Full text of "The Virginia tourist. Sketches of the springs and mountains of Virginia: containing an eexposition of fields for the touist la Virginia; natural beauties and wonders of the state; also accounts of its mineral springs: and a medical guide to the use of the waters. etc., etc"

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THE

Virginia Tourist

SKETCHES OF THE
SPRINGS AND MOUNTAINS OF VIRGINIA:

CONTAINING

AN EXPOSITION OF FIELDS FOR THE TOURIST IN VIRGINIA; NATURAL.

BEAUTIES AND WONDERS OF THE STATE; ALSO ACCOUNTS OF

ITS MINERAL SPRINGS; AND A MEDICAL GUIDE TO

THE USE OF THE WATERS, ETC., ETC.

EDWARD A. POLLARD,

Author of "The Black Diamonds," "The Lost Cause," etc. etc

ILLUSTRA TED BY ENGRA VINGS FROM ACTUAL SKETCHES.

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern

District of Pennsylvania.

Lippincott's Press,
philadelphia.

• • ■ » t • « I

• • ■ • • 1

'•» •••• tc

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• • • •• * ' I '
I » ••« • . « ■

ANNOUNCEMENT.

HE Author comes before the public, this time,
humbly bearing what may be described to many
readers in America as the discoveries or revela-
tions of a iV^^ze/ ;^r/<//

So httle known, even among his own countrymen, is
Transmontane Virginia ; not now referring to its unde-
veloped industrial resources, but to its unappreciated
wealth of natural scenery, its unknown rivers and its
unexplored mountains ; the beauties and wonders which
designate this region as the richest field, the most abun-
dant area of adventure and discovery, yet remaining for
the American Tourist; and, added to these gifts, the
curious and magnificent dowry that Nature has bestowed
in the distribution here of Mineral Springs unequaled in
the world.

It IS believed that the many interests contained in this
work will embrace many classes of readers. In brief, it
is designed to be a Traveller's or Tourist's Guide,' a
Medical Guide, a Sketch Book and an Artist's Portfolio
of the Great Mountain Belt of Virginia; a region in which
is displayed a Scenery that, positively, when known, will

4 ANNOUNCEMENT.

admit no rivals on this continent, and in which is provided
the additional and illimitable attraction of the great Sani-
tarium of America.

The author has told the unaffected story of a real tour,
but he has attempted something more than a slight or a
temporary work. He has designed, not without some
pride in the undertaking, a great patriotic contribution to
the State of Virginia, developing a source of prosperity
as fruitful and real as that of her fields and mines ; and
he has aimed to lay a worthy literary offering on those
high altars of worship which he has found in some of the
grandest scenes of Nature.

Among the few persons he has to thank for any favors
the author would testify here his gratitude to his artist
friend, Warren C. White, Esq., whose assistance in sketch-
ing some of the scenes of the work not only deserves
acknowledgment, but whose affectionate companionship
on the journey is remembered in another sense and with
a tenderer gratitude.

The author has but little else to be thankful for in the
way of encouragement of his work. However, he is ac-
customed to submit his writings on their merit alone ; and
he is proud to say that, however the envy of criticism may
have interposed and expostulated, the favors of the reading
public have never yet failed to give him signal rewards.

Edward A. Pollard.
Home in Virginia.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY-
PAGE

Neglect of the Natural Scenery of Virginia — A Glance over its
Beauties and Wonders — The Natural Structure of
Virginia — Design of our Work — " Old " Virginia — Natural
Divisions of the State — Piedmont Virginia — The Valley of
Virginia — Husbandmen of the Valley — South-west Virginia
— Picture Galleries constituted by the Mountains — Three
Notable Pictures — Virginia as a Recent Discovery — The
Springs Region of Virginia — The Sanitarium of
America — The Boundaries of this Region — Its Relation
to the Mississippi Valley — Hotel Accommodations at the
Springs — Their Defects — Investments in Springs' Property —
Guide to the Virginia Tourist — The Angle which
measures the Springs Region — How it may be Traversed —
Stage Routes over the Mountains — Table of Routes in
and about the Springs Region — A Topographical Coup
d' CEil of a Tour in Virginia 13

CHAPTER II.

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

Lynchburg recommended as a Starting-point of a Tour in Vir-
ginia — Superior Attractions of South-west Virginia for the
Tourist — Obscurities of this Part of the State — Description
of "the Hill City " — Mountain Scenery around Lynchburg —
A Royal Peculiarity of the Blue Ridge — Ancient Memories
of Lynchburg — The James River and Kanawha Canal —
1 * 5

6 CONTENTS.

PAGB

George Washington's Vision — The Great Water Line
OF Virginia — A Vision of Romance as well as of Empire —
The Boast of New River — An Heraldic Ensign for " New"
Virginia 37

CHAPTER HI.

FROM LYNCHBURG TO THE NATURAL BRIDGE.

Recent Neglect of the Natural Bridge by Sight-Seers — Directions
of Route to it — On the Banks of the James — Balcony Falls
— Views from the Stage Road — Scenery on North River —
The Natural Bridge — First Sight of it — Curious Propor-
tions of Art in its Structure — The Angle of Ascent — View
from the Creek below — A Strange Imagination — Gates of
Hell — The Natural Bridge compared with Niagara Falls —
Two Illustrations of the Sublime in our American Schools
of .(Esthetics — Climbing the Natural Bridge — Testi-
mony of an Eye-witness 48

CHAPTER IV.

THE PEAK.S of otter.

Journey to the Peaks — Experiences by the Wayside — Panoramic
Views — Picture of a Feudal Proprietorship — Grape-growing
in the Mountains — Toilsome Ascent — On the Peak — Stand-
ing up in the great Hollowness of the Sky — Peculiar Sublim-
ity of the Peaks of Otter — A Religious Reflection on the
Scene — Bird of the Mountain — The Sublime Effect of a
Striking Contrast — The Little Earth and the Great Heav-
ens 60

CHAPTER V.

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS AND SURROUNDINGS.

Route to the Alleghany Springs — At the Heart of the Mountains
of Virginia — Access to the Springs North and South — The
Water sui generis, and the most elaborate in the World —
Analysis of the Water — Medical Guide to its Uses — Wonder-

CONTENTS. 7

PAGB

ful Effects of the Water — The Scenery around the Springs
the most Remarkable in Virginia — Puncheon Run Falls —
Romance of its Discovery — Climbing the Mountain — A
Rough Journey — Sublimity of the Falls — Descent Two
Thousand Feet^Scenes on Puncheon Run — " Purgatory" —
The Deserters' Fortress — Fisher's View — Looking from
the Mountain's Top — Characteristics of Mountain Views —
Sublime Effect of a View of and beyond the Alleghany 70

CHAPTER VI.

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA.

Going to the Natural Tunnel — A Seat of Empire — Bristol and
its Surroundings — A Ride through Two States — The
White Ships of the Mountains — Estillville — A Glance at
the Mineral Wealth of the Country — " Boone's Trace " —
Indian Relics and Traditions — The Natural Tunnel —
First View of the Tunnel — Its Dimensions — Frightful Pass-
age through it — Sublime View from the Lower Entrance —
Speculations as to the Cause of this great Natural Wonder —
The Tunnel seen by Sunrise — Sublime and Picturesque Ef-
fects — Association of an Indian Story — The Tragedy of
Masoa — The Adventure of Dodson — A Battle with an Eagle
— The Cave of the Unknown — Almost Lost — A Cavern-
ous Country — Blooming Rocks — ^A Poetical Country-
man — The Holston Springs — Analysis of the " Hot
Spring" — Attractions of the Place 91

CHAPTER VII.

THE MONTGOMERY WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, AND THE YELLOW

SULPHUR SPRINGS.

8 CONTENTS.

PAGE

the Tournament — A Beautiful Illumination in the Moun-
tains — A Night Picture — The Yellow Sulphur Springs
— Analysis and Virtues of the Water — Within Sixty Feet of
the Alleghany Summit II9

CHAPTER VIII.

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER, SALT POND, BALD KNOB AND LITTLE

STONY CREEK.

Plan of a Trip into Giles County — Crossing the Mountain — A
Ride through a Night-storm — The Adventure of a Lost Hat
— Benighted in the Woods — Singular Experience with a
Mountaineer — One of " Nature's Noblemen " — Egcles-
ton's White Sulphur Springs — Scenery ok New
River — " Pompey's Pillar" and " Caesar's Arch " — " The
Narrows" — " Hawk's Nest" — New River compared with
the Rhine — Little Stony Falls — Terrific Leap of the
Water — Salt Pond — A Lake of Fresh Water suspended
among the Clouds — A Submerged Forest — Part of the Lake
Unfathomable — An Old Lady's Theory — An Emigrant
Company of East Tennesseeans — Talks with Them — A Pic-
ture of Solitude — Bald Knob — Looking into F"ive States
— Effects as compared with the View from the Peaks of
Otter — Cloud-ships — A Fog-ocean — A Hospitable Rest 130

CHAPTER IX.

TAZEWELL COUNTY THE SWITZERLAND OF VIRGINIA.

How to go to Tazewell County — Description of the Route — Salt-
ville — The Alps of Virginia — " The Peak " — An Indian
Baltle-Field— Dial Rock — Climbing the Cliffs — Valley OF
THE Clinch River — View of it on a Summer's Evening —
Burke's Garden — Abb's Valley — The Flora of South-west
Virginia — The Tazewell Historical Society — Was Tazewell
County ancient Xuala ? — Social and Literary Culture in the
Mountains — Romance on Horseback — A Ride through
the Mountains — Homes of the Mountaineers — Com-
parison of the Mountaineer and the Lowland Rustic — Dia-

CONTENTS. 9

PAGE

led of the Mountains^Traditions of the Early Commerce
of South-west Virginia — "Uncle Billy" — Isolation of the
Mountaineer's Home — An Observation of Mr. Horace
Greeley — Simplicity of a Primitive Society — A CoMEDY IN
THE Mountains — " Sal's" Courtship — The " beatingest "
Dog — A Lock of Hair — Reflections on the Mountain Maid
— A Vision of Beauty 154

CHAPTER X.

LEXINGTON AND THE VALLEY OK VIRGINIA.

From South-west Virginia to Lexington — Coyner's Springs — ■
Reputation of the Water — Lexington and its Surround-
ings — "The Athens of Virginia" — Its Educational Institu-
tions — General Lee's Professorship — The Grave of
Stonewall Jackson — A curious letter from a former
Governor of Virginia — The Rockbridge Baths — A Buoy-
ant Water — The Rockbridge Alum Springs — Mountain
Views — A Remarkable Advantage of the Watering-Places
of Virginia — Testimony of Dr. Cartwright — The Valley
of Virginia — Its Physical Geography — Peculiarity of
Minor Formations — The Luray Valley — View from Thorn-
ton's Gap — A Recollection of the War — Mineral Springs
on the P'lanks of the Alleghany— The Valley of Virginia, as
a Fancy and as a Reality 180

CHAPTER XI.

a romance of the valley of VIRGINIA.

Geographical Fables of the early Virginia Colonists — Mr. Jeffer-
son's belief in the Mastodon — A Curious Indian Myth —
The Barrier of the Blue Ridge — Influx of Pennsylvania
Germans into the Valley of Virginia — The Adventures of
John Sailing — The Lewis Family — Remarkable Result of a
Buffalo Hunt — Burden's Grant — Andrew Lewis' Explor-
ations on Greenbrier River — The Shawnees — Death of
Cornstalk — Relations of the Germans and of the Scotch-
Irish in the Valley — Characteristics of the Scotch-Irish —

lO CONTENTS.

PACK

Their Churches and Schools — Three Generations in the
Valley �� The Progress of America in Miniature 19S

CHAPTER XII.

THE GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS.

The Railroad through the Mountains — Site of the White Sul-
phur Springs — Pleasing Scenery — The Springs in 1772 —
Hotel Improvements — The Grounds — Analysis of the White
Sulphur Water — Remarks on the Use of Mineral Waters-
Popular Errors on the Subject — Debauchery in Mineral
"Waters — A Guide to the Use of the White Sulphur W'ater
— The Theory of Fresh vs. Stale — The Bathing Establish-
ment — Life at the Springs — " Jenkins " in Virginia — A
Ball-room Conversation — A Southern Editor on Society
and Comfort at the Springs — Why Virginians " can't keep
Hotels " — An Anecdote of Boniface — The White Sulphur
Hotel a Superior one 222

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SPRINGS OF MONROE AND BATH COUNTIES.

The Springs Region described from the White Sulphur as a
Centre — Surrounding Scenery — View from Dry Creek — .
The Old Sweet Springs— A Ride through the Rain —
An Aristocratic Resort — Medical Description of the Old
Sweet Water — The Salt Sulphur Springs — Observa-
tions of Dr. Mutter — The Red Sulphur Springs — Re-
ported cures of Consumption — The Blue Sulphur Springs
— Analysis of the W^ater — Routes from the Greenbrier -
White Sulphur Springs into Bath County — The Cascade
OF THE Falllxg Si'Rings — Views through a New Atmos-
phere — The Blowing Cave — Thomas Jefferson's Descrip-
tion Incorrect — The Warm Springs Mountain — Look-
ing from " Flag Rock " — The Hot Springs — Virtues of
the Thermal Baths — The Warm Springs — An Indian
Tradition — The Healing Springs — Beauties of Scenery
— Pleasures of Trout-fishing — Dr. Burke on these Springs

CONTENTS. II

PAGE

—The Bath Alum Springs— Effects of the Water-
Painful Aspects of Invalidism at the Springs 239

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM STAUNTON TO WEYER'S CAVE.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad — Looking to the Occident
— A Wilderness of Riches — The Tow.n ok Staunton — A
Glance at its History — Views of the Surrounding Country

The Virginian " Apology " for Roads — Weyer's Cave

— A Subterranean Diorama — " Formations" and Curiosities
— Peculiarities of Subterranean Nomenclature — "Washing-
ton's Hall " — A Flight of Fancies — Dimensions of the
Cave — Estimate of it as a Natural Wonder — Age of the
Stalactites — The Sublimity of Nature as a Workman 260

Pr.\ctical Hints to the Virginia Tourist 273

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MAP OF SPRINGS REGION frontispiece.

PAGE

SCENE ON NORTH RIVER 50

PUNCHEON RUN FALLS 77

" PURGATORY' —VIEW ON PUNCHEON RUN 85

FISHER'S VIEW— THE ALLEGHANY SPRINGS 89

THE NATURAL TUNNEL— THE INTERIOR 103

—LOOKING OUT 106

LITTLE STONY FALLS 143

VIEW FROM THORNTON'S GAP— THE LURAY VALLEY 195

VIEW ON DRY CREEK 240

TROUT POOL 256

The Virginia Tourist.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTOR Y.

Neglect of the Natural Scenei-y of Virginia — A Glance over its Beauties and Won-
ders — The Natural Structure of Virginia— Design of our Work — "Old"
Virginia — Natural Divisions of the State — Piedmont Virginia — The Valley of
Virginia — Husbandmen of the Valley — South-west Virginia — Picture Galleries
constituted by the Mnuntains — Three Notable Pictures — Virginia as a Recent
Discovery — The Strings Region of Virginia — The Sanitarium of
America — The Boundaries of this Region — Its Relation to the Mississippi
Valley — Hotel Accommodations at the Springs — Their Defects — Investments
in Springs' Properly— Guide to the Virginia Tourist — The Angle which
measures the Springs Region — How it may be Traversed — Stage Routes over
the Mountains — Table of Routes in and about the Springs Region —
A Topographical Coup cfCEil oiz. Tour in Virginia.

IT is a subject of complaint, and a sore reflection
with Virginians, that the natural scenery of their

I State, which they claim excels in interest any
equal area of the Union, and surpasses that of Europe in
the breadth of its panoramas and in many other effects,
has been so long neglected, obtaining hitherto so small a
patronage of the traveler and the artist. Certainly no
other State in the Union can make the same number of
exhibitions of the sublime and curious in works of the
wonder and cunning of Nature. Yet these are but little
known north of the Potomac, and a population unskilled
2 13

1 4 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

in advertising the attractions of tlieir neighborhood see
them neglected, while inferior scenes and resorts in the
North are attended every convenient season by tens of
thousands of visitors, are displayed in illustrated papers,
written of, ostentatiously described, and made objects of
curiosity and of interest to the Avhole world. The Avriter
was recently shown a book entitled Summer Resorts of
America, in which not a single place attractive to travelers
for health or pleasure was noted south of Cape May. Yet
here, in this wonderful State of Virginia, we have a well-
defined belt of territory containing more than twenty
mineral springs, in the variety and efficacy of their waters
certainly unequaled in the whole world, and offering the
remarkable double attraction that these fountains of
health and pleasure are set in a scenery unsurpassed, and
wherein stand numerous wonders of Nature, which have
been sometimes esteemed by the few foreign travelers
who have penetrated to our mountain lands as, indeed,
the greatest sights of the American continent.

In years before the war these scenes were visited from
abroad to some extent. This awakening interest must
have been cut short by the war, or, for some other reason,
curiosity has resiled from the mountains of Virginia ; for
it is certain that scenes among them, once referred to as
wonderful and interesting, have fallen into comparative
obscurity, and have for years since the war foiled to make
their appearance, even in the advertisement columns of
the newspapers. Yet what beauties and wonders may be
swept by a glance of the eye across less than half the
breadth of the State !

Take the Natural Bridge in Rockbridge county, its arch
fifty-five feet higher than Niagara Falls, its mystic rocks
rising with the decision of a wall.

INTR OD UC TOR 2'. 1 5

The Peaks of Otter (Bedford county), 5307 feet above
the sea-level, where John Randolph, once witnessing the
sun rise over the majestic scene, turned to his servant,
having no other to whom he could express his thoughts,
and charged him "never, from that time, to believe any
one who told hirn there was no God !"

Hawk's Nest, or Marshall's Pillar (Fayette county), the
latter name in honor of Chief Justice Marshall, who, as
one of the State commissioners, stood upon its fearful
brink, the entire spot not affording standing-room for
half a dozen persons, and sounded its exact depth to the
river margin, which exceeds one thousand feet.

The Natural Tunnel (Scott county), passing one hun-
dred and fifty yards through the solid rock, making a huge
subterraneous cavern or grotto, whose vaulted roof rises '
seventy to eighty feet above its floor, and facing the en-
trance to which is an amphitheatre of rude and frightful
precipices, looking like the deserted thrones of the genii
of the mountain.

Weyer's Cave (Augusta county), which has been com-
pared to the celebrated Grotto of Antiparos, traversing in
length more than sixteen hundred feet, its innumerable
apartments filled with snowy-white concretions of a thou-
sand various forms, among which stands "the Nation's
Hero," a concretion having the form and drapery of a
gigantic statue.

A mountain scenery, of a portion of which an English
traveler, passing through the Kanawha country to the
White Sulphur Springs, has written : " For one hundred
and sixty miles you pass through a gallery of pictures
most exquisite, most varied, most beantifi.l — one that will
not suffer in comparison with a row along the finest por-
tions of the Rhine."

l6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Again, on the very waters of "the Rhme of Virginia,"
beautiful, wonderful New River, cutting with its steel-blue
blade into the very rock, and, even at the base of its
cliffs, passing one hundred and fifty feet deep through
glittering banks of the mineral wealth of the State.

The Bald Knob, with nothing but a broken crown of
rock on its scarred summit, from which we may look as
far as eye can reach, and watch the passenger clouds into
five States.

The Salt Pond, the mysterious lake hanging among the
clouds on the side of Bald Knob, unfathomable, or mea-
sured in places only by the submerged forest which we
see as if cast in bronze in the depths of the emerald
waters.

A little farther away "a new Switzerland," compassed
in Tazewell county, where "Burke's Garden" smiles in
the shadow of "the Peak," and the swift streams dash
like arrows through the mountain sides.

And lastly — that the freshness of a recent discovery
may adorn the catalogue — the Puncheon Run Falls, dis-
covered near the Alleghany Springs, the water, hurled
from the brow of the mountain, descending at an angle
near the perpendicular eighteen hundred or two thousand
feet — a scene, in its union of the picturesque and grand,
unexcelled, yet which had never been noticed until the
summer of 1869, but by the rude and stoical mountaineers,
who had never thought of advertising it to the world.

But this is only an enumeration of scenes at random.
There is a remarkable system of distribution in the natu-
ral scenery of Virginia. There is an order in the exhi-
bition — a dioramic order in which its scenes pass before
our eyes ; a succession of galleries constituted by its rivers
and mountains.

INTRODUCTORY. 1 7

This by way of prefatory remark. In affording the
reader an introduction to the scenery loosely enumerated
above, and to other interests of our work, it will be con-
venient here to lay the foundation of the tour we propose
in some general remarks, and to indicate our plan under
some different heads.

THE NATURAL STRUCTURE OF VIRGINIA.

We are not going to write of the physical geography
of the State, its geology, or its agriculture. It is not the
design of our work to descant on the "resources" of Vir-
ginia, to uncover her robes of field and forest, or to throw
curious and scientific glances into her beauteous bosom.
The author is simply a tourist ; he is traveling for pleas-
ure ; and he cannot pause to observe what there is of
scientific or commercial interest in the country he trav-
erses, unless such as falls obviously under the attention of
the ordinary traveler. Such "incidental mentionings"
may be not without value or interest. But the main pur-
pose of the author is simply to record the impressions of
a real journey from the stand-points of pleasure and rec-
reation. He is a tourist, not a scientific explorer, or
even a "commercial traveler;" he is to tell what there
is of the beautiful and the enjoyable in "the grand old
State" — and the task is plentiful enough. It is distinct
enough, too, though it may sometimes fall into reflec-
tions on "resources" of the State as seen from the way-
side, and mingle something slight of "the material" with
the aesthetic and luxurious.

The Natural Structure of Virginia constitutes those
remarkable divisions of scenery to which we have already
referred. They are divisions which have grown up on
2* B

l8 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

differences of topography and soil, and to which the steps
are geographical. The common impressions of Virginia
which the larger mass of travelers passing hurriedly
through it obtain are those of the Atlantic slope, and
they are impressions by no means prepossessing. Pass-
ing from the Potomac through a series of dreary country
towns to the unclean city of Richmond, or floated there
from Norfolk on the tidewater of the James, or going
even for many miles on the railroads leading from the
capital of the State, the traveler on the ordinary routes
has but a sorry sight of "old" Virginia, in her galled
hills and old fields, worn to exhaustion by the plough
and hoe in the culture of tobacco and corn. It is a level
and barren picture. The old field pines, the broom
sedge and the persimmons are the memorials of "im-
provement" under the past system of slavery. The trav-
eler from the North thinks of his own populous land-
scapes, he compares what he sees along the low, scanty
banks of the historic rivers of Virginia with the valleys
of the Hudson, the Mohawk and the Susquehanna, and,
having seen the decays of Eastern Virginia, he carries
home the impression that there is but little worth seeing
in the State, except for those "prospecting" for cheap
farms and speculating in impoverished lands.

But never were impressions more partial or unjust. He
has traversed but the decayed framework of the beauties
of Virginia scenery and the bounties of her soil. He has
not yet seen through the blue-gilded mists of the moun-
tains, which his eye has caught only desultorily and in
the distance. Let him approach those distant heights,
of which he has seen only the faint outline from the win-
dows of the railroad car, and in the picturesque landscape
there rise up in perspective the Blue Ridge, the Peaks of

INTRODUCTORY. 19

Otter and Monticello, overlooking the grand dome of
the University of Virginia.

He is now in Piedmont Virginia. The character of
the agriculture is changed. There is a mixed system of
farming, planting and grazing. He goes beyond the
blue mountains — that mysteriously and beautifully robed
boundary which Nature has lifted up into the sky, in the
Blue Ridge, the barrier for a century against the early
enterprise of the Virginia colonist — and new scenes un-
fold. He has struck the rich soils of clay, loam and
limestone — the grand, rock-ribbed belt that girds the
mountains from the Potomac to Tennessee and Ken-
tucky, and widens and embraces the beautiful Valley of
Virginia. He is in a country where every view is of won-
der, and admiration, and thankfulness. The fields are
dressed with the green grass and the blue grass ; the hills
and the mountains and the valleys smile with verdure;
there are the golden harvests, and fruits of summer and
autumn, and the wealth of flowers; the year is crowned
with goodness; the pure " encasing air" is as an invisible
garment of inspiration; the pastures are clothed with
flocks and herds, which are led into green pastures and
lie down by still waters. There are the catde upon a
thousand hills. There are the husbandmen of the Valley,
a simple and prosperous race ; there are real Arcadians ;
there Plenty smiles in the sunburnt face; there, in the
sweet and fruitful fields, men send up the incense of
grateful hearts, and invoke the blessing of Him who
''visits the earth and waters it," upon the fruits of honest
toil.

Upon these mountain shelves Nature has placed the
great stores of her fertilizers, to renovate the worn and
barren lands which decline to the sea. Along its entire

20 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

northern border, throughout the whole extent of the
Valley and South-west Virginia, lie buried, deep down in
the earth, beds of limestone, cropping out upon the sur-
face everywhere, and inviting capital and enterprise to
burn and market millions of tons of it, and to spread it
upon the clay and sand soils of all Eastern Virginia.
There are no sour growths here; the sorrel, the pines,
and the broom sedge have been exchanged for the vigor-
ous cereals and all the healthful blooms of domesticated
vegetation.

The topography, the frame of the earth here, is worthy
of its garniture. The most remarkable topographical
feature of Virginia is the grand gallery constituted by its
mountain ranges, the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany, and
a distribution of rivers which we shall elsewhere notice;
and it is a gallery where are not only piled up the de-
posits of its wealth and the displays of its bounty, but
where the loveliest and the grandest pictures succeed
wherever the eye roves. Here are the mountains — that
wonderful feature of Nature which is the universal expres-
sion of the sublime, the types of the highest mystery; for
it is on the mountains where the religions of all men have,
by curious universal instinct, placed the oracles of God
and the altars of sacrifice. Here are the valleys, the
abode of the beautiful ; that which the universal spirit of
poetry has chosen as its favorite part of earth ; here the
variegated display, the walk of meditation, the home of
the thankful laborer, the loveliness of Nature with the
usefulness of man ; no longer the severity of the mountain
robe of solitude, but the warm colors of human life (
the landscape. We are in the Garden of Virginia, ai
its boundaries are the mountains that stand out as Ian
marks on the vast and shoreless sea of the azure heavei

INTR OD UC TOR Y. 3 1

Let the traveler now pass out of the Valley of Vir-
ginia, crossing the range of the Alleghany where it de-
clines to the south-west — its altitudes sunken and broken —
and he is in another division of the State. He passes
through a shattered side of a natural gallery, a picturesque
confusion, where the great Appalachian system apparently
loses its unity and is tossed into a sea of mountains. He
passes by the salt wells, that remarkable source of the
supply of brine which the wants of six millions of people
in a four years' war did not sensibly diminish ; a never-
failing fountain of waters welling up perennially in the
deep, beautiful basin of the richest land in the State. He
is now in South-west Virginia. He is in a country richer in
mineral resources than California, and more beautiful and
various in its natural scenery than any equal area in
America. The modern El Dorado boasts only of gold ;
but here are not only salt, plaster, limestone and marble,
but in the same belt, in an area twenty miles in width by
sixty in length, are clustered iron, lead, copper, zinc,
baryta and numerous other minerals, discovered but not
developed. Gold is no longer the measure of mineral
wealth. The lead mines of South-west Virginia supplied
the Confederacy v/ith shot during the war. The iron
alone hid in its mountains is said by Pennsylvania iron
men to be worth, if developed, more than the gold mines
of California. And just beyond this richly-jeweled belt,
toward the Cumberland range and the Ohio, is a vast
coal field, richer, more extensive, than the coal field
of Pennsylvania — the "black diamonds" more indispen-
sable for the crown of Modern Commerce than the gems
of Golconda.

Here, too, the natural scenery of Virginia has its last,

'jid, perhaps, supremest development. It is a region

22 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

almost unknown to tourists. The wild and rugged scenery
at Harper's Ferry, where the mad rush of the mingled
waters of the Shenandoah and the Potomac bursts the
mountain barrier, has been rendered famous by the pen
of Thomas Jefferson; the grandeur and beauty of "Bal-
cony Falls," where the James river makes its passage
through the Blue Ridge, glancing and murmuring through
the rock-ribbed bosom of the everlasting hills, is a com-
mon spectacle to the traveler ; but the third grand pic-
ture of the same peculiar sort, constituted by the river and
its barrier, and fitted in the Mountain Gallery of Virginia —
"the Breaks of the Sandy," where the Cumberland range
is riven asunder by the accumulated forces of the head-
waters of Big Sandy, the mountain rent from apex to
base by the rushing and resistless surge — is comparatively
unvisited and unknown. There is an order in these three
notable pictures of the savage sublimity of mountain and
river — a system founded in the relations of the two
elements of natural scenery in Virginia; but of these
kindred scenes that of the Sandy is undoubtedly the sur-
passing one. Here is the colossal and ruined " Chimney,"
standing four hundred feet, in the deep, blue sky, above
the other gigantic rocks, the fallen walls and shattered
arches of antediluvian architecture. The scene from the
bed of the stream has been thus described by one who,
like ourselves — and even beyond those routes which we
have considered accessible to the ordinary traveler, and
which, therefore, limit this work — has sought out the
beauties of Virginia scenery: "Bald and perpendicular
walls of sandstone rise in naked majesty hundreds of feet
above, whilst the waters which chafe and madden at their
base are filled and choked by the shattered fragments
which have been riven from their summits. Here and

INTR OD UC TOR T. 23

tliere the hand of Nature, the great Restorer, has softened
the asperities of the scene, and clothed in verdure and
beauty both beetling cliff and precipitous ravine. Here
the spruce towers in sombre majesty, or the laurel and
ivy throw their dark mantle over the spectral rocks ; and
there the bramble and the muscadine mingle their foliage
and their fruit in wild and graceful beauty, crowning with
tender tendrils and purple berries some tempest-riven or
lightning-blasted trunk. For three or four miles this wild
and savage scene stretches in unbroken continuity."

. . . Yet of the Virginia we have thus described, beyond
the dead and uninteresting levels of the East — of Piedmont
Virginia, of the Valley of Virginia, of South-west Virginia —
how little is known ! A Southern writer has ingeniously
remarked: "A Northern editor recently visited Virginia,
and on his return wrote just such a descriptive account of
the people and the country as we should expect from an
explorer into an unknown region: Indeed, one of the
most noticeable things of the civil war was the discovery
of Virginia and the Southern States by the Yankees."

While capital and emigrants stand gazing into this
terra incognita, we may disclose aspects of it to yet an-
other class of adventure and of travel. Fortimately, at
the time of this writing, the attention of the country has
been powerfully drawn upon Virginia, in the interest of
its wonderful industrial resources and of a system of in-
ternal improvements that has risen to national import-
ance. It is reasonable that such a vivid and searching
regard of the State must, in the end, suggest and develop
all the elements of interest which it contains ; that the
natural scenery which envelopes its resources will not be
much longer slighted by the world ; that the tourist will
follow in the track of adventurers in other pursuits,

24 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

bringing a novel and important element of travel into
the State, and discovering a new world of beauty, as well
as new kingdoms of commerce and industry. It is, as
seizing this rising interest in Virginia, to reveal to it,
along with other aspects, the peculiar objects to which
our book is devoted, that we consider our work well de-
signed, and aided by time and opportunity in its claim
upon the attention of the country.

But even within the limits of our design we have so
far directed the reader but to one of its topics — ^viz., the
natural scenery of Virginia. We have yet to show an-
other curious element of interest, which has so far ap-
peared only in the title or announcement of our work,
and which we have delayed in these introductory pages,
beyond a bare reference in the first paragraph, for a
separate treatment becoming its importance. Asso-
ciated with the scenes we have rather mapped out thar
described are the y2cn.ov& Mineral Springs of Virginia
Here, bound in a natural scenery unsurpassed, fenced '
by the mountains, is that wonderful sanitary enclosu-
Virginia Medicatrix — an invitation for health to '
world. It is an invitation which we propose to ^we
out at some length. ed

.he

THE SPRINGS REGION OF VIRGINIA : THE SANITARIUl

AMERICA. ^^

The territory in which the most famous of the mind
springs of Virginia are sought may be rudely desc'ihe
as a belt or crescent, averaging in width a doubklar
of counties, commencing at the AUegliany Springet
Montgomery county, running north through the coieir
of Monroe, Greenbrier, embracing Rockbridge and\ts
gusta, and having its northern termination or horn at

INTR OD UC TOR Y. 25

the thick group of springs in Bath county. This descrip-
tion will answer our purposes here : it will be enlarged,
of course, in the progress of our work ; but it occurs to
us here to say that, within these boundaries, with an oc-
casional excursion, the traveler may derive most of the
interest to be found in the mountain region of Virginia.

The boundaries desultorily sketched above, we repeat,
contain by no means the entire Springs Region of Vir-
ginia. Beyond these there are outlying mineral waters
of value, to which the traveler may have ready access
from the great routes of travel through the State. Indeed,
the true extent of the Springs Region of Virginia is from
near North Carolina, along the Alleghanies and their
spurs, quite to the Potomac. The development of mineral
springs along the line of the great Appalachian chain, and
. among its upheavings, extending from the various min-
. eral waters of comparatively recent discovery in South-
west Virginia to the valuable waters of Capon and Berk-
ley in the north ; late explorations in the interest of such
c liscoveries ; evidences already obtained of the general
■geological character of this entire range of country, all
y.^„")int to an extension of the Springs Region to embrace

j^u„5 entire eastern and western bases of the Alleghany.

the tP^^^ ^"^^ ^^ present, and for the purposes of this work,

been ^^"^'^ selected as the Springs Region that where the

its wo^''^^^^ '^^ mineral water abound — where there is, so to

. jik, a co7itinuity of these springs. It is a collection

ance ^^^ limits on both sides of the Alleghany mountains,

jmparatively small body of territory, but one so rich

11 ^j.1 various in mineral waters that it may claim the

^j^j,ignation,/«r excellence, of the Springs Region of Vii"-

mucl^^' ^"^ ^^ merit of being a sufficient sanitarium for

' ai. America.

26 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Within the area described there is every variety of
mineral water, a fountain for almost every conceivable
disease. It is a body of country to which there is easy
access from every portion of the Union. The North and
the South, the East and the West, may meet here in the
common pursuit of health, or at common resorts of pleas-
ure. But what is most remarkable of the Virginia springs
is their peculiar accommodation as a summer retreat from
those vast malarious districts which extend through the
richest portions of the South and lie in the Valley of the
Mississippi. The fertile regions of the Mississippi are
liable to fevers (the calentures of the Spaniards' time),
and will always be so : wherever vegetation is prolific and
exuberant — precisely in the richest portions of the South —
the wealth which Nature has bestowed is counterbalanced
by chills and fevers. The escape from these malarious
influences, and from the diseases which abound in sum-
mer along all the tributaries of the Mississippi, is natu-
rally to the springs and mountains of Virginia — that area
of high land crowned with health-giving waters and beau-
tified by the finest natural scenery of America. It is
when the tide of the class of visitors we have described
is fully turned into the Springs Region of Virginia that
this portion of the State will be developed in its peculiar
element of prosperity, creating sources of wealth as real
as those to be found in any of the producing industries
of the Commonwealth. The springs of Virginia have a
future before them that can scarcely be measured. It
will be realized when those tides of summer travel from
the South which were previously extended to tours in the
North, and were distributed from Saratoga and Cape
May, are collected, and obtain their true direction to the
mineral waters and mountain scenes of Virginia. The

INTRODUCTORY. 27

extent and peculiarities of the vast populations of the
South naturally turned to these as a summer retreat ; the
numbers, the wealth, the munificent habits of a class of
visitors coming from the richest portions of the cotton
and sugar regions of the South, will constitute the future
prosperity of the springs of Virginia, and be the only
limits to what are already the just expectations of the
Shoughtful and the enterprising.

The only difficulty will be as to the comforts and ac-
commodations of these places. This difficulty is already
apparent. The hotel accommodations of the springs of
Virginia are generally insufficient or imperfect or unat-
tractive. People traveling for health or for pleasure —
especially the latter, persons accustomed to the luxuries
of cities — will not visit places, however blessed and
adorned by Nature, where there is only a dreary hotel
of whitewashed boards, and some thin cottages uniformed
with wooden washstands, bare floors and cheap, crying
bedsteads. Nor will they be satisfied where the un-
traveled proprietor, in his coarse estimate of human
needs, thinks that only certain quantities of food have to
be put into the stomachs of his guests, insensible of the
truth that the human stomach of the civilization outside
of his mountains needs a delicate chemistry, and that the
cuisine is really an art—xiot contemptible, as some vulgar
satirists have supposed, but one belonging to the dignity
of man.

But even where the accommodations are finer and irre-
proachable, the hotel establishments of the Virginia
springs may be said generally to be conducted on false
and defective principles. They are usually conducted
on the narrow methods of short and exclusive leases ; or
there, is a monopoly of proprietorship that excludes from

28 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the grounds everything but its own ideas and fancies.
The North builds at all its watering-places competitive
hotels ; it sets up shops and competes for every want of
its visitors; and the entire hotel system at such places is
conducted on the principle of adaptation to different
classes of visitors — comfortable accommodations and ne-
cessaries for all, and luxuries for those who wish them,
and are able to pay for them. The hotel establishment
of the Virginia spring is generally a single caravansary,
with uniformity of accommodations throughout — the nar-
row, one-price system of the single hotel, and its stiff
rows of cottages as alike as the barracks of a regiment,
even to the pine furniture and the huckaback towels. The
hotel proprietor of the Northern watering-place calculates
that the man who is able and willing to spend his six
dollars a day shall find occasion for it ; while at the same
time he does not neglect the privileges of another who
does not want luxuries, who is not able to pay for a pri-
vate parlor or a special chamber, and who does not
demand a degree of accommodation beyond the average
guest. The hotel proprietor of the Virginia springs, on
the contrary, has but one price and one accommodation.
There are no degrees of comfort, or, what is more, de-
grees of privacy, such as are found in the hotel life of the
North ; none of its wonderful resources ; in short, too
much of the old country tavern as it existed before the
modern hotel became one of the phenomena of our civili-
zation, an "institution," an empire and a study.

The defective hotel establishment (generally speaking)
of the Virginia springs is, doubtless, a check on the pros-
perity of those places. Happily, however, it is a check
that may be readily removed ; and the present disposi-
tion, shown at the time of this writing, to improve and

INTRODUCTORT. 29

develop springs property, argues the commencement of
an expansion of prosperity that will not be the least among
the great elements of wealth in the State. The argument
is simply this : There is no disposition now among the
people of the Cotton States to go to the Northern cities
or watering-places, they greatly prefer the Virginia springs ;
only^/W timn, and advertise to them, the aceomjnodations,
and they will come. It is said that in the summer of
1869 there were two thousand visitors at one of these
springs. There might as well have been ten thousand
there from the great stock of summer custom — persons
not only from the South, but from every part of the
Union, who should find at these favored spots of Nature
the comforts of home and the pleasures of gay society,
and who would delight to linger there for at least four
months of the year.

Enterprise and better management are yet to be more
fully learned by the proprietors of these places. In the
lesson of the latter is the art of advertising. It is the
custom of the Virginia springs to advertise in a few local
papers — the lowest appreciation of advertising, a system
of waste, since it addresses only those best calculated to
know otherwise of subjects in their neighborhood, ne-
glecting those who are removed from sources of informa-
tion other than comes to them by the skill and enterprise
of the advertiser. Such skill and enterprise are yet to
carry a knowledge of the Springs Region of Virginia be-
yond the contracted borders of special localities and to
all parts of the country — the knowledge that here, acces-
sible to the traveler from North, South, East and West, is
a region more healtbful than the fabled islands and more
beautiful than Drea nland — a region where Nature has
intermingled the foi ntains of health with the feasts of

30 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the eye — where she presses to the lips of the invalid the
living waters in the garnished and jeweled urns of moun-
tain rock, and spreads before the eyes scenes lovelier and
grander than those which imagination with remote and
wandering steps pursues beyond seas and deserts.

It is a striking knowledge : it cannot fail of effects.
When the invalids who sigh in every corner of the coun-
try shall know the true value of the mineral waters of
Virginia; when the aesthetic man of the North, the artist
and the tourist shall learn that there is a natural scenery
in Virginia which in the richness and variety of its ex-
pression is so admirable, unsurpassed perhaps in its
whole effects in any equal spaces of the world ; when the
guide-book of Virginia is admitted into the current litera-
ture of our times as freely and commonly as the preten-
tious and more intricate vade mecum of Northern and
European tours, — we may justly then expect that a bulk
of travel and of wealth will be poured through this region
not much less than that which has built up Long Branches
and Saratogas, or that which, each summer, crosses the
Adantic to dissipate its curiosity and its money in foreign
lands. The future of the Virginia springs is a magnificent
speculation, and there are great prizes bound up in it.

At present we are firmly persuaded that there is no
field of investment in Virginia that presents such oppor-
tunities as does the already awakened improvement of
springs property. Nor do we regard this matter only in
the light of benefits to a class of property-holders ; nor
even exclusively in the interest of the numbers resorting
to these places for health and pleasure. It is a real ele-
ment of public prosperity — part of the economy of the
resources of Virginia, and pertaining to the interests of the
whole Commonwealth. The aggregate r-^ ''*'';' *'^'*

INTRODUCTORY. 31

whole State of the development of the Springs Region is
no mean consideration. It is an interest not only to the
philanthropist concerned with the ills of humanity, not
only to men of sentiment and pleasure, but an interest to
be cultivated in our public economy, our legislation, our
system of internal improvements, our press, our literature,
and to be shared by all who truly and in all respects
desire the prosperity of Virginia.

^UIDE TO THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

The two principal points of departure to the Springs
Region of Virginia, and to the Natural Scenery inter-
locked by these springs or adjacent to them — to that
Field of the Tourist which we propose to traverse — are
Staunton and Lynchburg. With these two points held in
his mind, the reader may have a clear and comprehensive
view of the Springs Region, and of the area of those places
which may be most recommended to the attention of the
tourist. If we look at the map, we find that the two
points, Staunton and Lynchburg, are extremities of a fork
of railroads, the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Orange
and Alexandria, dividing from the main stem of travel at
Charlottesville ; the real point of junction, however, being
twenty-one miles farther east, at Gordonsville, the cars of
the Orange and Alexandria and the Chesapeake and Ohio
roads running on a double track from Gordonsville to
Charlottesville. The geographical angle, however, is at
Charlottesville ; and it is this angle, one line running
through Staunton toward the Ohio, the other through
Lynchburg to Tennessee, which measures the Springs
Region and that section of the great Mountain Belt of
Vlrcnii.T. ^icG*- interesting in its displays of scenery.

32 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

We shall see now how we may penetrate the breadth
of this country, and what are its remarkable divisions
with reference to the distribution of its mineral waters
and natural scenery.

The access to Staunton from the North is by the great
route of travel coming down the Orange and Alexandria
road from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New
York, etc. The access to Lynchburg from the South and
South-west is by the great routes of travel leading up to
the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad from Knoxville,
Chattanooga, Memphis, New Orleans, Montgomery, Mo-
bile, etc. There is no difficulty in tracing out these broad
and common routes on any ordinary map.

The Springs Region of Virginia, which we have else-
where roughly described, has its upper portion adjacent
to Staunton and penetrated by the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad, while its lower portion rests on the Virginia and
Tennessee Railroad. Staunton and Lynchburg are thus
the great converging and diverging points of the travel
of this region. From Staunton we penetrate that part of
this region most thickly populated with springs; the most
famous of these resorts being congregated within a limited
space of which the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad fur-
nishes all the points of detour. From Lynchburg we
traverse the south-western tier of springs, less numerous
than those which cluster in the upper region, but having
the advantage of a more striking diorama of natural
scenery ; the two elements of attraction being associated
and both parallel to the Virginia and Tennessee road.

Let us pass our finger along the lines of these two roads,
and we shall enumerate the principal objects of interest
the tourist has in either direction.

From Staunton we may go by stages to Augusta Springs

INTRODUCTORY. 33

and Weyer's Cave. From Goshen, a little farther on the
Chesapeake and Ohio road, by stages to Rockbridge
Alum Springs, Rockbridge Baths and Cold Sulphur
Springs. From Millboro', by stages, to Bath Alum and
Warm Springs. From Covington, by stages, to Hot
Springs and Healing Springs. From Alleghany, by
stages, to Old Sweet and Red Sweet Springs. Fro7n the
Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, by stages, to Salt
Sulphur Springs, etc., and, indeed, to almost every point
within the diagram of the Springs Region.

From Lynchburg, on the Virginia and Tennessee road,
we have in succession the Alum Springs at New London,
Coyner's, the Alleghany, the Montgomery White Sul-
phur and the Yellow Sulphur (counting, as in the preced-
ing paragraph, only those springs which are well known).
All these are immediately on the rail or within a few
miles of it. But we have something more than this tier of
mineral waters. In the same direction, or within parallels
of convenient travel, we have the Peaks of Otter, the
Natural Bridge, the Salt Pond, Bald Knob, Puncheon
Run Falls, Burke's Garden, the Natural Tunnel, etc. —
a succession of scenes and curiosities adjacent to that of
the springs of the South-west, and all having their points
of detour from the Virginia and Tennessee road.

We have thus generally described the area of a prac-
ticable tour in Virginia and the field of our present work.
The natural division into two departments of the Springs
Region contained in the angle of the railroads referred to
is designed only as an element of simplicity in the geo-
graphical description; for the intercommunication of
these departments is direct and easy. The intercommu-
nication is by a system of stage-ronits which cross the
angle at various points, and make the whole country con-

34 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

tained in it practicable for the traveler. Thus he may
cross the angle from the region of the Alleghany Springs
or from that of the Montgomery White, both near Chris-
tianslmrg,^ to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, and
the watering-places yet north of it, by stages all the way,
taking Salt Pond and Bald Knob in the route, and pass-
ing by the Sweet and Red Sweet Springs; or he may
cross lower down, from Salem, on the Virginia and Ten-
nessee road ; or yet lower down, from Bonsack's (Coy-
ner's Springs), taking in succession such objects of in-
terest as the Natural Bridge, Lexington, Rockbridge
Baths, etc., to Goshen, or any other point in the north-
ern tier of springs. The details of these routes will be
given hereafter as they occur in our journey. For the
present, the subjoined table of routes may serve for gen-
eral reference within the limits of the diagram we have
marked out:

Table of Routes in and about the Springs Region.

From To Conveyance. Miles.

Staunton Augusta Springs Stages 12

Staunton Weyer's Cave Stages 17

Staunton Goshen Ches. and Ohio R.R. 32

Goshen Cold Sulphur Springs Stages i

Goshen Rockbridge Alum Springs Stages 8

Goshen Rockbridge Baths Stages 9

* The angle of the Springs Region is yet more conveniently (in
point of distance) crossed by travelers coming from the Soiith-ivest
at Newbern, where they may leave the railroad (Virginia and Ten-
nessee) and proceed directly to the Red Sulphur or Salt Sulphur
Springs in Monroe county, and thence to the whole northern range
of mineral waters commanded l)y the Greenliricr White Sulphur.
But this route leaves out the lower or south-western portion of the
Springs Region, neglecting the valuable waters of the Alleghany and
the Montgomery White, and is indicated only in cases wh'""'^'
traveler from points south of the Ohio river desires the nearc'^^^'^St
in miles, to points within what we have designated as the 1
more northern division of Virginia watering-places. jfingS

INTRODUCTORY. 35

Prom To Conveyance. Miles.

Goslien Lexington Stages 2i

Goshen Natural Bridge Stages 35

Goshen Millboro' dies. andOhio R.R. 8

Millboro' Bath Alum Stages lo

Millboro' Warm Springs Stages iS

Millboro' Covington Ches.andOhio R.R. 29

Covington Hot Springs Stages 18

Covington Healing Springs Stages iS

Covington Alleghany Station dies. andOhioR R. 16

Alleghany Old Sweet Stages 9

Alleghany Red Sweet Stages 8

Alleghany White Sulphur Springs dies, ajid Ohio R.R. 6

White Sulphur Springs.. Blue Sulphur Stages 22

White Sulphur Salt Sulphur Stages..., 23

White Sulphur Red Sulphur Stages 4°

White Sulphur Red Sweet Stages 16

White Sulphur Old Sweet Stages 17

White Sulphur Hot Springs Stages 37

White Sulphur Healing Springs Stages 40

White Sulphur Warm Springs Stages 42

White Sulphur Bath Alum Stages 47

White Sulphur Rockbridge Alum Stages 62

Lynchburg Natural Bridge Canal-boat 36

Lynchburg Lexington Canal-boat 40

Lexington Natural Bridge Stages 14

Lynchburg Forrest Depot Va. andTenn.R.R. ii

Forrest Depot New London and Alum Springs. . Stages 4

Forrest Depot Liberty Va. andTenii. R.R. 14

Liberty Peaks of Otter Country road 12

Liberty Bonsack's (Coyner's Springs). . . . Va. and Tenn. R.R. 22

Bonsack's Natural Bridge Stages 30

Bonsack's Lexington Stages 42

Bonsack's Sweet Springs* Stages 47

Bonsack's White Sulphur, etc. etc Stages 64

Bonsack's Salem Va. and Tenn. R.R. 13

Salem Sweet Springs Stages 36

Salem White Sulphur, etc. etc Stages S3

Salem Shawsville Va. and Tenn. R.R. 17

Shawsville Alleghany Springs Stages 4

Alleghany Springs Puncheon Run Falls Country road 8

Shawsville Montgomery Wh. Sulphur Station. Va.and Tenn. R.R. 6

Montgomery White. . . .Christiansburg Va. andTenn.R.R. 3

Christiansburg Yellow Sulphur Stages 4

fe*- -rg New River White Sulphur Stages 24

these burg Salt Pond Stages 32

. urg Bald Knob Stages 32

niCatlCy^g Salt Sulphur Stages 4°

angle

'Old Sweet and the Red Sweet are but one mile apart.

36 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

From To Conveyance. Miles.

Christiansburg Sweet Springs Stages 48

Christiansburg White Sulphur Stages 65

Christiansburg Newbern Va. and Tenii.R.R. 19

Ne wbern Red Sulphur Stages 35

Newbern Salt Sulphur Stages 52

Newbern White Sulphur Stages 77

Newbern Glade Springs Station Va. and Tenn. R.R. 70

Glade Springs Station. . Saltville Branch railroad .... 8

Saltville Jeffersonville Country road 18

Saltville Burke's Garden Country road 26

Glade Springs Station. . Bristol Va. and Tenn. R.R. 28

Bristol Natural Tunnel Country road 42

Bristol Holston Springs. Country road 28

The reader may easily trace out on the map the routes
noted above as the exigencies of his journey may require.
In this place — one of introduction — we design only to
give a topographical coup d'ceil of the country we pro-
pose to traverse on a pursuit of pleasure and in the garb
of the tourist.

CHAPTER II.

