Connecticut western news., 1890-03-05
A STRANGE STORY.


 Last summer, the schooner William Haley, of Galveston, trading among the West Indies, was becalmed near the Gulf Stream. The second day the captaiiI's curiosity was aroused by 8 strange floating mass, and he ordered the mate to take boat and examine it. The n1ate returned towing 8 log, from which the men had cut away the marine growth which had made it seem at distance like 6 sea-monster. The captain order ed it to be hoisted to the deck, de laring that in forty years spent at sea he had never found any thing like it.
 When laid on the deck, it was seen to be about twenty feet long and two feet in diane CT. It was os some very hard, dark colored wood, like palm, charred in places, and worn and bro ken, cut and torn, as if it had been whirled through torrents and mael- stroms for hundreds of years. The ends were pointed, and five bands of dark metal, like bronze, were sunk in the wood, and the whole bore evidence of having passed through intense heat. On closer examination, the log was seen to con sist of two parts, and these bands were to bind i. together. The captain had the bands cut, and in the exac. centre, fit d into cavity, was . round stone, eighteen inches in dia- meter. The rest of the wood was solid.
 
 The captain, more disappointed at this result than he cared to confess, picked mp the stone and was greatly astonished at its lightness. Examin- ing it more closely, he remembered that when a boy on the old New Hampshire farm he used to find hollow stones with crystals in thenl-geodes, as he afterwards heard them called. This was probably geodc, placed in this strange receptacle for some un- known purpose. He carried it into his cabin and put it into his chest.
 Two months later, the old captain returned to his cottage on Calves on Bay, aud placed among his curiosities the geode he had so strangely found in the Gulf Stream. One day he studied it again, and the sunlight chanced to fall upon narrow, irregu- lar line. -...
 "I declare" said the old man; Git looks like az if this store had been patched together!"
 He struck it with a hammer and it fell apart, and proved to be filled with small pieces of yellowish-brown wood. The shell of the stone was about an inch thick, studded over inside, with thousands of garnet crystals. It had been broken into three parts and fas- tened together again with some sort of cement which showed plainly on the inside.
 The old captain pourel the pieces of wood on the table. They were per fectly dry and hard. They seemed almost like strips of bamboo, and were numbered and covered with writing, made by pricking marks with some sharp instrument like an awl. He found the first piece of wood and be- gan to read, for it was in English. The work of deciphering the tiny dents on the bits of wood soon became the captains chief occupation. He copied each sentence off in his old log-booa as fast as it was made out. Five or six sentences were about all his eyes would stand without rest, so that it was 8 long time before the narrative was all complete. This narrative runs as fol. lows:
 HEART OF THE ROCKIES, about Sept
 IT, 1886.
 I am an American, Timothy Par. sons, of Machias, Maine. 1 have no living relatives. l write this in 6 vast vaulted chamber, hewn from the solid granite by come pre-his; ;orlc race I have been for months 0 wander. CT in these subterranean spaces, and now have contrived a way to senC my message out to tho world that shall probably never see again. Ii some miner tunneling in the Rockies comes upon a vaulted chamber, witf heaps of ancient weapons of bronze bars of gold and precious stones tha no man may number, let him give Christian burial to the poor human bones that lie in thls horrible treasure house. He will find all that is left o1 my mortal frame near the great ever burning lamp, under the dome of th' central hall. That lamp is fed iron some reservoir of natural gas. It wa lighted when came, months ago. Flo all I know otherwise, it has burned there for thousands of years.
 The. entrance to this sub-montan river is in the Assinnaboine Noun tains, north of the United States line l was 8 prospector there for severa years, and heard stories among tn older Indians that river greater thai the Columbia had once flowed wher the Rocky Mountains now are; tha the Great Spirit had piled the noun tains over it and buried it deep under ground. At last a medicine-man whose life had once saved, told m that he knew how to get to the river and he took me to cave in 8 dee] gorge. Here we lived for week, ex ploring by means of pine torches, an, at last found Q passage which ra steadily downward. This, the Indian Utold me, was the path by which hi ancestors. who once lived in the mid dle of the earth, had found their wa to the light of day.
 I think we were about three hundre feet below the entrance of the cave when we began 10 hear the sound o roaring waters. The aound increas ed until we stood by an unde, ground river q Whoso width and depth we coul