Kitabı oku: «Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities», sayfa 10

APPENDIX I.
THE SILVER SPRING

The geological formation of Florida gives rise to springs and fountains of such magnitude and beauty, that they deserve to be ranked with the great freshwater lakes, the falls of Niagara, and the Mississippi river, as grand hydrographical features of the North American continent. The most remarkable are the Wakulla, twelve miles from Tallahassie, of great depth and an icy coldness, which is the best known, and has been described by the competent pen of Castlenau and others, the Silver Spring and the Manatee Spring. The latter is on the left bank of the Suwannee, forty-five miles from its mouth, and is so named from having been a favorite haunt of the sea-cow, (Trichechus Manatus,) whose bones, discolored by the sulphuret of iron held in solution by the water, are still found there.

The Silver Spring, in some respects the most remarkable of the three, is in the centre of Marion county, ten miles from the Ocklewaha, into which its stream flows, and six miles from Ocala, the county seat. In December, 1856, I had an opportunity to examine it with the aid of proper instruments, which I did with much care. It has often been visited as a natural curiosity, and is considered by tourists one of the lions of the State. To be appreciated in its full beauty, it should be approached from the Ocklewaha. For more than a week I had been tediously ascending this river in a pole-barge, wearied with the monotony of the dank and gloomy forests that everywhere shade its inky stream,³²⁸ when one bright morning a sharp turn brought us into the pellucid waters of the Silver Spring Run. A few vigorous strokes and we had left behind us the cypress swamps and emerged into broad, level savannas, that stretched miles away on either hand to the far-off pine woods that, like a frame, shut in the scene. In the summer season these prairies, clothed in the luxuriance of a tropical vegetation, gorgeously decked with innumerable flowers, and alive with countless birds and insects of brilliant hues, offer a spectacle that once seen can never be forgotten.

But far more strangely beautiful than the scenery around is that beneath—the subaqueous landscape. At times the bottom is clothed in dark-green sedge waving its long tresses to and fro in the current, now we pass over a sunken log draperied in delicate aquatic moss thick as ivy, again the scene changes and a bottom of greyish sand throws in bright relief concentric arcs of brilliantly white fragments of shells deposited on the lower side of ripple marks in a circular basin. Far below us, though apparently close at hand, enormous trout dash upon their prey or patiently lie in wait undisturbed by the splash of the poles and the shouts of the negroes, huge cat-fish rest sluggishly on the mud, and here and there, every protuberance and bony ridge distinctly visible, the dark form of an alligator is distended on the bottom or slowly paddles up the stream. Thus for ten miles of an almost straight course, east and west, is the voyager continually surprised with fresh beauties and unimagined novelties.

The width of the stream varies from sixty to one hundred and twenty-five feet, its average greatest depth about twenty, the current always quite rapid. For about one mile below its head, forests of cypress, maple, ash, gum, and palmetto adorn the banks with a pleasing variety of foliage. The basin itself is somewhat elliptical in form, the exit being at the middle of one side; its transverse diameter measures about one hundred and fifty yards, (N. E., S. W.,) its conjugate one hundred yards. Easterly it is bordered by a cypress swamp, while the opposite bank is hidden by a dense, wet hammock. A few yards from the brink opposite the exit runs a limestone ridge of moderate elevation covered with pine and jack-oak.

The principal entrance of the water is at the northeastern extremity. Here a subaqueous limestone bluff presents three craggy ledges, between the undermost of which and the base is an orifice, about fifteen feet in length by five in height, whence the water gushes with great violence. Another and smaller entrance is at the opposite extremity. The maximum depth was at the time of my visit forty-one feet. The water is tasteless, presents no signs of mineral matter in solution, and so perfectly diaphanous that the smallest shell is entirely visible on the bottom of the deepest portion. Slowly drifting in a canoe over the precipice I could not restrain an involuntary start of terror, so difficult was it, from the transparency of the supporting medium for the mind to appreciate its existence. When the sunbeams fall full upon the water, by a familiar optical delusion, it seems to a spectator on the bank that the bottom and sides of the basin are elevated, and over the whole, over the frowning crags, the snow-white shells, the long sedge, and the moving aquatic tribes, the decomposed light flings its rainbow hues, and all things float in a sea of colors, magnificent and impressive beyond description. What wonder that the untaught children of nature spread the fame of this marvellous fountain to far distant climes, and under the stereoscopic power of time and distance came to regard it as the life-giving stream, whose magic waters washed away the calamities of age and the pains of disease, round whose fortunate shores youths and maidens ever sported, eternally young and eternally joyous!

