Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/21

Rh where the hosts were arrayed, where the conflict raged most furiously, and where the earth drank the deepest draughts of the blood of her sons. He also guides to the burial-ground, where officers and soldiers rest peacefully in death's embrace, and recites with peculiar emphasis, a poetical epitaph on the fallen brave.

On the bank of the river a burning-spring is shown, which emits a stream of sulphurated hydrogen gas, which being confined and ignited by the touch of a candle, sends forth, through a tube, a brilliant volume of flame. This might doubtless be rendered useful for lighting houses, were there any in its neighborhood. But its position is isolated, and the slight tenement thrown over it was filled with a close, unpleasant atmosphere, which one would think must be insalubrious to the man who exhibited it to strangers. A draught from the spring, which was presented us, was cold, and strongly sulphureous.

Between the Clifton-House and the Pavilion is a Museum, whose contents display taste and perseverance; a Camera-Obscura, which gives a miniature and prismatic view of the Falls, and also the nucleus of a menagerie. One of its principal curiosities were a pair of immense white Owls, who fixed their large, round eyes upon the company with imperturbable gravity, as if determined, by an extra show of wisdom, to prove their claim to the patronage of Minerva. Their captivity seemed neither so irksome, nor so contradictory to nature, as that of a Bald Eagle on