USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 28
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Walter Williams on Missouri's Wonders.
Walter Williams found at Hahatonka "more natural curiosities than in any other similar share of the earth's surface." His visit prompted him to say of it: "At Hahatonka the big cave was seen by night. The entrance is made by boat under an overhanging weight of rock, which looks always ready to topple over. It suggested the River Styx, with Charon, the boatman. Once inside the cave and there were rooms of various sizes, shapes and oddities, a massive pillar, river disappearing, echoing corridors and other wonders. Bridal Cave, some distance away, is pronounced by cave experts to be the most wonderful in the world.
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MOONLIGHT ON THE LAKE AT PERTLE SPRINGS
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If Hahatonka were on a railroad it would have thousands of visitors where it now has one. Here is a cave more wonderful than Mammoth Cave, a spring surpassing in size any in the State, a natural bridge superior to the famous Virginia Natural Bridge. The ignorance of Missourians regarding the natural wonders of their own State is shown when reference is made to Hahatonka and other places of less attractiveness. The existence of these is scarcely known, and yet Missourians will wander off to the distant sections of the country to see caves, waterfalls, lakes and mountains far inferior in beauty. The Garden of the Gods is far-famed. It is surpassed by the Hahatonka regions. The Cave of the Winds is not the same high class as the Bridal Cave. Some patriotic Mis- sourian should get up an expedition to explore Missouri. It would be a fine contribution to knowledge and understanding of the State and its greatness. Within the borders of the dozen counties lying in the south central portion of the State between the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway and the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad may be found territory that would require months to investigate and explore."
There is wide difference in human interest about caves. Walter Williams told of traveling through Missouri with a college professor whose lack of enthu- siasm for underground exploration was summed up in, "All caves look alike. They are damp, muggy, smell of malaria. Bats live in them, and they taste of the flood. To see one cave is to see them all."
On the other hand, Henry Robbins, the editor, said of the late Bishop MeIn- tyre, the educated and eloquent bricklayer: "His lecture on 'Wyandotte Cave' has probably never been surpassed in spoken English as a sustained effort. Ingersoll, who surpassed him in delivery, gave brief descriptions of superior polish, but McIntyre's lecture of two hours in length was entirely descriptive. The only criticism was that its very brilliancy palled. Like Bulwer-Lytton, he kept continually on the mountain-top without the relief of valleys. When the bishop was in St. Louis the writer told him of a traveling man who had been so charmed with the McIntyre description of Wyandotte Cave that he had, at considerable expense, made a special visit to the cave itself. His conclusion was: 'That man McIntyre is the biggest liar in America.'"
Warren County's Cave.
The main street along which the pretty town of Warrenton stretches for a mile and a half is known to this day as the Boone's Lick road. It was laid out and traveled in the pioneer's lifetime. Boone chose his last home well. Warren combines some of the most fertile slopes and valleys of Missouri, with some of the boldest and roughest gorges and bluffs. The combination is an unusual one. Here was a natural game preserve. The county has a number of large caves. Three miles from Holstein is one of the most notable. John Wyatt was out hunting bear and he followed one to the top of a high hill. Bruin dropped out of sight by a hole in the ground just about large enough to let him through. This was the discovery. This cave has been explored many times, but still contains an unsolved problem. One can travel for long distances underground. There are chambers 30 or 40 feet across. Skeletons show that great numbers of wild animals hibernated in these chambers. One passage leads to a chamber from which the stoutest hearted shrink. It is bottomless. Large stones dropped over
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the edge give back no sound. The strongest torches thrown into the abyss go sailing down, the light growing fainter and fainter until it fades entirely away. The longest line let down fails to measure the depth. Not far distant from this cave is a high, rocky hill on the farm of Rudolph Kierker, where strange phenom- ena are observed. Every year, during the month of May, peculiar rumbling noises can be heard, seeming to come from the interior of this hill. At the same time one standing on the hill can feel beneath him a jarring motion. The oldest inhabitant does not remember the time when the haunted hill did not behave in this inexplicable manner during the month of May. In the vicinity of the cave and the animated hill have been found an extraordinary number of petrifactions. John Northcutt's farm, near Charette Creek, has a pond 60 feet across, the bottom of which no sinker has ever been able to reach. What the connections are between all of these mysteries of nature, the wise men of the Central Wesleyan College have never been able to explain.
