s may suit
their convenience and pleasure. Those who own the caves, and those who
visit them, would do well to remember that if all the natural adornment
should be allowed to remain in its original position, it would continue
to afford pleasure to many persons for an indefinite time; but if
broken, removed, and scattered the pleasure to a few will be
comparatively little and that short-lived. The gift of beauty should
always be honored and protected for the public good.

We were not so fortunate as to discover fossils of any kind in this
locality, although the search was by no means thorough; but even if it
had been the result might have been the same, since that county and
others adjoining have been mapped as Cambrian. The greater part of the
exposed rock is a fine sandstone almost as white as gypsum on a fresh
fracture, and much of it is ripple-marked so as to show a beautifully
fluted surface of remarkable regularity. These ripple flutings are
sometimes more than an inch in width, and often less, but the variations
never appear on the same level, the smallest being seen on the hill-tops
and the larger outcropping on the downward slopes.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GRAND GULF.

Oregon County, Missouri, is also fortunate in having within its limits
the Grand Gulf, which has been declared by competent judges to be one of
the wonders of the world; and it offers a combination of attractions
that certainly entitles it to an important place among a limited few of
America's choicest scenes.

The Gulf is nearly nine miles northwest of Thayer, Missouri, and about
equally distant from Mammoth Spring in Arkansas, just a little south of
the Missouri state line. The drive is a pleasant one, as the road winds
among the forest-clad hills and passes occasional fields of cotton and
corn; but having been macadamized in very ancient times by the original
and all-powerful general government of that early period is somewhat
rough, yet threatens no danger greater than the destruction of wheels.

The only approach to the Gulf is over the hill-tops; and the entrance in
past times, while it was still a cave, must have been a sink-hole in the
roof of the largest chamber. This chamber is now the upper end of the
Grand Gulf, and into it we descended by a rugged path, sufficiently
difficult to maintain expectations of grandeur that are not doomed to
disappointment. The precipitous walls, two hundred feet in height, bear
a faithful record of