The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE NETHERWORLD OF MENDIP

PREFACE

The objects of this work are twofold: to describe the actual incidents of various interesting episodes in the modern sport of cave exploring, and to give an account of the scientific results of underground investigations in the Mendip region of Somerset. Speleology is the latest of the sporting sciences: like orology and Arctic exploration, it has two sides, sport and adventure being the lure to some, whilst others are chiefly attracted by the new light thrown by these researches on the geology, the hydrology, and the natural history of the subterranean regions explored. The chapters dealing with the scientific results are by H. E. Balch, who has been working on the geology of Mendip, more especially among the caves, for upwards of twenty years: the accounts of actual experiences, in which the sporting side is predominant, are by E. A. Baker, who described the recent exploration of the Derbyshire caves in his Moors, Crags, and Caves of the High Peak, 1903. No attempt is made to traverse the ground so perfectly covered by Professor Boyd Dawkins in his fascinating volume on Cave Hunting, and elsewhere, most of the work described here being supplementary to that done by him, and, largely, outside the scope of his aims. The authors are indebted to the kindness of the Editors of the Liverpool Courier and Daily Post, the Manchester Guardian, the Standard, the Yorkshire Post, the Irish Naturalist, and the Climbers' Club Journal for permission to use the substance of various articles which have appeared in their pages, and to M. Martel, Mr. C. Blee, and Messrs. Gough for permission to reproduce a number of excellent illustrations by them.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE NETHERWORLD OF MENDIP

[THE CAVE DISTRICT OF THE MENDIPS]

"A land of caves, whose palaces of fantastic beauty still adorn the mysterious underworld where murmuring rivers first see the light." In these words an imaginative writer describes Somerset, which shares with Derbyshire and Yorkshire the title of a land of caverns. Across it the range of the Mendips, a region of Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous Limestone, 1000 feet above tide-level, stretches in a huge, flat-topped rampart for nearly 30 miles, from the town of Frome to the sea. No piece of country in the kingdom offers so much to explore. An abundant harvest is there waiting to be reaped; for on every side are obvious indications of half-buried gateways to the dark and secret pathways to the netherworld, and everywhere upon the surface of the Mendip tableland lie the open pits and hollows which the local speech calls "swallets," that is to say, swallow holes, some of them dry, some actively engulfing streams, but all testifying to untold ages of water action.

This Limestone district lies far from the busy hives of industry, remote and secluded in the very heart of lovely Somerset. Only on the darkest of nights, with the clouds low in the sky, can the glare of the lights of Bristol be seen reflected far to the northward. One main line of railway, the Great Western from Bristol to Exeter, passes near it, and even that does not intrude beyond the margin of this Caveland. The rendezvous for the cave explorers of the district is usually the quiet little city of Wells, lying calm and secluded under the southern slopes of Mendip, in close proximity to all the principal caverns. A mile to the south-east rises the bold and picturesque Dulcote Hill, a fragment of the most southerly anticline of Mountain Limestone in the kingdom. From this point, rolling northward in a great fivefold anticline, Old Red Sandstone, Lower Limestone Shales, and Mountain Limestone form the great mass of the worn-down stump of the once mighty Mendip range. The extent of the denudation which has taken place indicates that this range was originally at least 5000 feet high, yet now in but a few places is the height of 1000 feet attained, and this is reached only by the Old Red Sandstone ridges laid bare in the prolonged course of that denudation. The first of these high ridges rises boldly to the north of Wells, and a steep climb of 900 feet in two and a half miles brings us to the summit of Pen Hill, or Rookham, from which a grand southward view is to be obtained. Immediately below, the three cathedral towers pierce the blue mist hanging over the little city we have just left. Beyond, the peat moors of the Brue and the Axe stretch away to the Isle of Avalon, sacred as the birthplace of our Christian faith in England. Here below us is that

"Island valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns,
And bowery hollows crowned with summer seas."

Here, where Arthur's bones are said to have been found, and where traditions associated with him abound, his memory is kept green in the names of many well-known spots; and yonder rises Cadbury Camp, looked upon by many as the Camelot of romance. On the low ridge which intervenes between the valleys of the Axe and the Brue lies Wedmore, where King Alfred gained in the Peace of Wedmore such temporary respite from his foes as allowed him to gather strength for the great operations that resulted at last in the conquest and unity of the whole kingdom. Yonder, too, are the marshes of the Parrett and the Tone, around which cluster tales familiar to every schoolchild. In the marshes between the Mendips and Glastonbury, exploration has unearthed a most interesting example of a swamp or lake village, with great store of antiquarian material, throwing a flood of light upon a period of which little was known. Beyond lies Sedgemoor, where in 1685 took place the last battle ever fought on English soil; and throughout this neighbourhood the infamous Jeffreys worked his will in the judicial slaughter of countless Somerset men.

In the far distance the sunshine glints on the waters of the Bristol Channel, where, 60 miles away, the bold promontory of the Foreland rises sheer from the sea; to the south, upon the farthest limits of our vision, Pilsdon and Lewsdon mark the descent of our southern counties to the English Channel; whilst, on a clear day, between them is seen the summit of Golden Cap, the base of which is washed by our southern sea. Surely here is as fair a scene as eye could wish to see.

Only a pleasant walk away, the great chasms of Ebbor and Cheddar have rent the rocks asunder, forming two of the loveliest ravines in the kingdom. Northward across the intervening syncline of Mountain Limestone, pitted with swallets marking the entrances to many an unknown subterranean labyrinth, are seen the Old Red Sandstone summits of North Hill, crowned with its seventeen Neolithic barrows, and of Blackdown beyond, from whose bare top is seen the broad estuary of the Severn spreading out across the view, giving a glimpse of the coast of South Wales in the far distance, its busy factories showing their pencil-like chimneys against the dark hills behind. In the Channel the little islands of Steepholm and Flatholm mark the line of the original continuation of the great Mendip range into South Wales. The limestone shores of the former rise sheer from the sea, forming an impregnable fortress. Here, far below the level of the salt water around, a supply of pure water is obtained from the Limestone, brought, doubtless, from the Limestone area of Mendip by way of some hidden fissure.

Hard by, at Clevedon, is the grave of that great friend of Tennyson, who sat here and listened to

"The moaning of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that, swift or slow,
Draw down æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be."

Very truly and accurately his words describe the action that is going on, by which the swallet streams are undermining and honeycombing these hills and bearing their component rocks away to the sea.

Standing on Pen Hill and looking northward, a great east and west depression is seen forming a broad low valley in the tableland of Mendip. Into this valley numerous springs and a liberal rainfall are for ever pouring their waters. Yet nowhere is there a surface channel which can carry this water away; and nowhere, save in the small hollows of the Old Red Sandstone and Shales, does water accumulate. The reason is not far to seek. The Carboniferous Limestone, evenly stratified everywhere, has been split by vertical joints into a series of gigantic cubes. Between them, the surface waters, laden with carbonic acid obtained from the atmosphere and from vegetation, have for ages made their way, enlarging them by both chemical and mechanical action, till they have become fissures capable of giving passage to an enormous quantity of water. So from one joint to another, from one bedding plane to another, the water percolates downwards until it meets with some impermeable rock beneath, or until it finds an outlet at the level of the Secondary rocks forming the valley below. Such impermeable beds are found in the Lower Limestone Shales, and the resulting outlets are well known in the great risings of St. Andrew's Well in the gardens of the Bishop's Palace at Wells, in the source of the Axe at Wookey Hole, in the Cheddar Water and other large springs, of all of which more hereafter.

MAP OF THE MENDIP DISTRICT OF SOMERSET, SHOWING SWALLETS, CAVES, AND OUTLETS.

(Click on map to see a larger version. Not available on all devices.)

Reference to the sketch map of the district will show that the majority of the more important swallets lie along the line of the great depression referred to. These comprise by no means all the swallets of Mendip, yet they are the chief ones. It is obvious that the whole of the mass of material represented by this great depression has been removed in suspension by way of these swallets; and one is compelled to ask, How long has this work been going on? What time is represented by so vast a work? On the threshold of the inquiry we are met by such an amount of evidence bearing upon it that the subject must be dealt with separately. For, upon the upturned edges of the Carboniferous Limestone rocks, which can have been brought down to their present plane of denudation only by long-continued water action, have been deposited, and still remain in situ, great masses of the basement beds of the Secondary rocks, lying in such a manner as to convince us that swallet action had prepared the denuded surfaces upon which they lie. And upon this hinges the whole question of the antiquity of the caverns of Mendip. But whilst the age of our caverns is a debatable matter, no one can question the accuracy of the theory of ravine formation from the collapse of cavern roofs, as evidenced by the instances supplied by Mendip.

Through crevices and cracks, here, there, and everywhere, the percolating waters find their way. Now some crevice is enlarged into a passage; now some weak point in the passage becomes a chamber; and on the water rushes, steadily joining forces and accumulating, until on the level of the lower land it finds an outlet, and rushes forth a considerable stream. In its headlong course the water again and again leaps down some great series of potholes, as down some giant stairway, forming many fine cascades, whose deafening roar goes on for ever where there is no ear to hear and where no footstep ever treads the rocky ways. Along the course of the larger streams huge chambers occur; for the ever-eddying water, bearing sand along in its course, eats out the sides of its channel, or, revolving stones in its bed, carves out the pothole by friction. Or some pendent mass of rock has its support undermined and comes crashing into the streamway, only to be broken up and carried away by the ceaseless energy of the stream, so ever enlarging the chambers upwards towards the light of day. But whilst this action is going on underground, a more potent factor is at work where the subterranean stream first sees the light. Here very soon the action of the water alone gives rise to a little cliff overhead. Now rain and frost, wind and tempest, loosen, bit by bit, the fragments of rock forming the face of the cliff, which fall away into the river, to be broken up and carried away. Little by little the face of the cliff recedes, along the line of the subterranean river, until the first underground chamber is reached. The undermined archway of rock is less able to withstand the agents of denudation, and the cliff front recedes apace. Such is the present stage at Wookey Hole, the chamber whence the river Axe issues being still in process of destruction. Thus the work goes on slowly, yet none the less surely, until along the whole course of the subterranean river the roof of the cavern is destroyed, perhaps effectually hiding the stream under huge blocks of Limestone, such as those of Ebbor Gorge, near Wells, or until the water finds another course for itself, as at Cheddar, to begin the whole story over again. Every stage is abundantly illustrated by our Mendip swallets and caves. The large swallets of Eastwater, three and a half miles from Wells, of Swildon's or Swithin's Hole, a half-mile nearer Priddy, and the more recent swallet of Stoke Lane, half-way between Wells and Frome, are excellent examples of streams engulfed on the summit of Mendip. The whole of the country surrounding the two first-named caverns is dotted with innumerable small pits and hollows. The great swallet of Hillgrove, three miles north of Wells, in the exploration of which we are at present engaged, in an endeavour to penetrate the labyrinth of ways to which it will undoubtedly afford access, is a fine example of an intermittent swallet. Here three ways, carved deeply through the stream-borne sands and clays of some uncertain epoch of geological history, converge in a deep glen, beautiful with its tropical wealth of ferns. In the bottom of the glen huge spurs of Limestone stand up boldly, dipping towards the Old Red Sandstone exposed to the south, and pointing to a great fault, along the line of which the Limestone water is bound to accumulate in a huge triangular reservoir, the outflow from which may account for the summer flow of the Axe when the majority of the swallets are dry. In winter the converging torrents here find ingress into the Limestone, but, though pits and hollows abound on every hand, no foot of man has ever yet trod the hidden ways beneath. At a depth of 10 feet we have reached the first open channel, only to have it blocked subsequently by a fall of the treacherous gravel through which we have been working.

Vast dry swallets are represented by a great depression which we call the Bishop's Lot Swallet, on the road from Wells to Priddy. Here a huge hollow in the ground, perfectly circular and 300 yards round, shows us the largest swallet in Mendip. Though the surrounding land slopes gently to the edge of the great pit, which is 60 feet in depth, there is but the smallest trace of water penetrating it. It is ages since the drainage of the surrounding land gravitated towards it, for it lies at a considerable height above the level of most of the other swallets in the neighbourhood. A mile and a half to the west, a similar pit occurs called Sand Pit Hole. Here too water has ceased to flow, and it remains, with precipitous sides, a problem for us to investigate in the near future.

To enter either of the active swallets of Eastwater or Swildon's Hole, and to follow it to its greatest depth, is to gain an insight into the action of subterranean streams such as no other method can give. The former is well illustrated by the annexed section, in which its profound depth and its labyrinth of passages may readily be understood. The difficulties and disappointments which we encountered when I conducted the operations which at last resulted in our effecting an entrance into this cavern, the existence of which was not even suspected previously, need not here be recapitulated. Altogether, what with volunteers and labourers, nearly a dozen of us were occupied ten days in the determined effort which we made, and which at last was crowned with success. From the point of view of the subsequent explorer the reader is referred to the ensuing chapter upon Eastwater Cavern, which will convey some idea of what the first explorers must undergo in any such place when to the ordinary difficulties of such an exploration is added the great uncertainty felt at every step taken, and when every boulder upon which our weight is to rest must first be carefully examined. The difficulty of our work at Eastwater is practically what must be experienced in any new work undertaken in the Mendip region, and there is much waiting to be done. If there is one thing more than another to be learned from Eastwater Cavern, it is the great importance of chokes in determining the lines of subterranean drainage. Here they are seen in every stage of formation and destruction, and the channels which have been carved by the arrested water may be readily recognised.

There is a fascination in exploration work such as that at Eastwater, where corridors, hitherto untrodden by the foot of man, open up all around as you make your way ever downwards into the heart of the hills; and even now there are many accessible passages into which as yet no one has penetrated. Reference to the section annexed will show an upper way, which terminates abruptly in a choke of stones and gravel, holding up a little water, whilst allowing a considerable quantity to pass. It is a remarkable fact that in all the labyrinths of galleries which we have explored in the profound depths of this cavern we have not yet alighted upon any portion which gives access to the continuation of this channel. There, rendered inaccessible by the barrier of débris, is, without doubt, a cavern as extensive as that which we have proved to exist in the sister watercourse hard by; and these two channels, starting from practically the same point, must diverge widely, and certainly do not unite again before the depth of 500 feet is attained.

