Westward, among the cliffs, above the village of Knowersville, is Livingston's Cave, a small, dry, and romantic cavern. Should you happen to be near, it is worth a visit. West and east there are many more caves which you may find by seeking. Near the Hudson, toward Coeyman's, there are several.
At Clarksville, twelve miles from Albany, and eight or ten miles southeast from the Indian Ladder, are more caves. Two of these are well known; the entrance of one is in the back-yard of one of the village houses. The subterranean river is the house well; a pair of steps lead down into a crevice in the rock. They have no other water. For drinking it is unsurpassed- but it issues from lime rock, and is therefore hard and unfit for washing. This same river bursts forth near by in the bed of the Oniskethau, and aids that stream to run a saw and paper mill. Chaff thrown upon the river in the cave is soon found floating on the mill-pond. The stream empties into the Hudson at Coeyman's. I once heard it remarked that an amphibious animal might make its way through the caverns from Hudson River to Niagara Falls without once coming forth to daylight!
These two caves are said to be respectively one-eighth and one-half a mile in length. They should not be called two caves, however, for the "river" seems to flow from one to the other, and forms a connection which a person who likes ice-water baths might explore. Taken as one cave they may exceed a mile in length. The smaller cave is dry and airy, and has some spacious corridors. Squeezing Your way down through the, narrow entrance yen reach a sort of room-the vestibule-faintly lit with the few white rays of daylight which glimmer down through the entrance. You have suddenly passed into a dim region of silence, only broken by the faint tinkling and murmuring of the subterranean stream below. you light your lanterns, and the red flame guides your footsteps. A short way through a narrow passage and you ascend into a lofty chamber-the "Room of the Gallery." Should you visit it in winter, as I once did, you may start horrified back. Two or three ghostly, white columns rise here and there from the floor! There are no such stalagmites in this cave. What; then, are these white columns gathered in a spectral circle ? You approach; they move not. Nearer, nearer still, and the white columns resolve themselves into fantastic stalagmites of ice-beautiful yet fragile. The water dropping from the roof, the frost which reaches in thus far, account for them.
That dark hole plunging downward to the right is the continuation of the cave; descend, and turn in at and climb the first side passage to your left, and you will reach the "Gallery."
It is related that a villager, venturing in to pass a hot summer night, having but a solitary tallow-candle, his light became extinguished, and he thought himself all but lost. Feeling along in the dark to find some means of exit, he was suddenly precipitated into a dark pit. A while after, as he sought to ascend, he fell again, deeper, receiving severe injuries. Dreadfully alarmed, he rushed hither and thither, only to fall a third time, and still deeper. He swooned from terror; and when he awoke he observed a faint light opposite. Scrambling toward it, he entered a room; it was the cave entrance! Some assert that he mistook the passage in returning, and merely climbed to and fell from the gallery three several times.
There are other large rooms and corridors in this cave, but there are few stalactites or stalagmites, if any. In one place are some beautiful incrustations of spar; and in another spot a vein of the massive calc-spar, with large crystals, is found. The latter sometimes contains the Silurian anthracite, supposed to have had its origin in the organic animal life of that age. The rock inclosing the calc-spar is a granular or subcrystalline limestone-the Upper Helderberg.
A singular feature of the cave are the waterworn pot-holes in the rock ceiling. Every one knows that rational, common-sense brooks or rivers of the surface world make them according to law of gravitation in their water-worn beds. Here natural laws seem laughed to scorn; and these pot-holes, as though from very perverseness, are set inverted in the roof. They were formed undoubtedly when the cave was filled with water, whirling and rushing against the roof.
A narrow passage leads to the extremity of the cave. Where it enlarges is a steep a and rather slippery descent to water. This is called by some a lake; the rock roof comes so close to the surface that its lateral extent can not be seen. Naptha poured upon the water and ignited, though it makes a singular sight, burning with a blue, lambent flame, shows nothing, and the darkness is deeper when it dies away. The water is very clear and still, and increases in depth, gradually, off the shore. There are here no "eyeless fishes."
The "Half-mile Cave"-the larger cave, or the longer end of the cave, if they are but one-is about a quarter of a mile from the hotel in Clarksville. This cave is often visited, and has a large, wooden, cellar-like door, and wet, slippery steps, which lead in winter down into warm, steaming darkness.
