XIV. The Jenolan Caves

Oh! quelle étrange nuit sous l’univers sonore

Un trou s’offre lugubre. Il y plonge et, rampant
Dans un vide où l’effroi du tombeau se répand
Il voit sous lui de l’ombre et de l’horreur. Il entre
Il est dans je ne sais quel intérieur d’antre.

Les enchevêtrements de racines vivaces,
Les fuites d’eau mouillant de livides crevasses,
Il franchit tout; des reins, des coudes, des talons,
Il pousse devant lui l’abîme et dit: “Allons!”

Victor Hugo.

Jack and Lulu run boisterously into my room, shouting:

“We’re going to the Caves. We’re going to the Caves! Mother says so!”

Jenolan is the wonderland of the Blue Mountains. Its vast caves equal, if they do not excel, the most famous ones of the world.

Mrs. Clarke has organised an excursion there of several days’ length. “It will be good for Lulu,” says she, “and distract her attention from her mysterious little visitant, who, you will see, won’t follow her. These influences adhere as much to places as to people.”

I know my kind friend is actuated also by the desire to divert my thoughts from myself and relieve my anxiety until Hector’s reply can reach me.

I am only too delighted to have the chance of visiting these Caves, of which I have heard so much. Formed long ages ago, in a limestone belt, by the action of water, which, percolating gradually through the soft stone, at length crashed down the barriers, and, boiling and seething, carved out immense caverns, fantastic grottoes and recesses, they are now adorned with glistening stalagmites and stalactites, transforming them into an Aladdin’s Palace.

Our guide, “Jerry,” is what they call here a “Character.” He considers himself the territorial Lord of everything pertaining to the Caves. Certainly he has discovered the greater part of them, and he does the honours to tourists from all parts of the world.

Deaf as a post, he abuses his position by uttering whatever comes into his head in highly coloured language of which I cannot hope to receive the full savour. One can’t very well snub him. Yelling into a trumpet would scarcely convey an impression of offended dignity.

In justice, I ought to say that his gruffness is only superficial. He would risk his life to spare his tourist visitors a scratch.

Following his usual custom, Jerry gives each of us a sobriquet.

“Life is too short,” says he, “to learn the names of the people I shall likely enough never see again.”

So Mrs. Clarke is “Mother,” I am “Brown Eyes,” nurse is “Sulky” (her looks evidently have not pleased him), Lulu is “Little Fairy,” and Jack “The Imp.”

A good judge of character is Jerry.

We are conducted into the largest of the Caves, which descends more than a thousand feet, and is reached by a series of subterraneous passages and vast halls. The Imperial Cave, the Cathedral, the Exhibition Room, all lit by electricity, are full of the most enchanting marvels, statues, pillars, marble columns, frozen cataracts, glistening pendants from the vaulted roof, walls encrusted with gleaming jewels reflecting all the colours of the prism. One might imagine oneself in the palace of the Genii, where rubies, topazes and diamonds rival each other in lambent fire. In one gallery, stalagmites, shot with the chatoyant hues of an agate, fall in a frieze, some six feet in thickness.

Other formations when struck give forth the deep harmonious roll of an organ fitted for a race of Titans.

Jerry’s great pleasure is to seat us with a stern injunction not to move, and then suddenly switch off the electric light.

The horror succeeding our vision of fairyland is inexpressible. The darkness is corporeal, palpable. One actually feels the vast material solidity separating us from the blue sky. The terror is heightened by the resonance of the air. The slightest sounds are magnified. Jerry throws some stones into the abysmal depths near us. A long, long time after, we hear their impact with the stream which threads its tortuous course below.

The children cling to us affrightedly, but our magician switches on the current, and once more we are in the palace of the fairies.

A little incident marks the beginning of our excursion. At the entrance of a cave our guide shows us the imprint of a snake on the wet sand in the hollow of a rock. “You needn’t be afraid. They only come out at night after the bats, which swarm here in myriads.”