Farther eastward in Mendip, too, are similar swallet caverns. Not far to the north-west of Stoke Lane is an interesting cavern locally known as Cox's Hole. It is situated in the Limestone forming the southern edge of the great basin in which lies the Radstock Coalfield. Owing to the existence of this coalfield, there are no deep caves accessible in this part of Mendip. Yet a good deal of water must be absorbed through the innumerable fissures into the depths of the Carboniferous Limestone underlying the coalfield, and it is by no means unlikely that this water, heated to a high point by the subterranean temperature, gives rise to the hot springs at Bath. Cox's Hole was at a remote period, when the form of the hill was very different from that presented now, an active water-channel, evidently draining towards St. Dunstan's Well. It has two distinct entrances, one, the more westerly, being a cavity of considerable size. For about 100 feet the cavern consists of a roomy gallery running more or less horizontally. Then it pinches in, until the height is less than a foot, and only those can get along who are able to compress themselves into small compass. In a few feet, however, it widens out into a good-sized passage, with fine stalactites here and there, especially at a point on the northern side where an aven opens into a chamber more than 30 feet high. Now roomy and now contracted, the passage leads on until, at a distance of 100 yards from the entrance, it becomes so small that there is considerable difficulty in proceeding. Beyond this point the cavern becomes a simple water-tunnel, of a type common in Yorkshire. At 130 yards there is a sharp descent, the floor is littered with boulders, and 20 yards farther the passage is choked with silt. A very small passage, which had water in it when I was there, is said to be passable at times, though I am inclined to doubt this. An almost vertical ascent amongst treacherous boulders, however, seems an indication of a possible route onwards, which may, I trust, with care be yet explored. The last 50 yards of the cave run to the south-east—that is, away from the direction of St. Dunstan's Well—a beautiful spring rising from the Carboniferous Limestone hard by; yet I feel sure that it must of necessity be a part of the same waterway. Either it was an inlet which received the waters of some vanished Old Red Sandstone spring, or it was a former outlet for the waters of that well. I am inclined to favour the former theory. As to the present source of the waters of St. Dunstan's Well there can be no doubt whatever. In the valley below Stoke Lane, and three-quarters of a mile distant from the well and from Cox's Hole, there is a most interesting swallet, of comparatively recent age. It is obviously certain that, not so long ago, the stream which courses down the valley flowed unchecked down its whole length, and so reached the larger stream below. Slightly retarded, in all probability, by some flood-borne silt, the water found a little joint in the western bank of the valley, and by slow degrees so enlarged it that it at last became capable of swallowing the whole. Even now a few hours' work would divert the water and cause it to resume its former course. Upstream is a mill, the owner of which has courteously given every facility for testing and for exploration. It was found that the effect of damming the mill stream entirely was to reduce the flow at St. Dunstan's Well enormously, and to render the entrance of the swallet passable. Mr. Marshall of Stratton-on-the-Fosse with his party made a successful descent, and travelled a considerable distance, mainly parallel with the valley without and to a great extent horizontally, through water-tunnels of small size. As no measurements were taken one cannot say yet how far it is passable, but he says that they did not get to the limits of possible exploration, as the time which they spent there was getting dangerously near the hour up to which it is possible to dam the water, and they most wisely beat a hasty retreat. The first opportunity will be taken by us to make use of a spell of fine weather to carry this exploration to a successful issue. Not far distant, too, is another swallet, from which the water has been diverted to be used for water-supply. This is in the vicinity of a ruined hunting lodge, and is said to lead in the same direction as the Stoke Lane Swallet. The whole of this district is likely to be very interesting, there being a series of remarkable rifts or fissures in the Dolomitic Conglomerate which deserve attention. One of these, called Fairy Slats, has been known for many years, and is indeed shown on the Ordnance map; and the fact that such fissures abound has been forcibly brought home by a disaster to a new reservoir, only recently completed by the authorities of Downside Monastery, to supply the neighbouring villages. Here a finely designed basin, having been constructed over one of these fissures, had its massive concrete bottom burst out as if it were an egg-shell the moment the water filled it, and in a single hour the whole fabric was absolutely ruined. Some measure of the extent of the concealed fissures may be gathered from the fact that 500,000 gallons of water were absolutely swallowed up without a drop coming to light in the neighbouring valley. An early visitor to the adjoining field reported that air was being ejected through the grass all around him, much to his alarm, as he was quite unaware of what had occurred. It will be a most interesting subject for inquiry, as to how far such fissures as these are the results of water action or otherwise, and it is most desirable to descend one of them at the first opportunity in search of evidence. At present I am inclined to attribute their presence to movements in the Secondary rocks, due to the intersection of the district by valleys. The Conglomerate mass has parted along the lines of the principal joints, and the rifts thus formed have become lines of drainage. This theory, in view of possible future discoveries, may have to be modified.

Above Stoke Lane Swallet, and evidently connected with it in some remote way, is a cavity without a name, the exploration of which would probably be interesting, and would be most likely to yield remains of primitive Man. Mr. Marshall also reports the existence of a fissure of considerable size, where, after a very small entrance, a point is reached with a vertical descent of great depth. All these things indicate that there is a splendid field here for further work.

Indeed there are abundant evidences of this all over Mendip. One of the most interesting problems has had further light thrown upon it by work recently done by us at Wookey Hole. The Hyæna Den and the Badger Hole are testimony that a large amount of underground action has taken place upon the east side of the ravine, yet nothing has been known hitherto of any series of dry channels upon that side. Recently, however, we have succeeded in gaining access, by way of the smallest of fissures, into what will turn out most likely to be a portion of this very series. Here is to be seen a choked-up chamber of precisely the same type as the Hyæna Den, but far deeper in the wall of the ravine. Without doubt it contains prehistoric remains, yet its excavation will entail great labour. We have already reached a distance of 80 feet from the entrance, and only a partially choked passage bars the way.

High up in the ravine at Ebbor, too, there is a very promising field for further research. This is immediately beneath a cliff on the western side of the valley, where we have already done much preliminary work. There is also a very promising little cave, slightly north of Tower Rock in the same gorge and high up in its side. Here a narrow entrance gives access to a small chamber, on the floor of which is a deep deposit of cave earth, from which I have obtained Deer bones.

At Dulcote, again, there is a series of waterways and dry caves of great interest, which in themselves bear corroborative evidence of the great antiquity of the caverns of the district. From time to time the quarrymen have broken in upon these waterways, which have been lost in subsequent operations. Not many years ago a blast blew off the top of an almost vertical shaft, carved out in the Limestone by water action and descending to a great depth. The mass of rock blown off by the charge turned over and fell down the shaft, blocking it at 30 feet from the surface. It was possible to descend to this point and throw down stones, which fell for a considerable distance; but the block was never moved, and in the process of quarrying the hole became filled, and is now lost in the general level of the quarry. Hard by, also, a cavern of considerable extent was opened, and still remains. It contains nothing of peculiar interest, though when I was first lowered into it, from a hole 60 feet above its floor, it contained very pretty coral-like splash stalagmite; and also, in the mud floor, the tubular linings of calcite, formed from the drip from above. In this quarry, too, were found a considerable quantity of the bones of Bear, Deer, Bos, Horse, etc., and these are now in the Wells Museum, where they were deposited some years since by A. F. Somerville, Esq. There are numerous other minor caves in this locality. Farther up the same valley, above Croscombe, is a small cave known locally as Betsy Camel's Hole, and it appears to have been occupied by a woman bearing that name for some years. She was, of course, carried away by the devil, according to the same popular report. It may very well have been a rock shelter at some stage of its history. Mr. Somerville informs me, too, that in Dinder Wood there is a small cave which was almost certainly a rock shelter. This also has never been explored. In fact, the whole district may be described as an unexplored field, and there is abundant room for willing helpers. The landowners, for the most part, are exceedingly kind and ready to offer every facility for scientific research.

H. E. B.

[THE CHEDDAR GROUP OF CAVERNS]

The great gorge of Cheddar and its caverns form a subject of surpassing interest to the student of Geology. Presenting some of the most stupendous cliff scenery in England, the great wall of rock on the southern side of the valley towers nearly 500 feet into the air, defying all attempts at mapping contour lines; and the road which traverses the ravine winds, with many a sudden turn, along the base of this noble cliff, ever upwards, until in four miles the actual summit of the Mendip downs is reached. At the entrance to the gorge, and close to the caverns owned by Gough, the hidden river bursts into the light, pouring forth a stream of great volume, which, after serving the purposes of various millers in the village, hurries on to join its sister stream from Wookey Hole, the two then flowing into the sea near Weston-super-Mare. It is strange that in all the exploration work that has been done at Cheddar, the underground channel of the stream has not once been reached. Near the entrance in Gough's Cave a fairly deep hole contains water, which changes in level along with the river itself, but no open passage leads from it. A vertical rope descent of 100 feet from the upper and practically unknown caverns belonging to Gough brings the explorer to what must be regarded as the nearest point which has yet been reached to the subterranean river of Cheddar. As this gorge is the most stupendous in the Mendip region, so is this stream the most considerable in volume. Mr. Sheldon of Wells has gauged its minimum flow to be not less than three million gallons per day, whilst its torrent at flood time must be many times as much, probably not less than eight or ten millions.

THE GREAT GORGE OF CHEDDAR.

Photo by Dawkes & Partridge, Wells.

This is considerably larger than the other two great outlets of the subterranean waters of Mendip, those of Wookey Hole and Wells, each of which, however, pours forth an enormous volume. That it is the Cheddar stream which is responsible for the existence of the gorge itself no one can doubt, and it is a most interesting subject for discussion as to how this has been brought about. It is not difficult to determine what points must mark the boundaries of the catchment area, the waters of which drain to Cheddar. The road from Castle Comfort to Charterhouse on the north-east, the outcrop of Shales south of Blackdown on the north, and a line drawn from Rowberrow Farm north of Priddy to the gorge itself on the south, enclose the whole area from which the supply is obtained. This is somewhere about 12 square miles in extent. To this must be added, possibly, some water from slightly more to the eastward. It is now the commonly accepted theory that the whole of this water, or at any rate the bulk of it, found inlet into a series of caverns along the line now occupied by the gorge, and that then the processes which are so well known to be going on gradually enlarged these to the point of collapse, the falling débris being removed by the still flowing stream. It is only right to add that M. Martel, arguing from his long experience, which probably exceeds that of any man who has ever studied the subject, sees in the gorges of Cheddar, Burrington, and presumably Ebbor, the superficial channels worn by the escaping streams from the ancient Mendip plateau. He says, "The numerous dried valleys (Burrington Combe, Cheddar Cliffs, etc.), which cut through the circumference of the Mendips, witness, as everywhere, to the ancient superficial flowing off of the rivers, and to their capture by the natural wells, successively opened and enlarged in the cracks of the Limestone rock." That even small streams acting through a sufficient period of time are capable of doing enormous erosive work it would be idle to deny, but the difficulties in the way of accepting this theory as alone sufficient are too great to admit of its acceptance. It demands that the water of a very large area could find access to the eastern end of the ravine, which itself demands that the general configuration of the Mendips must have been very different from that presented now. This, from the existence of the Secondary beds in their present position, say near Harptree, was not the case; and therefore, for the theory to hold good, we must suppose that the superficial gorge was pre-Triassic. As it was not filled in, either in Triassic time or subsequently, it could not have been superficial. Of course it may be contended that the reversal of this line of argument demonstrates that the gorge is post-Liassic and may then have been a superficial channel, but I hold this to be disproved in my chapter on the antiquity of the Mendip Caves. I am, accordingly, forced to the conclusion that the Cheddar gorge was during the whole of the Secondary period a roofed-in cavern. The only difficulty which arises is a doubt as to the ability of the stream to remove so vast a bulk of falling material as must be accounted for; but when we see the process in actual operation, as at Wookey Hole, it is only necessary to demand sufficient time, and the difficulty vanishes. That a time did arrive when the rate of collapse more than kept pace with the destructive energy of the stream is indicated by the rapid rise which takes place in the road through the gorge. This favours the cave theory as opposed to the superficial channel theory, inasmuch as a superficial channel would probably have maintained a more nearly equal depth throughout.

That the portion of M. Martel's theory which explains the absence of the stream from the gorge is correct is very clear, there being obvious indications, notably at the western end of the ravine, where points of absorption might be traced beneath the high cliffs, any one of which, if excavated, would almost certainly lead to the present channel of the river beyond Gough's Caves. The Long Hole above, as pointed out in my chapter upon the antiquity of the Mendip Caves, is corroborative evidence which tends to disprove the superficial valley theory, as it is without a doubt an old cavern of absorption, which could not have existed had the ravine been a superficial valley. Everyone must lament the recent developments in the Cheddar gorge by which the northern side is being hacked to pieces to provide road metal. There are thousands of places where the same stone could be obtained, with almost equal ease; and it does seem pitiful that one of the finest places in the kingdom should be sacrificed to the most callous and sordid commercialism. The conditions under which the work is being carried on constitute also a public danger, as has now been exemplified by the collapse into the gorge of a huge mass of the rock. The dip of the Limestone is to the southward, and consequently any work done on the northern side is removing the support that holds up the great mass upon an inclined plane. Of necessity the mass above, its support gone, comes hurtling down to the roadway, and it is practically certain that, if quarrying operations continue, some day the gorge will be entirely closed by a gigantic fall.

An interesting little tributary ravine and cavern, far up the gorge, provides a perfect example of the cave theory of the formation of the gorge itself. About two miles from the village, on the southern slopes of the ravine, is an extensive fir wood. High up on the opposite side this little ravine is visible, and it may be reached with ease. Here sides that gently slope give way to precipitous walls, between which you walk. Moss-grown stones give place to new-fallen stones, and then you have before you the little ravine roofed in; you pass beneath, and find yourself in the darkness of the cavern itself, which can be followed for some distance. Here, at any rate, there can be no doubt as to the process that has been at work.

H. E. B.

[ANTIQUITY OF THE CAVES OF MENDIP]

When we consider the question of the age of our caverns, we are met at the outset by a mass of evidence forcing upon us the certainty that they must be credited with a very high antiquity indeed. Here measurement by years and centuries fails, and the imagination must be called in to aid us to compute the epochs that have successively elapsed since the first cave, to take one example, began to be formed at Wookey Hole. These evidences are of three kinds: historical, palæontological, and geological. In the first place, there has been obviously little change in the general configuration of our caverns since earliest historical times. The dens and caves of the earth have afforded a retreat to the persecuted of all generations, and a ready-made home when all else has failed. Here, too, with the rocky walls behind him and his protecting fires at the entrance, early man could defy the savage beasts that roamed the land in those far-off days.

At Wookey Hole it was only necessary to scratch the very surface of the accumulated débris within the mouth of the great cave to turn up fragments of Romano-British pottery and a human jaw and rib-bones. These interesting relics are in the possession of myself and Mr. Troup. From the very nature of the place, it is obvious that the tendency has been to accumulate more and more débris upon the mass of cave earth which contains these remains. Slightly deeper, yet still only in the loose earth of the cavern mouth, we found pottery of still earlier date, unwheeled and cruder. The fact is borne in upon us, that certainly for two thousand years this entrance has remained much as it is now. Perhaps a loose rock here and there has been dislodged from the overhanging cliff outside, and, crashing to the stream bed below, has there been broken up and carried away by the river. But no one can doubt that the general outline is the same now as then. And farther within the cavern an interesting sidelight is thrown on the slowness with which things change in the underworld. At the descent into the first great chamber a chalk inscription roughly made reads "E A 1769." That inscription has been there unchanged, to my knowledge, for the last twenty years, and I have no reason to doubt its authenticity. If a chalk mark remains unerased for a century and more, how long have those solid walls stood, and how long will they endure?

