Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1890-05-16
A SUBTERRANEAN STORY.


the mGte to ia Ike a boat and examine it. The
mate returned towing a log, from which the
men had cut away the marine growth which
had made it seem at distance like sea
monster. The captain ordered it to be hoist
| ed to the deck, declaring that in forty years
spent at sea he had never found ANYTHING
like it.
When laid on the deck it was seen to be
about twenty feet long and two feet in diam
eter. 1t was of some very hard, dark coloreG
wood like palm, charred in places, and worn
| and broken, cut and torn, as if it had beer
whn'led through torrents and naelstroms fol
| 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 wa!
seen to consist of two parts, and these band:
were to bind it together. The captain had
the bands cut and in the exact center, fitted
into a cavity, was round stone eighteen
inches in diameter The rest of the wood wa:
solid.
The captain, more disappointed at this re
suit than he cared to confess, picked up the
stone and was greatly astonished at its light
ness. Examining it more closely, he remem
bered that when a boy on the old New Hamp
shire farm he used to find hollow stones with
crystals in them-geodes, as he afterwards
heard them called This was probably q
geode, placed in this strange receptacle fol
some unknown purpose. He carried it to his
cabin and put it into his chest.
Two months later the old captain returned
to his cottage on Galveston bay and placed
among his curiosities the geode he had SC
| strangely found in the Gulf stream One
Il l,a i'd LII
| Glanced to fall upon a narrow, irregular line
Il declare" said the old man, Kit looks like
as if this stone had been patched together'
He struck it with a hammer and it fell
apart and proved to be filled with small
pieces Of yelowish brown wood The shell
of the stone was about an inch thick, studded
over inside with thousands of garnet crys
tails 1t had been broken into three parts
and fastened together again with some sort OF
cement which showed plainly on the inside
The old captain poured the pieces of wood
! on the table. They were perfectly dry and
| hard. They seemed almost like strips OF
| bamboo and were numbered and covered
with writing, made by prclSing marks with
some sharp instrument like an awl He
| found the first piece of wood and began tc
read, for it was in English The work of de-
| ciphering tie tiny dents on the bits of wood
| soon became the captains chief occupation
| He copied each sentence off in his old log
book as fast as it was made out. Five or six
sentences were about all his eyes would stand
without rest, SO that it was long time be-
| fore the narrative was at all complete. The
| narrative runs as follows:
HEARTS OF THE ROCKIES,
| About Sept. II, 1856.
| I am an American, Timothy Parsons. of
Machias, Me. l have no living relatives.
write this in vast vaulted chamber, hewn
from the solid granite by some prehistoric
race 1 have been for months wanderer III
| these subterranean spaces, and now l have
contrived a way to send my message out to
the world that I shall probably never see
again. If some miner, tunneling in the
Rockies comes upon vaulted chamber, with
| heaps of ancient weapons of bronze, bars of
! gold and precious stones that no man may
number, let him give Christian burial to the
| poor human bones that lie in this horrible
treasure house. He will find all that is left
| of my mortal frame near the great ever burn
ing lamp, under the dome of the central hall
That lamp is fed from some reservoir of nat
ural gas. 1t was lighted when I came, months
| ago For all l know otherwise, it has burned
| there for thousands of years.
The entrance to this sub-montane river is
in the Assinnaboine mountains, north of the
| United States line. l was e prospector there
for several years, and l heard stories among
| the older Indians that river greater than
the Columbus had once flowed where the
Rocky mountains now are; that the Great
Spirit had piled the mountains over it and
buried it deep underground At last medi-
cine man, whose life had once saved, told
me that he knew how to get to the river, and
| be took me into cavern in deep gorge.
Here we lived for week, exploring by means
of pine torches and at last found passage
which ran steadily downward This, the In
dian told me, was the path by which his an
cestors, who once lived in the middle of the
earth, had found their way to the light Of
| day.
I think we were about three thousand
feet below the entrance of the cave, when
we began to hear the sound of roaring wa
tiers. The sound increased until we stood by
an underground river, of whose width and
depth we could form no idea. The light of
our torches did not even reveal the height of
the roof overhead. Ny guide told me that
this was the mother of all the rivers of the
world. No other person except himself knew
| of its existence. 1t flowed from the end of
the north to the extreme SOUTH 1t grew
| even warmer and warmer. There was q
time when the people lived along its channel,
| and there were houses and cities of the dead
there and many strange things. 1t was full
of fish without eyes and they were good to
eat. If I could help him build raft he
would float with me down this river. The
| old, old stories said that one could go upon it
for many miles. 1t ran down a hollow I'M
| der the mountains
We built and equipped our raft and
launched it on the most foolhardy adventure,
do believe, that ever occupied the attention
of men. We lit torches and set them in sock
cts On the raft, and we were well armed. For
two weeks we moved down the high archway
at a steady rate of only about three miles an
| hour. The average width Of the stream was
about 500 feet, but at times it widened out to
almost twice that. 1t swarmed with many
kinds Of fish, and they were very easy to Sc
cure. The rock walls and roof seemed to be
Of solid granite. We were below the latter
| formations.
As nearly as I can calculate we were about
| a thousand miles from where our voyage be-
gan, and nothing had yet happened to dis
| turb its nonotony, when we began to find
traces of ancient work and workers An an
| gle in the wall was heWn into a Titanic fig
ure; at another point there seemed to be regu-
lar windows, and dwelling was perched far
up in the granite dome.
The Indian told me more of the traditions
of his race as we drifted past these things
'They we're very great men who lived here.
They had many things; they knew more than
the white men. They are all dead now.''
And gathered from his chance remarks that
| he thought they had left secrets in their cave
| dwellings which would make him the biggest
Indian on the continent if he could discover
| them.
Suddenly we found that the river was flow
ing much faster, and we failed to check our
raft. we went over a waterfall, perhaps
seventy feet high, and wereithrown on shelf
of rock at the side Of the river below. was
rnhylrt. but my companion was SO badly i.,
| jured that he died In Few hours. I repaired
/ the raft after fashion and continued the
voyage. finding it impossible to contriye sny
way to scale the sides of the waterfall and
attempt return. All our torches were lost,
and the attempt to proceed further seemed
but the last act Of despair. A few hours
| later I saw light CLEAN over the river in a