Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 by Various

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Entrance Hall leads into Washington Hall, a magnificent apartment, three
hundred feet long, and in the lowest part upwards of forty feet high.
Our guide favored us at every turn with some new story or legend,
repeated in a sing-song, nasal tone, ludicrously contrasting with the
extravagance of the tales themselves. Yet he recited all alike with the
most immovable gravity. It was a lively waltz of three notes.

Old Tunnel and Giant's Chapel, two fine cave-rooms, were next explored.
On entering the latter, Bob favored us with the rehearsal of an old
story from the Arabian Nights, which--unfortunately, not one which will
bear repetition--he wished us to believe actually happened in this very
locality.

I may here confess that, when we came to 'the dark hole in the ground,'
I felt some slight reluctance to trust myself therein. Bob, observing
this, immediately drew from his lively imagination such an astonishing
increase of the perils of the way, looking complacently at me all the
while, that my alarm, strange to say, took flight at once, and I pushed
onward defiantly. The journey is, however, one that might justly inspire
timidity. Above our heads, and on each side, frowned immense rocks,
threatening at every instant to fall upon us; while the dash and babble
of a stream whose course we followed, increasing in volume as we
progressed, came to our ears like the 'sound of many waters.' We crossed
this stream a hundred times, at least, in our journey. Sometimes it
murmured and fretted in a chasm far below us; again, it spread itself
out in our very path, or danced merrily at our side, until it seemed to
plunge into some distant abyss with the roar of a cataract.

We emerged from the windings of our tortuous path into Harlem Tunnel, a
room six hundred feet in length. In its sides were frequent openings,
leading into hitherto unexplored parts of the cave; but we did not
venture to enter many of these. Never have I seen such rocks as we here
encountered; at one time piled up on one another, ready to totter and
fall at a touch; at another, jutting out in immense boulders, sixty feet
above our heads, while, in the openings they left, we gazed upward into
darkness that seemed immeasurable.

From Harlem Tunnel we came into Cataract Hall, also of great length, and
remarkable for containing a small opening extending to an unknown
distance within the mountain, since it apparently cannot be explored.
Applying the ear to this opening, the sound of an immense cataract
becomes audible, pouring over the rocks far within the recesses of the
mountain, where the Creator alone, who meted out those unseen, sunless
waters, can behold its beauty and its terror.

Crossing the Pool of Siloam, whose babbling waters sparkled into beauty
as we held our lamps above them, we entered Franklin Hall. Here the
roof, although high enough in some places, is uncomfortably low in
others; whereupon Bob bade us give heed to the caution of Franklin,
'Stoop as you go, and you will miss many hard thumps.'

We arrived next at Flood Hall, where a party of explorers were once put
in great peril by a sudden freshet in the stream. They barely saved
themselves by rapid flight, the water becoming waist-deep before they
gained the entrance. We had no reason to doubt the truth of this story,
as there were evidences of the rise and fall of water all about us.

Congress Hall now awaited us, but I will omit a description of it, as
Musical Hall, which immediately succeeded, contains so much more that is
interesting. On entering, our attention was first directed to an
aperture wide enough for the admission of a man's head. Any sound made
in this opening is taken up and repeated by echo after echo, till the
very spirit of music seems awakened. Wave after wave of melodious sound
charms the ear, even if the first awakening note has been most
discordant. If the soul is filled with silent awe while listening to the
unseen waterfall in Cataract Hall, it is here wooed into peace by a
harmony more perfect than any produced by mortal invention. A
temple-cavern vaster than Ellora with a giant 'lithophone' for organ!

The second wonder of Musical Hall is a lake of great extent, and from
ten to thirty feet in depth. The smooth surface of these crystal waters,
never ruffled by any air of heaven, and undisturbed save by the dip of
our oars as we were ferried across, the utter darkness that hid the
opposite shore from our straining sight, the huge rocks above, whose
clustering stalactites, lighted by our glimmering lamps, sparkled like a
starry sky, the sound of the far-off waterfall, softened by distance
into a sad and solemn music, all united to recall with a vivid power,
never before felt, the passage of the 'pious AEneas' over the Styx, which
I had so often read with delight in my boyhood. I half fancied our
Yankee Bob fading into a vision of the classic Charon, and that the
ghosts of unhappy spirits were peering at us from the darkness.

