Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1910 — EXPLORE DIG AUSTRIAN CAVE [ARTICLE]

EXPLORE DIG AUSTRIAN CAVE

Party Runs Short of Food Before Completing Examination of Subterranean Wonder. Vienna. The “mammoth cave of Europe,” as the newly discovered series of subterranean chambers near Obertraun In Austria Is now called is described for the first time by Hermann Boch, an engineer, who with a small party of Alpine climbers explored the cave, which is situated under the Dachstein, a mountain in upper Austria 9,800 feet high. The entrance to the cave is at an elevation of some 4,500 feet Italian road menders knew of the existence of a small grotto here, where they had been looking around for gold. Behind a great boulder at the end of this grotto the party discovered a natural tunnel which a powerful stream In earlier ages had followed out of the rock. At the bottom of this tunnel there was a six-foot deep river bed, formed by what remained of the earlier stream. Here and there pools of crystal clear water continued for 1,000 feet and led to an apparently bottomless abyss. The party crawled along the edge of the precipice and up a gallery 150 feet high, also seafed with the action of dried up mountain torrents. At the top a narrow hole was found which led upward to a series of stalactite caverns and then narrowed down again to a curving passage leading downward for 1,500 feet Suddenly the party came upon a vast hall leading portal like to another still larger dome 340 feet high. Here a cave-in

had piled up a cone-like heap of debris 250 feet high. From here radiated a maze of other halls, passages and galleries, many of which ended precipitately in dark abysses. As food wad running short the party had to return.