Cabane

“ Nous auons veu aussi vne fois nostre propre cabane en feu; mais Dieu mercy nous l'esteignismes aussi tost. Il y a de ces cabanes ou berceaux de diuerse grandeur, les vnes de deux brasses en longueur, d'autres de dix, d'autres de vingt, de trente, & de quarante: la largeur ordinaire est d'enuiron quatre brasses, la hauteur est presque pareille. Il n'y a point de diuers estages; il ne se voit icy ny caue, ny chambre, ny grenier. On n'y veoit autre fenestre ny cheminée qu'vn meschant trou au haut de la cabane, qu'on y laisse à dessein pour chasser la fumée. ”

“ At the bottom of this chasm, so far below my feet that I was giddy to look down, a small circular lake was visible, like the eye of a fiend. On the shore of it, near a cliff overhanging the water, stood a cabin, from the stone-weighted roof of which rose a thin column of blue smoke. About the cabin, in the narrow and sterile pasture, a few cows and sheep were grazing. What a dreadful place for a human habitation! ”

“ The first men who settled in this favoured valley under shelters open to the blaze of the sun, in a soft and pleasant climate, where the air when not in proximity to men, is scented with mint, marjoram and juniper, where with little trouble a salmon might be harpooned, must have multiplied enormously—for every overhanging rock, every cavern, even every fallen block of stone, has been utilised as a habitation. Where a block has fallen, the prehistoric men scratched the earth away from beneath it, and couched in the trench. ”

“ A dim, shadowy, phantom-like chain flitting silently through the forest depths. A living chain, composed of human beings—at least in outward semblance—bent upon an errand of bloodshed and death.
They pause at the edge of a considerable clearing, and gaze out upon it. A rude log-cabin stands here at the foot of a good-sized hill. In the darkness, it seems as though there were two buildings, but one is a huge square bowlder. A mass of rock that has puzzled many to tell where it came from. It gives a name to the cabin and its owners, "the people of the lodge by the great rock." ”

“ I have a log cabin, raised on six posts, all to myself, with a skunk's lair underneath it, and a small lake close to it. There is a frost every night, and all day it is cool enough for a roaring fire. The ranchman, who is half hunter half stockman, and his wife are jovial, hearty Welsh people from Llanberis, who laugh with loud, cheery British laughs, sing in parts down to the youngest child, are free-hearted and hospitable, and pile the pitch-pine logs half-way up the great rude chimney. ”

“ Trail through the cañon, and the mountain stream
Sounds his sonorous music far below
In the deep-wooded wind-enchanted cove.
Hemlock and aspen, chestnut, beech, and fir
Go tiering down from storm-worn crest and ledge,
While in the hollows of the dark ravine
See the red road emerge, then disappear
Towards the wide plain and fertile valley lands.
My forest cabin half-way up the glen
Is solitary, save for one wise thrush,
The sound of falling water, and the wind
Mysteriously conversing with the leaves. ”

“ It receives light that filters down the aven through the network of foliage above, and long trails of leaves fall from above as though to decorate the unsounded abyss that opens below. Now this cavern was a habitation of neolithic man, as has been shown by finds there of his handiwork. ”

“ They have been of the greatest service, because in the early days of man, and before he knew enough to build his own habitation, he made the cave his home. You have heard of the 'cave man,' have you not? During the old stone period in England and other European countries, these caverns were the only abodes of man, and in them have been found layers from twenty to thirty feet thick, of successive accretions of bone, stalagmites and various articles of human manufacture. ”

“ The quantity of water is not great, but it makes a pretty cascade down the rugged side of the darksome cavern. After you have looked at it for a minute or two, the guide blows a shrill whistle, and before you have time to ask what it means, the gloom is suddenly deepened. You look up in surprise. The mouth of the cavern is entirely filled by a torrent which in another second will be down upon your head. You cannot start back if you would; the rock prevents, and in an instant you see that the water makes its plunge with scarcely a splash on the brim of the pool. ”

“ An interesting feature at the junction of the two rivers is the cave in which the pioneer settler, Judge Joel Foster, with his negro boy, spent the winter of 1848-49. From his cave cabin he had full view of the falls on the two streams, no less beautiful in their winter dress of gleaming icicles, with the frost-whitened boughs of the willow and alder drooping over them, than in their summer brightness. The judge has told me that he loved, almost worshiped, this spot. The cave cabin stood about one hundred feet from the sparkling stream. ”

“ Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen. ”

“ The cabin, with its mud roof under the shade of the trees, gave a little shelter, but it was occupied by the family, and I longed for solitude. I took the Imitation of Christ, and strolled up the canyon among the withered, crackling leaves, in much dread of snakes, and lay down on a rough table which some passing emigrant had left, and soon fell asleep. When I awoke it was only noon. The sun looked wicked as it blazed like a white magnesium light. A large tree-snake (quite harmless) hung from the pine under which I had taken shelter, and looked as if it were going to drop upon me. ”

“ At lengthened intervals a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy butchers’-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the soil: and the log-house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. ”

“ The interior remains fluid. It may continue running until the tongue is all emptied, leaving a cavern. Such a cavern, whose upper end reaches the cold air of the mountains, might be like a chimney, down which freezing air would descend, turning into ice the water that trickled into the cave, even at the lower end. ”

“ The log cabin, on the top of which a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. ”

