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Chap. XLII
CURIOSITIES RESPECTING GROTTOS, CAVES, &c.
Grotto in South Africa-Grotto del Cani-Grotto of Antiparos -Grotto of Guacharo-Snow Grotto-Cave of Fingal-Cave near Mexico-The Nitre Caves of Missouri-Okey Hole- Borrowdale-Needle's Eye.
Sweet interchange Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forests crown'd.
Milton.
GROTTO IN SOUTH AFRICA. From Thom's account of his Journey to South Africa." In the country of Kango is the greatest natural curiosity of South Africa, a grotto of unknown extent. This I visited, and spent four or five hours in it. It was generally supposed that the end of it had been discovered, but we proved it to be still unknown; though, from the information I received, we proceeded into it further than any others, and our entrance into the third newly discovered chambers, or cave, was only prevented by a descent of fourteen feet. This great and astonishing work of God is divided into various apartments, from fourteen to seventy feet in length, and eight to one hundred in breadth. By measurement, I found that we had proceeded about nine hundred feet into the cavern of a mountain, of five hundred feet in perpendicular height; the grott is about two hundred feet above the level of the river running by the hill. "The stalactites, united or disunited, form a hundred figures, so that, without any effort of imagination, nature would seem here to have assumed the province of art for her canopies, organs, pulpits, vast candles, immense pillars, heads even of men and animals, meet the astonished visitor on all sides; so that he supposes himself in a new part of the universe. Eye, thought, and feeling, are equally overpowered; and, to complete this remarkable assemblage, there are various baths, or cisterns of water, as clear as crystal, divided by partitions, as if a most ingenious sculptor had wrought for some weeks in this subterraneous place of nature. Ten young colonists, with two slave guides, and my servant, were with me. had a flambeau and a number of large candles; but even these did not chase away the darkness which eclipsed the beauties of this great work of nature, which had been forming from age to age, and was first discovered in the year 1788. It is a remarkable circumstance, that no traveller appears to have visited it, or the various sub-districts which I have described above, since that time till we entered it.' We THE GROTTO DEL CANI. - This is a little cavern near Pozzuoli, four leagues from Naples: the air contained in it is of a mephitical or noxious quality; it is in truth carbonic acid gas, whence also it is called Bocca Venenosa, the Poisonous Mouth. "Two miles from Naples, (says Dr. Mead,) just by the Lago de Agnano, is a celebrated mofeta, commonly called La Grotto del Cani, which is destructive of all animal life that comes within the reach of its vapours. It is a small grotto, about eight feet high, twelve long, and six broad; from the ground arises a thin, subtile, warm fume, visible enough to a discerning eye, which does not spring up in little parcels here and there, but in one continued stream, covering the whole surface of the bottom of the cave; having this remarkable difference from common vapours, that it does not, like smoke, disperse into the air, but quickly after its rise falls back again, and returns to the earth, or hovers to a certain height, above which it never rises. This fact is ascertained by the colour of the sides of the grotto, which, as high as the vapour ascends, is of a darkish green, but above this it has only the appearance of common earth. As I found no inconvenience from standing in it myself, so I believe no animal, if its head were kept above this mark, would be in the least injured .
But when, as is often the case, a dog, or any other creature, is forcibly kept below it, or the animal is so small that it cannot hold its head above this noxious vapour, it presently loses all voluntary motion, falls down as dead, or in a swoon;