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cavern, and not from the part beyond the water, so that I should not sur pose the passage extended much farther than could be traced with the eye. The walls of this passage consist of a solid rock of limestone on each side, which appears to have been separated by some convulsion. The floor is of a deep sandy earth, and it has repeatedly been dug up for the purpose of getting salt-petre, with which the earth is strongly impregnated. The earth, after being dug up, is mixed with water, and when the grosser particles fall to the bottom, the water is drawn off and evaporated; from the residue the salt-petre is procured. There are many other caverns in this neighborhood; and also farther to the westward in Virginia; from all of them great quantities of salt-petre are thus obtained. The gunpowder made with it, in the back country forms a principal article of commerce, and is sent to Philadel phia in exchange for European manufactures.

About two thirds of the way down this long passage just described, is a large aperture in the wall on the right, leading to another apartment, the bottom of which is about ten feet below the floor of the passage, and it is no easy matter to get down into it, as the sides are very steep and extremely slippery. This is the largest and most beautiful room in the whole cavern; it is somewhat of an oval form, about sixty feet in length, thirty in breadth, and in some parts nearly fifty feet high. The petrifactions formed by the water dropping from above are most beautiful, and hang down from the ceiling in the form of elegant drapery, the folds of which are similar to what those of large blankets or carpets would be, if suspended by one corner in a lofty room. If struck with a stick, a deep hollow sound is produced, which echoes through the vaults of the cavern.

'In other parts of this room the petrifactions have commenced at the bottom, and formed in pillars of different heights; some of them reach nearly to the roof. If you go to a remote part of this apartment, and leave a person with a lighted torch moving about amidst these pillars, a thousand imaginary forms present themselves, and you might almost fancy yourself in the infernal regions, with spectres and monsters on every side. The floor of this room slopes down gradually from one end to the other, and terminates in a pool of water, which appears to be on a level with that at the end of the long passage; from their situation, it is most probable that they communicate together. The thermometer which I had with me stood in the remotest part of this chamber, at fifty-five degrees. From hence we returned to the mouth of the cavern, and on coming to the light it appeared as if we had really been in the infernal regions, for our faces, hands, and clothes were covered with soot from the smoke of the pine torches which are so often carried in. The smoke from the pitch-pine is particularly thick and heavy. Before this cave was much visited, and the walls blackened with smoke, its beauty, I was told by some of the old inhabitants, was great indeed; for the petrifactions on the roof and walls are all of a dead white kind.'

Wyer's Cave is situated in the same county with the preceding, and is equally remarkable. Its entrance is narrow and difficult, and when first discovered was impeded by perpendicular columns of stalactites, which have since been removed. After advancing at first in a horizontal course, we descend into an echoing cavern, by a ladder fifteen or twenty feet in length. Over our heads hang silvery white stalactites, while we are surrounded by pillars of stalagmites, and rugged walls incrusted with a beautiful brown

spar. The floor is composed of ledges of rocks, and presents rather an uneven pathway.

Advancing through a narrow passage in the rocks, we enter still other apartments, resembling the first in the beauty of their formations, but of different shape and extent. The sparry incrustations assume a thousand fantastic figures, sparkling with light, and more like the wonders of fairy land, than the original productions of nature. This cave is a mile and a half in extent, varying in perpendicular height from three to forty feet, and in breadth from two to thirty. Its dividing branches are numerous. Blue limestone is the base of the whole cave; every where covered with incrustations of carbonates. In some places the uneven sides of the rocks are quite covered with white crystals of the carbonate of lime, and appear like banks of salt. Sometimes the pavement sparkles as a floor of diamonds; and again the pathway is pebbled, and resembles the deserted bed of a river. It is impossible to convey any idea of the number and variety of shapes which the stalactites assume; resembling every thing in nature, and in the worlds of imagination, they are still unlike every thing but themselves.

The Nicojack Cave is situated in the Cherokee country, at Nicojack, the north-western angle in the map of Georgia. We believe it was first fully described by the Rev. E. Cornelius. It is twenty miles south-west of the Look-Out Mountain, and half a mile from the south bank of the Tennessee river. The Raccoon Mountain, in which it is situated, here fronts to the north-east. Immense layers of horizontal limestone form a precipice of considerable height. In this precipice the cave commences; not however with an opening of a few feet, as is common; but with a mouth fifty feet high, and one hundred and sixty wide. Its roof is formed by a solid and regular layer of limestone, having no support but the sides of the cave, and as level as the floor of a house. The entrance is partly obstructed by piles of fallen rocks, which appear to have been dislodged by some great convul sion. From its entrance, the cave consists chiefly of one grand excavation through the rocks, preserving for a great distance the same dimensions as at its mouth.