As I have gazed upon that inscription, the thought has come, that such a place as this would be an ideal site for national monuments. When our abbeys and cathedrals are crumbled away, these great subterranean halls will remain practically unchanged. And in the caves of Cheddar like evidences meet the eye. In the loose material in the Roman cave there, Roman and Romano-British remains have been found in abundance; and here again we are forced to the conclusion that no change has taken place since those remains were deposited.

But when we consider the evidences furnished by the remains of the extinct mammalia, mingled with those of primitive man, much more is it impressed upon the mind that we are dealing with relics of enormous antiquity. The great assemblage of bones of the extinct animals which occurs at Banwell Cave, and the numberless finds from the caves of Cheddar, are indications of this; but those of the Hyæna Den of Wookey Hole, and the conditions of their deposit there, afford us much more reliable testimony. Here are two principal cavities on the eastern side of the ravine, representing two of the five river levels which the stream of the Axe has hollowed for itself in the Dolomitic Conglomerate. These are branch or side chambers which have not been totally destroyed in the process of erosion that formed the ravine at the expense of the cavern. In the uppermost cavity, known as the Badger Hole (it was the haunt of badgers until a few years ago), no traces of the extinct mammalia are to be found, nor have I found definite traces of prehistoric man. At seven feet below the surface, however, there is a bed of river sand of precisely the same kind as that in the upper chambers of the great cavern. In the Hyæna Den below, on the other hand, so thoroughly and systematically explored by Professor Boyd Dawkins, was found one of the most perfect assemblages of the remains of extinct animals ever discovered. Many years after his labours were completed I searched there again, and was rewarded with a by no means poor collection of bones and teeth: Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, Irish Elk and Reindeer, Red Deer, Bison, Cave Lion and Bear, Hyæna and Wolf, Wild Goat, Wild Horse, and Wild Boar have all been found. One of my earliest trophies was a fairly complete skull of a young Bear; and I have representatives of all the others. From a small hole in the side of the valley hard by, which I thought looked promising, we have obtained a large number of Rhinoceros teeth, together with those of several of the other kinds present in the Den. The examination of these cavities and their contents demonstrates the fact that they were the actual dens of some of these animals. The abundant marks of gnawing show that the Hyænas made their home there. Over the vertical cliff many a worn-out beast was hunted to its death by the Hyænas and Wolves, and its shattered carcass dragged to this hole.

ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY, COINS, HUMAN REMAINS, ETC., WOOKEY HOLE CAVE.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

HYÆNA DEN AND BADGER HOLE, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

It is easy to wander back in imagination and bring the state of things that existed visibly before the mind's eye: to watch the unwieldy Mammoth or the great Rhinoceros rolling its huge bulk along; to see the pack of cowardly Hyænas or Wolves hounding some worn-out Bison to its death, over the awful cliff close by their den, which purpose effected, they themselves rushed headlong down the steep slope hard by, to fight and wrangle over the shattered carcass of their prey; or to see the Lion lying in wait by the peaceful stream in the little valley for the noble Elk or timid Deer to come for its accustomed drink; and then to behold savage Man, with his weapons of flint or bone, when out on his hunting expeditions, arriving at this peaceful valley, and there for a while making his quarters in the Den, and lighting his fires at the entrance to scare the wild beasts from their lair.[1]

How long ago this state of things existed is a matter for geological calculation. Suffice it that the earliest historical records show us no wild beasts existing in the land except Bears and Wolves, along with the Red Deer which is with us to this day. Now there is no sign at Wookey Hole of the time when the Bear and Wolf alone remained and all else had become extinct from the land. There is no trace whatever in the Hyæna Den of the pottery which we find in the entrance of the great cave. Without a doubt, the latest deposits here are vastly older than the most ancient deposits there. The commingling of northern, temperate, and southern forms gives evidence of oscillations in temperature such as demand a vast time to have taken place. Yet the whole of these remains accumulated between the time when the entrance to the Den was left exposed by the gradual destruction and retreat of the cliff face up the valley, and the infilling and choking of the entrance by the accumulating gravel which eventually blocked it. It is only within the last few years that the gravel arch which was first formed, and then undermined in the search after bones, has collapsed, revealing the true configuration of the cavern. Here we must again postulate a great antiquity for our caverns, since these deposits exist in what is really an insignificant fragment of the great cavern, and are only an incidental part of the material which an exposed cavity is sure to receive. But when purely geological evidences are taken into account, the demand for time becomes still more imperative. The subterranean Axe occupies, as its present channel, vast chambers formed by the excavation of thousands of tons of the hard Conglomerate, great halls over 70 feet in height and of fine proportions. The process which formed these is still at work enlarging them, till in the course of time they must collapse; yet no change is ever visible, no signs of recent action can at any point be seen. The rarely occurring great flood serves but to remove one film of sand from the floor and to leave another in its place as the waters subside. So slow is the undermining action that no eye can ever detect a change though the waters rise ever so high. Yet this channel is but one of five distinct levels which the river has occupied from time to time, until it has found in turn a lower course, leaving its sands as a record upon each, here and there sealed down beneath a mass of stalagmite. What untold ages have elapsed since first the river flowed through these upper channels!

PLAN AND SECTION OF WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.

(Click on map to see a larger version. Not available on all devices.)

But an examination of the top of the Mendips points to a vaster antiquity still. The published horizontal section No. 17 of the Geological Survey gives an excellent idea of the plateau of Mendip, which stretches from immediately north of Wells to the neighbourhood of Compton Martin. This plane of denudation would never have been reached save by the long-continued action of subterraneous streams, an assumption supported by the existence of the great depression crossed by the road from Wells to Priddy. That depression of nearly 100 feet in depth and several miles in length, hollowed in the hard Carboniferous Limestone, here dotted with every known type of swallet or swallow hole, has been obviously formed by the slow action of swallet streams prolonged through vast periods of time. Every atom of the millions of tons of solid rock represented by this depression has been borne down the course of the subterranean Axe. Tributary to this depression a little valley has been eroded across the Old Red Sandstone anticline immediately to the north, and in it are deposited masses of Dolomitic Conglomerate, the component pebbles of which were derived from the surrounding rocks. The same valley existed, therefore, in pre-Triassic time, and as there was obviously no other outlet for its water, the cavities into which it flowed—that is to say, the swallets and subterranean channels—must have existed also, and are therefore pre-Triassic in date. Though at first sight this appears impossible, inasmuch as the known course of the resulting Axe River is through Triassic Conglomerate, I propose to show that such a conclusion is necessary and inevitable. Long ago I was struck with the fact that at Wookey Hole the Triassic Conglomerate attains an abnormal thickness, and measurements have shown that at the far end of the cavern there is certainly a thickness of over 350 feet of this rock. As there is no sign of any approach to the Limestone against which it must abut, nor any change in the character of the Conglomerate itself at this point, I think that we may fairly conclude that the total thickness of it must be at least 500 feet. Now this is a vast deposit, far exceeding any known to exist elsewhere, and it requires a special explanation to account for it. Only one explanation is possible. The Conglomerate is here filling in some great pre-existing valley in the Mountain Limestone. That is just what I should expect.

The great Limestone cavern formed by the action of the swallet streams in early Triassic times collapsed, and formed a Limestone ravine, into which was rolled a great accumulation of fragments of the Limestone derived from the slopes and crags above. With the whole of this part of England these beds were subsequently submerged, remaining so during the deposit of the whole of the Secondary beds; and on their emerging once more from beneath the sea the lines of drainage were re-established along the old courses, where these had not been choked with sedimentary material. Forcing a way through the Conglomerate which then impeded its flow, the river formed those cavities which we see. Indeed, it may well be that the successive levels cut by the Axe through the Conglomerate may represent stages in the uplifting of the land, the lowest channel being the last and largest, as it has been formed during an extended period of stability. But we are not without evidences of another sort as to the existence of some of our swallet ways at that remote period. The cavities found in the Holwell quarries, near Frome, filled in with Rhaetic material containing bones and teeth of fishes; those of Gurney-Slade, near Radstock; and numbers which from time to time are laid bare in the Limestone quarries, all filled in with Triassic sediment, show that penetrating waterways of considerable size then existed. There was, too, at Charterhouse-on-Mendip, north of Cheddar, a fissure, possibly a swallet, which, being open, received an infilling of Liassic material that is known to extend to a depth of 300 feet. Had these channels been closed by a narrow aperture temporarily blocked, no infilling but by water would have taken place when the land sank beneath the waters of the Triassic and Liassic seas.

Furthermore, in the position of the entrances of many of our swallets there is corroborative evidence to the same effect. The great circular swallet on Rookham, near Wells, situated far from any existing line of drainage, yet withal one of the largest cavities on Mendip, shows that great changes have taken place since it was an active waterway. The position of the caverns of Compton Bishop and of Banwell, far removed from any stream or any line of drainage possible with the present contours, proves that the configuration of the country has utterly changed since they formed the points of engulfment of any streams. The Coral Cave (as we have called it) at Compton Bishop descends abruptly into the earth, and its outlet must have been far below the level where now the Triassic Marl forms an impervious barrier. The waters of Banwell Pond rise through the Marl, forced upwards through beds which do not yield water and ordinarily retard its passage. Doubtless the Marl when it was deposited covered some earlier outlet from the Limestone. The waters of St. Andrew's Well, at Wells, are forced upwards through Dolomitic Conglomerate and overlying Pleistocene gravel, the former of which was doubtless deposited upon what was once a free and unimpeded outlet from the Mountain Limestone, similar to that of Cheddar. The water of Rickford, near Burrington, resulting from the streams engulfed at and around Burrington, is forced up through the Secondary beds, which have been similarly deposited upon the pre-existing outlet. All these things help to demonstrate that what I contend is true, viz. that our caverns as a whole are pre-Triassic in age. The Long Hole at Cheddar, high in the cliffs above Gough's Cave, lends its evidence too. Contrary to all the other caves at Cheddar, it was a channel of intake for the water which formed it. Doubtless it is a fragment of a larger cavern, which, before the gorge of Cheddar itself was formed, existed in the mass of rock occupying the whole area. At the northern end of the Limestone defile of Ebbor, near Wells, the ravine is carved through Dolomitic Conglomerate, which has been much worked for iron ore. The fact that this Conglomerate was deposited in a depression in the land, at the head of the present ravine, yet without entering it, suggests that here was an entrance to a series of caverns, the collapse of which produced the gorge.

THE GREAT SWALLET ON BISHOP'S LOT, PRIDDY

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth

ST. ANDREW'S WELL, WELLS.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

The Devil's Punchbowl, near the Castle of Comfort Inn on the Mendips, is, in all probability, a collapse of the remarkable Lias beds which there occur into some pre-existing cavity in the Mountain Limestone below, somewhat in the same manner as the Shake Holes in the Glacial Drift on the Yorkshire moors were formed. No one questions the existence of the cavities beneath before the deposit of the Drift, neither do I doubt the existence of swallets beneath the Trias and Lias before these were deposited on the Mendips. The question naturally arises, Why do we not find in our caverns remains of all the ages that have elapsed since that time? Why are only Pleistocene remains discovered? Surely, because we have not found them it does not follow that they are nonexistent. The recent discovery of Pliocene remains in a cavern at Doveholes, near Buxton (Derbyshire), is clear proof that we may search hopefully for similar remains in the Mendips. It must be borne in mind, that the further we go back in time, the more certain we are to find that the contents of any Limestone cavern would be completely mineralised, until the whole of the contents may have become cemented into a solid mass. Where running water is present, attrition may have destroyed them, or borne them onwards to those great depths where, constantly submerged as they must be, we can never hope to penetrate. I am aware, however, of the existence, in the Eastwater Cavern, of very ancient chokes of water-borne material, from which I have some hope of obtaining remains.

I might mention the demonstrated antiquity of the bosses of stalagmite in Kent's Cavern at Torquay, and from it argue the immense age of the great masses of stalagmite in the Mendip Caves, but, recognising the variable rate of deposit of the carbonate of lime in different caverns, and indeed in different parts of the same cavern, no useful purpose would be served thereby. The huge Beehive of Lamb's Lair at Harptree, the large boss in the first great chamber at Wookey Hole, Gough's "Niagara" at Cheddar, the tall and slender pillars in Cox's Cave at Cheddar, and the taller "Sentinel" pillar at Wookey Hole, all demand for their formation a prodigious length of time, which it is but folly to attempt to compute with our present information. Certainly many thousands of years are required for some of them, and it should be remembered that we have then arrived merely at the time when the floor upon which they stand had received its final form, the action of running water having ceased.[2] Who can doubt then, that, as we stand in the great waterways of the profound depths of our hills, we are looking upon scenes which have varied little since remote ages, and that in some form or other these waterways played an important part in the degradation of the earlier and loftier Mendip range?

It is worthy of remark in this connection that the veteran M. Martel, commenting upon the caverns of Mendip, says, "In consequence of the existence, on the flanks of the Mendip Hills, of deposits of Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate (Keuper) of Rhaetian beds, and of possibly Glacial alluvia, unconformably on the Carboniferous Limestone, the outflow of the water in the risings operates in three ways: (A) by large fissures in the Limestone itself, when it flows out freely, as at Cheddar; (B) through the crevices in the Dolomitic Conglomerate (the Axe at Wookey Hole, etc.); (C) where the outlet of the water from the Limestone is hidden by alluvia (St. Andrews Well, at Wells). The consequence of this arrangement is that it will be possible—notably at Wookey Hole, when the explorations now going on have enlarged the new galleries recently found—to ascertain whether the Dolomitic Conglomerate is there shown in long beds of ancient shores, regularly superposed on the Limestone, or rather accumulated in filled-up pockets, in hollows pre-existing in the Limestone; that is to say, there will be a material verification of Mr. Balch's hypothesis (already outlined by Boyd Dawkins in 1874) of the very ancient excavation of certain caves of the Mendip Hills, even before the Keuper period. The lie of the Conglomerate under the vaulted roofs of Wookey Hole appeared to me to favour this idea. And it is necessary to wait till formal proofs have been gathered together here, that caves were hollowed out there before the Trias. I recall, on this subject, that long ago I concluded, with Messrs. De Launey, Van den Broeck, Boule, etc., that the formation of caves could commence in the most distant geological epochs, and that the pockets of phosphorites, among others at Quercy and the Albanets of Couvin (Belgium), testify to caves or abysses of at least Eocene times."

