Ten Years under the Earth

Author: Norbert Casteret
Publisher: Zephyrus Press, Inc., Teaneck, NJ. 1975.
ISBN: 0-904264-07-9
Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 75-26892
Number of Pages: 240

Norbert Casteret is undoubtedly the most famous of living speleologists. Through his evocative writings, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, he has introduced countless readers to the wonders of caves and the adventure of caving. Ten Year under the Earth, one of Casteret's earlier books, is among his best.

The reader slips into the book as into a dream. Imagine passing through a flooded cave passage by the light of a candle held above your head, with water up to your eyes, and emerging among the oldest statues in the world, clay representations of bears, horses, and lions! Or raising your "dim and smoky lamp" to discover on the ceiling just above you the "astonishing realistic head of [the] roaring lion" of Labastide!

Ten Years under the Earth ranges from "The Story of a Raindrop" (concerning the slow process of formation of cave features) to "An Ice World below Ground: the Grotte Casteret," from "The Phantom Hands of Gargas" (about ritual mutilation practiced by ancient man) to "The Deepest Abyss in France, the Gouffre Martel." Here is a wealth of first-hand archeological and caving lore, for the beginner as well as for the experienced caving enthusiast.

"The book we are reprinting here is dangerous; it has probably excited more people about caving than any other book, person, or thing. I still hold my own breath when I read how Casteret practiced holding his breath for minutes, and then went through that siphon, came up in blackness on the other side, lit his chandle. . ." -from the Introduction by Red Watson.