Hovey's Handbook of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky: A Practical Guide to the Regulation Routes — John Shaqi
Hovey's Handbook of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky: A Practical Guide to the Regulation RoutesHovey, Horace Carver
History
Hovey's Handbook of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky: A Practical Guide to the Regulation Routes
Hovey, Horace Carver
Mammoth Cave (Ky.)
Pompey Pillar is named for a negro miner, a raw hand, who in old times
trudged in here alone for “peter-dirt” and lost his way. He stumbled,
put out his lamp, and was in a frenzy. When at last he saw his
half-naked negro comrades approach, swinging their torches and shouting,
he took them for demons, and shouted lustily for mercy. It took no
little shaking and punching to convince him that he was yet alive and in
Mammoth Cave, instead of elsewhere.
It may tax the imagination to find the resemblance to an Elephant’s Head
in the stalactite so called; but once found the grotesque likeness is
vivid.
A curious legend told of the Gothic Chapel and its Bridal Altar is
verified. A Kentucky belle gave her heart to a gallant Southron. But her
mother, who opposed the match, made her swear never to marry any man on
the face of the earth. Shortly the lovers eloped and were hotly pursued;
but before they were caught they were married in this novel Gretna
Green. Taxed with her broken pledge, the bride replied: “Mother, dear,
it was not marrying any man ‘on the face of the earth’ to wed my own
true love in this underground chapel.”
[Illustration: Marriage in “Gothic Chapel”]
Few ladies fail to rest awhile in the Old Arm Chair, a stalagmite
naturally fitted as a seat. Jenny Lind sat here and sang one of her
sweet songs; and many a song has been sung here since. A slender
projection beyond it is called the Lover’s Leap, from whose point an
illumination shows a wild mass of rocks amid which runs a narrow path
styled the Elbow Crevice, whose walls are fantastically folded. We
escape from the ragged edge of what is known as Joseph’s Pit, and note
in passing the Devil’s Cooling Tub. Gatewood’s Dining-Table is a huge
flat rock directly under Napoleon’s Dome, from whose apex it fell.
Gratz Avenue, into which we enter, is not on the same Cave level as the
Gothic Avenue. Unless we take care we may walk directly into the
exquisitely clear waters of Lake Purity, a small mirror-like pool.
Beyond it we go, winding to and fro, till at the foot of a small cliff
we find the entrance to Annette’s Dome, one of the prettiest in all the
Cave. Shaler’s Brook spouts from the wall and runs merrily and musically
into a smaller room, whence it vanishes, falling by a leap of seventy
feet into Lee’s Cistern. In Gratz Avenue are found blind crustaceans,
crickets, and other forms of life described by Dr. Call.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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