‘Much interest has been excited on the subject of the source of these singular waters; but no researches have as yet unfolded the mystery. The large proportion of common salt found among their constituent properties, may be accounted for without much difficulty; all the salt springs of Europe, as well as those of America, being found in geological situations exactly corresponding to these. But the production of the unexampled quantity of carbonic acid gas, the medium through which the other articles are held in solution, is yet, and probably will remain, a subject of mere speculation. The low and regular temperature of the water seems to forbid the idea, that it is the effect of subterranean heat, as many have supposed, and the total absence of any mineral acid, excepting the muriatic, which is combined with soda, does away the possibility of its being the effect of any combination of that kind. Its production is therefore truly unaccountable.’[23] At Albany, in the summer of 1826, in boring for pure water for a brewery, a mineral spring was accidentally opened. The sensible qualities of this water have a great resemblance to those of the Congress Spring at Saratoga, but those who are acquainted with it, think it by no means so stimulating. Its temperature is uniformly from fifty-one to fifty-two degrees of Fahrenheit, at all seasons of the year; its specific gravity, when taken with great care, and after repeated trials, was found to be as one thousand and ten to one thousand. The taste of the water is purely saline, somewhat pungent, and not at all disagreeable; it has no sensible chalybeate taste, and no perceptible smell, which could lead to the suspicion of its holding sulphuretted hydrogen gas in solution.