Acknowledgments are likewise due to my son, Dr. E. O. Hovey, of New York City; to my former comrade in cave-hunting, Dr. R. Ellsworth Call; to Benj. F. Einbigler, Norman A. Parrish, and others, for valuable correspondence and memoranda; to the late Mr. Ben Hains and Mr. H. M. Pinson, photographers; to Mr. H. C. Ganter for use of copyrighted cuts; to the officials of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad for additional illustrative material, as well as for other courtesies and favors; and particularly to the trustees, managers, and guides of Mammoth Cave for heartily and generously facilitating explorations in former and more recent years, without which this work would have been impossible.
Finally, for information as to trains via the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and connections at Glasgow Junction with the Mammoth Cave Railroad; for the arrival and departure of steamboats on Green River; for terms of Cave routes and guides, and for hotel rates by the day or the week, and for other details not within the scope of this hand-book, application may be made to the Mammoth Cave Manager, at Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Our simple aim is to aid and entertain the reader in his subterranean rambles.
Many hurry to and through and away from Mammoth Cave; but let us go in a more leisurely manner. Suppose we begin by a stroll amid the rounded hills that environ Cincinnati. We find their flanks full of corals, shells, crinoids, and other marine objects by myriads. These are fossils, yet perfect as if freshly cast up from the sea. But we observe that the limestone lies in thin, level layers, with no signs of volcanic or earthquake action. They were gently cut down by an undermining process that left no caverns, because the strata are so thin that they can not hold together. This is the same Lower Silurian formation that elsewhere made the famous “bluegrass region,” causing Central Kentucky to be the fairest bit of the globe’s surface known.
Go by steamboat down the Ohio to Madison, Indiana, and the scenery changes with the geology. Near the river are still seen the thin blue limestone strata that we saw at Cincinnati, but capped by the marble heights of the Upper Silurian. Cascades from the cliffs wash out the thinner, softer material, making wide, shallow grottoes, each being, as a rule, at the head of a ravine, which is a cave in ruins.