Elizabeth daily monitor. [volume] (Elizabeth, N.J.) 1868-1880, 1869-06-16
SIisabsts paiIp @fsonitor,
PUBLISHED AT 155 BROAD STREET, BY
]. MADISON DRAKE.
A RIVER UNDER THE ROCKY NOUN
TAINS.

1IuDlCl ltCCOld COAudlllo uhO AOl-
lowing letter from the we'll known
American ethnographist, Mr.. George
Catlin. 1t will be read with surprise
and eager curiosity
Mr.. Catlin, the American ethnograph-
list, whose extensive travels have led
him through the widest and rudest
scenery of America, has turned his at
tention for several years past from the
Indians to rocks, and has made in these
studies voyages to South America, to
the Rocky Mountains, the Andes and
the Antilles, the results of which he,is
preparing to publish, in work entitled
"The Lifted and subsidized Rocks of
America, with their influences on the
Oceanic, Atmospheric and Land Cur
rents" And one of the striking fea-
lures Of this book seems to be, to quote
his own words, "the discovery of
river under the Rocky Mountains many
times wider than the Mississippi, its
course nearly twice the Mississippi's
length, and gliding through the clean
and vast rocky cellars of the upheaved
mountains without the losses by allu-
vial INSCRIPTIONS and solar evaporations
which diminish valley rivers, it takes
along in its course the sinking streams
and lakes of the mountains of Mexico,
and with them, perhaps by o hundred
mouths in its deep bed, debouches un-
seen into the Caribbean Sea and Gulf
of Mexico.
The frequent Montagnes gei .fament,'
"Roches gui hcmableu," and Blowing
caves" which occur in the Rocky Noun
tain range (he says indicate summon
tango cascades, caused by the waters of
melting SHOWS, of rains, of glaciers, and
thousand sinking rivers and lakes.
which, amongst broken up and angular
rocks, are on their way to the ocean
level.
Through the vast and heated vaults
underneath the Andes, contemplate
similia1l river, running from the Thrift
eth degree of south latitude to the north
and carrying its overlooking waters also
to the Caribbean Sea.
The Antilles, now partially sunk in
the ocean, are but chain of mountain
tops which, six thousand years ago,
stood up in their grandeur, a part, land
probably, the glory of the Andes and
at that date the two mighty summon
tagne rivers, meeting and debouching
together into the ocean, east or north
of the Antilles, combined with extraor-
binary volcanic influences, undermined
the Antilles chain, which went down
in the cataclysm well established in In
dian traditions, which have gathered
both in North and South America, and
also by unimpeachable records on the
rocks themselves--by shapes and
grooves left in the giant walls at Carac-
cas- and Santa Martha, on the coast of
Venezuela, where this mighty chain
was broken records which [ have
twice seen, which may be read by all
ages to come, and which are not my tbs
or fables.
In this tremendous catastrophe, prob
ably the m ost stupendons that ever took
place on the globe, the Peninsula of
Yacatan, with its splendid Aztec cities,
sank and since has partially risen, leav-
ing the two grand sudden estuaries, the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea,
into which the two subterranean rivers,
from the constant overflow of their
cisters under the mountains, nowspread
their clear and blue waters, heated by
the volcanic furnaces they have passed
By the joint influx of these rivers into
the Caribbean Sea, its western surface
is elevated several feet above the level
of the ocean ; and pouring into the
Gulf of Mexico, sweeping its western
cost of Rio del Norte and the Mississip-
pi, this vast flood debouches withH them
into the Atlantic, at the Florida Cape,
and there becomes the "Gulf Stream, -
until now one of the mooted puzzles OF
tho world