"In aunciente dayes, tradition showes, A base and wicked elfe arose The Witch of Wokey hight."
So it begins, and goes on to relate, in the sham antique style of the day, how a malevolent old woman was for her misdeeds changed to stone by a "lerned clerk of Glaston." The Witch, a black, aquiline profile in stone and stalagmite, is with her culinary utensils the chief attraction to sightseers in the first great chamber, or, as it is sometimes called, the Witch's Kitchen.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF THE "WITCH OF WOOKEY," WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.
[Illustration: AMONG THE POOLS, WOOKEY HOLE CAVERN.
It is impressive enough to stand beside the very modern-looking paper-mill, where the infant Axe, still dazzled by its sudden entry into the sunlight, is harnessed to assist in the manufacture of such workaday commodities as Bank-note paper, and to see before one things that carry the memory back all those stages; yet it is but the last few pages of the voluminous history that we are considering now. Professor Boyd Dawkins, who won his spurs as a palæontologist by his researches at Wookey Hole, discovered in the neighbouring Hyæna Den, which is really a branch of the old cavern, human and animal remains whose antiquity, compared with the periods just reviewed, is as the age of Stonehenge compared with that of a man. In the less known passages of the Hole itself, such relics have constantly been found in the course of our investigations. Potsherds, celts, bone implements, the carbonised embers from ancient hearths, all sorts of refuse lying in odd corners, have continually brought us, as it were, face to face with the time when man was little more than the king of beasts. Whosoever would read in the deeper chapters of this vast chronicle must be referred to the fascinating pages of _Cave Hunting_; there will be only an occasional glance at the human history in this record of a different class of exploration. Palæontological research has not been our object. Several of my companions have made some valuable discoveries in this line, and are intent on making more; but my own original motive, and that of several others, was the sport, as much as the scientific results, to be enjoyed in endeavouring to work out the great problem of the waters that have made themselves a road through the underworld of Mendip, and found an escape from bondage at Wookey Hole. This cavern has been known so long and so familiarly, that it must have seemed as if there were nothing more to be found out about it. It will, surely, be a surprise to many to learn what important additions have recently been made to the extent of its known and accessible passages, and what progress there has been in explaining the secrets of its water system. We are, in all probability, on the brink of yet more startling revelations.