Carlsbad Cave

Down a swaying rope into a black, hot pit, 1,350 ft. below the earth's surface, 325 ft. lower than anyone had ever gone there before him, slid Frank Ernest Nicholson, journalist-explorer, into the unmeasured depths of the Carlsbad Cave in the Guadalupe Mountains in lower New Mexico. Last week came reports of his expedition, begun in January (TIME, Jan. 27). He told of nightmare rock formations, of crystal clear water and perfect cave pearls in a subterranean pool. While he was drinking, a feeble chirping split the stifling black silence. He investigated, found a nest of milk-white crickets, curiously not blind from living in the dark.

Laboriously climbing back up his rope the equivalent of 30 floors, he started horizontal explorations which led miles beyond any known territory. One vast underground chamber, lavishly studded with stalactites, pools of water, a fountain, Nicholson and his comrades named "Hell's Half Acre." To the north of this room was a shaftway, with levels above and below. A strong air current suggested another entrance to the cave.

Into the tunnel leading beyond "Hell's Half Acre" stumbled the party. The tunnel led them into another towering amphitheatre, so lofty that flashlight beams failed to find the ceiling. The white marble stage was set for a vast Wagnerian twilight of the gods, in glittering onyx, with orange-tinted, translucent stone curtains and footlights of stalagmites.

On the explorers went, through a meagre crevice in the tunnel to yet another hall. The rocks were coated with powdery limestone formation. Nicholson jumped from a rock onto seemingly solid floor, sank neck deep into powdery dust which, clouding aloft from its aeons of tranquillity, floated steadily off through an immense opening near the ceiling.

Nicholson & friends went for ladders, promised further penetration of Carlsbad Cave, the continent's greatest.

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