The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Luray Cavern" to "Mackinac Island"This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Luray Cavern" to "Mackinac Island"Author: VariousRelease date: July 20, 2013 [eBook #43254]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "LURAY CAVERN" TO "MACKINAC ISLAND" ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Luray Cavern" to "Mackinac Island"Author: VariousRelease date: July 20, 2013 [eBook #43254]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Luray Cavern" to "Mackinac Island"
Author: Various
Author: Various
Release date: July 20, 2013 [eBook #43254]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "LURAY CAVERN" TO "MACKINAC ISLAND" ***
Articles in This Slice
LURAY CAVERN,a large cave in Page county, Virginia, U.S.A., 39° 35′ N. and 78° 17′ W., near the village of Luray, on the Norfork & Western railway. The valley, here 10 m. wide, extends from the Blue Ridge to the Massanutton Mountain. The ridges lie in vast folds and wrinkles; and elevations in the valley are often found to be pierced by erosion. Cave Hill, 300 ft. above the water-level, had long been an object of local interest on account of its pits and oval hollows or sink-holes, through one of which, on the 13th of August 1878, Andrew J. Campbell and others entered, thus discovering the cavern now described.
The Luray cavern does not date beyond the Tertiary period, though carved from the Silurian limestone. At some period, long subsequent to its original excavation, and after many large stalactites had grown, it was completely filled with glacial mud charged with acid, whereby the dripstone was eroded into singularly grotesque shapes. After the mud had been mostly removed by flowing water, these eroded forms remained amid the new growths. To this contrast may be ascribed some of the most striking scenes in the cave. The many and extraordinary monuments of aqueous energy include massive columns wrenched from their place in the ceiling and prostrate on the floor; the Hollow Column, 40 ft. high and 30 ft. in diameter, standing erect, but pierced by a tubular passage from top to bottom; the Leaning Column nearly as large, undermined and tilting like the campanile of Pisa; the Organ, a cluster of stalactites in the chamber known as the Cathedral; besides a vast bed of disintegrated carbonates left by the whirling flood in its retreat through the great space called the Elfin Ramble.
The stalactitic display exceeds that of any other cavern known. The old material is yellow, brown or red; and its wavy surface often shows layers like the gnarled grain of costly woods. The new stalactites growing from the old, and made of hard carbonates that had already once been used, are usually white as snow, though often pink, blue or amber-coloured. The Empress Column is a stalagmite 35 ft. high, rose-coloured, and elaborately draped. The double column, named from Professors Henry and Baird, is made of two fluted pillars side by side, the one 25 andthe other 60 ft. high, a mass of snowy alabaster. Several stalactites in the Giant Hall exceed 50 ft. in length. The smaller pendants are innumerable; in the canopy above the Imperial Spring it is estimated that 40,000 are visible at once.
The “cascades” are wonderful formations like foaming cataracts caught in mid-air and transformed into milk-white or amber alabaster. The Chalcedony Cascade displays a variety of colours. Brand’s Cascade, the finest of all, is 40 ft. high and 30 ft. wide, and is unsullied and wax-like white, each ripple and braided rill seeming to have been polished.
The Swords of the Titans are monstrous blades, eight in number, 50 ft. long, 3 to 8 ft. wide, hollow, 1 to 2 ft. thick, but drawn down to an extremely thin edge, and filling the cavern with tones like tolling bells when struck heavily by the hand. Their origin and also that of certain so-called scarfs and blankets is from carbonates deposited by water trickling down a sloping and corrugated surface. Sixteen of these alabaster scarfs hang side by side in Hovey’s Balcony, three white and fine as crape shawls, thirteen striated like agate with every shade of brown, and all perfectly translucent. Down the edge of each a tiny rill glistens like silver, and this is the ever-plying shuttle that weaves the fairy fabric.
1. The Vestibule.
2. Washington’s Pillar.
3. Flower Garden.
4. Amphitheatre.
5. Natural Bridge.
6. Fish Market.
7. Crystal Spring.
8. Proserpine’s Pillar.
9. The Spectral Column.
10. Hovey’s Balcony.
11. Oberon’s Grot.
12. Titania’s Veil.
13. Saracen’s Tent.
14. The Organ.
15. Tower of Babel.
16. Empress Column.
17. Hollow Column.
18. Henry-Baird Column.
19. Chalcedony Cascade.
20. Coral Spring.
21. The Dragon.
22. Bootjack Alley.
23. Scaly Column.
24. Lost Blanket.
25. Helen’s Scarf.
26. Chapman’s Lake.
27. Broaddus Lake.
28. Castles on the Rhine.
29. Imperial Spring.
30. The Skeleton.
31. The Twin Lakes.
32. The Engine Room.
33. Miller’s Room.
34. Hawes Cabinet.
35. Specimen Avenue.
36. Proposed Exit.
Streams and true springs are absent, but there are hundreds of basins, varying from 1 to 50 ft. in diameter, and from 6 in. to 15 ft. in depth. The water in them is exquisitely pure, except as it is impregnated by the carbonate of lime, which often forms concretions, called according to their size, pearls, eggs and snowballs. A large one is known as the cannon ball. On fracture these spherical growths are found to be radiated in structure.
