Although the water looked perfectly placid, the boat drifted with surprising speed, so that the two scared faces peering after me were soon lost sight of.  The channel was nowhere more than six feet wide, consequently as the boat inclined to drive against either wall I was able with care to keep it off the rocks with my hands, and in the same way guide it around the sharp turns in safety.  After several of these turns there appeared the mouth of a passage so much smaller that the roof was only twelve inches above the sides of the boat and I could touch both walls at the same time.  By running the boat across this it was held in place by the current, and I could sit at ease and enjoy the position, which even the least imaginative person can readily conceive to have been a novel one.

The small eyeless fish had been noticeable in the water everywhere but now came swimming about the boat in an astonishing multitude, and as unconscious of any possible danger as bees in a flower garden.  Having no eyes, they were naturally undisturbed by the light, so the candle could be held close to the water for a satisfactory examination of the happy creatures.

They bore a striking resemblance to minnows, although a few were larger, and it is claimed that four or five inches are sizes not unusual, but they happened not to be on exhibition.  Even dipping a hand into the water in their midst occasioned no alarm, and they might have been caught by dozens.

The guide now loudly called that he had fears of the twine being cut on the sharp edges of rock, and that cutting off all possibility of the boat’s return, which being sufficiently reasonable, explorations were indefinitely suspended, and a landing soon made.  The camera and flash-light were then prepared for taking a view, and a point of light being needed to work by the nephew was asked to sit in the boat with his candle, to which he readily consented; but judging from the developed picture it may be doubted if his pleasure at the time was extremely keen.

On leaving the cave the guide said it would not be necessary to return to the upper end of the Gulf in order to reach the surface, as the ascent could be made in another place; and leading the way to the left of the entrance he started up the nearly perpendicular wall, more than two hundred feet high, by a sort of “blind trail” that would have caused a mountain sheep to sigh for wings, but it was very beautiful.

We walked over to the wagon road on the high ridge above the middle of the bridge and going down the forest-clad slopes to the perpendicular wall in which is the smaller of the great arches, admired from this fair point of view the marvelous grandeur of one of the greatest natural wonders.

The weather being perfect after a rain the day before, there was no need of haste to get indoors, so we lingered into the afternoon and then drove to the Mammoth Spring, in Arkansas, a short distance south of the Missouri state line, where the Cave River, just visited, comes to the surface in a bounding spring of great force.  The distance being little less than nine miles.