250 IN MAMMOTH CAVE 



light of your lamp as in a huge wood at night; 

 when the guide lights up the more interesting 

 portions with his torches and colored lights, the 

 effect is weird and spectral; it seems like a 

 dream; it is an unfamiliar world; you hardly 

 know whether this is the emotion of grandeur 

 which you experience, or of mere strangeness. 

 If you could have the light of day in there, 

 you would come to your senses, and could test 

 the reality of your impressions. At the en- 

 trance you have the light of day, and you look 

 fairly in the face of this underground monster, 

 yea, into his open mouth, which has a span of 

 fifty feet or more, and down into his contracting 

 throat, where a man can barely stand upright, 

 and where the light fades and darkness begins. 

 As you come down the hill through the woods 

 from the hotel, you see no sign of the cave till 

 you emerge into a small opening where the 

 grass grows and the sunshine falls, when you 

 turn slightly to the right, and there at your feet 

 yawns this terrible pit; and you feel indeed as 

 if the mountain had opened its mouth and was 

 lying in wait to swallow you down, as a whale 

 might swallow a shrimj). I never grew tired 

 of sitting or standing here by this entrance and 

 gazing into it. It had for me something of the 

 same fascination that the display of the huge 

 elemental forces of nature have, as seen in 

 thunder-storms, or in a roaring ocean surf. 

 Two phoebe-birds had their nests in little niches 

 of the rocks, and delicate ferns and wild-flowers 

 fringed the edges. 



