A traveler who borrowed a canoe from some Indians visited a great and beautiful spring about 300 yards from the river, where water rose from between the hills, bringing up small white shells and shell rock that glittered in the clear water before settling around the basin. The nearly round basin measured about 100 yards in circumference, its moderately steep banks covered with broken white shell, and the water deepened gradually toward a center many fathoms deep. Fish and alligators filled the fountain and could be seen plainly even at great depth. A creek more than twenty yards wide ran swiftly from the immense spring into the river, carrying its sea-green transparent water nearly 100 yards across it, with a depth of 10 or 12 feet and a continual concourse of gar, catfish, mullet, trout, bream of various species, silverfish, pike, and the manatee, whose skeleton the traveler saw on the spring bank after Indians had lately killed it. Hills that nearly enclosed the spring stood about 15 or 20 yards high next the river, while the land beyond fell away into a lower, nearly level forest of pine, oak, bay, magnolia, and cabbage trees on loose grayish sandy soil over shelly limestone rocks. The spring water was cool and agreeable to drink, and Indians and traders said the fountain vented the waters of the great Alatchua Savannah.