At the end of the lake is Annexation Rock, a huge limestone formation in
the shape of an egg. It stands on one end, is twenty-eight feet in
diameter, and over forty in height.

We were now introduced into Fat Man's Misery, where the small and
attenuated have greatly the advantage. We emerged from this narrow and
difficult passage into the Museum, half a mile long, and so called from
the number and variety of its formations. We did not linger to examine
its curiosities, but pushed on over the Alps, which we surmounted, aided
partly by ladders. Very steep and rugged were these Alps, and quite
worthy of the name they bear. We descended from them into the Bath-room,
where a pool of water and sundry other arrangements suggest to a lively
imagination its designation. It certainly has the recommendation of
being the most retired bath-room ever known. That of the Neapolitan
sibyl is public in comparison to it.

We then entered Pirate's Retreat. Why so named, I can not guess, for I
doubt if the boldest pirate who ever sailed the 'South Seas o'er' would
dare venture alone so far underground as we now found ourselves.

Leaving the Pirate's Retreat, we were obliged to cross the Rocky
Mountains, similar in formation and arrangement to the Alps. The Rocky
Mountains lead into Jehoshaphat's Valley, one mile in length. Like its
namesake, this valley is a deep ravine, with steep, rugged sides, and a
brawling brook running at the bottom.

Miller's Hall next claims our attention. Here we take leave of the
brook, which, with the cave, loses itself in a measureless ravine, where
the rocks have fallen in such a manner as to obstruct any further
explorations.

From thence, turning to the right, we enter Winding Way, a most
appropriate name for the place. The narrow passage turns and twists
between masses of solid rook, high in some places, and low in others.
The deathlike silence of the solitude that surrounded us impressed us
with a vague feeling of fear, and we felt no disposition to tempt the
Devil's Gangway, especially as, in consequence of a recent freshet, it
was partly filled with water. Our guide informed us that beyond the
Gangway were several rooms, among which Silent Chamber and Gothic Arch
were the most noteworthy. The portion of the cave visited by tourists
terminates in the 'Rotunda,' eight miles from the entrance; although
explorations have been made some miles further. The Rotunda is
cylindrical in shape, fifteen feet in diameter, and one hundred feet in
height.

We were now in a little room six miles from the mouth of the cave, and
thought the present a good opportunity to try the effect of the absence
of light and sound on the mind. Extinguishing our lights, therefore, we
resigned ourselves to the influences of darkness and silence. To realize
such a state fully, one must find one's self in the bowels of the earth,
as we were, where the beating of our own hearts alone attested the
existence of life. We were glad to relight our lamps and begin our
return to upper air.

I have already mentioned Annexation Rock; near it is another curious
freak of nature, called the Tree of the World's History. It resembles
the stump of a tree two feet in diameter, and cut off two feet above the
ground, upon which a portion of the trunk, six feet in length, is
exactly balanced. A singular type of the changes which time makes in the
world above-ground.

In the Museum, whose examination we had postponed till our return, we
were lost in a world of wonders. It were vain to attempt to describe or
even enumerate half of the various objects that met us at every turn.
Churches, towers, complete with doors and windows, as if finished by the
hand of an architect; an organ, its long and short pipes arranged in
perfect order; Lot's Wife, a figure in stone, life size; in another
place two women, in long, flowing garments, standing facing each other,
as if engaged in earnest conversation, and a soldier in complete
armor,--these were among the most striking of the larger objects. The
vegetable world was also well represented. Here was a bunch of carrots,
fresh as if just taken from the ground, sheaves of wheat, bunches of
grain and grass hanging from the walls and roofs. Interspersed were
birds of every species, doves in loving companionship, sparrows, and
hawks. I noticed also in one place a pair of elephant's ears perfect as
life. Indeed it was not difficult to believe that these stony semblances
had once been endowed with life, and, ere blight or decay could change,
had been transmuted into things of imperishable beauty.

While waiting for our guide to unmoor the boat, which was to take us
over the lake a second time, I ran up the bank to look at the
stalactites that hung in the greatest profusion above the water. The
light of my lamp shining through them produced an effect as surprising
as it was beautiful. But no words can do justice to the scene. Imagine
an immense room whose ceiling is studded with icicles forming every
conceivable curve and angle, and you will have only a faint idea of the
number and variety of these subterranean ornaments.

