USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 63
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"That clay is awful tough; I thought I'd come out and rest my back awhile," the old man explained. But he showed a disinclination to go to work again. Powell went with him. The old man hesitated a little and then asked :
"Say, do you hear that kind of grumbling noise in there?"
After he had been convinced that what he heard was really the water he took up his tools. Not many men can be induced to work in the cave. They raise the pick and involuntarily hold it suspended, as if they were fearful it might strike through a coffin lid and release some uneasy spirit.
Some of the Cave Mysteries.
Three hundred feet of crawling and wriggling beyond the rest room ends with a sudden up-raise of clay. It seems as if the end has come. But the roof rises just as abruptly as the clay does. The passage simply jogs upward and then downward and the throne room is there. In reality there are three rooms, if the two half partitions or narrowing portions be taken into account. But the Powells
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treat the three as one grand hall 300 feet long. The first thing the visitor dis- covers is a little lake 30 feet long and 20 feet wide. The water is as transparent as glass. The torch shows the bottom, and the depth appears to be about 15 inches, whereas it is many feet. Mystic Lake it is called. A large rapid stream flows into the lake from the south. There is no visible outlet. Yet the lake does not rise nor fall. Somewhere out of sight there must be an exit for the water, but no trace of it has ever been found. An arch overhangs the lake. It is about 8 feet high in the center and the sides pass down with perfect turns to the floor of the room. Beneath the arch hangs a bewildering array of stalactites. These pendants are of great variety in sizes. Some are dark and some are white. The Mystic River, as it comes down to the lake, makes a tremendous noise over a succession of low falls and rapids. And this is the noise which, sifted through long and crooked passages, is easily mistaken for voices.
The onward way is up over the arch. Then it bears off a little to the right and brings one to the foot of Blondy's throne. The Great White Throne of the amphitheater was a marvel. But here is a throne ten times the size of that at the base and twice as high. For 120 feet the throne tapers up with story upon story of red and yellow and water-colored onyx. Across the base the width is 150 feet. With the aid of a long rope fastened to a stalactite it is possible to scramble up the side of the throne and enter the interior 75 feet above the base. In this is found a room 20 feet across and from twelve to twenty feet high. The floor is as white as snow. In the center is a tank of about the dimensions of a wagon box- eight feet long and three feet wide. The water in the tank seems to be quite shallow. An early explorer named Porter put his foot in to see what the depth really was. When he came to the surface the guide pulled out Mr. Porter by the ears. This interior room of Blondy's throne is hung with stalactites. In all of the ramifications of the cave there has not yet been found stalactite formation to compare with that in Blondy's throne room. Hundreds can be counted in the throne interior. They range in diameter from pipe stems to stove pipes, and in length from a few inches to twenty feet. Correspondingly in size and number the stalagmites come up from the floor to meet them. To the right hand of the entrance of the throne interior are the musical rocks. Two complete octaves can be rung from them by taps with a piece of iron. Some of these rocks give out sound as loud and clear as a large bell. Others are as fine as a piano note. Still others are as transparent as thick glass. The light illuminates them.
It is possible to reach the summit of Blondy's throne. That summit is crowned by a collection of spires. One great central spire is four feet through and extends far upward into darkness. Around it are ten or twelve smaller spires. Standing on the summit of the throne and throwing the light around, the explorer finds that the walls are covered with stalactites. Even at that elevation the roof is so far above that it is not visible.
The upper part of the throne from the interior room to the summit has been likened to a cupola. The similarity is striking. Crossing the throne interior to the side opposite from the entrance, one stands peering out into the great beyond. There is space and darkness above, below and all around. To this day it remains the great beyond. Leaning out from the interior of the throne the Powells have thrown flash lights and burned fire-balls without being able to know much
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more of the great beyond than that it is a vast chamber. Height and breadth are unknown. There is bottom, however; at the foot of a precipice of 100 feet. No human foot has yet trod the floor. The guides know that water flows through the great beyond. They can hear it. Whence it comes or where it goes, or how much there is of it they do not know. The great beyond is one of the several places where exploration has halted.
The Dead Animal Chamber.