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

Lynchburg recommended as a Starting-point of a Tour in Virginia — Superior At-
tractions of South-west Virginia for the Tourist — Obscurities of this Part of the
State — Description of "the Hill City'' — Mountain Scenery around Lynch-
burg — A Royal Peculiarity of the Blue Ridge — Ancient Memories of Lynch-
burg — The James River and Kanawha Canal — George Washington's Vision —
The Great Water Line of Virginia— A Vision of Romance as well as of
Empire — The Boast of New River — An Heraldic Ensign for " New" Virginia.

|;YNCHBURG is not made the starting-point of
our tour in Virginia by accident. We have
made it so by a well-considered design. It is
true that the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad leading out
of this town does not command as large a number of the
springs as does the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (a
comparison of the value of the waters is not made in this
place), but it has the advantage, and offers to the tourist
the additional compensation, of a scenery lying about its
summer resorts unequaled in the State. As our work is
in both interests — that of the springs and that of the
mountains and other natural wonders — our explorations
are then commenced at Lynchburg, and the reader may
imagine himself put down in sight of the blue mountains,
and close to the most abundant fields for the tourist in
our "many-sided" Virginia.

Of all the divisions of the State, South-west Virginia,
we repeat, is undoubtedly that most interesting to the
4 37

3S THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

tourist, and it, therefore, occupies an indisputable promi-
nence in our work. It is comparatively but little known ;
it has been neglected in most of the histories of the
State ; and there is to this day a lingering popular notion
in the comfortable homes of Eastern Virginia of a wild,
impracticable country, and an unkempt people classed
under the vague and harsh names of "mountains" and
"mountaineers." We may find on the map a well-de-
fined trans-Alleghany district, composed of the south-
western portion of Virginia, eastern portions of Kentucky
and Tennessee, and tlie north-western portion of North
Carolina, having remarkable similitudes of population,
soil and climate, its inhabitants sympathizing in the com-
mon complaint that they have been neglected by their re-
spective State governments. They are called contemptu-
ously "corner men ;" the systems of internal improvements
in the States named have seldom reached to them ; they
are to a great extent practically isolated, and they are yet
remarkable for a curious primitive life. Of this country
South-west Virginia is the imperial portion — a land of in-
calculable wealth in minerals, and one, as we shall soon
discover, containing a natural scenery to which the most
famous tourist routes in Switzerland and Germany, com-
bined, could scarcely furnish the parallel. And yet what
must be the surprise of the traveler when, penetrating this
beautiful and wonderful country, he finds it not only un-
advertised to the world (his experience already being
that at such an outpost as Lynchburg he could scarcely
get directions for his journey away from the railroad),
but that even among its own people it is almost unknown
beyond the circles of their neighborhoods ; that persons
residing within a few hours' ride of scenes which he had
come hundreds of miles to see are ignorant of them, or

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDTNGS. 39

can give nothing more than that laconic information
which he hears so often in the mountains, that they had
" hear'n telV of such places. A gentleman of Tazewell
county, writing a local history of it, testifies: "There is
in all South-west Virginia scarcely a schoolboy who is
not better acquainted with the history and geography of
New York or Massachusetts than those of his own beautiful
State of mountains and hills and valleys and streams !"

The truth is, the neglect of their scenery lies at the
doors of the Virginians themselves. If the obscurity of a
country, however, is an invitation to the explorer and
tourist, it should avail for South-west Virginia. Discov-
eries of the artist, as well as of other adventurers, are
already in progress there, and are opening up a country
as grand in its scenic effects as it is wonderfully rich in
the products of its fields and mines. Its mountain views,
its waterfalls, its natural curiosities, its stupendous won-
ders of rock-work, the revelation of the scenery of New
river, is a combination that the sight-seer can find no-
where else in the world.

The author is not mistaken in filling so large a portion
of his work with such a country. He returns to Lynch-
burg, repeating his designation of it as the point of de-
parture to the most interesting tour in Virginia. And
now, with such method or order of treatment as the na-
ture of his work will admit, he proposes not only to
attempt descriptions of scenes visited, but, with less of
literary ambition, to mingle with his sketches observations
and guides useful to those who may come after him.

The following general directions may avail the traveler.
Persons from all points north of Baltimore may take the
train which leaves New York city in the evening, reach-
ing Washington City about 6 A. M. This train makes

40 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

close connection with the Orange and Alexandria train,
which arrives in Lynchburg at 4. 20 p. m. The traveler
may also come by the Bay route to Norfolk, and thence to
Lynchburg over the Norfolk and Petersburg and South-
side Railroads, without change of cars. There is only one
passenger train daily over each of these roads.

The town of Lynchburg is not without its interest —
even such as is admissible in these pages — and it should
not be hurriedly passed. From "the Hill City," as the
burg is supremely spoken of by its people, the peaks of
the Blue Ridge are already plainly visible, and the scenery
that surrounds this really most delightful town — which
boasts, with reason, the reputation of containing the best
remnant of the old-fashioned and hospitable society of
Virginia — invites the eye, and with its fine healthy airs
would constitute itself a pleasing summer resort to one
habituated to cities. There are some views around the
town which might well repay the tourist a day's saunter
on its hills, and which, perhaps, might be more highly
esteemed if they were not quite so accessible. On College
Hill, across which runs the south-western boundary of
the city, we may obtain a fine view of the Peaks of Otter
in the distance, faint, but as well defined as a cloud re-
doubt ; while the lesser humped mountains to the north,
their buttresses on the horizon, look like a caravan of
camels scattered and reposing at evening on the dim out-
line of a desert.

A peculiarity of the Blue Ridge may be noticed here,
and it is a royal one. It is the change of its robes, and
especially of those gorgeous ones which it puts on at even-
ing. All mountains seen afar are blue — distance lends
this enchantment to the view — but this particular range of
mountains in Virginia has a depth, a variety and a wealth

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 41

of different shades of blue that are strikingly peculiar,
and so much so that the color has given them their name.
It is a blue of infinite richness, of a strange misty depth
that baffles analysis, and as variable as the sunset sky that
joins with it. Now mist-gilded, again li^ht as the heaven's
arch, again purplish, again indescribable as a mixture of
blue and red, and all these phenomena taking place, per-
haps, in half an hour's span of the sun, the garments of
the mountain changed, swift as the weaver's shuttle that
makes them in the light woven of earth and sky. The
writer has repeatedly, while traveling near these moun-
tains and struck by effects of color, found himself reflect-
ing that if these effects were transferred to canvas, how
art-critics would exclaim that they were fictitious and
impossible ! So strange is nature — a strangeness so little
recognized in our schools of criticism. Here where we
stand on College Hill, just on the confines of Lynchburg,
we were never more struck by this shading and shifting
of colors as they appear under the sky of a May evening.
The sun is sinking, and the two peaks of Otter, towering
far over all around them, appear as pillars in the sky, while
the clouds gathered at the gate of Evening are slowly
passing into the infinite fields beyond. There are ranks
of color in the scene from the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge
to the horizon's verge. The near mountains are gray
and mottled, for we see the soil and can count their ribs
of rock ; next is a broken rank of haggard mountains, a
pale, indescribable blue ; then, where it touches the sky,
an outline of blue and gold and purple all around, fit
hem of garment for the beautiful and majestic world !

We leave College Hill, wondering that this view of a
summer evening has not drawn out a single person, be-
sides our small party, to a walk more beautiful than in
4*

42 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

any park of Northern city, and to a scene more glorious
than what people sometimes travel or toil many miles to
see. In another direction there is yet another view to re-
ward us. About a mile and a half east of the city, where
a little white-painted country church — Tyreeanna Chapel
— stands by the grass-covered fortifications of the late
war, there is a view which some might think finer than
that just described. For besides the mountains is a piece
of water scenery; the island-dotted James, no longer
broad-breasted and strong as when making its way through
mountain passes, but lingering around its green islands,
or lying careless and indolent in the peaceful landscape.

These views are ornaments to Lynchburg, quite in con-
trast to the mud-defiled and decayed town having its Rip
Van Winkle sleep under the hills, and seeing which only,
the traveler carries away the impression of a sloppy and
uninteresting place, from which he has been glad to get
away.

It is a town of some ancient memories. It was estab-
lished in 1786 by an Irish emigrant of the name of Lynch.
En passant, the term "Lynch law" was derived from his
brother, a hot-tempered Irishman, who was a colonel in
the Revolutionary war, and who was in the habit of deal-
ing summarily with the Tories and desperadoes who in-
fested this part of the country. Despite the uncertainty
of the traditional origin of most popular appellations, the
reader may be satisfied of the authenticity of this bit of
philological information. Mr. Wirt, in his Life of Henry,
says: "In 1792, there were many suits on the south side
of James river for inflicting Lynch's law." Almost ex-
clusively from the immense tobacco trade of Virginia and
North Carolina the town derived its growth, being raised
from the lowliness and poverty of Lynch's Ferry to the

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 43

wealth and dignity of a city — from an insignificant James
river warehouse to a position which commanded respect
both in this country and Europe, as one of the best to-
bacco markets in the world. But besides its tobacco
interests, Lynchburg has but little trade or prosperity at
present — although, as other Virginia towns, it is "great
in possibilities."

The natural adaptation of the site of Lynchburg to
ample water-power indicates especially the possibility of
its importance as a manufacturing town. But this gift of
Nature is as yet undeveloped, and is found to have been
strangely abused, chiefly through the mistake in not locat-
ing the James River and Kanawha Canal sufficiently high
to secure the water-power. At the highest point of the
city the water is brought up by double forcing pumps at
the elevation of 253 feet above the level of the river, and
these works, constructed in 1828, were then celebrated
in a local paper as "unprecedented in this country."
The mistake in the location of the canal (which was
opened to navigation in 1841) on the river level it has
been attempted to remedy by raising the dams which
afford the supply of water ; but this work was left un-
finished at the breaking out of the war, and, owing to the
financial distress of the Canal company, has not been
since resumed.

There is no doubt that the management of this great
water-artery and the project of its extension to the Ohio
have been embarrassed and delayed by the prospect of
selling it out to French capitalists. Since the dissipation
of this prospect, some disposition has been shown by the
Canal company to repair their finances, and to resume
the enterprise of past years. An attempt is now being
made to fund their debt, under an act of the Legislature

44 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

authorizing the mortgage of works to the extent of seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars ; but the progress is
slow, and the local trade has so fallen off that it is
scarcely adequate to pay the current expenses and the
interest on the funded debt. It is obvious that while the
work is local, all its operations and benefits must be to a
great extent local ; and to complete its original design,
which was to connect the Eastern and Western waters,
and thus realize the full benefits which were predicated on
the consummation of the work, it is equally clear that
Virginia must look to capital from abroad, and to the
interest which distant and opulent States of the Union
have in an enterprise so large and far-reaching. Indeed,
this canal is perhaps the most important unfinished im-
provement in Virginia waiting upon that tide of capital
which is expected to flow into the State upon the assur-
ance of her political reconstruction, already so much ad-
vanced by the late elections. Efforts have been recently
noticed to revive interest in a work which has floated so
long in imagination, and which repeats the idea of Wash-
ington of joining the waters of the continent

THE GREAT WATER LINE OF VIRGINIA.

Even a traveler of ordinary views cannot help having
his attention arrested by the visions of commercial empire
which cling to the banks of the James and its tributaries.
The Water Line of Virginia, in its conceptions, is one of
those large works of the industrial enterprise of the age,
which rises above the boundaries of statistical and com-
mercial details to the dignity of a monument or a poem.
The unsightly thread of water coursing along the James
binds up a romance of motlern commerce. Now the

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 45

narrow canal extending from tidewater to Buchanan is an
almost deserted thoroughfare. The boat-horn is now
but seldom heard along its banks, and its waters are dis-
turbed only by some small barges doing the droning and
desultory trade of a few neighborhoods. But in this in-
fant canal grown to a water-route, with a capacity as great
as the waterfall and the feeders of its tributaries can sup-
ply, extended to the Kanawha river, and reaching by its
silver arm to the great system of Western waters, is des-
tined to pour a mighty stream of commerce, contributed
from the very heart of the agricultural empire of America.
It is then that the State of Virginia itself will obtain its
fullest development — when the coal and minerals of the
State are brought together ; then that the hydrographic
basins of the Mississippi and the Missouri shall be drained
into the long-neglected waters of the Chesapeake, and its
riches float into its heretofore stagnant harbors ; then
that we shall behold a water-route in connection with,
or rather supplemented by, the South-western system of
railroads in Virginia, "bringing in connection with the
Chesapeake bay sixteen thousand miles of navigable
rivers in the Mississippi Valley, and twenty-one thousand
miles of railroad already in operation there" (see Pro-
fessor Maury); bringing Norfolk two hundred and nine-
ty-three miles nearer than New York is by present routes
to all places on the Mississippi river that are situated
above the mouth of the Illinois river ; bringing the
cities on the Ohio one thousand to fifteen hundred
miles nearer to New York, via Norfolk, than they are
either via the Gulf or the Lakes ; giving the North-west
a water-route through Virginia to the seaboard shorter
and more practicable than the one by the Lakes and the
Erie Canal to New York, or the other by the Mississippi

4^ THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

river to New Orleans, with transhipment to New York,
Liverpool and other parts ; in short, making Virginia
the highway of the granary of America, and solving, at
once, the greatest problem of the political economy of
our country, and a most difficult question of sectional es-
trangement and national polity.

The future of the James River and Kanawha Canal is
even a romance outside of its commercial aspects. It is
not to be studied in a statistical closet; it is not to be
immured in dry figures. We have felt that we might
admit it even to the interest of these pages as an
element of beauty and of order springing out of the
geographical position and physical relations of Virginia,
that fall obviously under the eyes of the traveler. The
Water Line of Virginia solves a question of the age
scarcely less great than the Pacific Railroad. It will be
a monument in the country. It will realize a vision that
has been traditional in Virginia, which more than a
hundred years ago prophesied that "whoever shall be
master of the Ohio and the Lakes, shall become sole and
absolute lord of North America." And as a last romantic
interest is the curious system of design by which Nature
has invited and pointed out the work.

"It," as Mr. Sheffey says, in a recent speech to an
agricultural society in Virginia, "would solve the mys-
tery what that grand, rugged, limpid stream. New river
and Kanawha, with its successive falls, was made for.
Without capacity for navigation or fish, it has been pro-
nounced the most useless stream of its size in the world.
And so it is unimproved; but improved, it has no supe-
rior in power and value. It intersects and cuts down to
their bases every mountain barrier in the old State, from
its source in the south-west to its mouth in the north-

LYNCHBURG AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 47

west. Falling over successive steeps, it is the great wa-
terfall of Virginia, and affords sites for a hundred
Lowells. I hesitate not to say that the stream has more
water-power from its source to its mouth than all the
other rivers in the State combined. I assert, further, that
it intersects more mineral wealth, more copper, lead,
iron, zinc, salt and coal, than all the other rivers of the
State together."

But we close the page on a vision of wealth, in which
there is yet as much of poetry as in the loveliest and
grandest scenes that adorn the banks of those two rivers
with which Nature has blessed Virginia — the James and
the Kanawha. They are the two arms of the State — one
laid on the mane of Ocean; the other beckoning in the
distance to smiling and not unwilling fields to bring their
treasures to the crouching wave.

^ — -^-^^^

CHAPTER III.
FROM LYNCHBURG TO THE NATURAL BRIDGE.

Recent Neglect of the Natural Bridge by Sight-Seers — Directions of Route to it —
On the Banks of the James — Balcony Falls — Views from the Stage Road —
Scenery on North River — The Natural Bridge — First Sight of it — Curious
Proportions of Art in its Structure — The Angle of Ascent — View from the
Creek below — A Strange Imagination — Gates of Hell — The Natural Bridge
compared with Niagara Falls — Two Illustrations of the Sublime in our Ameri-
can Schools of Esthetics — Climbing the Natural Bridge — Testimony of
an Eye-witness.

'HERE was a time when the Natural Bridge was
esteemed among the greatest wonders of this
continent. Of late years it has languished in
obscurity and neglect, visited only by stray travelers from
the Virginia springs, or, as we may judge, by frugal pic-
nic parties from the near town of Lexington and the
neighborhood — a conclusion drawn from a notice extra-
ordinary posted at the hotel, that unless visitors patron-
ized its larder they would be charged fifty cents a head
for the privilege of looking at the Bridge ! The neglect
of this sublime spectacle in the mountains of Virginia,
once so attractive to the multitude of sight-seers, is diffi-
cult to be explained when we consider the easy access to
it — an access improved, too, by all that a beautiful and
various natural scenery can bestow upon the traveler's
route.

The common route is by way of Lynchburg, thence
48

FROM LYNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE, 49

thirty-eight miles on the James river and Kanawha Canal.
The canal divides immediately at the foot of the Blue
Ridge, a section being extended up the North River to
the town of Lexington, and the other pursuing the banks
of the James to Buchanan, short of which you can stop
at the mouth of Cedar creek, within two miles of the
Natural Bridge. From a few miles above Lynchburg the
route by canal is adorned with mountain scenery of the
richest and most various description, and the traveler
passes slowly, going scarcely more than three miles an
hour, through an almost continuous gallery of pictures.
The writer on his trip had the advantage of a moon-
lit night and of the company of some musical ladies. As
the boat moves slowly and so easily that you can imagine
it at rest, unless for passing objects, you see a horizon
broken and pierced with mountain spurs; at one time
under the shadow of great cliffs, again passing along
silver-clad willows where the James flows placidly through
meadows with the trophy of shivered moonbeams on its
bosom; in the distance by mountains with twinkling fires
on them, or the red glare of burning woods kindled by
stray fires during the drought; and so, in this dioramic
procession, with the music of sweet voices on the air and
the melancholy wail of the boatman's horn occasionally
intruding, we travel on to the rugged backbone of the
Blue Ridge.

Here, where the James river emerges from the moun-
tains on the line of Amherst and Rockbridge counties, the
scene is surpassingly picturesque. Overlooking Balcony
Falls, the pyramid-shaped mountain throws in the night
its pointed shadow in the mingled waters of the James
and North rivers like a great spear-head to divide them.
Where it terminates in the water it falls in a precipitous
5 D

50 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

cliff, the rocky face of which looked at once grand and
weird as we saw it in the moonlight. A branch of the
canal proceeds up the North river to Lexington, while
that along the banks of the James, which we pursue to
our destination, passes into a wilder scene.

The accompanying views were taken by the writer at
another time in daylight, and on a trip preferable to that
of the canal-boat, in the circumstance of its being per-
formed by day. The stage-road, coincident here with
the canal — either conveyance being at the choice of the
traveler — affords a succession of views by daylight of the
most picturesque and romantic effect. As the traveler
enters the gap of the Blue Ridge from the east, the winding
courses of the stage-coach carry him up the mountain's
side until he has gained an elevation of hundreds of feet
above the James river, over the waters of which the zig-
zag and rotten road hangs fearfully. On every side are
gigantic mountains hemming him in; there are black
ravines in the great prison-house; and the lengthened
arms of the winds smite the strained ear with the sounds
of the rapids below. While he looks at the distance, a
mountain rivulet, slight and glittering from amid the
primeval forest, dashes across his path, and, leaping from
rock to rock, goes joyously on its way.

On the North river the scenes are quieter. Emerging
here, the traveler sees a beautiful and fertile country
opening before him, while still westward the blue outlines
of distant mountains in Rockbridge bound his vision.
The water landscape is beautiful. Lovely valleys de-
bouch upon the stream; there are peaceful shadows in
the steel-blue waters, and on the broad shoulders of the
cattle on the banks we see the drapery of the shadows
of the trees beneath which they rest. The fisherman

.v^

SCENE ON NORTH RIVER.

Page 50.

FROM LYNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE. 5 1

standing leg-deep in the water can see his face as in a
mirror.

But at present our way does not lie through these
scenes. The canal-boat is taking us along the James in
the moonlit night, and by the time the day has broken
we are within two miles of the Natural Bridge. A rick-
ety team awaits us at the lock-house where we disembark.
Through an air filled with golden vapor, and with the
mists of the morning yet hanging in the trees by the way-
side, we proceed on our journey. The old stage-coach
lumbers along under the thick, overhanging boughs of the
forest pines, which ever and anon scrape its top or strike
in through the windows, scattering the dew-drops in the
very faces of the passengers, or perhaps smiting their
cheeks with their sharp-pointed leaves.

THE NATURAL BRIDGE.

The first view of the Bridge is obtained half a mile
from it at a turn on the stage-road. It is revealed with
the suddenness of an apparition. Raised a hundred feet
above the highest trees of the forest, and relieved against
the purple side of a distant mountain, a whitish-gray arch
is seen, in the effect of distance as perfect and clean-cut
an arch as its Egyptian inventor could have defined. The
tops of trees are waving in the interval, the upper half of
which we only see, and the stupendous arch that spans
the upper air is relieved from the first impression that it
is man's masonry, the work of art, by the fifteen or
twenty feet of soil that it supports, in which trees and
shrubbery are firmly imbedded — the verdant crown and
testimony of Nature's great work. And here we are
divested of an imagination which we believe is popular,

52 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

that the Bridge is merely a huge slab of rock thrown
across a chasm, or some such hasty and violent arrange-
ment. It is no such thing. The arch and whole interval
are contained in one solid rock ; the average width of that
which makes the Bridge is eighty feet, and beyond this
the rock extends for a hundred feet or so in mural preci-
pices, divided by only a single fissure, that makes a
natural pier on the upper side of the Bridge, and up
which climb the hardy firs, ascending step by step on the
noble rock-work till they overshadow you.

This mighty rock, a single mass sunk in the earth's
side, of which even what appears is stupendous, is of the
same geological character — of limestone covered to the
'depth of from four to six feet with alluvial and clayey
earth. The span of the arch runs from forty-five to
sixty feet wide, and its height to the under line is one
hundred and ninety-six feet, and to the head two hun-
dred and fifteen feet. The form of the arch approaches
to the elliptical; the stage-road which passes over the
Bridge runs from north to south, with an acclivity of
thirty-five degrees, and the arch is carried over on a
diagonal line — the very line of all others the most difficult
for the architect to realize, and the one best calculated
for picturesque effects. It is the proportions of Art in this
wild, strange work of Nature, its adjustment in the very
perfection of mechanical skill, its apparently deliberate
purpose, that create an interest the most curious and
thoughtful. The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and
through which traverses the beautiful Cedar creek, is not
otherwise easily passed for several miles, either above or
below the Bridge. It is needful to the spot, and yet so
little likely to have survived the great fracture, the evi-
dences of which are visible around, and which has made

FROM LTNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE. 53

a fissure of about ninety feet through the breadth of a
rock-ribbed hill, that we are at first disposed to reflect
upon it as the work of man. It is only when we contem-
plate its full measure of grandeur that we are assured it is
the work of God. We have the pier, the arch, the studied
angle of ascent ; and that nothing might be wanted in the
evidences of design, the Bridge is guarded by a parapet
of rocks, so covered with fine shrubs and trees that a
person traveling the stage-road running over it would, if
not informed of the curiosity, pass it unnoticed.

But let him approach through the foliage to the side.
More than two hundred feet below is the creek, appa-
rently motionless, except where it flashes with light as it
breaks on an obstruction in the channel ; there are trees,
attaining to grander heights as they ascend the face of
the pier ; and far below this bed of verdure the majestic
rock rises with the decision of a wall, and the spectator
shrinks from contemplating the grand but cruel depths,
and turns away with dizzy sensations. But the most effec-
tive view is from the base of the Bridge, where you de-
scend by a circuitous and romantic path. Even to escape
from the hot sun into these verdant and cool bottoms is
of itself a luxury, and it prepares you for the deliberate
enjoyment of the scene. Everything reposes in the most
delightful shade, set off by the streaming rays of the sun,
which shoot across the head of the picture far above
you, and sweeten with softer touches the solitude below.
Standing by the rippling, gushing waters of the creek,
and raising your eyes to the arch, massive and yet light
and beautiful from its height, its elevation apparently in-
creased by the narrowness of its piers and by its projec-
tion on the blue sky, you gaze on the great work of
Nature in wonder and astonishment. Yet a hundred
5 *

54 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

beauties beckon you from the severe emotion of the sub-
lime. When you have sustained this view of the arch
raised against the sky, its black patches here and there
shaped by imagination into grand and weird figures —
among them the eagle, the lion's head, and the heroic
countenance of Washington ; when you have taken in the
proportions and circumstances of this elevated and wide
span of rock — so wide that the skies seem to slope from it
to the horizon — you are called to investigate other parts
of the scene which strain the emotions less, and are dis-
tributed around in almost endless variety. Looking
through the arch, the eye is engaged with a various vista.
Just beyond rises the frayed, unseamed wall of rock ; the
purple mountains stand out in the background ; beneath
them is a rank of hills and. matted ^woods enclosing the
dell below, while the creek coursing away from them
appears to have been fed in their recesses. A few feet
above the bridge the stream deflects, and invites to a
point of view of the most curious effect. Taking a few
steps backward, moving diagonally on the course of the
stream, we see the interval of sky between the great abut-
ments gradually shut out ; thus apparently joined or
lapped over, they give the effect of the face of a rock,
with a straight seam running down it, and the imagination
seizes the picture as of mighty gates closed upon us. We
are shut in a wild and perturbed scene by these gates of
hell ; behind and around us is the contracted and high
boundary of mountains and hills, and in this close and
vexed scene we are for a moment prisoners. Now let us
move across, step by step, to a position fronting where
these gates apparently close. Slowly they seem to swing
open on unseen and noiseless hinges ; wider and wider
grows the happy interval of sky, until at last wide open

FROM LYNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE. 55

stands the gateway raised above the forest, resting as it
were on the brow of heaven — a world lying beyond it,
its rivers and its hills expanding themselves to the light
and splendor of the unshadowed day.

To an observer of both places a comparison is natu-
rally suggested between the Natural Bridge and Niagara
Falls in respect of the sublime and the beautiful ; and,
indeed, as in this respect the two greatest works of Nature
on this continent, they may well be used as illustrations
in our American schools of aesthetics. The first is unique
in its aspects of Nature like Art ; it is Nature with the
proportions of Art. In its expressions of power, in its con-
centration of emotion, as when we look at it distinct or
complete, it is truly sublime ; and its effect is alleviated
(for it is a maxim in aesthetics that the sublime cannot be
long sustained) by the picturesque scenery which sur-
rounds it. It is a greater natural curiosity and more
wonderful than Niagara, although it lacks the elements
of sublimity which the other has in sound, and of the
visible, actual struggle in which it displays the powers of
Nature. Niagara is a living thing, while the Natural
Bridge is monumentai. The first represents the sublime
as allied to the terrific — in contemplating it we are over-
whelmed with a sense of our insignificance ; while the
Natural Bridge associates the sublime with the pleasing
and curious, and, not transporting us as violently as Niag-
ara, entertains us more equably, and dismisses us, we
think, with more distinct and fruitful perceptions of the
grandeur and beneficence and variety of Nature which
have been distributed in the picture.

56 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

CLIMBING THE NATURAL BRIDGE BY 'THE ONLY SURVIVING

WITNESS OF THAT EXTRAORDINARY FEAT.*

I THINK it was in the summer of 181 8 that James H.
Piper, William Reveley, William Wallace and myself,
being then students of Washington College, Virginia, de-
termined to make a jaunt to the Natural Bridge, fourteen
miles off. . Having obtained permission of the president,
we proceeded on our way rejoicing. When we arrived
at the Bridge, nearly all of us commenced climbing up
the precipitous sides in order to immortalize our names,
as usual.

We had not been long thus employed before we were
joined by Robert Penn, of Amherst, then a pupil of the
Rev. Samuel Houston's grammar-school, in the imme-
diate neighborhood of the Bridge. Mr. Piper, the hero
of the occasion, commenced climbing on the opposite side
of the creek from the one by which the pathway ascends
the ravine. He began down on the banks of the brook so
far that we did not know where he had gone, and were
only apprised of his whereabouts by his shouting above our
heads. When we looked up, he was standing apparently
right under the arch, I suppose a hundred feet from the
bottom, and that on the smooth side, which is generally
considered inaccessible without a ladder. He was stand-
ing far above the spot where General Washington is said
to have inscribed his name when a youth< The ledge of
the rock by which he ascended to this perilous height
does not appear from below to be three inches wide, and
runs almost at right angles to the abutment of the bi-idge ;
of course, its termination is far down the cliff on that

* The narrative is from the pen of William A. Caruthers, and was
originally published in the New York Knickerbocker.

FROM LYNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE. 57

side. Many of the written and traditional accounts state
this to be the side of the bridge up which he cHmbed. I
beUeve Miss Martineau so states; but it is altogether a
mistake, as any one may see by casting an eye up the
precipice on that side. The story, no doubt, originated
from this preliminary exploit.

The ledge of rock on which he was standing ap-
peared so narrow to us below, as to make us believe his
position a very perilous one, and we earnestly entreated
him to come down. He answered us with loud shouts
of derision. At this stage of the business Mr. Penn and
servant left us. He would not have done so, I suppose,
had he known what was to follow, but up to this time
not one of us had the slightest suspicion that Mr. Piper
intended the daring exploit which he afterward accom-
plished. He soon after descended from that side, crossed
the brook, and commenced climbing on the side by which
all visitors ascend the ravine. He first mounted the rocks
on this side, as he had done on the other, far down the
abutment, but not so far as on the opposite side. The
projecting ledge may be distinctly seen by any visitor.
It commences four or five feet from the pathway on the
lower side, and winds round, gradually ascending, until
it meets the cleft of rock over which the celebrated cedar
stump hangs. Following this ledge to its termination, it
brought him thirty or forty feet from the ground, and
placed him between two deep fissures, one on each side
of the gigantic column of rock on which the aforemen-
tioned cedar stump stands. This column stands out from
the bridge, as separate and distinct as if placed there by
Nature on purpose for an observatory to the wonderful
arch and ravine which it overlooks. A huge crack or
fissure extends from its base to the summit ; indeed, it is

58 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

cracked on both sides, but much more perceptibly on
one side than the other. Both of these fissures are thickly
overgrown with bushes, and numerous roots project into
them from trees growing on the precipice. It was be-
tween these that the aforementioned ledge conducted
him. Here he stopped, pulled off his coat and shoes and
threw them down to me. And this, in my opinion, is a
sufficient refutation of the story so often told, that he went
up to inscribe his name, and ascended so high that he
found it more difficult to return than to go forward. He
could have returned easily from the point where he dis-
encumbered himself, but the fact that he did thus pre-
pare so early, and so near the ground, and after he had
ascended more than double that height on the other side,
is clear proof that to inscribe his name was not, and to
climb the bridge was, his object. He had already in-
scribed his name above Washington himself more than
fifty feet.

*■ Around the face of this huge column, and between the
clefts, he now moved backward and forward, still as-
cending as he found convenient foothold. When he had
ascended about one hundred and seventy feet from the
earth, and had reached the point where the pillar over-
hangs the ravine, his heart seemed to fail him. He
stojiped, and seemed to us to be balancing midway be-
tween heaven and earth. We were in dread suspense,
expecting every moment to see him dashed in atoms at
our feet. We had already exhausted our powers of en-
treaty in persuading him to return, but all to no purpose.
Now it was perilous even to speak to him, and very diffi-
cult to carry on conversation at all, from the immense
height to which he had ascended, and the noise made by
the bubbling of the little brook as it tumbled in tiny cas-

FROM LYNCHBURG TO NATURAL BRIDGE. 59

cades over its rocky bed at our feet. At length he
seemed to discover that one of the clefts before mentioned
retreated backward from the overhanging position of the
pillar. Into this he sprang at once, and was soon out of
sight and out of danger.

There is not a word of truth in all that story about our
hauling him up with ropes, and his fainting away so soon
as he landed on the summit. Those acquainted with the
localities will at once perceive its absurdity ; for we were
beneath the arch, and it is half a mile round to the top,
and for the most part up a ragged mountain. Instead
of fainting away, Mr. Piper proceeded down the hill to
meet us and obtain his hat and shoes. We met about
halfway, and then he lay down for a few moments to
recover himself of his fatigue.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PEAKS OF OTTER.

Journey to the Peaks — Experiences by the Wayside — Panoramic Views — Picture
of a Feudal Proprietorship — Grape-growing in the Mountains — Toilsome As-
cent — On the Peak — Standing up in the great Hollowness of the Sky — Pecu-
liar Sublimity of the Peaks of Otter — A Religious Reflection on the Scene —
Bird of the Mountain — The Sublime Effect of a Striking Contrast — The Little
Earth and the Great Heavens.

HE Peaks of Otter are situated in Bedford
county, Virginia, rising from the Blue Ridge,
which here runs to the right and left across the
horizon for many miles. They take their name from
Otter creek, which courses near them. They are the
highest peaks of the Blue Ridge, and are generally ac-
counted — although recently there has been some question
of their comparative elevation — the highest mountains in
Virginia. The estimated height of the northern Peak,
which is the more elevated, is forty-two hundred feet
above the plain, and fifty-three hundred and seven feet
above the level of the sea. The more sharply-pointed
Peak to the south is, however, more commanding and
more romantic, and is the one usually visited.

From the town of Liberty, twenty-five miles on the
Virginia and Tennessee Railroad from Lynchburg, the
turnpike to Buchanan leads through a gap high up on the
side of the mountain we have described, and a country
road deflects to the summit of the Peak. The distance

THE PEAKS OF OTTER. 6 1

is good fourteen miles. And here we may give an admo-
nition to the traveler that should avail him in all the
Mountain Region of Virginia : it is, never to lose time or
temper by asking distances of the country-people. If he
does so he will be driven out of his wits by the incon-
sistencies and absurdities of the answers given ; and it is
not only ignorant people who will innocently misinform
and annoy him, but it is remarkable that the most intelli-
gent persons residing in this country blunder most unac-
countably as to distances, and that on roads familiar to
them. "Just over the mountain" is generally ten miles;
and "a piece further" may be half a mile or five miles.
When at Liberty I mounted for the Peak, I was told by
the nimble barkeeper at the hotel that it was ten miles
away : the fat proprietor, who shuffled in slippers, said
fifteen. I had ridden a mile out of town when I met a
wagoner and asked the distance to the Peak. '• It's nigh
onto nine mile." I had traveled five miles farther when
I accosted a man on horseback: "How far to the top
of the mountain?" "It is eleven miles," he said, sol-
emnly. I was halfway up the mountain when I discov-
ered a sleek negro at the door of a cabin, to whom I
repeated the incessant question. "Yes, sir," with an
air of importance — then throwing up his eyes to the sun
as if making an astronomical calculation — "yes, sir: it's
just exactly about tiventy-five miles f^ I answered nothing
and rode on. I have no commentary to make, except
the assurance that each answer was given me precisely as
recorded, and that I have related an actual experience.

But the road, however variously described as to dis-
tances, and although for three or four miles it appeared
to be in the bed of a mountain torrent, was never weari-
some or dull for a moment. From the time I rode out

63 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

of the village of Liberty the grand Peak was constantly
visible just before me, and it was a curious and vivid in-
terest to notice how at each stage of the journey the
mountain changed its envelope. It was constantly pre-
senting new vestures and aspects and dyes as mile by mile
I approached it. I could see the blue surface lifted up
before me become brown as I rode toward it ; then it
ripened into rock and shrub ; until at last yet closer I
could see the naked scars and the wrinkled soil of ks
sides. On each side of my bridle, as I rode over the
warm plain to the foot of the mountain, magnificent
scen'es stretched away. Broad fields palpitated under
the sun ; on the foot-hills were bands of young tall oaks
standing as firm and even as regiments of infantry; while
on the mountain slopes and far up to their summits, shad-
ows of clouds swept and broke upon the unmoving ranks
of the forest. It was a scene full of animation ; Nature
had bestowed everything upon it, and a beautiful day
had filled it with the images of fancy.

At last I am ascending the mountain through a succes-
sion of panoramic views. The road at one time seems
going away from the Peak ; now it bends back with new
determination ; now it flattens out on an observatory,
where I pause with involuntary exclamations as I see the
country below rolled out, and far beneath me the red
stripe of road by which I have come. It is a wild
and desolate country immediately around me. I ride
for miles with no sign of human life by the roadside
but what some hut contains ; some dogs bark at the
horse's heels, and an old, half-nude negro glares at the
traveler with savage curiosity, ceasing his work in a half-
scratched field of withered corn. Suddenly, and as if by
a "magical translation, the road that has hesitated in such

THE PEAKS OF OTTER. 63

scenes, comes out upon a broad shoulder of the mountain,
in sight of a pleasing mansion, and where are noticed,
with infinite surprise, all the evidences of the broad and
garnished farm of a wealthy plants. .

It was indeed a surprising revelation to find displayed
here something like a vision of feudal proprietorship. I
had got to the "gap" of the Peak before I was aware.
Fenced in by hills, it affords no view of the country be-
low, and thus gives no idea of its elevation save by com-
parison with the yet unsealed top of the mountain ; and
I had thus insensibly ridden from an almost savage sur-
rounding into a scene of broad acres and cultivated rural

life. Mr. H , a well-known gentleman of Virginia,

owns three thousand acres here, and has a numerous ten-
antry. It was a picture of the old plantation life of Vir-
ginia hid away in the niche of a mountain ; the romantic
home of a modern feodary suspended in the clouds.
The hospitality of the proprietor detained me ; and it was
indeed as refreshing as it was unexpected to dismount at
a house which would have been of no mean pretensions
even among our lowland gentry, crossing a cultivated
lawn to it, and noting evidences around of a thrifty indus-
try as well as of a refined taste. The name of the place
is "Bellevue." But there is no view, so concealed is the
place in the mountain gap, except the Peak, which stares
into the sky and throws a shadow down sharp as a spear-
head at evening. The neck of land which constitutes the
farm is well cultivated, tobacco being the staple produc-
tion. There were no workmen in the fields ; and their
absence there was painfully explained to me when a few
minutes later there passed the house a funeral procession
of negroes, in their decentest attire, following a short
pine coffin placed in a rude wagon, that drove slowly to

64 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

a grave dug in the obscure side of the mountain that
perhaps had bounded all that the dead one ever knew of
the life of this world.

Mr. H , a repicsentative of the best of the intelli-
gent large land-proprietors of Virginia, instructed and
interested me greatly in descriptions of resources of the
mountain region which he so eminently occupied. I
found that the people were developing a new industry
here in the raising of fruit, and especially in the culture

of the grape. Mr. H had just sold for fourteen

hundred dollars the apples he had gathered from trees
scattered about in the fields, and hitherto grown without
the least attention. He was now about to make a large
experiment in the production of wine from the Joplin
grape. The description of the country about the Peaks
of Otter answers, in respect of the grape, for nearly the
whole length of the Blue Ridge in Virginia. On the sunny
slopes of these mountains there is said to be precisely
the conditions needed for the growing of wine -making
grapes. The air is dry, the warmth entirely sufficient,
the soil suitable ; so that there would be no mildew, the
fruit would ripen at the proper time, and the crop would
be abundant. These were the conditions indispensable
to the production of the juicy wine-grape. The want of
proper geniality and warmth in the climate of the North
disables that country from producing the wine-grape,
while it succeeds well in producing the solid table-
grape. On the other hand, south of Virginia, there is
danger of mildew from the dews and fogs. Mildew is
the great enemy of the grape, and it cannot flourish
where the causes of the disease prevail. On the sunny
slopes of the Blue Ridge there is no danger of this evil ;
and I was assured that there the wine-grape could be pro-

THE PEAKS OF OTTER. 65

duccd to perfection, and to an extent that would soon
make a new feature of industry and a new resource of
wealth in the State. But a truce to speculations induced
by the wayside ; although here, as elsewhere on a tour
devoted to scenery, the writer has yet dismounted to
pluck some chance new blossom of the wealth of Virginia.
Refreshed by some glasses of home-made wine, we
soon returned to the main object of our journey. From

the portico of Mr. H 's house could be plainly seen

the top of the mountain we had come to explore, pro-
jected into the sky, garnished with a cap of dark, rusty
rock that ran up to a point and nodded over the preci-
pice. It was a mile and a half by road and by path to
the mountain's top. The writer had been joined at Mr.

H 's by a young physician of the neighborhood, and

by a student from the University of Virginia, who were
as anxious as himself to climb to the narrow and perilous
summit. Our horses struggled a mile up the mountain
side ; we had then to hitch them and complete the ascent,
half a mile farther, by a path so steep and so badly
graded that we had to assist our uncertain foothold by
grasping the boughs of trees within reach. It was hard
work under a July sun. There was nothing to repay us
in intermediate views ; we might mark our elevation by
imperfect glimpses of some red hills below, but the fol-
iage was too thick to afford any extent of view, and before
us was nothing but the rugged inclined plane, the rotten
ascent up which we were toiling. It was interesting, how-
ever, to notice the steady diminution of the trees as we
ascended ; we had ridden through stately trees a little
while before, now we were among stunted pines and
dwarfed oaks, the limbs of the latter crooked and twisted
by storms that for years had tortured and deformed them.
6 * E

66 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

In this narrow scene we toiled up to the great overhang-
ing rocks of the mountains, reahzing nothing of the view
that awaited us. The path here is yet obscure ; it winds
up under a shelf of rock'; it is overhung and shut up to
the very last moment ; and then a single step, as it were,
a single curve, and the whole scene bursts upon us, an
infinite apparition !

It is the suddenness of the grand and limitless revela-
tion that first seizes and alarms the soul. There was a
loose slanting board, a remnant of an old walk, at the
last turn of the path, crouching on which I had to climb
to a huge boulder. There, yet on all-fours, faint, dizzy,
trembling, I clung to the slippery summit, finding sud-
denly that it was all that was left me beneath the skies !
I felt suspended under the dome of the heavens. I could
not rise to my feet, I could not survey the scene around
me ; prostrate and almost breathless, I clung to the small
space on the crown of rock on which I had been lifted
up as on a pinnacle into the limidess air. It was only
after the suggestion of one of my companions that I
should not look into the awful chasm below, but should
relieve the eye by resting it on the milder ascent up which
I had come, that I regained command of myself, and was
able to rise to my feet and survey what was around me.

It is the exceeding keenness of the summit of the Peaks
of Otter that gives an effect of sublimity perhaps un-
equaled by any mountain view in the world. There are
many mountains higher than where we stood ; there are
others, it may be, with more merit or interest in the sur-
roundings ; but none, we imagine, which produce so terri-
bly sublime an emotion of suspension in the sky. There
is a rude, circular arrangement of immense rocks on the
top of the mountain, suggesting the crater of an extinct

THE PEAKS OF OTTER. 67

volcano, and there are no less than three points that
thrust up, on any one of which we may stand with no
more room beneath the great blue heavens than that on
which the feet are planted. The traveler stands up in
the great hollowness of the sky, alone, naked in the dead
air. It is not the common intoxication of a pinnacle ; it is
the awful sublimity of an insecure suspension, the steps to
which, looking from a summit that nods on one side over
the world below, his imagination does not retrace and his
eyes do not see.

I had to get accustomed to the narrow and impending
observatory before I could take in or enjoy the scene it
commanded. It was a scene whose grand boundaries
were even with the sky. Here was Bedford county at our
feet, a patchwork of farms, tufted and tasseled with beau-
tiful forests. Here were mountains all around us ; some
near, gashed into red clay, their bare, macerated sides
plain to the vision ; on others we could see the mottled
soil and plumes of the forest ; others, clothed with the
hues of distance, gave only smooth surfaces to the eye as
they joined the sky. There were mountains of all im-
aginable shapes — flat-top mountains, peaked mountains,
every form of the cone and the pyramid, perfect, broken,
or truncated. There was the curiously-shaped "House
Mountain" near Lexington, then far to the south-west,
a grotesque, misshapen pyramid, a broken fang on the
pearly crust of sky. Out of all this confusion ran away
steadily the great ranges of the Alleghany and Blue
Ridge, giving order and disposition to the wild scene,
and tracing out of it the mountain system of Virginia.

No wonder that John Randolph's infidelity was shaken
in such a scene. There were the prints of the Great Cre-
ator's hands on the earth. A world was at our feet to

68 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

display design ; the strong sun was hung up in the infinite
air; a thousand beauties were kindled around us; world
and sky were in the garments of a new creation — the au-
•ora of a new and sublime significance ;

" And luminous beyond the golden mist,
Something that looked to my young eyes like God."

Sounds from the world below traveled up to us with
strange distinctness. I could hear the tinkle of a cow-
bell a mile and a half away. Some buzzards, attracted
by the unwonted spectacle of human figures on the Peak,
sailed around us, gradually contracting the circle as im-
pelled by curiosity, until they swept almost within pistol
shot. I am sure that I abuse neither my own imagination
nor the credulity of my readers in saying that I could
hear the flapping of their wings in the dead, stagnated air !
Wearied by their circuits, continued for half an hour,
several of these monstrous birds — than whom, despite their
uncleanliness, there are no more graceful travelers of the
air, none that move through it with slower and more
magnificent stroke — perched on a cliff below us, and
yawned at us by an occasional motion of the wings.

There was one reflection in the scene which remains to
be indicated, and which will live always in the writer's
recollections of it. Looking down upon the map of
country below us, the mind is se'zed with the reflection,
How conventional are our ideas of spaces and of magni-
tudes! The speed of modern travel has no more re-
markable fact than the change it has wrought in our
ideas of distance — a change in some respects painful and
unpoetical, for in it we have lost some of the dearest
images, and instead of the "wide, wide world," the tra-
dition of our childhood, we find ourselves reflecting in

THE PEAKS OF OTTER. 69

this age of steam and telegraphs, How small, in what nar-
row spaces are now held all the habitations of men ! The
reflection comes to us with additional pangs on this wild
platform of Nature's observatory. The great stretch of
territory from the remotest ranges of the Alleghany,
sweeping down to the North Mountain away down in
Shenandoah county, extending to the "backbone" of the
mountains separating Eastern and Western Virginia, lies
at our feet in miniature — a patch of a map that we might
sweep over with a motion of the arm. The zigzag turn-
pikes along the mountain sides, where the stage-coach
winds its way day and night for successive days to reach
its destination, are but threads swept by a single glance
of the eye; a distant train on the Virginia and Tennessee
Railroad appears but a child's toy; the space of a whole
day's journey seems but a few strides. The poetry of
distance is gone; but with the pain of the diminution of
the theatre of life and of man's empire of industry at our
feet, there was yet a moral usefulness in the scene, and,
in the language of another observer, "I was impressively
reminded of the extreme littleness with which these things
of earth would all appear when the tie of life which binds
us here is broken, and we shall be able to look back and
down upon them from another world ! "

Our eyes involuntarily turn upward. It is the same
canopy of blue sky ; that has not changed, that not di-
minished ; and our idea of magnitude is more than satis-
fied. We are lost in the sensation of immensity, raised into
God's universe, and entranced with the thought that when
the earth beneath our feet shall have passed away and
the mountains melted down like wax, there shall still
remain room, infinite room, for the habitations of man
and the excursions of his spirit !

CHAPTER V.

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS AND SURROUNDINGS.

Route to the Alleghany Springs — At the Heart of the Mountains of Virginia —
Access to the Springs, North and South — The Water siii generis, and the
most elaborate in the World — Analysis of the Water — Medical Guide to its
Uses — Wonderful Effects of the Water — The Scenery around the Springs the
most Remarkable in Virginia — Puncheon Run Falls — Romance of its Dis-
covery — Climbing the Mountain — A Rough Journey— Sublimity of the Falls
• — Descent Two Thousand Feet — Scenes on Puncheon Run — " Purgatory" —
The Deserters' Fortress — Fisher's View — Looking from the Mountain's Top
— Characteristics of Mountain Views — Sublime Kffect of a View of and beyond
the Alleghany.

E do not hold ourselves under any obligation to
take the objects of our travels in strict geographi-
cal succession. We would be but poor tourists to
do so. So from the Peaks of Otter, remounting the cars
at Liberty and passing objects of interest to which we
meditate return, we are rapidly carried fifty miles on
the railroad to what is likely to become, on various ac-
counts, the most famous of the summer resorts of Vir-
ginia — the Alleghany Springs in Montgomery county. It
is not only for the value of its incomparable waters that
we thus speak of this resort, but for its fortunate position,
holding, as it does, the key to the finest scenery and one
of the greatest natural wonders of Virginia.

Wc leave the railroad at Shawsville,* the springs being
three miles distant. Here, at the railroad station, the

* Since named Allegliany Station, in consideiatioii of the springs.
70

ALLEGHANT SPRINGS. 71

Springs' managers have erected a commodious and pleas-
ant hotel — an outcropping, in fact, of their increased scale
of accommodations, keeping pace with increased patron-
age — it being designed as a convenience for visitors who,
leaving the cars in the night-time, may choose to defer
the brief remainder of the trip by stage-coach until next
morning, or may possibly be detained by the swollen
mountain streams. In any circumstances, however, the
traveler will not regret staying over night at this hotel,
for the scenery through which he is to ride to the springs
should be seen by daylight. To traverse the beautiful
valley leading up to the springs' hotel, and to see over
the mist-fretted tops of the mountains which overhang the
way the sun coming up "with all his traveling glories
round him," his early rays working into heavenly alchemy
the steel-blue mountain streams, is a reward not to be
despised, and a fitting preface to pictures which the
Alleghany holds yet in reserve for the happy visitor.

"The Mountains of Virginia" is a vague term in the
popular geography of the State. Wherever is found a
sulphur spring bubbling from a foot-hill, or not even
within the skirmish-line of our great mountain ridges, we
have advertised in the newspapers a ^'tnountain resort,"
as if this elevation of figure could catch and cheat the
imagination of the heat-burdened inhabitants of the low-
lands. But the writer is now quite well satisfied that he
is really in the mountains of Virginia, at the very heart
of them, situated as he is now onJ;he Roanoke river, in
the county of Montgomery, at the eastern foot of the
Alleghany Mountains — the most elevated region between
the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. Here he
reposes (for writing is scarcely a labor in such surround-
ings) in the midst of the numerous and lofty "spurs" of

72 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the king of mountains — the hotel of the Alleghany Springs
and its picturesque ranges of cottages occuj^ying smooth
and undulating hills, which descend to a lawn extending
to the banks of the tuneful and trout-inhabited stream
that flows far away into the sounds of North Carolina.
And yet this place, apparently so remote and intricate, is
within three miles of the Virginia and Tennessee Rail-
road, is accessible by continuous railroad travel from the
four points of the compass, and invites its visitors from
every city of the Union, not only to see its abounding
scenery, but to drink of a water which we shall presently
describe as unequaled in any of the cunning of Nature's
pharmacy. By the rapid motion of the steam car, the
valetudinarian of Boston, escaping from the dark and
dense rheumatism-and-consumption-provoking fogs of
the North, and the invalid of New Orleans, fleeing from
the malaria of the Mississippi swamp, may (starting at
the same time) in seventy hours find themselves socia-
bly seated side by side at the foot of the great Appalach-
ian chain of mountains, at an elevation of two thousand
feet above the level of their homes, breathing an air
more salubrious and bracing than that of Montpelier,
and able to shake hands literally across the line of 36°
30', that being the exact latitude of the springs.