A mile from the entrance we found some stray bats,--the first living
creatures we had met. We endeavored to attract them by holding up our
lamps, and succeeded so well that we were glad to leave them behind us
as soon as possible.

It is a singular fact, noted by other cave-explorers, and confirmed by
our own experience, that while within a cave one's usual vigor and
activity appears augmented. A slight reaction takes place on coming out
into the upper world, and renders rest doubly refreshing and grateful.

Let me, in closing, advise other visitors to Howe's Cave to choose _fair
weather, and take time enough_ for their visit, as the windings of the
cave and its curiosities are alike exhaustless.

* * * * *

POTENTIAL MOODS

I sit and dream
Of the time that prophets have long foretold,
Of an age surpassing the age of gold,
Which the eyes of the selfish can never behold,
When truth and love shall be owned supreme.

I think and weep
O'er the thousands oppressed by sin and woe,
O'er the long procession of those who go,
Through ignorance, error, and passions low,
To the unsought bed of their dreamless sleep.

I wait and long
For the sway of justice, the rule of right;
For the glad diffusion of wisdom's light;
For the triumph of liberty over might;
For the day when the weak shall be free from the strong.

I work and sing
To welcome the dawn of the fairer day,
When crime and sin shall have passed away,
When men shall live as well as they pray,
And earth with the gladness of heaven shall ring.

I trust and hope
In the tide of God's love that unceasingly rolls,
In the dear words of promise that bear up our souls,
In the tender compassion that sweetly consoles,
When in death's darkened valley we tremblingly grope.

I toil and pray
For the beauty excelling all forms of art;
For the blessing that comes to the holy heart;
For the hope that foretells, and seems a part
Of the life and joy of the heavenly day.

* * * * *

THE TRUE INTEREST OF NATIONS.

For a litigious, quarrelsome, fighting animal, man is very fond of
peace. He began to shed blood almost as soon as he began to go alone in
company with his nearest relatives; and when Abel asked of Cain, 'Am I
not a man and a brother?' the latter, instead of giving him the hug
fraternal, did beat him to death. Cain's only object, it should seem,
was a quiet life, and Abel had disturbed his repose by setting up a
higher standard of excellence than the elder brother could afford to
maintain. It was only to 'conquer a peace' that Cain thus acted. He
desired 'indemnity for the past and security for the future,' and so he
took up arms against his brother and ended him. He loved peace, but he
did not fear war, because he was the stronger party of the two, his
weapons being as ready for action as the British navy is ready for it
to-day; and Abel was as defenceless as we were a twelvemonth ago. Cain
is the type of all mankind, who know that peace is better than war, but
who rush into war under the pressure of envy and pride. Ancient as
violence is, it is not so old as peace; and it is for peace that all
wars are made, at least by organized communities. All peoples have in
their minds the idea of a golden age, not unlike to that time so vividly
described by Hesiod, when men were absolutely good, and therefore happy;
living in perfect accord on what the earth abundantly gave them,
suffering neither illness nor old age, and dying as calmly as they had
lived. Historical inquiry has so far shaken belief in the existence of
any such time as that painted by the poet, that men have agreed to place
it in the future. It has never been, but it is to be. It will come with
that 'coming man,' who travels so slowly, and will be by him
inaugurated, a boundless millennial time. In the mean time contention
prevails; 'war's unequal game' is played with transcendent vigor, and at
a cost that would frighten the whole human race into madness were it
incurred for any other purpose. But, while fighting, men have kept their
eyes steadily fixed upon peace, which is to be the reward of their valor
and their pecuniary sacrifices. Every warlike time has been followed by
a period in which strenuous exertions have been made to make peace
perpetual. Never was there a more profound desire felt for peace than
that which prevailed among the Romans of the Augustan age, after a
series of civil and foreign wars yet unparalleled in the history of
human struggles. One poet could denounce the first forger of the iron
sword as being truly brutal and iron-hearted; and another could declare
it to be the 'mission' of the Romans only to impose terms of peace upon
barbarians, who should be compelled to accept quiet as a boon, or endure
it as a burden. Strange sentiments were these to proceed from the land
of the legions, but they expressed the current Roman opinion, which
preferred even dishonor to war. So was it after the settlement of Europe
in 1815. A generation that had grown up in the course of the greatest of
modern contests produced the most determined and persistent advocates of
the 'peace-at-any-price' policy; and for forty years peace was preserved
between the principal Christian nations, through the exertions of
statesmen, kings, philanthropists, and economists, who, if they could
agree in nothing else, were almost unanimous in the opinion that war was
an expensive folly, and that the first duty of a government was to
prevent its subjects from becoming military-mad. Perhaps there never was
a happier time in Christendom than it knew between the autumn of 1815
and the spring of 1854, after Napoleon had gone down and before Nicholas
had set himself up to dictate law to the world. It was the modern age of
the Antonines, into which was crowded more true enjoyment than mankind
had known for centuries; and they are beginning to learn its excellence
from its loss,--war raging now in the New World, while Europe lives in
hourly expectation of its occurrence. There were wars, and cruel wars,
too, in those years, but they faintly affected Europe and the United
States, and probably added something to men's happiness, for the same
reason that a storm to which we are not exposed increases our sense of
comfort. Their thunders were remote, and they furnished materials for
the journals. So we saw a Providence in them, and thanked Heaven, some
of us, that we no longer furnished examples of the folly of contention.