Variety is the characteristic of Marvel Cave. No two parts or features are similar. Past the spring, direct from the amphitheater and straight as if an engineer had bossed the workings, goes a tunnel. The floor is of hard red clay; the walls and arched roof of rock. Unlike some other portions of the cave this passage is very dry. A stooping walk gives place to the hands-and-knees posture and then the prone position must be taken. The tunnel becomes a crevice which suddenly widens out into a large, low, vaulted room. This is the dead animal chamber. A chamber of horrors it might be called. The distance is 125 feet from the amphitheater to the chamber. On the last part of the way it is impos- sible to crawl or to turn. Mr. Powell, a thin, wiry man of great nerve and strength, was the first to make his way to the chamber. He came wriggling his way back to the amphitheater and told his associates that he had seen 500 dead animals.
"Five, five, five," exclaimed the skeptical Dr. Jones in derision, and then he made ready for the trip. But when he got back the first words that came from his lips were, "Not five hundred, but five thousand."
The floor of the vaulted chamber was not only covered, it was heaped with mummified remains of animals. Curled or stretched out, according to the natural way of going asleep, they lay by hundreds and thousands. Upon many the fur was so well preserved that they had the appearance, in the dim light, of sleeping. There were the remains of panthers, of wildcats, of 'coons, of opossums, of wood- chucks, and underneath were skeletons of animals long ago extinct. A little stir- ring of the remains raised a cloud of dust which was suffocating. Subsequent examination of the dead animal chamber showed that the remains which lay in sight constituted only a small fraction of the number which had crawled in to die. Buried in layers of clay deposits, carried into the chamber at some remote period by floods, were countless other skeletons and mummies, chiefly of the feline tribe. Evidently this had been for centuries the place to die chosen by these kinds of animals. Some hundred have been carried or sent away. Government naturalists from Washington completed the shipment of a ton of the clay and its contents ; together with a large box of the best preserved specimens to Washington. But no impression has been made upon the great chamber's grewsome contents. The scientists are greatly interested. The dying animals never came down through the crater and the gap in the roof of the amphitheater. They knew of some other entrance to Marvel Cave. That is more than the Powells, with all their search- ing, have been able to find. Why did the dying animals come centuries after cen- turies to the cool dry place, a natural tomb with wonderful preserving conditions ? There is a revelation of instinct in the dead animal chamber.
Mr. Powell said that animals have crawled into the chamber and died since
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ENTRANCE TO FOREST PARK, ST. LOUIS, AND STATUE OF FRANCIS P. BLAIR
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he has been living here. The carcasses are preserved, but in the process of mum- mifying they give off a strong smell, not offensive, however, like carrion. To make room for their last resting places these late comers have crowded back the remains of those gone before until they have choked up the crevice to the amphitheater.
Following the wall of the amphitheater around to the right from the dead animal tunnel, the visitor must look well to his steps. Down close to the wall is a well-like opening. To the bottom is thirty-five feet and it opens into the Powell and Hughes rooms, thirty feet long, six or seven wide and fifteen high. These rooms are only interesting for the large deposits of bat guano they contain. When the cave was first explored in 1882 the idea was to take out this guano and sell it. A whim and a tramway were constructed, but the distance of thirty miles over the mountains to the railroad wiped out the profits and the industry collapsed.
Beyond the entrance to the Powell and Hughes rooms the amphitheater has a great wing which is almost a part of itself. But the wing has been given the dis- tinctive name of the Mother Hubbard room. When Mr. Powell first walked to the further end of the wing chamber and came front to front with a prodigious stone image he exclaimed to those following: "Hello! Here's Mother Hubbard." The figure is as shapeless as a Mother Hubbard dress and that suggested the name. But when Mr. Powell looked behind the figure and saw a large crevice he added from another chamber of his memory, "And here's Mother Hubbard's cupboard, sure enough." When the Powell boys read Haggard, they adopted "She" as the better title for the figure, but "Mother Hubbard" and "the cup- board" still stick.
The Battery and the Dungeons.
