Mov. 2i, 1903.] 
Cave Exploration. 
Throughoiit my hunting ranges in the Ozarks, caves 
are so numerous that I often vary the routine of camp 
lite by exploring underground. The surface rock of this 
region is mostlj' a porous and easily soluble limestone, 
through which the rain water, acidulated by fallen 
leaves and other forest debris, sweeps downward and 
eats out subterranean channels. These channels are 
enlarged by erosion, and thus caverns are formed. A 
similar formation is common in western Virginia, Ken- 
tucky and the southern parts of Indiana and Illinois. 
This belt, continued beyond the Mississippi to the In- 
dian Territory, contains the largest and most beautiful 
caves known in our country. Few of the larger ones 
have been fully explored, and there are, no doubt, hun- 
dreds that no man has ever entered. 
It is rare sport to be a pathfinder in the weird realms 
of the underworld. Sluggish indeed is the pulse that 
does not leap at the thought of going where mortal 
has never been, and seeing what no other eye has seen. 
The spice of adventure, the thrill of exploration, the 
slightly heroic feeling that comes from risks coolly 
taken and difficulties overcome, the lure to go farther, 
farther, and the uncertainty of ever getting back again — 
these lend to the sport of cave hunting a peculiar fas- 
cination. Moreover, it takes no long and expensive 
journey to reach your land of mystery, and you can go 
at any season of the year. 
In exploring a cave that has not previously been en- 
tered, the party should be small. Three men are 
enough, and four should be the limit. A larger party 
confuses everyone by its reverberating babble, it 
moves too slowly, and there is the greater chance that 
someone will stray or flunk. Let it be understood that 
this first trip is for the purpose of exploring and noth- 
uig else. Choose a leader, and obey him like a soldier. 
The cave will probably be a labyrinth, both vertically 
and laterally; so you cannot afford to straggle away 
from each other. If one of the party gets into trouble, 
you should be on hand to help him. 
Wear old clothes, of course; for you will probably be 
wet and muddy from head to foot ere you emerge. The 
clay of caverns usually leaves an indelible stain on 
cloth. Overalls and an old canvas hunting coat are 
good— the latter on account of its roomy pockets in 
fivhich you can stow the necessaries of your trip, and 
30 have no stick-outs or hang-downs among your ap- 
jurtenances. Remember that you must climb and 
:rawl. It is bothersome, if not dangerous, to carry 
anj'thing that vw-ill flop around and get under you when 
you are wriggling along a shelving rock with an abyss 
below, or to be jammed and wedged fast when trying 
to crawl through a narrow tunnel. 
It is imperative that every man in the party should 
carry a lantern. One of the lights may well be a com- 
mon kerosene lantern. Its bearer should have a good 
length of strong twine with which to lower the light 
down pits or precipices. The other men will do bet- 
ter with acet3dene lanterns. A common bicycle light 
does very well, if you remove the clamp and rig a wire 
bail through holes drilled in the top; but it should be 
of such kind as will stand on its bottom. Carry spare 
carbide; also a canteen of water, for some caves are 
dry, or you may be unable to reach the drainage level. 
Urine will do for the acetylene lantern in an emergency. 
Each man should also carrj'- a few short paraffin candles. 
If not otherwise needed, they are useful to mark difficult 
or doubtful places on the return route. It stands to 
reason that plenty of matches should be carried. It is 
not enough to carry them in a waterproof box — the 
matches themselves should be waterproofed. This may 
be accomplished by dipping them in melted paraffin; 
but these are not thoroughly reliable, for the wax may 
rub off. A better way is to dip the matches, one at 
a time; into a thin varnish prepared by dissolving 
shellac in alcohol, and then laying the sticks separately 
on paper to dry. If the varnish is too thick, the 
matches will not hum well. Experiment until you gef 
the right consistency. Such matches will ignitf- -' .nnd 
even after they have been soaked in wat-er day' 
or more. 
Stow where you can get at it a piece of sandpaper 
well wrapped in sheet rubber. 1 was taught this kink 
by an experience that I shall not soon forget. With 
but one companion, I was exploring a new-found cave 
that was exceedingly turtuous and had passages lead- 
ing in every direction. I stopped to examine some- 
thing while my comrade, not noticing my halt, went 
on down and vanished. After a few minutes I started 
to follow my leader. Soon I had to get down on my 
belly and worm my way through a hole in the rock that 
was not much bigger than the width of my shoulders, 
and was crooked to boot. I was lighted b3' a common 
kerosene lantern. When I was about half-way through 
the hole my lantern upset and went out. Its mechanism 
for opening and closing was new to me, and, in fum- 
bling with it, I dropped my waterproof match box. 
