row,

CURIOUS MODE OF BATHING.

105

with only a high partition between them, so that you can hear every splash and groan of your neighbour in the next apartment. On one side of me was an old man, apparently, whose kicks, at long intervals, told me he was yet alive. Some two or three women were on the other side, whose laughter and rapid German kept up a constant Babel, while the steam came rolling up over where I lay like the smoke from a coal-pit. I do not know what idea these Germans have of delicacy, but this hearing your neighbours kicking and splashing around you, while the whole building is open the entire length overhead, would not be tolerated in my own country.

It must be remembered that these gambling "hells" are not in out of the way places, but meet you as they would if placed in the public rooms of the hotels at Saratoga, and were patronized by the fashionables of both sexes from New York city. Methinks it is time another Luther had arisen to sweep away this chaff of Germany.

XX.

SCHWALBACH AND SCHLANGENBAD.

THERE are other mineral waters in Nassau besides those of Wiesbaden, and differing from them entirely in taste and temperature. Schwalbach contains several springs very much like the Congress, Pavilion and Iodine Springs of Saratoga. One called the Weinbrunnen, from the fancied resemblance of the water to wine, reminds one very much of the sparkling water of the Pavilion Spring. The Stahlbrunnen and the Pauline in the same place, differ from each other only in the little different proportions in which iron and carbonic acid gas are found in them. It is but a day's ride from this to the famous Nieder Selters, the spring from which the well known and almost universally circulated Seltzer water is obtained. Sir Francis Head's description of this spring and the mode of obtaining the water is better than any I could give. Says he: "On approaching a large circular shed covered with a slated roof, supported by posts but open on all sides, I found the single brunnen or well from which this highly celebrated water is forwarded to almost every quarter of the globe -to India, the West Indies, the Mediterranean, Paris, London, and to almost every city in Germany. The hole, which was about five feet square, was bounded by a framework of four strong beams mortised together, and the bottom of the shed being boarded, it resembled very much, both in shape and dimensions, one of the hatches in the deck of a slip. A small crane with three arms, to each of which there was suspended a square iron crate or basket a little smaller than the brunnen, stood about ten feet off; and while peasant girls, with a stone bottle (holding three pints) dangling on every finger of each hand, were rapidly

MODE OF FILLING THE BOTTLES.

107

filling two of these crates, which contained seventy bottles, a man turned the third by a winch, until it hung immediately over the brunnen, into which it then rapidly descended. The air in these seventy bottles being immediately displaced by the water, a great bubbling of course ensued, but in about twenty seconds this having subsided, the crate was raised; and while seventy more bottles descended from another arm of the crane, a fresh set of girls curiously carried off these full bottles, one on each finger of each hand, ranging them in long rows upon a large table or dresser, also beneath the shed. No sooner were they there than two men, with surprising activity, put a cork into each; while two drummers, with a long stick in each of their hands, hammering them down, appeared as if they were playing upon musical glasses. Another set of young women now instantly carried them off, four and five in each hand, to men who, with sharp knives, sliced off the projecting part of the cork; and this operation being over, the poor jaded bottles were delivered over to women, each of whom actually covered three thousand of them a day with white leather, which they firmly bound with pack-thread round the corks; and then, without placing the bottles on the ground, they delivered them over to a man seated beside them, who, without any apology, dipped each of their noses into boiling hot rosin, and before they had recovered from this unexpected operation, the Duke of Nassau's seal was stamped upon them by another man, when then they were hurried, sixteen and twenty at a time, by girls, to magazines, where they peacefully remained ready for exportation.

Having followed a set of bottles from the brunnen to the store where I left them resting from their labours, I strolled to another part of the establishment, where were empty bottles calmly waiting for their turn to be filled. I here counted twenty-five bins of bottles, each four yards broad, six yards deep, and eight feet high. A number of young girls were carrying thirty-four of them at a time to an immense reservoir, which was kept constantly full, by a large fountain pipe, of beautiful, clear fresh water."

