1897.] THE FOSSIL SLOTH AT IHG BONE CAVE, TENN. ^1 



was only found after turning to the right from the main tunnel 

 and following a small bifurcating passage for 900 feet. 



As we groped onward, the cave became dry, and the candles re- 

 vealed a line of clay stains waist high upon the narrow walls, mark- 

 ing the limit of nitrous earth previously excavated along the entire 

 length of the gallery. Without the superfluous assertions of our 

 guide, James Priest, and the land owner, Mr. G. B. Johnson, we 

 might have inferred that we had entered one of the numerous 

 Appalachian caves, where the floor accumulations, because they 

 contained saltpetre, had been removed by gunpowder makers at 

 times of need in the wars of 1776, 1812 or 1863.^ 



Laden with pickaxe and shovels, baskets, instruments, candles 

 and provisions, now crouching where the roof lowered, now clam- 

 bering upon a log across an intersecting crevice, eight or nine feet 

 deep, we followed the lead of Priest, until directly on the footway 

 a spot was reached where, in the utter darkness, beyond the range 

 of the continued baitings of men, and probably of large animals, 

 at a point where no human culture layer, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, could have been formed, these remarkable bones of the 

 sloth and all other sloth bones, known to have been previously 

 removed from the cave, were found. Elsewhere the evidence of 

 the relation of animals and men to the cavern, whatever its charac- 

 ter, had been destroyed. 



1 Judging by the wall stains, from one to three feet of this floor earth had been 

 removed throughout the nine hundred feet of the passage observed, and the large 

 pile of leached earth, just under the entering arch of the cave, the still greater ram- 

 part outside and several similar heaps at other points in the neighborhood, where 

 water for leaching was convenient, testified that the numerous " petre diggers " of the 

 war of 1812 (about three hundred in number, said Mr. Johnson) and their successors 

 of the Rebellion, had done a formidable amount of work underground. Many 

 thDusands of sacks, full of the pungent earth, had been carried upon their backs by 

 way of devious passages, with many tedious twists and leanings, crawls and squirms 

 from the eternal darkness to daylight. To leach the earth you place it (according to 

 Mr. Johnson) in a wooden funnel-shaped hopper, with a drip orifice at the bottom. 

 After pouring on water, an equal mass of which the dry earth absorbs, the hopper at 

 length begms to drip and continues to drain off a pungent liquid caught in a vat. 

 Having " seeped " for several days, the drops loose their taste, proving that the earth 

 has lost its strength, or is, in other words, leached. Then the treatment of the liquor 

 begins. This is poured through a similar hopper full of wood ashes and drips not, as 

 before, clear, but now darkened with impregnated lye. Boiled down after this to half 

 its volume in kettles, the liquor thickens, and, when allowed to cool, at once hardens 

 throughout suddenly into beautiful cyrstals of pure saltpetre, when it is ready for 

 sale. Such is the process familiar to the memory of many of the wild-looking moun- 

 tain men, whose subterranean labor, unfortunately for archneology, has destroyed the 

 interesting evidence once furnished by many of the care floors in eastern Tennessee. 



