120 THE MOUNTAIN. 



important individual has a universe to himself, "is unre- 

 lated, unallied." "See, all things for MY use," especially 

 this thing; but the worm's log must make the coal-digger 

 a prop for the roof of his drift ; the sap-sucker'^ maple must 

 make the salt-sucker a handle for his drill ; while the cater- 

 pillar's linden-tree will make an excellent bowl, from which 

 the hungry artist might eat his mush and milk. Need the 

 brook-trout, sporting in the mossy rock-bed of the crystal 

 torrent, quarrel with the pale valetudinarian who drinks 

 new life from its pure waters?* "All things are kind to 

 our flesh, in their descent and being," and of one wondrous 

 web, although cut in different patterns, and apparently for 

 different ends, are all the creatures of the earth. 



A scientific estimate of the intrinsic and perpetual worth 

 of things will give to the pure freestone or soft water of the 

 mountain the greatest consideration; this is its crowning 

 blessing the true heal-all and specific for the maladies of 

 men. Springing, as we have observed, from the large sili- 

 cious formations which make the highest spurs of the moun- 

 tain, the waters have the mean annual temperature of the 

 rock from which they issue ; and they are frequently so pure 

 that chemical tests give but traces of any foreign element 

 whatever, thus demonstrating their constitution to be as 

 nearly as can ever occur in nature, absolute or pure water, f 



* Provided always, of course, that said valetudinarian be not in 

 fell purpose intent on predatory invasion of the sacred haunts of said 

 trout, or be armed with cruel, barbed instruments of death, wickedly 

 concealed by worm writhing in the tortures of longitudinal transfixa- 

 tion, or seductively hidden within the treacherous folds of brilliant 

 feathers, stolen from the neck of chicken-cock, styled, in Waltonian 

 phrase, " The Fly." 



f Absolutely pure natural water does not exist. Water falling- 

 from the clouds contains carbonic acid gas and ammonia. " Decom- 

 position of silicious and other rocks occurs from the action of water 

 holding in solution carbonic acid, and the organic acids arising from 

 the decay of vegetable matter." Silica is never absent from natural 

 water, and is greater in surface waters slightly impregnated with 

 mineral ingredients. The analysis of Sterry Hunt, of the waters of 