Greer Spring Canyon.
Greer Spring is seven miles north of Alton, the capital of Oregon County. With its surroundings it might well become a state park, reserved for the delight of future generations of Missourians. A great volume of crystal clear water comes roaring from the base of two hills. It flows rapidly over a mossy bed between the hills for a distance of about a mile and joins Elevenpoints River. All who have seen Greer Spring have been of one mind in giving it a conspicuous place among the wonders of the Ozarks. After she had visited this wonder Luella Agnes Owen, the author, wrote: "Taking a last look at Greer Spring with its cave river, grey walls, gay with foliage, and all the harmony of color and form combined in the narrow canyon that was once the main body of a great cave, I recalled views on the Hudson River and in the mountains of Mary- land, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and others out in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and the Wausatch in Utah, but amid all their wonderful grandeur and famous beauty, could remember no spot superior to this masterpiece of the Ozarks."
Old Monegaw's Mausoleum.
Without war but very reluctantly the Osages gave up their Missouri homes. There is no part of the Ozark country more picturesque than that through which the Osage makes its course of innumerable windings. In St. Clair County great cliffs frown upon the beautiful river from the mouth of the Little Monegaw to that of the Big Monegaw. These cliffs are hundreds of feet high and several miles in length. They abound in caves. In places the summits of the cliffs overhang. The entrances of the caves are in some cases reached by difficult climbing. Here the Osages had natural fortresses. Monegaw was their chief. In a nation of red athletes of more than usual size, he is said to have been distin- guished for his physical appearance. He was an Indian of great strength. He saw the white settlers coming in great numbers, and decided that migration to the promised reservation in the Indian Territory was best for his people. But he couldn't persuade himself to go with them. Calling the head men of the nation to a council in one of the largest of the caves, the chief said to them: "Go! But Monegaw is your chief no longer. My hunting ground has been
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taken from me. My home on the Osage and the Sac is now in the hands of the white men. That which has been my home shall be my burial place. I will leave here only to go to the happy hunting ground beyond the skies."
Monegaw remained in the cave. His people left him. After a time he was missed. White men found his body and gave it burial with the weapons and war bonnet beside him. The old chief had starved himself to death. In several of these caves are still to be seen the evidences of the Indian occupancy. On the side of one cave are carved the figures of three braves with their war trappings. Seemingly the braves are walking single file on the warpath. Turtles have been carved as if swimming in the river. Indians engaged in a variety of activities are carved on the walls. Some are leading ponies. Others are swimming. Still others with bows and arrows are apparently out on hunting expeditions. One of the life-like representations is that of an Indian sleeping in a blanket. The cave to which the name of Monegaw is especially given has been explored nearly a mile. It has a ceiling in places forty feet high adorned with crystal forma- tions.
Cave Waters.
Fishing Spring is in Crawford County, near Steelville. It comes from a large cave on the Meramec River. The water boils up in a basin fifteen or twenty feet across. It rises through three holes in the rock bottom in a modified geyser form. The spring, for a great many years, abounded in fish of the perch species. The method of fishing was to drop the line with heavy sinkers through one of the holes in the bottom of the spring. These openings are only three or four inches across. It was necessary to weight the line sufficiently to sink the hook eight or nine feet into a subterranean lake. At times not a single fish would bite. At other times fish were caught by the hundreds. These perch weighed about half a pound each. It is tradition that tons of them have been caught and carried away. The theory is that a very large underground lake is beneath the adjacent bluff.
In Webster County the Ozarks reach extraordinary altitude. In a depres- sion on top of one of the highest ridges is a body of water known as the Devil's Lake. The water is located in what was called the Devil's Den. The den is oblong, the sides enclose nearly an acre. The den has steep sides, but can be entered by a narrow passage in the rock. At one end of the den is the so-called lake. Strange stories are told about the movement of the water level. Rains or water levels in the vicinity seem to have no effect upon the lake and yet there is a difference in the level of thirty feet between what are "low water" and "high water" by those familiar with the place. The lake is about three hundred feet in diameter. Apparently it has some distant underground connection. The water will rise to within fifty feet of the top and then sink to a depth of eighty feet. These changes take place, according to those who have lived in the neighborhood, with the rise and fall of the Upper Missouri in Montana. Many years ago there was an oak tree leaning over the lake. It was cut at a time when the water was low and fell nearly one hundred feet before it struck water. It passed below the surface and never came up. Several engineers state that the level of this lake is higher than most parts of the Ozarks and that the underground supply of water must come from great distance. One of the stories told of the Devil's Lake is
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that two or three cedar logs appeared upon the surface. They were larger than any cedar trees which grow within a hundred miles.
