The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1874-06-04
The Legend Of the Baths.

A King of Constantinople had, so the
history tells us, a daughter whose beauty,
graces and virtues were of that superla-
tive character peculiar to heroines of the
Middle Ages, but who was afflicted with
a sickness upon which all the medical
skill of Byzantium could make no inn
preston. The faculty, nonplussed, acted
very much as it is wont to act under sim
liar circumstances in these modern times,
and got rid of an obstinate patient that
would neither get well nor die, by recon-
mending change of air. Dagh-Hammam
as it is now called, was the spot selected
for the princess, and there the king built
a palace for her reception, and in that
palace she took up her abode, and breathed
the mountain air and drank the mountain
water, but without deriving any advan-
tage from one or the other.
One day, however, the princess was in
dulging in that favorite pastime of Con-
stantinople young ladies, looking out of
the window, when she saw bear; no
very unusual occurrence, but this bear
struck the princess by his remarkably de-
jected aspect. The princess sympathies
gushed forth at once, and she drew a par
allel between the woe-begone animal and
herself
"There," said she to herself, els bear
that possesses all the requisite elements
for being very nice and a very happy
bear, but he isn't; far from it; his fur is
ragged, his skin is NANCY, his bones are
nearly through it; he has not an atom of
bears grease about him, and his doleful
expression of countenance shows low
ness of spirits equal to my own. Like
myself, that bear is confirmed invalid"
Thus soliloquizing, the princess watched
the movements of the bear, and remarked
that he went and plunged into pool of
mud, after rolling in which for space of
time he got out, sat down at the edge of
the pool, rested, and then plunged again;
and after going through the ritual several
times, with precision and solemnity, with
drew to the mountain. Next day the
bear came again, and the next after that,
and so on for several days, until at last
the princess began to notice change in
his personal appearance. His hide was
less patchy, his cOuntenance more cheer
full and his step more blithe.
Day by day the improvement continued;
sickness, obviously induced by plenti-
full secretion of the potent grease, came
over the ragged fur; it lost its rusty color,
curled abundantly over a healthy skin,
and at length the once melancholy object
stood a regenerate bear, sound in body
more to the pool.
Pondering over these things, the prin-
cess came to the conclusion that if rolling
in the mud brought back health to an
apparently worn-Out bear, it could do no
less for an invalid princess. So her high
ness took a preliminary roll, and, finding
it warm and on the whole agreeable, she
built herself clearinghouse around the
pool, and, daily initiating the bear, was
at the end of two months restored to per-
feet health. Then the king, her father,
to commemorate the event, built public
baths there, and from generation to gen.
Grafton the fame of the springs of Dagh-
Hamman have come down to the present
day. There is a certain resemblance be-
tween the legend attaching to these min
eral springs and to that of King Bladud's
pigs, which is associated with the chaly-
beate springs of Bath, in England. In
point of sentiment, however, that of Dagh-
Hamman has perhaps the advantage, a
sickly bear being on the whole less pro-
sale object than herd of diseased pigs.
The waters of Kourou and of Dagh-
Hamman are composed, in great part, of
chlosulphuric salts and hydrosulphuric
gas, and enjoys deserved reputation for
efficacy in skin diseases and rheumatic af
fections. Not far from the springs are
some interesting ruins which are doubt
less those of the hospital and palace de-
scribed by the old Byzantine historian as
having been constructed in this neighbor-
hood by Constantine and his empress,
Helena.