The Alleghany Springs is about the extreme of t\ie
southern tier of Virginia watering-places scattered along
the route of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The
water is sui generis, peculiar, and the most elaborate min-
eral water in the world, containing nearly thirty elements,
many of them possessing active medical properties. Sul-
phur water is cheap in Virginia; we have all quantities
and varieties — white, red, yellow, salt, cold, etc. The
Alleghany water, which is of comparatively recent dis-

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 73

covery, is most remarkable for the active salts of lime
and magnesia; but an analysis which lies before me
(most skillfully made in a Northern laboratory) shows
that it exceeds in the number and variety of its elements
the famous waters of both the Bedford Springs in Penn-
sylvania and the Congress Spring at Saratoga. Of metals
(which, with the exception of iron, are scarcely ever
found in the mineral waters of Virginia) there are no less
than seven ; of the alkalies, three ; of the earths, six ; and
of acids the same number, in intimate chemical combi-
nation, many of them forming salts of known medicinal
virtues. Indeed, it is not a curious reasoning, but one
drawn strictly from analogy, that Nature, which never
does anything in vain, and which no doubt has a design
in its pharmacy as in its other workshops, has, in elabo-
rating a compound containing so many elements, many
of them known to possess active medical properties, fur-
nished a potent remedial agent for the uses of afflicted
and unhealthy man. Experience has already taught the
uses of the water for those commonest afflictions of human
flesh, the diseases of the stomach and liver, and it is
already famous for its specific conquest, its ' ' sovereign
cure," of that Protean monster, dyspepsia — our "Ameri-
can disease." But it is yet only in the infancy of its fame :
there are other encouraging inferences as to its therapeutic
qualities, which the writer describes below, after having
named the crowning glory of the water as he has experi-
enced it in his own flesh — its specific tonic action upon
the various organs concerned in the vital function of
digestion.

In the Springs Region of Virginia the siilplmr waters
in their various modifications are common: there are
thermal waters of temperature ranging from 62° to 106°;
7

74 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the chalybeates, simple and compound, are found in many
places; while of the aluminous or acidulated aluminous
chalybeates there are three or four varieties.

But the Alleghany Springs belong to the rarer class of
what are known as saline waters, and yet with a variety
or elaboration that renders them peculiar.

The annexed analysis of the water was made by Dr. F.
A. Genth, of Philadelphia:

ONE GALLON, SEVENTY THOUSAND GRAINS, CONTAINS:

Nitrate of Magnesia. . . 3.219562 grains.

Do. Ammonia... 0.559412 "

Phosphate of Alumina. 0.025549 "

Silicate of Alumina. .. . 0.207399 "

Fluoride of Calcium. . 0.022S58 "

Chloride of Sodium.. 0.274676 "

Silicic Acid 0.882782 "

Crenic Acid 0.001921 "

Apocrenic Acid 0.000192 "

Other Organic Matter. 1.999121 "

Carbonate of Cobalt 1 „,

} Traces.
Teroxide of Antimony '

183.068321

Sulphate of Magnesia.. 50.884290 grains.

Do. Lime 115.294022 "

Do. Soda 1.717959 "

Do. Potassa 3.699081 "

Carbonate of Copper.. 0.000359 "

Do. Lead 0.000569 "

Do. Zinc 0.001713 "

Do. Iron 0.157049 "

Do. Manganese 0.060617 "

Do. Lime 3.613209 "

Do. Magnesia.. 0.362362 "

Do. Strontia. . 0.060536 "

Do. Baryta. . . . 0.022404 "

Do. Lithia 0.001679 "

Solid ingredients by direct evaporation gave 184.072000

Half-combined carbonic acid 1.885526

Free carbonic acid S-455726

Hydro-sulphuric acid 0.001339 "

Total amount of ingredients 190.41 1912

The effects of the Alleghany water are cathartic, diu-
retic and tonic. Their main efficacy appears to depend
on their laxative and purgative operations, by which the
alimentary canal is excited to copious secretions, and the
secretory functions of the liver and pancreas are stimu-
lated to pour out their appropriate fluids. The sympathy
between the organs upon which they operate primarily
gives them a very wide range of value, as in relieving
congestion or irritation of distant organs.

ALLEGHAXr SPRIXGS. 75

When the water is used in small, regulated quantities,
best calculated to meet the indications of cure in the large
class of diseases in which it seems to have almost a spt:-
cific action, the leading characteristics are hmic, alterative
and detergent. That the two last-named properties of the
water, acting on the vascular, capillary and glandular
system, purify the blood and other secretions, throwing
off dead "peccant matter," is shown by the softness, pli-
ancy and smoothness of the skin, which it never fails to
produce (a property which must commend it to the favor
of the ladies as the safest and surest cosmetic), the speedy
clearing of the complexion in the worst cases of jaundice,
and the cure of scrofula — next to cancer, the most intract-
able glandular affection.

The catalogue of diseases for which the Alleghany water
is indicated and recommended is — dyspepsia; obstruc-
tions of the abdominal viscera generally ; depraved and
vitiated biliary secretions ; obstinate and habitual costive-
ness; scrofula and cutaneous exanthemata; jaundice;
biliary calculi ; sympathetic affection of the lungs, and
incipient consumption.

But the crowning virtue of this water, as we have
already remarked, is its specific tonic action upon the
various organs concerned in the vital function of diges-
tion. Its effect in correcting deranged and morbid ac-
tion in these organs, and restoring them to their healthful
strength and tone and vigor, is almost miraculous, and
must be witnessed or experienced to be fully appreciated.

Directions in the use of the water are very necessary
to their effect; and fortunately the resident physician,
Dr. White, is a gentleman who has accumulated a large
experience on this subject, and the renown of whose skill
has been carried by many a grateful patient to distant

76 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

parts of the country. It is observed commonly that the
water purges mildly or actively according to the quanti-
ties taken into the system ; but what is most noticed, to
the pleased surprise of the invalid, is that he can keep up
the action upon his bowels for a number of days without
feeling any debilitation, and instead of losing his appe-
tite, as from ordinary purging, always experiencing a
positive increase of it. This effect is of the happiest sort.
It may be said, in popular language, that the system is
cleaned out and built up at the same time, and thus re-
newed by a process which is all the time exhilarating and
agreeable.

It is not necessary to be an invalid to obtain benefits
from such a water. It improves even those in average
health. The writer recollects the singular observation he
made at the Alleghany Springs, that not only were the
invalids bettered, as they are more or less at such resorts,
but that all the visitors were improved ; the remark being
common, even from the healthy as well as the sick, that
they never felt so well before.

Such a testimony points out the Alleghany as a resort
for the entire public. The man out of health wants to
get it; the man in health wants to increase and to secure
it; and the Alleghany seems to accommodate in a special
manner, and beyond most other springs, each of the two
universal desires.

The country around the Alleghany Springs is a succes-
sion of wild, strange pictures; and the astonished amphi-
theatre of the mountains looks down upon the illuminated
ball-room and scenes transported from city life. The
advantage of these springs — an extraordinary one when
added to the surpassing virtue of the water — is the attrac-
tions of natural scenery just about them, among these a

PUNCHEON RUN FALLS.

Page 77.

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 77

romantic discovery of the seventh wonder of Virginia.
The writer recollects having been recently shown, in a
Northern city, some stereoscopic views of wild water-
courses and picturesque canons in distant parts of the
world, but while the exhibitor was waiting for our admi-
ration we could not help exclaiming, ''We have seen
much finer around the Alleghany Springs in the State of
Virginia." From a number of such views, embarrassed,
in fact, by the riches of the scenery around us, we have
chosen some for description, or rather for an attempt at
such performance, where pen and pencil are alike so in-
adequate.

PUNCHEON RUN FALLS.

Our first task is to give some account of a scene which
ranks, we think — and our estimation has been improved
by travel — with the most w'onderful and grand sights of
this continent. It has the freshness and romance of dis-
covery. Within the leafy and untrodden forest of Mont-
gomery county, in the south-western quarter of Virginia,
on one of the rocky ribs of the Alleghanies, not more
than eight miles from the famous Alleghany Springs,
which for years have numbered their visitors by the
thousand from all parts of the Union, a gentleman (Dr.
Isaac White, the resident physician of the springs), ram-
bling for trout up one of the forks of the Roanoke river,
found hid in the green curtains of the woods, and de-
fended by fortress and palisade of rock, what is now
known as, or rudely called, the "Puncheon Run Falls,"
and what is destined (if I can trust my own impressions)
to exceed in its attractions those already well-known
"sights," such as the Natural Bridge, the Peaks of Otter,
Weyer's Cave, etc., which have made Virginia famous for
7*

78 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

its monuments of the beauty and cunning of Nature. In
the midst of what must have been once a grand convul-
sion of the elements, and where the mountain side ap-
pears to have been torn open almost to the primitive
rock — a wound from an unknown source, unhealed and
kept open and fretted with huge masses of stone — a moun-
tain stream descends, not perpendicularly, nor yet by
stages of descent, but at an angle near the perpendicular,
in a smooth plait of currents knotted with white cascades,
some eighteen hundred or two thousand feet, measuring
the length of the water. But the scene and its surround-
ings are best described from different stand-points of per-
sonal observation ; and as the journey to secure these is
not without interest, the writer proposes to attempt some
record of the trip which made for him a day of various
and ineffaceable memories.

The first expression of curious inquiry which the visitor
at Alleghany Springs makes concerning this grand and
even sublime scene, so close to a resort thronged no less
by lovers of Nature than by those who come to drink of
the most wonderful health-giving waters of this State, is
that it should have remained so long undiscovered, or
rather unnoticed, to the world. It is wonderful, almost
ludicrously so, that a singular class of people, for whom
there is no other name here but the general one of "Moun-
taineers," living close to the Falls, where they scratch
the ground for a meagre subsistence, and sometimes
visiting the springs, bringing chickens, jeggs, fruit, etc.,
should yet never have mentioned, not even signified by a
word casually dropped in conversation, the existence of
this wonder of Nature, in the presence or within the sound
of which they lived daily, and some of them had been
born. There is a "settlement" within a quarter of a

ALLEGHANT SPRINGS. 79

mile of the foot of the Falls, and a number of clearings
about their summit. The people who inhabit these spaces
on the mountains are a singular class of country people ;
very ignorant of course, but always striking us as possess-
ing much of the silence and stoicism of the red man : but
little disposed to converse except with those who have the
art to fall in with their manner, jealous or disdainful of
"city folks," and in their uncouth life showing much
more of a harsh reserve than of mere rustic shyness.
These "mountaineers" are not communicative (except
in whisky) : they are, of course, desperately ignorant,
but their singular impassiveness is what most strikes the
traveler. Those who lived near the Puncheon Run Falls
saw nothing very remarkable in it, and therefore never
spoke of it. Not a word, not even an accidental allusion
from these people, ever discovered that there was within
eight miles of Alleghany Springs what was worth cross-
ing half the breadth of this continent to see. But for
the adventurous steps of an enthusiastic sportsman, the
ramparts of rocks and the veil of the forest would yet
have secured against intrusion this grand and cunning
work of Nature, now accessible to the army of tourists
and the thousands who pursue in all the ways of travel
the genius of natural scenery.

Speaking to a neighboring mountaineer after his first
impression from the discovery of these Falls, Doctor White
moderately remarked that they were a great curiosity.

"I don't see nothing kewrus about 'em," responded
the man, disdainfully. "When the water comes over
the top it is bound to run down to the bottom, and der
ain't nothing kewrus or comicaV (a rustic synonym for
"strange") "in that. Now" — adding meditatively — •
"if the water was to run up, you see, then I allow it

8o THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

would be a kcw?-osity" — a characteristic expression truly
of rustic philosophy.

Only eight miles from the smooth lawns and pic-
turesque cottages and lively clamor of the springs ! But
an eight miles that I would not like to travel again for
a less prize than the spectacle at the end. Half of the
distance is over a passable road, with some pleasant
stretches along the murmuring waters of the Roanoke
river, with entrancing vistas through the forest and
visions of lazy cattle by the stream. But now comes the
unbroken ascent (possibly on horseback) of a mountain
at an unceasing angle near the perpendicular, a mile and
a quarter — not a single table-land for rest, and where,
if we walk, we must cling to the underbrush while we
pause to take breath. On a momentary foothold near
the top we look abroad. There is a girdle of mountains,
patches of golden grain in the valleys below us, and the
squat houses of the mountaineers ; and on the limits of
vision across from where we stand the scarred, black
peaks of the almost leafless Poor Mountain. In amazing
contrast, on the summit of this mountain near where we
stand, are immense towering trees of the yellow poplar,
some of them sixty feet high before the first limb puts
out, and in a single one of which cylinders, estimating
the cubic feet of timber, there is a possible undeveloped
house, awaiting, as the statue in the block of marble, the
workmanship of man. Half a mile's ride on the level
summit, and under such majestic though spare shade,
and we are within a quarter of a mile of the Falls, where
we must dismount and commence to go down a mountain
side even more precipitous than that we have ascended,
where we have no advantage of path, no guide but a
low, uncertain sound as from the depth of the earth, con-

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 8i

fused by the whispering winds which embrace it and bear
it away, toying with it through the forest. Through nets
of underbrush, over great boulders of rock, cutting
gashes in the loose soil with our iron-shod boots, clinging
to the ivy bush or to a point of uncertain stone while we
get a foothold, we appear to be descending into a great
fissure in the earth's surface, for there is nothing oppo-
site to view through the torn or imperfect shade but the
rocky face of another mountain patched with stunted
growths and dead timber.

The difficulties of the way are not described exces-
sively ; but to show what is the resolution of sight-seekers,
I may mention that a party of ladies, animated by the
adventurous spirit of Miss M., of Louisville, Ky., a young
lady just released from boarding-school, as dauntless in
every exercise of mountain-life as she is graceful and
radiant in the ball-room, and sustained by the matronly
though youthful countenance of Mrs. Rosa C, whom
every visitor of the springs will recognize whenever there
is a kindness to be done for any of the guests or an oc-
casion of pleasure to be dispensed, actually made the de-
scent described, went to the very foot of the Falls, and,
what is more, climbed the mountain in returning — all
the gentlemen of the party being ordered to the front
on this part of the trip. In what plight they emerged,
what ravages of dry goods marked the way, the rents and
mischances and losses of the adventure, are not for me to
report; and Miss M., of the ladies, to all the impor-
tunate curiosity which assailed them on their return, hap-
pily under cover of night, to the springs, protests that a
full relation of the adventure is not to be given until at
the approaching masked ball of the season, and then
under masks, or literally sub rosa.

82 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

But to describe my own experience of a journey so
difficult. About two-thirds of the way down one of our
party called, joyously, "■ The Falls ! " We had for some
time heard the sound of it, though on the uncertain
shifts of the wind, and now a few steps or scrambles
brought me to the view pointed out by our companion.
I was disappointed and sullenly silent. There was noth-
ing to be seen but ten or twelve feet span of falling water,
and I readily imagined that the whole Fall was composed
of such short stages of descent, breaking all effect of a
continuity of view. " We must go to the bottom," said
Wills, whose long stride and fine eye had constituted
him our leader. An aggravated struggle with loosened
earth and over the sharp, remorseless rock succeeds, and
we are at the bottom of this strange, almost ghastly,
fissure, the awful, rock-ribbed residence of Solitude.

Heavens ! what a scene opens upon me ! What I had
taken for an abrupt termination of the cascade proves
only to be a deflection out of sight, and a few shifts of
position at last give a point of view from which can be
seen the sweep of the Fall, but out of a straight line, its
white currents writhing close at the top, with their knotted
muscles standing out, spreading, uniting, divided for a
moment, then joined in loud foaming combat, again on
the jut of a rock, again over the perilous edge in locked,
fatal embrace, and all descending in one tempestuous
roar of conflict into the wild channel of the water that
rocks on the attenuated sand at our feet. And still the
struggle goes on, for there are yet more falls even after this
great descent, more conflicts and writhings of water, and
twisted currents and great bowls worn in the rock, in
which the foam splashes in feastful music. As far as the
eye can reach — for two hundred yards at least from the

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 83

foot of the great Falls — the stream is white with cascades,
and bent and tortured with great masses of stone ; some
of these huge boulders or loose rocks containing more
than a thousand cubic feet, others piled by the side of
the water, their great seams like recesses or gaps of Na-
ture's masonry, mysterious openings into the side of
earth. It appears, indeed, as if Nature had made all the
surroundings of this wonderful scene to secure the greatest
effect of wildness and sublimity. The solitude is deep,
impenetrable. We are in the green heart of the wood,
deep down in a narrow fissure ; rocks embroidered with
mosses as black and as brilliant as French broadcloth
are close to the stream, and invite us to repose ; the
drapery of the forest, the rich foliage of the spruce,
starred here and there with the pinkish-white of the
abounding laurel, conceals even the outlines of the sum-
mit from which we have descended. We are alone ;
walled in and curtained in from the outer world with
Nature's wildest Avork, the sublime manifestations of an
elemental violence piled around us in the channel of a
stream cleft and gashed in the mountain side, and riveted
in the everlasting rock. There is not a sound of life in
the forest; not a lizard disturbs the leaves, not a bird twit-
ters, not a living thing moves. There is nothing but the
endless sound of the Falls — not so loud, of course, as that
of Niagara, but the same deep, solemn monotone of fall-
ing waters. Unceasing .' Through night, through storm,
through sunshine, through all the world's changes, when
other sounds are interrupted and changed, or travel or
cease, and even the measures of time cease to beat, and
the sweet cadences of health are gone and the pulses are
still, yet uninterrupted, the same to-day as yesterday — the

84 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

same when those who saw it then are passed into the
ignorance and silence of the grave.

The best effect of the Falls, no doubt, is that derived
from the vexed channel through which it descends. If
the water fell from such a height over a smooth and un-
confined face, it is evident that it would assume a fan-like
shape, losing its body and be dissipated into spray. As it
is, the interruption from the points of rock in the channel,
with here and there larger obstructions — one of the most
remarkable, a tall pine grown straight into the air from
a cape of soil — separates and divides out the currents to
reunite or to unravel in separate strands, making effects
picturesque beyond the power of description. The most
vivid comparison we can make to realize the spectacle is,
a plait of white, glistening currents, at top closely inter-
laced, now knotted with white lumps of foam, the plaits
again and again shaken out, again and again united, and
at the last frayed out like a whiplash of silver cords.

The day was singularly propitious for every accumula-
tion of sublimity in the scene. My companions had
strolled down the stream in search of trout, and I was
left alone in the heart of the great scene. One of those
storms so rapid and sublime in this mountainous region
was rising, and the solemn rumble of the thunder down
the narrow valley, like the distant chariot wheels of the
Almighty marshaling the storm, mingled with the deep
roar of the Falls, and made a combination of sound in
which the very soul of man was mixed with the grand
commotion around him.

The scene was inexpressibly sublime, and yet various,
when explored to its extremity. For farther down the
stream, where the eye could reach, and where my com-

"PURGATORY" — VIEW ON PUNCHEON RUN.

Page 85.

ALLEGHAN7' SPRINGS. ^S

panions had passed out of sight, and where I at last re-
joined them, there were gentler passages, and

" Still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes ; .

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies —
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep.

.... My soul was an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, did float
Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing."

The most romantic route to the Falls is undoubtedly
that up the stream, clinging to its banks or stepping
along the rocks piled in its channel. It is perhaps no
more difficult than the scrambling down the mountain
side which has been described ; and if one can work
his way through the "purgatory" of broken timber,
brush and rock, he will be rewarded on his way with
vistas of wonderful beauty. Occasionally he may look
to a long distance through the canon. For miles the
stream is contained closely by walls of shrub-covered
rock ; and in the patch of sky overhead the sun is visible
but for two or three hours of the day. An old moun-
taineer remarked to us that of deer, bear and other wild
animals hunted in that vicinity, none had ever been
known to attempt the crossing of Puncheon Run until it
emerges from the mountain, so wild and violent is the
chasm.

But the signal is given for departure, and we are forced
to take the return route up the harsh side of the moun-
tain in time to escape the rain. The ascent is made with

• 8

86 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

difficulty and labor ; but at every pause of it I am con-
stantly thankful that I have striven to look upon a scene
that has stored my heart for ever with images of beauty
and grandeur ; for it is thus, indeed, that Nature is to us a
"■perpetual ^^^ of nectared sweets," and its inspirations
a possession for ever. All the difficulties of the travel
are immensely repaid ; but yet it is pleasant to know
that this wondrous scene is in a short while to be laid
open to the great host of sight-seers, and made accessible
to visitors generally, through the enterprise of Mr. Cal-
houn, the energetic and popular proprietor of the Alle-
ghany Springs. It is already planned to cut a path down
the mountain side, and to overcome the most difficult
spaces with ladders, and, besides these aids to the traveler,
to open some romantic vistas through the forest, and to
cut some timber that obstructs the otherwise easiest views
of the Falls. There is no doubt that a scene which one
of our company, who had traveled on every continent of
the globe, pronounced to be incomparable in its com-
binations of the picturesque and the grand, is to become
famous, especially in its convenient conjunction with the
best health-giving waters of Virginia ; and it is already
contemplated to build another mammoth hotel at the
Alleghany Springs, in view of the accumulation of visit-
ors from such double attractions for the health of the in-
valid and the interest of the tourist.

There are local associations of the Falls of a singularly
romantic nature, which are not to be omitted from my
narrative, and which appropriately conclude its interest.
In the almost inaccessible country near the top of the
Falls, where there was a more modern settlement known
as Puncheon Camp, there are remains of a noted refuge
of deserters in the war of 1812. There are imperfect

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 87

walls of stone yet visible where they constructed rude
abodes and defied pursuit. Farther down the side of the
mountain, perched on a steep slope, where a single man
might hold in check a thousand pursuers, there is an ob-
ject of yet greater interest — a house or cabin built of
large stones, and so cunningly thatched with mosses that
to the distant eye it has the appearance of one large rock
on the perilous edge of the precipice. This singular
structure is now known as the fortress and abode of a
number of deserters from the Confederate army in the
late war ; and it is reported that as many as forty or fifty
of them harbored here, making predatory excursions into
the surrounding country for subsistence, and invariably
escaping those who pursued them by the ingenuity of
their refuge. The place knows them no more ; but it
yet hangs on the mountain side, its loosened thatches of
moss fluttering in the breeze, one of the most interesting
relics of a war whose crooked paths of romance are yet
untrodden by historical detail, and are yet to be illumi-
nated in story.

fisher's view.

About five miles from the Alleghany Springs towers
"Fisher's View" — one of the finest and most character-
istic mountain views to be found in this region. It is ap-
proached by a well-graded road, which will soon be com-
pleted to the mountain top, and which is now eked out
by a narrow but sound path, along which one may ride
safely on horseback. A few dead, dismantled pines pro-
ject from the mountain comb, which affords a view around
half the horizon. A natural platform juts out, a con-
venient observatory strewed with leaves and dead soil, on

88 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

which Ave may luxuriously recline while "taking in " the
delicious draughts of beauty in the scene.

We have described the scene as a characteristic moun-
tain view. It is emphatically so, and one obtains here a
vivid general idea, a typical impression, of the aspects of
our mountainous country. There is scarcely a single
breadth of landscape in the scene, if we may except the
patch of open land on which glimmer the white cottages
of the springs, and the imperfect glimpses of a valley of
gray fields breaking away toward the Virginia and Ten-
nessee Railroad. It is mountains — mountains all around,
mountains interminable. The first element of the scene
is the broken, unequal band of mountains that describes
the half circle that limits our vision in front ; now run-
ning in straight ranges with almost mathematical decision,
again rising into pyramidal points, again jagged and eaten
in by the blue sky. And within this boundary lies rank
after rank of lesser mountains, a great expanse of coun-
try, dented and worked up as dough or potters' clay —
plastic shapes, half regular in groups and rows, as if the
hand of some great Power had pinched the loose soil
into grotesque shapes, and again as if its fingers had
touched here in careless disposition the immature crust
of earth.

This is the mountains. It is the wild, dented arena,
clad with unbroken forests, that is the characteristic fea-
ture of the scene, so strange to the lowlander. Homely
comparisons seldom miss being graphic. A companion
compared the knotted expanse to " tobacco hills." Yet
more picturesque was the anecdote of an old lady who
had never lived above tidewater, and, having been trans-
ported in the night-time on a swift railroad crossing the
Blue Ridge, looked in the morning from the windows of

(/I

I
m

<
m

H
I

I
>

to
T3

(K5

ALLEGHANY SPRINGS. 89

the cars, and exclaimed, ''Law sakes ! what a bumpy
country !"

The name of the view is taken from Fisher, the artist,
who made a picture of it last season, declaring that he
had seen nothing in Europe to equal its wild and un-
kempt variety. It is seldom, indeed, that a mountain
scene is so litde disturbed by "clearings," the signs of
cultivation, or even the habitations of man. Excepting
the buildings of the Alleghany Springs, which lie at our
feet, there is nothing in the intervening valleys to indi-
cate the presence of man ; while, in the distance, the huge
mountains, dark, forbidding and sombre, do not relent •
from their frown until far away the dark blue grows
faiftter and fainter, and they soften to meet the embraces
of the sky and mingle in the same light cerulean hue.

Another experience of mountain scenery

close to Fisher's View — but a few miles on a road turned
to the south from that leading to the springs — occurs to
our recollection. We had been riding on horseback for
exercise, when, on the road to Franklin Court-house — a
little beyond where a rickety sign-post marked twenty-
six miles from there — Dr. W. pointed me out a mountain
scene equal to that viewed from the Peaks of Otter, ex-
cept in extent, as it occupied but one-fourth of the hori-
zon. The spot is nameless, yet as a mountain view it*
has but few superiors in Virginia. For a hundred miles
we could see the billows of the Alleghany. But there
was a peculiar impression I wished to record — one due to
certain atmospheric effects which are sometimes observed
in these views of distant mountains, and which a dis-
tinguished and traveled Northern gentleman assured me
that he had never seen under other skies. It was a faint,
8 «

90 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

whitish band of light on the horizon, the deep blue of the
sky melted into a radiant, indescribable hue as it de-
scended to join the outline of the mountains, and there,
ending in a streak of something like gray twilight,
through which we could look farther and farther as into
the immensity of space, the boundless sea of an outlying
eternity ! The air was slightly misty when this effect was
observed. Any description in words is but a poor ap-
proximation, and I doubt as well whether human pencil
could produce such an irradiation, such a mixture of
softened colors and lights, as that in which I looked be-
yond the Alleghany into a world without trace or meas-
ure or post of distance on it, and which I was yet sure
was infinite !

CHAPTER VI.

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA.

Going to the Natural Tunnel — A Seat of Empire — Bristol and its Surroundings —
A Ride through Two States — The White Ships of the Mountains — Estill-
ville — A Glance at the Mineral Wealth of the Country — " Boone's Trace " —
Indian Relics and Traditions — The Natural Tunnel — First View of the
Tunnel — Its Dimensions — Frightful Passage through It— Sublime View from
the Lower Entrance — Speculations as to the Cause of this great Natural Won-
der — The Tunnel seen by Sunrise — Sublime and Picturesque Effects — Associa-
tion of an Indian Story — The Tragedy of Masoa — The Adventure of Dodson —
A Battle with an Eagle — The Cave of the Unknown — Almost Lost — A Cav-
ernous Country — Blooming Rocks — A Poetical Countryman — The HoLSTO^f
Springs — Analysis of the "Hot Spring"— Attractions of the Place.

HE writer opines that many persons living beyond
the limits of Virginia — and he kfiows that even
a considerable number of natives of this grand
and wonderful State — have never heard of the Natural
Tunnel. Whether or not it is one of the greatest won-
ders of this continent, let the reader determine when he
has read our description, rude and insufficient as it may
be. Much has been written vaguely (and our own pen is
already dipped in the subject) of the natural scenery of
Virginia, its supreme claims on the American tourist,
and the neglect of those claims ; but it is certainly an
extraordinary instance of such neglect that there is within
our memory no printed account of the Natural Tunnel,
and that even the curiosity of the newspaper man has
scarcely penetrated its obscurity. It has occurred to us
to attempt some account of this greatest curiosity of Vir-

92 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST,

ginia, and to add to it some notes of a tour in a part of
this State hitherto but little known to the outside public,
yet recently the subject of great and eager interests of
the capitalist, and abounding with many new fields and
objects for the American traveler and artist.

A SEAT OF EMPIRE.

We leave the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at Bris-
tol, the most bustling town of Virginia, and one of the
liveliest and most animated for its size south of the
Potomac. It has the peculiar appearance of a nascent
metropolis; and what this little town, which has accumu-
lated a population of eighteen hundred souls since the
Virginia and Tennessee Railroad developed its first im-
portance, and where a few years ago sportsmen hunted
wild ducks on what is now the site of the Nickels House,
a hotel of metropolitan dimensions, may become, when
the system of railroads is completed that will establish it
as the halfway house between the Mississippi Valley and
the Atlantic seaboard, the doorway of the Central' West,
standing, in fact, between the centre of production of the
West — which Professor Maury now calculates to be in the
mouth of the Ohio — and the outlet to the great commer-
cial ocean of the world through Hampton Roads, is one
of those subjects of vivid imagination belonging to the
grand possibilities of the future progress of our country.
Bristol may yet be the radiating-point of a scheme of
improvement scarcely less great or brilliant than the Pa-
cific Railroad ; of which, if the reader doubts, let him
consult Professor Maury's Physical Survey of Virginia —
a work whose grand imaginations one may well study in
surveying this part of Virginia, which thrusts out as a

A WEEK IN- SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 93

cape across which must come the great highway of the
trade of the boundless West. The figure of the State
here terminating in the form of a long cape — the thin
tongue of land thrust out of the jaws of the great Appa-
lachian chain of mountains, extending through the United
States from New Hampshire to Alabama — gives distinct-
ness to the imagination of the commercial importance of
that part of Virginia of which Bristol is the emporium ;
and that without statistics and trade details, which we
have no room for in these pages, and which would be
misplaced there anyhow, unless incidentally. When the
Norfolk and Great Western Railroad is built, and the
Virginia and Kentucky also, it is very certain that we
shall hear of Bristol again, and that in a much larger
sense than a point of debarkation or departure for a tour-
ist (such as the author) to an interesting patch of moun-
tain scenery and natural curiosities in Virginia.

Without exceeding the limits of the design of our
present writing, without going into the commercial and
industrial resources of the country, which we traverse in
another interest, we may yet, standing at Bristol, take
that cursory glance which the general traveler may afford
in such circumstances. Such a glance, in fact, is irre-
pressible. Here, at this particular point, a vision of in-
dustrial empire bursts on the tourist and mingles with
the other interest of his journey, even if his mission be
not more serious or more thrifty than to see the natural
beauties of the country and to make the ordinary trip of
pleasure. He stands where he cannot help seeing the ele-
ments of power and of wealth around him. He is in the
heart of the richest portion of Virginia. The estimate
of it may be made in a single paragraph taken from an
intelligent journal :

94 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

" The rich and productive counties constituting what
is known as South-west Virginia are among the most
favored localities on the American continent. Their cli-
mate, scenery, mineral productions, their coal, iron, lead,
salt, plaster, their splendid valleys watered by never-fail-
ing streams, their boundless pastures, their rich mountain
sides, capable, in many instances, of cultivation to the
very summits, their vast yield of hay, their fine horses,
sheep and cattle, and last, but not least, their noble breed
of men and women, are destined, by the help of the
great Virginia and Tennessee Air-Line and the James
River and Kanawha Canal, to be distinguished as the
very crenie de la creme of Virginia. South-west Virginia
is often called an empire of herself"

Yet this is but one and the smallest element of the
vision that floats around Bristol. We are in one of the
greatest gateways of the trade of America. In the times
in which we write it remained for the genius of General
Mahone to display the J^^alue of this portion of the State
as holding the thoroughfares of a far-reaching and opu-
lent trade. The eye of such a man sweeps a magnificent
scene; a breadth of internal improvement; the thorough-
fare of the Norfolk and Great Western road ; its neigh-
bor in the Danville road, pushed by a judicious and
masterly system of friendly connections into the very
heart of the Gulf States ; the consolidation of the three
lines reaching from Norfolk to Bristol, raised beyond
small and fretful local interests into a system of thorough-
fares for a continent; and finally and generally, the ter-
minus at Bristol expanded into a great funnel for pouring
through the accumulated freights of the South-west, con-
ducting them on to their ultimate markets, then draining
the whole region between Bristol and Norfolk of its vast

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 95

products, distributing its due proportion to each of the
cities of Virginia, and throwing the remainder upon its
long-neglected seaboard, and laying the foundations there
for the elevation of Norfolk to the height of one of the
great commercial capitals of the world.

But to return to the immediate aspects of Bristol. It is
a town that will repay thie curious traveler at least a day's
delay in it. It is broadly scattered on some rolling hills,
and there is a bit of mountain view in the distance. The
common acceptation places the town just astride of the
Virginia and Tennessee boundary, the line running from
the Nickels House just through the middle of the main
street, so that the passenger, by a few steps, may cross
from State to State, and may be one moment in Virginia
and another in Tennessee. But this boundary, though
of legal and traditional effect, dividing the town by
almost exact halves in respect both of size and property,
is said to be incorrect ; and it was reported to the writer
that the recent party of government officers that had ob»
served the eclipse of 1869 from Bristol had determined,
from astronomical observations, that the town laid sev-
eral miles within the true limits of Virginia; and, indeed,
it is so located in the later and more careful maps of the
State. But until a joint commission of the States of Vir-
ginia and Tennessee shall determine the true boundary
(if it ever does), the citizens of Bristol appear satisfied
to live in a double jurisdiction, there being, in fact, two
corporations and two sets of municipal officers ; and, con-
trary to what might be expected, we were assured that no
case of conflict had occurred of the adjoining authori-
ties, and that perfect peace reigned in the bicephalous
town.

Bristol is interesting at present as the depot of a wagon-

96 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

trade — that curious and primitive apparition of commerce
which we remember in our boyhood in other parts of
Virginia, and which we supposed had disappeared since
the advent of the steam-car. But it survives in its glory-
in BristoL It is a great part of the present prosperity of
the place ; the busy streets are choked with wagons, some
of which have traveled sixty or seventy miles to these
markets, bearing the stores of an abundant country. At
every step we meet the wagoner, and the streets are garish
with the gilt signboards and flame with the immense
placards which denote an appeal to the country customer.
It is the peculiar display of a thriving country town, and
the effects of the gilded letters and the painted paste-
board, though coarse, are brilliant, and, we doubt not,
"stunning" to the rustic. The hotel accommodations
of the place are fine, and even unexceptionable.

A RIDE THROUGH TWO STATES.

A day's journey from Bristol transports us to the
Natural Tunnel ; but so little is it visited by travelers
from a distance, and so imperfectly appreciated is the
sublime scene by persons who live near it and have
grown familiar with it, that there is some hesitation in
giving the directions of the road to it. Yet there is a
passably good road to it, and a plain one, too. The
traveler goes westerly twenty-eight miles to Estillville,
the seat of Scott county, and thence again westerly and
slightly to the north for fourteen miles, crossing the
Clinch river, and he is at the Natural Tunnel, having
made the distance, forty-two miles, on a road the great
portion of which is the main thoroughfare to Cumber-
land Gap, and all of which may be pleasantly traveled
either in a vehicle or on horseback.

A W£EK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 97

We chose the latter conveyance. The road to Estill-
ville takes us, in turns, through two States. It is the
great thoroughfare of the wagon-trade to Bristol, and it
is picturesque with white-covered wagons winding over
the hills, separate or in trains, dotting the landscape,
several of them being almost constantly visible on the
tract of country that the eye sweeps. These are f/ie
white ships of the mountains. They are freighted with
grain and fruit, and the other stores necessary in the dis-
tant homes from which they have come. Some of them
were emigrant trains traveling westward. The modes of
"moving" are interesting. Whole families live for
days, and even weeks, in the covered bodies of these
wagons, cooking and sleeping under the trees by the
wayside; and as the heavy vehicle lumbers on in the
day, such of the emigrants as are able to walk trudge by
the side of it, while the aged and feeble ride ; and it is
not uncommoij to see the curious eyes of little children,
in various begrimed conditions, peeping from the white
canvas that covers the moving household.

In one passage of the road we met a close train of
five covered wagons — a few men in front with rifles on
their shoulders, and some six or seven barefoot women in
their rear, of all ages, from the old crone in her narrow
and dirty dress of linsey-woolsey to the young girl of
mountain beauty unadorned, walking slowly and painfully
over the stones as their teams labored up the hill.

"Where are you going?" we asked one of the men.

" Gwine to Ar-kan-j^rt-j-," was the reply, with a strong
accent on the last syllable.

" You have a long journey before you, my friend."

"Yes, furrer'n five hundred miles, I reckon," was the
answer, with a certain air of determination in the bronzed,
9 G

98 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

set face ; and slowly, sturdily, the train moved on in that
long and weary journey which poverty and disappoint-
ment elsewhere had appointed for the emigrants.

We were weary from riding when we got sight of the
village of Estillville. Passing through the well-defined
Moccasin Gap, after having crossed the North Fork of the
Holston river, there suddenly came into view the twenty
or thirty houses which compose Estillville, overlooking
a beautiful bit of meadow bounded by a line of "river
knobs." It is a village that boasts of a half-finished
church on the hill-side, and a new court-house with a
cupola and gilt ball. Spending the night at a so-called
hotel, where the real and unaffected kindness of the lady
proprietor made amends for the imperfect accommoda-
tions, and more than compensated for the single dollar
that was asked for supper, lodging, breakfast for ourselves
and stabling for our horse, we were fortunate in making
acquaintance with two young gentlemen, -who accompa-
nied and helped us in our journey the next day to the
Natural Tunnel. One incident of Estillville must not be
omitted. It was natural for a traveler, wearied by a long
ride, to ask for a glass of spirits, and one whose experi-
ence hitherto had been that there was not a cross-roads,
much less a village, in Virginia where whisky of some
quality might not be procured. But not a drop of liquor
of any sort is to be got in Estillville, and the remarkable
fact was ascertained that not for fifteen years has there
been a license to sell liquor in the county. Here is a
record indeed for the temperance cause, and that, too,
in a mountain county of Virginia, where the display of
so much virtue has been lost to fame. A little observa-
tion was convincing enough that there were no hardier,
healthier, manlier people to be found in Virginia than

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 99

those among whom our lot had fallen for a few days ;
and recollections of their hospitality, their intelligence,
their thrifty and honest and innocent lives have been
borne away by at least one grateful traveler.

The ride in the fresh air and through the scenes of the
next morning was delightful, and we were constantly enter-
tained by information of the country through which we
passed. Here, on each side of the road and in every di-
rection, were pointed out the undeveloped resources of
one of the richest parts of Virginia. The intelligent con-
versation of Mr. W , of Estillville, was constantly

directing us to the wonderful mineral resources of this
region — the iron of which had already been tested in the
workshops of Cincinnati as the best from any quarter of
the Union ; the copper mines that abounded and were
yet unexplored ; the wonderful deposits of the lead, so
rich that from a bank a mile from Clinch river, where
our road lies, the neighbors had cut out plugs and
moulded bullets from them in the late war. But all these
resources are as yet undeveloped, and while Scott county
awaits the marches of enterprise, the people are satisfied
to raise grain and fruit — the latter so abundant that in
the scarcity of money it has actually furnished a currency,
and dollars and cents are counted by peaches and apples.

The incessant question in all the conversations of the
people touching the resources of this country is of the
railroad that is shortly expected to furnish them an outlet
— meaning the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad, which is
to extend from Bristol to Cumberland Gap, connecting
there with the Kentucky system of railroads, and running
away to Louisville, Cincinnati and Cairo, bringing in
fact Louisville three hundred miles nearer to the sea —
through the Chesapeake Bay — than she is now by rail

lOO THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

through the narrows of Sandy Hook. Some work had
been done on this road when the war broke out, and its
grades are yet visible along the route we are traveling.
That it will be built in a few years (when the State of
Virginia is able to redeem her pledge of a million and a
half dollars toward its construction, or when capitalists
have had the great benefits of such an improvement
brought fully to their attention) we do not permit our-
selves to doubt ; for it is in fact a continuance of the Nor-
folk and Great Western Railroad, a necessary link in that
great line of communication at which we have already
imperfectly glanced, and which, joining at Bristol with
the railroads of Tennessee, and connecting at Cumber-
land Gap with the Louisville, Harrodsburg and Virginia
road, is to bring the most productive regions of the West
into commercial connection with the tidewater ports of
Virginia. The grades to Cumberland Gap are easy. And
curious enough, this important railroad finds a passage
through the Natural Tunnel which we are proceeding
to visit, and such as the human resources of the engineer
might not soon accomplish. The Natural Bridge in
Rockbridge county has been remarked for the conve-
nience it furnishes — a stage-road passing over it. And
here we have a yet more remarkable instance of the
generosity of Nature in furnishing a natural tunnel just
where a railroad must seek the passage of an almost im-
penetrable mountain ridge. It is certainly a singular
correspondence of natural gifts, and one, too, of natural
wonders.

Riding through the beautiful and remarkable scenery
that hedges our way to the Natural Tunnel, our attention
soon falls off from railroads and trade, and we are lost in
very different meditations. A single remark conjures up

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. lOl

all the resources of romance. We arc traveling precisely
the same road that Daniel Boone traversed a hundred years
ago, when he moved into Kentucky. It is still the great
thoroughfare into Kentucky, opening out from Moccasin
Gap, and passing through the different chambers or galle-
ries that run into each other along the lovely waters of
the Clinch. It was known for many years as ''Boone's
Trace," and is yet called so by the emigrant. The whole
country around here is rich with Indian traditions, which
have been neglected in comparison with those of Eastern
Virginia, and which might yet furnish a volume of vivid
interest. The country we are traversing, and the sur-
rounding counties, formed properly part of the "Dark and
Bloody Ground," which the historian and novelist have
too exclusively placed in Kentucky. Five miles from Es-
tillville, and on the road by which we approached it from
Bristol, are the ruins of a block-house which protected
the early settlers ; and a fearful story yet clings to a spring
within the limits of the village, where a family of the name
of Farris perished under the tomahawks of the savages,
their blood dying the waters of the brook Passing on our
way a little farther west, we are reminded that we are in
the thoroughfare through which the tribes inhabiting the
Rockcastle hills, in the wilderness of Kentucky, passed
to the old settlements of Virginia. Not far from here,
too, was the range of the celebrated Cherokee chief,
"Dragon Canoe," worthy to be ranked with Tecumseh
or Osceola in courage or skill, and who suffered a defeat
fatal to his tribe in 1776, at the battle of the Great Island
in the Holston river. What tales of blood yet cling to
these mountains ! What calamities and trials come fresh
in remembrance in the midst of these scenes ! They
compose a story as yet but scantily written, and one that

I02 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

cannot be written entirely to the advantage and honor
of the white man, when we remember that ruthless war-
fare sometimes made by the settlers, and call to mind a
message from Mr. Jefferson, when governor of Virginia
(1781), congratulating the success of an expedition against
the Cherokees already mentioned as inhabiting this re-
gion, "it having destroyed fourteen Indian towns, and
burnt fifty thousand bushels of corn!" It is a history,
perhaps, not in the interest of the present day to revive ;
but the wild scenes bring glimpses of recollections of it
to the traveler, and especially in a country which still
appears primitive and from which civilization has not yet
entirely effaced the envelope and color of savage life.

But enough of these reflections by the Avayside. We
are aroused from our romantic meditations — fit preface,
however, as they have been to that wild and wonderful
scene where tends the chief interest of our journey.

THE NATURAL TUNNEL.

After progressing about three miles from the ford of
the Clinch river, and after having repeatedly crossed its
crooked tributary. Stock creek, we come to a small moun-
tain or globular hill which is our wondrous destination,
for here is the Natural Tunnel. There is nothing which
advertises in advance this great wonder, or in any way
excites the expectations of the traveler. There is a
common road, from which we depart a few hundred
yards to make a half circuit of the base of the mountain,
that goes clean over the ridge, leading to a settlement
some miles farther, called Rye Cove, and which was once
the abode of a fierce Indian tribe. This main road goes
over the arch of the Tunnel, furnishing a curious conve-

THE NATURAL TUNNEL— THE INTERIOR.

I'ligo 1U3.

.ttftO

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 103

iiience to the traveler, of which he would be unaware,
seeing nothing through the foliage but glimpses of the
mural rocks that guard and sustain the termination of the
secret passage-way many hundred feet below him. It is
from this convenience that the neighboring people name
the gigantic work of nature we are proceeding to explore
a natural bridge. But this name is certainly insufficient
and paltry for a rock-work that on one flank at least ex-
tends some eight hundred feet, and which if regarded with
reference to the breadth of the interval it spans, is, in
fact, a complication of bridges, arranged, as we shall
presently see, in one single massive spectacle.

The western face of the Tunnel, near which we dis-
mount, continues partly concealed from view, or is
imperfectly exposed until we nearly approach it ; the
immense rock which is perforated being here dressed
with the thick foliage of the spruce-pine, and the harsh
surface adorned with a beautiful tracery of vines and
creepers. At last is seen the entrance of what appears to
be a huge subterraneous cavern -or grotto, into which the
stream disappears ; a towering rock rising here about two
hundred feet above the surface of the stream, and a rude
entrance gouged into it, varying in width, as far as the eye
can reach, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
feet, and rising in a clear vault from seventy to eighty
feet above the floor. The view here terminates in the
very blackness of darkness ; it is broken on the first curve
of the Tunnel. The bed of the stream, from which the
water has disappeared on account of the drouth, the re-
duced currents sinking to lower subterranean channels, is
piled with great irregular rocks, on the sharp points of
which we stumble and cut our hands : there is no foothold
but on rocks, and it is only when we have struggled

■I04 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

through the awful, cruel darkness, holding up some feeble
lights in it, and issued into the broad sunshine, that we
find we have traveled nearly two hundred yards (or say,
more exactly, five hundred feet) through one solid rock,
in which there is not an inch of soil, not a seam, not a
cleft, and which, even beyond the debouchure of the
Tunnel, yet runs away a hundred yards in a wall five hun-
dred feet high, as clean and whetted as the work of the
mason.

But we must not anticipate this majestical scene, "won-
derful beyond all wondrous measure." Happily, in
catering the Tunnel from the western side we have adopted
the course of exploration which affords a gradual ascent
of the emotions, until at last they tower to the standard
of a perfect sublimity. The course of the Tunnel may be
described as a continuous curve : it resembles, indeed, a
prostrate co. For a distance of twenty yards midway of
this course we are excluded from a view of either entrance,
and the darkness is about that of a night with one quarter
of the moon. The vault becomes lower here — in some
places scarcely more than thirty feet high — and springs
immediately from the floor. The situation is awful and
oppressive : the voice sounds unnatural, and rumbles
strangely and fearfully along the arch of stone. We are
encoftined in the solid rock : there is a strange pang in the
beating heart in its imprisonment, so vnpcnetrable, black,
hopeless, and we hurry to meet the light of day. In that
light we are disentombed : we cast off the confinements of
the black space through which we have passed, and we are
instantly introduced to a scene so luminous and majestic
that in a moment our trembling eyes are captivated and
our hearts lifted in unutterable worship of the Creator's
works.

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 105

It is that sheer wall of rock which we have already
mentioned, where the arch and other side of the tunnel
break away into the mountain slope ; a high wall, slightly
impending ; an amphitheatre, extending one hundred
yards, of awful precipices ; a clean battlement, without
a joint in it, five hundred feet high. And this splendid
height and breadth of stone, that a thousand storms have
polished, leaving not a cleft of soil in it — this huge, un-
jointed masonry raised against the sky, gray and weather-
stained, with glittering patches of light on it — is yet part
of the same huge rock which towered at the farther end
of the tunnel, and through whose seamless cavity we
have traveled two hundred yards. It is in this view
that the mystery of the scene seizes the mind, and the
last element of sublimity is added to it. It is in this
view that the Natural Tunnel we had come to see as a
mere " curiosity " takes rank among the greatest wonders
of the world. What Power, what possible imaginable
agency of Nature, could have worked out this stupendous
scene ?

Of all the wonders and curiosities of Nature within
the breadth of man's discovery, there is always an at-
tempt to construct some theory of a cause. There is
some scheme of probabilities, or, at least, of possibilities,
that may be adjusted to the case — some ingenuity that
will supply something satisfactory, more or less, to the
ignorance of man and his demand for an explanation.
Thus the Natural Bridge in Rockbridge county has been
accounted for on the hypothesis, we believe, of Professor
Rogers, once of the University of Virginia, of the worn
exit of an inland sea that in some immeasurable time
washed its way through the Blue Ridge to the ocean.
But neither water nor fire can be taxed by human in-

lo6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

genuity as the cause of the Natural Tunnel — a scene
which, having approached in wonder, or even in its
lower tones of "curiosity," we are yet compelled to
leave in unutterable amazement. Look at the breadth,
the magnitude of this scene — an unbroken rock eight
hundred feet in length, averaging, say, three hundred
feet in height to where the soil clothes it, and measuring
nine hundred feet across the face of the lower entrance
of the Tunnel : multiply these numbers together for the
cubic volume of this f/ioiintain of rock, and then inquire
if it is possible that the Natural Tunnel could have been
worn — and worn to such dimensions as we have already
given of it, and which we have described as cleaii rock
throughout — by the action of water operating under any
imaginable pressure or in any conceivable time ! But
the theory of the agency of water, anyhow, is discredited
by a single circumstance — the inequalities of the height
of the arch, varying as much as from eighty or ninety
feet in some places to twenty in others. Again, the
phenomenon fails to strike us as one of volcanic action.
There are none of the irregularities of an upheaval ;
there are no signs of a force rending the mountain and
tearing it asunder. The impression of the scene — and it is
here where its sublimity is unexampled — is not as of some
mighty force that has raised the crast of the earth, or that
has rent the rock or worn through it or delved in it, but
as of some mysterious Power, winged with all the winds
of heaven and browed like the thunderbolt, that has bat-
tered its way through the solid rock, tearing away every-
thing in its path, strewing it with the huge, sharp ruins
that now choke the stream, and that has rushed tlirough
it all like the screaming, invisible body of a storm, which
scatters dismay around and leaves behind it the voiceless,

THE NATURAL TU N N EL— L OOK I NG OUT.

Page 100

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 107

iininscribed monuments of a sublime and inscrutable
wonder !

The conception is terrible. The imagination is strained
as we stand within the august portals of this scene, medi-
tating a question which ever recurs — feeling that shock
which verges on insanity, smiting the feeble mind of
man whenever he takes into his hands the dark chain of
causation. We let fall in the strange doorway where we
stand the links of thought that thrill us too powerfully,
and we look to other parts of the scene to moderate our
emotion.

Turning our eyes away from the battlement of rock to
the opposite side of the ravine, a new revelation of the
grand and picturesque awaits us. Here a gigantic cliff,
but one broken with rock and soil, and threaded to its
summit by a sapling growth of the buckeye, the linden
and the pine, rises almost perpendicularly from the
water's edge to a height almost equal to that of the oppo-
site wall of rock. A natural platform is seen to project
over it, and yet a few yards farther there is an insulated
cliff, a Cyclopean chimtiey, so to speak, scarcely more than
a foot square at its top, rising in the form of a turret at
least sixty feet above its basement, which is a portion of
the imposing cliff we have mentioned. It is at once per-
ceived that here are two points of view that will give us
new and perhaps the most imposing aspects of the scene.
To attain these points, however, it is necessary to make a
circuit of half a mile ; and the sinking sun admonishes
us to defer this new interest of the scene until to-morrow.