Calcite crystals, drusy, feathery or fern-like, line the sides and bottom of every water-filled cavity, and indeed constitute the substance of which they are made. Variations of level at different periods are marked by rings, ridges and ruffled margins. These are strongly marked about Broaddus Lake and the curved ramparts of the Castles on the Rhine. Here also are polished stalagmites, a rich buff slashed with white, and others, like huge mushrooms, with a velvety coat of red, purple or olive-tinted crystals. In some of the smaller basins it sometimes happens that, when the excess of carbonate acid escapes rapidly, there is formed, besides the crystal bed below, a film above, shot like a sheet of ice across the surface. One pool 12 ft. wide is thus covered so as to show but a third of its surface. The quantity of water in the cavern varies greatly at different seasons. Hence some stalactites have their tips under water long enough to allow tassels of crystals to grow on them, which, in a drier season, are again coated over with stalactitic matter; and thus singular distortions are occasioned. Contiguous stalactites are often inwrapped thus till they assume an almost globular form, through which by making a section the primary tubes appear. Twig-like projections, to which the termhelictitehas been applied by the present writer, are met with in certain portions of the cave, and are interesting by their strange and uncouth contortions. Their presence is due to lateral outgrowths of crystals shooting from the side of a growing stalactite, or to deflections caused by currents of air, or to the existence of a diminutive fungus peculiar to the locality and designated from its habitatMucor stalactitis. The Toy-Shop is an amusing collection of these freaks of nature.
Calcite crystals, drusy, feathery or fern-like, line the sides and bottom of every water-filled cavity, and indeed constitute the substance of which they are made. Variations of level at different periods are marked by rings, ridges and ruffled margins. These are strongly marked about Broaddus Lake and the curved ramparts of the Castles on the Rhine. Here also are polished stalagmites, a rich buff slashed with white, and others, like huge mushrooms, with a velvety coat of red, purple or olive-tinted crystals. In some of the smaller basins it sometimes happens that, when the excess of carbonate acid escapes rapidly, there is formed, besides the crystal bed below, a film above, shot like a sheet of ice across the surface. One pool 12 ft. wide is thus covered so as to show but a third of its surface. The quantity of water in the cavern varies greatly at different seasons. Hence some stalactites have their tips under water long enough to allow tassels of crystals to grow on them, which, in a drier season, are again coated over with stalactitic matter; and thus singular distortions are occasioned. Contiguous stalactites are often inwrapped thus till they assume an almost globular form, through which by making a section the primary tubes appear. Twig-like projections, to which the termhelictitehas been applied by the present writer, are met with in certain portions of the cave, and are interesting by their strange and uncouth contortions. Their presence is due to lateral outgrowths of crystals shooting from the side of a growing stalactite, or to deflections caused by currents of air, or to the existence of a diminutive fungus peculiar to the locality and designated from its habitatMucor stalactitis. The Toy-Shop is an amusing collection of these freaks of nature.
The dimensions of the various chambers included in Luray Cavern cannot easily be stated, on account of the great irregularity of their outlines. Their size may be seen from the diagram. But it should be understood that there are several tiers of galleries, and the vertical depth from the highest to the lowest is 260 ft. The large tract of land owned by the Luray Caverns Corporations covers all possible modes of entrance.
The waters of this cavern appear to be entirely destitute of life; and the existing fauna comprises only a few bats, rats, mice, spiders, flies and small centipedes. When the cave was first entered, the floor was covered with thousands of tracks of raccoons, wolves and bears—most of them probably made long ago, as impressions made in the tenacious clay that composes most of the cavern floor would remain unchanged for centuries. Layers of excrementitious matter appear, and also many small bones, along with a few large ones, all of existing species. The traces of human occupation are pieces of charcoal, flints, moccasin tracks and a single skeleton embedded in stalagmite in one of the chasms, estimated, from the present rate of stalagmitic growth, to have lain where found for not more than five hundred years.
The temperature is uniformly 54° Fahr., coinciding with that of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. The air is very pure, and the avenues are not uncomfortably damp. The portions open to the public are now lighted by electric lamps. The registered number of visitors in 1906 was 18,000. A unique and highly successful experiment merits mention, by which the cool pure air of Luray Cavern is forced through all the rooms of the Limair sanatorium erected in 1901, by Mr T. C. Northcott, president of the Luray Caverns Corporation, on the summit of Cave Hill. Tests made for several successive years by means of culture media and sterile plates, demonstrated the perfect bacteriologic purity of the air, first drawn into the caverns through myriads of rocky crevices that served as natural filters, then further cleansed by floating over the transparent springs and pools, and finally supplied to the inmates of the sanatorium.
