Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1890-03-29
A STRANGE DISCOVERY.
BY CHARLES HOWARD sINN.

Last summer the schooner William
Haley, of Galveston, trading among the
West Indies, was becalmed near the Gulf
Stream. The second day the captains
curiosity was aroused by strange float
ing mass, and he ordered the mate to
take boat and examine it. The mata
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 hoisted 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 tc
be about twenty feet long and two fec.
in diameter. 1t was of some very hard,
dark-colored wood, like palm, charred in
places, and worn and broken, cut and
torn, as if it had been whiried through
torrents and maelstroms for hundreds Of
years. The ends were pointed, and five
bands of dark metel, like bronze, were
sunk in the wood, and the whole bore
evidence of having passed through in.
tense heat. On closer examination the
log was seen to consist of two parts, and
these bands were to bind it together.
The captain had tie bands cut. and in
the exact centre, fitted into cavity, was
round stone, eighteen inches in diane
ter. The rest Of the wood was solid.
The captain, more disappointed at this
result than he cared to confess, picked
up the stone and was greatly astonished
at its lightness. Examining it more
closely, he remembered that when boy
on tha IL Hav far ha gaI
to find hollow stones with crystals in
them-geodes, as he afterward heard
them called. This was probably geode,
placed in this strange receptacle for some
unknown purpose. He carried it to his
cabin and put it into his chest.
Two months later the old captain re-
turned to his cottage on Galveston Bay
and placed among his curiosities the
goede he had 50 strangely found in the
Gulf Stream. One day he studied it
again and the sunlight CHANGED to fall
upon a narrow, irregular line.
Il declare, said the old man, lit looks
like as if this stone had been patched to-
gether !"
He struck with hammer and it fell
apart and proved to be filled with small
pieces of yellowish-b brown wood. The
shell of the stone was about an inch
thick, studded over inside with thou
sands of garnet crystals, 1t had been
broken into three parts and fastened to-
gether again with some sort of cement
which showed plainly on the inside
The old captain poured the pieces of
wood on the tabl-. They were perfectly
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 began to read, for it was in English.
The work Of deciphering the tiny dents
ON the bits of wood soon became the cap
tain's chief occupation. He copied each
sentence off in his old g-book as fast as
it was made out Five or six sentences
were about all his eyes would stand with
out 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, 1885.
am an American, Thomas Parsons.
of Machias, Me- have no living rela-
tives. / write this in a vast vaulted
chamber, hewn from the solid grants
by some prehistoric race. have been
for months a wanderer in these subter-
ranean spaces, and now have contrived
a way to send my message out to the
world that l shall probably never seq
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
6nd all that is left of my mortal frame
near the great ever-burning lamp, under
the dome of the central hall. That lamp
is fed from some reservoir of natural
gas 1t was lighted when came, months
ago For all / know otherwise, it has
burned there for thousands of years.
The entrance to this sub-montane rive1
Is in the Assiniboine Mountains, north
of the United States line. 1 was pros
oector there for several years, and
heard stories among the older Indians
hat a river greater than the Columbia
lad once flowed where the Rocky
Mountains now are; that the Great Spirit
lad piled the mountains over it and
buried it deep underground. At last a
Medicine man, whose life l had once
aved, told me that he knew how to get
0 the river, and took me into cavern
n deep gorge. Here we lived for a
week, exploring by means of netorches,
md at last found passage which ran
teadily downward. This, the Indian
old me, was the path by which his an.
sestors, who once lived in the middle Of