Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1869-03-28
A CURIOUS LETTER FROH CATLIE.

Trubner's Record contains the follow
ing letter from Mr.. Catlin:
Mr.. Catlin, the American ethnog-
raphist, whose extensive travels have
led him through the widest and rudest
sceHery 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 a work entitled
Lifted and Subsided Rocks Of America,
with their influences on the Oceanic,
Atmospheric and Land Currents And
one Of the striking features Of this book
seem to be, to quote his own words,
&" the discovery of a river under the
Rocky Mountains many times larger
than the Mississippi, its course nearly
twice the Mississippi length, and gliding
through the clean and vast rocky cellars
of the uphea7ed mountains without the
losses by a~Iluvial INSCRIPTIONS and solar
evaporation which diminish valley rivers,
1t takes along in its course the sinking
streams and lakes Of the mountains Of
Mexico, and with them. perhaps by a
hundred mouths in its deep bed. de-
bOuches unseen into the Caribbean Sea
and the Gulf CT Mexico.
The frequent Hontqgaes gu
1ument,' Roches qui trem5leat,' and
BloCiRg Cares, which occur in the
Rocky mountain range Che says indi-
cate submontagne cascades, caused by
the waters of melting SHOWS, Of rains, of
glaciers and a 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, I contemplate a
similar river, running from the thirtieth
degree of south latitude to the north,
and carrying their OVERLOOKING waters
into the Caribbean sea.
The Antilles, now partially sunk in
the ocean, are but a 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 ~submontagle
rivers, meeting and d~ebouching together
into the ocean, east or north of TIE
Antilles, combined with extraordinary
volcanic influences, undermined the
Antilles chain, which went down in the
Cataelysm, well established in Indian
traditions, which I have gathered in
both North and South America, and also
by unimpeachable records on the rocks
themselves-by shapes and grooves left
in the giant walls at Caracas and Santa
Martha, on the cost cf Venezuela, where
this mighty chain was broken records
which l have twice seen, which may be
read by all ages to come, and which are
not myths or fables.
In this tremendous catastrophe,
probably the most stupendous that ever
took place on the surface of the globe,
the Peninsula of Yucatan, with its
splendid Aztec cities, sank, and since
has partially risen, leaving the two grand
sunken estuaries, the Gulf of Mexico
and the Caribbean Sea, into which the
two subterranean rivers, from the con-
slant overflow of their vast c~isterns
under the mountains, now spread 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,
and taking in its way the waters of Rio
del N9rte and the Mississippi, this vast
food debOuches with them into the
Atlantic at the Florida Cape, and there
becomes the Gulf Stream, until now one
Of the mOOted puzzles Of the world.
aGEORGE CATLIN.n