For a full description see an article by Dr G. L. Hunner, of Johns Hopkins University, in thePopular Science Monthlyfor April 1904.
For a full description see an article by Dr G. L. Hunner, of Johns Hopkins University, in thePopular Science Monthlyfor April 1904.
(H. C. H.)
LURCH,a word with several meanings, the etymological relationships of which are obscure. The chief uses which survive are—(1) in the phrase “to leave in the lurch,” to abandon some one, to leave him in a position of great difficulty; (2) a stagger, sudden leaning over, originally a nautical expression of a sudden “list” made by a ship; (3) the name of a dog, the “lurcher” used by poachers, properly a cross between a sheepdog or collie and a greyhound. In (1) “lurch” is the name of a game, of which nothing is known (it is supposed to have resembled backgammon), and also of a state of the score in various games, in which the loser either scores nothing or is beaten by very heavy points. In this sense the term is practically obsolete.It was taken from Fr.lourche, connected with many German forms, now only dialectical such asLortsch,Lurtsch,Lorz,Lurz, all for some kind of game, but also meaning left-hand, wrong, which theNew English Dictionarythinks is the origin of the word, it being first used as a term in gambling. In (2) “lurch” occurs first in the form “lee-lurches,” sudden rolls a ship takes to leeward in a heavy sea, which may be a corruption of “lee-latch,” defined in Smyth’sSailor’s Word Bookas dropping to leeward of the course. In (3) “lurch” is probably another form of “lurk,” to lie in wait for, watch stealthily, hence to pilfer, steal.
LURGAN,a market-town of Co. Armagh, Ireland, well situated on high ground overlooking Lough Neagh a few miles to the north; 20 m. S.W. of Belfast by the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 11,782. The parish church of Shankill (this parish including Lurgan) has a finely proportioned tower. Contiguous to the town is Lurgan Castle, a fine modern Elizabethan structure, the seat of Lord Lurgan. Lurgan is famed for its diapers, and the linen trade is of the first importance, but there are also tobacco factories and coach factories. It is governed by an urban district council. Lurgan was founded by William Brownlow, to whom a grant of the town was made by James I. In 1619 it consisted of forty-two houses, all inhabited by English settlers. It was burned by the insurgents in 1641, and again by the troops of James II. After its restoration in 1690 a patent for a market and fair was obtained.
LURIA, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON(1534-1572), Jewish mystic, was born in Jerusalem. From his German descent he was surnamedAshkenazi(the German), and we find that epithet applied to him in a recently discovered document of date 1559. In that year Isaac Luria was living in Cairo and trading as a spice merchant with his headquarters in Alexandria. He had come to Egypt as a boy after his father’s death, and was brought up by his wealthy maternal uncle Mordecai Francis. The boy, according to the legends which soon grew round his life, was a “wonder-child,” and early displayed marvellous capacity. He married as a lad of fifteen, his bride being his cousin. For some time he continued his studies; later on when engaged in business there was no break in this respect. Two years after his marriage he became possessed of a copy of the Kabbalistic “Bible”—theZoharof Moses de Leon (q.v.). In order to meditate on the mystic lore he withdrew to a hut by the Nile, returning home for the Sabbath. Luria afterwards gave to the Sabbath a mystic beauty such as it had never before possessed. Thus passed several years; he was still young, but his new mode of life produced its effects on a man of his imagination and saintly piety. He became a visionary. Elijah, who had been his godfather in his babyhood, now paid him frequent visits, initiating him into sublime truths. By night Luria’s soul ascended to heaven and conversed with celestial teachers who had once been men of renown on earth.
In 1566 at earliest Luria removed to Safed. This Palestinian town was in the 16th century the headquarters of the Kabbala. A large circle of Talmudists lived there; at their head Joseph Qaro, then over eighty years of age. Qaro’s son married Luria’s daughter, and Qaro rejoiced at the connexion, for he had a high opinion of Luria’s learning. Mysticism is often the expression of a revolt against authority, but in Luria’s case mysticism was not divorced from respect for tradition. After his arrival at Safed Luria lived at most six years, and died in 1572. But these years were momentous for Judaism. He established an extraordinary reputation; his personality had a winning attractiveness; and he founded a school of mystics who powerfully affected Judaism after the master’s death. The Holy Spirit, we are told, rested on him, drawn to him by the usual means of the mystics—self-flogging, ablutions and penance. He had wonderful gifts of insight, and spoke to the birds. Miracles abounded. More soberly true is the statement that he went on long walks with enthusiastic disciples, whom he taught without books. Luria himself wrote no mystical works; what we know of his doctrines and habits comes chiefly from his Boswell, Hayim Vital.