* if. i(i if. ■)(. *

It was well that we did so. After a comfortable lodging
in a farm-house two miles away, where a substantial sup-
per, flanked with the invariable milk and honey of the

lo8 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

mountains, and a bed of snowy-white linen, attesting
that cleanliness so beautiful when found beneath the rude
roof, and yet so common in all the homes of the moun-
taineers, had refreshed us, we remounted for the Tunnel
in the early morning, and were soon to find that the
rising sun was to give a new and unexpected glory to the
scene. This time we ascend the mountain instead of
deflecting as before. The road is easy; there are no
difficulties of access to the points of view from the top
of the Tunnel, and they are undoubtedly the grandest.
We pass to the platform before described by a few steps
from the main road. It is a slab of rock projecting from
an open patch of ground ; a dead cedar tree is standing
at its edge, throwing its gnarled and twisted arms, as in
wild and widowed sorrow, over the awful scene below.
We now see the great opposite amphitheatre of rock in
added grandeur, for we see it from above — we see it
across a chasm nine hundred feet wide and five hundred
feet deep, and the exposure being almost exacdy eastern,
the long spears of the rising sun are being shattered on
it. The effect is inexpressibly grand. But there is one
more circumstance to be added to the scene : we do not
see from this observatory the arch, the entrance of the
Tunnel. A few yards farther the fearful chimney-shaped
rock invites to a more commanding view, but the ascent
is dangerous ; the stone on top is loose, and so narrow
that two persons can scarcely stand on it. A single mis-
step, a moment's loss of balance, and we would foil into
eternity. But now the sense of peril is lost, or is rather
mingled, in the grandeur of the scene. It is a panoramic
view. We have now the whole sweep of the mural pre-
cipice opposite; the sun's glitter is incessant on the
polished stone ; the trees which fringe the bottom appear

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 1 09

now scarcely more than shrubs ; the entrance of the Tun-
nel has now come into view, and that which yesterday
we thought so high and wide, now appears, from our
amazing height, as a stooped doorway. We imagine
the gloomy entrance into a cave of Erebus and Death,
the broken rocks lying within which look like black and
mangled entrails. It is a fearful picture — it is that of a
supernatural abode.

It only needed some wild legend to crown and adorn
the scene. Happily such is furnished, and, more fortu-
nately for the interest of the reader, the tale is true.
Some tradition attaching to such a spot is to be ex-
pected, and a spot, too, surrounded in past times by the
Indian tribes. Romances are easily conjured up or in-
vented in such a scene, and in fact there is scarcely a
remarkable cliff that does not suggest some new version
of the old story of "The Lover's Leap." But the tradi-
tion attached to the chimney-rock we have described was
ascertained to be true before the writer was willing to
transcribe it ; and it furnishes a story and a scene more
dramatic than that of Pocahontas, or any of those ac-
counts of Indian life which have been carefully preserved
in the earlier settlements of Virginia.

The story was told the writer by a lady of the neigh-
borhood, whose intelligence and manners might have
adorned any circle of listeners, and whose dark eyes
flashed with the spirit of her narrative. Her uncle.
Colonel Henry S. Kane, a gentleman well known and
honored in this part of Virginia, and of extreme age,
remembers the main incidents of the story, which trans-
pired some years after the close of the Revolutionary
war, and which were related to him by persons of the
neighborhood. The same incidents were preserved some
10

no THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

years ago in a Tennessee paper (we think the Roger sville
Times). So much for the authenticity of the " Story of
Masoa."

In 1 79-, what is now called Rye Cove, a small settle-
ment near the Natural Tunnel, hemmed in by the moun-
tains, was occupied by a fierce Indian tribe, probably the
Wyandots. Masoa, the daughter of the chief, was
enamored of a young warrior of her tribe, and their
trysting-place was on the wild heights that overhung the
subterranean passage of the mountain. Here it was her
custom to gather flowers, and to meet her lover in the
inspiration of the beautiful and solitary scene. But the
old chief had other designs for his daughter : he had
promised her in marriage to the chief of a neighboring
tribe, and, scrupulous as is the Indian in such affairs, he
was relentless to the entreaties of his daughter, and angry
when he discovered that her affections had been engaged
by another. Masoa told her lover in the accustomed
place of their meeting of the fate that had been deter-
mined for her ; when, it is said, he advised, as the only
means of averting their disappointment, that on the day
appointed for the neighboring chief to claim his bride,
Masoa should escape, ascend the sharp high rock, and
there, with her lover, proclaim him as her choice to her
father and to the party who would probably pursue her;
the two threatening to cast themselves from the rock if
compassion was not had on their love, and the maiden
released by her father from his hateful compact. It was
hoped that the prospect of a self immolation so awful, so
instant and so dreadful in its aspect might touch the
heart of the old chief and .save Masoa and her lover.
The day came for the celebration of the marriage which
the father had designed : the neighboring chief who was

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA, m

to bear away the prize attended with numerous followers.
It was an occasion of barbaric splendor, to which all
were invited ; but Masoa was missing. Search was insti-
tuted : her romantic habit of visiting the wild scene on
the mountain was known, and it is said that a little
brother who had frequently accompanied her there now
innocently directed the party of pursuers. These, to the
number of several hundred, had searched through the
cavernous recesses of the Tunnel. Assembled in the am-
phitheatre below which we have described, closely mingled
in the ardor of pursuit, an appalling sight fell on their
uplifted eyes — Masoa and her lover on the high stem of
rock, his strong form uplifted above the screen of woods
in clear relief against the sky, and embracing it the
affrighted but unshrinking maiden, who had ascended
with him this awful altar of immolation. She had com-
menced to speak to the spectators below, and she was yet
speaking loudly and vehemently in the last eager hope of
reconciliation with her father and of safety for her lover,
when a"n arrow whizzed through the air. It had been
strung by the jealous and disappointed chief below. A
stream of blood gushed from the breast of the warrior —
that breast from which she had separated herself but a
little space to rise to the proclamation of her love : she
was seen to clasp him in her arms, to look long and
tenderly on his face as if inquiring of the death that
passed over and sealed it ; and then, embracing him more
tightly and uttering a wild, long shriek, she leaped down
into the air, falling a mangled corpse on the rocks below,
and bearing in her not yet loosened arms the dead body
of her lover. The scene is not yet ended ; another death
completes it. Even while Masoa leaped, her brother,
exasperated, in the quick agony of his revenge has stridden

112 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

behind the assassin chief and planted his tomahawk in
his brain. All three of the dead bodies are said to have
fallen nearly together.

Such is the story of Masoa — characteristic of the Indian
nature, its strength and ardor, containing no violent im-
probability, assured by such living testimony as has given
us those many narrations of Indian life which we do not
hesitate to believe, and so vivid and dramatic, its natural
arrangement falling in such a form of tragedy, that we
may congratulate ourselves on saving it to the literature
and romance of Virginia.

A more modern and a more homely adventure is re-
lated of another part of the scene. It happened within
the memory of the neighbors. In the perpendicular wall
of rock at the lower entrance to the Tunnel occurs what
is apparently a small cave or fissure. A man of the name
of Dodson determined to explore it, as it was not unlikely
that it might contain nitrous earth, since found to abound
in the caves and grottoes of these mountains, from which
saltpetre is extracted. Anyhow, Dodson was determined
to take a look into this opening, and he was accordingly
lowered from the top by a rope running over a log and
let out by several men. The rope was eked out to a
sufficient length by some plaited strands of the bark of
leatherwood ; and on this perilous tenure, supported
around the waist, he commenced his descent. The pre-
cipice shelves considerably here, and to draw himself to
the edge of the fissure, Dodson had provided himself
with a long pole having a hook at the end. Throwing
this on the edge of the fissure, he had nearly pulled him-
self there when he lost his hold and swung like a pendu-
lum out into the middle of the ravine, suspended by an
imperfect rope two hundred feet above the bed of rock

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. 1 13

below. At this moment, when he was performing his
fearful oscillations — so fearful that one of his neighbors,
standing at a point on the opposite cliff, described it as
if his body had been slung at him across the abyss, caus-
ing the spectator to draw back instinctively — an eagle,
scared from its nest in the fissure and excited to protect
it, flew out and attacked the already alarmed adventurer.
Having dropped his pole in his consternation, he yet
managed to defend himself with a pocket-knife ; but
while stabbing at the eagle over his head, he severed one
of the strands of his bark rope. The accident was un-
perceived by those who held the rope above, who were
only notified that something fearful had happened by the
screams of Dodson — "Pull! for God's sake, pull!"
He was saved, but the agony of suspense was too much
for him ; and as the men caught hold of him by his
shoulders and dragged him over the top of the pre-
cipice, he fainted. The opening he had ventured so
much to explore has since been found to be nothing
but a shallow pocket in the rock.

"the cave of the unknown."

The interest of Scott county to the tourist does not
end at the Natural Tunnel. But half a mile from this
scene, which we leave unwillingly, is a cave in the moun-
tain side, arranged in chambers, one of them seventy by
ninety feet, and from the roofs of these hang thousands
of stalactites of various sizes and shapes. This cave has
been but imperfectly explored, and the two rustics who
attended us in it with a pair of tallow dips had never
ventured farther than where there was easy ingress, and
our party was without facilities to make farther explora-
tions. We passed through several chambers, and must
10 * • H

114 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

have gone more than a hundred and fifty yards through
various windings, at times under lofty roofs, again on our
knees in low apertures, our lights sometimes flashing on
colonnades of stalagmites formed by the calcareous sub-
stance brought down by the drip from the roof or arch.
In one of the rooms the country people have been accus-
tomed to have their "■ frolics " by torchlight. A smaller
room adjoins this theatre of the dance, laden with the
beautiful tapestry-work of the rock, and looking like a
bridal-chamber.

Here, for centuries and ages and countless time, deep
down in the bowels of the mountain, Nature has done
her unremitting work. Nowhere more than in one of
these subterranean workshops, where the silent forces
toil in darkness, in absolute secresy, do we obtain that
sublimest reflection of the universe — the ceaseless and
unmeasurable activity of Nature. Busy in the profound
darkness, no measure of time in it, no intermission,
work every moment, man sleeping and resting and dying,
but the hidden structure ever, ever going on — going on
as we are looking at it, going on in stony indifference
to the lights that we hold up, yet going on when we have
turned the scene into darkness and traveled away, and
listen to the rock-drips until lost in the distance of our
retreat.

We repeat that our explorations could only be partial,
as the extent of the cave is as yet unknown, and so little
has the curiosity of the neighbors been taxed with this
natural wonder that it is yet without a name, except that
which our party agreed to bestow upon it — the " Cave
of the Unknown." It was said that wild animals had
been chased into it, and it had been found impossible to
discover their retreats. There were several apertures no-

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA 1 15

ticed by us, which might be increased so as to admit the
body of a man, and stones cast through some of these
gave a holloAv sound, denoting enlarged spaces beyond.
But our short and feeble lights, and the ignorance of our
guides, caused us to make a hasty and somewhat anxious
return to the light of heaven. One of the guides once
sent a thrill of horror through us, already chilled in
those awful depths of cold air, and impressed by the
scenes and pictures, as of another world, that looked at
us in the broken darkness and from -the saffron walls,
calling out to his companion who had wandered into
another gallery, and saying, after a painful hesitation, that
he believed we were lost. But the cheerful light of day
soon shows us its welcome again ; and right glad are we
to emerge into it, although the atmosphere — and it is
that of an October day — is almost stifling as we pass too
suddenly into it from the cold and buried air of the cave.
The fact is, the structure of the whole country about
here is cavernous. What we heard of caves and grottoes
and tunnels and subterranean chambers was enough to
give me a crusty sense of insecurity in traversing such a
country. Near the house of a Mr. Horton, about three
miles back on the road, returning from the Natural Tun-
nel to Estillville, we were pointed to the partly-choked
exit of a tunnel, presenting little that was curious or
grand as seen from the roadside, and that might have
been passed without notice, but which we were assured
opened into an irregular passage-way two hundred feet
high in some of its parts, and at one point wide enough,
as a countryman described it, to turn a six-horse team in
it, and extending a mile and a half through the moun-
tain ridge. We were also told that there was a body of
water in it, through which some boys had swam.

Il6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

BLOOMING ROCKS.

The narrator of the wonder just mentioned, an old
countryman, displayed considerable though uncultivated
vigor of mind in expatiating on the attractions of the
country. If he did not altogether murder the " King's
English," he yet persistently knocked an /out of "curi-
osity." There were " cur'osities " innumerable in this
region. He would like to sell to the writer (whom he
evidently mistook for a Yankee speculator) a thousand
acres of them.

"Why, sir," he continued, pointing with animated
gestures to a wooded height near by, "there is rocks
blooming up there — rocks that bloom all the time."

"What!" we exclaim. "Oh, you mean various col-
ored mosses on the rocks."

"No, sir. There is mosses plenty; but there's yaller
blooms — some little as your hand, and some big as a
bushel's head ; the brightest yaller you ever saw — in the
rocks. I can show you a mile of them, all blooming
round you same as a flower garden."

Here, indeed, was a new feature of mountain scenery,
a new wonder ; and when we had ridden to see it we
found that the old countryman had really supplied a
graphic word, and that he had had the unconscious ele-
ments of poetry in his rude description. There were
rocks which bloomed. We could trace a well-defined
ridge of rock, running a mile and a half, on which there
were not only patches of rich mosses, black and purjjle,
but spots and irregular spaces of the most brilliant yel-
low crusted in the rock, their colors apparently as live as
those of the richest plant or flower. At certain times
of the year the colors of these crusts are found to fade,

A WEEK IN SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA. I17

and then they brighten again as the flowers do, so that
the term bloom is even more vividly correct than we had
at first supposed. It was a new and strange appeal to
the imagination. The long ridge which the eye might
follow running away through the foliage, its spots of
black and purple and yellow glittering in the sun, lay like
the knotted length of a monster serpent, its stripes and
patches of different colors glancing through the leaves.

It is a pity to spoil such pictures by hard words of
mineralogy ; so we propose to leave work so unwelcome
to the iconoclast of science, and to proceed thankfully
on our journey.

THE HOLSTON SPRINGS.

Three or four miles south-west of Estillville, and
immediately on the North Fork of the Holston river,
another curiosity of this region invites the traveler. It is
the Holston Springs ; and what is most remarkable is,
that here, within an area of four or five feet square, one
may stand and drink, within reach of his hand, of four
different kinds of water. There is a common limestone
water, a chalybeate water, a thermal water, and a white
sulphur water; and the traveler may drink of each within
a common enclosure, without getting out of his tracks.
The chalybeate water is weak, but is said to have become
so from imperfect tubing. The white sulphur, though
not very strong, is a bold spring, and the water cool and
pleasant, and efficacious in many diseases. But the most
valuable spring in the group is the one known as the
" warm spring. " Professor Hayden analyzed this water
in the summer of 1843. From his report the following
extract is published in an advertisement of the Holston
Springs property :

Ii8 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

"The uniform temperature of the spring, 684°, be-
ing fifteen or sixteen degrees higher than the average
temperature of the springs in the vicinity, renders it a
natural medicated warm bath, subserving all the purposes
of health and luxury, without being sufficiently high to
give it the usual disagreeable flavor of warm water. One
wine gallon of the water contains 41.14 grains of saline
matter, consisting of chloride of sodium and muriate of
alumina, 1.51 grains; sulphate of soda, a trace; sulphate
of magnesia, 12.75 grains; phosphate and sulphate of
alumina, a trace; carbonate of lime, 6.42 grains; sul-
phate of lime, 20.46 grains. Total, 41.14 grains."

The water is represented to be actively diuretic, and
under favorable circumstances determining to the skin
by mild diaphoresis ; with many it is mildly purgative.
Drs. Clapp, Trigg and Preston, respectable physicians of
Abington, speak favorably of its use in diseases which
have their origin in a disordered state of the digestive
organs, in rheumatism, mercurial diseases and scrofula,
as well as in diseases of the skin, affections of the uri-
nary organs, and in some of the diseases of females.

When we visited the Holston Springs the property was
very much out of repair, and it had been offered for sale
in consequence of some litigation. It is to be hoped
that the place will be improved. The virtues of its vari-
ous waters, its bold, rugged mountain scenery, and its
pure, bracing air are great natural attractions, which,
employed and improved by an enterprising proprietor,
might class it among the most popular resorts in the
mountainous region of Virginia. There are unsurpassed
facilities afforded here for the sportsman. The moun-
tains are full of game, and the beautiful river that flows
within fifty yards of the hotel is alive with fish.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MONTGOMERY WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, AND
THE YELLOW SULPHUR SPRINGS.

Locality of the Montgomery White Sulphur Springs — Beauties and Attractions of the
Place— Medical Description of the Water— Reputation of the Springs for Social
Gayeties— A Criticism on Southern Society— A Gala Day at the Mont-
gomery White Sulphur — Description of a " Grand " Tournament — "Gan-
der-pulling" — A Knightly Defence of the Tournament— A Beautiful Illumination
in the Mountains— A Night Picture— The Yellow Sulphur Springs—
Analysis and Virtues of the Water— Within Sixty Feet of the Alleghany
Summit.

ACK from our rugged explorations of Nature
to scenes of social gayety, unexcelled in our
summer life in Virginia.
The Montgomery White Sulphur Springs are only ten
miles from the Alleghany Springs, occupying a central
position among the mineral fountains of the South-west,
and situated near the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad ;
but although so accessible, our visit to them was deferred
until we had "done" the extremity of the South-west,
and it was only after having doubled on the railroad,
from Bristol to "the Springs Station," that we were set
down in this delightful place to recruit from the wear of
our horseback travel in Scott county, and to refresh our-
selves with observations of gay and fashionable life in the
mountains.

These springs, although, like the Alleghany, of recent

119

I20 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

discovery and improvement, are among the best known in
Virginia. The grounds are but a mile and a half from
the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, whence the visitor
is pleasantly conveyed by a tramway reaching to the
threshold of the reception-room. The situation is beau-
tiful, there being two exits by valleys which are formed by
small streams that ripple in miniature cataracts over stone
bottoms. The wild scene is not without its legendary
history; old residents of the neighborhood recollect its
early name of "Devil's Dell," and the curious visitor is
pointed to a grotesque mass of rock within stone's throw
of the reception-room, which has been designated for
years as "the Devil's Arm-chair" — a seat which, we
must hope, has been long since unoccupied, and which,
for ourselves, we were not disposed to invade.

The lawn of the Springs is one of the most beautiful in
the mountains — a large elliptical plam planted with orna-
mental trees, here and there a monarch of the forest, the
ground divided by a stream flowing through deep, worn
banks, and cutting down clean to the gravel ; and bound-
ing immediately this view a broken rim of the Alleghany,
while at its very foundation runs a road as hard and
level as a race-course. The buildings are unexception-
able; and although less pretentious than those of the
Greenbrier White Sulphur, or less substantial than those
of the Old Sweet, they have their equals nowhere in the
mountains of Virginia, for pleasant architectural effect
and for the practical designs of comfort. They are said
to have cost one hundred and forty thousand dollars.
They suffered during the late war, having been abused
for the purpose of a hospital ; but it is absolutely astonish-
ing how the energetic efforts of the present proprietors
have restored the place to its former condition of attrac-

MONTGOMERY SULPHUR SPRINGS. 1 21

tiveness and comfort, and are already designing additions
and improvements. The buildings, as they now appear,
are spacious and on a large scale, consisting of elegant
cottages sufficient to accommodate at least a thousand
people. The central building, which includes the dining-
hall, ball-room and parlor, is equal in elegance and
spaciousness to any other in the South, and the •' cabins "
may be put down as a misnomer, as they are in all respects
equal to first-class residences, having two stories and gal-
leries, and all suitable appurtenances.

As yet, no analysis of the waters of these springs has
been made. They are of two classes — one a strong
sulphur water, apparently of like qualities and effects with
the famous Greenbrier White Sulphur ; and the other a
chalybeate water, of a strongly tonic character. Of the
first, the medical information which we have is, that it is
" a bland and pleasant beverage, well adapted to the cure
of a large number of chronic affections that are known to •
be advantageously treated by sulphur waters generally.
It is somewhat less cathartic, and also less stimulant, than
many sulphur waters, and hence may be used with more
freedom and with greater safety than such waters by deli-
cate and excitable persons. This mild and slightly
operative character of the water, while it constitutes it a
safe beverage for the delicate invalid, very happily adapts
it, as a mild alterative and depurative agent, to a large
class of cases in which alterative effects are demanded for
the cure of the case."

But it is not so much as an invalid resort that these
springs are famous ; and the proprietors appear to have
the good sense to understand that, after all, the invalid
patronage of watering-places is but a small proportion of
their profits, and have therefore determined to keep their
11

122 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

place in a style of elegance and comfort that will afford
to that large portion of the public in motion in summer
an attractive resort and a social rendezvous. For the
gayeties of their seasons the Montgomery White Sulphur
have a peculiar and unrivaled reputation among the water-
ing-places of Virginia. There is nothing of the sapless
and uninteresting life of an invalid resort. The social
life here, high as it is, is peculiarly 6'(?«///^r/z ; drawing
its animation from the principal Southern cities, such as
New Orleans, and having little of that Northern shoddy-
ism which it has been attempted to import into some of
our sumnier resorts in Virginia. Our Southern belles
might, perhaps, improve their taste in decoration, but
we are sure that people of fashion in the North might
improve their own style by imbibing some of that earnest
and natural gayety and enthusiasm, that unconcealed
sense of happiness and enjoyment, which characterizes
the more impulsive and demonstrative people of the South
in places designed for pleasure and recreation.

A GALA DAY AT THE MONTGOMERY WHITE SULPHUR.

A SOCIAL occasion of more than usual magnitude and
brilliancy served to divert the writer a day's space from a
journey otherwise planned. For some weeks past we
had been promised an unparalleled entertainment at the
Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, in one of the
** grandest" tournaments that had ever yet been wit-
nessed in Virginia, at which JNIr. Walker, the governor
elect of Virginia, was to preside, to be followed by an
illumination and a ball of more than usual magnificence.
Governor Walker was delayed, and thus disappointed the
curiosity of the multitude; but many other distinguished

MONTGOMERY SULPHUR SPRINGS. 1 23

persons were i:>resent, and we doubt whether a similar
occasion has ever been excelled in Virginia for real
pleasure and brilliancy. The number of visitors at the
springs was increased to some six or seven hundred ; a
special train from Lynchburg brought additions to the
crowd, and the gentry in the neighborhood attended in
such a number of private conveyances, and there was
such a collection of horses, that we were confounded on
first entering the extensive ornamental grounds of the
springs to hear

" Steed threaten steed with high and boastful neigh."

On the day of the tournament the expanse of the lawn
was covered with gay crowds, while nearer the crescent
course of the tournament the long line of ladies, thus pro-
vided with the best views of the game, might be likened
to a wreath of beauty twisted with picturesque confusion
on the front of the scene. There are twenty-eight
knights entered for the lists, who ride about as if prac-
ticing their steeds, while the unlucky pedestrian who
escapes them is bewildered by the rattling of carriage
wheels, the cracking of whips and the vociferations of
the gentlemen to the negroes who accompany them. But
in a moment all is silence and expectation, for the herald
has sounded the trumpet; the knights are "charged" by
a sage, bald-headed orator, and the exciting exercises of
the day are commenced.

Some account of the tournament, which for many years
has been a peculiar sport in Virginia, and which is evi-
dently becoming one of the popular games of the South,
is likely to be new to some of our readers, and not unin-
teresting. The Southern people are remarkable for their
affection for the horse ; but they differ from those of the

124 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

North in their regard for this animal, to the extent that
they esteem him only for his uses in displaying their
horsemanship, and not, as the cavaliers of the North gen-
erally do, for the qualities and "points" of the animal
considered as a creature by itself. To ride a fine horse
in this country is a mark of aristocracy, although the
writer can scarcely go so far as a certain Virginian, who,
speaking in an agricultural society and urging the rais-
ing of fine stock, declared that " no man could habitually
ride a fine horse without being a gentleman." In the
South the trotter is unknown or despised, while the run-
ning horse, or one trained to the tournament and sports
of the field, is valued for display and exercise. In this
sense the Southerners are probably the most equestrian
people on the civilized face of the earth ; and when the
question of a design for their flag in the late war was
debated — a question which was vexed and undecided to
the last — John M. Daniel was persistent in recommend-
ing a horse's head, or the heraldic equivalent of that
noble animal.

In Virginia the display of horsemanship has for many
years taken the form of tournaments. Farther South a
coarser and more vulgar equestrian exercise, which has
happily fallen into disrepute, is known by the name of
"gander-pulling." One of the feathered tribe is sus-
pended by the head from a cross-beam or gallows, his
long neck being cleanly stripped of feathers and well
greased ; and the feat of the horseman is, riding at full
speed, to wring the neck of the fowl, that is yet alive,
and to bear off his body as a trophy of his skill. The
achievement is a severe trial of horsemanship ; the rider
is often jerked from his horse; there are ludicrous mis-
haps, and sometimes severe accidents — the latter, as Mr.

MONTGOMERY SULPHUR SPRINGS. 1 25

Bergh and his school of humanity might consider, well
deserved by the cruelty of the sport.

But for many years there has been no gander-pulling in
Virginia. The tournament is of another order of diver-
sion. It has no feature of cruelty, and it is designed to
practice every resource and grace of horsemanship — in
speed of the animal, steadiness of the eye and hand of
the rider and a peculiar movement of agility. Ordi-
narily, the game is to pierce, with a long, metal-shod
spear, a ring about an inch and a half in diameter, barely
encircling the spear. The ring is suspended on a shallow
hook ; the knight rides at full speed, being timed by the
second to complete the course, which is usually some two
or three hundred yards. If he succeeds in bearing off
the ring, he is yet to perform the most difficult part of
the feat, which is to "cast" the ring, throwing it, by a
quick and adroit movement, from his spear within ten,
twelve, or fifteen feet of the beam whence he has taken
it, as the rules of the game may determine. In the in-
stance of the Montgomery tournament we have com-
menced to describe there was no casting of the ring, but,
as a multiplication of skill, three rings were suspended
at intervals of about twenty paces, and the game, which
consisted of five courses, was decided by the number of
rings and "tips."

The successful knight having been proclaimed, and
the choice of Queen of Love and Beauty having been
bestowed upon a lady of New Orleans, the most interest-
ing part of the programme remained to be carried out.
At night the coronation took place amid the dazzling
lights of the ball-room, the knights in their picturesque
costumes, and the fair queen fluttering under the atten-
tions that surrounded her throne, displaying perhaps not
11*

126 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

much of regal self-assertion, but preferably exhibiting the
tender and modest grace of a youthful virgin queen. The
coronation speech was made by a member of the Lynch-
burg press (Mr. Edward S. Gregory), arising young poet of
the South ; and, although the writer is not prone to praise,
he must say that there was an exquisiteness of expression,
a freshness of treatment, a nice felicity of words in the
orator's effort, such as he had seldom heard on similar
occasions, where the inspirations are necessarily trite and
unreal. He referred to some modern efforts to burlesque the
tournament, and then eloquently proceeded to vindicate
it in its various respects as a game of manly skill, a school
of refinement, a social opportunity and an inevitable as-
sociation of the virtues and graces of real arms. And
the reader may believe that the veriest mocker of such
sports, witnessing its unusually brilliant and picturesque
display on the occasion of this Montgomery tournament —
the aspects of reality given to it ; the romantic circum-
stances of a mountain amphitheatre and the wild scenes
loosely bound by the dusky combs of the distant Alle-
ghany ; the evident refinement of sentiment which it in-
spired in a vast and promiscuous crowd, and, more than
all, the real abounding joy of all who participated in it —
might relent from his disposition to ridicule and conclude
that, after all, there might be real and healthful uses in
the tournament.

■ But the most brilliant of all the scenes of this festive
occasion, and one unequaled in its surroundings by even
what the imagination can originate, was the illumination
at night of the vast lawns and adjoining grounds of the
springs. More than a thousand Chinese lanterns, pro-
cured from the most picturesque that could be bought in
New York, were hung in the trees. In the midst of

THE YELLOW SULPHUR SPRING. 12/

these fireworks were exploded, rockets fired. Back of
all this display was the dark, ominous mountain, rising
in the night, black as a bank of thunder-clouds, anon
striped with the ribbon flights of the rocket ; above all
a star-spangled sky, and in the distance the weird cries
and echoes of a night in the mountains. The illumina-
tion to such an extent was a happily-conceived idea, and
I do not know that it has ever been before so well dis-
played in the mountains of Virginia. Nowhere could
the effect be so well repeated as here, where there is a
natural amphitheatre of mountains, and where the varie-
gated plain mingles so abrupdy with the wooded height
and mural precipice that already, from the elevation of
more than three thousand feet above the sea-level, lift
themselves to scale the last ascents of the Alleghany,

THE YELLOW SULPHUR SPRING.

Five miles south-west of the Montgomery White Sul-
phur is the Yellow Sulphur Spring. It is most con-
veniently reached by stages passing over four miles of
well-graded turnpike from Christiansburg, on the Vir-
ginia and Tennessee Railroad.

We are now in the most elevated part of Montgomery
county. The spring rises on the east side of the Alle-
ghany and flows into the head waters of the Roanoke
river, two miles away. We are surrounded by variegated
and interesting scenery ; but what is most remarkable and
the most pleasant distinction to the visitor, who already
feels his translation into a new atmosphere, is the great
altitude of the spring. It is not more than sixty feet
above the summit-level of the mountain from which it
flows. In consequence of this elevation, the air, as may

128 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

be well imagined, is elastic, pure and invigorating during
the hottest days of summer ; and the advantages of a
salubrious climate are added in more than ordinary
measure to the virtue of the water, to which Nature has
given a place so lofty and secluded.

As yet the Yellow Sulphur is but in the infancy of its
fame, although the water was locally known and was
visited by invalids sixty or seventy years ago. Within
recent years the public has obtained some scientific
knowledge of the water, and it is already indicated by
medical men as one of the most valuable in the Springs
Region of Virginia. It derives the name popularly
given it from a yellow-brownish sediment, which is often
quite perceptible on the sides and at the bottom of the
spring enclosure.

The following is an analysis of one gallon of the water :

Carbonic acid 9- 360 grains.

Sulphuric acid 53-383 "

Phosphoric acid 0.013 "

Magnesia 7-723 "

Lime 32-150 "

Oxide of iron 0.432 "

Alumina 1-729 " 5

Potash r o. 119 "

Soda 0.359 "

Chlorine 0.092 "

Organic extractive matter 3-733 "

The range of usefulness of the water is to be found in
its valuable tonic properties. It is a very pleasant bever-
age, lying lightly and comfortably upon the stomach,
even when taken in large quantities. Seven to eight
tumblers, taken at intervals, constitute the usual day's
allowance of the invalid. The water is beautifully trans-
parent, and, what is a better recommendation to the
thirsty, it is delightfully cool, remaining at 55° in the

THE YELLOW SULPHUR SPRING. 1 29

hottest days of summer. The smell of sulphur is not
perceptible ; the taste is slightly astringent or styptic,
and the water, after being used but a short while, is gen-
erally preferred by visitors, as a common drink, to the
limestone water of the neighborhood.

The accommodations at this spring are as yet limited,
their capacity scarcely exceeding a hundred persons.
But the buildings are new and very comfortable, and the
table furnished by the bountiful proprietors is one of the
best in the mountains. All of the visitors of the season
of 1869 will testify to the good living of the Yellow
Sulphur — the wholesome and substantial beef, mutton
and chickens, the splendid bread, and the abundance of
good milk, cream and butter. The grounds have a
natural beauty to which architectural designs (however
we might wish an extension of buildings for the accom-
modation of a larger number of visitors) are not neces-
sary to add. The shade of magnificent forest trees,
whose tops are even with the summit of the Alleghany,
makes a shelter glorious and luxurious enough for a sum-
mer day ; and we leave it unwillingly as the cool nights
drive us into our "cabins" and to a refuge under two
blankets even in August.

CHAPTER VIII.

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER, SALT POND, BALD KNOB \
AND LITTLE STONY CREEK.

Plan of a Trip into Giles County — Crossing the Mountain — A Ride through a
Night-Storm — The Adventure of a Lost Hat — Benighted in the Woods — Sin-
gular Experience with a Mountaineer — One of "Nature's Noblemen" —
Eggleston's White Sulphur Springs— Scenery of New River —
" Pompey's Pillar" and " Csesar's Arch" — "The Narrows" — "Hawk's
Nest " — New River compared with the Rhine — Little Stony Falls —
Terrific Leap of the Water — Salt Pond — A Lake of Fresh Water suspended
among the Clouds — A Submerged Forest — Part of the Lake Unfathomable —
An Old Lady's Theory — An Emigrant Company of East Tennesseeans — Talks
with them — A Picture of Solitude — Bald Knob — Looking into Five States —
Effects as compared with the View from the Peaks of Otter — Cloud-ships —
A Fog-ocean— A Hospitable Rest.

HE Salt Pond, one of the "sights" of Virginia,
if curiosity is to be reckoned, is thirty-two
miles from the Montgomery White Sulphur
Springs; and around the terminus of a journey so brief
cluster other objects of even surpassing interest. In the
neighborhood of this mysterious lake one may get
glimpses of the matchless scenery of New river ; or he
may climb to Bald Knob and get the grandest of moun-
tain views ; or he may pursue the swift and contentious
course of Little Stony Creek, of which Mr. Fisher, fresh
from the art colleges of Europe, has said, "If it was in
Germany, we would see a hundred artists sketching on its
banks." All these scenes may be compassed by a trip of
three or four days. Salt Pond, the centre of them, is

130

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER. 131

about equidistant from Christiansburg and the Mont-
gomery White Sulphur ; the road from the latter place
passing into the Christiansburg pike, and constituting
the great stage thoroughfare between the springs of the
South-west and those of Monroe, Greenbrier and Bath
counties. Stages run on this line of travel three times a
week, and pass in view of Salt Pond.

A journey which promised so much we were not slow

to undertake. With Warren W , the guide and dear

companion of other journeys in Virginia, I was soon
equipped for the road, it having been determined not to
take the stage-coach, but to travel in our own way, so as
to make a more thorough and leisurely exploration of
the country. Warren was mounted on a horse — or, as
they say in the mountains, by a singular pleonasm, a
"horse-beast." I bestrode a mule; "Jacky" being
recommended as sure-footed, a regular "dog-trotter,"
and the pet of the stable.

Our road extended through the richest and most culti-
vated parts of Montgomery county. It was a vision on
either side of broad acres, wide, warm fields, the yellow
harvest bound with the garniture of woods, and groves
in which stood the square brick houses indicative of the
country gentry of Virginia. Leaving Blacksburg, eight
miles on our way, a pretty village which boasts a "col-
lege" of some sort, we were soon ascending the Brush
Mountains. There is nothing like a ride in this elevated
atmosphere ; the beautiful day is a benefaction — long-
forgotten poetry comes to our lips. For miles on the
flattened summit of the mountain we gallop along, high
in the blue ether and drunken with it, clouds of snowy
white over us and the birds of the mountains in their
majestic flight.

132 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

It had been determined in our leisurely plan of journey-
to leave the main road within a few miles of Salt Pond,
deflecting to Eggleston's White Sulphur Springs, and to
spend the night there. We had been told that the hotel
accommodations at the Pond were vile beyond descrip-
tion ; while Warren, who had spent a former season at
Eggleston's, assured me, with good reason, as I afterward
found, that it was the most delicious and comfortable of
resorts in the Mountain Region of Virginia. We should
sup on broiled pheasant, drink the most famous of
whisky toddies, and go to sleep on the banks of New
river and in view of " Pompey's Pillar" and " Csesar's
Arch," the magnificent rock-work throwing its shadows
through -our windows. So it was decided to spend the
night at Eggleston's, and to devote the following day or
days to Salt Pond, Bald Knob, Little Stony Falls, etc.
It was a well-planned journey, but, alas ! how many such
' ' gang a-gley ! ' '

At Blacksburg, where we tarried and lunched, we
had been told that from Newport, nine miles across
the mountains, it was but three miles to Eggleston's.
We had thus been in no hurry to pursue our journey ;
the greater part of the way up and down tlae mountain
ridge we had ridden very slowly, and the sun had been
set for a quarter of an hour when we reached Newport,
a settlement of twenty or thirty board houses on a little
pad of soil at the bottom of a funnel-shaped cup formed
by the high hills or mountains. As we passed through
the toll-gate here, we asked the distance to Eggleston's
Springs.

"It's nine miles /'' was the reply, not a little to our
consternation.

The night was gathering, the sky had become overcast

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER. 133

with clouds, but we determined to press on in view of the
cheer that awaited us, much to be preferred to that sug-
gested by the tarnished signboard of the Newport hotel
that creaked dismally over our heads. We had ridden
about three miles, when one of those rain-storms which
spring up so suddenly in the mountains absolutely en-
gulfed us in darkness. It was so dark that I could see
nothing before me, not even " Jacky's" ears. The roar
of the winds through the mountain pines was terribly
grand — a solemn diapason that drowned our voices ; the
air of the night had become so cold that my benumbed
fingers could scarcely feel the reins of the bridle ; there
was no sign of human habitation near ; and, to suggest
the real perils of our situation, we could hear through
fitful intervals of the storm of wind and rain the sound
of rushing waters below us, telling us that our road over-
hung the deep channel of a river. We rode on in single
file, "Jacky" bringing up the rear, faithfully keeping
the pace of the horse in front, but absolutely refusing
to move a peg when the attempt had been made to put
him in advance.

Presently a glimmering light was descried in the
encircling sea of darkness, in which were absolutely
obliterated all our ideas of distance. We could only tell
that we approached it by its growing larger, and could
only infer that it signified that a house was near.

We shouted at the top of our voices : " Are we in the
road to Eggleston's Springs?"

"Yes," came in reply a gruff voice: then followed
something indistinct about a "fork" in the road and
keeping by the side of a fence.

"But, my friend," I remonstrated, " I can't see any
fence — I can't see anything."
12

134 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

''I can't help that," was the boor's reply; and the
door must have been slammed to, for the light suddenly
disappeared.

There was evidently no prospect of any hospitable re-
source here. We rode on through the darkness and the
rain, Warren, in front, trusting to' the eyes and instinct
of his faithful steed. In miserable plight we toiled
through the storm, blind, wet, dogged, with the cold
wind smiting our faces, insensible now to its really sub-
lime effect, as, like an invisible army with chariots, it
rumbled far away up the mountain sides. We must have
gone a mile or so, when, just as a blast of wind cut fiercely
over our heads, I heard a sharp exclamation in front —

"I've lost my hat !"

Expressions of sympathy were of no avail. AVarren
could not spare his hat, but in such a storm it might have
lodged near by, or it might have been blown a quarter of
a mile away. I found that Warren had dismounted, for
he felt his way to me, and requested me to hold his horse
while he attempted to light a match under the folds of
his cloak.

" What in the world are you going to do?" I asked.

" I'm going to find my hat," was the reply.

A match was lighted after repeated failures, then a wisp
of paper, which showed a fence near by. The rails were
torn down, and we soon had, by aid of the wind, a fierce
fire burning. It was a wild scene — the fire hissing through
the rain, and throwing its twisted arms up into the black
sky ; Warren, his head bound by a white handkerchief,
flourishing a pine torch as he traversed the road for a
hundred yards, searching for the lost hat ; while far away
some alarmed dogs bayed at this unexpected apparition
of the night. We had searched in vain for a fiill half

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER. 135

hour, and were on the point of despairing, when I heard
a glad cry from Warren. He had found his hat : it had
been lodged fifty yards away in a corner of the fence.

Having warmed ourselves at the fire before extinguish-
ing it — and not before, weary and disgusted, I had pro-
posed to spend the night by it — we remounted for the
prosecution of our journey. Warren was sure that it was
a plain road to the springs ; the horses would easily find
it ; the rain was diminishing, and it was yet early in the
night. We plucked up our spirits, and ventured a jog-
trot in the darkness. Our steeds had their own way,
except occasionally an application of the spur when they
showed an unwillingness to proceed.

We had just supposed we had gone far enough to look
out for the lights of the springs, when " swash," "swash,"
came something in my face, then a stroke on the knee,
and then some obstruction overhead that nearly dragged
me from my saddle. The evidences were unmistakable :
I had been smitten by boughs of trees : we were in the
woods ! Nothing could be seen around us ; it was pitch-
dark, and the rain was yet falling. I twisted a piece of
newspaper out of my pocket to make a torch. Warren
had but one match left. It fizzled, and then expired
before I could reach the paper to it. In dogged despera-
tion I would have rolled from my mule, have put my back
against a tree and have waited for the morning. But
Warren was more resolute and vigorous. Having dis-
mounted, he twisted a white handkerchief around his
hat as a signal in the darkness, and commenced to feel
for signs of a road. I could only follow helplessly through
the darkness after the white speck, holding out my hands
for fear of limbs of the trees that might strike me. After
groping about some time, Warren was sure that he had

136 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

got into some sort of a road. It was strewn with the loose
and rotting soil of the woods, but he could feel hard
earth at times, and prints of wheels in it. It afterward
proved, as we learned next day, a mere wagon trace to
bring out wood cut in the forest ; and that my companion
should have discovered this exit was, as he claimed, sheer
luck, although in the confidence he had now established
in me I was disposed to give him credit for some of that
mysterious woodcraft which is supposed to be learned in
the mountains.

It was only by signs of feeling that Warren, after a
while, could determine that we had come out into a main
road. The question now was, which way to turn. In this
instance Warren's luck forsook him, for we turned to the
right, exactly away from the route we should have pursued
to Eggleston's Springs, the lights of which, as we discov-
ered next day, were not half a mile to the left, under a
hill on the brow of which we had hesitated. We must
have traveled three miles : not a light visible, not a sound
heard but the groanings of the dying storm or the splashes
of the feet of our slow steeds through puddle and mud,
assuring us that we were on a well-traveled road. Suddenly,
Warren drew rein and commenced hallooing. He told
me to join in, and for several minutes we yelled like mad-
men, although I had no idea what the demonstration was
intended for. A distant barking of dogs at last replied,
and I found that Warren had ingeniously sought in this
way to find whether any human habitations were near.
We rode toward the sound of the barking, exciting it
whenever it ceased by renewed yells, so as to get fresh
indications of our way. Soon the barking became furious,
and we judged that we were near some house. We hal-
looed with increased zeal : there must have been half a

A TRIP TO NEW RIVER. 137

dozen dogs barking in line before us, but there was no
reply of any human voice.

"This won't do," exclaimed Warren ; ''let us make
our way through the dogs and find the house." I could
hear him urging his horse forward. From a passionate
exclamation I understood that the animal recoiled, and
that he had dismounted to lead it. Suddenly the white
crown made by the handkerchief around his hat disap-
peared, as if swallowed up in the ground.

A laugh reassured me. Warren had tumbled some six
feet down a bank, but was uninjured, and was already on
his feet.

Just then a strong but kindly voice quieted the dogs
and greeted our ears. "Why, stranger, what's got hold
of you?" The owner of the voice, as far as he could be
perceived in the dark when he had come up to us, was a
large man, bareheaded. He had been aroused from his
bed evidently in haste. We explained our situation.
The man replied he had "no shelter fitten for strangers,"
but very civilly gave us directions by which we might
make a circuit on main roads two miles and a half to the
springs. But he added that, the springs being in the next
valley, there was a rough path over the ridge of the
mountain that might take us there in half a mile.

I told him I was distressed and in poor health, and
unwilling to trust the road. Would he guide us by the
near way ? and I would pay him anything he asked for
the service.

"Well, gentlemen," he replied, "I will take you
across the mountain." Taking hold of Warren's bridle,
he struck out in the dark, my mule following (for I had
found that I could always trust the beast for thaf). I
could tell that we were ascending a mountain only from
12*

138 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the spasmodic action of Jacky's back and the necessity
of clutching his scant mane. We were half an hour
making the ascent. Then the mule commenced stepping
down, down, as into a gulf of darkness, and as if its
lowest depth never would be reached. But I had become
desperate ; the reins dangled loosely on Jacky's neck,
and I no longer thought of precipices or chasms.

Presently the mule's feet sounded on a hard, level road,
and the cheerful lights of Eggleston's Springs were seen
not a hundred yards away. I rode to the side of our
faithful guide. The noble, hardy fellow, to my surprise,
had come bareheaded all the way. I felt his shaggy
hair drenched with the rain as I reached out my hand in
the dark to grope for and to grasp his hard fist in token
of my gratitude. I asked, ''What shall I pay you, my
good sir, for your great kindness?"

'■'■Not a cent, stranger," he replied, quietly. "I am
jes' glad I got you out of bein' lost."

Again and again we pressed money upon him, or that
he would come to the springs and let us entertain him for
the night. He would take no reward, and must return
to his house. The beautiful and touching grace of the
act of kindness done by this simple mountaineer was that
he made nothing of it, and seemed to be surprised that
we thought it remarkable. Yet this man had left his
comfortable bed, gone out in the darkness to strangers,
who might have been murderers or marauders for aught
he knew, and at their simple request had gone with them,
uncovered, through the rain, toiling in mud up and down
a rough mountain ; and now, storm-drenched, at mid-
night, having to make his way back home, this poor
fellow — a man who worked hard for his scanty bread —
who perhaps bitterly knew the value of money — refused

EGGLESTON'S WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 139

the least reward for what he had done, and was satisfied
to take with him on the dark, rough path on which he
was to grope back through the unceasing storm, the con-
sciousness of having done a kindness to strangers !

Truly this world is made up of different people ; but
never have I been so touched by the lesson of something
good and noble in human nature, never have I thought
better of my fellow-men, never more sincerely thanked
God for what there is in this beautiful world, than when
shaking by the hand this rough inhabitant of the moun-
tains, this true nobleman of Nature found in the forest.

The name of this man is George H. Williams ; and I
record it here as an expression of gratitude and of admi-
ration, which I am sure the reader will respect.

. . . The attention and kindness of our bustling host
of the springs soon consoled the fatigues of our journey.
It is sufficient to say that the prospects of good cheer
which Warren had held out were more than fulfilled ;
and when, long after midnight, I retired to bed, coiled
in clean and delicious sheets, it was with a sense of well-
earned rest, a bixury of fatigue even sweeter than the
sleep that blunted it.

EGGLESTON's white sulphur springs — SCENERY OF

NEW RIVER.

When next morning I put aside the curtain from my
window, it seemed that I had been transported into
Fairyland. The experiences of the journey yet bewild-
ered the brain ; the black night, the voices of the storm,
the dark, muttering mountains — and I woke out of these
to see a beautiful river carrying rich freights of the
morning sunshine by my window, and washing what,

140 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

partially seen, seemed to be the broken, scarred wall of
a ruined castle.

I was looking at some of the most beautiful cliffs of
New river. Eggleston's Springs is situated on a green
knoll. New river bends here nearly to doubling, but a
calm, majestic bend, with no anger of the stream at loss
of distance, not a ripple to show that it is disturbed in
its course, no sign of vexation in the graceful movement.

The scene is at once lovely and grand. My first sur-
prise was, that a resort so attractive had been found out by
so few seeking health and pleasure in the mountains of
Virginia, for the water of the spring is said to be of un-
surpassed virtues, and completes the attractions of the
place. The water has not been analyzed, but it is
strongly sulphurous, perhaps more so than the famous
Greenbrier water — so strong that we were told that in
ante-bellum times, when the happy custom was of carrying
silver coins in the pockets, they would be found tarnish-
ed from the insensible perspiration after a few days' use
of the water, so thoroughly did it saturate the system.
There were only about seventy visitors here in the sum-
mer of 1869, although the excellent accommodations
might have admitted more. It is a pity that the place is
so far removed from the railroad ; but there has recently
been discovered a mode of access to it which we think
far preferable to the stage-coach, and of so inviting and
romantic a nature that Mr. Eggleston might well advertise
it as a new sensation for the tourist in Virginia. It is to
leave the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad at New river
bridge, and to float down the stream twenty-five miles in
one of the batteaux which navigate it, the current of the
stream taking the boat slowly down through a scenery
most grand and picturesque, upon which the eyes of the

EGGLESTON'S WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 141

floating passenger may constantly feast. It is a journey
that may be done in six or seven hours of daylight ; and
the batteau may be rigged with a shelter from the sun,
and may be easily equipped with whatever comforts may
be required. Some ladies from New Orleans had adopj^ed
this mode of reaching the springs j they had had music
on the water ; there were wonders to tell of a scenery such
as they had never seen before, a diorama of the banks of
New river; and they were enthusiastic in praises of the
delightful and romantic conveyance, which they had pre-
ferred to that ordinarily adopted by the traveler.

Yet they had only got glimpses of the scenery of New
river. It is a wonder for a hundred miles. Just at the
springs there is a picture of rock-work the effects of which
are absolutely startling. The various forms of it are desig-
nated by such classical names as " Pompey's Pillar,"
"Caesar's Arch," "Vulcan's Anvil," etc. Just where
the river bends it is one hundred and twenty yards wide,
and towering clean out of the blue water are majestic
cliffs of clean gray rock two hundred and ninety-five feet
high. The stream is one hundred and fifty feet deep at
their base. The grotesque shapes of the cliffs startle us
with resemblances ; it is a Titanic world by moonlight ;
and we may imagine the slow, sinuous water creeping
under the shadow of a giant's castle.

Following the stream a few miles from Eggleston's, we
come to the "Narrows," where it passes through Peters'
Mountains. This ragged defile was a well-known strategic
point in the late war, and the headquarters of the North-
western army of Virginia was kept near it until Cox's
raid in 1863. The scene is about three miles north-west
of Parisburg, the county seat of Giles. The town is at
the extremity of a mountain, which rises over the scene,

142 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

and which is poetically named "Angel's Rest." From
the banks of New river it appears to be a peaked summit
scantily garnished with shrub-like trees^ but there is said
to be a beautiful piece of flat and open land on top.

Yet many miles farther away there rises another charac-
teristic landmark in the gallery of scenery which New
river affords. It is Hawk's Nest, ten miles from where
New river joins with the Gauley and makes Kanawha river
proper — a scene beyond the boundaries of our tour.
Although not afforded a visit here, the writer may com-
plete what he has designed as a rapid sketch of the
remarkable scenery traversed by New river with a descrip-
tion of Hawk's Nest, or Marshall's Pillar, credited to a
European traveler. His impressions standing on this
observatory are thus recorded in beautiful and thoughtful
language: "Beneath and before jou is spread a lovely
valley. The peaceful river glides down it, reflecting, like
a mirror, all the lights of heaven — washes the base of the
rocks on which you are standing, and then winds away
into another valley at your right. The trees of the wood,
in all their variety, stand out on the verdant bottoms,
with their heads in the sun, and casting their shadows at
their feet, but so diminished as to look more like the
picture of the things than the things themselves. The
green hills rise on either hand and all around, and give
completeness and beauty to the scene ; and beyond these
appears the gray outline of the more distant mountains,
bestowing grandeur to what was supremely beautiful. It
is exquisite. It conveys to you the idea of ])erfect solitude.
The hand of man, the foot of man, seem never to have
touched that valley. To you, though placed in the midst
of it, it seems altogether inaccessible. You long to stroll
along the margin uf those sweet waters and repose under

LITTLE STONY FALLS.

Page U.3.

LITTLE STONY FALLS. 143

the shadows of those beautiful trees ; but it looks impos-
sible. It is solitude, but of a most soothing, not of an
appalling character — where Sorrow might learn to forget
her griefs, and Folly begin to be wise and happy."

