IT would be interesting to know how far our country roads follow the lines of the old Indian trails. That some do so we have positive knowledge, but how seldom do we think of this when jogging along the present dusty highways, and picture the lazy bucks and burden-bearing squaws as they passed this same way and rested, it may be, in the shade of some still standing way-side oak! If happily our thoughts drift in such a channel, there is added interest even to the most romantic thoroughfare.

Not long since, with a companion, I wandered many a mile over a hilly country, having the Indian uppermost in mind, because we were in search of whatsoever he had left behind, and for long the road and one-time trail were the same. In and out among the rounded hills, sometimes crossing the sparkling waters that brightened the valley, or pausing by the bubbling spring that welled up from the roots of a spreading chestnut, and wherever we tarried we found that the Indian had been there before us.

It is mere child's play to pick up relics, and it became monotonous before the day was done, for wheresoever we halted had once been a village-site or the spot whereon a wigwam had been built. With what permanent ink fire writes its name! Burned and blackened pebbles, although cold for nearly, if not quite, two centuries, were everywhere conspicuous, and half those that had escaped burning were battered or chipped. There were strange forms among them. To decipher their meaning is labor and not pastime, and, out for a holiday, it was enough to gather an abundance of such treasure for the winter's study hours; and, so laden, we finally halted for the night. But relic-hunting was not the primary object of our outing, and -we had hurried by many a tempting nook in field or woods, having knowledge of a certain far-off cluster of old trees, among which was a cliff-dwelling, rock-shelter, or what you will; a place that for centuries had sheltered man in pre-Columbian days. At least so ran the tale.

It is "never wise to build largely upon hearsay. Accept one per cent, as probably true, and if that does not tempt you, stay at home. The excess, if there proves to be any such, is the bonus awarded your courage. The sun went down, not upon our wrath, but our rejoicing. We had ninety-and-nine per cent, in our favor. Rumor for once had held to the straight path, and now our camp-fire chased the dark shadows from a huge rock-shelter. There had been Indians upon the upland fields; this we knew; that they had fished in the mountain-stream that rippled by we had proved beyond a doubt, and it was now left us to determine what of the yawning cave near which we camped. Do not ask, “Why not in it?” One of us drew the line at sharing a bedroom with bats, and then it was dangerously damp so near the water. But this was of little moment. The cave would not run off in the night, and we were within arm's reach if it attempted it. Until long after midnight we rejoiced. There were chattering squirrels and hooting owls to keep us company, and the over-flying herons called to us from the misty skies. Erratic night-hawks chuckled as we sent columns of smoke into their hunting-grounds, and every vestige of these tame latter days faded from view. We were not, for the time, troglodytes ourselves, but had them for our next-door neighbors.

It was a most strange night, yet one that I would have repeated often as the years roll by. So much of life's pleasure lies in expectancy. Nothing that our dreams called forth was one whit more strange than the reality that at last was well within our grasp. For how long had we weaned of wigwams; dotting, in our imagination, every fair landscape with wattled huts thatched with maize-leaves or rushes! These, we had been told, “were built in groups and surrounded with palisades of stakes driven into the ground." We had a stock of these ever ready to plant at any turn of the road that took our fancy. But now was novelty in most tempting form, — a cave.

Morning came at last. That curious gray light, born of dense mist, and that scarcely more than makes the darkness visible, was sufficient to arouse us, and slight were the preparations for breakfast. For the first time in my experience the early fire and steaming coffee-pot were too commonplace for contemplation. There was but one influence controlling us: to solve the mystery of the cave. It was a matter of pick and shovel, and poetry promptly took to the woods.

The cave, let me say, is not in limestone, but in shale, and how far, if at all, artificial is a matter of opinion. I could not divest myself of the feeling that man had had a good deal to do with its shaping. My companion thought otherwise, and based his views on the peculiarly friable condition of the rock. As it proved, this is not so important a matter, and I have faith yet in that first impression, that whisper in the ear of the returning ghost that tradition holds once groaned and growled in the cave whenever the night was stormy.

When we came to dig, — for the treasure was hidden in the floor, if anywhere, — a few prosaic thoughts came to our rescue, and we were sobered straightway. We had a thick deposit of tough earth and broken rock to examine, bit by bit, and this over a space some five feet in width and six or more feet in length. But we were not frightened. Bit by bit we turned it over, and how all thought of drudgery disappeared when the potsherds came to light! Then bones, broken into small fragments, fire-cracked pebbles, more pottery and flint chips. One by one these were spread out to dry, and made a goodly show when the last shovelful of earth was overturned. And now, what of the story they told? Here is one of the delights of archaeological research: to reconstruct the past after the digging is done, which is legitimate, and something very different from the theoretical archaeology that occasionally crops out in the pages of learned reviews and believed because of its prominence.

