BOOKS.
THE NETHERWORLD OF MENDIP.*
THE Mendips have one advantage over other and, more imposing ranges of hills. Not only are their slopes and summits of beauty and interest, but hidden in their inmost depths there is a whole world of beauty and wonder, of mysterious caves and subterranean rivers. These under- ground regions are not ouly.interesting to him who searches for the vestiges of creation and the story of the making of the hills by the building up of strata. This netherworld not only appeals to the imagination by its record of countless ages, but also by its incomparable beauty. Here in caves made musical by the flow, of unseen rivers and the slow, rhythmic drip of stalactite-forming water are sights which never meet the eye above ground and in the light of common day. Here under the hills water has carved spacious halls opening out of narrow galleries, shafts ascending into the living rock, and the entrances and upper chambers just seen through fantastic screens .of translucent stalactite. The rough-hewing of the caves has been done by underground rivers. Sometimes they have washed away supports and caused falls of vast masses of rock, sometimes they have eaten the surface away slowly and gently. When the work has been done the river has generally found a new course below the old one, and the restless sculptor has begun the work over again. But after the river has ceased to cut away the rock and the cave has become empty and the rushing sound has been stilled, a new agency appears. One of the most mysterious of sounds is the slow, measured dropping of water from the roofs of these balls. Above ground the rain falls on the plant-clothed earth, and as it soaks into the ground it carries with it carbonic acid. As the rain-water sinks lower it reaches the limestone rock, some of which it dissolves as it passes through the fissures,—an effect which it has on other minerals it may happen to meet. Later on in its journey, compelled by the eternal law of gravi- tation, the rain-water reaches the cave. Here, as it oozes over the walls or drops from the roof, it deposits its burden of dissolved mineral matter. Now bit by bit are formed the inner linings, of the caves with all their magical and fantastic beauty. Pallid drapery and pillared recesses, rosy columns and glittering cascades, jewelled walls, and fonts filled with crystal water reflecting the encrusted roof above them,—such are the wonders, wrought by the labour of the countless ages in the night of the hills, that enchant him who penetrates into the Mendip caves.
To the world at large these caves consist of three,—two at Cheddar and one at Wookey Hole. These have been made
• The Nethencorld of Mendip. By Ernest A. Baker and Herbert E. Balch. Clifton Baker and Sou. London Sinirkin. Mamba% and Co. gs. Gd. net.1
accessible to the unadventurous, and in those of Cheddar by means of electric light the wonders are clearly seen. There is one cave at Cheddar which is high domed ; far up on one side is the entrance to another cave. You stand in darkness and look up to see this higher entrance lit with concealed electric light, showing gleaming stalactites row upon row in seemingly endless vista. Then you forgive the gas-engine at the cave's mouth that poisons the air and deafens you with its explosive working. Electric light alone can light up these stalactites without sullying their purity with smoke.
Beside these more generally known caves there exist numbers which are seldom entered, owing to their difficulty of access. In the book before us the authors describe the
explorations which they have been carrying on for several years past. Mr. Bakh in the three opening chapters enters into a most interesting geological account of the cave region of Mendip. The rest of the book is a description by Mr. Baker of the actual underground journeys. Mr. Baker talks about the sport of cave-exploring, but it is a sport that will find a limited number of devotees, especially when it comes to squirming through tortuous passages nine and a half inches wide. One of the most interesting places explored by the authors was the Eastwater swallet. A swallet, it may be remarked, is the local name for a depression in the ground, usually funnel-shaped. The whole of the top of Mendip abounds in these boles, ranging from small depressions to deep amphitheatres, like the Devil's Punchbowl by the Castle of Comfort on the road between West Harptree and Priddy. Instead of the rain•water being carried from the plateau which forms the top of the range by external streams, the drainage is effected by the swallets. Into them water soaks gradually, or is poured by streams, to emerge at the base of the hills, as the Axe, or the Cheddar River, miles away. That the swallets round the village and lead mines of Priddy are con- nected with Wookey Hole has been proved. The owners of the paper-mills which use the pure water of the Axe as it comes out of Wookey Hole showed this connexion during a lawsuit. On different days ochre and ink were put into the Priddy swallets, and some time after the water below on emerging into the light was stained. Mr. Balch and Mr. Baker have tried to follow the stream inside the hill. An artificial opening had to be made where the stream makes its first dive into the earth. The explorers proceeded through caves and passages ever lower only to find the way finally barred, they having gone down some six hundred feet in depth, and rather more in distance away from the entrance horizontally. Most interesting is the account of Swildon's Hole, with its foaming river rushing headlong through caverns and over subterranean waterfalls towards the reservoirs of Wookey Hole. Here we seem to be following the "sacred river" when it
"Reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean."
