Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/36

 rupture of the boiler had taken place. The various boring and probing instruments penetrated through the calcareous crust, from one cavity to the other, till they reached at last an immense reservoir, the boundaries of which could not be attained by thirty fathoms length of poles, joined together, directed towards the Market-Place and the Hirschensprung. That a great part of the town stands upon these cavities, is sufficiently demonstrated, whenever the foundation of a new house is laid; copious streams of carbonic acid gazgas [sic] are, moreover, incessantly seen bubbling in the river, near the wells.

Situated on the right bank of the TepleTeplá [sic], in the centre of the town, the Sprudel, to which superior powers are attributed, is 60° R, or 168° F. It has various orifices, but two only are adapted to public use. One of them is exclusively called the Sprudel; the other, named Hygiaeia, on account of the statue of that goddess, placed near it, flows in a regular stream out of a pewter-pipe. Its vapour supplies our steam-baths. The broad square stones and long boards placed over the thermal chaldron, answer the purpose of a cuirass against the large masses of ice and floating trees, which, in their rapid course, when a thaw or an inundation takes place, might, like battering rams, break through the crust, and disturb the equilibrium indispensable to the regular spouting of the mineral water. In order to prevent such ruptures, whose cicatrisation is always slow, troublesome and expensive, the incrustation of its orifices is