H. E. B.

[CAVE EXPLORING AS A SPORT]

We are called a nation of sportsmen; yet the first criticism we level against any new sport, not our own, is the question, usually unanswerable and always irrelevant, What is the use of it? One may then, with a certain show of propriety, point out that cave exploring is a sport not entirely lacking in utilitarian or scientific objects. It belongs, in fact, to that large class which originated as something else than mere pastime. Mountaineering and hunting are typical representatives of that class. The earliest mountaineers were geographers. Cave exploring was first of all taken up as a branch of archæological and palæontological research, and then as a general inquiry into the physical nature of caves. But a science that has discovery as its principal object, and hardships and adventure as its natural concomitants, is bound to attract as many sportsmen as scientists. The geographical might be called the sporting sciences. And so there are now many ardent cave explorers who would blush to be called speleologists, their sole motive being the enjoyment of the game, and scientific results purely a by-product. Thus the science of caves has given birth to a sport that subserves its aims in the same irregular way as rock-climbing and peak-bagging subserve the aims of geography, geology, meteorology, and other sciences.

Speleology itself is, comparatively, a new science. Cave hunting, the search for human and animal remains, has been an important bypath of scientific investigation since the days of Dean Buckland and the discoveries recorded in Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, 1823. Professor Boyd Dawkins has in recent decades done still more valuable work for palæontology. Speleology is a word of both wider and narrower meaning; in the widest sense covering all kinds of knowledge about caves, their geography, geology, hydrology, their fauna, their palæontology. But most speleologists confine their attention to the physical characteristics of caves. This side of the inquiry has practical utilities. At Vaucluse, for instance, near Avignon, M. Bouvier in 1878 explored the channels of a gigantic siphon that carries the waters of an inaccessible reservoir into the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a famous "rising." His object was partly scientific, and partly to determine the nature of this permanent source, so as to utilise its waters to regulate the level of the Sorgue, to extend the irrigation system of the neighbourhood, and to secure water-power for manufacturing purposes. The Katavothra of Pod-Stenami were enlarged by an enterprising engineer, and protected by iron gratings, after their subterranean exits had been explored, and so utilised to regulate the drainage of the marshy plains of Laibach, and to prevent periodical inundations. In our own country, underground exploration has brought to light valuable water-supplies, and enabled us to safeguard the public interests by pointing out sources of pollution. Caves are most abundant in the districts where those great fissures known as rakes occur, which are rich in minerals, especially lead, calamine, copper, gypsum, and fluor-spar. During the short period in which cave work has been taken up as a sport, discoveries have been made, which of course it is impossible to particularise, that may be the source of considerable profit in the future.

The majority of those engaged in this physical exploration of caves are French. France possesses a Société de Spéléologie, the secretary of which, Monsieur E. A. Martel, author of Les Abîmes, is a most indefatigable and courageous explorer, and the man who has made the science an important and a living one. But M. Martel himself awards the title of "créateur de la spéléologie" to a forgotten predecessor, Dr. Adolphe Schmidl, who published Die Grotten und Höhlen von Adelsberg, in 1854. In this country, although such brilliant discoveries have been made of extinct animals and prehistoric relics of humanity, cave exploring of this kind is a new pursuit. M. Martel says, in Irlande et Cavernes Anglaises, 1897: "In short, the underground of the calcareous regions of the British Isles may be considered as being, topographically, very insufficiently known; this is the conviction impressed on me by my own researches in 1893." Something has been accomplished since that date. Two or three clubs, consisting chiefly of climbers, and a few speleologists working independently, have effected a thorough examination of the great caverns of the Peak, the extraordinary system of underground waters, huge cavities, and profound abysses in the West Riding, and the beautiful caverns of Somerset. But the ground that remains unexplored, the opportunities for adventure and the possibilities of discovery are such as may probably astonish those people who think there is nothing of the sort left in Old England.

Caves are formed in calcareous strata by the chemical action of water laden with carbonic acid, and by the mechanical action of streams. In consequence of the original structure of the Limestone, the joints of which run at right angles to the bedding planes, these eroded hollows have two dominant forms: the vertical pot, swallet, or hole, produced by the widening of a master-joint; and the horizontal water-channel, running in the same direction as the line of stratification. But the strata being commonly tilted, these pits and abysses are often a long way out of the vertical, and the caverns that follow the strata very steep. Many of these ancient watercourses are now dry, but others are still traversed by streams, and present the explorer with most formidable obstacles. The complete exploration of any cave system would involve the tracing out of all its passages from the point where the stream or streams enter the earth to the point of exit. But I know not a single instance where such a task has been worked out in its entirety. In many cases the streams enter the ground merely as small rivulets, and begin to excavate passages practicable to man only at a considerable depth. "Siphons," or traps, as they ought to be called, complete or partial chokes, and a variety of other causes, may put insuperable obstacles in the explorer's way.

Take two of the most important cave problems still awaiting solution, one in Yorkshire, the other in Somerset. A large beck is precipitated into the abyss of Gaping Ghyll, 360 feet deep, and emerges from an opening in the hillside, a mile away, close to the mouth of Ingleborough Cave, which was itself an earlier exit. Several parties have descended Gaping Ghyll, and followed the passages at the bottom to a distance of more than 1000 feet. Then impenetrable water-sinks, and muddy chambers with no outlet, have been encountered, and the communication with the lower cavern has hitherto proved undiscoverable. Both the dry galleries and the canals of Ingleborough Cave have been explored, with great toil and daring, to a considerable distance upwards, with similar results; and though many speleologists are still absorbed in this problem, there is little hope that it will be cleared up without adopting the drastic and costly measure of cutting through the obstructions. The other problem is that of Wookey Hole, the cave in Britain which has the longest history, and which is still yielding interesting discoveries. A number of streams disappear into the earth on the Mendip plateau, 2 miles away and 700 feet above, and find their issue in the source of the Axe at Wookey Hole. Two of the Mendip swallets have been explored to a great depth. Swildon's Hole, an exquisite series of terraced galleries and stalactite grottoes, has been penetrated to a depth of 300 feet. But a more determined attempt has been made to reach the bottom of the Eastwater Cavern. This was discovered in 1902 by my friend Mr. Balch, of Wells, by means of opening the swallet, where a tiny brook ran away through small crevices in a Limestone ravine. A far-extending cave was thus disclosed, full of intricate ramifications, that explain in a graphic manner how new galleries are formed and old ones left dry and deserted, as the result of floods and partial chokes. We have, in the longest route discovered in this complicated system, reached a distance of 2000 feet from the entrance and a depth below the surface of 500 feet. At this point no absolutely impassable barrier has been met with. There is reason to hope that we may still advance farther into the mysterious region between it and Wookey Hole. But the formidable difficulties of the journey hither have set a limit to endurance. Hundreds of feet of creeping through steep, narrow, and contorted passages, compared with which a series of drain-pipes would afford luxurious travelling; perpendicular drops of 50 and 90 feet, with no convenient ledges at the top for letting men down; and, in addition, the necessity of transporting great quantities of tackle to the bitter end of it, have made a twelve hours' day underground as much as we could stand. The difficulty may perhaps be got over by means of a subterranean bivouac. Unfortunately, it would not do to leave the apparatus in position for long beforehand, as it would deteriorate so rapidly. In Wookey Hole itself, we have not yet succeeded in reaching a farther distance than 600 feet from the cave mouth; there a submerged tunnel has stood in the way. But Mr. Balch has thoroughly explored the upper passages that honeycomb the rock above the known caves; he has discovered a number of promising galleries, which are being slowly cleared of débris; and, among them, a series of the most beautiful incrusted grottoes in Britain. A season of drought may reveal an opening up the river-course.

Innumerable similar problems still await solution. Some of us have been engaged in trying with pick and crowbar to engineer a way into the swallets above Castleton, which send their waters through the heart of the hills down to the caves in the dale of Hope. One of these, which we have penetrated to a distance of 350 feet, may turn out to be the entrance to as wonderful a chain of caverns as those of Eastwater. Long Kin Hole, Helln Pot, and other tremendous cavities in the Ingleborough district, still promise good sport. Of all the varieties of cave forms these vertical holes are the most impressive, and also the most perilous to explore. No exploit stands out more finely in the record of that intrepid explorer, M. Martel, than his single-handed descent into Gaping Ghyll, the first ever accomplished. In the Cevennes, however, he has reached the bottom of abysses still more profound, though without the unpleasant accompaniment of falling water. One of the most awkward of the descents described by him is that of the Aven de Vigne Close (Ardèche), 190 mètres in depth. This strange pit is almost a corkscrew in shape, comprising five perpendicular drops, the bottom of one being a few feet from the top of the next. To manage the final pitch, with a chain of rope ladders 40 mètres too short, it was necessary to get six men down to the "Salle à Manger" at the foot of the fourth stage, others remaining as sentinels at the head of the various stages. Some of these waited on their narrow perches for eleven hours, in the dark, with nothing to do but listen to the distant noises of their comrades at work. One man, hanging at the end of a rope, succeeded single-handed in fastening a pulley to the free end of the second ladder, and so let down the third ladder to the required extent. This critical operation was carried out under grave difficulties, the nerves of the whole party having been shaken a few minutes earlier by the accidental fall of a heavy lamp, which was within an inch of killing the men beneath.

Elden Hole, in the Peak of Derbyshire, a yawning cavity 200 feet deep, with an inner cave 65 feet deeper, has been descended several times recently. On the first occasion, through the inexperience of the party, I had the privilege of spending nine hours in the hole, in a state of uncertainty as to whether it was in the power of the other men to get me out. On the next occasion, we let down a dozen men safely. But there still remains the possibility that excavation might clear up the puzzle as to the connection of Elden Hole with other swallets and caves in the vicinity. The old miners believed that it had communication with the natural chambers in the Speedwell Mine; and that is a problem which will entail exploration in collapsible boats along the flooded levels. The great chasm in the Speedwell, which used to be reputed bottomless, has been proved to be only 90 feet deep. It has an upward extension, in the same steep rake, which has not been climbed, nor its top so much as caught sight of. It attains a height, most probably, of at least 400 feet. That is a problem worthy the mettle of our most skilful cragsmen. In the Blue John Mine, a vertical fissure has been climbed, by a party properly roped up, to the height of 130 feet, between walls splendidly adorned with polished and translucent stalagmite. Ladders may sometimes be rigged up, one above another, to reach hollows in the roof of caves. In this way a handsome grotto was discovered above Peak Cavern. When these vertical fissures are open to the sky, it is a simple matter to fix tackle, and even a windlass, for letting men down. When they open in the floor of a well-nigh impracticable gallery, as in the Eastwater Cavern, the difficulties of securing pulleys and ropes are serious. There our troubles are aggravated by the proximity of deep, gaping chasms at the foot of each pitch, lying in wait to receive falling bodies. Nevertheless, by an ingenious arrangement of life-line and pulley, the entire party gets safely to the bottom of the gulf and back again, although it is usual in such situations to leave a sentry behind at the top. Grandest of all these underground cavities in England is the great chamber of Lamb's Lair, in the Mendips. The approaches and subsidiary chambers of that marvellous cavern are magnificent in the richness of their incrustation and their colouring; but this mighty hall surpasses the rest by far. Floor, walls, and roof, of a dome-shaped chamber 110 feet high, are a mass of sculptured transparencies, fantastic reliefs and glowing enamel, all the colours of the rainbow being produced by the different veins of minerals. Only a strong party of experienced climbers or cave workers, fully equipped, should venture to explore this fine cavern in its present dangerous state.

No chapters in Les Abîmes are more absorbing than those describing the exploration of underground waters. By means of collapsible boats, M. Martel explored the concealed streams that tumble into the canyon of the Ardèche. In 1890-91, M. Mazauric, with enormous toil and considerable danger, traced out the labyrinthine ramifications of the Bonheur at Bramabiau (Gard). The Tindoul de la Vayssière (Aveyron), with its yawning abyss and powerful subterranean torrent, and the Causse de Gramat (Padirac), both entailed the descent of a deep chasm and the navigation of large streams. At Padirac the exploring party made their way in four boats along a river, with frequent portages caused by dykes of stalagmite, and discovered some of the most exquisite and romantic stalactite scenery in the vaults through which the river flows.

As a sport, cave exploring ranks high. The exertion it entails is exceedingly severe. The innumerable obstacles and difficult problems to be faced make incessant demands on our inventiveness, adaptability, and presence of mind. The exposure, the hardships, the dangers that must be encountered, form an admirable discipline. Those who consider these any detraction from the merits of the sport, must condemn, not one sport, but a whole class. Running risks, we must remember, is always foolhardy, but to nullify danger by means of science and skill is an aim worthy of the noblest kinds of sport. It will, of course, be objected that the lack of exhilarating conditions, and of the stimulus of fresh air, deprives the sport of the usual benefits of outdoor games. But the air at the bottom of a cave 100 or more feet deep is usually as pure and sweet, and not seldom as dry, owing to its free circulation, as that on the hills. Then the darkness and the sense of imprisonment, you say, are not conducive to healthy enjoyment. But a cave explorer, enthralled by the manifold interest and excitement of the pastime, will never admit this. The variety of entertainment it affords constitutes a peculiar charm.

Only to judge by the number of climbers that have taken up cave work as a pastime, there must obviously be a natural relation between this sport and rock climbing. Certainly, there are many methods common to the two sports, and the expert cragsman has an immense advantage over others when he takes to cave exploring. But the methods and appliances of the mountaineer are restricted by artificial regulations. There are many things that must not be done, even to enable a climber to ascend an otherwise inaccessible peak or to avoid serious peril. In cave work, on the other hand, the difficulties and dangers are multiplied so formidably by the singular conditions, of which darkness is but one, that such prohibitions would be absurd. When one may be called upon to climb a wall of mud, or a sheet of slippery stalagmite, or to traverse water-swept rocks with an unfathomed pool or swallet underneath, every safeguard must needs be utilised. Any mechanical means of accomplishing, facilitating, or expediting a passage is legitimate in cave work; ropes, pulleys, ladders of rope and wood, windlass, rafts, boats, crowbar, pick, shovel—all these, and an enormous variety of other things, have their place in the cave explorer's equipment.

