THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 5F 
career in exhibiting and explaining the curi- 
osities of the Cave, with which his name has 
become identified, to thousands of delighted 
visitors, departed this life about eleven years 
ago. . 
Alfred is also dead. “Old Mat,” as he is 
familiarly called, who has trodden the dark and 
mysterious paths of the Cave for more than. 
thirty years, still lives, and may be seen about 
the hotel, but is no longer on duty, yet he 
thinks he is quite as capable of exhibiting the 
Cave now as he ever was, and believes that he 
possesses more knowledge regarding it than any 
one else. 
From the hotel we passed down the deep 
ravine through the native forest, before men- 
tioned, along the rugged pathway. The pre- 
cipitous and rocky character of the path, 
however, was not particularly observed until 
our return at night. We then began to wonder 
if some freak of nature had not occurred in our 
absence to cause the picturesque and rather | 
easy-graded path of the morning to present a 
nearly perpendicular front, every small stone 
that lay in the way to attain the proportions of 
_ an insurmountable rock, and the fourth of a mile 
that we had passed so easily and so pleasantly 
