Your Ultimate Guide To Barbados

Cole's Cave

Cole's Cave is located in the parish of St. Thomas on the island of Barbados. There are three (3) entrances to this cave but the most favourable one seems to be the one by way of a steep gully.

An account of Cole's Cave is seen in the following extract from an "Account of a Remarkable Cave in the Island of Barbados" by John Davy.

The descent to it is steep, but not difficult. The entrance is narrow, and, consequently, the descending rays of light are soon lost, and the interior of the cave is dark within a few feet of its mouth. The cavern may be briefly described as a subterraneous chasm or rent, of variable dimensions, and varying in the most irregular manner, with branches from it. That of greatest extent has never been followed to its termination; and it is yet a problem whether its termination is in the direction of the low coast to the southward, or the contrary, inland towards the hilly part of the island, in a northerly direction. There is a stream on each side, which may be adduced in favour of either hypothesis; but the course the chasm takes, so far as it has been penetrated, favours most the latter. The cavern occurs in a calcareous rock, an aggregate exceedingly various in different situations, often abounding in shells and coral, often having the character of freestone. This applies to the formation generally.

Water is plentiful in the cavern; there are few places where there is not a dropping of it from the roof, and, as already mentioned, a spring of water rises in it. It gushes from the rock with force, and immediately forms a pretty and clear rivulet, which, after flowing some way, is lost, and a little farther reappears, and continues sometimes running sluggishly, forming pools, sometimes rapidly, as far as this the main chasm has been traced. It may be mentioned, that another chasm, communicating with this, is without a running stream. In its bed, however, are some pools of water, and large deposits of clay, which also occur in the first mentioned at intervals; clearly indicating that during floods, the consequence of heavy rains, the cave is liable to be inundated, the clay suspended in the water subsiding on rest; and thus farther indicating, that the outlet of these chasms is very narrow, so as to admit of a small stream only flowing out, and, consequently, of accumulation and rising of the water and of a partial rest within. The clay or mud traces on the walls of the cavern shew that the depth of the collected water, when highest, is many feet.

Though so moist, and though all the other circumstances of the cavern seem favourable to vegetation, excepting one - the exclusion of light, - there is a total absence in it of vegetation, even of the lowest kind. The only living things known to be found in its recesses are a few of the freshwater crayfish of Barbados in the stream, some insects of the cricket kind on the walls, and numerous bats, which make its drier parts their roosting-places.

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