One might write a volume on the equipment of cave explorers. Hardly any other sport requires so formidable a variety. I must limit myself to a few words. The explorer's dress should be a boiler suit, made all in one piece from neck to heel, and with no pockets or buttons to catch in the jagged Limestone, plenty of both being provided inside. He must renounce any hankering after waterproof garments, the proper precaution against the effects of wet being to wear thick woollen underclothing. His boots should be nailed after the manner of those worn by rock climbers. Candles are the best illuminant, much better than any lamp—acetylene, electric, or other. But a supply of magnesium wire should be carried, with waterproofed matches in water-tight boxes; and a powerful limelight, burning ether instead of hydrogen, for the sake of portability, is a useful auxiliary. Boats have been used in some of the caves in the Peak, in Wookey Hole, and in the cavern of Marble Arch, explored by M. Martel, in Ireland. Plenty of rope—not of the Alpine Club material, but hempen—is necessary, and a few rope ladders often come in handy. The only rule of the game that I should like to insist upon is, that no damage should be done to the beautiful features of a cave. It is a rule observed by every cave explorer worthy of the name. The temptation to acquire specimens must be resisted.

The first thing that the cave explorer, eager for discovery, has to learn, is not to lose himself. In many cases no special precautions are necessary, but if there are numerous bifurcations, specific measures must be adopted. Often it is sufficient to station a hurricane lamp or a good-sized candle at the cross roads; a surer method, but one that is rather troublesome, is to unreel a thread as we advance. Such a cavern as Goatchurch, in Burrington Combe, Somerset, is a perplexing maze, where one loses one's bearings completely two minutes after looking at the compass. The mass of the hill is shivered into innumerable fragments, of giant size. Passages striking off along the fractures often lead one back imperceptibly to the point of divergence. At the Eastwater Cavern, in the same district, after I had already gone four times through the enormous aggregation of shattered rocks at the top, where a human body is like a beetle in a heap of macadam, I tried in vain to make my way out without using the life-line. Although there is but 100 feet of it, one takes half an hour to get through. The original explorers spent a much longer time in discovering a practicable route. For my own part, I was lost in a few moments, and compelled to return. The imprudence of two men in the Bagshawe Cavern, in Derbyshire, who went too far in advance in their anxiety to be discoverers, led to an uncomfortable experience both for them and for their rescuers. This very extensive cavern has a number of ramifications. The two men who were following reached a distant and unexplored part of the cave, only to find that they had missed their comrades, the sand and clay on the cave floor being still perfectly smooth and untrodden. They failed to discover the wanderers in the neighbouring passages, and lost their own way for a time before they got back, through the winding tunnels, low-roofed fissures, and deep canals, crawling, scrambling, and wading breast-deep through icy water, to the place where they had parted. They hoped the truants had found their way back, but there was no sign of them, and preparations had to be made for a second journey. After a fatiguing quest, that lasted several hours, they found the missing adventurers in a remote part of the cavern, nursing their last shred of candle and waiting to be rescued. The experiences of some youthful explorers in Wookey Hole, who found themselves on dangerous ground and all their matches gone, are described on another page.

There is a romance about cave exploring that is almost unrivalled. The conditions of the sport are so weird and exciting, so strangely different from everything we are accustomed to. To be so near to, and yet so far from, the scenes of our everyday life; to be launched on a voyage of discovery on an English river, or to be the first to gaze on some miracle of fantastic crystallisation only a few miles away from a large town—these are among the attractions of the sport, at least in its present stage. There is nothing in this country to compare with the prodigious caves of Kentucky or the terrific subterranean defiles of Adelsberg. One might as well look for the magnificence of the Alps among our English mountains. Yet the caves and gulfs of Derbyshire and Yorkshire have a grandeur of structure and diversity of character, and the Somerset caves a brilliance of crystalline deposits, that are fully as admirable and impressive.

E. A. B.

[EXPLORING WOOKEY HOLE]

"Where Albion's western hills slope to the sea,
There is a cave, and o'er its dismal mouth,
Whence come to quick, mysterious ears hoarse sounds
Of giant revelry, the ivy grew
And shut the old sepulchral darkness in;
And by its side a well, whence ever full
And ever overflowing, silent, deep,
And cold as death, the waters creep
Adown the broken rocks in search of day.
Above it frowns a fretted, stony brow,
And only from the setting sun e'er came
Within that place the joyfulness of light."

W. W. Smith, Angels and Men: a Poem.

Hardly anywhere else in Britain is the mind borne down with such a sense of incalculable antiquity as at Wookey Hole. Nowhere, certainly, is there anything like such a continuous record from ages inconceivably remote. To touch first of all upon periods that are historical and measurable, we have the name Wookey, which appears to be the one bestowed by the ancient Britons; for it is a recognisable corruption—especially as the people of the district sound it, "Ookey"—of the Celtic Ogo, a cavern, the same word, Ogof, as the modern Welsh still apply to several caves in the Principality. Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second century A.D., has a reference to the cavern, and there are periodical allusions in Latin and English writers from that time to the present. In the Middle Ages its fame as one of the wonders of England was great. William of Worcester has a quaint description; he says, "Its entrance is narrow, and the ymage of a man stands beside it called the Porter, of whom leave to enter the Hall of Wokey is to be obtained." What became of this janitor is now unknown, unless he be represented by the recumbent monolith still to be seen outside the portal. References to the antiquities of Wookey Hole occur in Leland's Itinerary and in Camden's Britannia, and there is incorporated in Percy's Reliques a ballad, by an eighteenth-century virtuoso, Dr. Harrington of Bath, entitled "The Witch of Wokey," recounting an old legend of the neighbourhood.

"In aunciente dayes, tradition showes,
A base and wicked elfe arose
The Witch of Wokey hight."

So it begins, and goes on to relate, in the sham antique style of the day, how a malevolent old woman was for her misdeeds changed to stone by a "lerned clerk of Glaston." The Witch, a black, aquiline profile in stone and stalagmite, is with her culinary utensils the chief attraction to sightseers in the first great chamber, or, as it is sometimes called, the Witch's Kitchen.

PROFILE OF THE "WITCH OF WOOKEY," WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

AMONG THE POOLS, WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

It is impressive enough to stand beside the very modern-looking paper-mill, where the infant Axe, still dazzled by its sudden entry into the sunlight, is harnessed to assist in the manufacture of such workaday commodities as Bank-note paper, and to see before one things that carry the memory back all those stages; yet it is but the last few pages of the voluminous history that we are considering now. Professor Boyd Dawkins, who won his spurs as a palæontologist by his researches at Wookey Hole, discovered in the neighbouring Hyæna Den, which is really a branch of the old cavern, human and animal remains whose antiquity, compared with the periods just reviewed, is as the age of Stonehenge compared with that of a man. In the less known passages of the Hole itself, such relics have constantly been found in the course of our investigations. Potsherds, celts, bone implements, the carbonised embers from ancient hearths, all sorts of refuse lying in odd corners, have continually brought us, as it were, face to face with the time when man was little more than the king of beasts. Whosoever would read in the deeper chapters of this vast chronicle must be referred to the fascinating pages of Cave Hunting; there will be only an occasional glance at the human history in this record of a different class of exploration. Palæontological research has not been our object. Several of my companions have made some valuable discoveries in this line, and are intent on making more; but my own original motive, and that of several others, was the sport, as much as the scientific results, to be enjoyed in endeavouring to work out the great problem of the waters that have made themselves a road through the underworld of Mendip, and found an escape from bondage at Wookey Hole. This cavern has been known so long and so familiarly, that it must have seemed as if there were nothing more to be found out about it. It will, surely, be a surprise to many to learn what important additions have recently been made to the extent of its known and accessible passages, and what progress there has been in explaining the secrets of its water system. We are, in all probability, on the brink of yet more startling revelations.

Drayton complained, in "Polyolbion," that the renown of the Devil's Hole in the Peak of Derbyshire, then as in the present day, had robbed the Somersetshire cave of some of its glory.

"Yet Ochy's dreadful Hole still held herself disgrac'd
With th' wonders of this Isle that she should not be plac'd:
But that which vex'd her most, was that the Peakish Cave
Before her darksome self such dignity should have."

Many things here bring to mind the Derbyshire cavern, which several of our party had explored pretty thoroughly before we did any serious work in Somerset—the approach along the deep wooded ravine cut through the Dolomitic Conglomerate, the river pouring out from vast reservoirs within the earth, the legendary associations, and the mystery shrouding the stream's subterranean course. From the drainage area about Priddy, 700 feet above, on the top of Mendip, these waters find their way down through a multitude of channels. Most of these passages are quite unknown, but the two most important, of which a good deal will be said presently,—the Eastwater Swallet and Swildon's Hole,—have been explored to a considerable depth. In the latter we have got to a depth of 300 feet, but natural obstacles and other difficulties have prevented us from following the stream-course farther. Mr. Balch has traced the Eastwater Swallet, which he opened in 1902, to the depth of 500 feet below the point of absorption—almost, that is to say, down to the level of Wookey Hole; but an enormous thickness of rock still remains unexplored between the farthest points attained, from below upwards and from above downwards. Most likely, when we get farther, if we succeed in passing the present obstacles, we shall soon find ourselves entering the canals and water caverns that lie on the same level as the great natural reservoirs of Wookey Hole; in other words, we are approaching the plane of saturation. Exploration in the Eastwater Swallet is still being carried on, though perforce very slowly; and concurrently therewith, efforts are being made, not without success, to trace the passages in the lower cavern farther and farther back.

MASS OF STALAGMITE, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

IN THE FIRST CHAMBER, WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

The summer tourist, conducted through the three principal chambers of Wookey Hole by a guide armed with a can of benzoline, for making stalagmites into torches, comes out having a very imperfect knowledge of the geography of the cavern, and a totally inadequate idea of its beauties. I well remember how little I was impressed by my first visit, under these conditions, many years ago. The weak illumination seemed to reveal only the proportions of some rather large cellars, pervaded by oily pools, into which the contents of the can were poured and set on fire, producing an unearthly glare through the darkness and the waters; and a number of dingy and unconvincing natural effigies, black with the accumulation of soot. Our exploring party in March 1903 saw these things under an illumination such as had never been kindled there before, and I for one was quite unprepared for the revelation of brilliance and spaciousness and beauty that we were to witness.

"Wokey Hole," says Bishop Percy, "has given birth to as many wild, fanciful stories as the Sybil's (sic) Cave in Italy. Through a very narrow entrance it opens into a large vault, the roof whereof, either on account of its height or the thickness of the gloom, cannot be discovered by the light of torches. It goes winding a great way underground, is crost by a stream of very cold water, and is all horrid with broken pieces of rock: many of these are evident petrifactions, which, on account of their singular forms, have given rise to the fables alluded to in this poem," the story, that is, of the blear-eyed hag who was turned into stone. This quaint description is true in every particular. The first cavern, or the "Witch's Kitchen," has a weird similitude to Gothic architecture. Arch springs from arch up to the lofty summit, and the walls and vaulting are full of canopied recesses, with wild foliations of glistening calcite wreathed from niche to niche.

Below us, as we enter, a broad deep pool stretches away into darkness. Could we follow the gently moving current in a boat, we should enter another great vault, whose existence the ordinary visitor never suspects. There, in a small passage beyond the water, Mr. Balch discovered human remains. Whilst we peered into the gloom, the limelight was burning up, and now it flashed across the cavern to where the black scowling head of the Witch overshadows terraces, basins, and wild imageries of spectral stalagmite.

"A glow! a gleam!
A broader beam
Startles those realms of endless night,
While bats whirl round on slanting wing,
Astonished at this awful thing.
The rocky roof's reflected rays
Are caught up in the waterways,
And every jewelled stalactite
Is bathed in that stupendous light,
One moment only; then the caves
Are plunged again in Stygian waves;
The fairy dream has passed away
And night resumes her ancient sway."

The Vicar of Whiteparish, near Salisbury, wrote these expressive lines after seeing Wookey Hole lighted up with magnesium. Our beam of light was less transitory, and gave us ample leisure to contemplate the glories of this magnificent chamber. Its walls for the most part are coloured a rich red, which absorbs light readily and makes photography a slow business. The first exposure took half an hour. Against the warm red, the pearly streaks of stalactite and stalagmite shine in exquisite relief. There is a superb mass of stalactite near the Witch; to say truth, the eye is confounded by the wild grouping of fantastic piles of dripstone around that uncouth head; the colours of the rocks and the flashing crystallisations are reflected in the pellucid water, and confused again with our glimpses of the river-bed, smitten by the moving shaft of light. On the nearer side of the cave, where a narrow arch leads into an incrusted grotto, a gentle stream has deposited a fairy-like series of fonts and stoups, ending in a pure white sheet of dripstone, over which the water murmurs. The surface of all these fabrications is diapered over with a network of delicate pearly ridges; so that here you see a mass, as it were, of polished brain coral, and there madrepores and alcyonaria, where the deposits have continued their growth under water. Some of these efflorescences are like petrified filaments of water weed. The foul scurf and soot that covers the Witch's cooking apparatus and other accessories would, doubtless, disappear under a fresh deposit of pristine white, would the guides but cease for a twelvemonth to drench them in benzoline, for the delectation of such as love conundrums in stone. Still, these things are but a small part of the scenery, when all is lighted up as we were able to light it. Our work done, a Bengal fire was set off, and the glimpses it gave us along the waterway to the inaccessible chamber beyond added vastness and mystery to the scene.

STALACTITE TERRACE, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

GREAT RIVER CHAMBER, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Dawkes & Partridge, Wells.

The next chamber is a loftier vault, and the arching is more decidedly Gothic in its suggestiveness. Two low arches at either side form the portals, far above which a series of pointed arches spring to a height of 70 feet, their summits converging in a polygonal cleft, like the lantern of some cathedral dome. Then we make our way across the sandbanks, between the pools, into the largest chamber of all, with a roof of enormous span, whose breadth dwarfs its height, arching over the sleeping river and the broad slopes of sand, whereon grotesque Limestone monoliths take the likeness of prehistoric monsters sleeping by the waterside. Through the clear water we can discern a submerged arch communicating with more distant caverns. There is a tradition, coming down from the mediæval historians, that unfathomable lakes lie behind the barrier. This is probably true in so far as it points to the existence of enormous reservoirs of water beyond the accessible parts of Wookey Hole, the theory being confirmed by the behaviour of the silt at flood time. Were the hatches belonging to the paper-mill opened, and the water lowered a few feet, an attempt might be made to solve these problems. Mr. Balch did, in fact, at a time when the water was partially lowered, make his way into two unexplored chambers, fed by tunnels submerged a foot or so below the surface.

SECOND GREAT CHAMBER, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Dawkes & Partridge, Wells.

ENTRANCE OF THIRD CHAMBER, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Dawkes & Partridge, Wells.