Did Coleridge when he lived at Clevedon, in Somerset, within sight of Mendip, hear traditions of its underground rivers ? Wookey Hole is the lowest of five caves one over the other. The explanation of these tiers of caverns is this,—the stream in working its way through the rocks is always finding fresh crevices in its bed into which it runs, so that an outlet becomes disused by the water sinking to a lower level some way from the original opening.
This brings us to Mr. Balch's theory of the formation of the
Cheddar Gorge. His theory seems to account reasonably for the existing facts, and furnishes an explanation of the splendid defile with its rocky sides, which at one point rise a sheer wall of nearly five hundred feet from the road. It is pointed out that the mountain limestone lies in beds, and that these beds are fissured., so that the whole forms a series of great cubes of stone. The water, penetrating these fissures, enlarges them both by chemical and mechanical action, till caves are formed ; "then the processes which are so well known to be going on gradually enlarged these to the point of collapse, the falling debris being removed by the still flowing stream." Eventually the stream finds its way out into the open air at the foot of the rocky wall of the hill. Thus we have the formation of caverns, but not of an open gorge. Now come in other powers. The face of the rock out of which the stream emerges is being perpetually worn away by air, water, and frost. As this cliff- face recedes the cave is opened up, and as the roof gives way the ravine is driven back into the heart of the hills. Mr. Balch points out that in a small tributary ravine at Cheddar the process can be seen at work. He says :— "Here sides that gently slope give way to precipitous walls, between which you walk. Moss-grown stones give place to new- fallen stones, and then you have before you the little ravine roofed in ; you pass beneath, and find yourself in the darkness of the cavern itself, which can be followed for some distance. Here, at any rate, there can be no doubt as to the process that has been at work."
Well may the poet say :— "The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands ; They melt like mists, the solid lands, Like clouds thy shape themselves and go."
The finest cave yet discovered in the Mendips is Lamb's Lair. The entrance to it was lost for many years, and its existence became a romantic tradition. Some twenty-five years ago it was rediscovered, and made accessible with ladders placed in the sixty-foot vertical shaft. In time these ladders have become rotten and dangerous, and great care is required in making the descent. That it is worth making the present writer can testify, and Mr. Baker goes so far as to say that Lamb's Lair is the finest cavern in England. The great cave, encrusted with stalactites, is a hundred and ten feet in height, and is reached by a passage nearly at its top. From what is like the minstrels' gallery of sonic gigantic ball we can peer into the depths below and hear the musical sound of flowing water, and by the help of strong lights we can see the roof and walls with their enamelled surface. Near where we stand are to be found layers of arrag,onite of matchless white- ness. Here in the night of the hills the echoing hall and festooned roof wait to reveal their beauty to those few who penetrate into the depths.
To his explorations of the Mendip caves Mr. Baker has added some chapters describing caves into which he has been elsewhere. Stump Cross Cavern, in Yorkshire, seems to be a very fine place, but among the best of all must be the Mitchels- town Cave, in Tipperary.
In taking leave of this delightful book we must call attention to the illustrations. Considering the difficulties of photographing by artificial light, these must be pronounced very successful. It is to be regretted that the plans are reduced to so small a scale as to be practically useless without a magnifying-glass.
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