A Spring Yielding Chicken Soup.

Manawatu Herald, 8 June 1899, Page 3

A Spring Yielding Chicken Soup.

There is in the State of Nevada a natural phenomenon, which, prior to investigation, might impress one as belonging in more likelihood to the realm of fiction than to the realm of fact. It is a spring of calcareous deposits, located near Elko, which yields at first hand from mother earth what the inhabitants of the town regard as a better quality of chicken soup than can be concocted by any of the " chefs " of the various hotels along the line of the neighbouring Southern Pacific Railway. Of course, this judgment of the Elkoites is not infallible, as what would, pass as terrapin and champagne with them might impress one not native born as salt-cod and hardtack. It all depends upon how generous the goddess of civilisation has been to them in her distribution, of an epicurean taste. These springs have been known to the Indians in that vicinity for more than a hundred years; and long before the whites came to this country, the Indians were in the habit of taking sick members of their tribe there, where they pitched their tents and remained to drink the waters and bathe in them until they were cured. In the early days the Washoes and Piutes had many a battle for the possession of the springs*, until it presently dawned upon them that the fights which took place in their vicinity resulted in death to more Indians than were cured by its waters. Tradition has it that they held a council of war somewhere between 1830 and 1840, signed .1 treaty of peace, and agreed to mutually share the benefits of the sanitarium. In 1 863, the whites first became aware of the existence of the spring when it was discovered by Charles Lautenschlager, who was prospecting for gold in that vicinity. A few years afterwards, John Kropper made a legal location of the place, taking up forty acres, which he sold to J. Von Alstine, who in turn transferred them to its present proprietor, who has remained in possession for the last twenty-seven years. The springs originally oozed out of the top of two rocky cones, but since tunnels were run into the sides at a depth of about six feet, the springs flow several thousand gallons a day. The one known as the Soup Spring is about two hundred yards from the hotel, and the waters contain sulphur, magnesia, iron and soda, with some copper. As the water runs out it is dipped up by tourists in glasses and a little pepper and salt added. The taste is then so much like chicken broth that it would easily pass for it if placed upon a hotel table. In order to test this proposition more thoroughly, the proprietor of-, the hotel once served some of the water to his guests as chicken broth, and no complaint was heard. There is no denying the fact that the chicken flavour is sufficiently pronounced to entitle it to the. name it bears. — Samuel Davis, in the National Magazine.