SUGAR TREE HOLLOW CAVE.
The name of this cave is due to the fact that the approach is through a
"hollow" well wooded with sugar maple trees. It is two miles from Galena
and the drive a beautiful one, as much of the way is through the forest
without a road, but with a charming little rushing, crooked stream of
clear, cold water: and in places the green slopes give way to mural
bluffs of grey limestone in undisturbed strata.
The entrance to the cave is through a hole about two feet high by three
in width, into which we went feet first and wiggled slowly down an
incline covered with broken rock, for a distance of fifteen feet, where
a standing depth is reached. A flat, straight, level ceiling extends
over the whole cave without any perceptible variation, and this is
bordered around its entire length and breadth with a heavy cornice of
dripstone, made very ornamental by the forms it assumes, and the
multitude of depending stalactites that fall as a fringe around the
walls. The line of contact between the cornice and ceiling is as clear
and strong as if both had been finished separately before the cornice
was put in place by skillful hands.
Dripstone covers the walls, which vary in height from one foot to twenty
feet, according to the irregularities of the floor, just as the width of
this one-room cave varies with the curves of the walls, which are
sweeping and graceful, the average being twenty-nine feet, but is much
greater at the entrance where the entire slope extends out beyond the
body of the cave.
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