A crawl of forty feet from the extreme end of the Mother Hubbard room gives entrance to The Battery. It is through heterogeneous rock, and a rather ugly scramble. The Battery is sixty or seventy feet long and high. The appear- ance is novel even after the other features of Marvel Cave have been examined. A little stream crosses the room from right to left. A large gallery is well filled with water formations composed about one-half of guano. A queer combination it is. The Battery gets its name from the fact that it is the chamber most fre- quented by bats. At times the bats cover the walls entirely and give the room the appearance of being draped in velvet. Out of the Battery is a passage to the Spanish room, so called because of marks on the walls which somebody once thought were made by the Spanish explorers. That story Mr. Powell discredited. Beyond the Spanish room a passage so choked with broken rock as to be impass- able extends nobody knows where. In this part of the cave is found a very hard and tough clay which, when scraped by a knife, takes on a rich polish.
Still further around the Amphitheater, just down the dump to the left of the big ladder, is a high crevice in which a man can stand erect and edge along side- ways. The course is downward at an angle of forty-five degrees. The crevice comes to an end on the brink of a precipice. An Indian ladder-that is a pole with rounds thrust through it-furnishes means of descent thirty-five feet to the bottom of the precipice. Here is the Dungeon, twenty-five feet across and very high. With the ladder broken or lifted out there is no escape. Mr. Powell said
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he had found unmistakable evidence of some one having been confined in this hor- rible trap. From the bottom of the Dungeon is an opening to a second and smal- ler room, and from that room a desperate effort has been made to tunnel through the hard clay upward in the direction of the Amphitheater. This unfinished tun- nel extends twenty feet and ends abruptly. In the main Dungeon ali the loose. stones have been collected and heaped up twelve feet high against the side nearest to the outlet fissure. But, standing on that heap, the prisoner would still be many feet below the fissure. The walls are too steep to permit of climbing out. In one place there is apparently a drilled hole in the wall for a staple. And when Mr. Powell first discovered the hole there seemed to be traces of rust around it. No skeleton was found in either of the Dungeons.
Freaks of Temperature.
Awe is not altogether responsible for the shivering sensation which comes with the first steps downward into Marvel Cave. From the summer temperature . of seventy on the mountain the transition is suddenly to forty-two at the foot of the Great White Throne. Only in the amphitheater and certain side passages is the temperature so low. The Powells learned to account for this by the presence of the bat guano. This deposit is not found in the Registry Room nor in the lower portions of the cave. There the uniform temperature is fifty-six. But where the guano is abundant the temperature is ten or twelve degrees colder. The explana- tion is found in the presence of thirteen per cent of ammonia in the guano. In other words nature, with the assistance of the bats, has produced chemical cold storage on a grand scale.
Almost opposite the big ladder and to the right of the Great White Throne some little distance stands a tall shapely rock, extending from the bottom to the roof of the amphitheater and back almost against the wall. It is "The Sentinel of the Spring." To the right of the sentinel is a passage and opening off that passage is a spring. The water comes trickling from above, and by constant drop- ping keeps a large basin full. This water is colder, a little colder than the at- mosphere. Tasted where it drips it is pleasant. Above ground it is almost too cold for comfort. Unlike the water of the Lost River the spring creates no forma- tions. No glassy coating follows a bath of whatever length in the basin. Just above the spring is another apartment reached by a short climb. It is the shower bath room. Walls and top are covered with moisture. The moisture seems to come from nowhere in particular, but it gathers as a jug sweats in hot weather and trickles down to form the supply of the spring. The theory of the collection of this water is one of the many freaks of Marvel Cave. It is that the difference in temperature between various parts of the cave and the collision of currents causes the water to condense from the warmer air and to collect in this shower bath chamber. Distillation, in other words, performed by nature on the spot, creates this supply of water for the bath room and the spring. Scientists to whom the conditions have been described have admitted the correctness of the theory. For the creation of the water supply no other explanation can be found. This purest and queerest of water is given credit for the cure of cases of diabetes. Just over the spring and on the side toward the amphitheater is the window
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shutter. The shutter slats are gigantic, but they are wonderfully perfect and lie in correct parallels.
Thirty Miles of Passages.
