Roosevelt High School - Bwana Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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BVJHNH A VISIT TO MISSOURI CAVERNS ET me take you to a new world, to a beautiful, grotesque, weird, fantastic fairyland, to a world designed by nature. We enter through a rock building, down clean, wide stairs on to broad gravel paths. We are now in Sand Hill Dome. You gasp! lt's beyond your wildest dreams. lts vastness bewilders you. On one side is a huge dome, the upper part of which has separated from the lower leaving a gap of from six to twelve inches wide. Throw a rock against this dome, and you find it is hollow. You feel its surface. You say it is sand, but it is really a mixture of limestone and sand. It takes from a hundred to hundred and eighty years to form a cubic inch of this rock. At one time, perhaps a hundred million years ago, a great, roaring river ran through this cave, dissolving the limestone rock and carving huge rooms and formations, a part of which you have seen. How convenient the gravel paths are! How clever is the lighting which does not spoil nature's beauty but merely lights the way so man can see. It is the finest example of cave illumination in the worldg all of it done by reflection. There are eight miles of lead cable with four hundred and seventy- five lamps totaling one hundred fifty-six thousand, nine hundred and seven candle power. We follow the pathg keep your eyes wide open and look all about you. Oh! look! a regular pair of false teeth. Yes, you are right. The water, the Wind, the drippings from the ceiling have fashioned a set. This is not the only freak formation you will find. There are many, many more. I shall have to show you some of them, others you will discover yourself. The cave forks. We shall take the path to the right first. This is the Dining Room. Look above you at the perfect cathedral dome that has be-en caused by the swirl of the water which at one time filled the cave. There, to your right, is the service window leading from the kitchen to the dining room. How peculiar to have Rip Van Winkle sitting on a stump in a dining room! But then nature does many peculiar things. You notice that some of the rock is white with streaks of brown and veins of blue. The white is pure onyx: the brown, streaks of clayg and the blue, copper stains. ln this room you observe the first stalactite and stalagmite formations. The stalactites hang from the ceiling. The rain on the ground above seeps through, making opalescent formations, hollow and filled with water. This water, in turn, seeps through the stalactites and where it drops on the floor begins a formation called stalagmites. The stalagmites, however, are solid. The stalactites on the side of the cave are called halagtites. When a stalactite and stalagmite meet they form a cone, there is a good example of one. Thousands of years have elapsed since it was formed. We continue on our way. Now we are in a sort of passage, perhaps a bit larger than what you consider a passage, but which is small compared to the vastness of the rooms. A plain light has been focused behind a thin piece of Eighteen

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