The result, as we considered it, was that the cave had not been continuously inhabited, but frequently and for many years. The débris upon the floor was not in thin layers, and so to be examined as the leaves of a book; but whatever we found was scattered through the mass and bore no relation directly to other subjects. The charcoal was in little pockets, as if for a single night had a fire been kindled. But that these fires were started by Indians there could be no doubt. Their pottery, their implements, and bones of wild animals only were found. Deer, wild turkey, mussels from the creek, and nuts from the trees had been their main-stay, and no white man would have hungered with this at hand. Retired and beautiful as the place is, I think no one would have preferred it to the shelter of the grand old woods that covered the surrounding hills. Even with a glowing bed of coals in front of it, it must always have been damp and depressing except in winter, and the difficulty of access when ice and snow covered the ground also an objection. We agreed in this: that the cave was for ages a place of temporary shelter rather than one of permanent occupation.

There was one most striking feature of the cave, a “window," as the farmers called it, in the east wall, and yet it was scarcely intended for such a purpose unless the front was veiled. This hole made me more sceptical of its natural origin, and seemed more probably designed as a means of communication with the next cave, for there was once another; possibly several more. For a long distance along the creek this same shale-like rock outcrops, and at places there are masses of it now resting upon the side of the cliff that suggest the roofs of just such caves or rock-shelters as I have described. Certainly this is true of the east side of the cave we explored, and what treasures may forever be hidden there! How I longed to lift the huge rock-masses and peep beneath! But why worry? There is many another such place in the valley of the Delaware, and the work of recovering the past, of placing the Lenni Lenâpé where he belongs in Indian history, is far from completion.

It is not a long walk from where I stand by this cave in a shale outcrop to one of grand proportions in limestone rock that has long been known. Along the river-shore the well-defined boundaries of Pechot-woalenk can yet be traced, and its prominent feature is the huge cavern, a considerable part of which is still intact. In Indian times, this cave “had a total length of about three hundred feet, an average height of twelve, and a breadth varying from ten to forty feet." The cave in its natural state was divided into three compartments or levels, and each reached by descending a short and slippery incline of at least ten feet.

One narrow passage leads to a dark and gloomy room, about eight feet by twelve in dimension, which is still known as Queen Esther's room. Her royal highness was a talented woman of much influence with the Indians, and during her frequent journeys from Philadelphia to the Six Nations, in New York, made this cave one of her halting-places. So runs the story at least. However all this may be, the Indians made good use of the cave and left abundant evidences of their one-time presence. The name of the locality in the Delaware tongue, Pechot-woalenk, signifies where there is a great depression in the ground, and obviously refers to this cave. The whole surrounding region is beautiful, and the Indians who possessed the land were over-generous, it seems, in allotting it to the Shawnees, who occupied it from 1680 to 1727.

There are other caves that have been found to contain Indian relics, but not perhaps in such a manner as to clearly evidence that the red man himself was a dweller therein. Floods may have carried them and swept from villages elsewhere the spears, bone implements, and beads that have been found. We must know more of the history of the whole region and of what has transpired since glacial times before speaking positively; but if the good fortune awaits us to be able to report all the secrets of all the caves, a wonderful chapter will be added to Indian history, and such puzzling discoveries as village-sites buried twelve feet beneath compact beds of sand, high upon table-lands, will no longer plague the archaeologist.

Nowhere have the Indians of the Atlantic seaboard been essentially cave-dwellers, as were some of the most ancient people of Southern Europe. This has been explained by the assertion that there are no caves, but, as we have seen, it is untrue. There are certainly sufficient of these natural shelters in the Delaware valley, — overhanging rocks, caves proper, and wide and winding crevices that needed next to no modification to make them habitable. The difficulty is to find those wherein traces still remain of human occupancy. It is probable that where used for temporary shelter the fire would not be in the cave, but at its mouth, and all traces would be obliterated by the winds and rain. This was true, in a measure, of the cave explored. The fireplace had usually been beyond the projecting roof, and when the back of the room or cave was reached, no trace of charcoal could be found. Certainly, a cave would be sure to attract an Indian's attention. The Lenâpé name for them is wáloh, and the fact that such a word was in their language is significant, for they had a word, too, for a hole in the ground, and drew the same distinction that we do. That such natural shelters were often utilized is a fact worth knowing, and how far cave- dwelling was a feature of our Delaware Indians remains to be determined. But we are dealing now with what has transpired since man first appeared upon the scene, and how many caves may be filled with glacial débris, upon the floors of which rest the remains of feasts of primitive man, — of the Indian's remote ancestry! Perhaps we are wandering too far from solid ground and may find ourselves immersed in the quick-sands of theory. Fearing this, I retrace my steps, and, standing, as the sun goes down, at the mouth of the cave that has been so rudely disturbed to-day, I recall the old-time occupants that have rested here, and dimly discern them, in fields beyond, returning from the hunt. Every potsherd is a perfect vessel; the coals are glowing; the spears are mounted on their slender shafts; deer and turkeys hang from the giant ash-tree near. This, my fancy, — the heap of broken stone, of bone and clay, veritable traces of troglodytes.