200 THE MOUNTAIN. 



salt sulphur spring, with a temperature of 137 Fahr., 

 which issues from a granite rock. Of the chemical compo- 

 sition and character generally not much has been said or 

 known. 



There are a number of mineral and thermal springs in 

 New Mexico. Thermal and sulphureous waters are found 

 near the river Del Norte, some miles from Santa Fe. 



MERE catalogues are, of course, always intolerable, and 

 "dry details," even on mineral springs and waters in general, 

 have just been abundantly demonstrated to be among the 

 things possible. After the precipitant recitation of the water 

 distribution of a portion of North America just attempted, 

 will not the beholder, in a quiet retrospection of the field, 

 be struck by a few obvious convictions, and among them will 

 not these be prominent ? If water is a good thing, if it be 

 one of the few primeval indispensables, if it has played an 

 important part in the past experiences of the planet, and 

 is to play a still more significant agency in the great future 

 mundane programme of the drama of time and space, have 

 not the sister continents been bountifully cared for, divinely 

 apportioned ? What means this intense and immense com- 

 munion of the land and the sea, this prodigious transporta- 

 tion of water on the wings of the wind, these rivers of air 

 which are rivers of water, those mighty Mississippis and 

 Amazons pouring back the deposits of aerial currents into 

 the great ocean reservoir from which they came ? A signifi- 

 cant fact this 40-inch precipitation over so much of the ex- 

 posed side of a world, so much of the earth's surface thus 

 made alive by springs of water of every order, those won- 

 derful basins of wonderful rivers, what means this array of 

 "water, water everywhere"? Other divisions of the globe 

 have one of the great original elements in excess, as, too 



