The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-24 00:00:00

SCHLAGEN BAD-THE SERPENT'S

BATH.

(From the Quarterly Review.)
This sec:nded spot, to which such a number of people
annually retreat, consists of nothing but an immense old
or " bad•Laus"--a new one—with two or three
little which, fed as it were by the crumbs which fall
from the rich man's table, are turned by the famous spring
if water, after fine fashionable visiters have done washing
themselves in it. The oh! ba'l•haus is situated on the side
if the hill, close to the macadamized road ; and to give
some idea of the scale on which these sort of German
'muses are constructed, in this rambling bath-house I
,counted 443 windows, and, without ever twice going
ver the same ground, the passages measured 409 pace?',.
.vhiela is, as nearly as possible, a quarter of a mile!
t3elow this immense barrack, and on the opposite side of
•he road, is the new bad-haus, pleasantly situated in a
shrubbery. This building contains 172 windows. After
having passed, in the two establishments, an immense
number of rooms, each furnished by the Duke with white
.vindow curtains, a walnut tree bed with bedding, a
,thestnut tree table, an elastic spring soft, and three or
four walnut tree chairs, the price of each room (on an
aver4ge from 101. to 2s. a day)being painted on the door,
our author complimented the good---or to give her her
roper title, the " bad"—lady who attended him, on tie
plain but useful order in which they appeared, in return
for which she very obligingly proceeded to give him the
legend of the discovery of this famous spring. This samts
legend forms a chapter of some moment in the histot•y

;he little Duchy of Nassau. Once upon a time, it seems,
;here was a heifer, with which every thing in natuN
seemed to disagree. The more she ate, the thinner sho
grew—the more her mother licked her bide, the rougher
and the more staring was her coat—not a fly in the forest
would bite her—never was she seen to chew the cud—
hut, hide-bound and melancholy, her hips seemed actually
to be protruding from her skin. What was the matter
with her no one knew—what could cure her no one could
divine—in short, deserted by her master and her species,
she was, as the faculty would term it given up. In a few
weeks, however, she suddenly reappeared among the herd,
with ribs covered with flesh—eyes like a deer—skin sleek
as a mole's—breath sweetly smelling of milk—saliva bang-
ing in ringlets from her jaw ! Every day seemed to con-
firm her health ; and the ph,pnomenon was so striking,
that the herdsman, having watched her, discovered that
regularly every evening she wormed her way in secret into,
the forest, until she reached and refreshed herself at a
spring of water—haunted by harmlessi serpents, when full
grown about four feet in length. The circumstance, it
seems, had been almost forgotten by the rasant, when a
young Nassau lady began to show exactly the .symptoms of
the heifer. Mother, sisters, friends, father, aall tried to
cure her, but in vain; and the physician actually
" Had ta'en his leave with sighs and sorrow,
, Despairing of his fee to-morrow ;"
whets the herdsman, happening to hear of her case, pre-
vailed upon her at last to try the heifer's secret remedy
she did so, and, in a very short time, to the utter astonkb,
ment of her friends, she became one of the stoutest young
women in the duchy. What had suddenly cured one youot;
lady was soon deemed a proper prescription for others, and'
all cases meeting with success, the spring gradually rose
into notice and repute. I may observe, by-the-bye, that
even to this day horses are brought by the peasants to be
bathed ; and I have good authority for believing, tha', in
cases of slight consumption of the lungs (a disorder com-
mon enough among horses), the animal recovers his flesh
with surprising rapidly. Nay, I have seen even pigs
bathed, though I must own they appeared to have no dis.
order but hunger.

THE LEECH FISHERY.

The country about La Brenne is perhaps the
nost uninteresting in France. The people are
miserable looking, the cattle wretched, the fish
just as bad—but the leeches are admirable.
If ever you pass through La Brenne, you will
see a man, pale, and straight-haired, with a
woollen cap on his head, and his legs and arms
naked ; he walks along the borders of a
marsh, among the spots left dry by the surround-
ing waters, but particularly wherever the
vegetation seems to preserve the subjacent soil
undisturbed : this man is a leech-fisher. To
see him from a distance,—his woe-begone aspect
—his hollow eyes—his livid lips—his singular
gestures,—you would take him for a patient who
had left his sick bed in a fit of delirium. If you
observe him every now and then raising his
legs, and examining them one al' er the other,
you might suppose him a fool ; but he is an in-
telligent leech-fisher. The leeches attach them-
selves to his legs and feet as he moves among
their haunts; he feels their presence from
their bite, and gathers them as they cluster
about the roots of the bullrushes and sea-
weeds, or beneath the stones covered with
green and gluey moss. Some repose on
the mud, while others swim about—but so
slowly that they are easily gathered with the
hand. In a favourable season it is possible, in
the course of three or four hours, to stow ten
or twelve dozen of them in the little bag which
the gatherer carries on his shoulder. Sometimes
you will see the leech fisher armed with a kind
of spear or harpoon : with this he deposits
pieces of decayed animal matter in places fre-
quented by the leeches ; they soon gather round
the prey, and are presently themselves gathered
into a little vessel half-full of water. Such is
the leech-fishery in spring.
In summer, the leech retires into deeper
water ; and the fishers have then to strip them-
selves naked, and walk immersed up to the chin.
Some of them have little rafts to go upon ;
these rafts are made of twigs and rushes, and it
is no easy matter to propel them among the
weeds and aquatic plants. At this season, too,
the supply in the pools is scanty ; the fisher cats
only take the few that swim within his reach, or
those that get entangled in the structure of his
raft. It is a horrid trade, in whatever way it is
carried on. The leech-gatherer is constantly
more or less in the water, breathing fog and
mist and fetid odours from the marsh ; he is
often attacked with ague, catarrhs, and rheuma-
tism. Some indulge in strong liquors, to keep
off the noxious influence, but they pay for it in
the end by disorders of other kinds. But with
all its forbidding peculiarities, the leech-fishery
gives employment to many hands; if it be per-
nicious, it is also lucrative. Besides supply-
ing all the neighbouring pharmaciens, great
quantities are exported, and there are regular
traders engaged for the purpose. Henri Char-
tier is one of those persons; and an important
personage he is when he comes to Meobecq, or
its vicinity ; his arrival makes quite a fete—all
are eager to greet him.
Among the interesting particulars which I
gathered in La Brenne relative to the leech
trade, I may mention the following :—One of
the traders, what with his own fishing and that
few months
leechesthem
in
of his children, and what with his acquisitions
from the carriers, who sell quantities second-
hand, was
cwoausrse oenafbl aedfw
to hoard uup ;
14,
deposited in a place where, in one night, they
all became frozen en masse. But the frost does
not kill them ; they may generally be thawed
into life again. They easily, indeed, bear very
hard usage. I am told by one of the carriers
that he can pack them as closely as he pleases,
in the moist sack which he ties behind his sad-
dle ; and sometimes he stows his cloak and boots

on top of the sack. The trader buys his
leeches pele mele, big and little, green and
black—all the same; but he afterwards sorts
them for the market. Those are generally
accounted the best which are of a green ground,
,vith yellow stripes along the body.—Mcdical
Gazette.