explain the construction of the fountain. A healthy poplar, seven or
eight years old, is taken from its native soil, and a cold iron borer is
run up the heart of the trunk from the roots, for six feet or more, by
which means the pith is removed, and the trunk is made to assume the
character of a pipe. A hole is then bored through from the outside of
the trunk, to communicate with the highest point reached by the former
operation, and in this second hole a spout is fixed. The same is done
at a very short distance above the root, in the part of the trunk which
will be buried in the earth when the tree is replanted, and the poplar
is then fixed in damp ground, with the pipe at its root in connection
with one of the little runs of water which abound in meadows at the foot
of hills. A well-known property of fluids produces then the strange
effect of an unceasing flow of water from an iron spout in the trunk of
a living tree; and, as poplars love water, the fountain-tree thrives,
and is more vigorous than its neighbours. This sort of fountain may be
common in some parts of Switzerland, but I have not seen them myself
except in this immediate neighbourhood. There is said to be one near
Stachelberg.

In the endeavour to explain all this to me, Christian succeeded so
perfectly, that for the rest of the day we understood each other very
well. When I told him that he spoke much better German than the rest of
the people in Gonten, he informed me that he had worked among
foreigners, in proof whereof he held out his fingers; but all that I
could gather from the invited inspection was, that, whatever his
employment might have been, he could not be said to have come out of it
with clean hands. He had been employed, he explained, in German
dye-works, and there had learned something better than the native
patois. About this time, too, I was able to make him understand that, as
he carried more than I, he must call a halt whenever he felt so