Discovery of the world below the surface began at the three 

 springs fifty feet beyond the seawall. The water here was 

 shoulder deep, but where the- springs marked the surface with 

 glassy boils, the river bottom dropped away into deep, shadowy 

 grottoes. After Bill McDougall explored them first, I swam thirty 

 feer down into one of them and struck up an acquaintance with 

 a couple of snook, a bass, and a school of snappers. 



Paddling deeper, I saw that the spring was flowing out of a 

 slanting crevice in the sandstone, and as I looked into it I 

 found that I was peering through an open door into still another 

 world. Beyond the crevice was a deeper space and at the bottom 

 was a patch of sand, brilliantly sunlit, and across it fish were 

 swimming. What kind of watery network underlay this land? 



Sam Pickard, owner of Paradise Point, added to the mystery 

 when he showed me the spring-fed pool in the lawn near the 

 cottage. There were bass in it, and he added several mangrove 

 snappers, alive and flipping. 



"Tomorrow morning," he suggested, "you come out and look 

 for the snappers." 



The next day I followed orders and the freshwater bass were 

 still there but the salt-water snappers were gone. Their only 

 means of exit was the 8-inch opening through which the spring 

 water came. You could only assume that they had made their 

 way elsewhere by way of underground waterways. 



One of the attractions of Florida's west coast jungle is its 

 mysteries. All up and down Crystal River are sights to ponder 

 over and among them are the mounds of oyster shells. These 

 must have been the remains of monstrous prehistoric clam- 

 bakes, because the oysters obviously had been eaten and the 

 shells piled up for a purpose. 



Another riddle is the potholes. Carson took me to one such 

 basin by rowing up a side channel and walking across a bit of 

 prairie. There, in the midst of swampy desolation, was a small 

 circle of water, and though it was not connected with any other 

 body of water it yielded large and lively salt-water channel bass. 

 Was the pool self-sustaining or did it repopulate itself through 

 some underground channel? 



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