LURAY CAVERN, a large cave in Page county, Va., U.S.A., 39° 35' N. and 78° 17' W., near the village of Luray, on the Norfolk and Western railway. The valley, here lam. wide, ex tends from the Blue Ridge to the Massanutton mountain. The ridges lie in vast folds and wrinkles ; and elevations in the valley are often found to be pierced by erosion. Cave Hill, 3ooft. above the water-level, had long been an object of local interest on ac count of its pits and oval hollows or sink-holes, through one of which, on Aug. 13, 1878, Andrew J. Campbell and others entered, thus discovering the cavern now described.
The Luray cavern does not date beyond the Tertiary period, though carved from the Silurian limestone. At some period, long subsequent to its original excavation, and after many large stalactites had grown, it was completely filled with glacial mud charged with acid, whereby the dripstone was eroded into sin gularly grotesque shapes. After the mud had been mostly re moved by flowing water, these eroded forms remained amid the new growths. To this contrast may be ascribed some of the most striking scenes in the cave. The many and extraordinary monu ments of aqueous energy include massive columns wrenched from their places in the ceiling and prostrate on the floor ; the Hollow Column, 4oft. high and 3oft. in diameter, standing erect, but pierced by a tubular passage from top to bottom; the Leaning Column nearly as large, undermined and tilting like the campanile of Pisa; the Organ, a cluster of stalactites in the chamber known as the Cathedral; besides a vast bed of disintegrated carbonates left by the whirling flood in its retreat through the great space called the Elfin Ramble.
The stalactitic display is one of the most remarkable in the world. The old material is yellow, brown or red ; and its wavy surface often shows layers like the gnarled grain of costly woods. The new stalactites growing from the old, and made of hard carbonates that had already once been used, are usually white as snow, though often pink, blue or amber-coloured. The Empress Column is a stalagmite 35ft. high, rose-coloured, and elaborately draped. The double column, named from Professors Henry and Baird, is made of two fluted pillars side by side, the one 25 and the other 6oft. high, a mass of snowy alabaster. Several stalactites in the Giant Hall exceed 5oft. in length. The smaller pendants are innumerable ; in the canopy above the Imperial Spring it is estimated that 40,000 are visible at once.
The "cascades" are wonderful formations like foaming cataracts caught in mid-air and transformed into milk-white or amber alabaster. The Chalcedony cascade displays a variety of colours.
Brand's cascade, the finest of all, is 4oft. high and 3oft. wide, and is unsullied and wax-like white, each ripple and braided rill seeming to have been polished. The Swords of the Titans are monstrous blades, eight in number, 5oft. long, 3 to 8ft. wide, hollow, I to 2ft. thick, but drawn down to an extremely thin edge, and filling the cavern with tones like tolling bells when struck heavily by the hand. Their origin and also that of certain so-called scarfs and blankets is from carbonates deposited by water trickling down a sloping and corrugated surface. Sixteen of these alabaster scarfs hang side by side in Hovey's Balcony, three white and fine, 13 striated like agate with every shade of brown, and all perfectly translucent. Down the edge of each a tiny rill glistens like silver, and this is the ever-plying shuttle that weaves the fairy fabric.
Streams and true springs are absent, but there are hundreds of basins, varying from 1 to 5oft. in diameter, and from 6in. to isft. in depth. The water in them is exquisitely pure, except as it is impregnated by the carbonate of lime, which often forms concre tions, called according to their size, pearls, eggs and snowballs. A large one is known as the cannon ball. On fracture these spherical growths are found to be radiated in structure.
The waters of this cavern appear to be entirely destitute of life; and the existing fauna comprises only a few bats, rats, mice, spiders, flies and small centipedes. When the cave was first entered, the floor was covered with thousands of tracks of raccoons, wolves and bears—most of them probably made long ago, as impressions made in the tenacious clay that composes most of the cavern floor would remain unchanged for centuries. Layers of excrementitious matter appear, and also many small bones, along with a few large ones, all of existing species. The traces of human occupation are pieces of charcoal, flints, moccasin tracks and a single skeleton embedded in stalagmite in one of the chasms, estimated, from the present rate of stalagmitic growth, to have lain where it was found for not more than five hundred years. The temperature is uniformly 54° F, coinciding with that of Mammoth Cave, Ky. The air is very pure, and the avenues are not uncomfortably damp. The portions open to the public are now lighted by electric lamps. (H. C. HY.)