BLIND GUDGEONS OF THE MAMMOTH CAVE, 263 



XVL — THE BLIND GUDGEONS OF THE 

 MAMMOTH CAVES OF KENTUCKY. 



North America, a country where nature affects 

 proportions which belong not only to the sublime 

 but almost to the impossible, had no marvel more : 



extraordinary than the Falls of Niagara when, in 

 1840, certain miners, who were engaged in excava- 

 ting nitre from one of the numerous caves in the 

 State of Kentucky, found themselves wandering j 



about among their inexplorable sinuosities, and were j 



shut up there for seventy hours without being able 

 to find their way out. These were the daring ex- 

 plorers who discovered the Mammoth Caves, and it j 

 is in the Mammoth Caves that the blind gudgeons — ' 

 are found. 



I first heard of these fish from three of the most 

 charming ladies of Lexington, who proposed to con- 

 duct me on an excursion to the Mammoth Caves. I 

 Mr. Rush (the husband of one of them) arranged all 1 

 the details of the party and superintended the pre- 

 parations, and next morning at day-break we started i 

 from E-ush's Bee-Hive (as he called his country- 

 house), and soon found ourselves skirting the base 1 ' 

 of the Cumberland Mountains and the sinuous banks ' 

 of Green River, until we came to the opening of the : 



