ndent and
unceremonious; and, like most people, because they have reaped a golden
harvest for two years, they anticipate that it will continue. The value
of property at these places has risen, speculations have been entered
into on a large scale, provisions and the necessaries of life have
become dear; new houses are building against time, and the proprietors
smoke their pipes with becoming gravity, calculating upon their future
gains. But the company will fall off more and more each succeeding
year, although the speculations will continue; for people always find a
good reason for a bad season, and anticipate a better one the next. At
last, they will find that they are again deserted, and property will
sink in value to nothing; the reaction will have fully taken place,
prices will fall even lower than they were at first; honesty and
civility will be reassumed, although, probably, the principal will have
been lost. Thus will the bubble burst with them, as it has already with
deserted Spa.

But when all idle people shall have visited all the bubbling fountains
of Germany, where are they to go next? There are some very nice springs
in Iceland not yet patronised; but although the springs there are hot,
the Springs, vernally speaking, are cold. I can inform travellers where
they will find out something new, and I advise them to proceed to the
boiling springs at Saint Michael's, one of the Western isles, and which
are better worth seeing than all the springs that Germany can produce.
I will act as _guide de voyage_.

When you land at Saint Michael's, you will find yourself in one of the
dirtiest towns in the world, and will put up at one of the worst hotels;
however, you will have to pay just as dear as if lodged at the
Clarendon, and fed at the _Rocher de Cancale_. The town contains many
inhabitants, but more pigs. German pigs are not to be compared to them.
You must then hire donkeys and ascend to the mountains, and after a hot
ride, you will arrive at a small valley in the centre of the mountains,
which was once the crater of a volcano, but is now used by nature as a
kettle, in which she keeps hot water perpetually boiling for those who
may require it. There you will behold the waters bubbling and boiling
in all directions, throwing up huge white columns of smoke, brought out
in strong relief by the darker sides of the mountains which rear their
heads around you. The ground you tread upon trembles as you walk; y