Senator Vest had an experience with the mysteries of the Ozarks. He had heard of the Roubideau River. "Old man Haskell" was a well-known Ozark guide in his day. The Senator engaged Haskell. They took the Roubideau about twenty miles above Waynesville, the county seat of Pulaski. After several days of interesting experiences the Senator asked Haskell if they could not make the run down to the Gasconade. "I reckon we kin, sure enough, by sundown," the guide said. The Senator and the guide, after two hours' floating and pulling found themselves in a strong eddy which nearly upset the little boat and which finally landed them on a bar. There was the end of the river. The Senator appealed to Haskell. "What have you got to say about this? You are the guide. You said you knew all about this country and especially this river. Now where has it gone?" Haskell got out on the bar, put his hand over his eyes and looked up the stream and then looked down where the stream should have gone but where there was only dry ground. There was a road within a short distance and when Haskell saw a farmer coming up he shouted: "O mister, did yer see a river running anywhar down that way? I'll be danged if we hain't lost one." The farmer looked pleased as he took in the situation and answered, "About five miles down the road. Reckon you'uns want a lift. I'll take ye an' yer traps fur $3. Better look out; you'uns may get sucked under whar ye air now."
"What do you mean ?" shouted Senator Vest.
The farmer replied, "That river don't go no further on top until you get below here five miles. It jist slips inter the gravel whar you are and don't show up till ye git ter Waynesville."
The Senator, the guide and the farmer lifted the boat into the wagon and rode to the vicinity of Waynesville, where the Roubideau makes its appearance, coming to the surface in the form of a splendid spring.
Lost rivers in Missouri are innumerable. In fact, the stream which does not lose itself several times before it concludes to run along on top of ground in an orderly fashion is an exception. A ride of half a day along some of the Ozark valleys will furnish repeated illustrations of the peculiar character of the chan- nels. A creek running half way to the wagon hubs will be in sight for a mile or two. Then will come a crossing where the channel is a bed of gravel, dry and dusty, without water in sight above or below. A mile farther on the creek is pursuing its joyous, rippling way. Stretches of dry bed and of dancing water alternate. The water sinks noiselessly and entirely into a bed of sand at one place and appears without any fuss oozing up from another bed farther down.
There are few of the caves of considerable size which do not have their "lost rivers." Through them flow streams of considerable volume. The lost river comes out of one side, crosses the cave and disappears in the other side. Often there is not a sound, not as much as a ripple. Of all the strange thrills which come in an exploration of these underground passages there is nothing quite so weird as when the torch casts its light upon one of these silent rivers flowing by with nothing to show whence it came or whither it goeth.
The Hannibal Mystery.
"Mark Twain's Cave" is in the Missouri cliffs overlooking the Mississippi about a mile southeast of Hannibal. Since "Sam" Clemens crawled into the
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crevice high up the bluff and had the adventures to be utilized later in his books, the cave has been modernized. A beautiful river road passes the park which surrounds the entrance now used. The hole through which Mark Twain crawled is boarded up. It was above the present entrance. The visitor now walks into a broad level corridor. The guide leads the way, pointing out such localities as "Straddle Alley," "Fat Man's Misery" and "Bat Alley." There is enough hard going, as the cave is explored to satisfy the adventurous. There are passages leading downward to levels below the Mississippi River.
