XIX. 



THE CAVERNS AT LDRAY AND AT PIKE'S PEAK. 



THAT the underlying limestones of Page County, Virginia, were pene- 

 trated by crevices, horizontal cracks, and some caverns of respectable 

 size, has long been known. The general valley of the Shenandoah is 

 here badly broken up. At Riverton two streams unite to form the main 

 river. Between them lies the Massanutton Mountain — an isolated range 

 parallel with the neighboring chain, and dividing their water-sheds. En- 

 closed by it and the Blue Ridge, and drained by the South Fork of the 

 Shenandoah, lies the Page Valley, with the small village of Luray, as 

 county-seat, in the centre, on the Shenandoah Valley Railroad. 



Page Valley is here several miles wide, and the surface is diversified 

 by an endless series of knolls, ridges, rocky outcroppings, and deeply em- 

 bedded streams. " The rocks throughout the whole of this region have 

 been much displaced, having been flexed into great folds, the direction 

 of which coincides with that of the Appalachian mountain -chain. In 

 fact these folds are a remnant of the results of that series of movements 

 in which the whole system primarily originated." Hidden in the woods 

 near the top of one of these hills, about a mile east of Luray, an old cave 

 has always been known to exist. Connected with it are traditions which 

 reach back to the Ruffners, the earliest settlers of the valley. Peter 

 Ruffner the First was a Hanoverian, who married the daughter of a 

 wealthy Pennsylvania farmer, and moved down into this wilderness, 

 where he possessed himself of a large tract of land and raised fifteen chil- 

 dren. His eldest son, Peter the Second, also got him a wife and fifteen 

 children, so that the colonization of the valley proceeded with great ra- 

 pidity. One of this first generation of Ruffners went out hunting one 

 day and did not come back. At the end of nearty a week's search his 

 gnn and powder-horn were found at the mouth of this cave, within which 

 the famished and nearly dead man was at last discovered. Of course 

 nothing less could- be done than to call it Ruffner's Cave, which is printed 

 on all the maps in attestation of the truth of this history. 



