“SPELEOLOGIE”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1939, Page 6

“SPELEOLOGIE”

A NEW VOGUE IN FRANCE.

Everyone talks about “speleologie” in France, and many people declare themselves confirmed “speleologists.” Middle-aged people talk about “speleologie” and young people talk about “speleologie.” When you look up the word in a French dictionary you discover that it means the study of the formation of caverns. This is the new craze in France.

While some people go to the mountains to climb them, others go to descend the caverns in their sides or at their feet, and “speleology" has become, one of the most fascinating, exciting and at time even dangerous of sports. No visit now to the south-west of France is complete without seeing the famous caverns. To the already well known caverns of Padirac and Aven Armand a new one has just been added. opened less than a month ago to the public. This is the cavern of Labouiche, with the longest underground river, four and a half miles, in Europe. Labouiche is situated three miles north of Foix. A kmall stream enters the mountain at Aigo-Perden. After a distance of 300 yards in a large gallery it meets another underground river, the Labouiche, which follows the general direction of the valley far below the surface. The voyage by boat on this subterranean river is most thrilling.

Apart from the better known caverns. there are numbers of smaller caverns which excursion parties set out to explore, with the knowledge that any of these smaller caverns may reveal fissures and passages leading to greater caverns that in turn may become famous. Many of the caverns in the Pyrenees contain highly interesting wall drawings and paintings left by prehistoric man. In the cavern at Gargas there are scores of imprints of hands of the people who inhabited them over twenty thousand years ago. The caverns are of great beauty, with stalactites hanging in fringes from the roof and stalagmites like close-set pillars rising from the ground, giving a fairyland aspect- especially as the rocks are often pink and shine with crystals. The cave explorers have formed speleologie clubs, where they gather to compare notes, listen to lectures, and make plans for further descents into the mysterious underworld.