Speaking of the number of bottles that strew the road in every direction, and make the very place look as if it had been once made of bottles and overthrown in a thunder storm, leaving its

wreck on the ground, he says: "The little children really looked as if they were made of bottles: some wore pyramid of them in

baskets on their heads;-some of them were laden with them, hanging over their shoulders, before and behind ;—some carried them strapped round their middle, all their hands full; and the little urchins that could scarcely walk, were advancing, each hugging in its arms one single bottle! In fact, at Nieder Selters 'an infant' means a being totally unable to carry a bottle; puberty and manhood are proved by bottles; a strong man brags of the number he can carry, and superannuation means being no longer able in this world to bear-bottles.

"The road to the brunnen is actually strewed with fragments, and so are the ditches; and when the reader is informed that, besides all he has so patiently heard, bottles are not only expended, filled and exported, but actually made at Nieder Selters, he must admit that no writer can do justice to that place unless every line of his description contains at least once the word-bottle. The moralists of Nieder Selters preach on bottles. Life, they say, is a sound bottle, and death a cracked one. Thoughtless men are empty bottles; drunken men are leaky ones; and a man highly educated, fit to appear in any country and any society, is of course, a bottle corked, rosined, and stamped with the seal of the Duke of Nassau."

This humorous and graphic description will not be thought much exaggerated when we remember that nearly a million and a half of bottles are annually carried out of that small inland German town, to say nothing of another million and a half broken there. In the year 1832 there were exported from that spring 1,295,183 bottles. If they were all quart bottles, it would amount to over a thousand barrels of mineral water, which annually goes down somebodies' throats. This valuable spring was originally bought by the ancestor of the Duke for a single butt of wine, and it now yields a nett profit of over $26,000 per annum.

Schlangenbad, or the Serpent's bath, is another of the brunnens of Nassau. Schlangenbad is in a secluded spot, and takes its name from the quantity of snakes that live about it, swimming around in the spring and crawling through the houses with the utmost liberty. The waters are celebrated for their effect on the

LEGEND OF THE SERPENT'S BATH.

109

skin, reducing it almost to marble whiteness. The most inveterate wrinkles and the roughest skin become smooth and white under the wonderful effects of this water. Acting as a sort of corrosive, it literally scours a man white, and then soaks him soft and smooth. Says Francis Head, "I one day happened to overhear a fat Frenchman say to his friend, after he had been lying in one of these baths a half an hour: Monsieur, dans ces bains ou devient absolument amoureux de soi même.' 'Sir, in these baths, one absolutely becomes enamoured of himself."" great is the effect of this water on the skin, that it is bottled and seut to the most distant parts of Europe as a cosmetic.

So

The Germans have soine mysterious origin to every thing, and what the Italians refer to the Madonna, they attribute to some indefinite mysterious agency. This spring, they say, was discov◄ ered by a sick heifer. Having been wasting away a long time, till her bones seemed actually to be pushing through her skin, and she was given up by the herdsman to die; she all at once disappeared and was gone for several weeks. No one thought of her, as it was supposed she was dead, but one day she unexpectedly returned, a sleek, fat, bright-eyed and nimble heifer. Every evening, however, she disappeared, which excited the curiosity of the herdsman so that he at length followed her, when to his surprise he saw her approach this spring, then unknown, from which having drank, she quietly returned. Not long after, a beautiful young lady began to waste away precisely like the heifer, and all medicines and nursing were in vain, and she was given over to die.

The herdsman who had seen the wonderful cure performed on one of his herd being told of her sickness, went to her and besought her to try the spring. Like a sensible man, he thought what was good for the heifer was good for the woman. She consented to try the remedy, and in a few weeks was one of the freshest, fattest, plumpest young women in all the country round. From that moment, of course, the fame of the spring was secured, and it has gone on increasing in reputation, till now the secluded spot is visited by persons from every part of Europe.

The duchy of Nassau is a beautiful portion of Germany, and