“As I was one of the first settlers in the country, living along the creek three miles below Eureka Springs for thirty-eight years, I will tell something about the discovery of that place.
“I had hunted all over these mountains—killed bears and panthers and many other wild animals in nearly every gulch and cave in that vicinity. I have killed nine bears in the hollow near the Dairy Spring and many deer, for that was a good place for them. My regular stopping place was the Rock House, or cave, above the Basin Spring in which Alvah Jackson camped on his hunting trips. We often camped there, using the Basin water for our coffee and never imagining it was more than pure water, until Uncle Alvah camped there with them. They simply dipped the water up from the little basin.
“Then Uncle Alvah began to use the water for other diseases, finding that it was beneficial. He induced Judge Saunders and Mr. Whitson to go there in the summer of ’79. Then others began to come and were cured and benefitted; the whole sides of the mountains were covered with tents.
“I was there every day, watching and wondering. The people crowded around the Basin Spring (that was the only spring at first, though in a short time others were discovered) dipping up the water that poured down over the rock into the little basin, one waiting on the other.
“I would watch for hours, wondering how it could be that I had used the water so long and now to see the crowds gathering there for the cure of all kinds of diseases. Many who were not able to walk would use the water and be able in two or three weeks to climb the mountains, at that time steep and rugged and without roads. Wagons would turn over in trying to drive too near the springs. Once on the bench of the mountains they would take off the wheels, and let the axles rest on the ground. Then tents and afterwards houses were erected.
“One incident that happened that summer impressed me with solemn thoughts. For lack of a house a great many people gathered under the trees one Sunday to hear the preacher. A rain came up and we all retired to the rock house. As I listened to a good sermon and saw the preacher laying his book on the rock where I had so often set my coffee pot, my mind ran back to the many times I had camped here, to times when the scream of the panther or the growl of the bear mingled with that of my dogs in the fight. Little did I think that afterwards I would sit here and hear the voice of the man of God echoing among those rocks. I was convinced that the all-wise Creator had not made these mountains and valleys merely for the wild beasts.