“ There is an immense cavern where one sits down to rest; weird shadows cast by the lamps dance upon the walls, and falling drops of water tinkle loudly in the silence. There are precipices and bottomless pits—into which the guide tosses stones—and atmospheric lakes, into which one is liable to walk unawares—the surface of the water being invisible to the sharpest scrutiny. ”

“ The great main entrance to the cavern in the mountain opened high and wide above us, and its portals were flanked with guard houses and sentry boxes exactly like those we had discovered on the other side of this great natural bore. The line we had seen through the jungle was a wonderful roadway built with such lavish care and fidelity, and with such excellent engineering that not even the jungle, nor storm, nor age, nor weather had ruined its splendid proportions. ”

“ The cave I now propose as the Saptaparnna cave fulfils this condition. It is a large natural cavern which has been untouched by art, and portions of it have fallen in and over. The cavern is divided by natural septa of rock into compartments, six of which I counted, and there was space between the last one I counted and the vertical face of the ledge above it for a seventh compartment, but the jangal was too dense to allow me to penetrate to it and establish its existence by actual sight. ”

“ The cavern continues for some two hundred yards, with a very uneven roof, all craggy projections of rock and limestone, and in every nook and corner, like stars in the sky, shine glow-worm lamps of varying intensity, giving just light enough to show the outlines of this mysterious place, and in the black water roof and glow-worms are dimly reflected. ”

“ The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them.
From the mountains on every side, rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. ”

“ Here, in a massive pile of rocks, is a deep, dark cavern, evidently worn by the action of the waves that have pounded against it for centuries. Looking out upon the ocean, we see a wave mightier than all the others sweeping onward, as if challenging the rocks to mortal combat, its mighty curving crest white and seething with foam, hissing like a serpent. On it comes, sweeping over half-submerged rocks, growling in its fury, sublime in its towering majesty, awful in its giant's strength. ”

“ The inhabitants then depend entirely on water found in a cave a mile and a half from the village. It is perhaps the most remarkable cavern in the whole country.
The entrance is magnificently wild and picturesque. It is necessary to carry torches, for the way is dark and dangerous. After advancing sixty or seventy feet we descend a strong, rough ladder twenty feet long, placed against a very precipitous rock. Not the faintest glimmer of daylight reaches that spot. ”

“ A rugged path leads to this beautiful and spacious cavern, which may well, in former days, have been the place of refuge supposed in the foregoing poem. The brook which runs through it is broken by the pointed rock into many waterfalls, and also feeds several small lakes; a spring trickles from the roof, and the sides are covered with a profusion of moss, and weeds, and wild flowers. Like most of these caverns, the walls are covered with sparry incrustations. ”

“ The cave-houses are comfortably and neatly furnished, and their appearance and that of their inhabitants proclaims well-being, content and cheerfulness.
On the Beune, a tributary of the Vézère, is the hamlet of Grioteaux, planted on a terrace in a cave, the rock overhangs the houses. Above the cluster, inaccessible without a ladder, in the face of the cliff, is a chamber hewn out of the rock, and joist holes proclaiming that at one time a wooden gallery preceded it. This cavern, that is wholly artificial, served in times of trouble as a place in which the community concealed their valuables. ”

“ Such a formation is not rare in water caverns; but in such beauty of shape and hue it is rare indeed, for these tender little crystal flowers took all [109] manner of forms, blossoming ofttimes into wreaths and clusters like a miniature coral. One of the most exquisite and most puzzling features was that the dots and spicules were often arranged in set patterns, symmetrical and even geometrical, in tiny circles, squares, and triangles, by the rhythmic action of the waters that had left this beautiful record of their passage. We named the cave the Coral Cavern. ”

“ A most horrible noise is made by them in the dark recesses of the cavern, and the clamour increases as they are disturbed by the visitors advancing deeper into it with torches, and those nestling in the side avenues begin to utter their mournful cries. When the first sink into silence, it seems as if the more remote inhabitants were alternately complaining to each other of the intruders. The nests of these birds are fixed fifty or sixty feet from the ground, in funnel-shaped holes, with which the cavern roof is pierced like a sieve. ”

“ As we enter the cove, instead of finding a narrow glen, with towering walls and overhanging rocks, I see a stretch of pasturage land inclosed by rocks that are broken back in hills, and up the valley beyond the pasturage lands there is a deserted cabin. Near the cabin a great spring gushes from the foot of the rock, and about it trees grow. ”

“ You can find them in the Grand Canyon, and all along the Rio Grande. Whenever the surface rock is much harder than the rock beneath it, the softer stone begins to crack and crumble with weather just at the line where it meets the hard rim rock. It goes on crumbling and falling away, and in time this wash-out grows to be a spacious cavern. The Cliff City sat in an unusually large cavern. We afterward found that it was three hundred and sixty feet long, and seventy feet high in the centre. The red tower was fifty feet in height.
Blake and I began to make plans. ”

“ And though the progress of modern discovery has done much to lower the wonder, by rendering it merely one of thousands of the same class—for even among the cliffs of the hill in which the cavern is perforated, there is scarcely a spring that has not its border of coral-like petrifactions, and its moss and grass and nettle-stalks of marble—the Dropping-Cave may well be regarded as a curiosity still. It is hollowed, a few feet over the beach, in the face of one of the low precipices which skirt the entrance of the bay. ”