Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1886 — PICTURESQUE CAVES. [ARTICLE]

PICTURESQUE CAVES.

One of the Wonders of Nature Found in Southern Oregon. The new discovery is a multiplicity of grotesque and fantastic-looking objects of natures fashioning. Persons of lively imagination can, out of the scenery, make perfect in their minds almost any archetype, and, many different parts of many different animals. The numerous chambers and many narrow passages with different shaped, fashioned, and molded scenery are surprising and astonishing. A man can go through what is discovered, and does go through it; the writer has gone through part of the discovery, but he believes that no one person who does go through it has a mind large enough to take in and hold all that is to be seen in that arcadian formation. If lamps with large, brilliant burning flames to emanate streams of light on the surroundings were placed there, the sights would be dazzling. The snowy white and wax-colored stalactite, and incrustations that coyer the sides can not be reproduced in pictures. The wax-colored and vitreous stalactite pendants hanging from the lower extremity reflect flashes of the light, and when the burning candles are held still the visitors behold the appearance of innumerable splendors. The incrustations on the bottom of some of the chambers include patches of imitation hoarfrost, which is so hard and sharp that it makes prints in the bootsoles; but its glistening in the candle-light is like a body of newly fallen snow when the early sunbeams strike it in the morning air. There are imitation sponges that look soft and velvety, but hard and sharp to the touch of the hand; imitation coral and coral fringes of very beautiful shapes and colors; a body of stalagmite resemblmg the snow-clad Mount Hood and the ghost chamber that came near scaring the life out of the cave man when he discovered it.

Before entering into the big chamber there is overhead a vertical aperture that seems to run up the distance of thirty feet, and all the way it seems to have the same diameter. A strong cuirent of air spins through, and visitors have to take extra care of their lights or they may lose them. The big chamber is well named. It is a spacious underground room, being 364 feet long, 50 feet wide, its vaulted roof rising to a height of from 50 to 75 feet; and its size imposing to the beholder. Its sides and roof consist of rock, differing from any other cave chamber that the writer has seen; enormous bowlders cover the bottom, and on sides bunches of gravel are sticking that contain variously colored pebble stones.— Grant’s Pass Circular.