122 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



grew in length, the cave ever becoming shorter by the 

 continued falling of the roof. Both gorge and cave 

 are located about three miles south-east of Mitchell, 

 Lawrence county, in a region noted for the beauty of 

 its scenery. 



Three passages open directly into the mouth of the 

 cave. The right hand passage has the level of its 

 floor about five feet above that of the entrance, while 

 the opening on the left is 12 feet above the bed of the 

 stream and very difficult to enter without a ladder. 

 The middle passage extends straight back from the 

 common vestibule or main entry. The latter is 

 twenty-five feet long, twenty-one feet high and 

 eighteen feet wide, but at its farther end is reduced 

 to the narrow middle passage between great masses 

 of limestone. The water in this passage is waist deep 

 and explorations must be made by wading or in a 

 light canoe. One hundred feet within is a magnifi- 

 cent cascade, where the stream rushes and leaps down 

 a narrow passage with such violence that the noise is 

 plainly heard at the entrance. 



The right hand passage, for the first 100 feet, is 

 about ten feet high by fifteen wide, with a clay bot- 

 tom and a roof on a level with that of the vestibule. 

 It then expands into a large room, 230 feet long and 

 forty feet wide, which lies east and west at right 

 angles to the entering passage. This narrows at the 

 west end to twenty feet and at one point the outer air 

 flows in through a small opening in the roof. From 

 near the smaller end of the room a narrow passage 

 starts off to the southward and can be traveled for 

 200 feet, when it becomes too narrow for further 