Dr. Joseph N. McDowell, a famous but eccentric surgeon, founder of McDow- ell's College at St. Louis, gave the Hannibal cave a mystery some years before the Civil war. He had very strange ideas about the disposition of the dead. When Dr. McDowell thought he was going to die, he called to his bedside Dr. Charles W. Stevens and Dr. Drake McDowell, his son. He exacted from them a solemn promise that they would place his body in a copper receptacle and fill the space with alcohol. The receptacle they were to suspend in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Permission to do this the doctor claimed he had already obtained. This eccentric demand was not a great surprise to Dr. Stevens. Com- ing to McDowell's College to study medicine, Stevens had learned quickly some- thing of his preceptor's strange fancies. A child of Dr. McDowell died a few days after Stevens entered the college. The coffin was lined with metal. The body was placed in the coffin. All space remaining was filled with alcohol and the coffin was sealed tightly. A year or so later the body of the child was removed from the coffin and placed in a large copper case. . This was Dr. McDowell's method of treating the bodies of his children. No religious service of any kind was performed. The copper cases were carried at night attended by a procession formed by the medical students and friends of the family. Each person carried a torch. The place of disposition was a vault in the rear of the residence. The thought of a natural cave as a final resting place was a favorite one. Dr. McDow- ell bought the cave near Hannibal. He had a wall built across the opening and placed in it an iron door. The vase or case containing one of the children was taken from St. Louis to this cave and suspended from the roof. Only ordinary local interest had been felt in the cave up to that time. But when Dr. McDowell barred entrance everybody wanted to know what was inside. Boys found crev- ices and crawled in. They gave such accounts of their discovery that an investi- gation seemed to be justified. Men broke down the iron door. The curious public visited the place. In the effort to find a plausible explanation for this use of the cave the theory was advanced that the surgeon wanted to see if the cave would bring about petrifaction. Whatever had been his purpose, Dr. McDowell removed the body of the child. He bought a mound across the river in the American Bottom, not far from Cahokia, in view with a spyglass from the cupola of the college. There he constructed a vault in which he placed the body of his wife. Years afterwards Dr. McDowell and his wife were buried in Bellefontaine.
Caves in Endless Variety.
Labaddie's Cave in Franklin County obtained its name from a hunting tragedy. A man named Labaddie with his boy about twelve years old followed a bear which had been wounded to the mouth of the cave. Labaddie crawled in, think- Vol. 1 -13
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ing that the wound was mortal. The boy waited some hours. The father did not come back and the boy returned to St. Louis. A rescuing party went out to the cave, which is near Labaddie Station, on the Rock Island road. The search was fruitless. Many years afterwards the cave was examined and the skeletons of the hunter and the bear were found side by side. Fisher's Cave, in Franklin County, is near the station of Stanton on the Frisco. It is a spacious opening in the bluffs on the Meramec. A long passage leads to a chamber one hundred feet in diameter with stalactites and stalagmites of beautiful dark colors. In another room one of the stalactites has grown until it has met a stalagmite, the two forming a great column seeming to support the roof. A mile from the entrance is the "dripping spring" where the water continually falls from the roof into a large pool. Below Fisher's Cave is Saltpeter Cave, where gunpowder was made in the early days. Garrett Cave is near Sullivan. Persimmon Gap is a hole ten or fifteen feet wide passing through a spur of the Ozarks about three miles south of Stanton. This hole or tongue is one of the strange freaks in Franklin County. It is located west of Detmold. At the bottom of a depression is an opening in the rock fourteen inches wide and four feet long. Descending through this hole the explorer finds the well widening to ten or twelve feet square. About eighty feet down the water of a large underground lake is reached.
Perry County has so many caves that it was described by an early traveler as having "a little subterranean world, full of rippling rills, vaulted streets, palatial caverns and grottoes, filled with monuments of stalagmites, and festooned with stalactites." One Perry County cave has been penetrated four miles. Stone County abounds in caves, more than twenty-five having been explored. Mason's Cave, in Greene County, was first known as the Cave of Adullam. Knox Cave, in Greene County, was discovered in 1866 by J. G. Knox and given his name. Alum Cave, in Washington County, was given its name at the time alum was mined there.
In Shannon County is Sinking Creek. It passes for a distance of one mile through a hill six hundred feet high. Boats can navigate through the hill. Oregon County has a depression one hundred and fifty feet below the surrounding country. It is called Grand Gulf. The cascade on the border of the Arcadia Valley drops from the top of Cascade Mountain a distance of two hundred feet into a gorge. Ste. Genevieve County has a cave in which there are apparently drawn on the limestone pictures of birds. Simm's Hole is near the town of Ste. Genevieve. In it is the mouth of Dead Men's Cave, eight feet high. There are passages in the cave several miles long. Ha-Ha-Tonka Natural Park on the Big Niangua River, in Camden County, includes among its wonders a bottomless pit and cave within which is a large lake having an island, a natural bridge, an amphitheater, a large spring of cold water which discharges into a lake abounding in trout.
