San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-01-11
REVOLVING REVELATION.
Famous Wisconsin Spring Rises
from a Graveyard.
Supposed Medicinal Waters Issue from
Ground Occupied by Old skele-
tons of Winnebago
Indians.

The people who have for the last 25
years been deriving much real or fam
cied benefit from drinking the medi-
cinal waters OF Big Indian spring. on
the farm of Hans Egerede in the town
of SpringvaIe. Wis, are now afflicted
with qualms of the stomach that threat
en- to counteract all the good the spring
may have done them.
In a narrow valley of the wild region
of the southeastern Wisconsin water
shed, lies, or until the other day lay,
Big Indian spring. The country
roundabout is the hilliest and most
rugged of the central west, the pre-
cipitous hills lacking only height to
give the scenery all the characteristics
of a mountain landscape. Some of the
hills are indeed quite high, rising
1000, 1900 and 1,SOO feet into the
pellucid Wisconsin air. Everywhere
are the ruins of an older world, the yet
undestroyed battlements of the ancient
surface of the globe, left behind when
the rains and rivers cut down the land
and graved the valleys, for these Wis
COnsin mountains are not wrinklings of
the earth's Crusts, or upheavals of vol
canic fires like other mountains, but
fint-capped eminences which, once part
of a general level, now tower high
above the rest of the country, their for
mer surroundings having been washed
away.
In the very widest part of this re-
gion, oozing out from under an i'm
mense monolith that at a distance bears
the appearance of rude semblance of
a man, is lively little spring that, flow
ing some 20 feet deep, drops into a
nearly circular pool some so feet in cir
conference, a barrier ledge damming
back the current to form the pool.
This is the Big Indian spring, its name,
according to the belief of the Morse
folk who make up the population of the
township, being given to it on account
OF the big rock at whose base the spring
arises.
But an inmate of the county poor
house. a daft old man of unknown and
vast age, the last of the Yankee pioneers
" llO IllSl NOH INC lhllh IIOlll lldA VI Z
and then sold out to the Norseman and
moved on after the retreating Indian,
this old man has always insisted that
rae spring got its name for some other
rsAeon, and that it should be Stunned
BY all. His memory went no farther
Asn this, and though he always strived
% remember what this reason was and
WAY the spring should be Stunned his
aged mind could never quite call back
what he wished to know.
But the reason for the name of the
spring and the reason why the waters
should be Stunned by all is now sicken-
ingly apparent. The last four years
have been dry ones in Wisconsin, at
mospherically, not eXcisely, for the
normal amount of beer has flowed, but
the rainfall has been deficient. This
year the rainfall has returned to the
normal, but the effect of the dryness
OF past years has not thereby been re-
paired. Whole forests dropped their
leaves in the early summer and are now
decd. Dozens of lakelets, some of them
a square mile in extent, are now
marshes and even cultivated land
Springs and wells have gone dry every
where and among them Big Indian
spring, and the real reason for its name
long hidden beneath it's cold, iron
impregnated waters, long sought in thG
dim mind of the pauper pioneer, though
not the reason for its medicinal virtues
has been disclosed.
Big Indian spring is CLEARINGHOUSE
Its bottom for a depth Of four feet il
covered with human bones, .heapet
upon each other, packed down by thu
infltration of the waters, covered will
a light film of mud. At the upper end o
the basin there are no bones, and stand
ing there one sees that the heaps of hu
p L-..-L.