92 
RURAL HOURS, 
Thursday, ZOth . — The springs are all full to overflo^ving, this 
season. Some trickling down the hill-sides, through the shady 
woods, many more sparkling in the open sunshine of the meadows. 
Happily for us, they flow freely here. We forget to value justly a 
blessing with which we are so richly endowed, until we hear of 
other soils, and that within the limits of our own country, too, where 
the thristy traveller and his weary beast count it a piece of good 
fortune to find a pure wholesome draught at the close of tlieir 
day’s toil. 
This is decidedly a spring county. Mineral waters of power- 
ful medicinal qualities are scattered about within a circuit of 
twenty miles from the lake. There are several ndthin the limits 
of the village itself, but these have little strength. Others farther 
off have long been used for their medicinal properties — vile messes 
to taste — and sending up an intolerable stench of sulphur, but 
beautifully clear and cool. There is a salt sj^ring also at no great 
distance from the lake, said to be the most easterly of the saline 
springs in this part of the country, and at a distance of some 
eighty miles from the great salt works of Onondaga. 
A portion of our waters are hard, touched with the limestone, 
through which they find their way to the surface ; but there are 
many more possessing every good quality that the most particu- 
lar housewife can desire for cookin" her Hands, or bleaching her 
linen. Near the farm-house doors you frequently see them fall- 
ing from a wooden pipe into a trough, hollowed out of the trunk 
of a tree, the rudest of fountains ; and the same aivangement is 
made here and there, along the highway, for the benefit of the 
traveller and his cattle. 
One likes to come upon a spring in a walk. This afternoon we 