During my stay I took great pains to ascertain the exact temperature of the water and from a number of observations made at various hours of the day obtained a constant result of 73.2°, Fahrenheit. This is higher than the mean annual temperature of the locality, which, as determined by a thermometrical record kept at Fort King near Ocala for six years, is 70.00°; while it is lower than that of the small mineral springs so abundant throughout the peninsula, which I rarely found less than 75°. It is probable, however, that this is not a fixed temperature but varies with the amount of water thrown out. Competent observers, resident on the spot, informed me that a variation of three feet in the vertical depth of the basin had been known to occur in one year, though this was far greater than usual. The time of highest water is shortly after the rainy season, about the month of September, a fact that indicates the cause of the change.

Visiting the spring when at a medium height I enjoyed peculiar advantages for calculating the amount of water given forth. The method I used was the convenient and sufficiently accurate one of the log and line, the former of three inches radius, the latter one hundred and two feet in length. In estimating the size of the bed I chose a point about a quarter of a mile from the basin. The results were calculated according to the formulæ of Buat. After making all possible allowance for friction, for imperfection of instruments, and inaccuracy of observation, the average daily quantity of water thrown out by this single spring reaches the enormous amount of more than three hundred million gallons!

Numbers such as this are beyond the grasp of the human intellect, bewildering rather than enlightening the mind. Let us take another unit and compare it with the most stupendous hydrographical works of man that have been the wonders of the world. Most renowned of these are the aqueducts of Rome. In the latter half of the first century, when Frontinus was inspector, the public register indicated a daily supply of fourteen thousand and eighteen quinaria, about one hundred and ninety-six million gallons. Or we can choose modern instances. The city of London is said to require forty million gallons every twenty-four hours, New York about one-third, and Philadelphia one-quarter as much. Thus we see that this one fount furnishes more than enough water to have satisfied the wants of Rome in her most imperial days, to supply plenteously eight cities as large as London, a score of New Yorks, or thirty Philadelphias. By the side of its stream the far-famed aqueduct of Lyons, yielding one million two hundred and nine thousand six hundred gallons daily, or the Croton aqueduct, whose maximum diurnal capacity is sixty million gallons, seems of feeble importance, while the stateliest canals of Solomon, Theodoric, or the Ptolemies dwindle to insignificant rivulets.

Neither is this the emergence of a sunken river as is the case with the Wakulla fountain, but is a spring in the strictest sense of the word, deriving its sustenance from the rains that percolate the porous tertiary limestone that forms the central ridge of the peninsula.

There are many other springs both saline, mineral, and of pure water, which would be looked upon as wonders in any country where such wonders were less abundant. Such are the Six Mile Spring (White Spring, Silver Spring), and the Salt Spring on the western shore of Lake George, a sulphur spring on Lake Monroe, one mile from Enterprise, another eight miles from Tampa on the Hillsboro’ river, Gadsden’s spring in Columbia county, the Blue spring on the Ocklawaha, Orange Springs in Alachua county, the Oakhumke the source of the Withlacooche, and numberless others of less note.³²⁹ Besides these, the other hydrographical features of the peninsula are unique and instructive, well deserving a thorough and special examination; such are the intermittent lakes, which, like the famous Lake Kauten in Prussia, the Lugea Palus or Zirchnitzer See in the duchy of Carniola, and the classical Lake Fucinus, have their regular periods of annual ebb and flow; while the sinking rivers Santa Fe, Chipola, Econfinna, Ocilla and others offer no less interesting objects of study than their analogues in the secondary limestone of Styria, in Istria, Carniola, Cuba, and other regions.