The dimly lit gallery, where we sit down to rest after the fatigue of reaching the upper cave, is closed by an iron gate. Jack, leaning against it, utters a cry: “A snake! a snake!”

We all run, Jerry leading. Coiled round the iron points of the railing is a huge serpent.

“A carpet snake, be jabers, I’d like to take him alive. Light your candles!” orders our guide imperiously (it is advisable to carry candles in case of any mishap). We form a luminous circle; there are about fifteen of us, for some other tourists are being “personally conducted.” Jerry loves to dominate a crowd.

The snake lies inert, simulating sleep.

“He has eaten too many bats and forgotten the danger of his whereabouts, or else he has climbed up there to get them on the wing.” Jerry, while speaking, has made a running knot in a piece of rope which he fixes to the end of a stick.

Approaching cautiously, he endeavours to throw it over the snake’s head. But his majesty, now alive to his danger, draws back each time. The play (scarcely play to me or the reptile) lasts a long time. At each sinuous movement we retreat warily. But Jerry is relentless.

“The lights, the lights!” he exclaims, and, willy-nilly, we reform the magic circle. Finally a less swift movement of the victim results in the cord being drawn taut. He hisses, slowly uncoils, and is dragged off in triumph.

“A windfall for me,” remarks our guide; “they’ll give me ten bob for him at the Zoo.”

It is a young carpet snake, five feet long, beautifully marked on top and silvery underneath.

There is something artlessly artful about Jerry.

Among our number is a young man with a retreating facial angle and a weak chin. Jerry, in the coolest manner possible, calmly hands him the snake-wound stick to carry. He takes it gingerly, with inward trepidation, but afraid to show the white feather too openly.

Jerry strides on in front with an unconcerned air, belied by a suspicious glint in the corner of his eye.

The timid young man, with his living “caduceus,” is left to bring up the rear, a position to which he is speedily relegated by the shrinking of his companions when he approaches too closely. Apparently no thought of resisting Jerry’s masterful action occurs to him.

In the evening the heat is stifling. We have carried our chairs to the verandah to enjoy the slight breeze wafted from the mountains. The children, tired out with the day’s pleasures, are lying on cushions at our feet. The sky is covered with threatening clouds. Suddenly, one by one appear little twinkling lights. They are fire-flies, flitting from tree to tree, honouring our visit by a fairy illumination.

The following days bring new excitements, new marvels, subterranean rivers, ascensions on rope ladders, and spiral staircases, which lead from cave to cave.

“We shan’t see them all,” says Jerry, “for 30 miles or so they penetrate the interior of the mountains, forming endless circuits and detours. Even I don’t know them all (words fail to give adequate expression to that pronoun), and I have been on the job forty years or so.”

Jerry alternates his guide book English with a slangy colloquialism.

No, nor are we likely to see the “hairy man,” the monster whom he has chased so many times, and whose footprints he has marked in almost inaccessible places.

Is there really a mystery here, I wonder, or is it some freak of Jerry’s vivid imagination?

He swears by all the gods that there is such a monster. Others have seen him, fired at, and wounded him, too, which in no wise impeded the remarkable agility with which he used to appear and disappear.

To finish, Jerry takes me to the top of the mountain. A rocky arch, crowned with gum trees, dominating the valley at our feet, where the towering Eucalypts, over hundreds of feet high, look no bigger than small shrubs.

Their tops touch each other, interlace and form a carpet of sombre velvet. Strangling trails of foliage hang from the rocks; tree ferns wave their graceful fronds in the hollows, and orchids, with quaint faces, nod in the crevices, slenderly detached against the abysmal background of green and russet.

My eyes, unaccustomed to dizzy heights, become dazzled, my brain reels, I feel faint, giddy.... I gladly leave these altitudes to the Australian eagles, which, disturbed in their eyries, fly off, uttering discordant shrieks as they wheel in the splendour of the unshadowed blue.