6
The Big Cave Is Explored
After the mining operation had been under way for some time I found I wasn't so busy and had a little free time to myself to sort of rest up and think of something besides getting the guano to the surface and off to the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company of San Francisco.
More and more I began to wonder just what this Big Cave was like beyond our immediate area. Many of the men also wondered, and often suggested that some day we form an exploring party and see what it was like.
We decided to do just that. A day was decided upon and the necessary preparations and precautions were made. Of course, we had no idea of what lay ahead of us, nor how far our journey would take us, and I reasoned therefore that it would be better to carry too much with us than too little.
First of all I rounded up all the available lanterns that weren't otherwise in use. Then I got all of the candles we had, a supply of matches, and all of the cord in the cave. We had a lot of cord because it was the cord we used to sew the guano sacks.
We also carried a supply of food, for we meant to really go a great distance. Of course no one had to go, but most of the men wanted to see what mysterious wonders lay beyond the site of our immediate guano operation.
Fortunately there were a couple of men who didn't seem interested, preferring to remain outside. This was all right with me, for if any unforeseen emergency should arise, we could depend upon them to send for help.
We decided how long we would be gone, and I told them that if we were not back by a certain time, they were to organize a search party and come looking for us.
I told them that we would light the candles and place them at intervals along the way, and also we would string the cord along the entire distance, both methods being used in order that we could easily and quickly find our way back, as well as to assist a rescue party in following our trail should such prove necessary.
With all of these precautions being made, the suspense of our undertaking grew, and the men were quite excited and eager to get started, yet I was in no hurry to proceed until I was sure everything was in readiness, for although we were to be gone only a matter of hours, no one knew what lay ahead and I preferred to be well prepared for any emergency.
So, at our appointed hour our journey of exploration began—the first journey into the Big Cave—the first time Man had ever set eyes on its matchless wonders. How little we knew then that in the years that would follow millions of others would enter this cave to view the beauty and grandeur that Nature had been in the process of creating for countless centuries.
At times the going was pretty slow due to the uneven floor of the cave. Big boulders often had to be moved to one side, and when they were too heavy or were too well lodged in the floor to permit moving, we had to climb over them.
Generally the direction of travel was downward as the Big Cave seemed to go deeper into the earth. We were going in a westerly direction and the cave seemed to take on a maze of large connected rooms.
We would enter one and then, as we would pass out the other side, seem to enter another.
Many times we stopped in bewilderment of the beauty that lay before us. The fellows in the party often kidded about the trip and were pretty much in gay spirits, but as they would enter these magnificent rooms which man had never seen before, they became very quiet, letting their eyes soak in every detail that the light of our lanterns brought out.
We all seemed humble amid God's handiwork, and I noticed many of the roughest men in the party became suddenly reverent as though they might be entering some great cathedral.
I never knew exactly how the other men felt about all this strange exhibition of beauty, but I could see it had some effect upon their lives. A rough bunch of men usually don't say much about this sort of thing.
As for me, I wondered if anyone on the outside would believe our stories when we told them what we were seeing. Actually, I felt it was a big dream, and that I would soon wake up. I had heard of caves before, but I had never heard of anything this large or filled with as much beauty.
All of us felt that each turn would be the end and we would be able to terminate our trip and return. But each time we would discover a deep shadow which would turn out to be another tunnel or entrance to another large cavity or room, often more colorful and appealing than the one we were leaving.
At times there would appear to be no further trail. The boys would flash their lanterns around and find an outlet, sometimes so high above us that we couldn't reach it without a ladder. Then we would find another on our own level and we would be on our way again, leaving a world of beauty for another fully its equal.
In one place we came upon what looked like an iceberg, but of course it was a rock formation. In another we came upon a green pond of water.
Everywhere we saw stalactites formed through countless years of the dripping of water, each drop leaving behind its minute portion of calcium or other chemical composition which eventually forms the pendant. The fellows constantly referred to them as icicles, since they resembled them so exactly.
Underneath many of the biggest ones were the stalagmites, the "rising statues" formed by the drips from their counterpart above. Every one, it seemed, had a style and shape all its own.
The colors were in a class by themselves. We saw all the colors of the rainbow, from pale pinks to deep maroon—from pale sky blue to dark purple. Many had a softness which no artist could duplicate. Others were as bright as a Mexican cafe, and the Mexican members of our party took an extreme delight in seeing these vivid hues. Apparently they had missed, in America, the bright colors which are so abundant in their homeland.
Almost any formation known to man could be seen as we inched our way along. Castles, monuments, animals of all sorts, a gremlin, the devil, a bridal veil, totem poles, all of these and hundreds more were easy to visualize everywhere around us. And with but a little Imagination we could see many more.
It was time to turn back, and I could feel the reluctance of the men in the party to do so, but if we did not arrive back at our appointed time a search party would start after us, and I saw no reason to create false fears with those on the outside.
The return trip was much faster than our trip in, simply because we knew what to expect. Also, we did not stop so long to look at the magnificent splendor, and also because the candles and string told us exactly where the trail led.
It was interesting to note, however, that as we would enter a room from the opposite direction from which we had originally entered it, it appeared much different, sometimes so much so that we thought we had not entered it previously. Of course, the candles and string proved we were wrong, but the difference in perspective was amazing.
When we finally arrived back at the entrance the members of the party spent hours telling the others what we had seen. It was interesting to hear the different descriptions from the men and to see how each man had noted something different yet of course we had all been along the same route.
After this we often took trips into the cave and would explore different rooms and tunnels which we hadn't seen before. It seemed that there was no end to this maze of underground caverns.
Accidents were relatively few on all of these trips, and I think it was because the fellows all realized that if any of them got hurt it could be serious. The trip back would be a hardship on those who might be required to carry an injured man back to the entrance.
When my young son, Jodie, (Joe N. Long), was about 5 years old, he began to take quite an interest in our conversations in which we would describe the many incidents that took place daily in the Big Cave.
| Abijah Long | Joe N. (Jodie) and Andrew B. Long Long |
|
| (Taken about 1904) | ||
Finally Jodie asked my father to take him into this big hole in the ground. We didn't think it safe to take such a small child into the cave, but Jodie kept insisting.
However, Jodie won out. One day his grandfather led him to the cave entrance, the one where visitors now enter, and took him inside. From that day on we were besieged with all kinds of childish questions.
The incident is worth mentioning because, as far as I know, Jodie was the first child ever to enter the Big Cave.
We never did see any forms of life in the cave, other than the millions of bats which made it their home, but on one of our trips into the inner chambers the boys found a large bone. They brought it out to examine it more carefully. It was much too large to be a human bone, and when the boys tried to break it they found it was very hard, resisting for a while the blows of their sledge hammer.
The bone apparently was in a state of semi-petrification. We all speculated as to how it could have gotten into the cave, and every man had his own theory. Some said an animal must have fallen into the cave, such as Mr. Simm's cow had done, but lived to stumble on into the cave where he starved to death.
The fellows thought this theory unlikely because if it were true, other bones would have been found at the same spot.
Another theory was that a cave man centuries ago had killed some wild beast and had taken a leg of meat into the cave where he made his home. Meat and man had long since ceased to exist, but the bone remained.
At least we couldn't offer any sound reason against this theory, but it seemed almost fantastic to accept it.
The only other theory which seemed at all plausible was that some wild animal, such as a bobcat or lynx, had at some time lived in the cave and had brought in the leg of a deer or moose and left it there after having eaten the meat from it. However, there were no tracks of any kind in the Big Cave, hence that theory had little support.
How the bone got there still remains a mystery.