The mirror., 1919-08-14
THE FOUNTAINS OF VERSAILLES
Most Wonderful Fountains Ever Constructed by Man
Turned When Peace Treaty Signed
Literary Digest

| NOuO'N"0O VI uoui Oiiys W uldAO euS
town so healthy. Versailles has
never had an epidemic since 100.
The flu did not attack Versailles
in 1918!
The conduits lead from many q
plateau, forest watershed, and
OPEN hillside, gathering rain,
spring water, flow of creeks, and
even melted snow in winter into
secret ponds of stone. lined with
concrete, all connected to receive
them.
with all this. now, in present
times, the fountains play magnifi-
Gently, twelve times a year-and it
might be once a week did they de-
sire it. Such, at least, was the re-
gime before the war; and doubt
less the Fountain Days will be, as
a fact. more frequent than ever in
the tourist rush to France in the
coming years.
"On holiday afternoons the rail :
roads transport so many hundreds
of thousands of sightseers that
trains follow one another every
five minutes on each of the three
lines-not to mention the COM
pressed-air tram line, now become
trolley. Hours before it is time
for the Great Waters, it is i'm
possible to get within sight of
them. The Basin of Neptune,
which is the greatest and most
complicated, forms a semi-circular
space like the auditorium of a
theater, the waterworks being the
stage. Ten thousand people gather
in the auditorium space before it,
and every square foot is occupied.
Those who stand here must be
content to miss most of the Little
Waters scattered through the for
est; and it takes some judgment
and foot-work to hike down the
central avenue in time to catch the
major fountains as the water from
the Neptune, gushing down to
them, shoots their white columns
higher, and makes all their frogs,
and naiads, and baby cupids, and
dolphins, and whiskered Neptunes
holding squirt-horns spout and
gush and froth and foam the white
cool water and it's rainbow sprays
dear little rainbows dancing,
disappearing, reappearing in the
hot bright summer afternoon!
From fountain to fountain the
crowds rush-to the Basin of La
tone, the Colonnades, the Basin of
the Domes, the Dog Fight, the
Basin of Enceladus (the giant bur-
led under Mount Etna whose
struggles are supposed to provoke
its eruptions), and dozens of others
whose names everybody forgets.
In the Dog Fight. which is lulu,
the two giant TRUSTEES spit at each
other from a distance of twenty
seven yards each-each hitting the
central fountain with the force of
a first class fre-hose.
1T is all down. hill; and as the
pressure accumulates in the hidden
conduits, new water-batteries open
up, to right and left, vast columns
in dark forest glades, and sheety
waterfalls in fowery circuses. and
boiling geysers in the sunlight.
and great sheets of water steps in
formal pieces. The Water Lane
and Dragon Basin and the Latone
are vast architectural works in
size and grandeur of design. The
| Water Lane consists of % separate
high fountains connected with
three Cupids holding horns from
which gush other white sprays.
From all these, the torrents rise to
the height of "a feet, forming
arches and structures of fairy-like
magnifcience. As to the Little
Waters, the chief thing about them
| is their number and the music of
their splashing, and their unexpect-
| ed appearance here and there"