Beautiful, generous river, that bestows such scenes on
the lover of Nature and gives such noble places for the
meditations of man, the purification and strengthening
of the soul of the wanderer ! It should be the pride of
Virginia, as the Rhine is of Germany. "The Rhine!
the Rhine! a blessing on the Rhine!" sings its wor-
shiper. And a blessing, too, on our beautiful Virginia
river — not, like it, flowing by ruins of ancient castles grim
and hoar, and " reeling onward through vineyards in a
triumphal march, like Bacchus crowned and drunken,"
but passing in solemn pace the eternal rocks which Nature
has sunk deeper than man ever made foundations for his
work, the shadows of enduring castles on its silver breast,
and its pure waters washing like a sacrifice the feet of the
great mountains.

LITTLE STONY FALLS.

Little Stony Creek is a tributary worthy of New river.
We had to ride seven miles from Eggleston's Springs to
find it, hid, as it is, in a deep and narrow valley. Hitch-
ing our steeds at a saw-mill worked by the beautiful
stream, we provided ourselves with redoubtable pilgrims'
staffs to assist on the rugged path to the Falls, half a
mile below.

The path was by or near the side of the stream, the
sound of which, tearing through a channel piled with
rock and broken into a succession of small falls, guided
us through the thick laurel, even when the swift and

144 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

clamorous water was not in sight. The stream averages
a width of fifteen or eighteen feet, but the descent is
great, and the water rushes through a deep channel with
the volume and contention of a mountain torrent. At
times it darts by us with arrowy swiftness ; a cape of
rock wounds its side, and it writhes for a moment on it ;
again it passes into cascades, with here and there a
divided current wandering playfully away to a worn
basin, and throwing drops of silver water up into the air.

The path was rough and difficult enough to please any
romantic notions. At one place, where we had to cross
the stream, we found the rude bridge had been swept
away, and our only resource was to "coon" a small tree,
thick with branches, that was found lower down, fallen
across the chasm. The process is to straddle the tree
and work the body along by the hands, with the neces-
sity of "spraddling" in a very ungraceful manner when-
ever a limb putting out from the body of the tree is
encountered. I was some time working my passage, and
I found that Warren, who was in my rear, had been
amusing himself making a pencil sketch of the perform-
ance.

But there was no time for idling, for the sound of the
great Falls was already in our ears. Spanning a turn of
the stream, we come to a decayed wooden walk just on
the brow of the Falls, and affording an excellent view.
The water descends sixty feet clear, and then breaks in
wild confusion upon a succession of short falls, and then
rocks itself in a wide, worn basin fifty feet deep. The
impetuosity of the stream has before been spoken of,
but here it is grand ; it does not fall, but it leaps far out
into the air, and we might easily stand between it and
the wall of black rock that measures the descent. With

SALT POND. 145

a fierce, almost deafening sound the stream springs over
the chasm. It is fearfully lifelike, and makes one invol-
untarily shudder as the torrent, with frothy lip and wild
scream, leaps by us to the torture of the rocks below.

At the foot of the Falls the scene and sounds are less
terrific. We hear the incessant trampling of the waters
on the succession of the short falls below. There are
graceful shadows on the rocky face of the cliff; miniature
rainbows hang around the falling waters ; and for a hun-
dred yards, such is the force of the main fall, the mist
floats in the sunbeams and dances in our faces. The
framing of the picture is curious. The entire structure
of rock is seamed like masonry, and the abutments are
almost as well defined as if the hand of man had reared
them there. But the yet further surroundings of the
scene overpower the suggestion of Art having intruded
here. A mountain crested with towering plumes guards
the scene, and Nature reigns in unbroken grandeur
around.

SALT POND.

Three miles farther we had to go to see Salt Pond,
and we proceeded across the country at a rapid pace, so
as to get a view of it before the expiration of the day.

The first view of this wonder of Nature, as obtained
from a turn of the road half a mile distant, was a disap-
pointment. It looked like any large mill-pond, and
there was nothing in the contracted surroundings — this
strange water being sunk in a cup, as it were, deep in the
mountain side — to tell us that we were looking upon a
lake suspended four thousand five hundred feet above the
level of the sea. A nearer view disclosed some beauties
in the scenery. The bright, translucent water is held
13 K

14^ THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

sparkling in a bowl of forest green, a shaded walk winds
along its banks, and from a surface smooth as a mirror
arise the dead tops of giant trees that the water -has sub-
merged without overwhelming.

The lake is three-quarters of a mile long, and will
average a third of a mile in width. It approaches the
form of an ellipse, with one side flattened or bent into a
shallow crescent. Contrary to the suggestion of its rude
and inappropriate name, it is a lake of pure fresh water,
not the least saline trace in it. It obtained its name
from the circumstance of a tradition that there was once
a famous "salt lick" here, frequented by immense herds
of elk, buffalo, deer and other wild animals.

The interest that attaches to the lake is the mystery of
its source. There is no visible stream to feed it. At its
eastern termination it is enclosed by a huge pile of rocks,
and there is no exit but one recently made by an act of
vandalism of some wretch, who has cut out a "race" to
drain its waters for a saw-mill. As yet, the diminution
of the water has not been considerable from the apt of
this savage, although we could perceive that it had fallen
some two or three feet from the old water-line on its
banks. However, when we consider the 7nysterious depths
of this wonderful lake, we can have no fear of its disap-
pearance unless from yet hidden causes that Nature com-
mands. It is said to have been forming and to have
been gradually enlarging for more than si.xty years, its
first appearance having been noticed in 1S04. It has
been steadily increasing since then, having risen twenty-
five feet within the memory of persons living near it.
It has never been affected by drouths ; and although the
water has not the least trace of stagnation, and is fresh
enough to l)c taken to our lips, it has never been inhab-

SALT POND. I^y

ited by fish, and it is said that all of the finny tribe placed
in it have not died, but strangely disappeared.

The surpassing wonder is that in some parts it is un-
fathomable. A boat carried us over this enchanted
water. At some places we could look down, down into
its translucent depths, and see the great trees which it
had submerged, crooked and dwarfed by the refracted
light — a weird, leafless forest yet rooted in its original
soil. The effect was indescribable ; it was that of the
glimpses of a strange, solemn world of shapes that looked
heavy as stone or bronze, and was yet suspended in the
water. Rowing into the middle of the lake, we were
told that thereabouts the water had been sounded by a
line three hundred feet long and that no bottom had been
touched. I wrenched a thin silver band from my pencil
and cast it into the water. It made a cord of beautiful
white light, let down, down — no end, no circlet to tell
that it had stopped, until the eye, straining after a dimin-
ished strand, then a vanishing point, could see no more,
and quivered on phantasms of its own creation in the
depths of the water that mocked it.

What can account for this mystery of a bottomless
lake suspended among the clouds? A popular but inad-
equate explanation is, that the trampling of the herds in
the bottom or sink, where they came to lick the salt,
kneaded and packed the earth until it held the water that
gradually collected from springs which the area contained.
Indeed, we were informed that a common practice of
making ponds in this region is to select a "springy"
bottom, and use it as a place for salting cattle until the
soil is beaten so as to hold the water that rises in it.
But this explanation does not account for the immeasura-
ble depth of water we have referred to. That suggests a

148 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

subterranean river, the opening of lower depths, or what-
ever the imagination may supply of "caverns measure-
less to man, down to a sunless sea."

I had been amused by an anecdote I had heard at
Montgomery White Sulphur Springs. Some ladies there
had planned a trip to Salt Pond, escorted by gentlemen.
The anxious mamma of one of the former insisted upon
exacting a promise from the gentleman who was to escort
the treasure of her hopes that on no account should she
be permitted to venture into a boat and go upon the
water. The gentleman remonstrated that there could be
no possible danger in this part of the amusements that
had been designed. "I don't know about that, Mr.

A ," rejoined the old lady : " it is a curious sort of

thing, that pond, and if I was on it I should feel all the
time as if the bottom might fall out f

Altogether, Salt Pond is a great curiosity to the com-
mon traveler, and may be much more to the man of
science. If an enterprising Yankee had hold of the
place, a large and pleasant hotel would be built here ;
there would be the finest boating imaginable on the water;
the delightful mountain air and the scenes it encases would
invite hundreds of visitors; and all these attractions would
be afforded immediately on the great thoroughfare of the
Springs Region of Virginia, the stage-coaches which
traverse it passing in sight of the Pond and Just under
the brow of Bald Knob. As it is, the accommodations
here for the traveler are not worth the name. Poverty
and filth surround the place. What is called a " hotel "
we found to be a single dreary house built like a barn,
the cattle housing under the front portico, and a muddy
scow, pushed from the slime of the bank in whi( h it was
rotting, was the only conveyance we could get on the

SALT POND. 149

water. The large, bleak house, cut up into rooms, hotel-
foshion, appeared to be deserted. It was only when we
entered it that we were surprised to find a swarm of un-
savory humanity hid away in it — men, women and chil-
dren pigging together in the dirty rooms, and scarcely
aroused to notice the appearance of strangers or to an-
swer our questions except in sullen monosyllables. An
emigrant company of East Tennesseeans had come to
make a settlement here, and for the present inhabited the
hotel. It was a dreary collection of the old and young
of a people whom poverty had driven to new adventures
in the wilderness. A pitiful, shrunken woman, a speci-
men of the " respectable " poor, entered into conversa-
tion with us. Warren asked her how she liked her new
home. "It is a hard life," she replied; "but" (with
an air of superiority) " what I mind most is that there is
no society here." We were not disposed to deride the
aspiration of the poor woman. A country where we
may ride for miles without seeing a house, even a log
cabin, where in the stillness of evening we may look
from the road-side or the mountain over unbroken forests
stretched to the stained sky and hear no sign of life — not
the bark of a dog, not the tinkle of a bell — may give mo-
mentary emotions to the passing traveler, and he may
exclaim in the silence around him, " How grand is this
solitude!" but to live in it, to bind up our life and
work in such a scene, is a thought that appalls, and in a
moment the solitude has become changed and oppressive
when we realize it no longer as a passing picture, but as
an allotted home.
13 *

150 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

BALD KNOB.

The sun was sinking when it was proposed to complete
the emotions of the day by a view from Bald Knob, the
top of the mountain on the high shoulder of which Salt
Pond is placed. It was only half a mile farther to the
mountain's summit, and we could go up on horseback.
I had but little anticipations of the scene that awaited
me, and, fatigued as I was, was almost tempted to de-
cline any farther explorations. I had imagined that no
other view in Virginia could comi:>ete with what I had
seen from the Peaks of Otter ; but I was yet to see an
even surpassing image of sublimity, differing in aspect
and perhaps in kind from the former experience of moun-
tain scenery, and realizing how various is Nature, even
when we select to explore but a single feature of its
wealth or grandeur. If I had not gone to Bald Knob, I
would have missed what by far most rewarded our jour-
ney, and I would not have my present reflections, that
the finest mountain view in Virginia is comparatively un-
known, and is yet to be advertised to the tourist.

The top of the mountain we should judge some thou-
sand feet above Salt Pond, and our impression was of
an elevation quite equal to that of the Peaks of Otter,
although we had no means of measuring it. The summit
is very differently formed from that of the Peaks : it is
a globular surface, having on the north a broken crown
of rock, with a field of some acres of dark soil on the
blunt top, thickly covered with undergrowth. What
appear to be bushes a foot and a half high are really
dwarfed oak trees, bearing acorns. A slight rain had
fallen just before we commenced the ascent of the moun-
tain, and the leaves of the dwarfed forest we have de-

BALD KNOB. 151

scribed still held drops of water, illumined by the glan-
cing rays of the setting sun, and giving the effect of a
jeweled veil twisted on the scant and deformed head of
the savage mountain.

We had ascended up out of the cup formation of Salt
Pond, its narrow circumscription of scenery, to the
sudden view of a new world, where we could see a
hundred miles away. We could look into five States —
Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North
Carolina; we could see the systems of mountains in all
these States — parallel ranges of mountains, mountains
running transversely, sierras, single mountains, moun-
tains near by thatched with rock and shrub, mountains in
the distance whose even line of summit looked sharp as
a knife edge, and mountains which peeped ever yet be-
yond on the farthest banks of the infinite sky. The scene
was hung with strands of raveled clouds ; a variable pur-
plish tint rested on the mountains ; the sun was throwing
across them the last lengthened javelins of the day. It
was a scene of surpassing width and grandeur. The wild-
ness of it exceeded that of the Peaks of Otter. There
were no patches in it of cultivated fields ; there were no
round and milky-bosomed hills in the foreground. The
savage grandeur of mountain scenery was spread around
us and lifted up into the sky. Our eyes seized, twenty
miles away, a glittering object. The light of the sinking
sun must have flamed on a cupola in a distant village, for
in a fold of the purple robe of the mountain there shone
something like a single star, bright as a diamond— fit
clasp to the regal attire of the scene. New river, too
deeply sunk in its valley to catch the last rays of the sun,
appeared but as a silver thread. Everywhere a new fea-
ture of sublimity appealed to us. We could speak only

152 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

in exclamations. The mind was squandered by the ex-
tent of the scene.

On the Peaks of Otter the writer has referred to an
effect experienced there — that of immensity of space,
looking from the cribbed earth below up into the blue,
unfathomable sky overhead. The sensation on Bald
Knob was quite different, and so from a singular circum-
stance. The sky was half covered with clouds ; they
were just over our heads, and the effect was as if we had
been thrust right up under the dome of the heavens — the
result of measuring the clouds and the blue spaces to-
gether, as in the same plane of distances. The eye, in a
little while, searches through this delusion, but the first
impression is that of being just under the sky, and it is
one of grand, unspeakable terror. As we watched the
scene a great white cloud swept near us, looking like a
flying ship. We were near enough to have thrown a
stone into it. I could almost imagine that I could hear
the sound of its passage through the air. So much to
see, so much to think of, in a scene that changed every
moment, and was now passing, with shadowy grandeur
of the dying day, into the blackness of night !

" Many arc tlie tliousj;hts that come to me

In my lonely musing;
And they drift so strange and swift,

There's no time for choosing
Which to follow ; for to leave

Any, seems a losing."

. . . Such a scene called for another visit ; and even
at a cost of a night of wretchedness in the Salt Pond
hotel, we were determined to see the next sun rise from
the observatory of Bald Knob. We had some biscuits
and cold meats in our bag, and a thick traveling shawl

BALD KNOB. 153

spread on the floor, with our satchels for pillows, was
found sufficient for the little time of night we gave to
sleep. We asked only shelter of the Tennessee emi-
grants, and that was given us in an apartment used for a
wood-room, in which we fortunately had abundant mate-
rials for a good fire, grateful enough in this mountain
atmosphere.

The morning was raw, and so dark that our watches
only had informed us when it broke. When we had
walked up the mountain (choosing this mode of ascent
for its superior exercise), the sun must have been up; but,
although we could not see it, Nature had prepared for us
a superior scene, and no happier circumstances could
have been imagined than those which rewarded us. The
air was filled with a dense fog. and, as at last we ascended
above it on the summit of Bald Knob, we found that
what appeared to be a great ocean had engulfed the
scene, and that we stood upon a small island raised above
its immensity. The fog hung below us, around us, a ship-
less ocean — not an object discernible upon it but the sum-
mit of the Cumberland Mountains in the distance, not yet
quite submerged, and looking like a thin rim of coast
seen far away at sea. Presently the fog rose above this
too, and drowned it, and we stood upon a single island
under the hollow sky, in a vast, solemn ocean — no sail
upon it, no white caps of waves, no sound of water — a
gray, limitless, breathless sea. It was hours before this
sea broke up, and when it did, it was as the apparitions
of another creation issuing out of chaos. The mountains
arose, and took shape gradually ; the valleys were spread
out and garnished ; tlie eternal rocks were planted aiid
the river traced ; and when at last the sunlight streamed
in full joy and conquest over the scene, there was naught

154 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

of the fog but some shreds twisted by lances of the sun,
as they retreated slowly with sullen steps of defeat up the
mountain side.

We had seen Bald Knob in its various glories. The fol-
lowing night we were happy in telling our recollections
of the scene. We spent the night by invitation at the

beautiful residence of Mr. W , who did not need the

recommendation of being "the richest man in Giles
county" to establish the elegant hospitality and refine-
ment of his home. There was a company of ladies visit-
ing here from neighboring counties, such reunions being
common in the hospitable practices of Transmontane Vir-
ginia. The next morning we were returning to the Mont-
gomery White Sulphur, going back to its places of fash-
ionable gayety, yet places holding for us no fairer, sweeter
faces than those we had left in the mountain home behind
us — a transient, but unforgotten vision.

CHAPTER IX.

TAZEWELL COUNTY, THE SWITZERLAND OF
VIRGINIA.

How to go to Tazewell County— Descriptions of the Route — Saltville— The Alps
of Virginia— "The Peak"— An Indian Battle-Field— Dial Rock— Climbing
the Cliflfs- Valley of the Clinch River — View of it on a Summer's Eve-
ning — Burke's Garden— Abb's Valley — The Flora of South-west Virginia — The
Tazewell Historical Society — Was Tazewell County ancient Xuala? — Social and
Literary Culture in the Mountains — Romance on Horseback— A Ride through
THE Mountains — Homes of the Mountaineers — Comparison of the Moun-
taineer and the Lowland Rustic— Dialect of the Mountains— Traditions of the
Early Commerce of South-west Virginia— " Uncle Billy"— Isolation of the Moun-
taineer's Home — An Observation of Mr. Horace Greeley— Simplicity of a Primi-
tive Society— A Comedy in the Mountains — " Sal's" Courtship— The "beat-
ingest" Dog— A Lock of Hair— Reflections on the Mountain Maid— A Vision
of Beauty.

E were meditating a journey to the upper tier of
Virginia watering-places — approached as this
part of the Springs Region is from Staunton, or
by stage routes crossing from various points on the Vir-
ginia and Tennessee Railroad in the direction of the Green-
brier White Sulphur Springs — when we were advised that
we had not completed even the most obvious interests of
South-west Virginia until we had made an incursion into
Tazewell county, described as the Switzerland of the
Old Dominion. The whole country is a tossed bed of
mountains. Clinch Mountain, which derives its name
from Clinch river, which heads here, extends through
the entire length of the county ; the Cumberland Moun-

155

156 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

tains also traverse it, the '•' Great Flat-Top" in the north-
east corner of the county being a spur of this range, and
the whole of Tazewell maybe described as broken up into
a succession of mountain and valley. The mean height
of the arable soil of the county is about two thousand
two hundred feet above the level of the ocean. Without
either a railroad or a navigable stream, the condition of
Tazewell is one of singular isolation ; it suffers greatly
from the distance of markets; and, glancing at it on the
map, we would imagine that it w'ould be impracticable to
the traveler.

But an easy route is to be found to the scenes of Taze-
well — one that may be recommended to the tourist, not
only for its convenience, but for the agreeable circum-
stances of the wayside. This route is by way of Glade
Springs Station. There we leave the Virginia and Ten-
nessee Railroad; a branch railroad runs eight miles to
Saltville, itself an object of interest. Passing through a
rugged defile of Walker's Mountain, we enter the beautiful

DO '

valley in which the great salines of Virginia are situated.
The settlement is at the foot of the mountain, and over-
looks one of the most charming valleys in the world, in
the centre of which is the curious basin of salt water,
eighty per cent, in strength, from which a large portion
of the country is supplied with salt.*

* In a recent account of these salines, published in the interest of an
emigration company in Virginia, there is a sketch of their history;
and it may gratify the curiosity of some of our readers to trace the
steps of this now important manufacture of salt. At the advent of the
•whites decisive evidences of the prior presence of the Indians were
furnished by the debris of an Indian village or encampment imme-
diately contiguous to that part of the valley where the soil is most
sensibly impregnated with salt. These consist of pieces of broken
pottery, arrow-heads, and other rude commodities of stone which

TAZEWELL COUNTY. I57

We then comrnenced a delightful ride on horseback to
Jeffersonville, the seat of justice for Tazewell county,
eighteen miles distant. We say delightful, for the road

then abounded, and are yet by no means infrequently turned up by
the plough, not only about Saltville, but at the foot of both gaps of
Walker's Mountain, opening into the valley from the south. But the
presence at the lick of numerous little pits or basins, fashioned by
the tongues of animals in the soil, besides other reasons unnecessary
to state here, would indicate rather nomadic than permanent settle-
ments there of the aborigines, allowing occasionally in the interim
uninterrupted access of wild beasts. Manifestly the spot was to the
Indians an invaluable preserve of game. There are many proofs of
the countless numbers of animals which used to resort to it thickly
underlying the soil in large spaces. The Indians, too, must have
found their supplies of salt here, although we cannot say whether it
was used concrete or in brine. The pits would often, no doubt, be
found to contain little pools of brine, trickled into them from the sur-
rounding earth, and in warm seasons, or where long overlooked,
crusted at the edges or at the bottom with grained salt. To the
more instructed whites these natural processes pioneered the way to
their own first rude salt-works — excavations of a few feet, into which
the brine, saturating the adjacent soil, gradually flowed, whence, trans-
ferred to some iron household vessel, it was boiled down to salt. At
length some more adventurous innovator enlarged and deepened
these excavations, carried finally to a depth of eight or ten feet, and,
obtaining larger kettles, commenced the business of making and
selling salt. The sweep now, instead of the dipper, was needed for
these larger operations, and, raising the brine,' swung it around to
monster twenty-gallon kettles at convenient distances. This descrip-
tion of operations belongs to a period of time between 1780 and 1800.
Toward the close of the last century, a stalwart, fine-looking man,
a Scotchman, with his pack on a little white pony, appeared on the
scene. He sought and found employment with the parties then
engaged in making salt. A piece of land lying adjacent was, soon
after his arrival, offered for sale. His employer, the proprietor of
the salt-works, refused to buy it, because it had been already stripped
of timber, which alone gave it value in his eyes. Here was the golden
opportunity. For the slight requital, as a well-authenticated tradition
14

15S THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

goes through the grandest and most various scenery, and
at the beginning is signalized by the sublime picture
of a grand mountain gateway, through which one of the
tributaries of the Holston river breaks its channel. We
are in the Alps of Virginia ; and never were the shifting

assures us, of an indifferent horse and rifle, the Scotcliman became
the purchaser of a future principality. He set up a little store, but
immediately commenced, also, exploring for salt, opening a large
well, which, at the depth of about two hundred feet, rewarded his
sagacity and enterprise by the disclosure of the finest brine ever yet
discovered, and in unlimited quantity. This almost penniless way-
farer was William King, whose salt and mercantile establishments
were soon known to fame, far and wide, through Virginia, Tennessee
and North Carolina. The property of his former employer, General
Preston, extended to the immediate neigliborhood of King's well.
He, too, a short distance off, now dug for and found, finally, a similar
brine. Sometimes separately, sometimes unitedly, these two wells
have been operated to the present time.

The value of these salines to South-western Virginia and East Ten-
nessee is at all times very great ; but how greatly they concern the
most vital interests of both these States in particular, as well as tliose
of the Carolinas and Georgia, and how deserving they are of the
favor and fostering care of them all, can only justly be estimated by
adverting to the part they have played in times of war. In that of
1812, interrupting as it did the supply of foreign salt, wagons were
sent to them from almost all parts of Virginia — certainly from as far
east as Richmond and Petersburg; and during the late civil contest,
both sources of competitive supply being cut off — that from Liver-
pool antl that from the Kanawha Valley — the salt from these works
was almost the sole resource of the whole Confederacy lying between
the Mississippi and the Potomac. At one period of the civil war the
product of them was near ten thousand bushels a day, or between
three and four millions a year; and it deserves mention that this
great draft upon the wells was met by them without apparent strain
or material deterioration in the cpialily of the l)rinc. Still, the present
annual supply, restricted by the costliness of fuel, may be stated at
but from four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand bushels.

TAZEWELL COUNT T. 1 59

panoramas of mountain scenery more conspicuous and
vivid. The ascent of the Clinch Mountain, associated
with Indian memories, interests the traveler at every step,
and at its highest altitude discloses visions of rare beauty.
A sudden burst of the majesty of the landscape demanded
the pause and tribute of silent admiration. The wayside
is diversified with clusters of laurel in bloom, and deep,
dark defiles with overhanging cliffs bristle with mountain
pine.

Jeffersonville is a village of a few hundred inhabitants,
situated on an elevated plain in Clinch Valley, about one
mile from the river. It is a grateful retreat in mid-sum-
mer, and from its streets we may see the pinnacles of one
of Nature's mountaiji-temples. A gentle tranquillity
reigns around the ancient village, and the sweet incense
of fields and meadows is wafted from sequestered altars.

THE TEAK.

Here we are in the midst of a scenery that invites us on
every hand, its grandest and its loveliest displays being
within a circuit of a few miles. Immediately south of
the village is "the Peak" (or, as it is more commonly
called. Wolf Creek Knob), and the view is notable
from its summit, looking west and south-west. As the
warm season closes, the summit of this mountain is fre-
quently covered with snow, while verdant grass is seen
lower down its sides. But when we visited it the moun-
tain was beautifully decorated even to its top with laurel
and ivy blossoms. The vicAV is grand and full of associa-
tions. We see rising up the abrupt and rocky heads of
innumerable mountains ; the large hills are intermingled
in the picture ; and a singular opposition of mountain

l6o THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

ranges, rising up steadily against each other like the ranks
of two great armies, has its story of a fearful Indian battle
— a scene of savage war on the very antitype of a con-
vulsion of Nature. They are parallel ranges of Clinch
Mountain and Rich Mountain, and here occurred, just one
hundred years ago (1769), one of the most desperate and
terrible battles between the Cherokees and Shawnees,
those two powerful tribes that so long contested the pos-
session of South-west Virginia. The battle was witnessed
by a single white settler, of the name of Carr, who fur-
nished ammunition to the Cherokees. It lasted two days,
during which the fiendish yells of the savages might be
heard echoing over the rugged cliffs and deep valleys,
while the nearer ear caught the sli^rp crack of rifles and
the ringing of tomahawks striking against each other.
The Cherokees, who had their breastwork on the Rich
Mountain range, were the victors or remained holding
their advantage; but after the battle both tribes left
Virginia for their homes in the South and West, and the
disputed territory was left open to the encroachments of
the white man, alike their common enemy and their
common master. But before the savages left the bloody
ground a large pit was opened in the intervening valley,
and a common grave received those who had fallen in
this last battle fought between red men in this part of
Virginia.

Another object of interest near to Jeffersonville is Dial
Rock. It is three miles east of the village, and tradition
has it that on one of the rocks of the three heads of East
River Mountain is a natural sun-dial. We could see no
traces of this wonder, but from a naked cliff, rising more
than two hundred feet above the summit of the mountain,
which again is fifteen hundred feet above the valley of

TAZEWELL COUNTT. l6i

the Clinch, we beheld a scene of wild grandeur that
awed and affrighted the eye that dared to overlook it.
There are a number of these cliffs, among which we climb,
alternately ascending and descending, at times peering into
dark caverns, and again holding on to rocks lying on thin
scales so loosely that apparently the slightest blow would
sever the props that uphold them, and precipitate us into
one of the black mouths of the mountain side yawning for
its prey. Traversing this beautiful though terrible array
of cliffs (on the top of one of which a basin of clear, ice-
cold water quenches our thirst), it is not until we have
climbed the sixth that we have reached the highest point
of view, the pinnacle of Dial Rock. It is again a view
of mountain and of valley. The eye is directed down
to the valley beneath, with a disposition to shrink back,
so precipitous is the chasm ; while, looking another way,
mountains rise above mountains in endless succession,
until far in the smoky distance the vision ceases to dis-
tinguish the faint outline of the Cumberland and the
Tennessee ranges.

VALLEY OF THE CLINCH RIVER.

But the view of largest combination and of most varied
charms in Tazewell county is, the writer is persuaded, one
that he obtained in an evening ride, and which may be
described as the head of Clinch Valley, looking west,
four miles east from Jeffersonville. It is a view in which
mountain and valley are combined, in which the highest
effects of natural scenery are obtained, in which it is
difficult to tell where the line of beauty passes into that
of the sublime, and to distribute to each part of the pic-
ture its appropriate emotion. The mountains of Taze-
14* L

t63 the VIRGINIA TOURIST.

well are all around us, and -in the distance may be seen
the mountains in Russell county; while again and again
runs across this scene the breadth of sublimity, or the pass-
ing grace of a beautiful valley with its interlocked hills
and flashing streams. These hills, so round-bosomed,
this circle which the grove describes with the severity of
a mathematical line, these trees grown up in rows so
even or in clusters that a landscape gardener might have
designed, are not of Art, but of that infinite variety of
Nature which sometimes mingles the regularity of what
is apparently human work with the most excessive wild-
ness of its creations.

It was a lovely summer evening when I ascended the
mountain that overlooked this scene. I had climbed to
a voiceless pinnacle two or three thousand feet above the
valley for the purpose of making a sketch. It was done
with a feeble hand. It was a scene only to be painted in
the variegated and brilliant hues of Nature's own dyes,
and where the hand was to be guided by a more than
human inspiration. The sun is sinking behind the dis-
tant mountains, clothing them in purple, gold and ame-
thyst. Away in the distance to the north the beautiful
Clinch river

" Winds like a blue vein on sleeping Beauty's breast."

I turn my eyes to the east, to a scene in which I must
falter in the descrii)tion. Huge mountains loom up,
piercing the sky. They stand firm, grim sentinels of
God, guarding the sleeping emerald valleys below. On
a former visit to Tazewell I had seen them in winter.
They were then shrouded in death-like garments of
snow; the "frozen music" of the torrent on their breasts.
Now their rock-braced sides are bathed in a warm violet

TAZEWELL COUNTT. 163

glow, and their rugged brows are bound with a golden
band of light ; while here and there along the pearly-
heavens glide the satin clouds, their purple slowly ming-
ling in the pale, tranquil twilight sky. And now

" The golden gates of day are closed,
And darkness drapes the world."

The open lands of Tazewell county are fit comple-
ments to its mountain scenes — stretches of beautiful
and fertile valleys contrasting with the stern aspects of
the mountains which interlock and guard them. Burke's
Garden, a refreshing and poetic name, is the Eden of this
region. It is about twelve miles east from Jeffersonville
— an enclosure, being almost entirely surrounded by lofty
mountains, save a narrow pass, through which runs Wolf
creek, a small rippling rivulet. It is about ten miles
long and five wide, and is a beautiful, perfect level.
Abb's Valley (so-called from Ab.salom Loorey, the first
white man who occupied it), about fifteen miles north-
east of Jeffersonville, is another delightful tract in the
county. It is a narrow but beautiful and fertile valley,
in which it was formerly observed, as a singular phe-
nomenon, that there was no running water ; but later
investigations have discovered a subterranean stream of
considerable size running in its hidden course the entire
length of the valley, about twelve miles. The soil of
these fertile tracts is the celebrated blue-grass soil, strongly
impregnated with lime, and very productive.

There is one interest in the aspects of Tazewell, and
of other parts of South-west Virginia, that the writer
should not omit because of his inability to use a scien-
tific technology. He refers to the rich and abundant flo7-a
of this region. A physician of Tazewell, accomplished

164 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

beyond the usual limits of his profession, thus refers to
the subject: "The botany of Western Virginia is not
surpassed by that of any other section in the temperate
zones. 'This region,' as Torrey says, 'may be called a
garden of medicinal plants.' Ornamental plants, as well,
are here scattered with a profuse hand. To every -dis-
ease of this region Nature seems to have furnished a
remedy. If in any country botany can be studied with
advantage, it is here, for flowers of the same class, genus
and species are blooming for several months — those in
the valleys first, and those found upon the ascent of the
mountains later. Many have been the pleasant days
which I have spent in botanical rambles on the moun-
tains, where from frost till frost flowers are ever found."
The county of Tazewell is, as we have already sug-
gested, a field for the historical explorer, having many
traces of traditionary history of the Indian tribes who
contested this territory, and frequently dyed its soil with
bloody massacres of the early settlers. Located on the
line of the great Indian road from the Ohio to the West-
ern settlements, it was naturally invaded at frequent
times, and it is said that no county in Virginia has such
a list of Indian massacres. Within recent years a his-
torical society has been instituted in the county to collect
the memorials of its early history. As an illustration of
its industry, we were informed that evidences had been
collected to show that the territory of Tazewell and the
adjoining counties had been crossed by De Soto (1540)
in his exploration from the Santee to the sources of the
Tennessee river ; that the region was then occupied by
the Xualans, who were afterward driven out by the Cher-
okees ; that, in fact, Tazewell county was the ancient
Xuala of the New World, the inhabitants of which had a

TAZEWELL COUNTT. 165

certain sort of civilization, and of whom the modern in-
quirer of the Tazewell Historical Society asks, "Might
not the natives have been originally from Egypt, having
been driven thence after embracing the religion of the
Hebrews ? ' '

Here is a nut for the archseologists. But seriously,
and to come down to our own times, the institution of
such a society in Tazewell (which, indeed, has been very
profitably employed outside of the times of De Soto)
is a singular evidence of the cultivation and literary pat-
ronage of its people. There is a social and literary cul-
tivation in this mountainous country which often takes
the stranger by surprise. The hospitality of some of
these homes is elegantly dispensed. Some of the finest
private libraries in Virginia are found here. The daugh-
ters of the wealthier proprietors are sent to distant cities
to be educated, and it is not unfrequent to find them
giving that excellent grace to the social circle which we
may expect from the real refinements of culture without
the affectations of fashion. But what is remarkable of
Tazewell, and of other parts of Virginia rudely called
"The Mountains," is, that with such a degree of intelli-
gence and refinement as that noticed we should find the
most violent and grotesque mixture of the abjectest igno-
rance. The contrasts in this respect are of the sharpest
and most painful sort. What may now be the scale of
popular intelligence in Tazewell I do not know ; but be-
fore the common-school system was instituted in Virginia
it was estimated that of 3317 persons in the county over
twenty-one years of age, 1490 were unable to read or
write !

The country is yet wild enough to afford many roman-
tic rides through it, not only in the interest of its natural

1 66 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

scenery, but in that other interest of the observation of a
singular people, many of them yet living in circumstances
of the original settler of the forest. I had determined,
as part of the journey I had planned, to mingle with this
people, to "rough" it in their homes, and to give my-
self the fresh sensation of a ride on horseback at random
through the mountains. I had provided, indeed, a deli-
cious sensation, with contrasts in it of bodily discomfort
only sharp enough to increase the zest. There can be no
enjoyment like that of a horseback ride through these
grand and beautiful mountains, inhaling the pure, fresh
air, casting the eyes upon constantly-shifting scenes, and
catching the inspirations of Nature rejoicing around us.
It is summer, but the pointed, glittering lances of the
sun no longer bar the pathway ; blunted and distempered
in the cooler air, they are broken in the foliage and lay a
golden spoil in the forest. We descend the mountain by
a faintly-discerned path ; a deer starts from the copse at
its base, gazes in beautiful alarm for a moment, then
gathers its slender limbs and bounds away. Again, we
are climbing toward distant summits bathed in golden
light, while the virgin dress of Nature flutters on our
path, disclosing some new beauty and inviting pursuit,
even through the dark, solemn forest, matted with vines
and almost excluding the light of the day. Now we are
come to a mountain stream. The horse's feet splash
musically in it, and we see the bright, speckled trout
flirting the crystal waters with their glittering fins. The
forest is alive with songsters ; and the sim, which has
l)arted the locks from the mountain's brow far above,
does not neglect, in dissipating far and wide the fog and
the dew, to stoop and kiss from the check of the hum-
blest wild flower its mark of grief.

TAZEWELL COUNTY. 167

But enough of these pictures. We had come to see
the people of the mountains, to study the ways of a se-
questered life and the manners of a strange society. The
subject is large enough to group upon it a number of ob-
servations, and we should treat, it as a distinct field in our
tour.

A RIDE THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS. HOMES OF THE

MOUNTAINEERS.

The people who inhabit the wild country which breaks
into a succession of mountain and valley in the south-
western corner of the State are designated generally as
''Mountaineers." They are a peculiar class, with very
strong marks of character and manners upon them. They
differ widely from the lowland rustic in the freedom of
their manners, their superiority to the bashfulness and
slouching manner of the bumpkin of Eastern Virginia,
and the energy and even sharpness of their discourse.
When you ride to the cabin of a mountaineer, there is no
scampering of an astonished family, and no unpleasant
incident of small uncombed rustics peeping through the
intervals of brush-heaps or through the cracks of fences at
the sudden apparition of "the stranger;" no whining,
distrustful greeting of "Mister ;" no feeling on your part
that " the man in store clothes " is on exhibition in a cu-
rious circle of unmannerly wonder. The master of the
house advances to meet you with a free manner : he has
not much to say, but generally his words are meet and
sufficient : you discover that while he has the stoicism, he
exhibits the 7iil admirari, the silence, the self-collection,
of the red man of the forest ; and it is only when he dis-
covers you to be as unaffected and natural as himself that
he warms into discourse, yet speaking with a strange

1 68 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

energy, in loud, distinct, decisive tones, and with a brev-
ity and sententiousness that sometimes realty rise to the
dignity of a literary study.

"Look here," said I, "old man" (a term of dignity
always appreciated by the mountaineers), "why do you
smoke so much ?" for I had observed him filling pipe after
pipe, without a moment's intermission in the space of an
hour. "Well, sir, I live here'' — tapping his pipe: "I
has my pleasure in whatsoever I is at for de time I am at
it. ' ' Could there be any more brief or pregnant exposition
of the philosophy of carpe diem ?

In an intercourse of some days I found that the dialect
of the Virginia mountaineer was not without peculiarities.
If he wishes to explain that he is well and in spirits, he is
" hunky ;" but if he wishes to give you a very emphatic
assurance of his feeling very agreeable, he is "hunky-
dory." Whatever is not sweet and fruitful is "flashy."
The peaches were "flashy" on account of the drouth.
But the word of greatest i)regnancy — that used to convey
the most extraordinary degree of worthlessness — that in
which the eloquence of contempt is boiled down, strained
and compressed — is "extrornificacious." It was explained
to me as the derivative of a verb meaning to build up and
to pull down. A worthless busybody, a man busy but with
little results, is "extrornificacious;" and woe to the un-
happy wight upon whom the weight of this word is laid —
to whom this fearful adjective once attaches in the critical
distribution of the mountaineer's opinions and judgments
of men !

From the roads running through Tazewell county, the
writer, being conveniently on horseback, turned off several
times to explore the irregular tracts of mountains on the
wayside, and to claim the hospitality of their singular in-

TAZEWELL COUNTY. 169

habitants. That hospitality was never once denied. Indeed,
its abundance was at times embarrassing. "Stay all night,"
and then the addition, "I'll treat you as well as any
man," was the unfailing invitation on our journey. Once,
when I had said, " Good-evening, gentlemen," after hav-
ing mounted my horse, my companion replied, as we rode
away, " Ge?itlemen indeed ! — for I offered one of them a
dollar for having pursued and caught my horse up the side
of the mountain, and he actually refused it, as if he had
been hurt by the offer."

The county of Tazewell is, as we have observed, far
away from markets: the people sell only those things
which "walk away" — meaning cattle, horses, swine, etc.
In midsummer the farmers begin to gather their cattle for
the drovers, who start usually about the first of Septem-
ber on their way to the Eastern markets. Before the war,
this county exported, annually, about seven thousand
head of cattle, and it was not unusual to see the roads lined
with them for miles, many of them passing to market
through the county from Kentucky and Tennessee. The
traditions of the commerce of Tazewell are among the
most interesting of South-west Virginia, and the modern
traveler gathers from stories of the old setders many curi-
osities of the early history of this part of the State. One
of the early settlers, yet remembered by name (James
Witten), had one day, at a house-raising, jocosely inquired
of his comrades what they would think if, in twenty-five
years, wagons actually came into the county and passed
along the very valley in which they were at work. " We
think," they replied, " you are a fool." Yet in less than
twenty-five years there were roads in Tazewell county,
and wagons traveled to it from cities hundreds of
miles away. The local historian. Dr. Bickley (of

lyo THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Knights-of-the-Golden-Circle fame), says: "Goods were
then wagoned into Tazewell from Philadelphia, one
wagon-load generally supplying the whole county. About
the year 1800, a sack of coffee, for the first time, was
brought into the county. It was kept by Mr. Graham,
the merchant, a year and a half, and sent back as alto-
gether unsalable.'''' The mountaineers had not yet learned
the use of the prime staple of the breakfast-table — which
is yet an uncommon consolation of their poor descend-
ants — a consolation which, adulterated at the cheap
grocery and stirred up with the native sugar of the maple,
is by no means an unmixed one.

But what is most surprising to the modern tourist is
the size and value of farms (mostly devoted to grazing
purposes) owned by rude men living in smoked log
cabins, whose appearance would betoken them as dire,
half-nude children of poverty. There is many a feudal
proprietor here in the guise of hickory shirts and dispro-
portioned pantaloons. "Uncle Billy" — the avuncular
title is only one of dignity — owns twelve hundred acres,
a beautiful domain on a broad tableland, probably three
thousand feet above the sea-level. There is a natural
park here of chestnut and white pine, some of the trees
fifteen to twenty feet in girth, fit to be the ornament of
a nobleman's estate : there are bursting granaries ; the
broad fields are picturesque with cattle ; there are store-
houses of hides, tallow, butter and wool; yet "Uncle
Billy" goes in his shirt-sleeves, lives in a log house, and
having taken several drams villainously sweetened with
maple sugar on the day we alighted at his cabin, whines
dismally, " Ole Billy is poor, but Ole Billy, you know,
doctor, is bound to have his spree ; and Ole Billy had
his jaws slapped at the saw-mill last night by one of the

TAZEWELL COUNTY. 171

boys ; and Ole Billy cussed him to h — 11 and back again ;
and Ole Billy has a white man's principle," etc., etc.
But Uncle Billy is happy and contented in his own way :
he raises the finest cattle to be found in the Eastern mar-
kets, and he puts the money in more lands, which he
farms out on shares to "the boys" — a characteristic of
these mountaineers being an ambition of tenantry and an
extreme tenacity of landed property.

It is painful to notice the seclusion in which these
mountaineers — even the better class of them — are satis-
fied to live. It is a seclusion which nurtures some virtues,
but which begets a habit of life, a slipshod industry, dif-
ficult to be understood in the populous and cultivated
old Northern States. A mountaineer will live in what
he esteems comfort, and in what he exhibits as content-
ment, in a cabin to which there is no access but a hog-
path, and cut off by unbridged mountain streams, which,
swelled by freshets, may imprison him for weeks. The
blacksmith, the harness-maker, the wagon-maker, are un-
known in his neighborhood. He will do his work of
all sorts — cobble harness, work a farm with one poor
worn-out plough — and will have about as many tools for
five hundred acres of land as a live Yankee will require
for fifty. The loneliness of his life never troubles him.
Mr. Horace Greeley, traveling in another part of South-
Avest Virginia (Pulaski county), says: "Coming down
from the mountains to Wolf creek, our party struck the
clearing of a pioneer who had probably lived here fifteen
to twenty years, had cleared twenty to thirty acres, and
had most of it in grain, yet who had no outlet but a
bridle-path — no sign of cart, sled or wagon-track — to
the road, half a mile distant and perhaps three hundred
feet below him, through a forest of superb oak, where a

172 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

good week's work would have made a very passable cart-
way." This is a picture which we may see in almost any
mountain hollow of South-west Virginia — a bridle-path
going up dry beds of streams and along precipices to a
mean log house squat in a recess, the master of which,
though comparatively a man of means, has been satisfied
for years to plod the same way to his dwelling as when
he first picked his steps through the forest and made a
clearing for his home.

Altogether, the mountaineers of Virginia are remark-
able for a simplicity of primitive life — a simplicity of
some hardy and manly aspects, quite unlike that mere
want of cultivation or that degeneracy which, among
the opportunities of more populous communities, desig-
nates the lower and ignorant classes. There is nothing
of the squalor or wretchedness of poverty in the moun-
tains. It is the native simplicity of the lives of this peo-
ple that interests us, not the- vicious or slouching poverty
that comes from loss of caste or neglect of opportunities
in other societies. There is nothing in common between
the poorest mountaineer and the " mudsills" of the low-
land community. The poverty of the mountain is pic-
turesque; it is hardy, healthful; it is a school of rude
but independent manners, not one of degradation or of
mendicancy, as elsewhere. One excellent trait in the life
of this people will be testified to by the observant trav-
eler. It is the exceeding cleanness of even their humblest
homes. The exterior of the log dwelling is uninviting
enough, but it would be unjust to omit the surprised ex-
perience of the traveler iit the neatness and comfort he
finds across the rough-hewed threshold. The few arti-
cles of furniture are well arranged. The bed, which is
always found in the main room where strangers are

TAZEWELL COUNT T. 1 73

received, is almost uniformly spread with a coverlet of
snowy white, forming a contrast to the dingy log walls
and rough floor of boards or puncheons. The dress of
the inmates, though often scanty, is clean homespun.
Their appearance is healthful : the men gaunt, muscular,
remarkable for the want of color in the face, but having
nothing of the sallowness of a sickly or ill-conditioned
people.

There are some humorous aspects in the primitive life
of this people. But they are simple, refreshing come-
dies, at which we may laugh without contempt or bitter-
ness. Our recollections of a night in one of the log
cabins we have described are preserved among the inci-
dents of a journey in which we had much to be thankful
for, and in which I would not indulge humor at the ex-
pense of gratitude.

A COMEDY IN THE MOUNTAINS.

We had ridden far and the day was closing, when,
taking one of those unmistakable crooked paths in a
mountain hollow which always lead to a house, we
alighted at a double-story structure of logs, and asked
shelter for the night. An old woman, in a very strait
dress of linsey-woolsey, received us rather doubtfully, and
said she would call "the old man." While awaiting the
presence of the individual thus designated we were seated
in the main room ; and the old woman, evidently to re-
lieve that embarrassment which people sometimes suffer
from poverty of conversation, commenced firing off the
wildest and most incomprehensible questions about the
"'tater crop." I noticed that, whatever was the wo-
man's nervous want of something to talk about, we were

16 *

174 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

never once asked where we were from, or where we were
going, or what was our business, or any other questions
commonly prompted by a vulgar and impertinent curi-
osity.

Presently a gawky, healthy, great girl bounced into the
room, and bounced out as quickly at the sight of
strangers.

"Don't be skeered, Sal," called the mother after her.

Sal, reassured, entered the room, but insisted on sitting
near the door. Her first singular exhibition of modesty
was to tuck her skirts very closely around the lower por-
tion of her body, and then to gaze on vacancy. The girl
had some wild flowers in her hands, and H. (the wag of
our company) soon commenced : " I see you are a lady of
taste ; you love flowers, the poetry of earth, as the stars
are of heaven !"

"Ah, stranger, and more'n that — they smell so purty,"
replied Sal.

The old man came in — a splendid specimen of his class —
a stalwart son of the forest, of Herculean stature, bent as
he stooped through the door ; a simple, ignorant moun-
taineer, but his grizzled looks framing a majestic and im-
pressive countenance that might afford a study to a painter.
He greeted us kindly, said he would look after our "horse-
beasts," and returned to ask us to supper in an adjoining
log structure, which looked about as big as a hen-house,
but proved to be the kitchen, as well as a bed-room for
the children. The supper was of pones of corn-bread,
venison and sassafras tea, to the latter of which I declined
the addition of "long sweetening," i.e., maple sugar. Af-
ter supper we were thrown again on the resources of con-
versation.

Generally speaking, the mountaineer is hospitable in

TAZEWELL COUNTT. 1 75

his way, but his lonely habits unfit him for many of the
offices of this virtue, and the host is sometimes put to
awkward emergencies. On the present occasion our host
was anxious to acquit himself of the embarrassment of
finding topics to entertain his visitors. The man was
greatly at a loss to find something to talk about, and thus
put himself at ease in a strange company. At last he hit
upon the expedient of acquainting us with the extraor-
dinary accomplishments of one of his dogs, who happened
to be out at the time. There was never such a dog as
"Wolf:" he would do anything at the command of his
master; he was almost "like folks;" in short, he was
the "beatingest" dog in the world. Wolf supplied the
conversation for hours ; and whenever it flagged the
mountaineer wished Wolf were only present to exhibit
some new accomplishment for us — the scale of his accom-
plishments rising at each renewal of the subject, which
the poor man thought it necessary to make to entertain
his visitors. But, as ill-luck would have it, just in the
middle of his discourse, what should we see but Wolf re-
turned, slinking through the door — a mangy cur, flop-
eared, wet and covered with mud. His first exhibition
of sagacity was to shake himself in the doorway, scatter-
ing his filth right and left, and spoiling H.'s broadcloth.
"Go out, sir!" commanded his master, stamping his
foot, and anxious no doubt to get him out of sight. But
Wolf was obdurate: he had an eye for his accustomed
place under the bed. As he made for it, his master took
in the situation at a glance with the lightning inspiration
of the genius of a great commander, and in a yet severer
tone of authority and with a triumphant look toward us,
exclaimed, "Go under the bed, sir! — right under the
bed, sir !" And Wolf <//</go right under the bed. But.

1^6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

as the reader may well imagine, he was not called from
there for any other exhibition of his master's power over
him, and not another word was heard of "the beatingest
dog you ever seed" — the old man suddenly jumping up
and exglaiming that he must go out to look after the cattle.
I could not help reflecting that the incident was not with-
out instruction, and that it might apply with hearty effect
to some pretenders in the world, who have just as much
real influence in directing events as Wolf's master ex-
hibited in the obedience of his dog.

The old man having disappeared after his experiment
in conversation, and the old woman having bustled back
into the main room, we were left in the kitchen alone with
Sal and with some big-eyed, wakeful children, who insisted
upon sitting up with the strangers.

H. was gallantly inclined, and renewed his rhapsody
or rigmarole, evidently with increased effects. From the
undertones of his voice and the quizzical glances cast
toward us, we could understand that he was making steady
approaches to the heart of Sal, while a giggling sound
from that young lady and the stuffing of her apron into
her mouth told that something was working inwardly.
Occasionally there was a deprecating wriggle of the body,
and a sigh struggled out. We could overhear but a por-
tion of the dialogue.

H. :

" I love you,
And I feel a seal is set
• Upon the fountain of my heart,

To keep its waters pure and bright for thee."

Sal:

" Go on, stranger, it sounds so nice !"

Before we retired to our shake-downs in the loft. I

TAZEWELL COUNTY. 1 77

found that H. had entreated a lock of hair of the gentle
Sal — "yea, had begged a hair of her for memory." The
next morning, as we mounted our horses to ride away, I
noticed a package of brown paper slyly put in H.'s hand
as Sal bent over it in parting. When we had got out of
sight I accused H. , and the package was produced — its con-
tents a great rusty rope of carroty hair, that might have
plaited a halter for our gay Lothario. Poor Sal ! The
last we saw of her as we went over the hill she was waving
a white bib and hallooing — no doubt, as she had informed
H. at parting, "ready to bust a-cryin'."

