Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/220

200 This is a basin inclosed by an octagonal brick wall, where, for a century or more, the washing of the plantation and other such matters have been performed. Directly under the oak-tree is a ledge of rock, over which the water is about two feet deep. It grows more shallow toward the "run," where its depth is but a few inches; the entire basin is about thirteen feet by ten. The above-mentioned ledge of rock forms the roof of a cave-like aperture some eighteen inches high by three or four feet wide, into whose dark recesses the eye cannot penetrate, the bottom sloping away in a northwesterly direction under the hill which sustains the old oak. Schools of minnows frequent the shallow part, and hide in the water-grass; stir this grass with a cane or stick, and occasionally you may frighten out a small bream or sunfish, but very few fish of any sort are seen in the shallow basin, and these few refuse the most tempting bait. Now, the proper rock-basin here lies just in front of the cavernous opening, and is some six feet deep, but scarcely four in diameter. Drop your line there, and, if all is quiet, in a moment your float will dart diagonally down under the rock, and you may draw out a yellow-bellied perch, a blue bream, or a sun-perch of half a pound weight. Look in, and you will see huge bass lying with their heads only visible at the opening, or flashing their silvery sides as they turn into its unknown recesses. I once detected a pair of white eyes peering from the grass at the mouth of this cavern, and, dropping my bait just in front of them, was astonished at hooking an enormous mud-fish; this fish must have weighed five pounds, and he carried several yards of tackle right into the bowels of the earth, whence it soon emerged minus hook and lead. The "run" to this basin is not more than three inches deep anywhere, and sinks entirely into a quaking bog some hundred yards from its source. No fish over an inch long could swim seventy yards from the basin, and there is no communication whatever with any other water.

Leaving the "Pooshee Spring," we now ride a little to the east of north, and, at the distance of about two miles, we reach "Moore's Fountains," the most remarkable of the group. Crossing a little "bay" in the pine-land, you notice under your feet a miniature Natural Bridge, a span of rock about six feet wide covered with earth, and a little hole full of clear water on either side. Walking among the pines about a hundred yards to the right, you reach the "Fountains," six or seven holes in the ground, the largest of which is about five feet by eight, and in general character like the larger basins before described, but much more shallow. All these holes contain large numbers of small perch and bream, which bite readily in the winter, but are hardly worth catching. A little to the right of them used to stand two large twin-pines, and directly between their roots was a hole not more than two feet in diameter, and which you could not detect until you stood on its very edge. (I use the past tense, as the