The friends of peace were actuated by various motives. With statesmen
and politicians peace was preferred because it was cheaper than war, and
all countries were burdened with debt. England has sometimes been
praised because she so uniformly threw her influence on the side of
peace, after she had accomplished her purpose in the war against
imperial France. Time and again, she might have waged popular wars, and
in which she would have probably been successful; but she would help
neither the Spaniards against France and the Holy Alliance, nor the
Turks against the Russians, nor the Poles against the Czar, nor the
Hungarians against the Austrians, nor the Italians against the Kaiser,
nor the Greeks against the Turks. She settled all her disputes with the
United States by negotiation, and showed no disposition to fight with
France, except when she had all the rest of Europe on her side. But this
praise has not been deserved. England did not quarrel with powerful
countries, because she could not afford to enter upon costly warfare.
She had gone to the extent of her means when her debt had reached to
four thousand million dollars, and she could not increase that debt
largely until she should also have increased her wealth. Time was
required to add to her means, and to lessen her debt; and to such a
state had her finances been reduced, that it is now twenty years since
she began to derive a portion of her revenue from an income tax, which,
imposed in the time of peace, was increased when war became inevitable.
The bonds she had given to keep the peace were too great to admit of her
breaking it. She did not fight, because she doubted her ability to fight
successfully. She had no wish to behold another suspension of cash
payments by her national bank; and a general war would be sure to bring
suspension. But she was as ready as she had ever been to contend with
the weak. The Chinese and the Afghans did not find her very forbearing,
though with neither of those peoples had she any just cause for war.

With the disunited States she has been as prompt to quarrel as she was
slow to contend with the United States; and now she is one of the high
contracting parties to the crusade against Mexico. We say nothing of the
Sepoy war, for that was a contest for 'empire,' as Earl Russell would
say. She could not, in the days of Clyde, give up what she had acquired
in the days of Clive; and no one ought to blame her for what she did in
India, though it can not be denied that the mutiny was the consequence
of her own bad conduct in the East. With Russia, Austria, and Prussia to
back her, in 1840, she went to the verge of a war with France; but, in
so doing, the government did that which the English nation by no means
warmly approved; and the fall of the whig ministry, in 1841, was in no
small part due to Lord Palmerston's policy in the preceding year. The
Russian war was brought about by the action of the English people, who
were angry with the Czar because his empire had the first place in
Europe. The government would have prevented that war from breaking out
if it could, but popular pressure was too strong for it, and it had to
give way. The event has proved that the English government was wiser
than were the English people, France alone having gained anything from
the departure from what had become the policy of Europe; and for France
to gain is not altogether for the benefit of England.

