The Hillsborough Recorder

THE WAKULLA SPRINGS.

The following beautiful description of a fountain in Florida:

Taking a narrow path I crossed through some dense underwood, and all at once I stood on the bank of the Wakulla spring. There was a basin of water one hundred yards in diameter most circular. The thick bushes were growing to the water's edge, and dipping their heads under the unrippled surface. I stepped into a skiff and pushed out. Some immense fishes attracted my attention and I seized a spear to strike them. Boatman laughed and asked me how far beneath the surface I supposed they were. I answered about three feet. He said they were at least twenty feet deep, and it was so. The water is of that marvellous transparency. I dropped an ordinary pin in the water, forty feet deep and saw its head with perfect distinctness as it lay on the bottom. As we reached the centre I noticed a jagged, high limestone rock beneath us pierced with holes; through these holes one seemed to look into unfathomable depths. Boat moved slowly on, and now we hit trembling over the edge of the sunken cliff, and far below it lay a dark, yawning, unfathomable abyss. From its gorge came pouring forth, with immense velocity, a boiling river. Pushing on just beyond its mouth I dropped a ten cent piece to the water, which is there 190 feet in depth, and I clearly saw it shining on the bottom. This seems incredible. I think water possessed a magnifying power. I am confident that the piece could not be so distinctly seen from a tower 190 feet high. We rowed on toward the north side and suddenly we perceived in the water which were darting hither and thither the long flexible roots and the wide spreading grasses on the bottom, all arrayed in the most beautiful prismatic hues. The gentle swell occasioned by the boat gave to the whole an undulating motion. Deathlike stillness reigned around, and a more fairy scene I never beheld.

So great is the quantity of water here poured forth that it forms a river itself, large enough to float boats with cotton. The planter who lives here has thus transported his cotton to Marks. Near the fountain we saw some of the remains of a mastodon, which had been taken from it. The triangular bone below the knee measured six inches on one side. Almost the entire skeleton has been sent to Barnum's Museum.

The Indian name of the fountain is beautifully significant. Wakulla means "The Mystery." It is said that the Spanish discoverers sprang into it with almost frantic joy, supposing they had discovered the long sought "Fons Juventus," or the fountain of youth, which should rejuvenate them after their exhausting marches and battles.