What is more remarkable than all, it forms for the whole distance it has yet been explored, a walled and vaulted passage for a stream of cool and limpid water, which, where it leaves the cave, is six feet deep and sixty feet wide. A few years since, Col. James Ore, of Tennessee, commencing early in the morning, followed the course of this creek in a canoe, for three miles. He then came to a fall of water, and was obliged to return, without making any further discovery. Whether he penetrated three miles of the cave or not, it is a fact he did not return till the evening, having been busily engaged in his subterranean voyage for twelve hours. He stated that the course of the cave, after proceeding some way to the south-west, became south; and south-east by south, the remaining distance.

There is a remarkable cave or grotto, situated on a bluff of limestone, on the south bank of the Holston river, in East Tennessee, which has been 'well described by Mr. Kain, in an article in Silliman's Journal. The bluff is perhaps one hundred feet high, and fifty wide. The grotto is a large natural excavation of the rock, sixty feet high and thirty feet wide. It is very irregular, and to the very top bears marks of the attrition of waves. The river to have been so high, must have covered the valley through

which it now winds its quiet way. The excavation gradually diminishes in size as you proceed backward, till one hundred feet from the entrance it terminates. A remarkable projection of the rock divides the back part into two stories.

This grotto, whose walls are hung with ivy, and the bluff crowned with Cedars, and surrounded by an aged forest, on which the vine clambers most luxuriantly, viewed from the river which winds slowly around it, and reflects its image, is more than beautiful: it is even venerable. But what renders it most interesting to many visitors, is a number of rude paintings, which were, as tradition reports, left on it by the Cherokee Indians. These Indians are known to have made this cave a resting place as they passed up and down the river Holston. These paintings are still distinct, though they have faded somewhat within my remembrance. They consist of representations of the sun and moon, of a man, of birds, fishes, &c. They are all of red paint, and resemble, in this respect, the paintings on Paint Rock, near the warm springs.

Mammoth Cave is situated near the Green river in Kentucky, the entrance to which is by a pit forty feet deep, and one hundred and twenty in circumference. At the bottom of this pit is the mouth of the cave, which is open to the north, and is from forty to fifty feet in heights and thirty in width, for upwards of forty rods, when it becomes not more than ten feet wide and five feet high. "However," says Dr. Wood, "this continues but a short distance, when it expands to thirty or forty feet in width, and is about twenty feet in height, for about one mile, until you come to the first hopper, where salt-petre is manufactured. Thence it is about forty feet in width, and eighty in height, till you arrive at the second hopper two miles from the mouth. The loose limestone has been laid up into handsome walls on either side, almost the whole distance from the entrance to the second hopper. The road is hard, and as smooth as a flag pavement. The walls of the cavern are perpendicular in every passage that I traversed; the arches are regular in every part, and have bid defiance even to earthquakes. As you advance into the cave, the avenue leads from the second hopper west one mile, then south-west to the chief city, which is six miles distant from the entrance. This avenue is from sixty to one hundred feet high, and about the same broad, the whole distance from the second hopper, until you come to the cross-roads or chief city; and is nearly upon a level, the floor or bottom being covered with loose limestone and salt-petre earth. When I reached the immense area, (chief city,) containing upward of eight acres, without a single pillar to support the arch, which is entire over the whole, I was struck dumb with astonishment, and can give but a very faint idea of its splendor. Nothing under heaven can be more sublime and grand than this place, covered with one solid arch, at least one hundred feet in height, and to all appearance entire. After entering the chief city, I perceived five avenues leading out of it, from sixty to one hundred feet in width, and from forty to eighty in height. The walls (all of stone) are arched, being from forty to eighty feet of perpendicular height, before the arch commences.

The next avenue which I traversed, after cutting arrows on the stones under our feet, pointing to the mouth of the cave, was one that led us in a southerly direction for more than two miles. We then left it, and took another that led us east, then north, more than two miles farther; and at

last, in our windings, were brought out by another avenue into the chief city again, after having traversed more than five miles through different avenues. We rested ourselves for a few minutes on some limestone strata near the centre of this gloomy area, and having refreshed ourselves, and trimmed our lamps, again took our departure through an avenue almost due north, and parallel with the avenue leading from the chief city to the mouth of the cave, which we continued for more than two miles, when we entered the second city. This is covered with one arch nearly two hundred feet high in the centre, and very similar to the chief city, except in the number of avenues leading from it, this having but two. We passed through it over a very considerable rise in the centre, and descended through an avenue bearing to the east about three hundred rods, when we came upon a third area, about one hundred feet square and fifty in height, which had a pure and delightful stream of water, issuing from the side of the wall, about thirty feet high, and which fell upon some broken stones, and was afterwards entirely lost to our view. After passing this beautiful sheet of water a few yards, we came to the end of this passage.

