The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1884-02-01
THE QUEEREST OF TOWNS.
HOW 1T SURROUNDS THE HOT
SPRINGS OF ARKANSAS.
Churches and Faro Hanks Incx-
tricnbly Mixed-A BIRDS Eye
View of the Place.

A Hot Springs ARK correspondent of
the New York Times says of this famous
Southwestern resort: 1.-THE little city
that has grown up around the springs is
like no other place under the sun. 1t is
great hospital, with the patients for
ever summing themselves on the side
walks; it is a California mining town,
with buildings springing up in night,
and the music of hammers and saws ring
ing everywhere; it is progressive Yam
kee town in Massachusetts, with a good
fire department, fine water-works, good
city government, and handsome brick
opera-house; it is a very religious place,
with dozen or twenty churches of all
denominations, twice as many ministers,
and a great assortment of church fairs,
sociables and Bible societies; it is para
disc of gamblers, with fifty faro
banks open day and night, Sun
day included; the moral tone of the place
is kept up by a saloon to about every four
inhabitants; it has little police force
dressed exactly in the NewYork uni
form; it has three or four brass bands
that seem to be playing day and night,
and that make speciality of being drawn
through the principal streets in chariots
every Sunday afternoon, playing "Tom-
my, make room for your uncle;" it has
street-cars, gas-works scores of electric
lights, telephones, banks, daily newspa-
pers, big hotels-all the attributes of civ
ilization. 1t has 5000 inhabitants and
5000 or 5000 visitors every year. There
is very heavy penalty for carrying con-
cealed weapons, yet every man is walk
ing arsenal. In the streets are cowboys,
tramps, city men from nearly every big
American city, cripples, Chinaman, gam
blers, Italians, and negroes 1t combines,
in short, the characteristics of towns in
New England, in California, in Texas, in
Georgia, and in the free and enlightened
Commonwealth of Arkansas.
AS natural wonder, the Hot Springs
deserve to rank with Niagara Falls and
the Mammoth cave. No two people sec
these things alike; but to me to see fifty
springs of hot water pouring forever out
OF the rocks is a greater curiosity than to
see the Niagara river take its grand tum
bic. There are other hot springs in
America, but none to compare with these
in magnitude or heat. They all come
out within a small space on the side
of the Hot Springs mountain, and in
most of them the water is so hot that
man would not care to dip his fingers
in it more than once. Any of the springs
will cook an egg in a very few minutes.
People 90 across the street with their
cans, fill them with water before break
fast and return home, and with this
naturally hot water cook eggs, steep tea,
and afterward wash the dishes 1t is as
pure and tasteless as any water that bub-
h., e,
cooking After bathing in it short
time (but not less than two or three
weeks, the hair seems more than nat
urally charged with electricity; and you
can 60 to any of the springs and drink
glass after glass just as it comes
out of the rock without the
nausea that usually follows a draught
of hot water. But these are the only in
dications that the Hot Springs water con-
tains any medicinal properties whatever;
for it is entirely tasteless, and analyses
have failed to discover any minerals eX-
ccpt such us are found in all water They
have made the mistake here that is made
in most such places of putting buildings
over nearly all the springs-for visitors
like to see the actual issuing of the water
from the earth. But this can still be seen
to some extent, for there are dozens of
little outlets that are not counted, that
pour thcir tiny Stcaming streams into lhe
Hot SPRING. creek. This creek runs en-
tirely through the valley, through the
main street and in places it is naturally
walled with curious black stone that |
can call nothing but burned rock. 1t
has certainly been burned in volcano.
and not very long ago. Some of it is soft
enough to crumbc in the hand, and the
marks of fire are still upon it. Through
this black rock the little rivulets trickle
into the creek, every one of them steam
ing; and have gone into the street carly
on frosty morning, when the whole
place looked like n vast tea kettle, with
steam rising everywhere.
When nature got done making the
Ozark mountains she seems to have had
dozen little mountlets of assorted sizes
left over, and these she scattered about
"kinder permisllus like as an Arkansas
man would say. Two of them landed
here together, one subsequently, beiny
called the Hot Springs mountain, and
the other the West mountain. All the
hot springs are in the Hot Springs noun
tain, within a quarter of mile of each
other. There are springs in the West
mountain, but they are all cold. The
two mountains are so close together You
could stand ON the summit of one and
shoot Il bird out of tree on the summit
of the other provided you could shoot
straight enough, and the bird would sit
still. The valley between them is not
more than hundred feet wide, and
through this runs the principal business
street of Hot Springs. The stores are all
\ on one side of it, for the other side is the
base of the Hot Springs noun
tain, which belongs to the government
and there is nothing on it but bath
houses. The streets curve around between
other mountains nearly every street fol-
lowing the bed of creek, and they are
spreading in every direction till the map
of the city looks like portrait of a
drunken devil-hsh. The city being 700
feet above sea level, and the tops of 9he