Mind your steps ; I speak literally. Now go down the dark hole on your right; it is a steep descent. You are in darkness again, and your lights but feebly illuminate the place. There is a sickening damp warmth; it is not unlike a charnel-house, a catacomb. This mouldy earth beneath your feet, lixiviated, would probably yield much nitre; the earth of caves generally contains it. Notice those black strata veins of flinty hornstone; they may have served their time in the days of flint-lock rifles. Here is flint, there saltpetre; pyrites through heat will yield sulphur; the alders and willows from beside mountain brooks give choice charcoal. Here is gunpowder in the raw, for those adepts in its manufacture!
It was these veins of brittle, translucent flint, called hornstone, which gave the name of "corniferous limestone" to this rock, from the Latin cornu-horn. It was not the fossil shell, the cow-horn shaped zaphrentis, which originated the name; though that is the most prominent of the many brown, weathered shells incrusting the roof and walls of the cave. These same shells-zaphrentis-project similarly from the walls of the great Kentucky cavern. This corniferous (upper Helderberg) limestone is peculiar as being the oldest rock in which the fossil remains of fishes have been found,
You may have a mile or more of clambering in and out from this cave, and that is as good, though not quite so bad, as twenty-five miles. There are long passages where you might drive a team of horses and a wagon; narrow, muddy passages in profusion; bats, overhead and fluttering past you, every where.
The bats hang from the ceilings separately, and from one another in curious festoons. They are now hibernating. Aroused by your approach, some take wing and occasionally strike against your lantern, shattering the glass. On all sides you hear them squeaking and chattering and grinding with their teeth; it is horrid. How they live there is a mystery; no suitable, food is visible, end the door of the cavern is kept closed. Some of the bats seem withered and half dead; others are more lively. The gray, or frosty bat is sometimes found here. The cheiroptera of this cave have been described in Goodman's "Natural History;" for this is the one therein mentioned as "an extensive cavern about twelve miles south of Albany, New York." They have quite changed their habits since sketches were made of them by that reliable naturalist. In his time, it is evident from the engravings, all bats hung themselves cozily head up; now the contrary vampires all hang head down, in a way that could not fail to be alarming to apoplectics-a vile rebellion against the naturalist. Bats, sleeping, hang then with their heads downward, holding fast by the little paws they have behind, and not by the hooks attached to their membranous wings. In their flight near the roof they stop and flutter for a moment, then hang correctly. It is thought that they catch by their hooks, and, if the place suit them, assume the upside-down posture. If they fall to the ground they are for the while helpless; however, with the aid of their front hooks, they climb to some little eminence from which, by turning a sort of somersault, they fall down, and, as they fall, take wing and search for better quarters. Nature has given them instinct so to repose that, when disturbed, they may be able to take to flight and escape.
If you determine to see the end of the cave and the lake, and are not afraid of mud and low, flat passages, you will go further, perhaps fare worse. Again the cavern enlarges, a black emptiness is before you. Approach. You stand upon the shores of "Styx," A vaulted roof of dripping rock, a silent, echoing cavity, scarcely illuminated by dim lantern-light. Unruffled are the still, deep waters, green, though clear. The silence only broken by the sudden, occasional tinkling of a drop of water falling Somewhere in one of the dark side passages, only to be explored in a boat. The boat is wrecked.
In returning you have to repeat the crawling and scrambling through the low, narrow or wet and muddy passages: it seems endless. You halt to await the approach of a loitering companion. His lantern is seen, in distant perspective, far down the dark corridor. You shout for him to hurry. Hark to the distant, echoing answer, "Coming!" Turn your lantern this way, and look down the long, shadowy passage of the cavern; in the dim vista he seems an imp, dancing along with a fire-brand. Suddenly, while you think him yet at a distance, he seems to enlarge, and is close to you.
I once fired a pistol-shot in this cave to hear the echoes; instead of the sharp crack which should have followed the flash came a volley of deep, echoing, hollow thunders, a rolling and swelling roar, a musical, harmonious earthquake, deafening. One of our party who was on ahead took it for heavy, celestial thundering.