mystery over all. The view is bounded and shut in by the lofty range of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Winding slowly and almost by imperceptible gradations downwards, we soon reach the beautiful Shenandoah valley, en route for the wonderful cave of “Luray,” which lies in the centre of Page county.
The earth’s surface here and for miles round is rugged and broken, as though by some great upheaval centuries ago; huge grey boulders are lying in all directions, as though some ancient Titan had flung them down in sport. Giant rocks, the work of the great sculptor Nature, lie in folded ridges, their stony draperies falling about them in massive magnificence that is beyond the reach of art. Rivulets of living water trickle down their gaping sides, and gather, and swell, and flow through darkened chasms half hidden from the light of the sun, playing an everlasting game of hide and seek, then rushing forth sparkling and laughing in its light.
Eastward about a mile from the pretty village of Luray, and partially screened by the dense thickets which crown the hilltops, there exists an extensive cave. Concerning its first discovery, many years ago, tradition tells an interesting story, indicating a man named Ruffner as its first discoverer. He with his family, it is said, was among the first settlers in the valley below, and one day he went out on a hunting expedition and never returned. After a search of many weeks, his gun was found at the entrance to the cave, and in due time he was discovered, having wandered among its labyrinthine courts and passages till he was lost and dead of starvation. From this event it was called “Ruffner’s” cave, and is so printed on the maps both of that period and since. Little interest, however, attached to the cave, and for a time it seemed to have passed from the memory of man, and remained neglected and hidden away in the heart of the mountain until the summer of 1878, when a number of gentlemen formed themselves into a company not only for the more complete exploration of the old cave, but for a regularly organised search for new wonders. They hoped to discover even a more extensive cave, which from their geological survey they believed to exist in the neighbourhood. They ranged the hillside, penetrated dense thickets and tangled woods; crept and groped under rocky ledges—first taking care to rout the brood of rattlesnakes from their slimy bed, and hunting the frightened foxes from their burrows under the ground, where for ages they had lived in savage security—but for many weeks their search was in vain. However, on returning one evening, exhausted and disheartened, along the northern side of the hill, they observed a suspicious looking hollow choked up with straggling bushes, loose stones, weeds, and rubbish of all kinds, the accumulation of years. They set to work at daydawn, clearing away the tangled brushwood, tossing out the loose stones, and plunging deeper and deeper into the dark abyss, till they felt a rush of cool air creeping up through the broken earth, and after a few hours’ laborious endeavour they found themselves in a lofty passage, which formed a kind of antechamber to a vast palace of wonder which had been building since the world began. Thus was the Luray cave discovered; but it is only during the last year that it has been rendered accessible to the public. Nature hides her most beautiful secrets so closely within her breast, and surrounds them with so many mysteries, that art and labour, hand in hand, must come to the fore before they can become the property of the world outside.
Surely Aladdin’s magical lamp never lighted up such jewelled wonders as are to be beheld here! Here are halls and corridors, stairways and galleries, chasms and bridges, built or hollowed out with a weird architectural magnificence wonderful to behold. We stand in the spacious nave of the cathedral, and gaze at its groined and glittering roof, and Gothic columns of many-coloured stalactite. The utter silence (which never exists in the outer world, where there is always the whirr of invisible insects, the stir of leaves, the whispering of grasses, and a thousand other nameless sounds) here is supremely impressive; the air, laden with solemn stillness, lies heavy and close round us. We listen for the roll of some hidden organ to fill the darkening shadows with music, and tempt us to fall upon our knees in worship of the Great Unknown. We pass through a narrow jagged passage full of grotesque shapes and caricatures of things real and unreal, till we come to a damp, low-roofed opening called the bridal chamber, which is profusely ornamented with fantastic formations of crystalline rock. It is said, I don’t know how truthfully, that some benighted imbeciles have already been married on this spot. The roof is everywhere supported by hundreds of columns of various gradations of colour and size, from a thin walking cane to the grand pillar in the “giant’s hall,” which is nearly twenty feet in circumference, and is ribbed and rugged like the bark of a tree. A curious feature in this particular cave is the profusion of thin icicles—I do not know by what other name to call them; it seems as though threads of ice had been woven together in a veil of frost work unknown to decorative art. They hang from the edges, and drape the walls in falling folds like a tapestry curtain; they droop in graceful folds before Diana’s bath, and are drawn round the couch of the “sleeping beauty”—for a symmetrical form that is almost human lies shrouded in ice beneath it. Fancy has found some appropriate name for every nook and corner, form and figure, of this underground world. However fantastic these stalactite embellishments may be they are never inharmonious, one thing never seems out of keeping with another. Here we may gather to ourselves lessons of loveliness, and the mysterious mingling of the beautiful in form and colour that æstheticism tries in vain to teach.
We wander through the “garden,” and gaze round with still greater amazement upon the gorgeous colouring and delicate formation of these stalactite flowers, so airy and fragile; they look as though a breath would wither them, yet they have been in bloom for ages, and will bloom on for ages more. The grey stone is covered with this growth of glassy flowers, with quivering petals of pink and violet and white. We are inclined to smell them, scarce believing they are cold and scentless. Presently we come upon a glacial forest scene, where the fluted columns, uprising like knotted trunks of trees, spread their thin, brittle branches till we fancy we see them quivering in the still air. Let fancy take the bit in her mouth and run away with our reason, and we shall believe we are standing amid a spectral group of ancient willow and elm trees which have perished from the upper world, and live out their frozen life of ages here below. Here and there a tiny rill of water trickles like a silver thread down among the folded draperies, till it is lost among the fretted frostwork below. Then crossing a rude stony balcony we look down into a wide, deep chasm, which yawns beneath our feet, and it is not difficult for the imagination to evolve the most uncanny creatures of weird, unearthly forms from the depths of darkness which the magnesium lights illuminate but cannot penetrate.
At last we come up from those vast underground realms to the light of the living sun, awestruck and impressed with the wonders thereof. While we are carrying out our small human lives, taxing our intellect, our imagination and our skill to build up vast edifices of brick and stone on this outer earth, which in a few short years must crumble away, an unknown and invisible world is being slowly perfected beneath our feet—a world not made by hands—every touch and tint the work of a passing age; silently and slowly the viewless workers labour on, under the land and under the sea, while cycles and ages pass! Will not this outer crust whereon we live slowly crack like a shell, and one day fall away, and leave a world such as the Revelation tells of, whose jewelled palaces are of silver and gold, the glory and wonder whereof this world knoweth not! We feel as though we had stood on the outermost edge and caught a glimpse of the wonder-land where nature is working her will in silence and darkness.
Some of the most picturesque and sublime scenery of the South may be found in the regions of Western Virginia, where nature in her wildest mood holds sovereign sway among her everlasting hills, clothed with majestic woods running down to the narrow valleys and winding lands which intersect the mountains. Here in these solitudes, scattered through these lonely regions, live a primitive people, leading a primitive life.
They are supposed to be the descendants of the Irish and Scotch who came over to this country about two hundred years ago, and wandered on and on till they reached these solitudes and then settled down in sparse and scattered groups far apart, not in villages but in single families, where they have been living undisturbed through all these changing years, marrying and intermarrying with some kind of ceremony peculiar to themselves, from generation to generation. Children have been born, grown to be old men, and died, having never passed out from their own solitary homes.
They hold no communion with the outer world; no “iron horse” steams through their solitudes, and few and far between indeed are the travellers