CHAPTER XI. SOME EXTRAORDINARY ASSETS.
Iron Mountain-James Harrison's Start-The Gift to Joseph Pratte-Valley Forge-Plank Road and Toll Gate Days-A Five Dollar Bill in Every Ton-From Mountain to Crater -Cleaning the Ore-One of the World's Wonders-Scientific Speculation-Little Moun- tain-The Iron Industry of St. Louis-Pilot Knob-Surface Deposits Exhausted-Ore Banks of Crawford County-Model Management of the Midland-Governor McClurg's Venture-Taney County's Iron Mountain-The Twelve Minerals of Mine La Motte -- Copper Smelting in Franklin-Theory About Gossan-Prodigious Banks of Coul- Geology Confounded in Morgan-Shale-Made Brick-Missouri Manganese in Demand -Cantwell's Forecast-From Riverside to Doe Run-Evolution of the Yellow Cotton- wood-Senator Rozier's Protest-De Soto's Search for Silver in the Ozarks-Later Came Antonio and then Renault-The Mississippi Bubble and Missouri Silver-Tradi- tions of Hidden Mines-An Ounce of Silver to a Ton of Lead-Schoolcraft's Explora- tion-The Deceptive White Metal-"Flickers"-Geology Against the Precious Metals- A Scientific Investigation-The Second Cornwall-Tin Mountain's Collapse-"Silver Mountain"-Madison County Discoveries-The Garrison Cave.
It is about a mile broad at the base, four hundred feet high and three miles long, and has the appearance of being composed of masses of iron ore. It is literally a mountain of ore, so pure that it yields from seventy to eighty per cent under the ordinary process of converting it into malleable iron. At the base the ore lies in pieces from a pound weight upward, which increase in size as you ascend, until they assume the appearance of buge rocks, which would remind the beholder of those "fragments of an earlier world" of which the Titans made use. Six miles southeast is another mountain called Pilot Knob, composed of a micaceous oxide of iron lying in buge masses. This ore will yield about eighty per cent of metal .- St. Louis Newspaper Description of Iron Mountain in 1843.
The pioneer of the Iron Mountain enterprise was James Harrison, who built the Laclede rolling mill. A picture of this first president of the company shows the bulging perceptive faculties and the square, massive jaw-a face a little more rugged, but otherwise wonderfully like that of his son, Edwin Harrison. This elder Harrison was the master of his own fortune. He told of having split rails in Howard County to get a start. Later he traveled the Santa Fe trail, first for the Glasgows, then for himself, with wagon trains. In 1840 he was a man of means and had won the confidence of capital. In some way his attention was called to Iron Mountain, then a natural wonder and nothing more. It was the smallest of a large group of hills. Trees grew to the summit. Chunks of iron ore were scattered over the crest, but mixed in with them was enough strong red clay to give the cedars and scrub oaks their rooting. The presence of ore had been known many years. But the enterprise for development had been lacking. Nobody knew whether this collection of ore chunks, ranging in size from a pea to a peck measure and larger, was four or forty or 400 feet thick.
Away back about the beginning of the century the Spanish government con- veyed the mountain to Joseph Pratte. The grant covered a tract five miles square, with the mountain in about the center. Pratte was a man of great influ- ence in Southeast Missouri, or, as it was then, Upper Louisiana. He had made
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himself especially useful to the government in adjusting Indian troubles. There was no man in all those parts who could go out and pacify the redskins as Pratte could. He was frequently in demand to act as an arbitrator in the differences which arose between the settlers and the Indians. One of the largest of the Indian towns in that part of the country was at the base of Iron Mountain; and it is probable that Pratte gained his knowledge of the mountain from the visits he made to this town on his peace errands. However that may be, when the governor of Upper Louisiana suggested to Mr. Pratte that his services entitled him to recognition and asked him what he should recommend to the government as a suitable honorarium, the peacemaker said he would take this mountain. In due time there came a patent making the grant of five miles square, including the mountain and the site of the Indian town.
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