TEN INDIANA CAVES. lof> 



as one and a quarter miles, and this is probably not 

 far from correct. The rough character of the passage, 

 the many steep ascents and corresponding declivities, 

 added to the oppressive silence, cause persons unac- 

 customed to subterranean travels to think the distance 

 much greater than it really is. 



THE NEW CAVE. 



In 1850 a party from Fredonia, Indiana, observed 

 that a current of air was passing from beneath a large, 

 loosely placed, flat rock at the inner end of Banditti 

 Hall, about 1,000 feet from the entrance of the cave. 

 They succeeded in prying the rock loose and found a 

 narrow descending passage, since known as the " Scut- 

 tle" or "Fat Man's Misery." This they entered and 

 passed through, and for the first time white men stood 

 in the "New Cave." The ceiling of the first room 

 entered, which is called "Bat's Lodge," was then black 

 with smoke.- Fragments of charred hickory bark 

 strewed the floor, while moccasin tracks, now entirely 

 obliterated, were plentiful. Hundreds of poles of 

 sassafras, papaw, lin, and other soft woods were 

 found both in this room and in that 

 portion of Rothrock's Straits nearest 

 the New Cave. None of these poles 

 had been cut with a sharp instrument, but all had 

 been twisted from the parent stem or hacked there- 

 from with dull stone axes. On the left side of the 

 room was found a sloping bank of earth and sand in 

 which bark, sticks, leaves and bunches of twisted 

 grass were plentiful. Digging into this bank in 



