Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/219

Rh in the deeper water may be seen full-grown perch and bream, catfish, black bass, pike, and alewives. Watch the bottom for a while, and you will see these fish issuing from the fissure in the rock, the larger bass (four to eight pounders) never venturing far from it, and darting into it at the least alarm. I well remember a pike nearly three feet long which I have often struck with a fishing-cane, but which I never could capture. The largest fish will not take the hook, on account of the exposure to view; but the smaller bream, perch, and bass, bite with great eagerness, and I have often caught from twenty to sixty in an afternoon, selecting the best fish by sight, and placing the bait at their very mouths. Sometimes the basin is almost empty of fish; an hour afterward enough will be visible to overstock a dozen ponds of equal size. By day eels are rarely visible, and you may stir up all the patches of grass along the bed without discovering one; at night they are frequently caught, the negroes sometimes "gigging" them of the largest size. The temperature of the water is the same winter and summer, about 62°, and the fish bite best in the coldest weather. I have examined the sandy margins at all seasons, and have never seen a fish-bed in this or any other of the springs. They do not breed in them, and indeed could not possibly do so.

From the lower extremity of this large basin proceeds the "run," a shallow, winding stream down which the larger fish could not possibly make their way. Indeed, I once caught a two-pound bass stranded, having essayed the passage and failed. Following this run about five hundred yards, we come suddenly on another businbasin [sic], circular in form and much smaller than the first. Its greatest diameter is probably not over fifteen feet, while its greatest depth, near the centre, is fully ten. The bottom descends like a huge funnel, but on one side there is a projecting ledge of rock, under which, sloping downward in a direction away from the upper basin, is a hole seemingly about a foot in diameter. Out of this hole bass and pike of the largest size are seen to emerge, while the upper basin is filled with small bream and sunfish, biting readily at angle-worms, and occasionally a large red-bellied perch, a species rarely seen in the basin, will dart from under the rock-ledge and seize the bait. The little stream is lost at this basin, which has no outlet, but is surrounded by a wet, swampy piece of ground. Not far from these basins marl has been extensively dug, and one or two beds of greensand have been found, but' I never knew the hard limestone-rock which forms the bottom of the springs to be struck in any of the excavations.

Proceeding now in a northwesterly direction, we find another of these basins on a plantation about two miles off. The ground falls suddenly into a little valley about twelve feet deep and six or seven wide, at the head of which stands a very old oak-tree, growing on the upper level. On the southeast the roots have been exposed by the washing of the clay soil, and immediately under them lies the spring.