the wall of the Registry Room was found the record that the Blow party, from St. Louis, had penetrated to this depth in 1869. But the party went no further.
The Registry Room is 50 feet high, as square and perfect as if carved with purpose. . The roof is as smooth as if plastered. At the further end of the Registry Room a chasm yawns. It is 130 feet down this precipice to the bottom. The roof is 50 feet above. This gives 180 feet from bottom to top. It is the Gulf of Doom. And a gulf of doom it would be to any one who, intent on viewing the Registry Room, should step backward into the chasm. The first time any one ever went beyond the Registry Room it was descent by rope 130 feet to the bottom of the Gulf of Doom. And the return was made the same way. But soon a pas- sage was found-a continuation of the route by which the Registry Room is reached from the amphitheater. Keeping on down the steep passage without turn- ing into the Registry Room, the visitor reaches a succession of ledges and ladders. The ladders were built where they are. No piece of wood longer than 10 feet could be dragged down, so short are the turns and curves. The timbers were spliced and the rounds were put in after the material reached its destination. Several of these ladders, with more or less difficult crawls between them, lead to Lost River Canyon. The opening is into the side of the canyon, which extends in both directions. The turn to the right into the canyon takes one to the waterfall. A short crawl ends in the Sullivan Room. Everybody straightens up and walks into a narrow hall, which curves first one way and then the other until it forms a perfect S. When this freak was first found there was a man named Harvey Sullivan in the exploring party. Some one called attention to the fact that the room was shaped like an S lying on its side. And another exclaimed, "We'll just call this the Sullivan Room." So it remains. The carved hall is 20 feet long and 8 feet high. Upon the roof nature has left a curious molding divided into figures unknown to geography, with little knobs as large as an acorn stuck along the dividing ridges of the panels. Lost River flows through the Sullivan Room and leaves on its way little pools that look like plate-glass. Just beyond the room the river spreads and ripples over a lot of rocks which appear as soft and smooth as so many feather pillows. There Lost River plunges downward 45 feet into a
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mass of spray, into the bottom of the Gulf of Doom. In Lost River the alchemy of nature is always at work. Of all the streams yet found in the cave this is the only one which coats everything it touches. A stick left in the water three months will be found covered with a transparent glass-like substance. The manufacture of onyx is in progress all of the time, though, of course, it will be ages before the water formation of today becomes the onyx of use.
The Gulf of Doom.
The top of the waterfall having been seen, the next thing is to reach the bottom of the fall and the floor of the Gulf of Doom. Backward through the Sullivan Room and into the hard crawling among the rocks the way is. At one place a rock splits the passage in two. The only course is to wriggle under or over. "Fat Man's Misery" the guide calls it. Just beyond Fat Man's Misery is the Hornet's Nest, a mass of water-formed rock with cells and color, so like the dangerous bunch hanging from the apple tree bough that one almost hears the angry buzz. And a little way from the Hornet's Nest there project down from the low roof of the passage two great knobs of rock. The man who misses the first is sure to measure the hardness of his head with the second. Originally there was a coating of clay on the knobs. One day a visitor struck a knob so hard the red clay broke and fell. He shouted to the guide :
"I have caved in my whole head. Take me out of here as quick as you can or I shall be dead before you get to the ladder. Oh! oh! oh!"
"I knew," said young Powell, "that if the man's skull was crushed in he wouldn't be talking, and I tried to relieve his mind. He wouldn't have it. He insisted that he had broken his head and that the pieces had fallen all around him. I went back, and after awhile I convinced him that the pieces were the red clay covering of the knob and not his head. But he had had a pretty hard bump."
And while he told his story the guide led the way down a couple of short ladders, along a passage and into the bottom of the Gulf of Doom, with its 180 feet from floor to roof. Lost River fell on what seemed like a heap of feather beds, but the spray and mist and the roar told that the piled-up mass with its soft look and smooth curves was onyx, formed by the long and continuous dashing of the water.
The Gulf of Doom, 900 feet below the top of the mountain peak and in the very heart of it, has its relations with the outer world. In times of excessive rains and freshets the Gulf of Doom fills with water to a depth of 100 feet, and as the rivers outside go down the water in the gulf falls.
Mysterious Cave Noises.
From the foot of the waterfall begins a crawl to further wonders. The explorer is now about a quarter of a mile below the rim of the crater and daylight. He has come a long way roundabout in the descent. He has climbed down nine ladders from 10 to 60 feet long. He has half slipped, half stepped along steep grades. He has walked through tortuous passages, sometimes erect and sometimes bent until his body was almost at right angles with his legs. He has crawled on his hands and knees. He has passed through tight places where he had to lengthen
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out his legs and drag himself by his hands. But having come thus far he should not turn back. A dash through the waterfall means only a little additional damp- ness. A more serious-minded way is to edge along the wall and get around the falling water. The torch shows a slanting wall in front. The guide calls it a "clay slide." The clay makes it possible to dig the toes in and gain footings. Up the clay slide at its steep angle goes the way, and the only way to Blondy's throne. This ascent of 65 feet looks all but impossible, until the guide shows that it can be done. When the top of the clay slide is reached there appears what could not be seen before. a wide, low opening. It is only 2 feet high. The bottom is of damp red clay ; the roof of smooth rock. This is the passage to the throne room. It is hands and knees for it now. But familiarity has already bred contempt for the moist clay. The crawl begins. In places the clay either rises a little or the roof lowers. Whichever it matters not. The only thing to do is to drop flat and wriggle along, until there is a little more space, and then one realizes how much easier it is to crawl than to wriggle. Three shallow pools of water are encountered on the way. Two of them can be skirted with care. Through one it is necessary to splash. From the head of the clay slide there is 600 feet of this kind of traveling. Just half way on the route is the rest room. Well named it is. There is space to rise and to stand erect and to stretch the arms. There are ledges to sit upon. And while all rest and nobody speaks, suddenly a murmur seems to come through the opening opposite. It is the sound of talking, surely. As the hearing is strained, the voice grows more distinct, but not a word can be distinguished. One day as Powell sat in the rest room with a visitor, the latter bent his head and exclaimed :
"Listen! Listen! There! She laughs !"
Imagination is reluctant to give up the theory of voices for the reality of echoes from falling water. One day Will Powell took an old fellow into this crawl pas- sage to dig out some cay and make the way a trifle easier. Young Powell him- self was at work in the passage leading to the foot of the waterfall, replacing one of the ladders. He had occasion to go up toward the amphitheater for material. He was not gone thirty minutes, but on his way back he met his workman crawling out.
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