But what, asks the gentle reader, of those female beau-
ties of the mountain pictured in poetry and read of in
romance — creatures with gazelle eyes, "hair flowing
like Alpine torrents," cheeks wooed by the breezes, etc.?
Is there any antitype in reality of the mountain maid, or
is she but the ideal, the wood nymph of poets and
romance-writers ? In fact, it is to be confessed that the
female of "the child of Nature" is not commonly pre-
possessing ; and, shocking as it may be to our poetical
preconceptions, the girl of the mountain is usually found
to be sallow, ungrammatical and altogether unlovely, a
gawky specimen of ill-dressed humanity, having ropy hair,
standing in clouted brogans and furnished with great red,
clawing hands. The disillusionizing process is sharp and
painful enough. But stop: we must not be too hasty in
our induction. Rare as may be the mountain maid of
the rural school of poetry, there is such a being. And
when Nature, in her infinite variety of gifts, does plant a
flower of female beauty in the mountains, does out of this
remote and uncultivated humanity mould a face and form of
loveliness, the creation is as infinitely exquisite as it is bold.

lyS THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Vriien this creation is found, the type of beauty can
only be described by the word "exquisite," and we find
ourselves wondering more at the perfect finish of the pic-
ture than at any separate feature. The most perfectly
beautiful girl the writer has ever seen was from one of the
mountain homes of Tazewell. The description is merely
that of an artist : he knows nothing of her but a name
casually mentioned in a crowd. She was standing in the
gathering of an agricultural fair at Lynchburg. She was
dressed in the simplest merino, and a wisp of the com-
monest shawl had fallen from her shoulder and was
twisted around the firm hip, whose form Fashion had
never disguised. The pose was that of the unconscious
grace of a classic statue. A wealth of hair, of yellowish-
dark color streaked with red — that tawny, amorous hair so
seldom seen — floated down her shoulders, and was matched
by the warm light of young desire that glowed on the
cheeks and made pensive half confessions as it swam like
the mouldering fire of a sacrifice in the golden-blue depths
of her eyes. The face was oval, classic, but warm from
the glow of a perpetual and insatiate love, and the rich
lips appeared constantly pouted for kisses, that could never
be satisfied. It might have been supposed that there was
some mark of uncultivation, of rusticity, to mar the pic-
ture and to break the spell of the admirer. But no :
Nature had done her work with a completeness that left
nothing to be desired. The feet were small and exquisitely
formed. The unjev^eled hands were as dainty as those
of a princess. Looking back at the face, the expression
of a pure, unconscious voluptuousness that swam over it,
yet contained in the severest classical types of virtue and
modesty, was perfect. I have attempted no description
of the eyes. Mr. T,ongfclIow has done it in Ifyperion :

TAZEWELL COUNTY.

179

"Eyes like the flower of the night-shade, pale and blue,
but sending forth golden rays." Such human orbs are
seldom seen. They haunt us for ever : the form is with-
drawn, the face is absent — *' only her eyes remained."

CHAPTER X.

LEXINGTON, AND THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.

From South-west Virginia to Lexington — Covner's Springs — Reputation of the
Water — Lexington and its Surroundings — "The Athens of Virginia"' —
Its Educational Institutions — General Lee's Professorship — The Grave of
Stonewall Jackson — A curious letter from a former Governor of Virginia —
The Rockbridge Baths — A Buoyant W'ater — The Rockbridge Alum
Springs — Mountain Views — A Remarkable Advantage of the Watering-Places
of Virginia — Testimony of Dr. Cartwright — The Valley of Virginia — Its
Physical Geography— Peculiarity of Minor Formations — The Luray Valley —
View from Thornton's Gap — A Recollection of the War — Mineral Springs on
the Flanks of the Alleghany — The Valley of Virginia, as a Fancy and as a
Reality.

lO the traveler looking from that part of Virginia
we have been traversing (the South-west) toward

i the Springs Region lying north of him, on the
inner slopes of the Valley of Virginia, there are two avail-
able routes. He may go by rail on each of the lines making
the anele which we have heretofore described as contain-
ing the range of the tourist in Virginia — that is, he may
go to Charlottesville, and thence take a new departure
by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, passing through
Staunton, etc. Or he may cross the angle by stage-
coaches from a series of points on the Virginia and Ten-
nessee Railroad, extending from Bonsack's Depot to
Newbern. The latter mode of conveyance is recommended
for those who have leisure and taste for the wild scenery
traversed by the coach, and for the opportunities it offers

180

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. i8l

to deflect to intervening places and to find recreation by
the wayside. If preference is determined for the coach,
a most agreeable route maybe marked out from Bonsack's
Depot, taking the delightful Coyner's Springs, only one
mile away from the railroad; thence to Lexington;
thence to the baths and springs of Rockbridge county ;
and emerging into the cluster of watering-places in Bath,
Greenbrier and Monroe counties by striking the Chesa-
peake and Ohio Railroad at Goshen Depot, or other points
west of Staunton. The route is recommended for its many
intervening opportunities ; the coaches are "slow" and
inelegant, but they are comfortable ; and if we lack other
companionship. Nature affords us communion and thought
in the various scenes which spring to our view at every
turn of the devious mountain route.

COYNER S SPRINGS.

The traveler will make his first rest at Coyner's Springs,
on the western base of the Blue Ridge. The conven-
ience of access to these springs is all that can be desired,
and they are a favorite resort of the people of Lynchburg,
being but fifty miles from that city. The buildings are
spacious and comparatively new, the management of the
hotel is exceptionally good, and as a social resort the
place is known as one of the gayest in Virginia.

The waters are sulphurous, and are, of their class, mild
and pleasant. They are recommended in cases of diffi-
cult, imperfect or painful digestion, enfeebled condition
of the nervous system, chronic diseases of the bladder or
kidneys, salt rheum, tetters, indolent liver, with deficient
or vitiated secretions, and in some of the affections pecu-
liar to females.

1 82 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

The place is a new candidate for the favor of summer
visitors in Virginia ; and to judge from the energy and
tact of its manager, and the reputation it has already
acquired for its elegant social entertainments, as well as
for the value of the water, it is destined to become better
known. The hotel accommodations, we repeat, are ex-
cellent. The situation is on the borders of one of the
most delightful and fertile regions of Virginia, being im-
mediately on the line of the counties of Botetourt and
Roanoke.

LEXINGTON AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

The town of Lexington is, by the pike, forty-two miles
from Coyner's Springs. It affords another convenient
place of refreshment on a tour to the springs and through
the mountains of Virginia, being distant twelve miles
from the Natural Bridge, ten from the Rockbridge Baths
(which the correspondent of the London Times, visiting
during the late war, pronounced unequaled in virtue and
brilliancy by anything of the sort in Europe), and seven-
teen miles from the Alum Springs, which are on the direct
road to the Warm and Hot Springs of Bath county. The
town is also one of the most interesting in Virginia.
The extent and success of its educational institutions
have won for it, from the red-brick and harsh-looking
town of Charlottesville, the title of " The Athens of
Virginia."

There were two liundred and seventy cadets of the ses-
sion of 1869 at the Virginia Military Institute. It was
vacation term when we visited the place, at which time
the cadets usually go into camp and undertake all the
discipline of regular soldiers, performing each evening

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 1S3

in dress parade. But owing to the want of tents, which
the State, in its financial difficulties, had not fiirnished,
the encampment had been intermitted on the year of our
visit ; and, as nearly two-thirds of the cadets were on fur-
lough, there were no parades or other exercises, and
there was but little to repay the visitor beyond the exam-
ination of the buildings, which* have, in the main, been
reconstructed since General Hunter's raid. The success
of this military academy has greatly increased of late
years, since, from being an exclusive State institution, it
has extended its benefits of instruction to pupils from all
the States of the Union. It originated from a slight
germ. Formerly a guard of soldiers was maintained, at
the expense of the State, for the purpose of affording
protection to the arms deposited in the Lexington ar-
senal for the use of the militia of Western Virginia.
About the year 1S36 some zealous friends of education,
among whom was Governor McDowell, thinking that the
arsenal might be converted into an educational institu-
tion without any increase of expense to the State, and
afford at the same time equal security to the public arms,
applied to the Legislature to make the necessary change.
After various delays the application resulted in the estab-
lishment of the Virginia Military Institute in the year
1S39. Since then its success has been such as to fulfill
the wishes of its warmest friends.

Here also is situated Washington College, which in
1869 numbered nearly five hundred students, exceeding
the State University, and which has progressed from a
beginning as humble as the military school in its neigh-
borhood. It is one of the oldest literary institutions
south of the Potomac, having been established as an
academy in the year 1776, under the name of Liberty

184 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Hall, by the Hanover Presbytery, then embracing the
whole of the Presbyterian Church in Virginia. Liberty
Hall received its charter from the State in the year 1782,
and in 1796 it received its first regular endowment from
the hands of -the "Father of his country." The Legisla-
ture of Virginia, "as a testimony of their gratitude for his
services" and "as a mark of their respect," presented
to General Washington a certain number of shares in the
old James River Improvement, a work then in progress.
This, Washington, unwilling to accept for his own pri-
vate emolument, presented to , Liberty Hall Academy.
To perpetuate the memory of this act the name of the
institution was, by the unanimous vote of the trustees,
changed to Washington Academy; and in the year 181 2,
by an act of the Legislature, still further changed to
Washington College. Subsequently, there were other be-
quests to the college, among them one from the Cincin-
nati Society of Virginia. Within late years the course
of instruction has been enlarged by a professorship
founded by Mr. McCormick, the inventor of the reaping
machine ; and still another professorship, recommended
by General Lee, the president of the college, has been
added, through a donation made by Mr. Peabody, the
last of the public gifts of this distinguished philan-
thropist.

The college is now flourishing mostly on the strength
of the name of General Lee as president. It is a brilliant
head to an advertisement ; but we cannot help comparing
the obscure names of the professors which follow with the
gilded top line of "Robert E. Lee, President."' One
absurdity of the institution is to be laughed at — that is, a
"professorship of journalism " — the man who is to make
our future Greeleys and Raymonds and Danas, the indi-

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 1S5

vidual called to this high station of instruction being the
editor of the village weekly paper, which recently showed
its appreciation of the mission of journalism by devoting
its columns to a long discussion by two opposing village
wiseacres of the question, "Does Prayer bring Rain?"*
Lexington has not made up its mind on the subject.

The country around here is interesting in its natural
features and in its population. It is especially so as the
abode of that Scotch-Irish stock and "true-blue" Presby-
terianism which yet in Rockbridge and Augusta counties,
and in what is called the upper portion of the Valley of
Virginia (although geographically the lower), making its
head near Staunton, exhibits traits and influences as dis-
tinct and cherishes traditions as peculiar and dear as the
Puritanism of New England. From the Scotch-Irish stock
of this portion of Virginia have sprung some of the most
remarkable men of the nation. We may name Stonewall
Jackson, Sam Houston of Texas — who was born in a small
house six miles north of Lexington — and Rev. Archibald
Alexander, D.D., president of the Theological Seminary at
Princeton, New Jersey, who was a native of this county,
and married a daughter of the " Blind Preacher."

* Everybody in Virginia was talking of the drouth in the summer
of 1869. The writer recollects, once on his tour, to have made this
discovery from the conversation of a minister at the hotel table — that
he had marked out on the map the lines of the prevailing drouth,
which much of the South was then deploring, and found them all the
way through Virginia, Tennessee and the Carolinas adjacent to the
railroads ; and that was convincing proof, to which he should call the
attention of the next conference, of the special displeasure of Al-
mighty God at the carrying of mails on Sunday ! This discovery
should have been communicated to the Lexington Gazette before it
closed its columns to the discussion of the pluvial theory. The pious
gentleman who figured it out gave us his address in North Carolina.
16*

l86 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

THE GRAVE OF STONEWALL JACKSON.

An interest which may be much greater in future times
than now, attaches to Lexington as the resting-place of all
that was mortal of the great warrior-spirit of the South,
that issued from the quiet shades of the Military Institute
here to its meteor-like career in the late war. The grave
of Stonewall Jackson is in the Presbyterian burying-ground,
which lies at the extremity of the town. There was only
a board imitation of marble, with rude lettering, to mark
the place where the hero slept.

Indeed, the neglect of the grave of Stonewall J^jckson
and inattention to his memory on the part of the State of
Virginia, the Commonwealth his life shielded and adorned,
are almost incomprehensible, and, it must be painfully con-
fessed, throw a reflection of suspicion upon the vaunted
generosity of her people. We cannot doubt that there
are many hearts in Virginia that hold proudly and tenderly
the memory of the departed warrior. But we cannot for-
get that, one year after the war, the household goods of
the dead hero were allowed to be sold in the town of
Lexington under the hammer of the auctioneer, and that
his family have been unnoticed in their poverty, except
by the benefaction of a citizen of another State ; despite,
too, the lessons of generosity which might have been
derived from the reviled North, which has abounded in
attentions and gifts to the families of those public men
who have d-ied poor in her service.

Yet, more strangely, it has remained for the North,
though at the instance of a Virginian, to testify to the
illustrious nature and ennobling qualities of Stonewall
Jackson, and to vindicate his name and fame from the
cloud left upon it by a defeated cause. The movement

LEXINGTON— THE V ALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 1S7

to this end is reported to have commenced with the fol-
lowing letter from an ex-Governor of Virginia :

" Lexington, Va., 1869.
*' Col. Jacob Hyland, Philadelphia :

''My Dear Sir: The admirers of the virtues and ex-
alted character of the great Christian soldier, Lieutenant-
General Stonewall Jackson, propose to erect at the Virginia
Military Institute, where he served fourteen years as a pro-
fessor, a memorial chapel, to testify the respect and honor
with which his name is cherished, and to transmit to after
generations the veneration due to so renowned a hero. It
is estimated that tv/enty thousand dollars will erect a
monument.

''I am truly your friend,

"John Letcher."

It does seem hard that Mr. Letcher should have felt
compelled to go beyond the State of Virginia, and to
first besiege a Northern city (Philadelphia), for the sum
of twenty thousand dollars for the memory of Stonewall
Jackson !

At the date of our writing it is reported that a subscrip-
tion among the citizens of Philadelphia, in response to
Mr. Letcher's appeal, has amounted to five thousand dol-
lars, and that citizens of New York have offered to guar-
antee twenty thousand dollars for the object proposed in
the above letter. Such responses are, in some sense, a
subject of congratulation ; they do infinite honor to the
magnanimity of some of our Northern brethren, and show
that section in an elevated light that cannot fail to in-
struct the mind and touch the heart of the South ; and
they are powerful and eloquent testimonies to the memory
of the great man whose fame has so soon surmounted the

l8S THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

prejudices of the war. Whatever of painful comparison
is in them is for the State of Virginia. It is a stinging
reflection that this movement should have commenced
with the strange and unbecoming letter of Mr. Letcher,
and that the North should have led off in a work which
reverent hands in Virginia should have been the first to
undertake. To be sure it is said that Mr. Letcher, en-
couraged by the eager and generous contributions of the
North, now proposes to enlarge the scope and object of
the plan first designed in his letter, and to give the testi-
monial to Stonewall Jackson a national significance, by-
inviting the South to join in contributions to it. But the
afterthought will hardly redeem the commencement of
the enterprise. To say the least, an ungraceful thing has
been done in directing the first appeals for a monument
to the hero of Chancellorsville to citizens of the North;
and if Virginia ever really proposes to repair her public
neglect of the memory of the greatest of her dead, she
should at least lay the foundation of it in gifts and con-
tributions of her own.

THE ROCKBRIDGE BATHS.

We leave Lexington e7i route for the watering-places in
the Valley of Virginia. The Rockbridge Baths are mid-
way between the town of Lexington and Goshen Depot
on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, being, say, twelve
miles from either place. They are within a few feet
of the banks of North river, and the road toward Goshen
Depot pursues these banks through mountain chasms of
the most picturesque effect. There are two springs, which
supply two bathing establishments, the water being im-

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 189

pregnated with iron and abounding richly in carbonic
acid gas. The bath is so buoyant with this gas that one
floats easily lying in its brilliant and refreshing water,
which is five feet deep and affords a surface of forty by
twenty feet for the swimmer.

The bath is medicinally classed as tonic. It is adapted
to nervous diseases, general debility and to that large
class of cases in which stimulative and tonic effects are
required. The testimony of physicians is that the Rock-
bridge Baths will be found highly efficacious, especially
after the use of alterative mineral waters.

Within two miles of the baths is a strong sulphur
spring in an islet in North river ; the cup or basin of
rock which holds the mineral spring rising just in the
middle of the stream of fresh water, and from depths be-
low its channel. It is a bit of curiosity, and it is visited
for medicinal effects in addition to those of the baths.

THE ROCKBRIDGE ALUM SPRINGS.

The Rockbridge Alum Springs are situated in the
northern part of Rockbridge county, seventeen miles from
Lexington, and are reached thence by the main turnpike
which traverses the county, leading to the Warm Springs
in Bath county. Access in another direction is from the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, which runs five miles
from the springs, but discharges its passengers bound for
this watering-place at Goshen Depot, eight miles distant,
whence comfortable stage-coaches transport them to their
destination. The springs are thus within easy reach of
the whole Atlantic seaboard and of the North, being
brought within twenty-four hours of New York, allowing
the Northern passenger to breakfast in Washington City

190 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

and to sup the evening of the same day in this romantic
seclusion of the mountains.

A shallow vale or basin, bounded by hard but pictu-
resque ridges, contains the springs, a row of five fountains
issuing from beneath heavy and irregular slate-stone
arches. The sloping strata are exposed on the hewn
side of the cliff, and on top there is a pleasing crest
of green forest. The lawns, which are within a circular
drive, are begirt by brick cottages, but there are other
houses of greater extent, and buildings on the whole
sufficient for the accommodation of six or eight hundred
visitors. Mountains skirt the plain in which this retreat
lies hidden, and in some parts overhang it. There are
pleasing views of the North Mountain and the western
wall of the Great Valley and of some lesser ridges, while
the near forest, thronged with fine trees and enriched
with a luxuriant flora, invites the visitor into seclusions
as complete as those of a wilderness remote from man
and untouched by his inventions. The remark attributed
to a distinguished gentleman from the North, spending
his first season in the Springs Region of Virginia, and
aware for the first time of its attractions, may be very
justly applied to the scenes we are describing: "It is
one of the singular advantages of these Virginia watering-
places that, by walking for three minutes, you can plunge
yourself at once into glens and tangled wilds."

The water of these Alum Springs is found useful in a
number of diseases. Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans,
whose fame as a physician will occur to readers in all parts
of the Union, thus speaks of the value of the water, stamp-
ing it with the authority of an opinion derived from a
special study of the various spas of both continents : "In
truth, I know of no water in Europe or America so rich in

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 191

medical substances as that of the Rockbridge Springs.
My attention was first attracted to it some fifteen years
ago, by observing that the sojourners at the Rockbridge
Springs were generally composed of invalids from Vir-
ginia, while those at the other springs were mostly from
distant parts of the Union, more in search of pleasure
than health. Most of these other springs in the Virginia
mountains have a deservedly high reputation for the
efficacy of their water in a variety of chronic ailments ;
but I am satisfied that the Rockbridge Springs have not
yet attained that wide celebrity they deserve, from the
circumstance of their being regarded as merely alum
springs, instead of being seen in their true light as the
richest of all that class of mineral springs known as the
acidulous ferruginous — a class of mineral waters to which
the most famous springs of the world belong."

The chemical description of the water suggests that
"Alum" is a popular misnomer, since its virtue is pro-
bably not owing to the alum it holds in solution, nor are
its effects the well-known ones of this powerful astringent.
The protoxide of iron, sodium, potash, lime, magnesia
and ammonia, together with sulphuric, carbonic, crenic,
chloric and silicic acids, exist in the water in common
with alum. The qualities which result are tonic, altera-
tive, diuretic and aperient, and a remedy is furnished for
many of the ills of humanity — one of rare and unques-
tionable virtues. The therapeutic applicability of the
water appears to be well defined. It is prescribed gene-
rally for the following diseases : confirmed dyspepsia in
nearly all its varieties, except such as are attended with
symptoms of acute gastric irritation ; chronic diarrhoea ;
leucorrhoea \ scrofulous ulcers and other scrofulous affec-
tions of the skin and of the lymphatic glands. A South-

193 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

ern physician speaks of this water as having removed a
great reproach from the healing art, in that it has furnished
an undoubted cure for scrofula (king's evil), a disease
that has so long fatigued and baffled the multiplied re-
sources of medical science.

THE VALLEY OF VIRGINLA..

We shall conclude this chapter, not inappropriately,
by a general sketch of the Valley of Virginia, into which
we have now entered, and through some of the galleries
of which we have undertaken to guide the traveler. We
propose to give only the outlines of this famous topo-
graphical feature of the State; our object being to intro-
duce a principle of order into scenes upon which we are
advancing, and in the midst of which the traveler would
see nothing but confusion without a reference to the land-
marks which make the third great geographical division
of Virginia.

The Alleghany Mountains preserve this name only in
Virginia and Pennsylvania. Beyond these States, north
and south, they assume the proper geological name of the
Appalachian chain, the second or subordinate system of
North American mountains. In Virginia and Pennsyl-
vania the range averages one hundred and fifty miles in
width ; the characteristics, especially in the former State,
being the parallelism of the ridges and the uniform level
of their summits. Another characteristic, which extends
generally through the Appalachian chain, is that these
mountains have mo central axis, but consist of a series of
convex and concave flexures, forming alternate hills and
longitudinal valleys, running nearly parallel throughout
their length, and cut transversely by the rivers that flow

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 193

to the Atlantic on one hand and to the Mississippi on the
other. It is remarkable that the water-shed nearly fol-
lows the windings of the coast from the point of Florida
to the north-western extremity of the State of Maine.

The Valley of Virginia properly extends from the wall
of the Alleghany to the edge of the terrace known as the
Atlantic slope, which rises above the maritime or Atlantic
plain — this latter at its extremity south of Virginia join-
ing the plain of the Mississippi. The features of it are
ridges of hills and long valleys running parallel to the
mountains. It is rich in soil and cultivation, and has an
immense water-power in the streams and rivers which,
flowing from the mountains across it, are precipitated
over its rocky edge to the plains below. It has been cal-
culated that Rockbridge county alone has in water-power
and sites a capacity for manufacturing greater than that
of the whole State of Massachusetts !

In its limited acceptation, the Valley of Virginia has its
head in the tract of country between Lexington and
Staunton, becoming well-defined toward the latter place,
thence gradually widening toward the Potomac, and de-
bouching into the wide hills of Pennsylvania. In the late
war it was a prominent theatre of strategy, as it afforded
the most obvious avenue to an attack on Washington, and
constantly threatened a flank movement on that city.

The most remarkable flexure or minor formation of the
valley occurs near the middle of it. About half-way be-
tween Staunton and the Potomac two ranges of mountains
run parallel for twenty-five miles, uniting in Massanutten
(Mesinetto) Mountain, which divides the branches of the
Shenandoah, ancT ends southward abruptly in Rocking-
ham county. This is ,Luray Valley — a beautiful vale
branching off from and thence running parallel to that
17 2T

194 I^HE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

main gallery through which the troops of Stonewall Jack-
son marched in 1862, and where that warrior won his
first and imperishable laurels. It was terribly devastated
at a later day by Sheridan.

This minor formation is the north-eastern limit of the
Valley of Virginia. Through its gaps are the communi-
cations with the lower lands of North Virginia on the
Rapidan and Rappahannock, where Lee campaigned.
One of the most famous of these gaps, familiar in the
geography of the late war, is Thornton's Gap on the
line of Page and Rappahannock counties. It is a wide
avenue curving up to the mountain tops, and bounding a
view on which the eye is unable to compose itself for the
excess of riches spread before it.

It was our fortune once to see this scene as it was
lighted up by the glories of the Morning.

" Day !
Faster, and more fast,
O'er Night's brim, Day boils at last ;
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and supprest it lay —
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world ! "

We could imagine the presence of the great army of
Confederates which had once passed through this scene,
catching the light of the morning on their bayonets.
For here, even to these secluded retreats, rolled the red-
hot lava of the war. The tides of battle which tossed

LEXINGTON— THE VALLET OF VIRGINIA. 1 95

in agony around these hills are replaced now by floods
of sunshine, which come and go with the peaceful day ;
and where armies dashed to strife there are now but
" light and shade upon a waving field chasing each
other. ' ' But what memories are for ever bound up in
the rock-ribbed sides of the Valley of Virginia ! We
would not, without occasion, take the seals from these
memories — least willingly in such a day, when the glories
of the sky are on the earth, and all should be forgotten
of the dead but the gentle peace in which they have been
laid to sleep beneath the coverlid of green turf and
blooming flower.

The beauties of this valley (the Luray) have often been
told. For miles around us is the mass of Nature's lives
and wonders pulsing under the sun ; " the voice of man
is on the mountains;" human life touches the scene
only to make it more vivid and beautiful. Nothing can
exceed the loveliness of the Shenandoah, which flows here.
Straying by its banks, we watch its waters rippling in
adroit, laughing escape under the mottled arms of the
sycamore tree. There is the swell of turf and slanting
branches on the hillside ; the spaces of the deep blue
sky, at which we look from the narrow vales jutting on
the stream are edged round with dark tree-tops; and be-
yond is the forest full of whispered mysteries, within
which are the dramas of a thousand creations — the birth,
life and death of unseen flowers. The picture must be
badly stripped in winter. What differences, indeed,
wrought by the seasons on all this "pomp of groves
and garniture of fields," and what reflections troop upon
the symbols ! Now tresses of newly-budded flowers
hung up in the forest, now "honeycombs of green,"
and on the warm fields the freckled wings of the butter-

196 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

fly. Anon the yellow leaves, and the owl's cry of coming
winter.

The Springs Region of the Valley of Virginia is near
the dividing line of the Alleghany, the springs of Rock-
bridge and Bath counties being in minor formations —
the North Mountain and Warm Springs Mountain being
really spurs of the Alleghany — and those of Greenbrier
and Monroe counties clinging to the backbone of the
great range. The Valley of Virginia is not, as in geo-
graphical speculation or in fancy we might take it, a
tiniform depression running evenly between two ranges
of mountains ; it is broken and cut up, remarkable, as
we have said, for its subordinate formations, a succession
of valley and of mountain range. It is only a compara-
tive view of the Alleghany and of the sunken parallel of
the Blue Ridge that gives order to the impression and
bestows the idea of a valley. The traveler must hold to
these great landmarks, or, so far from realizing that he
is in the Valley of Virginia, he will imagine himself in
a wild, intricate country, where every feature of Nature
has been huddled and Disorder reigns supreme.

The effect of the physical geography of the Valley, as
we have briefly described it, is a scenery the most vari-
ous in the world. We have the sublimity of the moun-
tains, where we may stand " ringed with the azure
world;" the peace of humble vales; the picturesque--
ness of the inhabited landscape ; the beauty of waving
crops on a bountiful soil ; streams which seem to flow out
of the sky ; haunts of romance ; the most curious forma-
tions of geology ; the wonder and magnificence of the
subterranean world. On the whole, however, the scenery
is inferior in point of grandeur to that of South-west Vir-
ginia. It is more varied, but, on a general estimate, it

LEXINGTON— THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 197

is more quiet. We have not here such scenes as those
of the Peaks of Otter and of Bald Knob or of the cliffs
of New river — the peaked observatories, the mural preci-
pices and the pictures of great convulsions where rocks
have been piled on rocks and timber swept from the
earth.

17*

CHAPTER XI.

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.

Geographical Fables of the early Virginia Colonists — Mr. Jefferson's Belief in the
Mastodon — A Curious Indian Myth — The Barrier of the Blue Ridge — Influx
of Pennsylvania Germans into the Valley of Virginia — The Adventures of
John Sailing — The Lewis Family — Remarkable Result of a Buffalo Hunt —
Burden's Grant — Andrew Lewis' Explorations on Greenbrier River — The
Shawnees — Death of Cornstalk — Relations of the Germans and of the Scotch-
Irish in the Valley — Characteristics of the Scotch-Irish — Their Churches and
Schools — Three Generations in the Valley — The Progress of America in Min-
iature.

j'T is dififiicult for those of the present day to real-
ize the extravagance of the mysteries and the
wildness of the fancies with which the colonists
of Virginia, even for several generations, invested that
part of the world that laid beyond the mists of their
mountains. From the time when Captain John Smith
sent up a boat expedition to the present site of Rich-
mond, on the James, to discover an outlet to Cathay, the
vision of some mystery of land or sea seems to have
receded only just as the line of settlement or of explora-
tion passed westward ; the romantic wonder of a South
Sea, of a land of giants or of a range of unknown beasts
being always imagined but little beyond the last discov-
ery. The geography beyond the Blue Ridge was almost
a blank ; the hydrographic system of the Mississippi was
unknown ; and who could have imagined that beyond
the azure boundaries on the sky, to which the colonists

198

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 199

looked with constant questionings and imaginings, there
laid the breadth of three thousand miles of continent?
The geographical fable of the West had as many inter-
pretations as the imagination could give it. There were
bloody romances of the terrible Massawomees ; there
w€re stories got from Indian tradition, which even intelli-
gent persons in Williamsburg believed, of Titanic races,
of men ten feet high, of strange forms of life ; and
among other wonders of the mysterious land there was
not neglected a new version of the great devouring Beast
of the nursery tale.

Even Mr. Jefferson believed in the existence of the
Mastodon,'^ and that it had ranged near the Ohio, a crea-
ture for which, in his "Notes on Virginia," written in

* It is known in our day that in the great salt deposit which lies
in the valley of the North Fork of the Holston river, a vast quantity
of fossil remains is dispersed in the soil, probably indicating that it
was once the resort of the larger quadrupeds which at some period
have inhabited this portion of the earth. Remains, judged to be of
the Mastodon (as we may choose to call it), elephant, elk and
others, but mainly the larger animals, are almost profusely found in
the immediate vicinity. The railroad cut, through a swell in the
Valley rising westward, revealed a large bed of them, while in the
ditches cut in all direcjions for the drainage of the lake-like flat be-
low, they were frequently encountered and thrown out by the spade.
Of these remains, a pair of very perfect tusks, of the double curve
which is said to have marked them as pertaining to the Mastodon,
upward of eleven feet in length, were dismterred some years ago ;
but they fell to pieces by some neglect or from the effect of exposure
to the atmosphere, although the parts were carefully collected, and
have since been contributed to the Museum of the Smithsonian In-
stitution at Washington. These salines were, no doubt, from time
immemorial the resort of numerous animals, whose instincts and
necessities led them there; and hunters and pursuers of the wild
beasts were guided on the track of their precursors to an object of
so prime a value to them. The " lick " of the animals became the

200 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

1787, he adopts the calculation of Buffon, as " five or six
times the cubic volume of the elephant," and adds : " But
to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain
such a one has existed in America, and that it has been
the largest of all terrestrial beings." And to reinforce
his speculation that such a creature had recently inhab-
ited the Ohio district, the sage of Monticello is found
relating an Indian account of this natural wonder, which
was expounded at Williamsburg as late as when Patrick
Henry was governor of Virginia. It is one of the wild-
est of the aboriginal traditions, with a mixture of sub-
limity and grotesqueness that makes it remarkable even to
the reader of the period. Some Indians had crossed the
mountains to visit Williamsburg, and, after having been
entertained by the governor, were asked what they knew
or had heard of the animal whose bones were found at
the salt-licks on the Ohio. It was an opportunity for
e??ipressemefit, such as the Indian orator does not usually
neglect. One of the warriors immediately struck an atti-
tude becoming the elevation and seriousness of his sub-
ject, and, with great pomp and emphasis delivered him-
self to the following effect, as reported by Mr. Jefferson :
"That in ancient times a herd of these tremendous ani-
mals came to the Big-bone licks, and began a universal
destruction of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes and other
animals which had been created for the use of the Indians ;
that the Great Man above, looking down and seeing this,
was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on
the earth, seated himself on a neighboring mountain, on

salt springs, doubtless, of the men, hardly less wild, who followed
after them — when and how long before the era of the dimly-known
Massawomees none can speculate — and is now the brimming " sa-
line " of our day, one of the greatest natural gifts of Virginia.

ROMANCE OF THE VALLET OF VIRGINIA. 20I

a 7'ock, on which his seat and the print of his feet are still
to be seen, and hurled his bolts among them till the whole
were slaughtered, except the big bull, who, presenting his
forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell ; but
missing one at length, it wounded him in the side,
whereupon, springing round, he bounded over the Ohio,
over the Wabash, the Illinois, and finally over the great
lakes, where he is living at this day ! "

Such fables — some of which were believed by intelli-
gent men who have died within the times of those now
living — none of which, indeed, are exaggerated illustra-
tions of the geographical myths of early Virginia, a
peculiarity of that colony not sufficiently noticed in the
common histories — may give us some idea of the ro-
mance which attended the footsteps of those who first
scaled the mountain barriers of the Old Dominion. For
a full century the eyes of the settlers in the distant plains
below had been turned with passionate longings and
mysterious imaginings to the top of the Blue Ridge, en-
veloped in a peculiar blue mist, wearing an unusual
depth of that beautiful color which gave it its name.
The first efforts to surmount it were naturally made in the
direction of the settlements on the upper branches of the
Rappahannock and in the Northern Neck (the country be-
tween the Rappahannock and the Potomac), the ridge
declining toward the Potomac, and being less rugged and
forbidding in its aspect than it is farther toward the
south-west. Here the first exploring parties from East
Virginia entered the vale of the Shenando (Shenandoah),
planting themselves on the rich, low grounds, but gradu-
ally venturing upon the pleasant uplands beyond the river.
So slow, however, was the extension of these settlements,
and so little was the country subdued, that we are told

2C2 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

by Judge Marshall that as late as the year 1756, eighteen
years after Frederick and Augusta had been formed into
counties, the Blue Ridge was regarded as the north-
western frontier of Virginia, and that the colony found
great difficulty in completing a single regiment to protect
the inhabitants from the horrors of the scalping-knife,
and the still greater horrors of being led into captivity
by those who added terror to death by the manner of
inflicting it. Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, Frederick, in
Maryland, and Winchester, in Virginia, were then frontier
posts, the latter continuing to be such until the French
were driven out of Canada.

The first settlement of the Valley from Lower Virginia
was preceded, however, to some extent, by an earlier tide
of immigration coming from Pennsylvania. The eastern
part of the Valley was conveniently situated for emigrants
from Pennsylvania ; and the Germans in this colony no
sooner heard of the rich vales of the Shenandoah and its
branches than, manifesting the characteristic passion of
their race for fat lands, they began to join their country-
men from Europe in pouring themselves over the country
below Winchester, following the branches of the Shenan-
doah, and going up the Valley of Virginia as far as the
Massanutten Mountain, where these branches divide,
being called the South and North Forks. And here, in
our distribution of the Valley of Virginia, we must explain
that it is habitually described according to its form and
the flow of its waters, and in opposition to the points of
the compass ; the upper portion or head of the Valley
commencing from the south, and what is called the Lower
Valley being to the north, where it declines and spreads
about Winchester.

This latter division of the Valley, for the space of sixty

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 203

miles, had been occupied by the Germans, until, as they
pressed toward the head branches of the Shenandoah,
their immigrant columns were met by another race, which
soon filled up an equal space beyond them, and was des-
tined in most respects to dominate in the new land of
promise. The Germans brought with them their ener-
getic language, the simplicity of their manners and a
vigorous industry that was to improve in a country where
the climate was most delightful and the soil the richest
imaginable. Traces of this healthful element of popula-
tion, tenacious of its customs, are yet to be found among
their descendants in Shenandoah and Page counties and
other parts of the Valley ; but a sensible transition has
been going on about the borders of their old settlements,
and the trace of the Germans in the Valley of Virginia is
much slighter than that of the wonderful and strong stock
of emigrants who were to meet them on the branches of
the Shenandoah, and who to this day maintain their
strongly-marked characteristics not only in Transmontane
Virginia, but wherever they continued to spread south-
ward and westward, until, as said by one of their histo-
rians, "there is scarce a county in the great Valley of
the Mississippi where some of their descendants may not
be found."

We allude to the Scotch-Irish element. The importa-
tion of this element beyond the Blue Ridge is one of the
most romantic stories of American settlements, and is yet
preserved with a singular fondness for details and personal
anecdotes by the descendants of the old settlers of the
Valley of Virginia. We all may know generally of " Bur-
den's Grant," of the explorations and surveys of the
Lewises, etc.; but it is anew interest to find the local and
traditionary history of the Valley yet preserved in such

204 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

vividness of coloring and particularity of details among
the unwritten memories of its people.

The first explorers of the Valley of Virginia from the
eastern portions of the colony appear to have been two
traders, who were accustomed to pass from the Northern
Neck to the settlements about Winchester. Moved by a
passion for adventure, or perhaps by the prospects of
trade with the aborigines, they determined to explore the
unknown parts of the country toward the south-west.
They seem to have passed entirely through the Valley,
for they were captured by some hostile Indians on the
waters of the Roanoke. One of them, John Sailing, after
six years of strange and eventful wanderings, the prisoner
of various tribes by the event of war, having been shifted
from the hands of the Cherokees to those of some Indians
from Illinois, and after having accompanied various tribes
in distant expeditions to countries then wholly unknown
in Virginia, at one time treated with cruelty, and at
another with distinction as the adopted son of a chief's
mother, ended his strange pilgrimage in Canada, where
he was kindly redeemed by the French governor, and
returned to Virginia.

• He brought back to Williamsburg a stock of wonderful
stories that were eagerly devoured by a curiosity whetted
with the passion for discovery. He told of a great river
in the West, of new countries where he had fallen in with
exploring parties of Spaniards, and he is thought to have
even looked on the Gulf of Mexico. But the country he
described most passionately, and to his glowing descrip-
tion of which his auditors listened most attentively, was
the Valley of Virginia, abroad and broken space between
parallel ridges of mountains; a country of beautiful pros-
pects and sylvan scenes — lofty mountains, transparent

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 205

Streams, falls of water, rich valleys and majestic woods ;
its plains covered by a rich herbage grazed by herds of
buffaloes, its hills crowned with forests, and the whole
interspersed with an infinite variety of flowering shrubs,
constituting the landscape around them. To these ac-
counts of this strange and beautiful land, for the most
part untouched by the hand of man, and offering un-
bought homes and easy subsistence to the adventurer, the
most constant and interested listener was a stranger from
Great Britain. The name of the stranger was John Lewis
— the founder of an historic and one of the most romantic
names in Virginia, and one honored in every part of the
State even to this generation. He not only heard Sailing's
story with admiration, but he determined to accompany
him to this newly-discovered land, and to found a settle-
ment there if it fulfilled the expectations that had been
excited in his mind.

Lewis — or, as he was afterward known, Colonel John
Lewis — accompanied by his sons, Samuel and Andrew, the
latter the brave and beloved General Lewis succeeding"
to the greatest honors of the family, made a settlement on
Middle river, on a creek which bears his name. The
large design and high spirit, however, with which he had
entered the new country were soon manifested ; for while
Sailing and his companions were dissipating their time in
the chase, he set' about surveying lands, not satisfied to be
a mere pioneer of hunters — indeed, showing a true great-
ness of soul in laying the foundations of an empire in the
wilderness.

In 1736, Lewis visited Williamsburg, desiring to ob-
tain authority to locate lands in separate parcels in the
country around him. An accident served him to obtain
an Influence and a patronage that the most assiduous en-

2o6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

deavors might not otherwise have gained. He met with
Benjamin Burden, who had lately come over to Virginia as
agent for Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck.
Burden, pleased with his new acquamtance, who opened
to him his views, agreed to accompany him to his home
to see the country and to hunt the buffalo — an animal
then unknown in Lower Virginia. In one of their hunts
a young buffalo-calf was taken by Andrew Lewis, who
turned it over to Burden, and in doing so proved himself
a provident hunter. Burden, knowing that the shaggy
young monster would be an object of great curiosity at
Williamsburg, carried it there ; and he is said to have
won the heart of Governor Gooch by presenting to him
this rare pet. Anyhow, the governor was so pleased with
the donor and what he told of the country roamed by the
monsters of which the pet was a small specimen, that he
promptly favored his views for himself and Lewis by en-
tering an order in his official book authorizing Benjamin
Burden to locate five hundred thousand acres of land, or
any less quantity, on the waters of the Shenandoah and
James rivers, on the condition that he should not interfere
with any previous grants, and that within ten years he
should settle at least one hundred families on the located
lands.

Here was a princely gift on paper, but there were diffi-
culties in the way of employing and realizing it. The
first difficulty was to obtain settlers. The old colonists
of Virginia were indisposed to leave their tobacco lands.
They lived by the cultivation of tobacco ; it was the
sole staple of their trade ; it was the money of the col-
ony. A life in the new Arcadia, with occupations among
green pastures and herds of cattle, had no enticements
for theni. Tobacco was associated with all their ideals of

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 207

a prosperous agriculture, and was their measure of the
hixuries of life. The common practice was to 7'oll the
hogsheads of tobacco to market. How could this be
done through the rugged defiles of the Blue Ridge ? It
was readily seen by Burden that he must look elsewhere
than to the old settlements of Virginia for a stock of emi-
grants with which to people his broad possessions. A
few months after the governor's concession he returned
to England for emigrants, and the next year, 1737, he
brought over upward of one hundred families to settle
on the granted lands. The Presbyterians in the northern
parts of Ireland, in Scodand, and in the adjacent parts
of England were at this time greatly stirred by the spirit
of emigration. Most of Burden's colonists were Irish
Presbyterians, who, being of Scottish extraction, ob-
tained the name of Scotch-Irish. Among the names of
the more numerous families settled on Burden's grant
occur such as the Prestons, the Paxtons, the Lyles, the
Grigsbys, the Stuarts, the McDowells, the Alexanders,
the Crawfords, the Cumminses, the Browns, the Wallaces,
the Wilsons, the Carutherses, the Campbells, the Mc-
Campbells, the McClungs, the McCues, the McKees, the
McCowns, etc. Many of these names are yet extant in
the Valley of Virginia, attesting relationship with the
race which imbibed the indomitable spirit of John Knox,
and proud of the distinction which the robust virtues of
their ancestors have made for them in the new homes of
America.

Of the hardihood and enterprise of this emigrant stock
an illustration is furnished in an anecdote which we copy
from one of the chroniclers of Virginia:

"Among others (says Withers) who came to Virginia
at this time was an Irish girl named Polly Mullhollin.

2o8 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

On her arrival she was hired to James Bell to pay her
passage, and with whom she remained during the period
her servitude was to continue. At its expiration she at-
tired herself in the habit of a man, and, with hunting-
shirt and moccasins, went into Burden's grant for the
purpose of making improvements and acquiring a title
to land. Here she erected thirty cabins, by virtue of
which she held one hundred acres adjoining each.
When Benjamin Burden the younger came on to make
deeds to those who held cabin-rights, he was astonished
to see so many of the name of Mulhollin. Investigation
led to a discovery of the mystery, to the great mirth
of the other claimants. She resumed her Christian name
and feminine dress, and many of her respectable descend-
ants still reside within the limits of Burden's grant."

The supplement to Burden's grant was a new enter-
prise, the circumstances of which were even more dra-
matic than those which prefaced the first adventure of
the Lewis family into the mountainous region of Virginia.
The grant obtained by Burden did not include some
lands on the upper branches of the Shenandoah. An
opening to further settlements in that direction, however,
was obtained by an order of the governor and council of
Virginia, giving to a company of grantees 100,000 acres
of land lying on the waters of the Greenbrier river; and
in 1 75 1 we find General Andrew Lewis, as agent for the
company, entering upon the exploration of this country,
lying close to the great range of the Alleghany. To his
surprise, he found that he had been preceded in the dis-
covery of this new area for settlement, and that there
were white men already living in it. The story goes that
in the year 1749 a person who lived in the county of
Frederick was subject to spells of lunacy, during which

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 209

he wandered into the wilderness, returning to his home
when he recovered a sane condition of mind. This
unhappy creature, wandering westwardly, came to the
waters of the Greenbrier river. The features of the
country here were unknown to the English inhabitants of
the then colonies of America. It is true it was claimed
by the French, but their settlements were limited to the
Ohio and its waters, west of the Alleghany Mountains.
The lunatic being surprised, even -in his condition of
mind, to find waters running a different course from any
he had before known, and retaining a recollection of the
scene where he had been brought to his senses, told of
the phenomenon on his return home, and described a
country abounding in game. His wild tale found be-
lievers, and soon excited the enterprise of others. Two
men from New England, Jacob Marlin and Stephen
Sewell, were the first white settlers on Greenbrier river.
Having disagreed, they separated and lived apart.

In 1 75 1, General Lewis found these two men in the
Greenbrier country — one lodging in a cabin, the other
making his abode in a large hollow tree. He inquired
what could induce them to live separate in a wilderness
so distant from the habitations of any other human be-
ings. They replied that difference of opinion had occa-
sioned their separation, and that they had since enjoyed
more tranquillity and a better understanding; for Sewell
said that each morning when they arose, and Marlin
came out of the great house and he out of his hollow
tree, they saluted each other, saying '' Good-morning,
Mr. Marlin," and "Good-morning, Mr. Sewell," so
that a good understanding then existed between them.
The neighborly feeling did not last long, for Sewell soon
removed about forty miles farther west, where he was
18*

2IO THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

found and killed by the Indians. " Sewell's Mountain "
is a monument to the name and memory of the rude
adventurer.

The General Lewis spoken of above was the hero of
the battle of Point Pleasant, 1774, which finally broke
the power of the Indians between the mountains and the
Ohio ; the tribes which had inhabited the Valley of Vir-
ginia and the powerful Shawnees having retired down the
Kanawha toward its mouth as the white settlements ad-
vanced upon them. Here General Lewis pressed them
in what was known as " Dunmore's War" (1774), with
an expeditionary force of eleven hundred men. In the
battle of Point Pleasant were represented the Shawnee,
Delaware, Mingo, Wyandotte and Cayuga tribes, the
whole force commanded by Cornstalk, sachem of the
Shawnees and king of "the Northern Confederacy."
The Virginians paid dearly for their victory, about one-
fifth of their number being killed and wounded. Colonel
Charles Lewis, a nephew of the general, fell in the en-
gagement.*

* The following ballad, obtained from a mountain cabin in this
region, appears to have been published in the papers of the time,
and is inserted here as a very rare and decided curiosity. The name
of the border minstrel does not appear :

Let us mind the tenth day of October,

Seventy-four, which caused woe;
The Indian savages they did cover
The pleasant banks of the Ohio.

The battle beginning in the morning,

Throughout the day it lasted sore,
Till the evening shades were returning down

Upon the banks of the Ohio.

Judgment precedes to execution,
Let fame throughout all dangers go,

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 211

The removal of the Shawnees from the lovely valley
of the Greenbrier is a story throughout of thrilling and
beautiful romances. It was not until frequent battles and
desperate forays, by which they testified their attach-
ment to their ancient hunting-grounds and the graves of
their fathers, that they were finally, after the battle of
Point Pleasant, forced to abandon their country and seek
shelter with the main body of their tribe, then living on
the waters of the great Scioto.

The romantic story of their expulsion is fitly crowned
with the death of their great warrior. Cornstalk, two
years later, by one of the foulest and most pitiful assas-
sinations that ever drew sympathy for the wrongs of the
red man and reflected the fierce and cruel spirit of his
conquerors. He was murdered by the garrison at Point
Pleasant.

Our heroes fought with resolution
Upon the banks of the Ohio.

Seven score lay dead and wounded

Of champions that did face their foe,
By which the heathen were confounded,

Upon the banks of the Ohio.

Colonel Lewis and some noble captains,

Did down to death like Uriah go,
Alas ! their heads wound up in napkins,

Upon the banks of the Ohio.

Kings lamented their mighty fallen

Upon the mountains of Gilboa,
And now we mourn for brave Hugh Allen,

Far from the banks of the Ohio.

Oh bless the mighty King of heaven

For all his wondrous works below,
Who hath to us the victory given

Upon the banks of the Ohio,

213 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

He had gone there on an errand of peace, and was
detained as a hostage, war being expected with his tribe.
\ Of wh-at ensued we have some vivid details in a me-
moir of Colonel John Stuart, who was in the garrison
and sought to prevent the dreadful crime referred to.
He writes :

" During the time of our stay, two young men, of the
names of Hamilton and Gilmore, went over the Kanawha
one day to hunt for deer. On their return to camp some
Indians had concealed themselves on the bank among the
woods to view our encampment, and as Gilmore came along
past them they fired on him and killed him on the bank.

" Captain Arbuckle and myself were standing on the
opposite bank when the gun fired ; and while we were
wondering who it could be shooting contrary to orders,
or what they were doing over the river, we saw Hamilton
run down the bank, who called out that Gilmore was
killed. Gilmore was one of the company of Captain
John Hall, of that part of the country now Rockbridge
county. The captain w\as a relation of Gilmore's, whose
family and friends were chiefly cut off by the Indians in
the year 1763, when Greenbrier was cut off. Hall's men
instantly jumped into a canoe and went to the relief of
Hamilton, who was standing in momentary expectation
of being put to death. They brought the corpse of Gil-
more down the bank, covered with blood and scalped,
and put him into the canoe. As they were passing the
river, I observed to Captain Arbuckle that the people
would be for killing the hostages as soon as the canoe
would land. He supposed that they would not offer to
commit so great a violence upon the innocent, who were
in nowise accessory to the murder of Gilmore. But the
canoe had scarcely touched the shore until the cry was

ROMANCE OF THE V ALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 213

raised, 'Let us kill the Indians in the fort;' and every
man, with his gun in his hand, came up the bank pale with
rage. Captain Hall was at their head and leader. Cap-
tain Arbuckle and I met them and endeavored to dis-
suade them from so unjustifiable an action ; but they
cocked their guns, threatened us with instant death if we
did not desist, rushed by us into the fort and put the In-
dians to death.

"On the preceding day the Cornstalk's son, Elinipsico,
had come from the nation to see his father and to know
if he was well or alive. When he came to the river op-
posite the fort he hallooed. His father was at that instant
in the act of delineating a map of the country and the
waters between the Shawnee towns and the Mississippi,
at our request, with chalk upon the floor. He imme-
diately recognized the voice of his son, got up, went out
and answered him. The young fellow crossed over, and
they embraced each other in the most tender and affec-
tionate manner. The interpreter's wife, who had been a
prisoner among the Indians and had recently left them,
on hearing the uproar the next day, and hearing the men
threatening that they would kill the Indians, for whom
she retained much affection, ran to their cabin and in-
formed them that the people were just coming to kill
them, and that because the Indians who killed Gilmore
had come with Elinipsico the day before. He utterly de-
nied it, declared that he knew nothing of them, and trem-
bled exceedingly. His father encouraged him not to be
afraid, for that the Great Alan above had sent him there
to be killed and die with him. As the men advanced to
the door, the Cornstalk rose and met them ; they fired
upon him, and seven or eight bullets went through him.
So fell the great Cornstalk warrior, whose name was be-

214 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

stowed upon him by the consent of the nation as their
great strength and sui)port. His son was shot dead as
he sat upon a stool.

