re-impregnated in three years. When saltpetre bore a high price,
immense quantities were manufactured at the Mammoth Cave, but the
return of peace brought the saltpetre from the East Indies in
competition with the American, and drove that of the produce of our
country entirely from the market. An idea may be formed of the extent
of the manufacture of saltpetre at this Cave, from the fact that the
contract for the supply of the fixed alkali alone for the Cave, for
the year 1814, was twenty thousand dollars."

"The price of the article was so high, and the profits of the
manufacturer so great, as to set half the western world gadding after
nitre caves--the gold mines of the day. Cave hunting in fact became a
kind of mania, beginning with speculators, and ending with hair
brained young men, who dared for the love of adventure the risk which
others ran for profit." Every hole, remarked an old miner, the size of
a man's body, has been penetrated for miles around the Mammoth Cave,
but although we found "_petre earth_," we never could find a cave
worth having.




CHAPTER II.

Gothic Gallery--Gothic Avenue--Good Road--Mummies--Interesting Account
of Them--Gothic Avenue once called Haunted Chamber--Why so Named--
Adventure of a Miner in Former Days.


In looking from the ruins of the nitre works, to the left and some