HOW JIM FOUND THE CAVERNS

Bats!... millions of black little mammals drifting along the horizon andseeming to fuse into the hazy clouds of a New Mexico sunset! That was thespectacle which led Jim White, back at the turn of the century, to become interestedin the colossal phenomenon designated by Act of Congress as CarlsbadCaverns National Park.

If you could ask him about it today, Jim’s eyes would probably turn inwardas he’d muse and remember. “I thought it was a volcano—but then I’dnever seen one. For that matter, I’d never seen bats fly. I had seen plenty ofprairie whirlwinds during my life on the range, but this thing didn’t move. Itseemed to stay in one spot near the ground—but the top kept spinning upward.I watched maybe a half-an-hour, and being about as curious as thenext fellow, I started toward the place”.

Jim White, native of Mason County, Texas, grew up ranching ... surroundedby the cattle-business, without even a grammar school education. Jimwould have preferred bustin’ broncos to books and blackboards even if therehad been a little log schoolhouse on his native soil. So it was an experiencedten-year-old range-rider who teamed up with John and Dan Lucas of the X-X-XRanch in New Mexico, three miles or so from the entrance to the cave. JimWhite spent eight or ten years on the range surrounding Lucas’ Ranchhouse,and like the other rangemen, had known of “the bat cave”, but he had feltno impelling urge to see what was hiding in its darkness.

Then came the day of the bat-flight. Crawling through the rocks andbrush, Jim White approached the spot from which the bats seemed literally toboil. The incredulous young range-rider made a feeble guess about the numberof bats—could think no further than millions—but realized that any holewith capacity for that many bats must be a whale of a big affair. Creepingstill closer, Jim finally lay on the brink of the chasm and looked down ...into awesome, impenetrable blackness.

Torn between awe and curiosity, Jim did the natural thing for a manfamiliar with desert ranges.

“I piled up some dead cactus and built a bonfire. When it was burninggood, I took a flaming stalk and pushed it off into the hole. Down, down,down it went until the flame went out—and I still watched until the emberssprinkled on the rocks below. Seemed the thing wouldn’t ever stop, but later itmeasured about thirty or forty feet from where I dropped the fire down to thatfaraway bottom. I kicked the remainder of the fire into the hole and watched2it fall. The bats seemed to be sca

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