The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and artAbbott, John Loraine
Science
The wonders of the world : $b a complete museum, descriptive and pictorial, of the wonderful phenomena and results of nature, science and art
Abbott, John Loraine
Curiosities and wonders
points of interest, until we came to a pure and beautiful body of water
called Lake Lethe, upon which we embarked in a small boat provided for
the purpose. We were now all on the look-out for the eyeless fish that
are found in the waters of the cave, and were so fortunate as to catch
in a small net, first, what was called a clawfish, having legs like a
lobster, but eyeless and apparently bloodless, being almost precisely
the color of potato sprouts that have grown in the spring in a dark
cellar. Afterward we caught a very small fish of the same color, and
having no eyes. Where the eyes should grow, the flesh was smooth and
just like the rest of the body. Whatever our doubts might have been
before, we here had ocular demonstration that the fish in these waters,
which are never illumined except by lamplight, are entirely without
sight.
“Leaving Lake Lethe, we entered a most grand and imposing avenue, with
lofty rocky walls towering about two hundred and fifty feet high, called
the Great Walk. This leads to the Echo River, one of the greatest of
these subterranean wonders. We sailed down this river a distance of
_three-quarters of a mile_, and such a sail! Where on the earth or under
the earth, could another such a sail be taken? The water was cold, clear
and pure, and in color remarkably like the Niagara, as it plunges over
the falls. At many places we could see the bottom, and in others it
seemed of very great depth. It flowed in placid stillness, unrippled by
a single breeze, between, above and beneath walls of massive and eternal
rock. Now the channel was deep, narrow and tortuous, and now it spread
out into a broad, pellucid stream. Now the massive ceiling above us was
high, and smooth, and beautifully arched; and now it was so rough,
broken and low, that we had to stoop as we sat in our boat, in order to
pass under it. We did not pass rapidly down this stream. None of us were
in a hurry. We seemed scarcely to belong to this driving, go-ahead
world. Now a shout echoed wildly and magnificently through the rocky
chambers; and now we sat entranced while one of our company, a splendid
musician, sang some beautiful song, never as beautiful as now, when it
echoed and reëchoed along these walls, and died away in the darkness
that our dim lamps could not penetrate. This river, too, is most
appropriately named. The echoes are most perfect and beautiful. We
experimented in a great variety of ways, singing alone and in concert,
shouting, whistling, clapping our hands, and finally, the whole company
sung Ortonville. But there was one thing more impressive than all these,
and that was silence! We sat in our boat as quietly as possible, no one
speaking or moving for some time; and the stillness and the darkness by
which we were surrounded, were solemn and awful beyond all description.
We were deep in the bowels of the earth, I know not how many feet below
its surface, but so low that no ray of light from the sun had ever
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