"Turning towards the right hand from the entrance we advance two
hundred feet up an incline of dry clay, the room widening gradually
until its width is forty feet, when we reach the top of an
elevation thirty feet above the starting point, where a sudden
steep descent brings us to a halt. A stone cast down strikes water
and the sound of a splash comes back to us. With caution we seek
our way down the hill and stand on the edge of a small lake or
pond. Suddenly my son, who is in the lead, rushes back saying:
'Look out! I put my hand on a snake.' Some of us, being armed with
hickory canes that had been thrown down, concentrated our lights
and advanced. Sure enough, there is a snake a yard long coiled up
on a section of rotten wood. It proves to be a copperhead, the most
quarrelsome and vicious snake in this country; but his nature is
changed so that he makes no effort to fight and is killed with a
blow, and is sent to be hoisted up that we may examine him in
daylight. No others were found, and probably he had fallen in at
the opening, and spent a long, weary time in expiation of his
upper-earth crimes.
"Examining the lake we find it to be about forty feet wide and the
same long, and it fills the room from wall to wall.
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