Nature with all its munificence has created wonders that can only be admired
DURING a recent visit to the United States, I had the good fortune of visiting one of the most amazing places in the world. So much so, that I am quite sure that it must be on one of the natural wonders of the world, list. For seeing is after all believing.
The place I am talking of are the Luray Caverns, the one-and-a-half miles long underground horseshoe-shaped cavern, situated in Luray, a far-off town of the Virginia. It was on a fine Saturday evening when my hosts decided to drive me there. The outer space of the cave was a marvel of landscaping in its own right, right next to a vast parking lot and other tourist necessities like a restaurant, motel, gift shop, museums, miles of hiking trails, rippling waterfalls, and a host of other facilities. To top it all, salubrious weather had lifted the spirits of young and old alike.
As a matter fact, when my hosts invited me to tour the place, I was a bit reluctant. I thought it would be a murky and dingy cave. However, it turned out to be a commodious, labyrinthian, resplendent cave with modern arrangements of lighting, heating, air-conditioning, flooring, background music, maintenance and preservation.
The entry ticket, $17 appeared exorbitant at the time of entrance. But as we entered into a world of nature’s best, it proved fully justified. There, we saw stones “growing” out of the walls. At some places stone formations were seen hanging from the ceiling while at others, these had touched the floor like the branches of an old banyan tree.
The vestibule of the cave is nothing short of illuminating banquet hall of a five-star hotel. Conducted by a guide, tourists entered the cave in groups of fifty each, after every twenty odd minutes.
Our guide was a young, petite Swiss girl named Lucy who could speak fluently and convincingly. Addressing the visitors at the start of the tour, she told that everything in the cave was preserved with chemicals. The surrounding rocks also contained many chemicals and minerals. She therefore advised us not to touch anything as it could be harmful to skin. “However,” she comforted, “one reassuming feature of these chemicals is that snakes and other reptiles have no access to the cave!”
Throwing light on the history of the cave, we were told that these have been 4,000,000 centuries in the making. An inland sea covered the entire valley in the pre-historic days. Marine plants and animals had extracted calcium carbonate; a key ingredient of limestone, from the seawater. As these sediments gathered in the sea belt, they were gradually compacted under pressure and cemented into firm rocks. When the seawater absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and from decaying animal life in soil humus, the combination created a mildly solution of carbonic acid. The cavern creation began as this solution seeped into cracks of the bedrock slowly attacking and eroding the weaker material in its way. In this process, which took millions of years, the stronger bedrock was left behind to form the walls and ceilings of the cavern chambers.
“And what about the stone draperies hanging from the ceilings and the stony growths from the sides?” asked one tourist utterly flabbergasted. Lucy replied, “These are what I said the stronger parts of the rocks which sustained the acidic solution. This has created a romantic environment throughout.”
During the one-hour spellbinding trip we treaded the well-lighted, neat and clean, paved walkways leading us through fort-sized rooms with ceilings as high as ten stories. Enormous chambers were filled with towering stone columns, shimmering ‘curtains’ and crystal clear pools to make Luray Caverns one of the nature’s most spectacular wonders.
At one point, Lucy re-gathered her ‘herd’ and enlightened it on the discovery of the cave. According to her, Benton Pixley Stebbins, a Maryland photographer came to this town in July 1878 in search of a better livelihood. Here, he befriended a tinsmith named Andrew Campbell and his nephew William Campbell. Influenced by the exposed limestone and numerous sinkholes in the valley, they got interested in the discovery of caves. Once, while they were inspecting, digging and clearing the ‘suspected’ sites, they found a big opening which was actually the mouth of a magnificent cave. With their hard work and dedication, they ultimately made their way to the whole of the cavern, which was thrown open to public on November 6, 1878.
The large influx of visitors to this place prompted the local administration to lay railway lines, make metalled roads and arrange public transport. The railway company later became the owner of the cave which was subsequently purchased from it for $60,000 by a Col. T.C. Narthcott.
For four generations now, the Luray Caverns continue to be the family business of Col. Narthcott. The cave is visited by nearly half a million people annually from America and other countries.
During the tour, the visitors were awestruck to see a fossilized human paw protruding from the edge of a rock. Children and women let out screams. Lucy told that a number of human bodies might be buried in these rocks. The paw belonged to one of them. Many bones recovered from the cavern were now stored in the local museum. Just then, a chilly drop of water fell on my head, which created a stir from top to toe. I was afraid, lest the rock above might succumb to the ‘acidic solution’ preserving the whole of my body minus a fraction of it for “tourists’ attraction.”
We also saw a ‘Fortune Lake’ in the cavern. Spanning 2500 square feet, the lake is only 18 to 20 inches at its deepest point. The depth and clarity of the water provide a perfect mirror reflection of the ceiling and the tourists standing along. It is known as ‘Fortune Lake’ because visitors were invited to throw coins in it and make wishes. Already the lake was filled with coins. Lucy informed that the lake was cleared once a year (another source of income for the management I presume!).
After finishing this scintillating tour, as we were coming out of the cave, in a state of trance, we saw another group entering. The National Geographic has rightly regarded Luray Cavern as a “Fairyland in Stone”.
Nature with all its munificence has created wonders that can only be admired