When we ponder on the cause of these phenomena we are led to the most extraordinary conclusions. To explain them we are obliged to accept the opinion—which very many associated facts tend to substantiate—that the lower strata of the limestone formation of the peninsula have been hollowed out by the action of water into vast subterranean reservoirs, into enormous caverns that intersect and ramify, extending in some cases far under the bed of the adjacent ocean, through whose sunless corridors roll nameless rivers, and in whose sombre halls sleep black lakes. During the rainy season, gathering power in silence deep in the bowels of the earth, they either expend it quietly in fountains of surprising magnitude, or else, bursting forth in violent eruptions, rend asunder the overlying strata, forming the “lime sinks,” and “bottomless lakes,” common in many counties of Florida; or should this occur beneath the ocean, causing the phenomenon of “freshening,” sometimes to such an extent as to afford drinkable water miles from land, as occurred some years ago off Anastasia Island, and in January, 1857, near Key West.

APPENDIX II.
THE MUMMIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

A number of years ago considerable curiosity was excited by the discovery of mummies in Tennessee and Kentucky, and many theories were promulged regarding their origin, but I believe neither that nor their age has, as yet, been satisfactorily determined.

Some were found as early as 1775, near Lexington, Kentucky, but we have no definite account of any before those exhumed September 2, 1810, in a copperas cave in Warren county, Tennessee, on the Cany fork of the Cumberland river, ten miles below the Falls. These were described in the Medical Repository by Mr. Miller, whose article was followed by another in the same periodical, illustrated by a sketch, in support of the view that this discovery indicated the derivation of the Indians from the Malays and Tartars. The same pair was also described by Breckenridge and Flint a few years later.

Shortly previous to 1813, two mummies were found in the Gothic avenue of the Mammoth Cave, and not long afterwards, (1814,) another in the Audabon avenue.

The same year, several more were discovered in a nitre cave near Glasgow, Kentucky, by Thomas Monroe, who forwarded one to the American Antiquarian Society, described by Dr. Mitchell in the first volume of the publications of that body.

Again, in 1828, two more were found in a complete state of preservation in a cave of West Tennessee, mentioned in the American Journal of Science, (Vol. xxii. p. 124.)

With that zest for the wonderful, for which antiquarians are somewhat famous, the idea that these remains could belong to tribes with whom the first settlers were acquainted, was rejected, and recourse was had to Malays, South Sea Islanders, and the antipodes generally, for a more reasonable explanation. It was said that the envelopes of the bodies (all of which bore close resemblance among themselves) pointed to a higher state of the arts than existed among the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, and that the physical differences, the color of the hair, &c., were irreconcileable. I think, however, it may be shown that these objections are of no weight, and that the bodies in question were interred at a comparatively late period.

The wrappings consisted usually of deer skins, dressed and undressed, mats of split canes, some as much as sixty yards long, and a woven stuff called “blankets,” “sheets,” and “cloth;” this was often either bordered with feathers of the wild turkey and other birds, or covered with them in squares and patterns. Their ages, as guessed from appearances, varied from ten years to advanced life. In several cases the mark of a severe blow on the head was seen, which must have caused the individual’s death. Their stature was usually in conformity to their supposed age;³³⁰ the weight of one, as given by Flint, six or eight pounds; in all cases but one the hair of a “sorrel,” “foxy,” “yellow” or “sandy” color; and they were usually found five or six feet below the surface.

First, then, in our examination, the question arises, did the Indians of the Mississippi Valley, when first met by the whites, possess the art of manufacturing woven stuff of the kind mentioned? In answer we have the express words of the Inca,³³¹ “These mantles the Indians of Florida make of a certain herb-like mallows, (malvas,) which has fibres like flax, (que tiene hebra, como lino,) and from the same they make thread, to which they give colors which remain most firmly.” The next explorer was La Salle; in Tonty’s account of his expedition,³³² he remarks that he saw in a council lodge of the Taencas, “sixty old men clothed in large white cloaks, which are made by the women from the bark of the mulberry tree.” Still more to our purpose are the words of later writers, who mention the interweaving of feathers. Not only, says Dumont,³³³ do the Indian women make garters and ribbons of the wool of the buffalo, (du laine du beuf,) but also a sort of mat of threads obtained from the bark of the linden, (tilleul,) “qu’elles couvrent de plumes de cigne des plus fines, attachèes une à une sur cet toil.” Dupratz³³⁴ mentions similar cloaks of mulberry bark covered “with the feathers of swans, turkeys, and India ducks,” the fibres of the bark being twisted “about the thickness of packthread,” and woven “with a wrought border around the edges.” Of the Indians of North Carolina, Lawson says,³³⁵ “Their feather match-coats are very pretty, especially some of them which are made extraordinary charming, containing several pretty figures, wrought in feathers, making them seem like a fine flower Silk-Shag.” Other examples might be given, but these are sufficient.

