A Visit to the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky by John Wilson

The necessary alterations having been made in the costume of my two daughters, namely, the petticoats being shortened, and trousers being donned -- pants, I ought to have said, for trousers are never named here, and breeches are never made -- and caps being placed upon their craniums, a gentleman, who accompanied us from Nashville, and myself, having been provided with coats that had been coats once, and low-crowned soft hats, we set off for the cave. We were fortunate in getting the services of the favourite guide Stephen, to whom we had a letter from a lady in Nashville. He is an active, intelligent, attentive, capital fellow, and after walking some 200 yards through an avenue of shady trees, we found him near the entrance, with his lamps ready to light, his flask of oil on his back, and one basket of provisions. We descended by about thirty rude steps to the entrance, where our lamps being lighted, we bade farewell for a while to the light of day. In a very short time we come to a wall that had been built by the miners, and in which there is a door-way, inside of which we are fairly in the cave. The temperature of the cave is always at sixty, and when the temperature out of doors is higher, the air rushes out at this doorway, so as to blow out the lamps, if the command of the guide is not obeyed to keep your lamps before you. At first one cannot see very well -- the eyes are not yet accustomed to penetrate the darkness -- the lamps only tended to make the darkness more visible. By and by we get more used to it. The "Church," as it is called, is the first apartment where we make a halt. It is very large, with galleries round it, and a projection of rock at one side, called the pulpit. Being told by the guide to put our lights behind us, he set fire to a Bengal light, and then we were struck with wonder and awe at the splendour and the vastness of the rocky apartment. For size, Exeter Hall is nothing to it. During the season service is performed in it by some of the clergymen visitors, and the effect must be very sublime, to see each worshipper sitting with his lamp, listening to the Word, joining in prayer to the Lord of all, and singing his praises. Each person enters with his lamp, of course, but on coming to the church the lamps are all placed together, so as to make one general grand light.

The church is in the "Main Cave," which is five miles in extent, and as we move along we see the marks of the action of the water upon the rocks in every part. The average height is 50 feet, its width 100 feet; at one place, however, it is 340 feet wide. We leave the Main Cave, and enter the "Gothic Avenue," where the first apartment we come to is called the "Haunted Chamber," from two mummies having been found there by the miners in 1809. They were in a sitting position, and clothed with deer-skins. One of them is now in a museum in New York; the other was burned by the museum in Cincinnati taking fire. The friend who was with me being somewhat of a utility sort of a person, wishes everything to be made proper use of, and suggested that the cave would be a capital place for keeping meat, vegetables, &c., when he was told by Stephen, much to his satisfaction, that the hotel people used it for that purpose. We go along farther, and soon find ourselves in the "Register Room," which has, or rather had, a beautiful white ceiling, but it is now considerably defaced by many persons wishing to immortalise themselves by writing their names on the roof with the smoke of a candle. They must have had the candle attached to a pretty long pole, for the roof is high. I. B. of old England is one of the names; I suppose John Bull is meant. There is also a Mr John Smith -- it does not state where his locale is, but it is not unlikely that it was Mr Smith of the United States. After passing "Vulcan's Forge," so called from the stone resembling very much the refuse of a forge, we come to the "Gothic Chapel."