Of the motives of the philanthropists, we have little to say. They are
always respectable, and it is a pity that the world should be too wicked
to appreciate them. But those of the economists are open to remark, and
the more so because there has been so much claimed for them. They
reduced everything to a matter of interest. Peace, they reasoned, is for
the welfare of all men; and, if an enlightened self-interest could be
made to prevail the world over, war would be rendered an impossibility.
Wars between civilized countries have mostly grown out of mistaken views
of interest on the part of governments and peoples. Once enlighten both
rulers and ruled, and make them understand that war can not pay, and
selfishness will accomplish what religion, and morality, and
benevolence, and common sense have failed to accomplish. Cutting throats
may be a very agreeable pastime; but no man ever yet paid for anything
more than it was worth, with his eyes wide open to the fact that he was
not buying a bargain, but selling himself. Nations would be as wise as
individuals, unless it be true that the sum of intelligence is not so
great as the items that compose it; and when it should have been made
indisputably clear that to make war was to make losses, while peace
should be as indisputably profitable, there would be no further occasion
to expend, annually, immense sums upon the support of great armaments,
such as were not kept up, even in times of war, by the potentates of
earlier days. The reason of mankind was to be appealed to, and they were
to be made saints through the use of practical logic. Neighborhood,
instead of being regarded as cause for enmity, was to be held as ground
for good feeling and liberal intercourse. Under the old system it had
been the custom to call France and England 'natural enemies,' words that
attributed to the Creator the origin of discord. Under the new system,
those great countries were to become the best of friends, as well as the
closest of neighbors; and one generation of free commerce was to do away
with the effects of five centuries of disputes and warfare. England was
to forget the part which France took in the first American war, and
France was to cease to recollect that there had been such days as Crecy
and Agincourt, Vittoria and Waterloo; and also that England had
overthrown her rule in North America, and driven her people from India.
But it was not France and England only that were to enter within the
charmed circle; all nations were to be admitted into it, and the whole
world was to fraternize. It was to be Arcadia in a ring-fence, an
Arcadia solidly based upon heavy profits, with consols, _rentes_, and
other public securities--which in other times had a bad fashion of
becoming very insecure--always at a good premium. Quarter-day was to be
the day for which all other days were made, and it would never be
darkened by the imposition of new taxes, by repudiation, or by any other
of those things that so often have lessened the felicity of the
fund-holder.

That the new Temple of Peace might be enabled to rise in proper
proportions, it became necessary to destroy some old edifices, and to
remove what was considered to be very rubbishy rubbish. Protection,
tariffs, and so forth, once worshiped as evidences of ancestral wisdom,
were to be got rid of with all possible speed, and free trade was to be
substituted, that is, trade as free as was compatible with the raising
of enormous revenues, made necessary by the foolish wars of the past. In
due time, perfect freedom of trade would be had; but a blessing of that
magnitude could not be expected to come at once to the relief of a
suffering world. England, which had taken the lead in supporting
protection, and whose commercial system had been of the most illiberal
and sordid character, became the leader in the grand reform, pushing the
work vigorously forward, and, with her usual consideration for the
feelings and rights of others, ordering the nations of Europe and
America to follow her example. She had discovered that she had been all
in the wrong since the day when Oliver St. John's wounded pride led him
to the conclusion that it was the duty of every patriotic Englishman to
do his best to destroy the commerce of Holland. She was very impatient
of those peoples who were shy of imitating her, forgetting that her
conduct through six generations had made a strong impression on the
world's mind, and that her sudden conversion could not immediately avail
against her long persistence in sinning against political economy, if
indeed she had so sinned; and the question was one that admitted of some
dispute, free trade being but an experiment. Gradually, however, men
came round to the British view, in theory at least; and among the
intelligent classes it was admitted that commerce without restriction
was the true policy of nations, which must be gradually adopted as the
basis of all future action, due regard to be paid to those potent
disturbing forces, vested interests. France was slow to yield in
practice, though she had produced some of the cleverest of economical
writers; for she is as little given to change in matters of business as
she is ready to rush into political revolutions. But even France at last
gave signs of her intention to abandon her ancient practice in deference
to modern theories; and Napoleon III. and Mr. Cobden laid their wise
heads together to form plans for the completion of the 'cordial
understanding,' on the basis of free trade. Less than forty years had
sufficed to effect a gradual change of human opinion, and protection
seemed about to be sent to that limbo in which witchcraft, alchemy, and
judicial astrology have been so long undisturbedly reposing.

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