534 Letter from Audubon to the Editor. 



the ground is saturated with water, it issues from various vents, 

 distant from one to three hundred yards from each other ; the in- 

 tervening distances appear to be filled up with the fragments I 

 liave before alluded to, and with silt. The fragments now accu- 

 mulated by the jet in activity, are evidently approaching it, in 

 time it will be choked up, and then, I suppose, the pressure ope- 

 rating upon the general filtration from all these lakes and 

 the surface, will force a new jet up in some weak place. The ori- 

 fice of the present one is about two and a half feet square ; its 

 velocity in the rainy season is about three feet per second, which 

 gives near 500,000 gallons per hour. The cove, from which this 

 jet rises, is, as I have before stated, about sixty feet in diameter. 

 We found the creek covered with the common nymphaea, in a 

 depth varying from fifteen inches to five feet of water. On the 

 north east side is a great cypress swamp, and on the opposite 

 side marshes, and islands covered with pines, live oaks, and sour 

 orange trees. Alligators in abundance, many water fowls, such 

 as ibis, hanningas or snake birds, galinules, coots, ducks, cormo- 

 rants, fish-hawks, &c. &c. We proceeded down this Spring Gar- 

 den Creek, with much difficulty, for about two miles and a quar- 

 ter, and reached Dexter's lake, but passed a mud flat at its en- 

 trance so very shallow, that I doubted, at one time, if we should 

 be able to effect a passage. Here the mud was literally filled 

 with muscles (Unio,) resembling those of the Ohio river. Our 

 negroes brought up from eight to ten each time they put their 

 hands into the mud, so that I collected a great many, out of 

 which I selected about sixty. Two other kind of shells were 

 found here, and of these also I preserved a sufficient quantity ; 

 but mark ! the water was now of a different colour ; from a trans- 

 parent sea green, it had become a dark chestnut, although still 

 limpid. The lake had an uniform depth of about five feet, and 

 we proceeded across its north east corner without difficulty ; it 

 is about eight miles long, and about three miles broad, without 

 islands, and bordered like the rest with ample marshes. The 

 continuation of the creek which we now entered leads to the 

 opening of Woodruff's Lake, which itself empties its own dark 

 waters into the St. John's. We could not reach the bottom of 

 the mud of this creek ; we pushed our oars into it, up to the 

 very ends with great ease. This was a cause of great sorrow 

 and disappointment to me, for I shot the male and female of a 



