Staunton Spectator

Cost of the Mammoth Cave.—Colonel Croghan, to whose family it belongs, was a resident of Louisville, Kentucky. He went to Europe some twenty years ago, and found himself frequently questioned of the wonders of the Mammoth Cave—a place he had never visited, and of which he had heard but little at home, though living within ninety miles of it. He went there on his return, and the idea struck him to purchase it, and make it a family inheritance. In fifteen minutes' bargaining he bought it for $10,000, and shortly after he was offered $100,000 for his purchase. In his will he tied it up in such a way that it must remain in his family for two generations, thus appending its celebrity to his name.—There are nineteen hundred acres in the estate, though the cave probably runs under the property of a great number of other land owners. For fear of those who might dig down and establish an entrance to the cave on their own property, (a man's farm extending up to the zenith and down to the nadir.) great vigilance is exercised to prevent such subterranean surveys and measurements as would enable one to sink a shaft with any certainty. The cave extends ten or twelve miles in several directions, and there is probably many a back-woodsman sitting in his hut within ten miles of the Cave, quite unconscious that the most fashionable ladies and gentlemen of Europe and America are walking without leave under his potatoes and corn.