The older and the newer caves and passages of Wookey Hole lie at five levels, one above the other like five storeys, the topmost of all representing the oldest channel of the subterranean Axe, which has in the course of ages forsaken first one and then the other, boring fresh passages in the Conglomerate. Of these five storeys, one alone, the nethermost, is known to the uninitiated visitor. Portions of the other four had been explored from time to time by Mr. Balch, who in 1903 made such discoveries of unknown continuations as fill us with hopes of penetrating deeply into the mysterious region beyond. Climbing into the Upper Series from a spot near the threshold of the Witch's Kitchen, we made our way eastward over dry rocks, and came speedily to the junction with another passage from nearer the cave mouth. Only a thin leaf of rock separates the two, for it is characteristic of all these upper passages that they run almost parallel to each other whilst rising to other levels. Altogether, we doubled back on our original direction three or four times, creeping through holes in the walls partitioning the corridors, and ascending to the top of several lofty bridges, formed by fragments that have fallen from roof and walls and wedged themselves securely. The construction of these bridges is often marvellous to see. In one case a number of rocks form an irregular arch, at the top of which a keystone wedges the whole cluster together. Obviously they must have fallen and come together practically at the same instant. This was what happened hard by with two great boulders that fell down the rift and caught each other in mid-air. Another impressive natural structure is known to explorers of Wookey Hole as the Spur and the Wedge. The huge horizontal peak of Limestone projecting into the chasm brings to mind a famous passage in Mr. Rider Haggard's She. This spot was the scene of a droll adventure that befell one of my companions years ago. With several other boys, he wandered into these passages, when suddenly the one candle they had with them went out. A boy had been commissioned to bring a supply of matches, but it was ascertained that he had only one left, which on being struck promptly went out. In this emergency, the lads could do nothing but sit still until help arrived. They had no food, and in trying to feel the time, they broke the hands of the only watch. They computed that they had been in durance three days when the rescue party reached the spot, but the protracted and hungry period of waiting turned out to be only eight hours. Their resting-place was the flat back of the pinnacle, with a 60-foot drop on one side and jagged rocks on the other.

In two places in these galleries there are fine displays of stalagmite on the wall, in the form of corrugated sheets, the ridges of which, stained red with ferrous deposits, hang straight down like a series of organ pipes. The walls glisten here and there with minute crystals. But the most striking sight is where the Dolomitic Conglomerate, of which the walls are composed, appears in clean-cut sections. One of these, which has been successfully photographed, shows the differently coloured pebbles, chiefly Mountain Limestone with a few of Old Red Sandstone, embedded in the matrix, and surrounded with distinct layers of cement, all as brilliantly defined as the concentric rings of an agate. Hard by is a corner where Mr. Balch discovered the bones of a man; they were mineralised, but it was impossible to tell their period, or even whether they represented an interment, or were merely the remains of some wanderer from his tribe who had perished in this forlorn spot.

Sleeping bats hung from many a coign, and would not be awakened even when lifted down. Big cave spiders crawled over the walls in the parts adjoining the open air, where the breeze found its way in, although we could not see through the narrowing crevices. Here and there the cocoons of the spiders hung from the roof in white, woolly balls. At the farthest point reached was a settlement of jackdaws, with a number of untidy-looking nests, and there we could hear a thrush singing in the trees outside; for we were close to the main cliff, and the river was flowing out beneath our feet, under a great thickness of rock.

STALACTITE GROTTO: NEW CHAMBERS, WOOKEY HOLE CAVE.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

STALACTITE GROTTO, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Claude Blee.

By the natural falling in of the roof, the first great chamber of Wookey has broken through into the galleries above, and certain passages of the Upper Series now open high up in the vault of the Witch's Kitchen. One of these openings has been known for years; another, which we reconnoitred carefully in March 1903, has now had its barrier of cave earth cut through, with the result that a group of stalactite chambers of wonderful beauty has been disclosed, with untold possibilities of further advance. Boxing Day 1903 was spent in an exploration of these new chambers. Climbing on my shoulders, Mr. Balch got hand-hold in a chink of the Limestone, and pulled himself up 10 feet. Here a stalagmite peg held the rope ladder whilst we clambered after, entering a cross gallery that gives access by another short scramble to the loveliest of the new grottoes. When the discovery was made, Mr. Balch and his assistants had to keep watch and ward day and night, until a door had been fitted up, and every hole and crevice securely blocked; for the entire village was quickly on the scene, and irretrievable damage might have been committed.

The grotto is irregular in shape, and the incrustations are disposed without order or system. From every nook and corner in the superimpending rocks bundles of stalactite spears are thrust; bosses and pillars spring from the floor, and sometimes meet the descending shafts. Of all these frail pillars, the finest, rising on the very edge of the rift we had ascended, seems to support the whole ponderous roof, like the fragile column left by a dexterous architect, to cheat the eye, in some cathedral vestibule. Certain of these hanging shafts are shaped like the barbed head of a spear, a slanting stalactite having intercepted and coalesced with the dripping calcite from an inch or two away. A creamy, brownish yellow, with a golden lustre like that of amber, is the prevailing tint; but, here and there, plaques of dazzling white shine out against the burning magnesium.

Crawling in and out among the stalagmite pedestals, grievously afraid of injuring the diaphanous fabric, we emerged in a very low chamber of great area, right across which a grille of translucent rods, each a foot high and ranged in regular line, fills the narrow space between roof and floor. This extraordinary and strangely beautiful railing is some 30 feet long, and only in one spot is it possible, by dint of careful wriggling, to pass between the rods into the farther parts of the chamber. Mr. Balch entreated me not to attempt this. When he tried it, a fortnight ago, he had indeed got through to the series of caves beyond, but, in returning, a projection had caught him at the lowest spot, where the chamber is only nine inches high, and he had struggled hard for twenty minutes before he could move an inch. Two of us, notwithstanding this advice, ventured through. After draining off a pool of water that was held back by a thin rim of dripstone, we traversed the low chamber and a short tunnel beyond, climbed a vertical cleft, and entered another low chamber of immense length and breadth, whose various extensions we explored until the accumulated deposits of boulders and cave earth stopped our advance for the time being. In returning through the tunnel and the low chamber with the grille, we tried successfully to dive under the archway and wriggle into the opening head foremost, in spite of two opposing stumps of stalagmite. By these tactics we escaped the worst of the squeeze.

STALACTITE PILLARS, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Claude Blee.

NEW STALACTITE GROTTO, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

Whilst engaged in this excursion, we had heard the sound of hammering somewhere away in the heart of the rock. It was our three friends attempting to break into a promising gallery, which ought to cross the vestibule of the main cavern and connect the two groups of upper caves. We were not long in joining them; and now with pick, hammer, and crowbar we attacked the barrier in force. The chief obstacle was a great flat rock standing on end across the unexplored opening, and propped up by a heap of boulders, which we gradually smashed up or removed to one side. Still the big fellow would not budge, and we had to sap his foundations by degrees. Yet this huge rock was but a fragment that had fallen from the edge of a vast and threatening leaf of rock, which now hung over our heads like a monstrous guillotine. The upper caves are waterless, and it soon became desirable to send one of our number to fetch us a drink. Presently we heard a plaintive cry from the distance: his candle had gone out, and he had forgotten the matches. Going to the rescue, I found him groping about on a shelf of rock, 30 feet from the floor, hard by the Spur and Wedge; he had lost his bearings altogether. On his return, we made another onslaught upon our rocky adversary, the five of us sitting on his shoulder and pushing against the wall, whilst our leader waxed grimly facetious as to what would happen to us if the shock brought down the guillotine. Slowly and painfully we tilted the mass of rock over, but only a few inches, leaving just room enough for a thin man to crawl behind. Squirming eagerly into the opening, I looked under, and was disappointed to see that, if wide, it was still heaped right to the crown of the arch by the rubbish flung there long ago by the river. Nevertheless, Mr. Balch was not dissatisfied. Though parts of these ancient waterways are choked with débris, it is unlikely, nay impossible, that the main channels should not remain open. Our day's work had taken us on another stage in our slow journey. The labour of removing the new obstacle will be considerable, but the result is sure.

In 1904 we had the pleasure of escorting that veteran speleologist, Monsieur E. A. Martel, through the old and the new caves at Wookey Hole. About the same time efforts were made anew to force a way into unexplored territory, with not uninteresting results. Many hours were spent one day by three of us in a hole that we had discovered just within the doorway of the cavern, a thing that had most unaccountably escaped observation hitherto, though right under our noses. The opening pointed in the direction of the lower cave mouth, where the Axe comes out; but it certainly did not look very promising. Crawling in, we found ourselves in a steeply descending passage, almost completely choked by stones and cave earth. But at the end of the first portion it was noticed that the floor dropped suddenly, indicating a chamber or gallery below. An afternoon was spent in the laborious task of shifting rocks, small stones, and earth, and passing up the fragments, great and small, from hand to hand, until they could be placed in safe positions near the mouth of the hole. Eventually, an ancient channel through the solid rock was disclosed, and at the end of 60 feet or so a broad low chamber appeared, floored with rocks and earth, and roofed in with solid rock at a height of 12 or 14 inches. Pushing on, the leader speedily found he was jammed between floor and ceiling, and could go no farther without more engineering; but an elder wand was procured, a candle tied to the end of it, and this rough-and-ready torch being pushed forward, it was possible to see some 35 feet ahead into the low chamber, in the depths of which a row of spiky stalactites stretched across like an alabaster grating.

To explore this chamber thoroughly, it will be necessary to hollow out a passage in the soft floor. In all likelihood, it crosses the present river-course at a level only a few feet higher. Quantities of pottery, bones, teeth, and fragments of charcoal were found in digging out the obstacles. It seems most probable that the hole was stopped up by human agency in prehistoric ages; perhaps it was a place of sepulture. The obstacles were carefully wedged together, and their removal caused much difficulty. It is not pleasant to lie on one's back in a hole, whose roof is only a few inches above one's face, and have a block of Limestone rolled from end to end of one's frame, without allowance for projections in either. In all several tons of material were shifted and carried out of the way. Much of the pottery had designs of a primitive character worked on the surface; the more elaborate was Romano-British. Considerable sections of amphoræ and other vessels have since been pieced together.

THE GRILLE: NEW CHAMBERS, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

THE SOURCE OF THE AXE, WOOKEY HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

Next day I made a curious find at a point farther in. Where the path from the entrance rises over a big accumulation of rocks, just before it reaches the first great chamber, a hole in the floor had been noticed. It had not been explored, but was waiting for someone capable of standing an exceptionally hard squeeze. The depth being uncertain, I had a rope tied on, and after a brief struggle managed to get through the first hole, into a crooked passage of no great length, which brought me down to a small bell chamber. This had simply been produced by the piling up of huge quantities of rocks and stones on the floor of the original cavern, the whole structure having since become thoroughly cemented and solidified by the growth of stalagmite. There were many teeth lying about, but the most interesting object was a wooden bowl, slightly flattened out, and resembling the top of a man's skull in shape and size. It felt soft, like a piece of cork, but was perfectly sound. What its age would be one could not tell within a century or two. It is now in the possession of Mr. Troup of Wells.

E. A. B.

[STRENUOUS DAYS IN THE EASTWATER
SWALLET]

From two to three miles north of Wookey Hole, on the top of the Mendip tableland, is a broad, shallow valley, surrounded on every side by higher ground. It is a grey, desolate tract, with few trees dotted over its surface, but a thick belt of wood on the south, the dark green of which in summer, and the black stems in winter, make the grey landscape seem the more arid, gaunt, and desolate. The ruined engine house of a deserted lead mine does not add to the attractiveness of the scenery. But that is soon lost to sight in the vastness of the rolling tableland, which swells up in the distance to 1000 feet above the sea on Pen Hill to the east, and again to the same height at Priddy Nine Barrows on North Hill, the general brown tints of the heather and bracken showing that the Old Red Sandstone comes to the surface on these and the other saliences of the plateau. Within this shallow basin the rock is Limestone, and the causes of the existence of a valley without any visible outlet for its drainage are at once manifest. In many places the surface of the ground is scored and pitted by innumerable depressions of diverse shapes and sizes; roundish basins, steep funnels, craggy troughs with streams running in and disappearing, and mere dimples, grass-lined and perfectly dry. Through these swallets, or swallow holes, the whole of the drainage finds a vent, and all the material excavated by the forces of nature in the process of hollowing out this valley, has been carried off in the same way. The work is still going on. At Eastwater a little stream, flowing down a long ravine, suddenly comes against a Limestone cliff, and begins to burrow. Less than a mile away, another stream, big enough to be called a brook, pours into a cleft in the ground and is seen no more. This second swallow is known as Swildon's Hole, Swildon being a corruption of Swithin. Years ago, in the course of a lawsuit, it was proved that the waters about the village of Priddy, which stands on the edge of this upland valley, find their way into the Axe, uniting their streams somewhere in the heart of the hill between this point and Wookey Hole. When there were storms on the hilltop, or the upland waters were fouled artificially, the Axe came out turbid. That the area drained by the underground Axe is a large one is proved by the size of the river, which must be formed by the junction of a good many streams of the volume of Eastwater and the Swildon brook. Probably that area extends as far east as Hillgrove, where a series of swallets in a woodland ravine are now being enlarged by Mr. Balch, with a view to an exploration of the underlying caverns.

In 1901 Mr. Balch's party made a descent into Swildon's Hole, and got to a depth of 300 feet below the point of absorption, which is at the same level as the Eastwater Swallet and that at Hillgrove—that is, 780 feet above the sea. Difficulties having been put in the way of a more complete exploration by the owner of the field in which the swallet is situated, he turned his attention to the neighbouring stream of Eastwater, which, unfortunately, runs away through holes impenetrable to man, and therefore had not promised so easy a route into the unknown. Undeterred by the obvious difficulties, Mr. Balch set to work early in 1902, and, as he describes, made his way at last into the open passages underneath the swallet. In the course of two or three visits he reached a point nearly 500 feet below the cave mouth, and distant about 2000 feet in horizontal measurement.

ENTRANCE TO GREAT CAVERN OF EASTWATER.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

SECTION OF EASTWATER CAVERN.

(Click on map to see a larger version. Not available on all devices.)

He invited a large party to descend with him on March 18th, 1903, for a more elaborate exploration. Besides the leader, Mr. Balch, experienced cave explorers came from Oxford, Derby, Holmfirth, Glastonbury, and Wells. Driving up from Wells early in the morning, we donned our overalls at the mouth of the swallet. Everything was in readiness for the adventure, and at eleven o'clock or thereabouts the first man descended the artificial hole, 20 feet deep, into the enormous accumulation of loose rocks that extends for more than 100 feet into the head of the cavern. The blocks forming the sides of this shaft, and many of those beyond its foot, had been carefully underpinned with timber. Everything bore witness to the labour and perseverance spent in engineering an entrance. The baggage having been let down by a rope, we pushed on through the confusion of rocks by a maze of passages resembling the intricacies of the well-known Goatchurch Cavern, at Burrington, although the rocks, instead of being huge rectangular masses, were shattered into the most irregular forms and sizes, leaving holes between scarce big enough for a human body to squeeze through. The first explorers were two hours in finding a way through this bewildering labyrinth. Some of our men went head foremost, others crawled on their backs with feet in front. The rocks were water-worn and jagged, and often so rotten with the action of water laden with carbonic acid, that a finger could be thrust in up to the hilt, as into clay. We formed ourselves into a chain to hand on the luggage; this was a trying business, for we were taking down more than 500 feet of rope, besides a pick, a shovel, a bucket, various steel pulleys, an ample stock of candles, and provisions for three meals, to humour which through these unaccommodating passages was worse than coaxing one's own body along. Both horizontal and vertical openings occurred here and there, and had to be avoided carefully, one of the most important of these being a flood-way formed by the stream entering the swallet. It was curious to find a withy stick making desperate efforts to put forth leaves in the darkness, and succeeding in producing a long white sprout.

