A CHLOROFORM SPRING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 6, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 18.

A CHLOROFORM SPRING.

It is seldom that the reporter in search of news fails to get an item from our worthy school superintendent, G. H. Stout. Not only is he thoroughly conversant with everything pertaining to educational matters, but he is an expert mineralogist, and spends the greater part of his summer vacation in pursuit of his favorite vocation in the mountains of Butte. In conversation with him to-day he told of a wonderful mineral spring that formerly flowed from the mountain side some miles above the Butte Creek House and near the Plumas County line.

This spring was first called to Mr. Stout's attention some years ago while camping in that vicinity, by an old prospector, who called it the "chloroform spring." The water which flowed from it did not differ in appearance or taste from the water from other springs, except that it was slightly brackish. It was the effect that followed the drinking of its waters that was remarkable. A small cupful would, in course of half an hour, render the drinker totally insensible, and he would remain as one dead for hours. But few white men had ever tried the experiment of drinking from it, but those who had described the effect as not unlike that resulting from a heavy narcotic.

To the Indians this curious spring had been known for generations. They call it "heep sleep" spring, and it is said that more than one poor weary red man has entered the happy hunting grounds through the medium of its waters.

Mr. Stout states that when he saw the spring, in the summer of 1890, there were no less than five carcasses of deer, besides numerous smaller animals, in its immediate neighborhood that had drunk of the water and been overcome and died from its effects. An examination of the geological construction of the immediate section failed to show any mineral that might account for the peculiar power of the water, and, so far as known, no analysis has ever been made.—Oroville (Cal.) Mercury.