The Argosy — page 320: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

302 The Baths of Gastein. Mutton, to be faithful in small chronicles, was never brought to the tabie. Whether sheep were scarce or only unpopular was a matter shrouded in mystery ; but during the whole of my wanderings in the Tyrol, the number of sheep seen might easily have been counted on one hand. The poor cows, on the contrary, were numerous and frightfully thin : and kept up so incessant a tintamarre with their crazy, battered-out tin-bells, that nervously inclined persons were driven wild with pity for the unhappy beasts, and excusable rage for themselves. Absence of all animals was a feature in Gastein. No cat choruses at night : they were almost unknown: and only a very few dogs. These were so frightfully ugly—long, thin, unshapely bodies, shaven of every vestige of hair, the end of the tail, the head, and the paws excepted—that they might have been taken for guardians of some infernal region. It is possible that cats, who are said to be nervous animals, found their health affected by the climate, and the perpetual vapours arising from the waters. These vapours indeed were bad, not for the cats only, who wisely kept away, but for many human beings who, less wise, do not exercise a like discretion. Many a wife, for example, in good health, accompany- ing her husband, falls ill during her stay at Gastein. There are num- berless people upon whom it acts almost as a poison. Carrying out the idea, it is easy to believe that for others, and in certain specified maladies, it is equally beneficial The fact of so many falling ill there proves that the place undoubtedly possesses certain powers. The chief reason for this indisposition is that the vapours msing from the baths and hot springs are inhaled: and these, restoring to health those who stand in need of them, have in opposite cases a contrary effect. Those who assert that the Gastein waters contain no special virtue above ordinary waters will find this a strong witness against them. The amount of evaporation in Gastein is so great that the process is always going on: and when the earth has become dry and parched for want of rain, the springs and waterfalls come in to the rescue. Many a time in the early morning, between five and six o'clock, I have watched the sun drawing up the spray from the waterfall. Gradually ascending, it first became a mist, and then a cloud, which so spread and increased that the whole mountain side was concealed by it. A strange sight, never witnessed elsewhere, perhaps for want of oppor- tunity ; and never seen at a later hour of the day. A sight curious and almost weirdlike, to note the spray change gradually to mist and vapour, and then to the thicker cloud : to watch the process ascending slowly and transforming itself as if under the influence of a wand held by some unseen spirit of the air: increasing from the small rainbow- like streak until it became large enough to envelop the mountain as in a huge white shroud. Then, attracted by the mountains, it) would linger lovingly about them, entwining them, as it were, in a fond sisterly ECoOMmicloookKks (C(O) in —_)