Suddenly the noise of falling water was heard, and the leading men called for the rope ladder. The masses of loose rock end abruptly. To the right a steep tunnel, called the 380-foot way, carries a small stream down; to the left is a large, irregular chamber; and beyond it, the main passages of the cavern. The ladder being secured, each man resigned himself to the inevitable drenching, and descended into the rugged cave at the head of the 380-foot way. A camera was got down so far, but most of the apparatus was left at the parting of the ways. Our road was now decidedly easier. The water-channel was rugged, but the roof rose fairly high, and there were few boulders. A large tunnel, cut in the solid rock, brought down a tributary stream on the right; on the other side, a horizontal tunnel was marked down for further investigation. The real termination of the 380-foot way has not been discovered. At present there is no passing beyond a choke of stones and gravel that fills it nearly to the roof; but Mr. Balch proposes to remove this.

We returned to the horizontal tunnel. It led into an extensive sloping chamber whose shape is peculiarly characteristic of this cavern. Roof and floor, roughly parallel, are inclined at an angle of fifty degrees. For a long distance there was space to creep along under the roof, then the space grew less, and at length the leading men shouted that they could get no farther. Being rather slighter in build than those who were in front, I made an effort to pass them, and succeeded by clambering along at a higher level. A hole between some choke-stones and a stalactite gave me admittance to a continuation of this extraordinary chamber. Then, dropping into a dry water-channel, I wriggled downward and downward, following the noise of some dislodged stones that rattled away to a considerable depth. At last I found it impossible to get any farther, though two more feet would have led me into a sudden widening that looked rather promising. The next man behind was unable to get within 50 feet of this point.

THE DESCENT OF EASTWATER CAVERN, THE SECOND
VERTICAL DROP.

From Sketch by H. E. Balch.

THE GREAT CANYON, EASTWATER CAVERN.

From Sketch by H. E. Balch.

After an exceedingly painful journey back to the mouth of the tunnel, we sat down to lunch, before re-ascending the rope ladder, and carrying our baggage through a series of awkward holes and pits, all deluged with water, into the big chamber at the head of the main passages. In this chamber, whose walls, floor, and roof are formed of gigantic blocks seemingly on the point of collapsing, is an opening in the roof, through which a stream comes tumbling in. At the farthest corner therefrom a large opening leads to the bottom of a chimney or aven. Great quantities of clay on walls and roof show that this cavern has frequently been filled with water through the choking up of the lower exit. The stream runs away into the rocky floor at the lower end of the cave, and a few feet above it is a flood-way, a short, low tunnel, through which we crawled. Then begins one of the most interesting portions of the cavern. In one of those broad, low-roofed fissures, inclined at the same angle of fifty degrees as the general dip of the strata, and formed, in fact, by the widening of a bedding-plane in the Limestone strata, a deep, winding channel has been cut by the stream we have just passed. It has been called, from its likeness, the Canyon. For a considerable distance our path lies down the Canyon, and with our heavy burdens we find the passage far from easy. As far as possible, we keep near the top of the ravine, straddling across. Sometimes, however, there is no help for it but to drop right to the bottom. Before we reach its termination, we have to climb out on the smooth, sloping floor of the main fissure, and wriggle forwards lying on our sides or on our backs. Foot-hold and hand-hold being singularly scarce hereabouts, we shall find this one of the most troublesome places in returning. On the right, we have a glimpse through a hole here and there of another great low-roofed fissure sloping at the same angle; then there are cross roads, with a tunnel on the left admitting to a stalactite chamber, and a passage on the right leading to the lower end of the Canyon.

We now reached the most constricted portion of the main channel. It is a low, roundish tunnel, with an S curve at the distant end. A good deal of our locomotion might be likened to crawling through drain-pipes; we were now coming to a sort of trap. The S bend has to be taken with the body lying on its right side. Once in it, the explorer cannot turn round, since the diameter every way only just admits a human body, and the three curves are close together. My candle went out half-way through, and to unjam my arm and get it down for the waterproof matches was a difficult and protracted operation. Moving the luggage through was a very severe task, the width of the hole at one spot being only nine and a half inches.

We issued into a good-sized passage. Immediately on the left a twisting fissure went down to the head of the first perpendicular drop; but, leaving this for a while, we spent nearly an hour exploring the lofty chamber straight ahead of us. It rises to an unknown height in a vertical fissure, narrowing gradually. At the bottom is a deep cutting, which some of us passed by back and knee work, at a height above the floor. On the left, that is the eastern, wall are openings into a parallel tunnel with good stalactites. At the far end both this tunnel and the passage itself are blocked with clay and gravel.[3] On our second visit, a day or two later, I explored a tunnel in the other wall 10 feet from the floor. It led into another of the vast sloping fissures already described, which I was too much exhausted to explore very far. These fissures, all inclined at the same angle, and either parallel or else lying in one plane, are most impressive features of the Eastwater Cavern; their extent is evidently enormous, and it seems as if only a few frail pillars of jammed stones served to prevent the great mass of the hill from settling down and crushing roof and floor together. On a more minute survey it may turn out that these are all portions of one huge fissure, merely partitioned off by different chokes.

It was four in the afternoon when we entered the twisting fissure leading to the first vertical descent, and two of the party had now to return. Through an oversight in not bringing a short rope for harnessing the pulley, nearly two hours were spent in rigging up the tackle, the situation being awkward for letting men down safely. We were ensconced in a little chamber, the boulder floor of which opened into the top of a narrow rift widening downwards, where, about 60 feet beneath, the walls funnelled into a yawning pit 60 feet deep. This pit had been explored previously, and was found to be choked at the bottom; it formed a safe and certain receptacle for anything lost or dislodged by persons descending the cliff above it. The configuration of our hole was such that only one man at a time could get a steady pull on the life-line, which ran over a pulley. A manilla rope was therefore let down from the same belaying-pin, for a man to climb up and down by, so far as he was able, the life-line being used merely as a safeguard. One by one the explorers dropped over into the abyss. The last three or four had the best of it, since, with a hauling party below, full use could be made of the pulley.

We were now drawing nigh to the final tug of war. A quarter of an hour of indescribable wriggling brought us to a narrow and lofty rift, into which as many of the party as it would accommodate wedged themselves, right over the second vertical drop. Much the same tactics were resorted to here, save that, instead of a fixed pulley, each man in turn had a large steel pulley belted to him, through which ran 200 feet of rope, one end fixed to a wedged boulder beneath us, the other end in the hands of the hauling party. A 90-foot manilla was, as before, allowed to hang free, as a guide-rope, over the crags, and enabled each man to do something for himself and assist those above. Only four men essayed this last descent.

The gigantic cavity into which we now dropped is one of the most savage and impressive things it has ever been my lot to see. At the top, over the heads of the hauling party, it runs up into the rocky mass of the hill as a vertical chimney, under the mouth of which lay what appeared to be a deep black pit. We alighted, one by one, on a sloping shelf that traversed the side of the cavity at a considerable height. Creeping along this ledge, we saw at the end of it a huge cavernous opening descending into darkness, with a mighty rock wedged across it like a bridge. The black, gaunt walls on each side of us were craggy and rifted; their surfaces glistened with streaming water. Our ledge ending abruptly, we dropped, hand over hand, on the rope, to the edge of a large pothole, into which a stream was rushing. At this point a tunnel goes off to the left, and, as it had not been explored, I was asked by Mr. Balch to proceed down it. Two of us crept and clambered and slid down a very dirty watercourse, till, at a distance of perhaps 50 yards, we found ourselves atop of a high clay bank, closely overhung by rocks, with a stream rumbling along to the south-south-west. I got within 10 feet of the water, but without a rope to get us up again we would not venture farther. We had now been in the cave nine and a half hours, and were too much fatigued to undertake new work. It was ascertained, beyond reasonable doubt, that a fine series of potholes that exist in the continuation of the great cavity must drain into the stream just discovered. Beyond those potholes, to pass which involves much hard work, is another cavity, and beyond that what?—at present no one can tell. All we know is, that the water finds its way ultimately into the vast reservoirs inside Wookey Hole; but whether there are other vast cavities, or merely narrow crevices and impassable clefts between, is a question that will require labours almost Herculean to solve.

In scrambling back along the ledge in the big cavity I gave the final shove to a dangerous loose rock weighing something like six hundredweight. It fell into the ravine beneath, and hurtled onwards toward the chain of potholes, making the whole grim place ring with a crash of echoes. It took us two hours and a half to return to the cave mouth, although we were unencumbered with apparatus, for we had left the ropes and pulleys in place for another descent. Getting seven men up the higher of the two vertical pitches was a tough undertaking at the end of an arduous day, and when we returned through the famous S tunnel more than one explorer seemed disposed to snatch a sleep on its procrustean bed. We had been twelve hours underground when we revisited the glimpses of the moon.

It had been proposed to continue the exploration next day, but no one was fit for such a repetition of exhausting labours. The day following, a party of three was mustered to recover the apparatus that had been left in the depths. Two of us reached the head of the nethermost pitch, and after hours of severe work got everything up to the mouth of the swallet. Once more we drove back over Mendip in the dark. All around us on the desolate plateau was impenetrable gloom, but in the northern sky, and it seemed but a few miles away, the lights of Bath and Bristol flared across the heavens like two immense conflagrations. Never does one feel the sublimity of the open, windy earth, the starry sky, and the free sense of space, so profoundly as after striving for a long day to break through the barriers that shut us out from the regions of mystery under the hills.

E. A. B.

[SWILDON'S HOLE]

An insignificant crevice, a hole scarcely wide enough to tempt a dog or fox, alone gives admittance to what is perhaps the wildest and most magnificent cavern in Britain. Swildon's Hole, it has already been stated, lies at the same level, 780 feet above the sea, as the Eastwater Swallet and that of Hill Grove. It lies in a separate trough, within the same basin as the Eastwater stream, with whose waters it unites somewhere in the bowels of the rocky hills, to flow out of Wookey Hole as the river Axe, of which it may be considered as the principal feeder. A few years ago the actual swallet was visible, the brooklet running away into holes under a bank of earth and rock crowned with foliage. More recently, in order to make a small fish pond, the landowner has made a dam above the swallet, which is entirely concealed by this means, an entrance remaining, however, into the maze of cavities and waterways through a narrow crevice at the side. Mr. Balch was the first person to recognise the importance of Swildon's Hole as a chief feeder of the Axe, and in 1901 he made preparations to explore it. But through some delay, three members of his party were the first to enter the cave, without him—namely, Messrs. Troup and H. and F. Hiley. A short while after, Mr. Balch was able to carry out a more extended exploration. Then for some time no one entered the swallet, which gradually became choked with stones and litter brought down by the stream. Very few had ever heard of the cave, and hardly anyone realised that one of the most beautiful pieces of underground scenery in Britain was lying there unseen, and one of the most important of hydrological problems remaining quite unsolved.

The next visit took place about Christmas 1904. Mr. Troup, who had been one of the first in the cave, took the lead of our party. My other companions were Messrs. Bamforth and E. E. Barnes, but we expected to be joined some hours later by Mr. Balch and Mr. Slater.

When the first explorers entered this cavern some little while ago, they met with serious difficulties owing to the presence of ancient chokes or dams that held back pools of water, but they were assisted by the dryness of the weather. We, on the contrary, made our descent after a period of heavy rains, and the volume of water that accompanied us down was twentyfold as great. We had one advantage, however: the original discoverers were with us to point the way. With luggage reduced to a minimum, two ropes, plenty of illuminants, food, and two cameras, we passed through the uninviting entrance, and attacked methodically a close-packed mass of débris that had been washed into a narrow gut since the former visit.

Whilst we lay at work, the sound of falling water in the depths below broke on our ears, a musical but ominous salutation. The obstacle wasted two hours of valuable time. Wriggling through at last, feet foremost, our legs came out over the rift, a narrow chasm some 20 feet deep, with the head stream of the cavern tumbling in over a choke-stone at one end. Our goods were let down carefully into the hands of the first man, who lodged them in a sheltered spot whilst we scrambled hastily down through showers of spray. Now began a painful advance into the depths. Along the tilted bedding planes, down the perpendicular joints of the Limestone, widened by the water into broad, low chambers and deep shafts and canyons, we forged ahead, hugging the stream, which grew larger and angrier as tributaries came swishing in from walls and roof. At one point the water swept horizontally along a straight canal, but was stopped at the end by a recent choke, and now tumbled through a hole in the wall into a huge pothole. Through this lay our road.

ENTRANCE OF SWILDON'S HOLE.

Photo by M. Martel.

WATERFALL, SWILDON'S HOLE.

Photo by H. E. Balch.

The water poured down a staircase of similar basins, where to keep clear of the stream was impossible. So far we had kept tolerably dry, but as we clung to this watery ladder I pricked up my ears at the remark, "Will you have your back or your stomach in it?" Crouching on all fours, with back pressed against the low roof, and looking between my legs, I watched the performances of my comrades, as each in turn went through the final archway. Not one escaped a severe wetting. But I was going to be more wily—at least, I thought so. With hands and knees in the rushing stream, I squirmed hastily but cautiously through. I seemed to be getting on famously, and gave a spurt. That moment the rocks ended; they were undercut. I found myself sliding down a waterfall 10 feet high, and floundering in a big pool at the bottom. Drenched we were; but what better preparation could we have for the troubles ahead? This part of the cavern shows traces of enormous changes in the course of the stream, which has planed down great masses of stalagmite, the growth of ages, when this section of the tunnels was dry or all but deserted by the streams, which found a way down by the horizontal canal or some higher channel. Between this first water-chute and the second lies the most nerve-trying part of the journey to the farthest point hitherto attained. It is a succession of lofty rifts, giving into each other at right angles, the water sweeping from one to the next through curving fissures and sudden falls. For a while we kept above the canyons on a water-worn shelf, all that remained of a low, flattish chamber that sufficed for the small streams of older times. This giving out, we scrambled along the cliffs of the canyons, which seemed in the gloom without top or bottom, bestraddling the rift, or with feet on one side and back to the other pushing on from hold to hold. The Limestone grips would have been amply sufficient for this mode of progression had they not been drenched and slippery. Below us the waters raced and bellowed. At the junctions of the canyons they sounded on all sides at once; the invisible hollows all round seemed to be alive with angry voices, mad to be at us. What if a thunderstorm burst over Mendip now? Such thoughts would occur, although we knew we could climb into safety on the upper shelves of the canyon; for with a water-chute above and another below, a little flood would make us fast prisoners.