"The Cornstalk, from personal appearance and many
brave acts, was undoubtedly a hero. Had he been spared
to live, I believe he would have been friendly to the
American cause ; for nothing could induce him to make
the visit to the garrison at the critical time he did but
to communicate to them the temper and disposition of
the Indians and their design of taking part with the
British. On the day he was killed we held a council at
which he was present. His countenance was dejected,
and he made a speech, all of which seemed to indicate
an honest and manly disposition. He acknowledged
that he expected that he and his party would have to run
with the stream, for that all the Indians on the lakes and
northwardly were joining the British. He said that when
he returned to the Shawnee towns after the battle at the
Point, he called a council of the nation to consult what
was to be done, and upbraided them for their folly in
not suffering him to make peace on the evening before
the battle. 'What,' said he, 'will you do now? The
Big Knife is coming on us, and we shall all be killed.
Now you must fight or we are undone.' But no one
made an answer. He said, 'Then let us kill all our wo-
men and children and go and fight till we die.' But
none would answer. At length he rose and struck his
tomahawk in the post in the centre of the town-house.
'I'll go,' said he, 'and make jjeace,' and then the war-
riors all grunted out, 'Ough, ough, ough,' and runners
were instantly despatched to the governor's army to so-
licit a peace and the interposition of the governor on
their behalf.

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 215

"When he made his speech in council with us he
seemed to be impressed with an awful premonition of his
approaching fate; for he repeatedly said, 'When I was a
young man and went to war, I thought that might be the
last time, and I would return no more. Now I am here
among you; you may kill me if you please; I can die
but once, and it is all one to me, now or another time.'
This declaration concluded every sentence of his speech.
He was killed about one hour after our council."

But to return from these incidents to the settlements
within the boundary of the Alleghany. The battle of
Point Pleasant secured these settlements, and it may be
considered to have been fought for them. The country
between the Alleghany and the Ohio was yet a wilder-
ness, while the Valley had commenced to smile with
homes, and was able to send to the battle-fields of the
Revolution of 1776 a body of volunteers who made the
name of Augusta county (as was then called the immense
territory which at the present time comprises four entire
States and nearly forty counties of the tw^o Virginias)
famous in its annals.*

The following has the authority of tradition, and has appeared
before in print :

* " When the British force under Tarleton drove the Legislature
from Charlottesville to Staunton, the stillness of the Sabbath eve was
broken in the latter town by the beat of the drum, and volunteers
were called for to prevent the passage of the British through the
mountains at Rockfish Gap. The elder sons of William Lewis, who
then resided at the old fort, were absent with the Northern army.
Three sons, however, were at home, whose ages were seventeen, fif-
teen and thirteen years. William Lewis was confined to his room
by sickness, but his wife, with the firmness of a Roman matron, called
them to her, and bade them fly to thje defence of their native land.
' Go, my children,' said she. « I spare not my youngest, my fair-

2l6 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Looking over the distribution of the early populations
in the Valley of Virginia, we find, first, the German ele-
ment filling the lower portion of the Valley as far as the
Massanutten Mountain ; secondly, beyond the line of
their settlements, the Scotch-Irish or Presbyterian element
extending to the vale of James river, and pushed yet far-
ther to hug tlie Alleghany, until for seventy or eighty
miles along the Valley there was a population scarcely
less homogeneous and more peculiar than the mass of
Germans below them. The German element, as we have
already intimated, was not so strongly marked, nor has
it been so retentive of its characteristics, as the Scotch-
Irish. It has lost much of its identity in Virginia by dis-
persion and by diffusion with stronger races, although
there are yet to be found in some of the Valley counties
German families who are unwilling to give up the lan-
guage of Fatherland, corruptly as they speak it, or the
plain homespun of old times, and who bewail the transi-
tion that is going on about their borders, and the Angli-
cizing disposition of their children, as the degeneracy of
their race.

The strong and fruitful element in the population of
the Valley has been the Scotch-Irish. The characteris-
tics of these people were strongly marked — not less than
those of the Pilgrim Fathers — and they yet survive to a
marked degree in their hardy descendants. Their detes-
tation of civil tyranny descended to them from the Cov-

haired boy, the comfort of my declining years. I devote you all to
my country. Keep back the foot of the invader from the soil of
Auj^usta, or see my face no more.' When this incident was related
to Washington shortly after ils occurrence, lie enthusiastically ex-
claimed, ♦ Leave me but a banner to plant upon the mountains of
Augusta, and I will rally aroun*! me the men who w'ill lift our bleed-
ing country from the dust and set her free.' "

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 217

enanters of Scotland ; and on the dispute between the
Colonists and the mother country, they were Whigs of tlie
firmest and most invincible spirit. They were a sober
and thoughtful people ; and it is remarkable that they
never showed any disposition to join the bands of white
hunters who formed a sort of connecting link between
the savage aborigines and the civilized tillers of the soil.
A striking peculiarity of manners which they had in com-
mon with the Puritans was that certain self-continence,
which, mistaken by a superficial observer for phlegm or
dullness, is sometimes found covering an enormous
strength of character, held in reserve and capable of
putting forth the most strenuous and persevering exertions
when demanded by occasion.

Another characteristic of these people was their rigid
Calvinistic morality. Founded on a religious principle,
this morality was sober, firm and consistent, though in
some of its aspects stern, and too disdainful of persua-
sions to virtue. They had none of the gay amusements
common among the Eastern Virginians. There was, in-
deed, as has been observed, but little communication
.with these, and not until roads and navigation offered new
facilities for trade, and the Eastern planter was somewhat
weaned from his devotion to the culture of tobacco, did
the Valley cease to repel settlers from the lowlands of
Virginia.

The Scotch-Irish were a God-fearing pople. No sooner
had the immigrants provicfed necessary food and shelter
for their families than they began to provide for the
regular and decent worship of God. They built churches
of the solid limestone of the Valley, and they called pas-
tors as far as their limited means would admit. The
difficulties sometimes experienced in raising these religious

2iS THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

structures, where there were no roads, wagons or saw-mills,
may be illustrated by a relation which tradition yet pre-
serves, that the Providence congregation packed all the
sand used in their church from a place six miles distant,
sack by sack, on the backs of horses; and, what is almost
incredible, the fair wives and daughters of the congrega-
tion are said to have undertaken this part of the work,
while the men labored at the stone and timber.

The social intercourse of the early homes of the Valley
was chiefly religious. The meetings of the presbytery,
held in turn by the principal churches, drew together a
large concourse, and were celebrated as the chief religious
festivals of the country. Except these solemn festivals,
and the weekly meetings at church, the families of the
country had but little social intercourse. The careful and
religious education of their children was one of the most
important features of their domestic polity, and was the
first concern of the infant society. Common schools arose
among them as soon as their settlements were founded,
and increased as the state of population warranted them.

Of the early institution of learning that preceded
Washington College the following account is yet pre-
served in a manuscript local history of one of the oldest
inhabitants :

"The school-house was a log cabin. Hither about
thirty youths of the mountains repaired ' to taste the
Pierian spring' thirty-five years after the first settlement
of Burden's grant. Of reading, writing and ciphering
the boys of the country had before acquired such know-
ledge as primary schools could afford ; but with a few rare
exceptions, Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry, and such-
like scholastic mysteries, were things of which they had
heard— whi(h tliey knew, perhaps, to be covered u[) 'r>

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 219

the learned heads of their, pastors — but of the nature and
uses of which they had no conception whatever. The
institution was a log hut of one apartment. The stu-
dents carried their dinners with them from their board-
ing-houses in the neighborhood. They conned their
lessons either in the school-room, where the recitations
were heard, or under the shades of the forest, where
breezes whispered and birds sang without disturbing their
studies. A horn — perhaps a real cow's horn — summoned
the school from play and the scattered classes to recita-
tion. Instead of broadcloth coats, the students generally
wore a far more graceful garment — the hunting-shirt —
home-spun, home-woven and home-made by the indus-
trious wives and daughters of the land. Their amuse-
ments were not the less remote from the modern tastes of
students — cards^ backgammon, flutes, fiddles, and even
marbles, were scarcely known among these home-bred
mountain boys. Firing pistols and ranging the fields
with shot guns to kill little birds for sport they would
have considered a waste of time and amm.unition. As
to frequenting tippling-shops of any denomination, this
was impossible, because no such catchpenny lures for
students existed in the country, or would have been tol-
erated. Had any huckster of liquors, knick-knacks and
explosive crackers hung out his sign in those days, the
old Puritan morality of the land was yet vigorous enough
to abate the nuisance. The sports of the students were
mostly gymnastic, both manly and healthful, such as
leaping, running, wrestling, pitching quoits and playing
ball. In this rustic seminary a considerable number of
young men began their education who afterward bore a
distinguished part in the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of
the country."

220 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

No wonder that such nurture and education produced
one of the most vigorous and manful populations in
America. Amid the many changes that have passed over
the face of their country, and affected, too, the social
organization, the people of the Valley of Virginia are,
as we have already said, still distinguished for many of
the virtues ascribed to their ancestors. And how great
and multitudinous have been those changes ! It has often
struck us that in no part of America is there to be
observed so striking an epitome of its progress, in all
phases, as in the enclosure of the Valley of Virginia, so
distinctly marked are the epochs on this well-defined and
measurable theatre.

Let us take three generations for our survey. Toward
the close of the last century we find here the ''backwoods-
men" — a type but little visible in Pennsylvania and New
England — leading a nondescript life between civilization
and barbarism, yet one of singular virtues drawn from
each. This life was rude, even in its highest develop-
ment toward civilization, but in its harshest aspects there
was a sort of purity and romance. The men of the Val-
ley of these times wore the hunting-shirt and moccasin ;
the common household furniture was the noggin, the
trencher and the wooden bowl ; their life was scanty but
not nomadic, and where we might have expected the
shiftlessness of the hunter-state, we are surprised to find
men with steady industry planting homes in the wilder-
ness. Their principal agricultural instrument was a har-
row with wooden teeth, and their common vehicle the
sled. In the rude and ponderous industry of this primi-
tive people we see something grand, even while we smile
at the grotesqueness of some parts of the picture.

Another generation comes upon the stage. In 1833,

ROMANCE OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA. 231

Mr. Samuel Kercheval writes : "The linsey and coarse
linen of the first settlers of the country have been ex-
changed for the substantial and fine fabrics of Europe
and Asia — the hunting-shirt for the fashionable coat of
broadcloth, and the moccasin for boots and shoes of
tanned leather. The dresses of our ladies are equal in
beauty, fineness and fashion to those of the cities and
countries of Europe." With yet greater complacency
he writes of the miracle of turnpike roads over the moun-
tains: "The horse-paths along which our fathers made
their laborious journeys over the mountains for salt
and iron have been succeeded by wagon roads, and
these again by substantial turnpikes, which, as if by
magic enchantment, have brought the distant region, not
many years ago denominated the ^backwoods,'' into a
close and lucrative connection with our great Atlantic
cities. The journey over the mountains, formerly -con-
sidered so long, so expensive, and even perilous, is now
made in a very few days, and with accommodations not
displeasing to the epicure himself I ' '

The last scene comes in panoramic succession ; and
what do we see in our day and generation ? Miles of
country, far and wide, smiling with a cultivation the
most luxuriant in America ; busy towns ; the most splen-
did institutions of learning in the South ; a people prac-
ticing every refinement of dress and manners ; villas
that Cicero or Sir Walter Scott might have envied ; the
telegraph set up where formerly had been the Indian's
trail; and for sled and stage-coach, the arrowy car, that
is soon to bear by the doors of beautiful and animated
homes the trade of a continent !
19*

CHAPTER XII.

THE GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS.

The Railroad through the Mountains — Site of the White Sulphur Springs — Pleasing
Scenery — The Springs in 1772 — Hotel Improvements — The Grounds — Analysis
of the White Sulphur Water— Remarks on the Use of Mineral Waters — Popu-
lar Errors on the Subject —Debauchery in Mineral Waters — A Guide to the Use
of the White Sulphur Water— The Theory of Fresh vs. Stale — The Bathing
Establishment— Life at the Springs— " Jenkins " in Virginia— A Ball-room
Conversation— A Southern Editor on Society and Comfort at the Springs —
Why Virginians "can't keep Hotels" — An Anecdote of Boniface — The White
Sulphur Hotel, a Superior one.

HE ride by rail from Staunton to the White Sul-
phur Springs is not the easiest and most joyous
in the world. Near the latter the Chesapeake and
Ohio Railroad surmounts its greatest physical difficulties,
and is elaborate with engineering skill ; and whatever may
be the safety, there is yet a feeling of insecurity on being
whirled through the deepest of cuts and over the loftiest
of trestles. The tunnel's in a short distance aggregate two
and one-eighth miles. One of them, " the Big Bend," is
sixty-four hundred feet long. Some of the longest ones were
yet incomplete, and in the haste to complete the road to
the White Sulphur for the summer's travel of 1869, a tem-
porary track had been laid around them and around in-
complete trestles.

The location of the springs is on the immediate con-
fines of the Valley of Virginia, being but six miles west
222 '

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 2 33

of the Alleghany chain, which divides the waters that flow
into the Chesapeake Bay and those which wander west-
ward, carrying their tribute to the Mississippi. It is en-
closed in one of those small valleys, branches of minor
formations, which we have noticed as characterizing the
geographical system of the great Valley. The immediate
confines are Kate's Mountain and the Greenbrier Moun-
tains, and the intervening country is beautifully em-
bosomed with hills. The valley opens about a half a mile
in breadth, and winds with graceful undulations beyond
the eye's reach.

As a hunting-ground of the Shawnees, and as the limit
of settlements founded by the famous Lewis family when
competing with the Pennsylvania Germans for the pos-
session of the Valley of Virginia, we have already glanced
at the. surrounding country, which is yet strewn with many
ungathered traditions. The county of Greenbrier is now
within the boundary of West Virginia. In the year 1778
it was separated from Botetourt county. The reputed
origin of the name is a little curious. The county is
named from the river, and it is said to have been named
by old Colonel John Lewis, father to the late general,
and one of the grantees under the order of council, who,
in company with his son Andrew, exploring the country
in 1 75 1, entangled himself in a bunch of greenbriers on the
river, and declared that he would ever after call the stream
Greenbrier river.

The locality of the White Sulphur Springs was known to
the Indians as one of the most important licks of the deer
and elk. As early as 1772 a woman was brought here on
a litter forty miles, whose disease had baffled all medical
skill. A tree was felled, and a trough dug and filled with
the mineral water, which was heated by putting hot stones

224 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

into it. In this the patient was bathed, while, at the same
time, she drank freely of the fountain. In a few weeks
she went from her bark cabin perfectly restored.
The fame of this cure attracted many sick persons to the
springs, and they soon commenced throwing up rude log
cabins. But the dreariness of the mountains, the badness
of the roads, and the poverty of the accommodations, re-
pelled all but the most anxious from these health-giving
waters till 1818, when they fell into the hands of a Mr.
Caldwell. From that time the place has continued rap-
idly to improve.

At the time of this writing the Springs' property is
leased, but it is owned by a joint-stock company of great
resources and enterprise. This company has already
erected the largest building in the Southern country, its
dimensions being four hundred feet long, by a correspond-
ing width, and covering an acre of ground. This im-
mense structure is of brick, and is appropriated for re-
ceiving-rooms, dining-room, ball-room, parlors, lodging-
rooms, etc. There are also numerous cottages for families.
With these improvements, together with a new and capa-
cious bathing establishment, and the removal of many of
the old buildings to new localities, by which the lawns
are enlarged and adorned, the property in capacity and in
the elegance of its arrangements will compare with some
of the most pretentious 'of Northern watering-places. The
interior appointments of the hotel are imposing and ele-
gant. The dining-room is upward of three hundred feet
long, with a correspondent width, and conveniently seats
at one time more than a thousand persons.

The fountain issues from the foot of a gentle slope, ter-
minating in the low intervale upon a small and beautiful
stream (Howard's creek) which is tributary to the Green-

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 225

brier river. It flows with unusual boldness from rock-
lined apertures, and is enclosed by marble casings five
feet square and about three feet deep. The ground ascends
from the spring eastward, rising to a considerable emi-
nence on the left, and spreading' east and south into wide
lawns. These have been improved by the construction
of broad serpentine walks, among which the most popular
is -'the Stroll," and the most romantic, "the Lover's
Walk;" the latter with many a winding, and measured
by such stages as sweet "Hesitation" and downright
"Acceptance," while a dark and angular recess, where
unhappy hearts are slain, takes the name of "Rejec-
tion."

The White Sulphur water was analyzed in 1842,
by Professor Hayes, of Boston, with the following re-
sults :

50,000 grains (about seven pints) of this water con-
tain, in solution, 3.633 water-grain measures of gaseous
matter, or about 1.14 of its volume, consisting of —

Nitrogen gas 1.013

Oxygen gas 108

Carbonic acid 2.444

Hydro-sulphuric acid 068

3-633

One gallon, or 237 cubic inches of the water, con-
tains 16 739-1000 cubic inches of gas, having the pro-
portion of —

Nitrogen gas 4.680

Oxygen gas 498

Carbonic acid 11.290

Hydro-sulphuric acid 271

16.739
P

2 26 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

50,000 grains of this water contain 115 735-1000
grains of saline matter, consisting of —

Sulphate of lime 67.168

Sulphate of magnesia 30.364

Chloride of magnesium 859

Carbonate of lime 6.060

Organic matter (dried at 212° F.) 3-740

Carbonic acid 4-5^4

Silicates (silica 1. 34, potash .18, soda .66, magnesia

and a trace of oxyd iron) 2.960

115735

The temperature of the water is 62° Fahrenheit, and
remains uniformly the same during winter and summer.
The principal spring yields about thirty gallons per
minute ; and it is notable that this quantity is not per-
ceptibly increased or diminished during the longest sjjells
of wet or dry weather.

With reference to the use of the White Sulphur waters
in the sense of a discriminating or pathological practice,
there may be conveniently prefaced here some reflections
on the use of mineral waters generally; which, so far
from being a technical treatise, will, following the popu-
lar design of our work, be found a familiar and intelligi-
ble experience among those accustomed to resort to these
natural provisions of health.

The most common difficulty in the use of mineral
waters is an impatience for sensible and obvious effects —
the eagerness of the invalid to witness the progress of his
cure. This disposition, so natural that it can scarcely be
severely censured, is yet an unfortunate one, and some-
times very injurious. 'I'he patient is impracticable ; he
cannot be reconciled to tlie use of small and inoperative
quantities of the water ; or he debauches himself with

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 227

excessive draughts of it. These are common errors, and
yet they are founded on an ignorance which a little re-
flection and a little observation of analogies within the
general experience, even without the aid of a medical
adviser, might readily remove.

The best effects of mineral waters generally are not
those of sudden disturbances. The intelligent physician
will admonish the invalid, eager for immediate and visi-
ble results, that it is far better that the water should lie
quietly upon his system, not manifesting much excite-
ment upon any of the organs, but rather silently putting
the inner man to rights, and giving it its natural and
healthy motion. The technical word that describes this
effect is '■^ alterative ^ As the celebrated Patissier — one
of the few learned physicians who is content to use a
popular language rather than the technology of his pro-
fession — has explained : "In the general, mineral waters
revive the languishing circulation, give a new direction
to the vital energies, re-establish the perspiratory action
of the skin, bring back to their physiological type the
vitiated or suppressed secretions, provoke salutary evacu-
ations either by urine or stool, or by transpiration ; they
bring about, in the animal economy, an intimate trans-
mutation — a profound change. ' ' The common springs'
parlance of "saturated with the water," as a desirable
condition, is an unconscious popular endorsement of the
pathology of the learned professor. And again, the
common experience of impatient invalids of being "no
better while at the springs, but beginning to mend soon
after leaving," is another familiar tribute to this true
theory of the action of mineral waters.

The medical world appears to have pretty well con-
cluded on the modern discovery, properly dated since

22$ THE VIRGINIA TOURIST,

the days of miraculous cures, that the real curative ac-
tion of mineral waters is the alterative action. This is
held to be especially true of sulphur waters ; and yet,
more especially, Doctor Moorman says of the Greenbrier
White Sulphur Springs: "Indeed no article of the ma-
teria medica has more decided alterative effects." He
claims that the water has these effects by being absorbed,
or, in other words, entering into the great circuit of the
circulation, and thus exercising the specific or peculiar
action of its constituents in promoting the various secre-
tory and excretory processes, and thereby restoring the
diseased system to a physiological condition.

Between the action of jnercury and of the more power-
ful of the sulphur waters on the organic system the most
striking similarity exists. Dr. Armstrong long since re-
marked the resemblance between mercury and the sulphur
waters of Europe, and confidently expressed the opinion
that the latter are equally powerful as the former in their
action upon the secretory organs ; and with this very
important difference, that while the long-continued use
of mercury, in chronic disease, generally breaks up the
strength, that of the sulphur waters generally renovates.,
the whole system.

The principal ground of discrimination in the use of
the White Sulphur waters proceeds from the general con-
siderations already advanced ; it is perfectly intelligible,
and the invalid may constantly refer to it, in the absence
of those details of instruction for which there is no place
here, and for which he should have recourse to his medi-
cal adviser. The leading guide is simjjly to determine
the preference for sensible medicinal effects or for the
alterative action ; and on this depends the practical ques-
tion which every visitor is called upon to decide — whether

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 229

to use the water fresh as it flows from tlie spring, or de-
prived of its gas, or with its quantities modified.

This question, it seems, has always had its partisans at
the White Sulphur, and it is the first one that is proposed
to the visitor. Doctor Moorman, however, thus intelli-
gently decides between the two opinions, giving to each
of the methods of using the water — -fresh or stale — its
proper allotment :

" For some patients, the White Sulphur as it flows from
the spring is too stimulating, and hence, before the «f;/-
stitnulatifig mtxhod of using it was introduced, many such
patients left the spring either without giving the water a
trial, or actually rendered worse by its stimulating
influence.

"In cases of nervous persons, and especially in those
. whose brain is prone to undue excitement, we have often
found it necessary, either hy freezing or heating the. water,
to throw off its gas completely before it could be tole-
rated by the system ; and some of the happiest results we
have ever witnessed from the use of the water have been
achieved by it after being Vnws prepared.

" Our object in prescribing White Sulphur has been to
pursue a discriminating ox pathological practice. We re-
gard it as an active and potent medicine, and believe that,
like all such medicines, it should be used with a wise
reference to the nature of the case and the state of the
S)"stem. IVe must not be understood as advancing the
opinion that this water is always to be preferred after the
escape of its gas. We entertain no such opinion ; on the
contrary, for a large class of visitors we think it prefer-
able that they should avail themselves of the use of the
water either at, or recently removed from, the founTain,
and asjt naturally abounds in its gases."

230 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

And the conclusion is plain and emphatic — that the
water, to be used safely and most beneficially in very many
ca-ses, must be taken with strict reference to its fresh or
stale quality ; or, in other words, to its stimulating ox non-
stimiclating qualities.

Without attempting a set of rules for the invalid, pre-
ceding and other reflections on the use of the White
Sulphur may be reduced, for distinctness and for readi-
ness of reference, to such obvious propositions as the
following. All the "points" are deducible from the
main theory :

1. The water is always more stimulant, and generally
less purgative, when taken fresh at the spring and abound-
ing in its gas.

2. The alterative or changing effects of the water are
by far its most valuable effects, and are those which,
more than all others, give to it its distinctive and effective
character.

3. If the water produces active purgative or ditcretic
effects, its alterative action is correspondingly delayed.

4. An active and long-continued diuretic effect is gene-
rally useless and frequently hurtful, and hence when in
much excess should be arrested. This may be effected
with the utmost certainty by a modification in the quantity
or periods of using the water, and by gentle medical
means that divert from the kidneys and determine to the
liver and skin.

Of diseases in which the White Sulphur may be usefully
prescribed, we may adopt again a summary paragraph from
Dr. Moorman's work :

'<■ Various diseases of the stomach, liver, spleen, kid-
neys and bladder, as well as some derangements of the
brain and nervous system generally, are treated success-

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 231

fully by this agent. To the various affections of the skin,
unattended with active inflammation, to chronic affections
of the bowels, and to gout and rheumatism, it is well
adapted. In haemorrhoids, in some of the chronic affec-
tions of the womb, in chlorosis and other kindred female
disorders, in mercurial seqi/elce, and especially in the
secondary forms of lites and ill-conditioned ulcers in de-
praved constitutions, it constitutes the most valuable
remedy to which the invalid can resort. "

An aid to the internal use of the water is supplied in
the excellent bathing establishment which the present les-
sees of the White Sulphur have added to their other exten-
sive improvements of the grounds. The water used for
bathing flows from the sulphur spring of which the visitors
drink. Looking at the analysis of the water, and finding it
to contain about one hundred and fifty grains of active
medicinal salts to the gallon, we cannot fail to see that,
so far as the medication of waters can favorably affect the
bath for which they are used, the White Sulphur baths
must be' remarkable. It is said that no other waters in
America that are used for bathing, except the Washita
Springs in Arkansas, are so highly impregnated with
mineral salts.

These baths, in connection with the drinking of the
sulphur waters, although not required in every case, are
of great importance in a large number of cases, aiding
to produce the best effects of the waters.

Impressed with the great value — in fact the absolute
necessity to some invalids— of the baths in connection
with the drinking of the water, the proprietors of the
springs have recently enlarged and remodeled their bath-
ing establishment, so as to make it satisfactory in every
respect. The bathing-house is large, affording ample

232 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

accommodations. The rooms are spacious, airy and
comfortable, and in addition to the usual tub-baths there
are erected douche baths, for the application of streams
of hot or warm water to parts of the body ; and there are
also set apart rooms for the administration of sweatitig
baths.*

The company at the White Sulphur has always been
distinguished for its numbers and culture, although we
cannot go as far as the description of Doctor Moorman —
in which there is an unpleasant evidence of the afflatus
of the advertisement — and designate the place as "at
once the Athens and the Paris of America." Heretofore,
these springs have had a larger patronage than any other
watering-place south of the Potomac. Their reputation
for' gayeties and fashionable display stands in stead, or
in preference, of even more solid attractions to draw a

* The new and improved method of heating the water for bathing
deserves to be noted. This is effected by steam in the vessel in
which it is used, and is a great improvement over the old method of
heating mineral waters for bathing. Under the old plan of heating in
a boiler and thence conveying the water to the bathing-tub, much of
its valuable saline matter was precipitated and lost. By this improved
method of applying steam to the water in the tub, the heat is never
so great in raising the water to the bathing point as to cause any im-
portant precipitation of its salts ; hence they are left in their natural
suspension in the water to exert their specific effect upon the bather.
Not only so, but by this improved method hot steam may be let into
the tub from time to time as the water cools, so as to keep it essentially
of the same temperature during the entire period of bathing — a con-
sideration often of no small importance. This method of heating
mineral waters in the tub in which they are used, in connection with
the douche and nuealing baths, brings hot and warm bathing at this
place in favorable competition with bathing at naturally hot and
warm fountains, and promises to be productive of the same good
efTects that are experienced from bathing in such fountains.

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 233

crowd, of which the invalid element is by no means the
larger.

While the White Sulphur has been such a social ren-
dezvous, there has recently been some displeasure at the
development of a vulgarity and a nuisance there which
was supposed to belong only to certain promiscuous
watering-places in the North, which we unwillingly notice
here, and to which we would not refer except to point
out a source of detraction which we would be glad to see
removed. We refer to the representation of "the press"
tolerated here in the persons of low reporters sloughed
off from the city journals during the summer season, and
of editors of country Phoenixes and Trumpeteers, the en-
couragement of weak editions of "Jenkins," and a feeble
apishness after the watering-place literature of the North.
We had hoped that "Jenkins" was altogether a Northern
institution, or at least that his tribe that threatens our
Virginia watering-places would not be quite so underling
and paltry as those who figured in the fiasco of the
"Press Ball" of 1869. The proprieties of our Southern
manners do not permit such liberties of the press as have
been practiced recently at some of our springs, while
common sense rejects their frivolities. To criticise the
dresses of ladies ; to print estimates, in dollars and cents,
of jewelry worn at different balls ; to publish the names
of ladies in full, without even the small decency of aster-
isks, and with no more misgivings than those of ballet-
dancers on a play-bill; to tell how Brigadier General
Bombastes Furioso, released from the cares of conduct-
ing his great gift establishment of "real diamonds and
plated ware," and of giving certificates of prizes to negro
barbers, made happy at fifty cents a head, spends his
valuable time, and what anecdotes he tells of his fuga-
20 *

234 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

cious military career; to describe how the wife of the
man who gave buttermilk to John M. Daniel, of the
Richmond Examiner, as a peace-offering, conducts her-
self as the clothes-horse or other unfeminine thing to
display a silk dress that cost several thousands of dollars,
— are certainly not the most valuable or interesting things
that could be written, or even the most tolerable things
that should be written of a society of Southern ladies and
gentlemen.

But "Jenkins" defends his privileges. He puts in the
plea that the ladies, however they disclaim it, are de-
lighted to have their names and dresses published broad-
side in the newspapers, and that their protest of "iVi?"
is merely the feminine of '■'■Yes.''' One of the ingenious
tribe thus reports a conversation in the ball-room to illus-
trate and sustain his position :

Reporter. " Miss , have the kindness to describe

your costume to me."

Miss (shocked and blushing at the idea of being

put into the paper). "Oh, indeed, don't put my name
in. It's a horrid way. Now, really, you mustn't."

Reporter. " Oh, certainly, Miss , of course not,

as you wish otherwise."

Miss (startled and turning pale at the idea of }iot

being put in the paper). " Well — but — at any rate — if you
should, say that I wore," etc. And there followed a cat-
alogue a half page long.

On which we have only this commentary to make :
that we fear that the dear creature "interviewed" -by
Jenkins was not the very best exponent of the culture
and gentleness and unaffected modesty of the daughters
of the South.

There is something undoubtedly of "shoddy" at the

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 235

White Sulphur (as at all famous places), and something,
we must add, of undue adaptation of the system .of ac-
commodation and entertainment there to the mere bac-
chanalism of society. A correspondent who cannot be
suspected of Jenkinsism — it is the editor of the New
Orleans Times who writes — thus indicates the hotel life
here, with a glance at the accommodations of the place :
"I missed, in the ball-room, many of the old charac-
teristics of our Southern women. There is quite too
much overdressing and emblazoning, and the air of con-
scious beauty, splendor and attractiveness. The prettiest
feature of a pretty woman is the unconsciousness of her
charms. This is a great natural endowment or a high
achievement of art. I do not perceive much of it here.
I can read too distinctly in the face of the leading belles
the idea which is predominant in their minds — that they
are exciting great admiration and producing certain
effects. The overdressing is awful, and may well alarm
the political and social economists of the South for the
future of our section. What a terror to aspiring bache-
lors to contemplate the potent agencies of bankruptcy
which flutter and glitter around them ! But I am ventur-
ing upon a dangerous sea of moral disquisition, and re-
turn to the more agreeable one of expressing my great
admiration for certain of the beauties here who are re-
garded as rightful aspirants for the apple of Paris. Ken-
tucky, Illinois and Virginia may be considered as the
three goddesses who enter the list. Each of these States
is represented by a magnificent specimen of female beauty
and elegance, and a most perplexing task it would be to

determine between their respective claims

Whilst I do not underrate the value and pleasure of the
drawing-room and ball-room pleasures and amusements,

236 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

it is an obvious criticism of this establishment that this
line of business is overdone, and that there is a woeful
lack of other pleasures and conveniences for quiet enjoy-
ment for which people flock to such resorts. There is
no drawing or reading-room for gentlemen, not even a
sitting-room, which is not shared with the servants and
hangers-on. This is an enormous hotel, and friend Hil-
dreth, who is here, says it has the largest dining-room in
the world, and a ball-room of corresponding dimensions.
And yet no sitting or reading-room for the many quiet
old gentlemen who would like to hold pleasant converse
without the necessity of dressing in full ball costume, or
mixing with the rather miscellaneous crowd in the bar-
room or the office. In fine, this hotel is, both in design
and management, far from what it ought to be as the
principal spa of the South."

Yet it is to be admitted that the present lessees, Messrs.
Peyton & Co., whose fame is eminent in the hotel direc-
tory of the country, have already done wonders in im-
proving a resort so popular; and we doubt not, consider-
ing their present rate of progression, they will before
long make the entertainment of the White Sulphur com-
plete at all points. The modern hotel is a small mon-
arch, but in Virginia the lines of succession are too
short and uncertain to accomplish the highest degrees of
improvement and prestige.

Indeed, however defective may be the hotel establish-
ment of the White Sulphur, it is so far superior to the
common run of what we get at the Virginia springs that
criticism in this connection is unjust ; and we have made
such only in comparison with the accommodations to be
found at Northern watering-places. The Virginian, with
all his virtues and accomplishments, does not, generally

GREENBRIER WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 237

speaking, understand keeping a hotel; and when we de-
scend from the cities to his rural entertainments, his
deficiencies in this respect are yet more painfully per-
ceived. The comparative aversion to the watering-places
of this State is, we are persuaded, greatly due to distrust
of the accommodations. We too often meet at these
country hotels, in the character of host, a man above his
business, who has a provoking air of indifference as to
whether his guests are pleased or not ; who treats them
rather as pensioners on his civility, bound to be grateful
for what they get ; and whose manners, on the whole,
are those of a man dispensing a doubtful, languid hospi-
tality to half-welcome visitors, rather than of one getting
a quid pro quo — the individual who is really served in the
transaction — he who is indebted to his guests, rather than
they to him.

The White Sulphur is cosmopolitan in comparison
with some other summer. hostelries in Virginia. An ex-
perience in the worst of these is a curiosity in its way,
although we doubt whether any one would be willing to
renew the discomforts of the investigation for the infor-
mation gained. The fiction of the Virginia country hotel
is that you zx& guests, and that the "General," "Col-
onel" or "Judge," or however may be called the gen-
tleman who takes your money, is at the head of a private
dinner-party. You must observe his ceremony and be
thankful. Imagine ceremony — and though the ceremony
of provincialism and ignorance, yet of the stiffest sort —
in a country hotel ! Here is an example for the doubting
reader : On one occasion in his travels, the writer took
breakfast in a company of some thirty or forty per-
sons. The breakfast was served on a long pine table
draped with a dirty cloth, persons taking their seats along

23S THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the board at whatever intervals they pleased. The writer
had finished his meal on strong bacon and doubtful eggs,
and was about retiring, when the proprietor and a col-
ored waiter rushed to him, on either side, whispering
mysteriously and with empressement. "Don't get up yet,"
said Boniface. "You mussen't move," responded Cuffy.
Surprised, alarmed at the expostulation delivered in such
anxious manner — imagining, even, some tragedy taking
place in the next room from which he was to be debarred
access — the writer asked, in broken tones, "What's the
matter?" "Sir," whispered the landlord, in tones of
wounded surprise, ^^ the ladies ! the ladies .' don't you see
they ain't done eating yet?" It was only when the last
female had licked her chops that Boniface gave a signal,
by beating a little iron rod on a triangle, and his com-
pany of guests were then dismissed to their respective
avocations.

Generally speaking, we believe that wherever assur-
ances can be made of good hotel accommodations, the
Virginia springs will obtain visitors in proportion to their
other attractions. Let the liberality of the springs' pro-
prietor begin at home, with himself, in founding hotel
establishments which are neither wayside inns, cocked up
in boards, nor yet too scant "mammoth" structures,
large without comfort and garish without elegance, and
he will have less to complain of the liberality of the pub-
lic, and of the slight put upon the summer resorts of Vir-
ginia for those where Nature has done less, but man more.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SPRINGS OF MONROE AND BATH COUNTIES.

The Springs Region described from the White Sulphur as a Centre— Surrounding
Scenery�� View from Dry Creek— The Old Sweet Springs— A Ride through
the Rain— An Aristocratic Resort— Medical Description of the Old Sweet Water
—The Salt Sulphur Springs— Observations of Dr. Mutter— The Red
Sulphur Springs— Reported cures of Consumption — The Blue Sulphur
Springs— Analysis of the Water— Routes from the Greenbrier White Sulphur
Springs into Bath County— The Cascade of the Falling Springs— Views
through a new Atmosphere— The Blowing Cave— Thomas Jefferson's De-
scription IncoiTect — The Warm Springs Mountain— Looking from " Flag
Rock'"— The Hot Springs— Virtues of the Thermal Baths— The Warm
Springs— An Indian Tradition— The Healing Springs- Beauties of Scenery
—Pleasures of Trout-fishing— Dr. Burke on these Springs— The Bath Alum
Springs— Effects of the Water— Painful Aspects of Invalidism at the Springs.

RADIUS of about forty miles, sweeping from
the Greenbrier White Sulphur as a centre, will
describe a circle containing the most important
part of the Springs Region of'Virginia. Within this
circle we have to the north the famous cluster of springs
in Bath county — the Hot, the Warm, the Healing and
the Alum Springs ; the distance to the former measured
by the common route of travel being thirty-five miles ; to
the east, the Sweet Springs, seventeen miles from the
common centre ; to the south, the Salt Sulphur Springs,
twenty-four miles, and the Red Sulphur, forty-one miles ;
and to the west, the Blue Sulphur Springs, twenty-two
miles.

In leaving this centre of the Springs Region in any

239

240 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

direction we can scarcely escape refreshing views of
mountain scenery. They lie on every hand. A general
description might suit them all, and we were not disposed
to select any of them for our sketch-book, with but one
exception. This — the sketch which faces this chapter —
is taken from the vast environments of the scenery of the
Greenbrier through which our road lies. It is on Dry
creek, a {t\\ miles from the White Sulphur, and may be
taken as an eminent representative of the extent and com-
bination of mountain views in this part of Virginia. The
mountains are not so high as, and they are more sloping
than, those where the Alleghany ridge is more severely
defined ; for we are on the decline of this great feature of
the State and its rude pictures of grandeur. On this de-
cline the views are softer, and comprehend a variety
peculiar to the situation. There is more breadth of land-
scape ; there is more for the eye to distinguish and to
combine ; and the distant mountains, instead of being
thrust up as boundaries to our vision, "swell from the
vale," and are lost in pleasing indistinctness near th'e rim
of the horizon. In fact, each of the characteristic pictures
of mountain scenery in Virginia has its merits : that which
rises in clear and abrupt outlines against the sky, and ends
boldly on distinct effects, and that, such as we have at-
tempted to show on the neighboring page, which in
infinite variety of landscape reaches to the limits of vis-
ion, and with its mingling of effects yet prefers the pic-
turesque to the sublime.

THE OLD SWEET SPRINGS.

But we must turn aside from sight-seeing of this sort
to explore in another interest the neighboring country.

"?f^^''^-

•\, •

VIEW ON DRY CREEK.

Page 240.

SPRINGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 24 1

The common routine of the visitors of the Greenbrier
White Sulphur Springs is to supplement a season there
with one at the Old Sweet. There are said to be good
medicinal reasons for the transfer ; and the invalid after
midergoing the alterative effects of sulphur water is fre-
quently advised by his physician to complete his treatment
by using the more tonic and nervine waters that are
placed within his reach, they being adapted to strengthen
the animal fibre and to give vigor and security to his
convalescence. On the other hand, the change of scene
and of company are obvious inducements to those who
seek pleasure rather than health at the watering-places ;
and thus it is usual to find all the springs of Virginia which
lie conveniently close to each other profiting from an in-
terchange of visitors, and instead of indulging in rivalry,
manifesting the best relations of good and kindly neigh-
borhood.

The road to the Old Sweet is an interesting one. There
is a station called " Crows," midway between it and the
Greenbrier White Sulphur, and where it is not uncommon
for parties from the two watering-places to appoint a
rendezvous for pic-nics and other amusements, returning
in the evening to their respective abodes. A few miles
farther on is the Red Sweet Springs, a pretty object by
the roadside, but rather neglected since the superior
attractions, or at least the larger accommodations, of the
Old Sweet await the traveler at the farther distance of
only one mile.

The term " old " is not inviting. As one of the travel-
ers, jolted on the top of the lumbering stage-coach and
grumbling under a dilapidated umbrella, remarked by the
way, " The word brought visions of a rickety country-
tavern-looking place, badly-patched and worse-kept in-
21 Q

242 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

valid resort, where an old fellow with a patch over his
eye nodded ' good-morning ' to a rheumatic spinster,
and a scrofulous infant disported with a mangy kitten."
It afforded, indeed, an agreeable surprise to find at our
journey's end an array of buildings the most tasteful and
neat that we had yet found in the mountains of Virginia — •
a crescent shape of brick cottages stretching away for two
or three hundred yards, with pleasant avenues in the rear
(Broadway and Elbow Row), and the pleasing effect sur-
mounted by a hotel, which, though much inferior in
dimensions to -the caravansary at the White Sulphur,
proved to be the best appointed and most comfortable in
which we had rested since we had left the Virginia House
at Staunton. The buildings are all of brick ; and the
distinguished boast of the proprietor is that he has intro-
duced what has heretofore been a novelty in the hotel ac-
commodations of Virginia watering-places — the use oi gas,
which is manufactured on the premises and is supplied in
every room. In fact, the Old Sweet has certain claims
to being an aristocratic spring ; the company we saw
there, not more than two hundred and fifty persons, about
one-third of the capacity of the accommodations, were
decidedly distinguished; and our impressions of the
"style" of the place were early confirmed when on our
arrival we were met in the dining-hall by an elegant col-
ored gentleman in a full-dress suit, not omitting the
white vest, who persuaded us that we would be doing him
a favor to eat, or, as he might have expressed it, to
condescend to the gratification of our appetites in his
presence.

The locality of these springs is a charming valley in
the eastern extremity of Monroe county, the lofty Sweet
Spring Mountain rising on the south, while not a mile

SP/?/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 243

away towers the Alleghany. The ground swells gradually
on either side, and a fine sodding of grass affords agree-
able walks beneath the shades of a primitive forest which
the axe of the woodman has not yet despoiled.

These were the earliest known of the mineral springs
of Virginia, their reputation dating back to 1764. The
water is chemically described as the best acidulous water
found in the United States. A marked characteristic is
the predominance of carbonic acid (fixed air), which
gives the water a peculiar briskness. It is prescribed in
the varieties of dyspepsia accompanied by gastrodynia or
spasms, with pains occurring at irregular intervals, and
heart-burn ; in secondary debility of the digestive canal
from the exhausting heats of summer; and in chronic
diarrhoea and dysentery without fever, or not sustained
by hepatic inflammation. As a tonic the water is success-
fully used in chronic diseases connected with debility, as
in certain forms of dyspepsia, amenorrhoea, chorea and
hysteria, etc., and in passive haemorrhage. In dropsy,
from its union of tonic and diuretic qualities, it is emi-
nently useful. In sterility, especially when connected
with membranous menstruation, it is regarded almost as
a specific.

Another feature of the sanitary arrangement here, and
a very important one, is the bath. A stiff building, of a
military appearance, faces the main hotel, about two hun-
dred yards distant, having a quadrangular shape, with
two high towers. On the right, looking from the hotel,
is the ladies' bath, and on the left the gentlemen's, each
sixty by thirty feet, and four, five or six feet deep, as the
bathers may choose. The bath, which is fed from the
spring, is reported to have made some remarkable cures
in sub-acute rheumatism and in neuralgic attacks ; and

244 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the external application of the water may be aided by the
use of the spout directed to the diseased part. Immer-
sious are also prescribed in calculous and nephritic com-
plaints ; and in such cases it has been remarked by a
distinguished physician that no mineral water promises
greater benefits. To persons in average health the bath
is stimulating, and, after the first slight shock, leaves the
most agreeable impressions.

THE SALT SULPHUR SPRINGS.

These springs are near Union, the county seat of
Monroe, and are completely encircled by mountains —
having Peters' Mountain to the south and east, the Alle-
ghany to the north and Swope's Mountain to the west.
There are three springs here — one known as "The
Iodine;" but the virtues of the Salt Sulphur proper are
best known, and constitute the chief attraction to the
invalid. Dr. Miitter, some time the resident physician at
this resort, thus describes the water, giving a touch of
poetry to the medical detail :

"Its odor is very like that of a 'tolerable egg,' and
may, in certain states of the atmosj^here, be i)erceived at
some distance from the spring; and in taste it is cousin-
german to a strong solution of Epsom salts and mag-
nesia. In a short time, however, strange to say, these
disagreeable properties are either not observed, or be-
come, on the other hand, attractive. Indeed there is
hardly an instance of an individual retaining his original
repugnance to them longer than three or four days, and
some there are who become so excessively fond of the
water as to give it the preference over any other liquids.
Tike most of the suljjhurous, this water is perfectly trans-

SPRINGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 245

parent, and deposits a whitish sediment, composed of its
various saline ingredients, mingled with sulphur. It is
also for the most part placid ; occasionally, however, it is
disturbed by a bubble of gas, which steals slowly to the
surface, where it either explodes with a timid and dimp-
ling smack, or is eagerly caught up by some careworn
and almost world-weary invalid as a gem from the treas-
ury of Hygeia."

The same pleasing medical authority recommends the
use of the water in chronic affections of the brain ; in
chronic diseases of the bowels, kidneys, spleen and blad-
der ; and in neuralgia, as well as in the various affections
termed nervous, such as hypochondria, hysteria, cata-
lepsy, chorea, etc. Dr. Mutter also found good effects
from the water in constipation of the bowels, haemor-
rhoids, and in irritation of the mucous membrane of the
kidneys, urethra, prostate gland and bladder.

THE RED SULPHUR SPRINGS.

The location of the Red Sulphur Springs we have
already described as about forty miles from the White
Sulphur. The situation is a romantic one, on Indian
creek. The spring is on one side of a small, triangular
plain, almost buried in mountains. The water is clear
and cool — its temperature being 54° Fahrenheit — is very
strongly charged with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and
contains portions of several neutral salts.

Its effects are directly sedative and indirectly tonic,
alterative, diuretic and diaphoretic. It has been found
efficacious or beneficial in all forms of consumption,
scrofula, jaundice and other bilious affections, chronic
dysentery and diarrhoea, dyspepsia, diseases of the uterus,

21*

246 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

chronic rheumatism and gout, dropsy, gravel, neuralgia,
tremor, syphilis, scurvy, erysipelas, tetter, ringworm and
itch ; and it has long been celebrated as a vermifuge.

With reference to the value of the water as a cure for
consumption, the reports of medical men have detracted
something from the exaggerated public opinion that, many
years ago, pointed out this place as a security against this
fell disease, so 'often supposed to be put at defiance, and
yet (we must sadly confess it) still unconquered by any-
thing in the science of man or in the bounty of nature.
A physician of South Carolina, who passed the summers
of 1822, 1823 and part of that of 1824 at the Red Sul-
phur Spring, after giving a detailed report of three cases
of pulmonary irritation connected with hremoptysis that
were cured by the use of this water, makes the following
observations : " I do not wish to be understood as stating
that the water of the Red Sulphur will cure confirmed
phthisis or tu])erculous consumption; but I believe we are
very often mistaken in supposing a case of pulmonary
irritation more desperate and hopeless than it really is;
and I believe that in most cases, if this spring is resorted
to early, and the clothing and diet and exercise duly at-
tended to, its waters will be found a most powerful
adjunct and assistant in the management of these hitherto
unmanagea])le cases. ' '

THE liLUE SUH'IIUR SPRINGS.

On the thoroughfare leading from the Greenbrier White
Sulphur Springs to Guyandotte, twenty-two miles from the
former place, and witliin the limits of Greenbrier county
are the Blue Sul])hur Springs.

The water is found to contain of solid ingredients — sul-

SPJ^/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 247

phate of lime ; sulphate of magnesia ; sulphate of soda ;
carbonate of lime ; carbonate of magnesia ; chloride of
magnesium ; chloride of sodium ; chloride of calcium ;
hydro-sulphate of sodium and magnesium ; oxide of iron,
existing as proto-sulphate ; iodine, sulphur, organic mat-
ters. Gaseous ingredients — sulphuretted hydrogen ; car-
bonic acid; oxygen and nitrogen.

It is classed among the sulphuretted waters ; and as a
therapeutic agent it is reported to be highly valuable in
chronic hepatitis, in jaundice and enlarged spleen, in
chronic irritations of the kidneys and bladder, and in
some diseases of the skin. There is also an establishment
of baths here, medicated and vapor. The situation is one
of great natural beauty, and the hotel accommodations
are beyond the average of those of Virginia watering-
places. The hotel is a spacious brick building, while
architectural effects appear to have been studied in its
composition, and in that of an imposing temple which
covers the spring, and rises in the centre of an extensive
and beautiful lawn.

Returning to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs,
and looking from it in another direction, the invalid finds
new resources to explore, and the tourist new beauties of
country and new attractions of summer life in the moun-
tains to enjoy. There are four famous bathing springs in
Bath county (which, by the way, is therefore appropri-
ately named), lying close together, and which, in turn,
may be reached by a day's journey from the White Sul-
phur. There are two routes from there, each of which
has its peculiar attractions. The traveler, going thence to
the Hot Springs, etc., takes the Chesapeake and Ohio
Railroad, moving eastward, and may leave it at Coving-

248 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

ton (eighteen miles from the White Sulphur), proceeding
thence to his destination eighteen miles by stage-coaches.
The turnpike is a new one, recently built. This route
offers some grand and imposing mountain scenery, fre-
quent views of Jackson's river, and passes in full view of
the beautiful cataract known as "The Falling Springs,"
and which is mentioned among the curiosities of the State
in Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia."

THE CASCADE OF THE FALLING SPRINGS.

The traveler on the route we have indicated makes a
partial ascent of the Warm Springs Mountain, the road
being cut and blasted on its side, about midway between
its top and Jackson's river in the deep valley below.
" The valley," writes an enthusiastic sight-seer, " is beau-
tiful as that where Rasselas expected to find peace ; the
mountains as romantic as those of Scotland." In the
fields below there are grown the blue grass and the red
clover ;* cattle browse lazily in the rich meadows, and
great stacks of hay give promise of abundant food through
the winter. The odor of thousands of walnut trees, at-
testing the richness of the soil, is borne to us on the
breeze, while the large orchards are significant of the
coming apple-brandy, which is a staple production of this
country. But the great charm is the new atmosphere we
have penetrated, and we already feel the exhilaration of
the change. There is said to be never in the Warm Springs

* The red clover is said to have been introduced into Virginia by
John Lewis, the progenitor of " the Lewis family," and an early
founder of tlie white settlements in tlie Valley. It was currently
reported by the jirophets of tlie Indians, and believed by the sav-
ages generally, that the blood of the red men slain by the Lewises
and their followers had dyed the trefoil to its sanguine hue.

SPR/IVGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 249

Valley that alternation of a close, suffocating atmosphere
with uncomfortable cold so common to the Atlantic bor-
ders. The thermometer seldom rises above 80 deg. Fah-
renheit, and its usual range may be stated as 60 deg. to
75 deg. ; and there is rarely a foggy morning.

At the lower end of this valley is the Falling Springs.
The stream which makes the cascade rises in the Warm
Springs Mountain, about fifteen miles south-west of the
Hot Springs. About three-quarters of a mile from its
source it falls over a rock two hundred feet into the val-
ley below. The sheet of water is broken in its breadth
in two or three places; and the projections of moss-covered
rocks give it the effect of a number of beautiful falls, until
at last it leaps into the chasm of the narrow valley below,
the banks of which are kept perpetually verdant by the
refreshing spray that breaks into numerous fanciful forms,
covering every sprig of fern and grass with countless dia-
monds. Between the sheet of the lower fall and the rock
at" the bottom one may walk across dry ; or standing
outside, he may enjoy the better effect of seeing the
cataract crowned with rainbows.