One of the first questions asked about a cave is, "How far can you go?" No satisfactory answer can be made to that question about Marvel Cave. There are, with Sentinel Rock as a starting point, several routes which have been followed long distances without end. If the amphitheater, into which visitors first enter, is taken as the starting point, it is possible to go in several other passages which have mysteries yet to be cleared up. The Powells have followed these different routes one after the other until they have come to rivers too deep to be forded or to precipices too great for ordinary means of scaling. In several directions jour- neys of at least five miles have been made. No less than thirty miles of chambers and passages has been explored. And how much more remains to be traversed it is not possible to estimate.
It is possible to leave the grand amphitheater at every point of the compass. Back of the ladder, directly opposite from the tunnel leading to the dead animal chamber, is a series of eight or ten rooms, but the rock is rotten, and there is constant danger of something dropping. The Powells have never gone far in that direction, and they never take visitors in. This course is almost due north. To the northwest is a string of nine rooms with connecting crawls, but they con- tain no extraordinary features.
Almost where the amphitheater leaves off and the Mother Hubbard wing be- gins, a short passage leads into a room shaped so much like an alligator that it has been given that name. The alligator room is interesting chiefly for the fact that from it Wind Passage extends. The alligator room is ten feet wide and thirty feet long. Wind Passage is so crooked that nothing longer than a four- foot stick can be dragged through it. It is so low that wriggling is the only style of locomotion. And this piece of crawling is between eight hundred and one thousand feet over rocks and under rocks. The clay bottom, which is usual in Marvel Cave passages, is not found in this. Through Wind Passage comes a cur- rent of air strong enough to extinguish any ordinary torch. Hence the name. Day and night, in all seasons, that draft blows through. Wind Passage comes to an abrupt termination at a precipice. The depth is about forty feet, and when the explorer has lowered himself by rope he stands in a large round chamber 200 feet across and very high. The guano and clay on the floor are dry, and a little kick- ing raises a great dust. This chamber has never been named. A passage not so contracted and tortuous leads out of the chamber. A crawl of about one hundred and fifty feet ends in a second room, which possesses the suggestive name of The Epsom Salts room. This room is 600 feet long and 200 feet high. In the center is a balloon-shaped sink fourteen feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. Epsom salts like frost work appears upon the walls. After Epsom Salts room is a series of eight large rooms, with short passages between. At the end of the last there is a fissure two feet wide in some places, in others narrowing to one foot. There are ledges on the sides. It is possible to shuffle along this fissure with a foot on either side. The fissure is sixty to seventy feet deep, and at the bottom is a stream of water. Probably there are rooms along the fissure, but the few times
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this most dangerous route has been traversed the Powells have been too intent on their footing to speculate on side issues. This fissure route is about a mile long. After traveling that distance the explorer bears off to the left and goes through a corridor that much resembles the one leading to the Dead Animal room. It is very low in places and extremely dry. Then comes a series of fifteen or sixteen rooms, and at last the straight high banks of a stream from twelve to fourteen feet wide and ten feet deep. The current is swift. No Name river this is called and it bars the progress of exploration in that direction until material can be dragged through for a bridge or a boat.
Three Rivers with Varying Courses.
The course of the No Name stream is westward. Mystic river's course is south. Lost river flows in still another direction. The streams flowing so vigorously through different portions of the cave account in part for the strong and diverse currents of air. The fact that they rise and fall with the rivers outside and feel the effects of rain and freshets seems to show that they have outside connections not a great way distant.
Lost River Canyon is where level heads are turned and confusion reigns. Where the ladders and passage coming down from Registry room bring one to the canyon stands a great rock, shaped like a thick slab. It is perpendicular as if set there by the square and compass and anointed by the oil and wine. This is Sen- tinel Rock. It plays an important part in the geography of the cave. If the ex- plorer notes the rock as he returns from Blondy's throne and the waterfall, he looks backward over his left shoulder and sees the passage to the ladders and the way out. But if Sentinel Rock is passed the traveler is lost. Lost River Canyon has countless side passages and crevices. Six boys and six girls went down to the waterfall on one occasion and started back. They did not come out. As the time went by without sign of them, Mr. Powell descended. When he reached the lad- der he could see the party crawling round and round through Lost River Canyon and its branches looking in vain for the way. Some of them had been there before, but they did not remember Sentinel Rock. They had become bewildered. Their lights had burned until only a bit of candle remained. At the first glimpse one of the party cried out, "Is that Editor Powell?" In a few moments a hysteri- cal girl had the editor by the arm crying, "Papa, I'm going to get hold of you." She never released her grip until she saw blessed daylight coming through the gap in the crater.
