MINNEOLA was the daughter of Nanketuka, chief of the Petonahs. Her beauty was warm and mellow as the sun, and her form graceful as the bow of heaven. The dews of paradise were in her eyes and the symphony of shadow musicians in her voice. Flowers sprang up from her footsteps and out of her midnight tresses she flung the stars.
Pocotacus, the athlete, loved Minneola like the spring buds love the sun; he bathed in the life-giving light of her eyes and drooped like a perishing flower in her absence. So loved Minneola, but Nanketuka, the lion father, whose heart was as inflexible as the mountain, hated Pocotacus and sought to bend the love of his lovely child toward Wonomeda, the crafty warrior of the tribe.
Failing thus in his endeavors, Nanketuka imprisoned Minneola in a lonely mountain cave, with the secret known only to Wonomeda, who visited the maiden and poured his love into her fretful ear, promising her freedom and the rarest jewels the womb of earth could bear. But she saw no favor in the offer, for her heart was like the dew-drops which sparkle only in the sun, and she pined for Pocotacus, the elixir of her life.
Unrelenting in his purpose, the chief considered not the happiness of his lovely daughter, and with bitter rage he seized Pocotacus and cast him into a cave on the opposite side of the mountain. Here he lingered in great anguish, caring not for his affliction, but with grief for Minneola.
There, while kneeling in devotion, pouring out his lamentations in the damp and dungeon cavern, he cast his useless eyes around him and, perceiving in the distance a light of flickering brightness, his heart leapt with emotion—then with anguish, lest it be the messengers from Nanketuka to execute his death.
But when it drew near, he perceived the bearer was a lady on whose head was a crown of starry splendor—it was the Spirit of the Cave. Coming nearer, she addressed him:
“Why hast thou invaded the precincts of the phantoms, come into the shadows where mortals must not be? Speak, lest the fire I hold consume thee, and thy life be taken here.”
Then answered Pocotacus and told his love for the maiden, and with head bowed low before her bade the spirit consume his anguished heart. But the anger of her face uplifted, and with pity stealing o’er her, she gave her hand to the lover and answered:
“Follow me.”
Straightway the two went forward, and the cavern walls rolled backward, clearing a pathway before them, until, sitting in the distance, wailing and despairing, he saw his Minneola, and soon clasped her in his arms. It was like the blending of the waters, the meeting of the sunbeams, the union of the flowers, or the kissing of sweet incense—so clasped they one another, lest some sorrow should come between.
While the lovers were thus raptured, dwelling in the fragrance of their own sweet meeting, the tramp of Nanketuka and Wonomeda, and their angered tone of vengeance, came ringing through the cave. Fear and sorrow brooded o’er the lovers, but the Spirit of the Cavern gave them promise of protection.
Then the rocks heaved heavily, and one by one rolled together until the granite walls enclosed them, and of earth they saw no more. Still the chieftain sought his daughter, the lovely Minneola—sought in the caves and forests, mourned her long and prayed for pity—but he found her nevermore.
There beneath the mountain, where runs the crystal water through the valley and the trees, lives the athlete Pocotacus and his sweet wife Minneola. Passed from life into the shadows, from the body to the soul-life, without passing through the portal where the body rusts and bleaches, passed they into life eternal with the Spirit of the Cave.
There they live in blissful splendor, with the beautiful Stalacta, in the cavern walled with diamonds and with floors of precious gems; corridors with golden columns, arched with porphyry, and studded with emeralds from the sea. Music floats throughout this bright Elysian with swells and undulations like the swimming air, and the laugh of happy spirits rings its melody through the halls.
Down in Happy Hollow, when the brook dries up its babble, and the pipers of the forest hush their music with the trees; in the peace of perfect quiet may yet be heard faintly the peals of joyous laughter from Minneola and her lover in the palace of happy spirits, in the paradise of Stalacta, in the cave of love eternal.
Note
Happy Hollow separates Hot Springs Mountain from Park Mountain. It contains a chalybeate spring and runs out into Hot Springs Valley one block west of the Arlington Hotel.
