attle. On either side of the stream, under the
cliff, is a shelf or projecting ledge, covered with loose stones.
Neither is 2 feet higher than the water level in a wet season.

BARREN COUNTY

PAYNE CAVE.--This, also known as Saltpeter Cave, is near Temple Hill,
9 miles southeast of Glasgow. The bluff in which it is situated is a
conglomerate limestone, rising from the waters of Skagg's Creek. The
cave has three different entrances, 100 feet or more apart, and each
entrance is broken into three or four by columns or masses of stone
that have resisted erosion. None of the entrances is large, or opens
into spacious chambers within daylight. Flood marks are visible in
all, and it is said that after prolonged or heavy spring rains the
water covers the floors.

BEN SMITH'S CAVE.--This was discovered while digging out a fox den. It
is a tunnel-like cavity, not more than 6 feet high or wide, and not
suitable for habitation. It lies a mile and a half south of Temple
Hill.

FORD'S CAVE.--This is between Freedom and Mount Hermon, about 14 miles
southeast of Glasgow. Originally the entrance was about 8 feet high
and 20 feet wide, and opened into a well-lighted chamber probably 40
feet wide and 60 feet long. The floor was of earth and level, with
ample space between it and the roof, as shown by marks on the walls,
for people to move about readily in any part of the room. The entrance
is now artificially closed by earth and stone, except for a space 4
feet square in which a door is hung. Old men in the neighborhood claim
they can remember when the floor was 20 feet lower than at present; a
manifest impossibility, for that measure would bring it several feet
lower than the bed of Mill Creek just in front of the cave. They also
claim that blocks of conglomerate and travertine 5 to 10 feet in each
dimension have formed from "drip" within their recollection; which, if
true, would prove these persons to be almost contemporaneous with the
cave men. The more probable statement is also made by them that in
early days saltpeter workers dug up and leached all the earth in the
cave, filling the entrance and the narrow space before it with the
leached earth from the front part of the cave and throwing that from
farther back into the cavities and pits left by the prior workings.
Inside the cave, near the entrance, is a never-failing spring whose
waters flow through a short, narrow crevice at one side. While easily
accessible, the water doe