SPRINGS 41 



honeycombed the foundations of the earth. They 

 have great highways beneath the hills. Water 

 charged with carbonic acid gas has a very sharp 

 tooth and a powerful digestion, and no limestone 

 rock can long resist it. Sherman's soldiers tell of 

 a monster spring in Northern Alabama, — a river 

 leaping full-grown from the bosom of the earth; 

 and of another at the bottom of a large, deep pit 

 in the rocks, that continues its way under ground. 



There are many springs in Florida of this charac- 

 ter, large underground streams that have breathing 

 holes, as it were, here and there. In some places 

 the water rises and fills the bottoms of deep bowl- 

 shaped depressions; in other localities it is reached 

 through round natural well-holes; a bucket is let 

 down by a rope, and if it becomes detached is 

 quickly swept away by the current. Some of the 

 Florida springs are perhaps the largest in the world, 

 affording room and depth enough for steamboats to 

 move and turn in them. Green Cove Spring is 

 said to be like a waterfall reversed ; a cataract rush- 

 ing upward through a transparent liquid instead of 

 leaping downward through the air. There are one 

 or two of these enormous springs also in Northern 

 Mississippi, — springs so large that it seems as if 

 the whole continent must nurse them. 



The Valley of the Shenandoah is remarkable for 

 its large springs. The town of Winchester, a town 

 of several thousand inhabitants, is abundantly sup- 

 plied with water from a single spring that issues on 

 higher ground near by. Several other springs in 