The cane mat was an article of daily use among the tribes wherever the cane grew, and was bartered to those where it did not. The Arkanzas, Taencas, Cenis, Natchez, and Gulf tribes, used it to cover their huts;³³⁶ hence a piece even sixty yards long was no uncommon matter; while in one instance at least,³³⁷ we know that the eastern tribes rolled their dead in them, tying them fast at both ends. All the minor articles of ornament and dress, the bone and horn needles, the vegetable beads, &c., can be shown with equal facility to have been in general use among the natives.³³⁸

It has usually been supposed that these bodies were preserved by the chemical action of the nitriferous soil around them; but this does not account for their perfection and extreme desiccation, inclosed as they were in such voluminous envelopes. Yet it is quite certain that the viscera were never absent, nor has any balm or gum been found upon them.³³⁹ Hence, if artificially prepared, it must have been by protracted drying by fire, in a manner common among the ancient inhabitants of the Caroline islands, the Tahitians, the Guanches of Teneriffe, and still retained in some convents in the Levant. It is well known that in America the Popayans, the Nicaraguans, and the Caribs of the West Indies had this custom;³⁴⁰ but I believe that attention has not been called to the fact, that this very mode of preserving the dead was used more or less by the Indians of the Mississippi Valley. The southern tribes of Mississippi and Alabama dried the corpse of their chief over a slow fire, placed it in the temple as an object of adoration till the death of his successor, and then transferred it to the bottom or cellar (fond) of the building.³⁴¹ Analogous usages, modifications of this and probably derived from it, prevailed among the tribes of North Carolina, Virginia, and the Pacific coast,³⁴² while we have seen that Bristock asserts the same of the Apalachites. That a cave should be substituted for a temple, or that the bodies should be ultimately inhumed, cannot excite our surprise when we recall how subject the Indians were to sudden attacks, how solicitous that their dead should not be disturbed,³⁴³ and how caves were ever regarded by them as natural temples for their gods and most fit resting places for their dead.³⁴⁴

The rarity of the mummies may be easily accounted for as only the bodies of the chiefs were thus preserved. Yet it is a significant fact that a body is rarely, if ever, found alone. Moreover, in every case of which we have special description, these are of different sexes, and one, the female, and the youngest, sometimes apparently not more than twelve or fourteen years of age, evidently died by violence. How readily these seemingly unconnected facts take place and order, and how intelligible they become, when we learn that at the death of a ruler the Indians sacrificed and buried with him one or two of his wives, and in some tribes the youngest was always the chosen victim of this cruel superstition.³⁴⁵

The light color of the hair is doubtless caused by the nitriferous soil with which it had been so long surrounded; a supposition certified by one instance, where, in consequence of the unusually voluminous wrappings, and perhaps a later interment, it retained the black color of that of the true Indian.³⁴⁶

Though most of these references relate to nations not dwelling immediately in the area of country where the mummies are found, it is quite unnecessary for me to refer in this connection to those numerous and valid arguments, derived both from tradition and archæology, that prove beyond doubt that this tract, and indeed the whole Ohio valley, had changed masters shortly before the whites explored it, and that its former possessors when not destroyed by the invaders, had been driven south.

Hence we may reasonably infer, that as no article found upon the mummies indicates a higher degree of art than was possessed by the southern Indians, as the physical changes are owing to casual post mortem circumstances, as we have positive authority that certain tribes were accustomed to preserve the corpses of their chiefs; and lastly, as we have many evidences to show that such tribes, or those closely associated with them, once dwelt further north than they were first found, consequently the deposition of the mummies must be ascribed to a race who dwelt near the region where they occur, at the time of its exploration by Europeans.