pure condition.

The artesian wells cost not far from $6 per foot for the boring, and
are much less expensive.

Most of the springs are owned by stock companies, with a capital
ranging from several hundred thousand to a million dollars. _On dit_
that the proprietors of the Geyser Spring were offered $175,000 for
their fountain, and probably the Congress could not be purchased for
quadruple that amount. It would not be a _very_ profitable bargain if
some of the springs could be bought for a song, even, and yet there is
not enough mineral water in all the springs now discovered in the
Saratoga valley to supply New York alone, if artificial waters were to
be abandoned. The only profit of the springs is in the sale of the
water in bottles and barrels; and as the method of bottling requires
great care, and is expensive, the per cent. of profit is not enormous.
The use of mineral water, both as a beverage and for medicinal
purposes, is increasing, and there may be "a good time coming," when
these springs will bring wealth to the owner as they give health to
the drinker.

The Medicinal Value of the Waters.

There is no doubt of their power to promote evacuations of effete
accumulations from the kidneys, skin and bowels.

Dr. Draper, an eminent physician, in speaking of the springs, says:
"They restore suppressed, and correct vitiated secretions, and so
renovate health, and are also the means of introducing many medicines
into the system in a state of minute subdivision, in which they exert
a powerful alterative and curative action."

The value of mineral water has been shown in the treatment of obscure
and chronic diseases. In many instances persons have been restored to
health, or greatly relieved, by the use of mineral waters when all
other remedies had proved of no avail.

The best known waters are now prescribed by the faculty in certain
diseases with as much confidence as any preparation known to the
apothecary. Indeed, no prescription is known equally beneficial to
such differently made patients.

A large majority of those who resort to the springs for their health
have tried other means of cure without relief.

It may also be considered a marked compliment to the medicinal
properties of the waters, that the thousands who come here for
pleasure merely, living fast and indulging in dissipation while here,
return to their homes in better health--as they almost always do--than
when they came.

Unlike