Fortunately, I laid hand on this precious article imme- 
diately, but it was wet on the outside. Then I discov- 
ered that there was nothing about me that was dry 
enough to strike a match on. My clothing was soaked 
with "drip-water, and the rocks about me were wet. I 
yelled like a good fellow for my partner, but he was far 
out of hearing. It would have been foolhardy to move, 
for there was an abyss behind, and I knew not what in 
front. Since the cave was a labyrinth, there was some 
prolsability that Sid might not find his way back by the 
route he had taken. No one on earth but ourselves 
knew where we were. Despite the cold air of the cav- 
ern, I believe that I began to sweat. The darkness 
seemed tangilale and ponderable. Incalculable tons of 
rock seemed to close in upon me like a shrinking gar- 
ment. I forgot that I could get a light with my teeth 
by jprking a match-head between them. I kept on yell- 
ing, and in a few minutes, which seemed aeons, I heard 
the welcome halloo of my comrade in a passage under- 
neath. Slowly he retraced his steps, and released me 
from an unpleasant predicament. 
In the pockets of your coat, or in a pouch strapped 
so that it cannot dangle nor get under you when 
crawling, carry a ration in the most compact form 
j^the army emergency ration in tin is all right), a pocket 
Forest an£) sitream. 
alcohol stove of the smallest size, a 4-ounce flask of 
alcohol and one of brandy, and, if you smoke, your 
pipe and a tin box of tobacco. A compass you will 
take, of course; but it will prove of slight service if the 
cave is labyrinthine. 
The rear man of the party should carry a ball or 
tube of light twine for a guide line. This he will let 
out as he goes along. It is an infallible guide back to 
the entrance. Each of the other men should carry a 
spare ball of twine. The man next to the leader should 
have a So-foot length of half-inch rope, wrapped about 
him like a sash. Carry nothing in your hands but a 
lantern. The camera and flash-lights may well be left 
behind for a subsequent trip. Some magnesium ribbon 
should be taken, to light up large chambers. It is also 
useful in flash-light photography to get depth of back- 
ground. In this case, the man who lights the ribbon 
should be well concealed from the camera, or you will 
get curious eft'ects of forked lightning in your picture. 
Other useful things that may be added to your out- 
fit, if the party be large enough to carry them, are a 
cold chisel, geologist's hammer, bags for specimens, a 
dip-net for blind fish, a thermometer, and a pocket 
aneroid. To measure accurately the height of large 
chambers, carry some toy balloons with thread at- 
tached. But, on the first trip, at least, go light, with 
everything stowed as compactly and get-at-able as pos- 
sible. Remember that you must use both hands in 
crawling over difficult passages, and in climbing or de- 
scending. Do not omit a ball of oiled tow or cotton. 
This is to be weighted with a stone, lighted, and cast 
into any sink-hole or chasm where you may fear fire- 
damp. This gas is only found in deep holes that have 
no draft, and is, I believe, never met in caves proper. 
The air of a true cavern is purer than that outside, and 
you can work harder in it without fatigue. One does 
not catch cold in a cave, whatever may be the tempera- 
ture, unless he has been imprudent in entering before 
cooling off, or emerging too abruptly. In this respect, 
it is wiser to explore caves in winter than in summer. 
The temperature of a cavern is constant the year round, 
but that of different caves varies from each other. The 
extremes, I think, are about 45 to 60 degrees. 
Most novices are afraid of meeting snakes or "var- 
mints" in caves. It is a rather foolish dread, thougti 
natural. Serpents or beasts in caves of any consider- 
able size are almost as rare as spooks. If, by extraor- 
dinary chance, you should meet one, it will probably 
be near the entrance. The only snake that I ever saw 
in a cave had tumbled in by accident when frightened. 
The only signs of wild beasts that I have discovered in 
such places were those of a woodchuck, and some bear 
beds made long, long ago. The newspapers once pub- 
lished a story of our killing a five-foot rattler in a cav- 
ern, and printed a photograph of the reptile for veri- 
fication. The snake was genuine enough, but he was 
killed outside the cave. If you should encounter a wild 
beast underground, just flash your lantern in his face 
and scare him to death. 
