48 PEPACTON 



boys have to wait till it settles. There is yet the 

 milkman's spring that never dries, the water of 

 which is milky and opaque. Sometimes it flows 

 out of a chalk cliff. This last is a hard spring: 

 all the others are soft. 



There is another side to this subject, — the mar- 

 velous, not to say the miraculous; and if I were to 

 advert to all the curious or infernal springs that are 

 described by travelers or others, — the sulphur 

 springs, the mud springs, the sour springs, the soap 

 springs, the soda springs, the blowing springs, the 

 spouting springs, the boiling springs not one mile 

 from Tophet, the springs that rise and fall with the 

 tide; the spring spoken of by Vitruvius, that gave 

 unwonted loudness to the voice; the spring that 

 Plutarch tells about, that had something of the 

 flavor of wine, because it was supposed that Bacchus 

 had been washed in it immediately after his birth; 

 the spring that Herodotus describes, — wise man 

 and credulous boy that he was, — called the "Foun- 

 tain of the Sun," which was warm at dawn, cold at 

 noon, and hot at midnight; the springs at San 

 Filippo, Italy, that have built up a calcareous wall 

 over a mile long and several hundred feet thick; 

 the renowned springs of Cashmere, that are believed 

 by the people to be the source of the comeliness of 

 their women, etc. , — if I were to follow up my sub- 

 ject in this direction, I say, it would lead me into 

 deeper and more troubled waters than I am in quest 

 of at present. 



Pliny, in a letter to one of his friends, gives the 