At the Well, the stream tumbles suddenly into a deep round pit, in which it is churned to foam before being driven out with accelerated speed along a rugged gorge to the second staircase of potholes. Shreds of magnesium ribbon dropped into the Well lit up such a turmoil of waters as one might see in some gigantic turbine going at full speed. Two of us now went ahead to report on the condition of the next stage. The gorge was too wide for climbing, but we found a footing on the rocks in the bed, then squirmed through a narrow fissure, and began to descend the potholes. These were deep basins, with high walls on the upper side where the stream poured in, and the other side broken down by the force of the torrent. Below them lay the second water-chute, a big fall pitching into a hole underneath a low arch, and sliding out into a turbulent pool. It was a sort of culvert, with very little head-room above the water. Had we not come through so many tribulations already, and had we not known of the glories that awaited us in the great stalactite chamber beyond this last trial, we should certainly have been turned back by this obstacle. After some little hesitation we resolved to attempt it, and went back to the head of the Well for our companions. One of the cameras had already been left behind; it was decided to leave the other here. The leader went down the water-chute on his back; the rest adopted all the other attitudes possible short of a complete header. But it made little difference; all got a most effectual drenching.

Running the gauntlet beneath another tributary, which came swishing in just over our heads, we pushed on into a high and ample chamber, where in times gone by a volume of water had accumulated in a sort of gigantic cistern. The rocky roof was flat and smooth, its cracks and fissures fringed with meandering lacework of stalactite. In front, the rocky mole that once held up the reservoir was cloven into a series of Limestone seracs, between which the stream found its way down into the remoter cavities. Masses of clay, some 15 feet thick, deposited by the ancient waters, still flanked this rugged portal into the unknown. Bones of sheep, cattle, horses, and lesser mammals lay about in profusion, enough to reconstruct whole skeletons; with them were the relics of animals now extinct on Mendip, deer and other creatures. Higher up sherds of Samian pottery had been found, brought down by the stream from the rubbish heaps of long ago. What struck the imagination as still more wonderful was that in this sunless spot, 300 feet below the surface, there were creatures that lived. Empty snail shells were abundant, but yet more plentiful were tiny snails that were actually crawling over the clay, feeding, no doubt, on water-borne vegetable matter. Gossamer-like webs stretched across many chinks in the Limestone, but the microscopic spiders we could not see. What flies did they live on? Surely not the caddis, whose corpses lay about in plenty on every shoal.

From this chamber the stream quickly descends into the great Water Rift, one of the most wonderful things in the whole cavern. It is but a few feet wide, but its height is enormous. The walls go up like mountain cliffs, but are lost in gloom instead of mist. Here tremendous changes had taken place since the former exploration. At that time the rift was blocked up in one place by a vast barrage of rock and stalagmite, that came down to the stream and forbade human progress save by one strait and difficult way. At a height above the water a hole ascended seven feet into the barrier, its orifice all but closed by a fringe of stalactites. Contriving to enter, the explorers crept up this pipe, and down a corresponding one on the other side, coming out on a cliff face overhanging the continuation of the Water Rift, to attain the bottom of which was an abstruse gymnastic problem. A little farther on they reached the utmost limit of their journey, where the stream beats violently against the termination of the rift, is hurled sideways, and finds an outlet through a low crevice, whence it tumbles in a 40-foot cataract into an unknown pool. Our main object to-day had been to descend this 40-foot pitch; that was the reason why we had encumbered ourselves with two long ropes. But now all was different. In the short interval that had elapsed since the former visit, the strength of the ungovernable torrent had swept away the whole of this vast structure, the work of thousands of ages—for the Pyramids are recent erections compared with these products of unimaginably slow crystallisation. Hardly a vestige remained; and now the current dashed unimpeded from end to end of the Water Rift, and the incessant thunder of the cataract deafened ears already attuned to the noise of the higher falls and canyons. Probably the removal of stones and dams by the former party, in making their way down, had contributed largely to this extraordinary event.

Nothing could be done in the face of such a volume of water. We turned, accordingly, out of the main passage into a lofty gallery or transept that branches off to the west, the general direction of the cavern being due south. To say it branches off is slightly incorrect, for it is really the course of a tributary brook, and quite possibly may have been in remote times the channel of the main stream. At all events its shape and magnitude indicate that it was once a very important section of the cavern. Scrambling cautiously along the sides of the toppling fragments of the mole, we crossed a deep gap and entered the gallery. At the portal a great hollow corbel of stalactite stood out from the wall, like an enormous stoup, its huge rims curved over like the petals of a flower. It stood there in solitary grandeur, but it was a token of transcendent glories beyond. A few more steps, and we saw that we were on the threshold of a fane more beautiful than any made with hands. The rocks to right and left were sheeted with crystalline enamel, its surface powdered thickly with a minute splash deposit, so frail that it gave one a twinge to crush the lovely efflorescence as we moved. One could not go a step without destroying hundreds of these delicate spicules, the work of untold ages of water action. More great corbels stood out from the walls as we advanced; they were richly moulded with concentric rings of stalagmite, and these again were carved and chased with wonderful reliefs. From the corbels sprang huge pillars right to the roof, pillars 40 feet in height; and from their capitals shining curtains hung down in ample folds, heavy as Parian marble, and as lovely in hue. One would have called them white, had we not seen, hanging from a cleft high up in the lofty walls, a mass of curtains as white as arragonite, the whitest thing there is. So dazzling was their immaculate purity that the rich creamy surface of the other incrustations showed dusky in comparison. We were veteran cave explorers, yet it seemed to us that all the caves we had ever seen in Britain could no more vie with this than parish churches with cathedrals. At each turn there was a new and more enthralling vista: more pillars, ampler curtains, piers and arches of Oriental magnificence, fluted and moulded into wildest fantasies. It struck one with a curious wonder to think that all these splendours had lain here unbeheld by living eye, untouched by a gleam of light, until one casual year in the twentieth century.

But the photographer was exercised by other feelings. He was here, but where was his camera? It had seemed a Herculean labour to bring that much-enduring instrument down to the 300-foot level, but he declared that the task was not superhuman, and, furthermore, he was determined to do it. He could not do it alone, however; that was obvious. The expedition, therefore, came down out of the stalactite gallery. Two went through the water-chute, two remained just outside it, to assist in the last and most dangerous stage of the transportation. We waited a long time; in fact, we had leisure enough to explore an interesting side gallery whilst the others made their way to and from the head of the Well. At last their welcome shout was heard. Standing in the water, with light held low under the arch, we caught sight of a hand, and then of a wading and much-crumpled-up man, lugging the camera, which he kept out of the foaming water with admirable skill. We grabbed it, and put the precious instrument in a place of safety; ten minutes later the flashlight was at work, taking our breath away with its gorgeous revelations. The photographer had his troubles even here, though not such as to be compared with those of the water caverns we had recently traversed, where at this moment two of our party, following us down, were engaged in photographing the canyons and the falls, under difficulties that few cameras have ever been confronted with. Here there was no marble pavement suitable to the splendours of the walls; nothing for the camera to stand on but an inch or two of slippery ledge, with a depth of mud in the middle that none of us cared to fathom. The only place that could be found at one spot for the flashlight was the top of my unfortunate head, which I generously put at the photographer's disposal. On it was laid a piece of stone, on which the gun-cotton was spread and sprinkled with the powder, which, when it went off, made me shut both eyes for fear of the shower of sparks, and so I missed the glorious blaze of light that illumined the cavern.

ENTRANCE OF STALACTITE CHAMBER, SWILDON'S HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

STALACTITE CURTAINS, SWILDON'S HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

These stately columns, soaring vaults, and sweeping marble draperies were strangely out of proportion to the narrowness of the place. But now the sinuous aisle broadened out, and the style of the architecture was changed entirely. We were at the junction chamber where, in the remote past, two big streams came down from the yawning passages to the left and right, and met here, probably as the main stream of the cavern. The roof is a spacious dome, hung with resplendent candelabra. But the unique feature of the place, the thing that impresses itself on the memory as one of the most dazzling creations of the wonder-working calcite, is the stalagmite bridge. Bridge, I say, but it is more than a bridge, for its complicated arches support a beautiful piazza, with a huge array of dripstone terraces, crystal basins, massive pedestals, and obelisks of stalagmite, which all but fills the chamber and extends some distance up the alcoves behind. Standing on one of the great hemispheres of dripstone, one could put one's head among the pendulous shafts above, and see how each was marvellously twisted, moulded, and fantastically embossed and gemmed with flashing crystals. The splash formation covered everything beneath the roof, save portions of the polished floor, with millions of tiny spicules. We had to move about cautiously, not only for fear of doing damage, but to avoid gaping pitfalls in the bridge, the surface of which was smooth as ice.

STALACTITE CHAMBER, SWILDON'S HOLE.

Photo by Bamforth, Holmfirth.

Whilst we were at work photographing a distant shout was heard, and soon the two men who had followed us down arrived at the big chamber. But our party was again reduced to its original four by the departure of two other members, who were to go back by the aquatic route in order to pick up certain articles that had been deposited on the way down. We ourselves hoped to get to the surface by another and a drier course. At the previous exploration two men had missed the rest of the party, and found their way, after divers adventures, through the ramifications of the cavern, to what they described as a great stalactite chamber, which was presumably our gallery. When they reached it, however, no one was there, nor any trace of human presence; either the explorers had finished their work and departed, or the pair had missed their way altogether. It was believed that they had come down to this very spot by the gallery joining this one on the north, and we purposed following that passage out. But this, as we presently discovered, was all wrong.

Two of us now went off on an exploring trip into the great passage running west. At once we encountered a series of huge obstructions. This passage was of the usual rift pattern, and, save for holes and crevices between, was wholly blocked up by large masses of tumbled rocks. One of us climbed to the top of the Cyclopean pile, whilst I attempted to make my way along at the middle height, but eventually found it easier to crawl through the culverts and water-gaps, regardless of mud and wet. Even among the piled-up rocks there were charming little nooks adorned with rich incrustations. When the rocks ended the open tunnel began to ascend rapidly; then, after a while, we came to another tunnel joining it on the north. This, though smaller, was the more important passage; the other shortly came to an end in a lofty grotto, bountifully tapestried with curtains and tassels of stalactite. We climbed the northern passage, through several brilliant displays of incrustation, and reached a level approximately 70 feet below the surface, by aneroid; there we could get no farther. But, unknown to ourselves, we had brought back important information.

We had noticed mysterious bits of string at two points in this series. When we reported the discovery to the two men left behind, they at once saw its significance. The two men whose route down to the stalactite chamber had caused so much perplexity had used a ball of string to mark their way out—these were the relics. Our casual trip had, perhaps, saved us from a night of blind wandering in the unknown branches of the great tunnel on the north. All being in readiness for our departure, we now proceeded to take up this providential thread. It was not an easy task. Often not an inch of string remained undecayed for many hundreds of feet together, and often we nosed the walls and floor, eagerly but in vain, for droppings of candle grease left by our predecessors. The way was dry, that was a relief, after six or seven hours in wet clothes; but it was a tighter squeeze than the other, and the sharpness of the turns was often aggravated by a portcullis of crystals on our backs, and a cheval de frise of stalagmite spear-heads against our stomachs. All the while we wondered whether we should really find the exit, or whether we should have to return and undertake the canyons after all. Mr. Balch compared our task of finding the desired exit to an attempt to ascend from the mouth of a river to some unknown point upon one of its tributaries, with nothing to indicate which way to take. This puts the position clearly enough, I think. There was no string to be found in the higher parts. At last the man in front disappeared feet foremost through the ugliest hole we had yet seen, out of which the noise of waters sounded ominously. A cheering cry came back to us; he had found the rift, where we had descended seven hours ago into the route through the canyons. A few more yards of determined wriggling, and the candle left by the other two men hove in sight. We found they had got out two hours ago. The stars were shining from a clear sky, and a keen frost was on the fields, but the excitement and the success of our adventure were stimulant enough to keep out the cold.

E. A. B.

[THE GREAT CAVERN AT CHEDDAR]

The ultimate goal of our researches at Cheddar has been the discovery of the underground river-course. Not many yards below the entrance to Gough's, or the Great Cavern, a large body of water wells up at the foot of a cliff, spreading out into a beautiful mere, half encircled by crags; flows on thence through the village, performing a great deal of industrial work on its way; and, finally, proceeds a mile or two farther as the Cheddar Water, to join its brother, the Axe, which has a similar origin. But less is known about the darksome course of the Cheddar Water than about the stream flowing out of Wookey Hole. With its tributaries, it has doubtless been the principal agent in the formation, not only of the caves, but also of the famous Cheddar gorge, which bears every evidence of having been produced by the gradual destruction of a series of caverns. Yet this important stream has actually not been met with hitherto at any single point of its course underground, and we have anything but complete information as to its sources on the uplands of Mendip. The owners of the Great Cavern, the Messrs. Gough Brothers, tell me that they intend to blast away about 10 feet of rock immediately overlying the exit of the river. When the stream is very full, water often bursts forth here from cracks and joints several feet above the normal level, and they imagine that there must be a chamber of some height just within. This, however, in my opinion, is not a necessary inference, since every cavity and crevice behind the outlet would at such times be heavily charged with water, under pressure, and the large cavities might be a long way back. It is curious that the water in a low tunnel recently discovered in Cox's Cavern, which lies some distance from Gough's, and at a lower level, rises and falls in unison with the movements of the water-level of the river outside, although that always remains 10 feet higher. Cox's Cavern is occasionally flooded, yet the water never rises to a point within 10 feet of the river level. Obviously the subterranean connection must be of a complicated and roundabout form.

At the time of my first serious attempt to explore the caves of Cheddar, when our party contained Dr. Norman Sheldon, Mr. J. O. Morland, and Mr. Harry Bamforth, two of whom have not since been able to join us in Somerset, I had not the advantage of knowing Mr. H. E. Balch, and we were utterly unaware of the great work he had been doing in the cave region adjoining Wells. On the other hand, we received invaluable assistance from the brothers Gough, who are not only proprietors of show caves, but take a sincere interest in underground exploration. Their father, who died in 1902, was the discoverer of the caverns that bear his name, and was actively at work pushing his way farther and farther into the rocky bosom of the hill up to the year of his death, at a good old age.

STALAGMITE PILLARS IN GOUGH'S GREAT CAVERN.

Photo by Gough, Cheddar.