D., whereupon one of the
Englishmen exclaimed, "Where is America? Why, your bloomin',
bloody country was not on the map. at that time!" Such good-
natured humor was borne with about the same patience as the
bites of "cooties" or Jersey mosquitoes. As they journeyed on, a
companion of the first speaker said, "You don't have such
wonderfully old and interesting things in America." The fiery
American doughboys accepted this remark as a challenge and could
keep silent no longer. One of them, voicing the sentiment of
all, exclaimed in a voice that fairly awoke the echoes of those
aged walls, "No, we do not have much of this old trash in our
country. Everything in America is new and up-to-date." But in
Luray Caverns we have one of the world's great wonders "that was
old long before the foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops." Here
are columns of gigantic proportions, one of which has lain on
the floor of the cave for more than four thousand years. Some
geologists state that the glacial period was sixty thousand
years ago. If their deductions be true; we have in Luray a
cavern that was fifty-four thousand years old when Adam gazed on
Paradise.
These caverns are carved from the Silurian limestone, although
they are considered to date from the Tertiary period. Long after
the cave was formed, and after many stalactites had been hung on
those spacious halls with their down-grown crystals, it was
completely filled with glacial mud charged with acid, whereby
the dripstones were eroded in singular grotesque shapes.
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