Mr. Powell considers that one of his greatest feats was finding his way out from the foot of the waterfall without light. It was a feat wholly unintentional. Dr. Jones, an early and frequent explorer of the cave, came out one day insisting that he had found an entirely new route from the waterfall to Blondy's throne. He claimed that he had discovered a hole just back of the fall, and that it was much easier going. Powell didn't believe him, but he had had so many discoveries upset previous knowledge that after listening to the Doctor carefully he went down to see for himself. He carried with him a candle and a box of patent matches. Never noticing that the matches were only good when scratched on the box lid, he threw away the box. Reaching the foot of the waterfall Mr. Powell saw through the mist a dark spot which he had not observed before. Concluding that
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that was the hole Dr. Jones had mentioned, Powell dashed through the water towards it. He struck solid wall instead of space and reeled backward. The water put out the light. When he recovered from the shock he tried to strike a match, and then another and another. After repeated failure he realized the situation. Turning with his back squarely to the wall he started through the fall and for the passage. Feeling his way almost inch by inch, and stopping every few feet to think out the turns and chutes, he came at last to the Sentinel Rock. It took two hours to make the trip out but it was accomplished.
The Original Arkansas Traveler.
After a day of hard climbing and crawling Mr. Powell sat on the gallery of the Glade Echo homestead and talked most interestingly of Marvel Cave's history.
"I have been told a great many things about the cave by the people round about here and I have given a good deal of time to investigating them. Many of the stories, I am satisfied, are purely imaginary. Some have foundation. The oldest reference to the cave in print was, I think, a short newspaper description. This was probably published a great many years ago and revived from time to time and started on its rounds. I found it printed in an appendix to a history of Missouri published long ago. The curious thing about the account is that it doesn't locate the cave further than to say it is in the Ozarks. From the description, it seems that the writer was lowered into the Amphitheater and crawled perhaps as far as the Registry. He speaks of there being another throne about the middle of the Amphitheater. This prompts me to believe that since his visit con- siderable debris has fallen in through the slit in the bottom of the crater and covered up one of the thrones. I have a theory that, this description of Marvel Cave was written fifty years ago, and that the man who visited the cave and wrote it was Col. Falconer. Falconer was the original of 'The Arkansas Traveler.' He is the character about whom so many stories are told. He had a place in Dade County, but he was seldom at home. Dressed in good clothes, riding a fine horse, he traveled all over this part of Missouri and Arkansas. Wherever he went he carried his fiddle. And he fiddled his way to the hearts of the pioneers while he explored their country. Falconer passed up and down the Old Wilderness road, then a mere trail, in his travels. He could hardly have failed to hear, from the hunters, of Marvel Cave, and it was just like him to visit the place and go down into it. He wrote what he saw, but never thought of telling the way to it or of locating it more definitely than in the Ozarks."
Traditions of Spanish Treasure.
When Mr. Powell began to explore the cave he heard many stories about it having been visited by the Spaniards at an early day. Some people believed that treasure had been hidden here:
"I have never been able to find any confirmation of these lost-wealth stories. We found upon our earliest visits the remnants of some old ladders, such as the Spaniards used. They are simply long poles with notches alternating on each side for footholds. The same kind of ladders are to be seen now in Mexican mines. Two of those poles, or sections of them, are now in the cave. You saw them in one corner of the Mother Hubbard room. The Spaniards roamed through this region looking for silver at an early day. It is altogether probable that they made ladders and descended into the cave, but I have never found any evidence that they mined there, or that they concealed any treasure. At one time I thought that I had found some inscriptions on the wall down near the Sullivan room and also on the wall in the Water Works room, but afterwards I became satisfied that they were due to natural causes.
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