The river Little St. Juan may, with singular propriety, be termed the pellucid river. The waters are the clearest and purest of any river I ever saw, transmitting distinctly the natural form and appearance of the objects moving in the transparent floods, or reposing on the silvery bed, with the finny inhabitants sporting in its gently flowing stream.
The river at the town is about two hundred yards over, and fifteen or twenty feet in depth. The great swamp and lake Oaquaphenogaw is said to be its source, which is about one hundred miles by land North of this place; which would give the river a course of near two hundred miles from its source to the sea, to follow its meanders; as in general our rivers that run any considerable distance through the country to the sea, by their windings and roving about to find a passage through the ridges and heights, at least double their distance.
The Indians and traders say that this river has no branches or collateral brooks or rivers tributary to it, but that it is fed or augmented by great springs which break out through the banks. From the accounts given by them, and my own observations on the country round about, it seems a probable assertion; for there was not a creek or rivulet to be seen, running on the surface of the ground, from the great Alachua Savanna to this river, a distance of above seventy miles; yet, perhaps, no part of the earth affords a greater plenty of pure, salubrious waters. The uparalleled transparency of these waters furnishes an argument for such a conjecture, that amounts at least to a probability, were it not confirmed by ocular demonstration; for in all the flat countries of Carolina and Florida, except this isthmus, the waters of the river are, in some degree, turgid, and have a dark hue, owing to the annual firing of the forests and plains, and afterwards the heavy rains washing the light surface of the burnt earth into rivulets, which rivulets running rapidly over the surface of the earth, flow into the rivers, and tinge the waters the colour of lye or beer, almost down to the tide near the sea coast. But here behold how different the appearance, and how manifest the cause! for although the surface of the ground produces the same vegetable substances, the soil the same, and suffers in like manner a general conflagration, and the rains, in impetuous showers, as liberally descend upon the parched surface of the ground; but the earth being so hollow and porous, these superabundant waters cannot constitute a rivulet or brook, to continue any distance on its surface, before they are arrested in their course and swallowed up: thence descending, they are filtered through the sands and other strata of earth, to the horizontal beds of porous rocks, which being composed of thin seperable laminæ, lying generally in obliquely horizontal directions over each other, admit these waters to pass on by gradual but constant percolation. Thus collecting and associating, they augment and form little rills, brooks, and even subterraneous rivers, which wander in darkness beneath the surface of the earth, by innumerable doublings, windings, and secret labyrinths; no doubt in some places forming vast reservoirs and subterranean lakes, inhabited by multitudes of fish and aquatic animals: and possibly, when collected into large rapid brooks, meeting irresistible obstructions in their course, they suddenly break through these perforated fluted rocks, in high perpendicular jets, nearly to their former level, flooding large districts of land. Thus by means of those subterranean courses, the waters are purified and finally carried to the banks of great rivers, where they emerge and present themselves to open day-light, with their troops of finny inhabitants, in those surprising vast fountains near the banks of this river; and likewise on and near the shores of Great St. Juan, on the east coast of the isthmus, some of which I have already given an account of.
On our arrival at Talahasochte, in the evening we repaired to the trading house formerly belonging to our chief, where were a family of Indians, who immediately and complaisantly moved out to accommodate us. The White King with most of the male inhabitants were out hunting or tending their corn plantations.
The town is delightfully situated on the elevated east banks of the river, the ground level to near the river, when it descends suddenly to the water; I suppose the perpendicular elevation of the ground may be twenty or thirty feet. There are near thirty habitations constructed after the mode of Cuscowilla; but here is a more spacious and neat council-house.
These Indians have large handsome canoes, which they form out of the trunks of Cypress trees (Cupressus disticha), some or them commodious enough to accomodate twenty or thirty warriors. In these large canoes they descend the river on trading and hunting expeditions to the sea coast, neighbouring islands and keys, quite to the point of Florida, and sometimes cross the gulph, extending their navigations to the Bahama islands and even to Cuba: a crew of these adventurers had just arrived, having returned from Cuba just a few days before our arrival, with a cargo of spiritous liquors, Coffee, Sugar, and Tobacco. One of them politely presented me with a choice piece of Tobacco, which he told me he had received from the governor of Cuba.
They deal in the way of barter, carrying with them deer skins, furs, dry fish, bees-wax, honey, bear’s oil and some other articles. They say the Spaniards receive them very friendly, and treat them with the best spiritous liquors.
The Spaniards of Cuba likewise trade here or at St. Marks, and other sea ports on the west coast of the isthmus in small sloops; particularly at the bay of Calos, where are excellent fishing banks and grounds; not far from which is a considerable town of the Siminoles, where they take great quantities of fish, which they salt and cure on shore, and barter with the Indians and traders for skins, furs, &c. and return with their cargoes to Cuba.
The trader of the town of Talahasochte informed me, that he had, when trading in that town, large supplies of goods, from these Spanish trading vessels suitable for that trade, and some very essential articles, on more advantageous terms than he could purchase at Indian stores either in Georgia or St. Augustine.
Towards the evening after the sultry heats were past, a young man of our company, having previously procured the loan of a canoe from an Indian, proposed to me a fishing excursion for trout with the bob. We set off down the river, and before we had passed two miles caught enough for our houshold: he was an excellent hand at this kind of diversion: some of the fish were so large and strong in their element, as to shake his arms stoutly, and drag us with the canoe over the floods before we got them in. It is in the eddy coves, under the points and turnings of the river, where the surface of the waters for some acres is covered with the leaves of the Nymphea, Pistia and other amphibious herbs and grass, where the haunts and retreats of this famous fish are, as well as others of various tribes.