Keowee Courier

NATURE SEALS TOMB OF FLOYD COLLINS
Unable to Recover Body, the Weird Depths of Sand Cave Will Hold Forever All that is Mortal of the Unfortunate "Cave Rat."

Cave City, Ky., Feb. 18.—Sand Cave hill, torn open in the struggle to rescue Floyd Collins from the grip of an underground trap, was slowly closing in again today upon his body without human assistance.
Unable to release him from the clutch of nature, the volunteers who fought to save him joined his family in brief and simple funeral services at the top of the rescue shaft, and six of his friends fulfilled the legal formalities by announcing his identity and accidental death.
The cement with which it was planned to seal the boulders over his rocky grave did not arrive, and the sagging of the rescue shaft and its lateral tunnel indicated nature's intention to seal him up forever. The mud and rocks, held back for a few days by heavy timbers in the rescue shaft, were settling back upon him.
Unwilling that the brave miners should risk their lives to recover his body, Lee Collins, aged father of Floyd Collins, agreed to leave him where he lay. A prayer, a few hymns and the ritual for the dead finished the story, while movie cameras whirred and "still" pictures by the score were snapped.
The best efforts of the State of Kentucky, scores of unselfish workers and the sympathy and prayers of thousands had failed. Dr. William Hazlett, of Chicago, the only physician who went to him in his sixty-foot grave, announced that Collins had been reached at least three days too late.
When it was decided to make the cave a tomb, a friend crawled down to wash and turn the face of Collins upward. Then six others of his personal friends went down one by one into the narrow tomb to identify him for the coroner's jury which they composed.
The last of these was John Gerald, who risked his life many times in the futile effort to draw him out of the natural tunnel before a rock slide sealed off that channel. Then they came into Cave City, solemnly assembled and judicially announced their verdict of "death by exposure caused by being accidentally trapped in what is commonly called Sand Cave".
This was entered into the record of the State military board, which took testimony from all those connected with the story. And thus the drama ended.
Within a few hours the workers, the officials, the soldiers, the newspaper men, scattered to their homes, the days of struggle and of anxiety over.