The only interesting mammal that I ever found in a 
cave was a white bat. In a small cavern chamber, Sid 
and I had paused, lost in admiration of the beautiful 
white incrustation that covered the rock above aii^l 
all about us. Never, save after a fall of snow, when ice 
crystals glittering in bright sunlight heighten the effect, 
have I seen such dazzling purity of whiteness. As we 
gazed, Sid suddenly pointed to something clinging 
within reach above my head. It was a bat, virgin white 
as the roof from which it hung. White rats in caves 
I had heard of, but not of albino bats. Sid was of the 
opinion that the sudden appearance of such horrid, 
antediluvian monsters as ourselves, and our voices 
breaking the age-long silence, had frightened the poor 
thing until its hair turned white. We captured it, and 
confined it in an empt^^ lunch box. An hour or so 
later, when we emerged, our first thought was of our 
prize., and huw it would appear by daylight. Sure 
eno' ' . it vias white as snow. Some time later we ex- 
'", .^^ain,, and, to our astonishment, it had turned 
3 ello ..". I took it home. The next day it 
' ion every-night bat, of conventional color. 
So..x^ ' "^hite incrustation of the cave, that I had 
brought wi... me in a bag, had turned to the color of 
iron rust, after exposure to the sunlight. _ I presume 
that the bat had been well dusted with it. ' 
The difliculties encountered in cave exploration are 
analogous to those of mountaineering, save that you 
may need a boat, and you must depend utterly upon 
artificial light. It will not do to rope the members 
of the party together, foV^the way is often so tortuous 
that such a rope would bt''^ nuisance, if not a positive 
source of danger. It is .;;::!metimes necessary to go 
hand-over-hand on a rope, atid such exercise should be 
practiced before starting, unless one is already adept. 
In such maneuvers, and in crawling through narrow 
holes or crevices, go slowly and cautiously, one at a 
time. 
It is hair-raising to have a man wedged in the rock 
so that he cannot move. I had one such experience, 
and it is enough. Some two years ago I discovered a 
"blowing-hole" in a wild part of Ste. Genevieve county, 
Missouri. When first found it was merely a 6 or 8- 
inch hole in the middle of a cattle trail. In summer a 
cold blast blew from it, scattering the leaves for yards 
around. The rains enlarged this opening until a man 
could lower himself into it. Five feet below the sur- 
face it connected with a crack in the rock that looked 
as though it had been rent asunder by an earthquake. 
This crevice descended at a sharp angle, but was too 
narrow to admit a man. Sid and I enlarged it with a 
cold chisel until, with a rope, a thin man could slide down 
edgewise. It went down at an angle for 20 feet, then 
vertically for 25 feet, and then connected with a cav- 
ern of comparatively recent formation. Later a party 
of seven men attempted to explore this cave. We were 
below from seven to nine hours, but did not reach che 
drainage level. It was when trying to get out that the 
"stick" came. Three men succeeded in climbing to the 
surface, but No. 4, when almost at the top of the 
vertical shaft, got one leg fast in a crack and could not 
dislodge it. The men outside could not free him, nor 
could we below, for we could not get at him. No. 4 
was nervy, and did not whimper, but his position was 
unenviable, to , say the least. His strengtH waned, but 
S3d 
he dared not let go the rope for fear of breaking his 
leg. Those of us below could not get out until he did. 
All the chisels in the county could not have liberated 
him in a week. Finally, by careful and gefitle 
wriggling, the poor fellow freed his leg and reached 
the surface. And he wants to go down into that cave 
again. 
Well, no sport is sport unless it involves some. risk. 
It is something to know that your nerve has been 
tested, and that it has borne the strain. 
Horace Kephart. 
The Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
(Coniinued from page 874.) 
The importance of the buffalo to all prairie tribes is, 
of course, well understood. It furnished them with food, 
clothing, and shelter. From its hide they made lines and 
cmches, and with it they covered their saddles ; the sinew 
gave them, thread for sewing; they carried water in its 
paunch and also boiled meat in it; its ribs and its dorsal 
spines gave them their knives, and arrowpoints and hoes 
were made from the shoulder-blades; cups and spoons 
and ladles were fashioned from the horns ; the hide of the 
neck formed their shields and gave them glue for their 
r.rrows and their bows; the head of the humerus was used 
to rub hides to make them soft ;' they braided and twisted 
ropes from the hair ; the brain was used for tanning, and 
the fat from the bones was eaten; if the people were 
troubled with certain simple skin diseases, they rubbed 
tiieir bodies with the gall mixed with the contents of the 
paunch, and this cured them. It is not strange, therefore, 
that among the prairie tribes the buffalo was regarded as 
a most important protecting spirit, and was the chief 
among all the animals of the plain. 
