CAVE OF DEATH.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 August 1922, Page 9

CAVE OF DEATH.

MYSTERY OF THE VELDT. GRIM UNDERGROUND SCE&E. A great deal of interest ha« been aroused by. and a considerable amount of scientific attention paid to. the strange find on the South African veldt of a vast underground cave, containing a large collection of dead animals, well preserved as mummies. The mystery of this death cave of Koster, about* SO miles from Johannesburg, has not yet been solved. On the contrary, with further investigations and richer results, the problem becomes even more perplexing. Th”e cave, which is reached by a drop of 60ft. sheer down into the earth, descends from a little scrub-clad hill on the veldt and extends underground an enormous distance. The full extent of the cave has not yet been ascertained, but. it is known to be immense. Apparently these natural caverns were worn out of the solid earth and rock by the action of water or by volcanic effect, long ages ago.

Tf this point as to origin could tf/r tied, then it might be possible to arrive at the meaning of the host of mummified animals found in the dim. mysterious recesses. It is these creatures, most ofzthem perfectly preserved as mummies which lend so extraordinary an interest to the discovery. * One of the creatures is a bird, rather like a voung ostrich, but with tremendous talons, like those of a hawkThere is a monkey, “six feet long, ’ which

if truly described, represents a species not in existence to-day. .Of course if » good-sized baboon were stretched out andi measured from muzzle to the extremity of the hind feet, that make a respectable total of inches, but here the discoverers speak of a true monkey, intact, but a mummy. x - A NERVE .TRYING SCENE. In one of the passages of the labyrinth stands a dead hartebeest, its pale lead« en eyes complete and reflecting the light of an electric lamp flashed upon it— a horrifying moment for the man who first saw it. Then, wedged into a crevasse, is what is described as a tiger, perfect, and beneath the tiger a deer. The two animals, conqueror and conquered, seem to have died together in the death grapple in which the carnivore sought its meal. But a tiger the conqueror cannot be. for Africa has no tigers. It may have been a lion, but more probably it was a leopard. Whatever it was, there, in that amazing tableau the two creatures rest where death suddenly found them. The story is certainly one of the most astonishing in the history of cave exploring. Many monkeys are there, curled up comfortably in natural sleeping attitudes, but dried and washed as if they had not lived for a thousand years or more ; and there are birds and other creatures unnamed, all dead, all watched over by swarming flocks of living bats, with whose guano the cave is feet deep* Probably it will never be known whati created this Koster cave, or how this company of birds and animals came to their death, but geologists can give us 9, rough guess'as to the origin of the tomb, and good naturalists should make a shrewd guess as to what brought the end of the creatures whose astonishing remains have thus been brought to light.