Science: Digger

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Nick-a-Jack Cave, near Shellmound, Tenn., is a long black involved passage, coiled, like an intestine, under a pot-bellied mountain. Into it last week crawled one Lawrence S. Ashley, geologist, cave-guide. Clambering up the entrance to a secret tunnel which he had discovered, Explorer Ashley heard a great echoing roar as a landslide filled his return to the mouth. After that he wandered for six days, drank the water of a little ebony river, beat away the attacks of two small, ferocious and invisible animals, peered at rough, curious arches that swung and loomed in the waving of his torch, reached a hitherto unknown exit after wandering 70 miles through dark and crusted corridors.