A sacred object of great importance — ^because connected 
with the food supply — was the buffalo stone or iniskim of 
the Blackfeet. This buft'alo stone possessed in itself some 
power, which gave its possessor the ability to draw the 
buffalo to him. Buffalo stones were found on the prairie, 
and the person who succeeded in obtaining one was re- 
garded as very fortunate. Sometimes a man while riding 
over the prairie heard a peculiar faint chirp, such as a lit- 
tle- bird might utter. He knew the sound to be made by a 
buffalo stone, and stopped and searched for it, and if he 
failed to find it, marked the place and returned next day 
to look for it. If it was found he was glad. 
These buffalo stones are usually small ammonites or 
sections of baculites or sometimes merely oddly shaped 
nodules of flint. It is said that if an iniskim was wrapped 
and left undisturbed for a long time it would have young 
ones. That is, two small stones similar in shape to the 
original one would be found in the package with it. 
All this is of the olden times, and since there are no 
longer buffalo, the buffalo stone is no longer useful. Yet 
within a few years an old woman gave me an iniskim that 
had been in her husband's family for many generations, 
and told me that if I would rub this stone with the kidney 
fat of a barren buffalo cow, and pray hard, I should never 
be hungry. _ 
There was a time, far, far back, when the people did 
not know about the buffalo stone, but at that time, in a 
season of great want and suffering, the first one was 
found. It was winter and the buffalo had disappeared. 
Heavy snows had fallen; so deep that the people could 
not move after the buffalo ; so the hunters killed deer and 
elk and other game along the river bottom, but these did 
not last long, and presently they began to starve. 
One day a :^pung married man killed a rabbit, and since 
he and his vvives and children were all hungry he ran • 
home fast and told one of the women to hurry to get 
water to cook it. She went down to the stream and bent 
down to .fill her bucket, and as she did so she heard the 
sweetest'^ singing she had ever heard. It was near her, 
but she could see no one, and for a long time she for- 
got her water and looked and listened. Presently she took 
a few steps in the direction from which the singing 
seemed to come, and then it appeared that it came from a 
Cottonwood tree close to her, and when she was near to 
the tree the singing sounded almost in her ears. She 
looked closely at the tree and saw wedged in the bark 
by a branch an oddly shaped stone, and with the stone 
some wool from a buffalo which had rubbed there. And 
now she saw that the song came from the stone. She was 
frightened, and did not dare even to run away. After a 
little while the singing stopped, and the stone said to the 
woman, "Take me to your lodge, and when it is dark 
call in the people and teach them the song that you have 
just heard. Pray, too, that you may not starve, and that 
the buffalo may return. Do this, and when day comes 
your hearts shall be glad." 
The woman took the stone from the tree and carried ■ 
it back to her lodge and gave it to her husband, telling 
him about the song and what the stone had said. After 
it became dark the young man called the chiefs and old 
men to the lodge, and his wife taught them the song,, and 
they prayed as the stone had directed them. Before long 
they heard a noise, a rumbling sound, at first a long way 
off and gradually com.ing nearer. It was the tramp of a 
great herd of buffalo comin.g. Since that time the people 
have taken care of the buffalo stone and prayed to it. 
Two of the most important lodges in the Black-foot 
camp are known as the In-is -kim lod.ges. Both are 
painted with figures of the buffalo, and they came to the 
tribe long, long ago, "in about the second generation after 
the first people." Formerly all the Blackfoot tribes lived 
far to the north of their present home, yet these lodges 
are said to have been discovered near the place where the 
Siksikau now dwell. These lodges came to the tribe in 
the following manner: 
One day, long, long ago, two old men, friends, had 
gone out from the camp to find some cherry-shoots with 
which to make arrows. This was on Bow River, below 
the Blackfoot crossing. After they had gathered ' the 
branches, they sat down on a high cut bluff on the river 
bank and peeled the bark from the shoots. The river; was 
very high. One of these men was named Weasel Heart, 
the other, Fisher. 
As they sat there. Weasel Heart chanced to look down 
into the water and saw the top of a lodge and its poles 
standing there above the surface. He could not believe 
that what he saw was actual, yet it was brosd daylight. 
