Cave exploration is not what would be commonly regarded as a pleasant pastime. It requires a lissom body, plenty of physical strength, and a strong nerve to worm along narrow passages, without any certainty of being able to reach a turning-place, and with the risk of being so wedged in as to make retreat impossible. A stout heart is necessary to enable a man to descend to unknown depths of blackness from mouths of fearsome pits, close proximity to which makes one's flesh creep. A fracture of the rope or the falling of a piece of rock might give the explorer his quietus. A somewhat sensational illustration of this kind of peril is given in Griffin's "Studies in Literature." The eldest son of George D. Prentice, one of the sweet singers of the New World, determined to fathom the maelstrom of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. A long rope of great strength was procured, and with a heavy fragment of rock attached to it, like a stone at the end of a kellick rope, it was let down and swung about to clear the course of loose stones. "Then the young hero of the occasion, with several hats drawn over his head to protect it as far as possible against any masses falling from above, and with a light in his hand and the rope fastened around his body, took his place over the awful pit, and directed the half-dozen men, who held the end of the rope, to let him down into the Cimmerian gloom. Occasionally masses of earth and rock whizzed past, but none struck him. On his way, at a distance of 100 feet, the spray caused by a cataract which rushed from the side down the abyss nearly extinguished his light. One hundred and ninety feet down he stood on the bottom of the pit. Returning to the mouth of the cave the pull was an exceedingly severe one, and the rope, being ill-adjusted around his body, gave him the most excruciating pain. But soon his pain was forgotten in a new and dreadful peril. When he was 90 feet from the mouth of the pit and 100 from the bottom, swaying and swinging in mid air, he heard rapid and excited words of horror and alarm above, and soon learned that the rope by which he was upheld had taken fire from the friction of the timber over which it passed. Several moments of awful suspense to those above, and still more awful to him below, ensued. To them and to him a fatal and instant catastrophe seemed inevitable. But the fire was extinguished with a bottle of water belonging to himself, and then the party above, though almost exhausted by their labour, succeeded in drawing him to the top. He was as calm and self-possessed as upon his entrance into the pit; but all of his companions, overcome by fatigue, sank down upon the ground, and his friend, Professor Wright, from over-exertion and excitement, fainted, and remained for some time insensible. The young adventurer left his name carved in the depths of the maelstrom--the name of the first and only person that ever gazed upon its mysteries."