Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1876-09-07
A WISCONSIN WATER SHEAF.
Prairie du Chien's Pride.
BY PROF. I'D. BUTLER


"No check, no stay, this fountain fears,
How merry it goes
Twill murmur on thousand years,
And flow, az now it flows"
1t seems odd that Madison should
find any thing TO covet in Pral-
RE du Chen, bnt | do covet it's
fountain. 1t is u me as Naboth's
vineyard to Ahab That sheaf of
foam springing up in everlasting lite
as high as the cottages around, is
with reason the chief pride of the
oldest amoLg Wisconsin villages.
All devices OF its class are freshness
to the air, music to the car, and
dropping diamonds to the eye, but
the Prairie water-spout is superior
TO most or It's fellows. You W0uIl
think it framed in the prodigality of
Nature, for it throws up daily we'll
nigh gallon for every inhabitant of
Wisconsin, OF about twenty barrels
every minute. 1t may be styled a
,cater tree, an aspen shifting it's form
when wind sways it, or weeping
willow clad with ice and sparkling
into rainbows with every sunbeam.
Some day there will be beneath that
tree a statue of Venus Anadyomeno
over arched with showery veil.
The falling streams fill rock
basin a hundred feet in circumfer-
ence, tumbling out of it in acascade,
and dividing into two rivulets clear
and rapid, flow through the main
street and on each side CT it to the
river. They thus give our ancient
burg, formerly so waterless, a
feature seldom seen between the
German Freiburg and the Mormon
city of the Saints. The unique charm
of both these cities is q streamlet be-
side every sidewalk.
Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska,
boasts a fountain nearly as large,
but all the streams it yields are as
salt as sea wafer, while the issues OF
the Prairie spring taste pleasant from
the first, and soon pecome to most
palates swoeter Than wine. They
are so ehaly beate as to embrown the
rocks around. No wonder,-as we
easily believe what we wish to be
lieve, that they are thought medi'
cinal and work cures on believers,
even though sceptlcal cheml st
should prove that they have no In
trinsic virtue, and 80 that men who
drink them have no business to get
we'll.
The Prairie men have made u
good bargain with nature who tosses
on high for them the blessing which
we must pump up beneath the
ground, - and which others must
bring from afar in aqueducts. Her
cornucopia pours into their midst
those boons which most seek in
vain.
Through all ages since the waters
gushed forth wher Moses smote the
rock, have fountains whore water
forgets it's nature and leaps up, in
stead of sinking down, appeard Il
sort of miracle. To the eye they
are O reversal OF the laws of gravi-
tation. According to the Hbernian
they are greater wonders than
| Niagara, where there is nothing to
hinder the water from falling, while
there is every thing to hinder water
from running up hill. Such a phen-
omenon reminds US OF the mountaia
coming to Mahomet. 1t is Nature
moved to come from abyssmal caves
to bring us aid and comfort. She is
there as Orientals fancy, most alive
and personal, and so they called
fountains eyes, and said their waters
were liUinq. No less than thirteen
Old Testament towns are named En-
that is eye, from the fountains they
encircle.
After all, the gift of nature to the
Prairie citizens, though bestowed on
New Years day, was neither sponta.
neous nor instantaneous. She had
exacted of them six months labor
with an artesian borer, and an outlay
of about three thousand dollars
When their money was all gone, the
last FIVE feet were bored with the
avails OF a shot gun. Thus the water
nytnph was not won without wooing
But IN certain Places, few and far
between. Nature amuses herself with
water outcrops, spouting straight up
ward in pillars, evanescent, but ever