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.
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.
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.