Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 | Page 5

narrow passage that succeeds it, should
be considered the mere gate-way and covered approach. It is a basilica
of an oval figure--two-hundred feet in length by one-hundred and fifty
wide, with a roof which is as flat and level as if finished by the trowel
of the plasterer, of fifty or sixty or even more feet in height. Two
passages, each a hundred feet in width, open into it at its opposite
extremities, but at right angles to each other; and as they preserve a
straight course for five or six-hundred feet, with the same flat roof
common to each, the appearance to the eye, is that of a vast hall in the
shape of the letter L expanded at the angle, both branches being
five-hundred feet long by one-hundred wide. The passage to the right
hand is the "Great Bat Room;" (Audubon Avenue.) That in the front,
the beginning of the Grand Gallery, or the Main Cavern itself. The
whole of this prodigious space is covered by a single rock, in which the
eye can detect no break or interruption, save at its borders, where is a
broad, sweeping cornice, traced in horizontal panel-work, exceedingly
noble and regular; and not a single pier or pillar of any kind contributes
to support it. It needs no support. It is like the arched and ponderous
roof of the poet's mausoleum:
"By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable."

The floor is very irregularly broken, consisting of vast heaps of the
nitrous earth, and of the ruins of the hoppers or vats, composed of
heavy planking, in which the miners were accustomed to leach it. The
hall was, in fact, one of their chief factory rooms. Before their day, it
was a cemetery; and here they disinterred many a mouldering skeleton,
belonging it seems, to that gigantic eight or nine feet race of men of
past days, whose jaw-bones so many vivacious persons have clapped
over their own, like horse-collars, without laying by a single one to
convince the soul of scepticism.
Such is the vestibule of the Mammoth Cave,--a hall which hundreds of
visitors have passed through without being conscious of its existence.
The path, leading into the Grand Gallery, hugs the wall on the left hand;
and is, besides, in a hollow, flanked on the right hand by lofty mounds
of earth, which the visitor, if he looks at them at all, which he will
scarcely do, at so early a period after entering, will readily suppose to
be the opposite walls. Those who enter the Great Bat Room, (Audubon
Avenue,) into which flying visitors are seldom conducted, will indeed
have some faint suspicion, for a moment, that they are passing through
infinite space; but the walls of the Cave being so dark as to reflect not
one single ray of light from the dim torches, and a greater number of
them being necessary to disperse the gloom than are usually employed,
they will still remain in ignorance of the grandeur around them.
Such is the vestibule of the Mammoth Cave, as described by the
ingenious author of "Calavar," "Peter Pilgrim," &c.
From the vestibule we entered Audubon Avenue, which is more than a
mile long, fifty or sixty feet wide and as many high. The roof or ceiling
exhibits, as you walk along, the appearance of floating clouds--and
such is observable in many other parts of the Cave. Near the
termination of this avenue, a natural well, twenty-five feet deep, and
containing the purest water, has been recently discovered; it is
surrounded by stalagmite columns, extending from the floor to the roof,
upon the incrustations of which, when lights are suspended, the
reflection from the water below and the various objects above and
around, gives to the whole scene an appearance equally rare and

picturesque. This spot, however, being difficult of access, is but seldom
visited.
The Little Bat Room Cave--a branch of Audubon Avenue,--is on the
left as you advance, and not more than three-hundred yards from the
great vestibule. It is but little more than a quarter of a mile in length,
and is remarkable for its pit of two-hundred and eighty feet in depth;
and as being the hibernal resort of bats. Tens of thousands of them are
seen hanging from the walls, in apparently a torpid state, during the
winter, but no sooner does the spring open, than they disappear.
Returning from the Little Bat Room and Audubon Avenue, we pass
again through the vestibule, and enter the Main Cave or Grand Gallery.
This is a vast tunnel extending for miles, averaging throughout, fifty
feet in width by as many in height It is truly a noble subterranean
avenue; the largest of which man has any knowledge, and replete with
interest, from its varied characteristics and majestic