•We then returned about one hundred yards, and entered an avenue (over a considerable mass of stone) to our right, which led us south, through an uncommonly black avenue, something more than a mile, when we ascended a very steep eminence, about sixty yards, which carried us within the walls of a fourth city, which is not inferior to the second city, having an arch that covers at least six acres. In this last avenue, the farther end of which must be at least four miles from the chief city, and ten from the mouth of the cave, are twenty large piles of saltpetre earth on one side of the avenue, and broken limestone heaped up on the other, evidently the work of human hands. I had expected, from the course of my needle, that this avenue would have carried us round to the chief city; but was sadly disappointed, when I found the end a few hundred yards from the fourth city, which caused us to retrace our steps; and not having been so particular in marking the different entrances as I ought, we were very much bewildered, and once completely lost for fifteen or twenty minutes.

At length we found our way, and, weary and faint, entered the chief city at ten at night; however, much fatigued as I was, I determined to explore the cavern as long as my lights held out. We now entered the fifth and last avenue from the chief city, which carried us south-east about nine hundred yards, when we entered the fifth city, whose arch covers upwards of four acres of level ground, strewed with broken limestone. Fire beds of uncommon size, with brands of cane lying around them, are interspersed throughout this city. We crossed over to the opposite side, and entered an avenue that carried us east about two hundred and fifty rods; when, finding nothing remarkable in this passage, we turned back, and crossed a massy pile of limestone in the mouth of a large avenue, which I noticed but a few yards from this last-mentioned city as I came out of it. After some difficulty in passing over this mass of limestone, we entered a large avenue, whose walls were the most perfect of any that we had seen, running almost due south for five hundred rods, and very level and straight. When at the end of this avenue, and while I was sketching a plan of the cave, one of my guides, who had been some time groping among the broken stones, called out, requesting me to follow him. I gathered up my papers and compass, and also giving the guide who sat

with me orders to remain where he was, until we returned, and moreover to keep his lamp in good order, I followed after the first, who had entered a vertical passage just large enough to admit his body. We continued to step from one stone to another, until at last, after much difficulty, from the smallness of the passage, which is about forty feet in height, we entered upon the side of a chamber eighteen hundred feet in circumference, and whose arch is one hundred and fifty feet high in the centre. After having marked arrows, pointing downwards, upon the slate-stones around the little passage through which we had winded, we walked nearly to the centre of this area. It was past midnight when I entered this chamber of eternal darkness, where "all things are hushed, and nature's self lies dead." I must acknowledge I felt a shivering horror at my situation, when I looked back upon the different avenues through which I had passed, since I entered the cave at eight in the morning; and "at time of night, when church-yards groan," to be buried several miles in the dark recesses of this awful cavern, the grave, perhaps, of thousands of human beings-gave me no very pleasant emotions. With the guide who was now with me, I took the only avenue leading from this chamber, and traversed it for the distance of a mile in a northerly direction, when my lamps forbade me going any farther, as they were nearly exhausted. The avenue, or passage, was as large as any that we had entered; and how far we might have entered, had our lights held out, is unknown.

'It is supposed that Green river, a stream navigable several hundred miles, passes over three branches of this cave. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning, when we descended the passage of the chimney, as it is called, to the guide who sat on the rocks. He was quite alarmed at our long absence, and was heard by us a long time before we reached the passage to descend to him, hallooing with all his might, fearing we had lost our track in the ruins above. Very near the vertical passage, and not far from where I had left my guide sitting, I found some very beautiful specimens of soda, which I brought out with me. We returned over piles of saltpetre earth and fire beds, out of one avenue into another, until at last, with great fatigue and a dim light, we entered the walls of the chief city; where, for the last time, we trimmed our lamps, and entered the spa cious avenue that leads to the second hopper. I found, when in the last mentioned large avenue, or upper chamber, many curiosities; such as Glauber salts, Epsom salts, flint, yellow ochre, spar of different kinds, and some petrifactions, which I brought out together with the mummy, which was found at the second hopper. We happily arrived at the mouth of the cave at five in the morning, nearly exhausted and worn down with nineteen nours' continued fatigue. I have described to you hardly one half of the cave, as the avenues between the mouth of the cave and the second hopper have not been named. There is a passage in the main avenue, about sixty rods from the entrance, like that of a trap-door. By sliding aside a large flat stone, you can descend sixteen or eighteen feet into a very narcow defile, where the passage comes upon a level, and winds about in such a manner as to pass under the main passage, without having any communication with it; and at last opens into the large passages, just beyond the second hopper. It is called the Glauber salt room, from salts of that kind being found there. There is also the sick room, the bat room, and the flint room, all of which are large, and some of them quite long