Murder Hole: Catawba Murder Hole Cave. Marian McConnell. National
Speleological Society, Huntsville, 2012. ISBN 978-1-879961-46-3. 8.5
by 11 inches, 150 pages, softbound. $24 (discounts for NSS members).
Catawba Murder Hole is one of the better known wild caves in Virginia,
perhaps partly because of its memorable name. It is not large, but
goes fairly deep, including one drop that requires a rope and others
that are often rigged. Marian and Don McConnell bought the property in
1993, and Marian has gathered a lot of information about its history.
Some of the legends recounted here involve murders, but there's no
real evidence for them. There have been quite a few accidents and
rescues from the cave over the years, because it was both well known
locally and popular with cavers. Most of the accident reports in the
book are poorly written newspaper accounts that might well have been
summarized, accompanied by photographs so poorly reproduced that the
book would have been better off without them; perhaps they were taken
from microfilm records. But there is an interesting and authoritative
account of a fatal accident caused by chemical damage to a manila
rope. Four pages are wasted on an accident in a different cave,
included on a flimsy pretext.
A long section describes other visits to the cave over the years. The
"oldest reference" McConnell could find to the cave is its appearance
on a historical map of the county as it was in about 1800, but
actually the map was made in 1965. A long and interesting article by
Porte Crayon (pseudonym) about being lowered into a cave in 1834 is
included, but again this was a different cave entirely. Apparently a
lot of the material about local visitors was gotten by planting an
article in the local paper and asking to hear from people who had
visited it. This fetched a number of interesting accounts and a lot
that aren't interesting, such as the bare fact that somebody named
Gene Ferguson says he went into the cave in 1948 or 1949. There are a
lot of old and not so old black-and-white photos in this section.
There must be a lot of reports in grotto newsletters about visits to
this cave, and if they had been mined selectively this section might
have been a lot more interesting.
There is a very detailed plan of the cave, but the profile, which is
much more interesting from the sporting and accident point of view, is
represented only by two sketches. A narrative trip through the cave
clarifies some of the mysteries earlier in the book, but it is
apparently written for sixth-graders. I wonder whether the McConnells
really guide groups that young through their cave. The book includes
chapters on safety and conservation that won't be important for most
buyers, but might be good to have if Scouts and similar groups visit
the cave. All in all, I'd say about half of the content is worth the
space.
In common with all the recent books prepared for printing by the NSS
Special Publications Committee, the design of the book is annoying,
with gigantic type in columns too narrow to accommodate it gracefully,
especially next to photos printed needlessly large. In addition, the
actual layout of this book, from the redundant title on, was extremely
careless. Apparently the NSS sells at a profit anything it prints, but
that doesn't mean it should print just anything.—Bill Mixon
----------------------------------------
I believe there are
15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,
181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,
231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the
universe and the same number of electrons.
—Sir Arthur Eddington
If you must know, that's 17 x 2^259.
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