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Show THE MAMMOTH CAVK OUTDOSE. The Kansas city Times says several gentlemen recently explored a esye lately discovered in south-eastern Missouri. Mis-souri. The entrance is through a volcanic vol-canic fissure, seven feet wide by twenty feet in length, which at the distance of a hundred yards, terminates in a room named by the explorers, "the Bat Room," from the thousands of bats that swarmed within its dark and hidden hid-den recesses; they flew about in swarms making a terrible noise in the arched roof above. This room has three sides, each with an aperture opeiiine into smaller caverns or side rooms. Its dimensions di-mensions are fifty by one hundred and thirty 1'eet from the floor. From this room a hall, four hundred yards in length, leads to a still larger room in the shape of a horseshoe, which the explorers say nature must certainly have intended for a church, since the roof is arched in purely Gothic style, with dome and columns, and, to finish off and make it complete, a pulpit near the centre. Tho walls of this magnificent cavern are one hundred feet Itijih, but one of the most remarkable feat urea about it is a fountain of pure water, four feet in diameter. Northward of this is a room sixty feet wide, and almost filled with glittering stalactites, which bang in curiously formed pendants from the roof. To the south of this is another room which should be named tho "bottomless "bot-tomless pit," since it apparently has neither bottom, sides nor roof. The darkness within this place is appalling. Turning to the east the party walked a distance ol' about a quarter of a mile, when they came to a flight of natural steps, forty or fifty in number, terminating termi-nating in a wide platform, the entrance to a mammoth hall, supported by Corinthian pillars of various thicknesses and endiess in number, all white as snow and glistening as though studded with millions of diamonds. This hall is estimated to be two hundred feet in width, and communicates with a number num-ber of passages leading off in various directions, uone of which have yet been explored. Proceeding on their way tho explorers explor-ers found a river of running water, issuing is-suing no one knows whence, and going, no one knows where. It is about fifty feet wide and three feet deep. The party followed its course down stream to the fallspwhere tho water goes roaring roar-ing over the precipice into the darkness dark-ness below. Explorations on a lake showed that the noise was mado by a huge waterfall, water-fall, where the water falls a distance of fifty feet. The lake is circular in shape, and has no visible outlet for water. It is about one hundred acres in extent. There were eight or ten dark passages found upon the banks of the lake, leading in all directions, but the guide, accompanying the exploring party lost his courage and refused to go further. The party were then about eight or ten miles from their starting point. They were in the cave forty-three forty-three hours. Tiie gentleman who headed the exploring parly states that there is another entrance to the rave thirty miles distant, which old trappers and hunters say load to the lake It is expected that further explorations will shortly be mado. |