Mercer.] 4UU [Nov. 16, 



many places scattered the subterranean floors. I proved, by experiment 

 with fresli bark outside the cave, that three or four pieces a foot long, 

 pulled fresh from the tree and held together in the hand, will burn half 

 an hour, making an excellent torch, which consumes slowly or fast, 

 wanes to an ember or bursts into flame as you hold it up or down or 

 wave it.* 



Two-thirds of the Wyandotte cave had been unknown until 1850, 

 when Mr. Rothrock, suspecting a purpose in a wall-like arrangement 

 of stones at the corner of a large passage, removed them, and to his 

 surprise crawled into an ante-chamber, leading into the most spacious 

 and beautiful of the present galleries. The ceiling of this low room 

 then first seen was black with smoke, as it still is, and he described 

 poles, some specimens of which are yet to be found, which appear to 

 have been broken from the parent stem or cut by charring and with 

 stone tools, standing in rows against the wall. Then, as now, frag- 

 ments of charred hickory bark strewed the floor, while moccasin 

 tracks, now entirely obliterated, led away in many directions over 

 the soft dust. In one corner of the ante-chamber lay then and lies still 

 a heap of grass, sticks, bark, leaves and nuts, (a specimen of which 

 rubbish I show) covered with dust and evidently placed there by the 

 Indians. Digging in this for an hour, I found the little block of sta- 

 lagmite here shown, which specimen, I believe, the ancient quarrymen 

 had lost, and, for comparison with which, I have brought two other 

 pieces of stalagmite, partly worked and polished, found in one of 

 the clifl" dwellings of southern Colorado, one of which is almost the 

 duplicate of the interesting piece found in the Wyandotte ante-cham- 

 ber. We have thus a chain of evidence. First, to show the quarr}-- 

 ing of stalagmite in the cave ; second, to specify the kind of fragments 

 sometimes desired and carried away from the quarry, and third, to 

 show that similar fragments were polished and worked by other In- 

 dians at other places. 



To kindle the hickory bark torch, a good blaze was required, and I 

 infer that the pile of grass and sticks in the ante-chamber was the rem- 

 nant of a store of fuel resorted to when the torches waned or a relight 

 was needed. Not inconsiderable must have been the danger of a long 

 ramble in the cavern with its alleged twenty-three miles of galleries, 

 when provided only with these primitive lights ; and I can imagine 

 that a good many precautions were taken in the way of shouted signals, 

 of comrades left behind, and of watches kept over a sort of reserve fire 

 in the ante-chamber, when, ventui'ing their lives on the chance of a 

 rude fire brand that must never be allowed to go out, the Ked Men 

 quai'ried jasper and stalagmite in the Wyandotte cave. 



* I had found bundles of coarse grass tied with henequcn string used as torches bj' 

 Indians in the cave of Rancho Chak in Yucatan, and had seen Indians carrying blazing 

 torches of dry cactus stalks to light them in their search for water in the galleries ot 

 Loltuii, another cavern in the Sierra de Yucatan, near Tabi. 