But before proceeding farther on our journey in this
direction we must revert to the other route by which our
destination — the Hot Springs, etc. — may be reached.
The traveler will better decide on the choice of routes
by a comparison pari passu. The second route, then, to
the Hot Springs leaves the railroad at Millboro', twenty-
nine miles east of Covington ; thence by the mail-coach
to the Hot Springs, twenty miles, via the Bath, Alum and
the Warm Springs. This route, although the staging is
not as good as from Covington, has the advantages of a
scenery even superior to that we have described, and
may be recommended to the traveler on that account.

250 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

He will have the advantage of seeing the singular " Blow-
ing Cave," near the banks of the Cow Pasture river, and
of enjoying the magnificent view from the top of the
Warm Springs Mountain, which is crossed by the turn-
pike at an elevation of nearly fifteen hundred feet above
its base, and 2250 feet above the level of the sea.

THE BLOWING CAVE.

The cave referred to is thus described by Mr. Jeffer-
son, who was curious about the phenomenon it exhib-
ited : " It is in the side of a hill, is of about one hundred
feet diameter, and emits constantly a current of air of
such force as to keep the weeds prostrate to the distance
of twenty yards before it. This current is strongest in
dry, frosty weather, and in long spells of rain, weakest.
Regular inspirations and expirations of air by caverns
and fissures have been probably enough accounted for
by supposing them combined with intermitting fountains,
as they must, of course, inhale air while their reservoirs
are emptying themselves, and again emit while they are
filling. But a constant issue of air, only varying in its
force as the weather is dryer or damper, will require a
new hypothesis. ' '

Since the date of the " Notes on Virginia" there have
been some further explorations of this curiosity. A. flow-
ing and eblntig ?,Y)x\\\g has been discovered on the same
stream with the cave ; and Mr. Jefferson is mistaken in
supposing that the issue of air was constant, as observa-
tions have shown that at times there was no perceptible
current from the cave. At other times the air comes out
with great force. A traveler who, in the heat of sum-
mer, was passing in his carriage, sent a little child to the

SPJf/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 251

mouth of the cave, who let go before it a handkerchief,
which was blown by the current of air over the horses'
heads in the road, a distance of thirty or forty feet. The
dimensions of the cavity, or rather its possible communi-
cations with other subterranean chambers, have not been
thoroughly explored ; and it is said that a small dog who
entered found his way out through some unknown pas-

sage.

THE WARM SPRINGS MOUNTAIN.

After refreshment in this current of air, the traveler is
prepared to make the ascent of the Warm Springs Moun-
tain, and is on his way to a view of some of the finest
scenery in Virginia. The road leads up and across the
mountain for five miles, and as we ascend we look down
upon a succession of deep precipices and glens, environed
by gloomy woods, their obscure bottoms being seen only
fitfully through the foliage. On the summit of the moun-
tain is a table, called " Flag Rock," which is frequently
visited, and which affords an elevation of 2400 feet above
the sea-level. There is a sublime view of parallel ridges
of mountains extending for forty or fifty miles, one be-
hind the other as far as the eye can reach, " like a dark
blue sea of giant billows, instantly stricken solid by Na-
ture's magic wand." A hundred years ago the principal
route of emigration was across this mountain, and it was
then practicable only for pack-horses. The emigrants
came in wagons to "the camping-ground," a spot yet
indicated at the eastern base of the mountain. Thence
they transported to the West their baggage on pack-
horses, while their wagons returned East laden with the
spoils of the hunter.

252 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

THE HOT SPRINGS.

There are nine baths, each supplied with water from
a separate spring, within the grounds of the Hot Springs
hotel. The hottest issue from the ground with a temper-
ature of 110° Fahrenheit.

The effects of these waters prove them to be highly
medicated, and they are known to contain sulphate and
carbonate of lime, sulphate of soda and magnesia, a
minute portion of muriate of iron, carbonic acid gas,
nitrogen gas, and a trace of sulphuretted hydrogen gas.
The waters, taken internally, are anti-acid, mildly aperi-
ent, and freely diuretic and diaphoretic. But when used
as a general bath their effects are great, and excel all
expectation. They equalize an unbalanced circulation,
and thereby restore the different important parts of the
system when torpid — that natural and peculiar sensibility
upon the existence of which their capacity to perform
their several functions and the beneficial action of all
remedies depend. They relax contracted tendons, ex-
cite the action of absorbent vessels, promote glandular
secretion, exert a marked and salutary influence over the
biliary and urinary systems, and often relieve, in a short
time, excruciating pain caused by palpable and long-
standing disease in some vital organ.

The most marked effects of these waters, and those
which have most established their poi)ularity, are in
rheumatism and in cases of torpid liver. \w these cases
their action is almost immediate and remarkable; and it
is said to be a not uncommon spectacle for those who
have with difficulty traveled to the Hot Springs' baths,
crippletl by rheumatism of long standing, to throw away
their crutches after a few days' experience of the "hot

SPJi!/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 253

spout." In fact, the baths are recommended for almost
every case of chronic disease, such as diseases of the
liver, of the stomach and bowels, of the kidneys, rheu-
matism, gout, neuralgia, paralysis, old injuries, etc.

A writer on thermal baths thinks that their hygienical
effects are not fully a])preciated in this country. In the
Eastern World warm and hot baths are habitually taken
by persons in every class and condition of life, from the
northern linjits of Russia to the Tropics. The fact that
they are resorted to in tropical climates as a refreshing
cordial is a sufficient answer to the popular but erroneous
idea that they are debilitating in their effects. The
Romans, indeed, carried this luxury to such a pitch of
vicious extravagance as to bring on it the title of one of
the three great destroyers of human life. But this only
applies to its abuse, and does not deny its salutary ope-
ration when properly and judiciously used. Should
the warm bath ever become general in its use in this
country, whether in the form of the simple plunge bath
or in that of the more complex apparatus of the Russian
or Turkish baths, it will probably produce a more bene-
ficial revolution as to the health and longevity of the
inhabitants than any other sanitary regulation.

It is very certain that the baths of the Hot Springs are
strong stimulants, although the immediate reaction is a
feeling of exhaustion and languor. After being in the
bath ten minutes, the heat of the body has reached that
of the water, and it then no longer feels hot. Then comes
on a sensation of dreamy and languishing consciousness,
halfway "betwixt sleep and wake." This continues
until the bath is ended, and even through the subsequent
stages of the "sweat-box." After this, most men brace
themselves with a julep, and nearly all feel a strong incli-

254 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

nation to sleep. The value of these baths is in the fact
that the whole epidermis is deterged, the pores opened,
the skin powerfully exercised, and the mineral qualities of
the water are absorbed into the blood.

THE WARM SPRINGS.

The Warm Springs, which have given name to the en-
tire valley and to the mountain range which forms one
of its boundaries, are five miles north of the Hot Springs,
at the county seat of Bath county. At this place are several
fine baths, about the temperature of 98° Fahrenheit. One
of these is believed to be the largest warm bath in the
world, and is supplied by warm water rising from the
floor of the bath with such boldness that the immense
bath, an octagon of forty feet in diameter and five feet in
depth, fills in less than three-quarters of an hour. It holds
forty-three thousand gallons, supplied by springs pouring
forth one thousand gallons per minute. The flow of water
from all the springs and baths is estimated at six thousand
gallons a minute, and forms a stream sufficient to drive a
large mill.

The tradition respecting the discovery of the springs is,
that a party of Indians hunting spent a night in the val-
ley. One of their number, discovering the spring, bathed
in it, and being much fatigued, he was induced by the
delicious sensation and warmth imparted by it to remain
in it some time. The next morning he was enabled to
scale the mountain before his companions. As the
country became settled, the fame of the waters gradually
extended, and at first visitors from the low country
dwelt here in rude huts. The property was patented by
Governor Fauquier to the Lewis family in 1760. At

Sm/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 255

present it is owned by a company, who have improved it
by a fine hotel, with other attachments for the accommo-
dation of visitors.

The Warm Springs water taken into the stomach is anti-
acid, diuretic, diaphoretic, aperient and tonic. The bath
equalizes the circulation and stimulates all the secretory
organs. According to the opinion of physicians who have
known the springs, and some of whom have practiced at
the place for years, these waters possess great efficacy, and
may be used with confidence in the following diseases:
chronic and sub-acute gout and rheumatism, paralysis,
dyspepsia, liver diseases, neuralgia, secondary syphilis,
nephritic and calculous disorders, and some diseases
peculiar to females.

The warm bath effects its purpose in an eminent degree,
in most chronic cases, through its agency on the sentient
extremities of the nerves distributed over the surface of
the body. There is an extensive chain of sympathies es-
tablished between the skin and the internal viscera, and
through the medium of this channel agreeable sensations
excited on the exterior are very often communicated to
the central organs and structures themselves.

THE HEALING SPRINGS.

The Healing Springs are three miles distant from the
Hot, and eight miles from the Warm Springs. The
scenes around the springs invite the visitor to numerous
walks and repay him with varied recreations. The val-
ley in which they lie rises on every side amid the coolest
and deepest shades, while the springs' buildings make a
charming little villa shining pleasantly through the green
trees. On one side, the Warm Springs Mountain pierces

256 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the sky with its long bleak boundary, and lower ledges of
rock guard recesses which we shrink from exploring, but
once secluded in which we find ]jlaces of repose and en-
joy a delightful and perfect solitude. At the end of a
short walk is the cascade we have already described. In
the gorge where it falls the sun in his most perpendicular
glories penetrates with shorn rays and distributes a soft
and shaded light. It shines, however, with full splendor
on the snowy wreaths which the falling water has twined
on the great rocks.

A pleasant recreation is here for the angler, who with
pliant rod draws " the gamest of game fish," the speckled
trout, from his native element. The sport is as much that
of hunting as of fishing, as the angler has to steal upcMi
this timid fish, disporting in the clear, crystal stream, with
as silent and stealthy tread as if still-hunting for deer.
He creeps softly along the stream, concealing himself be-
hind a rock, bush or bluff, careful to throw no shadow on
the water ; from his cover he casts his line from a long
pole; the hook is taken at once greedily, if the trout has
not been alarmed ; and the glittering spoil, with its purple
and gold yet reeking with water, is thrown panting on the
green sward. It is a fine sport, but we must avoid noise,
and practite a careful step, or we spoil the catch. The
mountain trout is a gem to look at, and a sweet morsel
for the palate when the last offices of the kitchen have
been done for him.

The waters of the Healing Springs are almost identical
in their chemical analysis to the famous Schlagenbad and
Ems in Germany. Dr. Burke, in a work on the mineral
waters of Virginia, says: "As to the temperature of
this water, it stands alone in the Springs Region, on the
confines of the cold and warm. It is the most delightful

TROUT POOL.

Page 266.

SPRINGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 257

bath that can be imagined. I plunged into it by way of
experiment, and a greater hixury in bathing I have never
enjoyed. It is the only water I have met with of a tem-
perature that may be denominated tepid, and therefore
possesses advantages of no ordinary character. With
the least possible shock to the system it gradually ab-
stracts from it its superabundant caloric."

The temperature of these springs is uniformly 84°
Fahrenheit, and they are not subject to any variation of
quantity or quality. The first employment of their water
and its earliest manifestation of curative powers were in
ill-conditioned ulcers and intractable affections of the
skin. Dr. Hanger, a physician resident at the springs,
and who has made immediate observations of the effects
of the water, testifies: " There are i^w diseases depend-
ent upon, or connected with, morbid secretions of the
glandular structures but what are more or less modified
by its use, while in others it acts as a direct curative
agent. I have known it to cure some hopeless cases of
scrofula, chronic thrush, obstinate cases of cutaneous
disease, neuralgia, rheumatism, ulcers of the lower limbs
of long standing, dyspepsia, etc."

THE BATH ALUM SPRINGS.

These springs are five miles east from the Warm
Springs, and near the eastern base of the Warm Springs
Mountain.

The waters issue from a slatestone cliff of twelve or
fifteen feet high, and are received into small reservoirs
that have been excavated near each other in the rock.
These different springs, or reservoirs, differ essentially
from each other. One of them is a very strong chaly-

22* R

258 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

beate, with but little alum ; another is a milder chaly-
beate, with more alumina; while the others are alum of
different degrees of strength, but all containing an appre-
ciable quantity of iron.

The water is said to be of favorable effect in scrofulous,
eruptive and dyspeptic affections, in old hepatic derange-
ments, chronic diarrhoea, nervous debility, and in vari-
ous uterine diseases, especially in the worst forms of
msenorrhagia, and in fliwr albus, both uterine and vagi-
nal. The high chalybeate and aluminous impregnation
manifests decided tonic and astringent powers.

There is one remarkable circumstance of the watering-
places of Bath county which strikes the visitor, and
which candor compels us to append. They are attrac-
tive rather as resorts for the invalid than for that other
large class of summer visitors who seek to find in a
"season" in the mountains rendezvous of social gay-
ety or places of agreeable recreation. The extent of
invalidism at these baths, and that, too, of the most un-
sightly and deformed kind, is painful to behold; and
the melancholy or repulsive quality which it imparts to
scenes otherwise beautiful and inspiring is quite in con-
trast with the gayety and abandon of other summer
resorts in Virginia, where the votaries of pleasure out-
number the victims of disease. Thermal waters are
suited only to chronic conditions of the system. Thus
we find, at the places we have been describing, invalidism
of the most depraved and despairing kind — conventicles
of cripples and of indescribable specimens of effete and
used-up humanity. Balls and routs are rather out of
place here, although sometimes attempted. But there
are milder recreations, and the invalids sometimes have

SPJ^/NGS OF MONROE AND BATH. 259

their ghastly jokes with each other, from the rheumatic,
who moves rustily "on his hinges," to the other cripple,
whose interpretation of Virginia "hospitality" is being
kept all the time in the hospital.

But the objection we are making about invalids seems
unjust, and we pause. These poor afflicted ones of hu-
manity are to be cared for somewhere, and if they offend
the senses of flushed and insolent health, a more gener-
ous emotion should rebuke a feeling of superiority, which
is but the accident of the animal, and, thankful that
Providence has spared us like afflictions, we should re-
joice that these unfortunates have found succor and
solace in a kind gift of Nature, and should be really
happy, in a profounder sense than that of pampering our-
selves with selfish pleasures, to see them partaking of it.
As a noble benefaction to humanity in the extremest
distresses of disease the thermal waters of Bath county
are probably without a rival in the world ; and this
should be boast enough for them without care for compe-
tition in any other article of attraction.

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM STAUNTON TO IVE YEN'S CAVE.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad— Looking to the Occident— A Wilderness of
Riches— The Town of Staunton— A Glance at its History— Views of the
Surrounding Country— The Virginian " Apology" for Roads— Weyer's Cave
—A Subterranean Diorama—" Formations " and Curiosities— Peculiarities of
Subterranean Nomenclature— '• Washington's Hall "—A Flight of Fancies-
Dimensions of the Cave— Estimate of it as a Natural Wonder— Age of the
Stalactites— The Sublimity of Nature as a Workman.

T';HE town of Staunton is in the track of a conti-
nental thoroughfare. We have already made a
_ passing acquaintance with the Chesapeake and

Ohio Railroad— the great harbinger of " New Virginia,"
the herald of a vast prosperity that is to clothe the sides
of her great mountains with the vivid scenes of prosper-
ity, the colors of cultivation and the embroidery of the
immigrant's home. The history of this road is not without
vicissitudes, and it opens to one of the grandest visions
of commercial power on which Virginia is now straining
her expectations.

This line of road, which reaches unfailing navigation at
Richmond, Norfolk, West Point and Washington on the
Chesapeake Bay, was carried in a general western direction
across the Blue Ridge, and when the war broke out was
halted at Covington (two hundred and ^rvc miles), the
foot of the main chain dividing the waters of the James
from those of the Ohio's tributaries. The enterprise, so
260

FROM STAUNTON TO WETER'S CAVE. 36 1

long cut off and set back by the cloud of war, has at last
enlisted the attention of eminent New York capitalists; and
it is expected that the road will be completed and equip-
ped to the confluence of the Big Sandy and Ohio rivers in
less than two years. At this latter point roads are already
being built and projected to connect it with Cincinnati
via Maysville, with Louisville via Lexington, with Chicago
via Toledo and Xenia, and with Columbus via Ports-
mouth. Through these channels it will reach the whole
Mississippi Valley system and the Pacific railroads. It is
said the distance between Chicago and Washington by
this route is no greater, and can be made in better time,
than by the Pennsylvania or Baltimore and Ohio routes,
while from the central tier of cities the distance is fully
fifty miles shorter to tide-water, and the gradients are
thirty per cent, lighter. The great feature of the business
of the line will be found, however, in its touching nearly
twelve thousand miles of steamboat navigation at its ter-
minus on the Ohio river.

Beside the distant and opulent country which the con-
nections of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad will reach,
it is to be more immediately remembered that it will open
to the tourist and immigrant a new breadth of Virginia
(West Virginia), which now is not only undeveloped, but
almost untrodden. Farming lands, inexhaustible minerals,
lumber, etc., are to be developed and brought into mar-
ket, in what is now an almost unbroken wilderness extend-
ing for some twenty-five or thirty miles on each side of
the road. This breadth of land, which the railroad will
command, and which is now so neglected and uncondi-
tionally surrendered to Nature, is adapted to the production
of all the cereals, roots and grasses known to this latitude.
The various iron ores, in the largest quantities and best

262 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

qualities, will be accessible to the Chesapeake and Ohio
road; the marble quarries, grind and whetstones, flag-
rock and the Burr millstone are all to be found in the
country just described ; the coal-fields, consisting of the
bituminous, splint, peacock, cannel, etc., abound for a
hundred miles on each side of the road ; the tan-barks,
hemlock, chestnut, oak, etc., the white and yew pines,
white oak, locust, black walnut, cherry, curl maple, pop-
lar, etc., are grown throughout West Virginia, and the
rivers of the region are all adapted to the transportation
of lumber. The interest of the lumber is already attract-
ing attention, and affords a new speculation to Virginians.
The calculation has been made to the writer that the
Greenbrier river, for eighty miles north-east of where the
railroad crosses it, traverses a lumber-field ; while it is
said that it would take years to exhaust the country lying
on the Gauley river and its tributaries of even the finest
varieties of its timber.

Resources so vast, with untold prizes in the more dis-
tant Occident, are those which are now beckoning the
best-managed and most sperate enterprise in Virginia.
It has been calculated that the trans-Alleghany portion
of Virginia alone would furnish freights enough to subsist
this line of communication with the East. At present,
however, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad is available
only for the head of the Valley and the Greenbrier
country. Its most important stations at this time are the
White Sulphur Springs and Staunton. But these fortu-
nately command the belt of the mountains most interesting
to the tourist, and are already i)oints of departure for a
large bulk of the summer travel, which we may now hope
to see each year increasing in Virginia, attracted to its
springs, or scattered to explore the curiosities and beauties

FROM STAUNTON TO WETERS CAVE. 263

of the scenery which lie at convenient distances from the
railroad.

THE TOWN OF STAUNTON.

Staunton is among the ancient towns of Virginia; it
was laid off by William Beverly, Esq., and established by
act of Assembly in 1761. It was once the retreat of the
Virginia Legislature in the Revolutionary war, when
Tarleton pursued its members to Charlottesville, and thence
across the Blue Ridge. Before the recent dismemberment
of the State of Virginia, and when there was a prospect
of those western counties which now constitute West Vir-
ginia being filled with population, the advantage of
Staunton, in central position and in security from the
danger of hostile invasions, had been indicated for the
seat of the State government in preference to Richmond.
It was always a rendezvous for political conventions in
the State, where the interests of different sections might
conveniently meet and confer. It is now adorned by
what are the finest monuments of the public benevolence
of Virginia — an asylum for the deaf, dumb, and blind,
and one for the insane, the reputation of the latter for
beneficence and skill being spread over the Union. One
of the best hotels south of the Potomac — the Virginia
House — affords entertainment for the traveler, and a
convenient pause and rest for the tourist, where he may
survey the surrounding country, and decide at leisure upon
the various objects of interest that beckon him in differ-
ent directions. One way we look to the springs ; in
another direction to the scenery of the lower valley; in
another to Weyer's Cave ; and a few miles east, at the foot
of the Blue Ridge, is the historical scene of one of the
last discomfitures of the Confederacy, where a broken

264 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

army took refuge in the woods, and dwindled at last to a
fugitive general with two companions riding for their
lives to the lines of Lee.

The country lying around Staunton is remarkable for
its picturesqueness. It is just on the limits where the
great Valley is determined, and the mountain and the
plain debate. The railroad gives a daily liveliness to the
scene. We see the hastening train puffing graceful vol-
umes of smoke over the green fields, or scourging with
its black lash the screaming side of the mountain as it
emerges writhing and swift on the distant slopes of the
Blue Ridge. The skill and patience of a great enterprise
have at last conquered this barrier, which, hung with blue
mist, was to earlier generations the very welkin of Vir-
ginia, the boundary of excursion and endeavors. The
village of Waynesboro' at the western foot of the ridge is
probably destined to be overgrown with machine-shops
for the great railroad. It already has something of the
clamor of a manufacturing town, and red eyes glow at
night beneath the heavy and disturbed brow of the
mountain.

On leaving any of the railroads in Virginia we are
struck by one remarkable want that afflicts all parts of the
State. It is the distressing uniform want of practicable
country roads. While any other public work is done
under the direction of skillful engineers and by competent
hands, it seems that the method of building roads in Vir-
ginia is the old-time one which belonged to the exigen-
cies of our early backwoods life, and yet survives in its
grotesque absurdity. To build a road now in Virginia
all the male persons living near it who (an handle a hoe
are drafted, and on a given day they turn out rii masse,
every delinquent being fined seventy-five cents for the

FROM STAUNTON TO WETER'S CAVE. 265

benefit of the county. The work is then done after the
slightest fashion : a plough runs two shallow furrows to
mark out the road, the loose stones are thrown out, the
scraper is used a little, and the road is declared finished.
There is no surveying or grading worth talking about.
Such is the average country road in Virginia, and the dirt
turnpike is only a degree better.

It is curious that people, otherwise intelligent, do not
understand the importance of good roads to their pros-
perity. It is said that our Virginia farmers spend about
four times as much power to cart the same amount of
produce as a New England or a Pennsylvania farmer
does — all owing to bad roads ; the stoutest vehicles are
torn to pieces over the stumps and through the quagmires ;
neighborhoods are comparatively isolated from the want
of roads, and all intercourse within spaces of a few miles
is sometimes suspended for weeks from the effects of a
freshet ; and yet the Virginians of our day are satisfied to
plod on in this state of things, and to use, in very sight of
the steam-car, red, mangled roads for their commerce and
travel — unsightly ruts which in an energetic Northern
community would be condemned as eyesores and nuis-
ances ! A gentleman from New York, who recently visited
Virginia to inspect her lands, remarked that there were
three needs of the State : "Roads," "Roads," "Roads."
He spoke truly and with a well-deserved emphasis. If
the State is anxious to invite immigrants and to develop
her prosperity, let her pay some attention to her country
roads as the necessary complement, the feeders, of the
railroads which she is now so ambitiously building in
every direction. As it is, the two classes of conveyance
are in the most striking contrast : the next step from where
speeds the luxurious car often bringing us to the red"

266 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

Stripe of mud or the trail through the woods, called, in
amusing flattery or sometimes to our cruel deception, a
"road."

These remarks apply to much of our travel in Virginia.
Some of the old mountain roads, however, which were
main thoroughfares before the advent of the steam-car,
had to be constructed after some idea of grading, and
by the regular collection of tolls upon them they are
patched up and maintain some sort of decency. But the
best of them are wretched by comparison with the well-
surveyed and sound roads in the Northern States, required
to a great extent there by the denser population, and yet,
however special excuses may disguise the comparison, in-
dicating as much as anything else a superior thrift and
enterprise. From Staunton to Weyer's Cave the traveler
has an old turnpike, rather better than the average country
roads, yet trying and exasperating enough when we con-
sider what litde labor might have given us a really admi-
rable road through this beautiful and picturesque country,
the features of which are the wide hill, the tableland, and
the thin forest in which the great clean trees stand as
colonnades.

weyer's cave.

From Staunton the distance to Weyer's Cave is seven-
teen miles ; the direction north-east, parallel to the Blue
Ridge, and about two miles distant from it. The month
of the Cave is on a hill, and has been enlarged since Ber-
nard Weyer, some time in the year 1S04, chased a deer
into this retreat, the entrance of which was then masked
with bushes, and scarcely admitted the body of the adven-
turous hunter. Now the enlarged entrance is walled; we
go through a convenient doorway into what is called

FROM STAUNTON TO WETER'S CAVE. 267

"the ante-chamber," and yet at the distance of a few
yards we are compelled to pass through a passage con-
tracted to the space of three or four feet square.

We are in a subterranean world — a cosmos of scenes,
cities, monuments, tribunals beneath the ground. The
golden day is left behind us ; it struggles, dying in the
narrow passage through which we entered ; our tapers
stab the mysterious darkness, which retreats with the
reluctance of an evil thing, and at the slightest effort of
our voices a growl of distrust and anger is heard from
chambers into which we are entering. Our imagination
is wrought upon at once by images of the world over-
head. Passing through chambers and galleries of infinite
variety, we are struck by beholding in a dark recess on
one side of the cave a very natural representation of the
moon, as she might be imagined in her last quarter,
rising in the morning. In another part, emerging from
what is called "the Wilderness," a rough passageway
not more than ten feet wide, but towering to the height
of ninety or one hundred feet, we see a surface of rock on
which colors and shades are so disposed as to represent a
foaming cataract, recalling the weird, poetic image of the
giant Water,

" as seized at once
By sudden frost, with all his hoary locks
Stood still."

But a few steps away we have passed a group of
beautiful white stalagmites, which the fancy has desig-
nated as "Bonaparte with his body-guard crossing the
Alps." The journey (our own, not Bonaparte's) so far
is toilsome, uneven, and we are often required to stop
and to practice ungraceful posturcj. The visitor, resolved
on a thorough exploration, must not expect to stroll

268 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

through "rooms and galleries" as in an "Arabian
Nights" entertainment. We are often on our knees,
often defiled with mud, often wounding our hands on the
sharp rock. The way is studded with all the minor curi-
osities of "formations," and we are constantly plucking
grotesque bunches and stems of rock, until our hands are
full of them. But the spoils of visitors are not only in
stalactites and stalagmites. In the deepest apartment, to
which the visitor hesitates to penetrate, affected by its
name, "the Infernal Regions," there is a mass, not
exactly of precious stones, but of the most brilliant white
crystals ; the floor of this sunken and dismal room being
composed mostly of layers of these crystals, in some in-
stances three feet deep. A person who had made a choice
collection of these stones was offered a hundred dollars
for them, which he refused.

A strange and vicious jumble of nomenclature describes
the wonderful and intricate scenes through which we pass.
In some instances the names have originated in such low
imaginations that we cannot transcribe them ; and it is
infamous that the grandest and most beautiful mysteries
of nature should be degraded and insulted, as they often
are, by unclean human wretches, viler than the worm
that turns from the leaf of the rose to moil in the filth
that manures it. But even in the admissible titles the
most absurd anachronisms and follies are perpetrated,
though the contrasts are sometimes not a little amusing.
From "the Dragon's Room," through "the Devil's Gal-
lery," we pass into "Solomon's Temple." Next we are
pointed to "Solomon's Meat-house." "The Radish
Room " is so named because of the form of stalactites
resembling this vegetable. " Ajax's Shield " and " the
Devil's Bake-oven " are adjacent curiosities. "Congress

FROM STAUNTON TO WETER'S CAVE. 269

Hall" and "the Tan-yard" are in close proximity.
Near "Jacob's Ladder" are " Jacob's Tea-table " and
"Jacob's Ice-house." "The Infernal Regions" and
"the Ball-room " are separated by a very thin partition,
through which are transmitted the least sounds from one
to the other. The " Rock of Gibraltar " stands close by
" the Pyramids of Egypt." From " the Garden of Eden "
we go into "the Fly-trap." The " Church " and " the
Lawyer's Office" are in friendly neighborhood. The
"Tower of Babel," an immense mass of solid stalagmite,
thirty-five, feet long, thirty broad and thirty high,
arrests the eye, and just by it is " Bonaparte crossing the
Alps!"

The most magnificent apartment in the whole cave is
undoubtedly " Washington's Hall." It is worthy of the
grand associations of its name, which is singularly appro-
priate from a calcareous formation that stands near the
centre of the room, rising to the height of six or seven
feet, and bearing a striking resemblance to a statue in
classic drapery. A sheet of rock-work runs through the
room, but the fine arch expands high over the head, un-
touched. The dimensions of the apartment are, 257 feet
in length ; breadth, from 10 to 20 feet ; height, ^t^ feet.
It is said that before the war there had been annual illu-
minations on the 4th of July of "Washington's Hall;"
but the lights by which we saw it, though less than on
these occasions, we are inclined to think, were just about
sufficient to produce the best effects. The perspective of
the room is very fine ; the tapers which burn near us are
encumbered by dark shadows, and a dim religious light
falls upon what is about four times the length of an ordi-
nary church. The roof is vaulted and amazing. The
lights which stream below strike with uncertainty upon
23*

270 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

the carved and knotted surface which they barely reach.
The shadows that have flitted upon the walls hesitate in
groups, and rally in the distance like reassured ghosts.
And amid these uncompleted resemblances the imagina-
tion constructs worlds of its own : the distant tapers check-
ing like stars the darkness — the maimed and uncertain
shadows that walk and stumble by our side — the assassin
that stands or shifts or cowers behind the white throne,
in front of which the lights dance — the saffron knotted
arm of the giant grown out of the shapeless rock — the
drip that is ceaseless in our ears, the water-clock that
measures the weird time, ever and ever, — all impress us
that we are withdrawn from the living world, and put us
under the spell of a strange and illimitable enchantment.
In these abodes of darkness, never penetrated by light
except what is artificial, but few creatures are known to in-
habit. Thereisnostanding water in all the cave. A limpid
spring, covered over with a thin pellicle of stalagmite,
flows near the "Fly-trap" and appears to be the source
of a subterranean stream ; and if there are finny inhabitants
in these measureless caverns, they are beyond the reach
of our observation. The floor of the cave is generally a
stiff clay. We were told that bats were sometimes found
to harbor here in winter, their habit being to form clus-
ters pendent from the ceiling after the fashion of bees,
and that when the taper, out of cruel curiosity or barbar-
ous sport, was applied to them or near them, they would
set up a strangely human cry, most pitiful, but would never
let go the hold by which they clung to each other. The
artificial door which opens into the "Antechamber"
excludes wild beasts ; but no doubt they once had here
their refuges and lairs, and fierce eyes might have looked
from the terrible darkness at the adventurous intruder.

FROM STAUNTON TO WE TEE'S CAVE. 27 1

The "main path" by which the visitor traverses the
apartments and galleries of the cave is sixteen hundred
and fifty feet in length. By the more winding paths the
length is quite double this. At all times the air of the
cave is damp, and some precautions should be taken be-
fore entering it, especially to preserve an equilibrium of
temperatures. In all seasons the temperature of the cave
is about 56°, and it is important that the visitor in sum-
mer should become cool before he enters, else he is likely
to be chilled by the sudden loss in the atmosphere of
thirty or more degrees of heat. In winter, of course, we
feel this subterranean air to be warm and comfortable.
In the spring and autumn the atmosphere without and
that within are more nearly equal in temperature ; and
those visiting the cave at other seasons should be careful
to defend themselves by change of clothing, or otherwise,
against the very marked differences they must experience
in degrees both of heat and moisture.

On the whole, Weyer's Cave is one of the greatest sights
in Virginia, and is eminent in its own class of wonders.
The emotions it excites are of the most various descrip-
tion, and though many a single object of sublimity may
produce a stronger impression, it would be difficult to
imagine a combination of objects more rich and powerful
in an aesthetic sense, in which curiosity, delight, appre-
hension, awe, admiration, by turns or together possess
the mind, and in which at the climax Sublimity reigns,
having her residence and domain in darkness, silence
and depths profound. There is no toyish effect, as one
might suppose, in its slightest curiosities ; everything looks
weird, and the taper-lights which exhibit them allow only
that indistinct vision which suggests images to the fancy,
and leaves them unfinished.

273 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

The feeble and broken light secures the best effects.
The hollow reverberations of the lofty arches alarhi us ;
the fanastic shapes keep the imagination in constant ex-
ercise ; and a thought of greatest sublimity possesses us
as we contemplate this ceaseless workshop of silent forces,
going on in grim, straightforward energy, never looking
to right or left upon their visitors as they build their
curious world. The human workman looks sometimes
away from his work ; he eats, he sleeps, he rests, he ob-
serves the spectator. But Nature, here and everywhere —
in its subterranean forge, or in the ripening field, or in
the decaying wood — is incessant ; and this grand thought
comes to us in this underground workshop with a peculiar
and mysterious force. It is the Sphynx, living rather than
monumental. We stand by the patient endeavor that
rears these forms ; we confront in unutterable mystery the
stony-eyed persistence of the secret force that answers no
question, that never glances from a perpetual task, that
heeds no watcher or intruder, doing its work deep down
in earth, while overhead the same law of the unceasing
goes on, and Nature continues

" Her old quiet toil in tlic licart of green
Summer silence, preparing new buds for new blossoms,
And stealing a finger of change o'er the bosom
Of the unconscious woodlands."

How sublimely does Nature work ! Day and night —
when the golden sun swings in the open spaces, and when
the glittering chains of stars have riveted the darkness on
the sky — unceasingly, from a time no man knows to an
end unimaginable, have been wrought the wonders that
we look upon with strained eyes and amazed hearts
among these subterranean monuments of the ages. The

FROM STAUNTON TO WETER'S CAVE. 273

stalactite upon which our hand rests has been building
from a time long before man made the first letter of his-
tory or planted the first seed of his empire — before, as
Professor Rogers has calculated, man was known to exist
in the Biblical chronology. It had commenced to form
before a single tower of man's greatness or of his folly was
raised toward the sky ; it will continue to increase, the
water will percolate and drop, as long as the scroll of the
upper world endures, and while a thousand histories have
been written and consumed upon it. The crowd upon
the imagination becomes painful in the darkened chamber
in which we stand ; it is the sublime carried to the last
point of endurance ; and yet the lesson we take away is
sweet and powerful, for it is the lesson that Nature per-
petually teaches of patience and persistence, when she
shows us every achievement of Time and Labor identified,
the grand, unimpeachable economies of her universe.

PRACTICAL HINTS TO THE VIRGINIA

TOURIST.

iHE route which we would recommend to the
Virginia tourist is, with some exceptions, that
which runs through the preceding pages, serving
as a thread of narrative to hold them together. The ex-
ceptions are those which are suggested for the mere topical
convenience of the traveler.

First to Lynchburg. The Natural Bridge and the
Peaks of Otter may be taken as outlying attractions, each
reached in a day's journey.

Thence to the Alleghany Springs, doubly attractive for
their medicinal water and scenery ; in the latter catalogue,
Puncheon Run Falls and Fisher's View. The Montgom-
ery White Sulphur Springs and the Yellow Sulphur
Springs are near by, and may be compassed in a ride of a
few hours.

Farther to the south-west are three ranges for the tour-
ist, which may be taken in order. From Bristol to the
Natural Tunnel (undoubtedly the greatest wonder of
Virginia). From Glade Springs Station into and through
Tazewell county, an excursion into the Alps of Virginia.
From Christiansburg into Giles county, taking in the
scenery of New river, Salt Pond, Stony creek and Bald
274

PRACTICAL HINTS TO THE TOURIST. 275

Knob. All these three ranges are transverse to the Vir-
ginia and Tennessee Railroad, the points of departure
occurring in the order named : Bristol, Glade Springs
and Christiansburg. We may substitute for the two
latter, Wytheville and Montgomery White Sulphur
Springs.

Returning to the rail, leave it at Coyner's Springs ;
thence to Lexington, Rockbridge Baths, Rockbridge
Alum Springs, etc. We are now in the Valley of Virginia,
and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and stage-lines
branching from it give access in every direction.

No summer traveler in Virginia will omit the Green-
brier White Sulphur Springs.

Thence, at the end of a day's journey and in the four
quarters of the compass, are spas in three counties :
Monroe, Greenbrier and Bath. Return east by the thermal
waters of Bath.

From Staunton go to Weyer's Cave. Thence back to
Staunton and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad,
striking the avenue of continental travel at Charlottesville,
from which we may go north, south, east or west to our
homes.

The route described is, to some extent, on three sides
of a triangle, making its apex at Charlottesville. Beyond
this triangular plot there is, to be sure, much in the State
to attract the tourist ; but he may content himself that
within the boundaries described he has compassed what is
most interesting in Virginia in the measure of its twin
attractions — natural scenery and mineral springs.

Such a tour as we have described may be done in
twenty days if sight-seeing is only concerned, and for an
expense of about one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty dollars, considering the traveler in

276 THE VIRGINIA TOURIST.

motion, or as stopping only single days at the places
named.

The charges at the Virginia watering-places are uni-
formly three dollars per day and seventy dollars for the
month, but with one exception of excess, and that is the
Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, where the rates are
four dollars for the day, and for the month in proportion.

Horses may be hired in the country for a dollar and a
half a day. At Bristol and at Liberty we got good
mounts at that rate. At the springs the charges for horses
and vehicles are higher, but very moderate in comparison
with the liveries of the North. There was a stud of very
stylish horses at the Alleghany Springs, which were hired
for the saddle at one dollar for the first hour and fifty
cents for the succeeding hours, or three dollars for the
whole day. Excellent carriages, seating four, were hired
at five dollars a day.

Let the tourist bring his fishing-rods, and a gun to shoot
deer. A common fault at the springs, and which is per-
haps prevalent at all watering-places, is the idle and dawd-
ling life; but the spas of Virginia have this great and
peculiar advantage — that instead of the visitor being
compelled to walk or ride on a dusty thoroughfare or hunt
a paltry stroll on the beach, he may lose himself in a few
moments in the neighboring forest, where recreation may
be sweetened with perfect solitude, or exercise freshened
with the mental excitement that makes it alike pleasant
and profitable.

One word to visitors from the North. So for from
apprehending any unpleasantness or any coldness of re-
ception in the summer resorts of Virginia, they may be
assured of a welcome much more lively than what pecun-
iary interest habitually extends to its customers. The

PRACTICAL HINTS TO THE TOURIST. 277

writer noticed at all the Virginia springs which he visited,
that wherever a guest hailed from the North there was a
special and sedulous effort on the part of the company, so
far as it might be done without officiousness, to pay such
stranger extraordinary attention, and to reassure his or
her doubts of the hospitality and social generosity of the
South. Such efforts were made in excellent taste, quite
removed from vulgar importunities, and with a purpose
that merits hearty commendation; and, indeed, we have
witnessed no happier occasions of re-establishing the social
reunion of the two sections than at these rendezvous of
pleasure in Virginia, where the inspirations of Nature dis-
pose the mind to forget alike its griefs and passions, and
where invariably attend some of the most genial and
cultivated people of the South. Those persons in the
North who may be induced to turn away from the worn
resorts of the tourist and the invalid in their own section,
to try, if only for novelty, a season in the Virginia moun-
tains, will be received there with the most cordial welcome,
will enjoy the advantages of marked efforts to please them,
and will have the satisfaction of assisting in a social
"reconstruction," in which the people of the South are
prepared to meet them with gracious readiness and with
grateful alacrity. " Let us have peace " is at least written
on every signboard that displays to the Virginia tourist a
fountain of health or an appointment of pleasure.

To the peaceful and richly-endowed spaces of her
springs and mountains and scenery the State invites all
comers; and what Nature has bestowed, a generosity that
does not encumber with its obligations, and a hospitality
that never wearies of its offices, unite to dispense.

WHITE AND BLACK SULPHUR

SPRINGS.

THIS WELL-KNOWN WATEEING-PLACE,

Situated in Botetourt county, Virginia, on the line, and in full
view, of the Virginia & Tenn. Eailroad, is

OPEN FOR THE RECEPTION OF VISITORS.

Persons leaving Baltimore, Washingtom, Richmond, Norfolk and
Petersburg will arrive the same evening at the Springs ; those coming from the
South and West reach the Springs in about ten hours from Bristol.

Visitors desiring to stop, by informing the Conductor, when they strike the Vir-
ginia & Tennessee Railroad, of the fact, will be landed at the platform IMME-
DIATELY OPPOSITE TO THE SPRINGS.

NO STAGING.

The HOTEL being only about two hundred yards from the
platform, makes it a very desirable KESTIN6-PLAGE
for persons from the South going North or re-
turning home at any season of the year.

The undersigned (formerly of Richmond) takes pleasure in informing his
friends and the public generally that he has removed to this place with the intention
of making it his permanent residence, and will spare neither trouble nor expense
to render it pleasant and agreeable to his guests. There are

FIVE SULPHUR SPRINGS,

the medicinal qualities of which are so generally and favorably known that it is
deemed unnecessary to speak of their virtues.

j^S^h. Fine Band of Music will be in attendance during the season.

■ 4»>

SOAUD per Day $3.00

« per Week 16.00

" per Month {of four weeks) 60.00

For a longer period than one month special arrangements will be made.

WM. H. FRY, Proprietor.

CONGRESS SPRING, SARATOGA, N.Y.

CONGRESS SPRING, the most famous of the medicinal springs of Saratoga, was dis-
covered in 1792. It has been successively owned bv the LIVINGSTONS («ho obtained
the property under an early grant or purchase) : GIDEON PU'I NAM, one of the founders
of the village of Saratoga : Dr. JOHN CLARKE, who was the first, in 1820. to bottle the
water for exportation and sale: LYNCH & CLARKE, CLARKE & WHITE, and the
CONGRESS AND EMPIRE SPRING COMPANY, who are the present proprietors,
and by whom the waters are now sent to all parts of the civilized world.

CONGRESS WATER is a purely natural mineral water, cathartic, alterative, and slightly
stimulating and tonic in its efiecls. without producing the debility that usually attends a course
of medicines. It is used with marked success in affections of I'he Liver and Kidneys: and
for Dyspepsia. Gout, Chronic Constipation and Cutaneous Di.seases it is unrivaled. It is
especially beneficial as a general preservative of the tone of the stomach and the purity of the
blood, and a powerful preventive of Fevers and Bilious (Complaints.

The same company are also proprietors of the COLUMBI.AN, a Chalybeate Mineral
Spnng, situated iiear the Congress: and al.so of the famous EMPIRE SPRING, whose
waters, being similar to the Congress, are extensively used, with very beneficial effects, as a
remedy for a great variety of bilious disorders, rheumatic and scrofulous affections, etc

During the many year^ in which rliese waters have been before the public they have en-
joyed a steadily increasing popularity, and they remain at the present day

PURE, UNCHANGED, UNFAILING!

BUY ONLY THE BOTTLED WATERS. NONE GENUINE SOLD ON DRAUGHT.

FOR SALE BY DRUGGISTS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.

Every Genuine bottle 0/ Congress Water has a large " C" raised upon the glass.

0/
Ph

Purchasers -will find a full supply 0/ these Waters, fresh from the Springs, in the hands
t/ie /ollowine: agents : BULLOCK & CRENSHAW. 528 Arch Si & 1:31 Noith St

liila.. Pa. : HURLKUT & EDSALL. 32 Lake St., Chicago, 111. ; F. E. SUIRE & CO.,
cor. of 4lh and Vine Sis., Cincinnati. Ohio: A. A. MELLIER, 600 Main St.. cor. Wash-
ington Avenue, St. Louis, Mo. : E. J. HART & CO., 73,75 & 77 Tchoupitoulas St., N w
Orleans, La.

Orders addressed to us by mail will receive prompt attention.

THE CONGRESS AND EMPIRE SPRING CO.,

Saratoga Springe, N.Y., or 94 Chambers St., New York City.

Virginia Hotel,

— <»>

WM. FRAZIER, Laie ProjrrUUrr Roclcbridge AUm Springs.

CAPT. WM. H. SALE, LaU Supt. RockbHdge. Alum Spriiigs.

The new proprietors of this Leading and Popular Hotel beg to announce
that the same has been remodeled, newly painted and refitted throughout with NEW
FURNITURE AND BEDS, of best quality and at heavy cost. HOT,
WARM AND COLD BATHS; BILLIARDS! (Being the only Hotel in
Staimton with Bathing Rooms and FJilliard Saloon.)

The Bar is stocked with as PURE WINES AND LIQUORS as can be
found in this country. An extensive Livery Stable connected with the House.

Springs visitors and tourists in Virginia will find this an allractive point for spend-
ing a few days or weeks. The great State Institutions established here, the flour-
ishing Seminaries, male and female, the various Churches, the notable healthfulness
of this " City of the Hills," and the picturesque scenery of the great Valley of the
Shenandoah, have lor.g made Staunton a favorite Summer Resort, and the " ViR-
GiNi.\" the leading Hotel of the place.

From this point parties visit the famous "'Weyer's Cave,'' the "Cave of Foun-
tains" the "Natural Ckiinneys'' or "Cyclopean Towers," and "EllioWs Knob,'"
the loftiest mountain peak in Virginia.

H^^ Omnibus to and from Railroad Depht free.

Stage Office, to all points, is kept in the house.

A Book for European Tourists.

HINTS FOR SIX MONTHS IN EUROPE:

BEING THE

Programme of a Tour through Parts of France, Italy, Austria, Saxony, Prus-
sia, the Tyrol, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, England and Scotland.

BY JOHN H. B. LATROBE.
IGnio. Toued paper. Kxtra CTotli. $1.50.

"A volume most delightful and entertaining, as well for the general reader as
for one who, about to embark upon a half year's travel, needs an intelligent view
of a pleasant route to be taken, and of annoyances to be avoided. Mr. Latrobe's
book will be highly appreciated wherever read." — Baltitnore Statesman.

" It is a genuine treasure-book for every new European traveler. . . . And if
this programme should be carefully studied by one about to start on a summer tour
in Europe, and be substantially followed by the tourist, he would secure for himself
manifold more enjoyment, and save himself fi-om countless disappointments and
vexations which he would be sure otherwise to experience." — Boston Evening
Traveler.

" The result is a highly satisfactory volume, which we commend and recommend
to travelers, whether they go abroad or stay at home." — Tlie Fhiladelphia Press.

For sale by all Booksellers, or ivill be sent by fnail, postage /ree, on receipt of
price.

Published by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,

715 and 717 Market St., Philadelphia.

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & Co.

PHILADELPHIA .

Will be sent by mail, post paid, on receipt of the price.

The Albert N''Tanza. Great Basin of the JVile^
and Explorations of the Nile Sources. By Sir Samuel White
Baker, M. A., F. R. G. S., &c With Maps and numerous Illus-
trations, from sketches by Mr. Baker. New edition. Crown 8vo.
Extra cloth, $3.

" It is one of the most interesting and
instructive bof>ks of travel ever issued ;
and this edition, at a reduced price, will
bring it within the reach of many who
have not before seen it." — Bostonjourtuil.

" One of the most fascinating, and cer-
tainly not the least important, books of
travel published during the century."
Boston Eve. Tratiscript.

The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia., and the Sword-
Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. By Sir Samuel White Baker,
M. A., F. R. G. S., &c. With Maps and numerous Illustrations,
from original sketches by the Author. New edition. Crown
8vo. Extra cloth, $2.75.

" We have rarely met with a descriptive
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written as Baker's Abyssinia, and we cor-

dially recommend it to public patronage.
... It is beautifully illustrated." — N. O.
Times.

Eight Tears'

Wandering

in Ceylon. By Sir
Samuel White Baker, M. A., F. R. G. S., &c With Illustra-
tions. i6mo. E.\tra cloth, $1.50.

" Mr. Baker's description of life in Cey-
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of its birds and beasts and insects and rep-
tiles, of its wild forests and dense jungles,
of its palm trees and its betel nuts and in-
toxicating drugs, will be tound very in-
teresting. The book is well written and
beautifully printed." — Bali. Gazette.

" Notwithstanding the volume abounds
with sporting accounts, the natural history
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not neglected. It is a valuable addition to
the works on the East Indies." — J'MUa.
Lutheran Observer.

PUBLICATIONS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT &= CO.
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ments, expressed in a concentrated, com
pact style which cannot fail to be attractive,
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Granville de Vigne; or.. Held in Bondage. A

Tale of the Day. By Ouida, author of " Idalia," " Tricotrin," &c

l2mo. Cloth, $2.

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Cloth, %2.

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more," " Tricotrin," &c. i2mo. Cloth, $2.

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The Old Matti'selle's Secret. After the German

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work has the minute fidelity of the author

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litt, author of "The Old Mam'selle's Secret," "Gold Elsie,"
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Over Yonder. Erom the German of E. Marlitty

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Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Moun-

tains. By A. K. McClure. Illustrated. i2mo. Tinted paper.
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North A nierican.

'• We have never seen a book of Western
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agreeable and charming style." — Bradford
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" The book is full of useful information.'
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" Let him wlu> would have some propel
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PUBLICATIONS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT <Sr* CO.

Our Own Birds of the United States. A Farniliar

Natural History of the Birds of the United States. By William
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the Academy of Natural Sciences. With numerous Illustrations.
l6mo. Toned paper. Extra cloth, $1.50.

" The text is all the more acceptable to
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we know them at once as old friends and
companions. We commend this unpre-
tending little book to the public as pos-
sessing an interest wider in its range but
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Gilbert White's Natural History of Sel-
borne.'— A'. V. Even. Post.

" The w hole book is attractive, supply-
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rangement and system that will often make
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"To the youthful, 'Our Own Birds' is
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oughly acquainted with the birds of the
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We therefore feel no hesitation in com-
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neatly printed and bound, and is profusely
illustrated." — New York Herald.

Few Friends, and How They Amused Them-

selves. A Tale in Nine Chapters, containing descriptions of Twenty
Pastimes and Games, and a Fancy-Dress Party. By M. E. Dodge,
awthor of " Hans Brinker," &c. i2mo. Toned paper. Extra
cloth, $1.25.

" This convenient little encyclopaedia
strikes the proper moment most fitly. The
evenings have lengthened, and until they
again become short parties will be gath-
ered everywhere and social intercourse
will be general. But though it is compar-
atively easy to assemble those who would
be amused, the amusement is sometimes
replaced by its opposite, and more resem-
bles a religious meeTmg than the juicy en-
tertainment intended. The ' Kew Friends'
describes some twenty pastimes, all more

or less intellectual, all provident of mirth,
requiring no preparation, and capable ol
enlisting the largest or passing off with the
smallest numbers. The description is con-
veyed by examples that are themselves
'as good as a play.' The book deserves
a wide circulation, as it is the missionary
of much social pleasure, and demands no
more costly apparatus than ready wit and
genial disposition." — Philada. North
A merican.

Cameos from English History. By the author of

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.Tinted paper. Cloth, $1.25 ; extra cloth, $1.75.

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The Diamond Edition of the Poetical Works of

Robert Burns. Edited by Rev. R. A. Willmott. New edition.
With numerous additions. i8mo. Tinted paper. Fine cloth, %\.

"This small, square, compact volume is
printed in clear type, and contains, in three
hundred pages, the whole of Burns' poems,
with a glossary and index. It is cheap,

elegant and convenient, bringing the works
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within the means of every reader." — Bos-
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J. B. Lippiiicott & Co.'s Magazines.

— • ^•> ■ —

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The SUNDAY MAG.'^ZINE will continue to be instructive on religious sub-
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GOOD WORDS.

Profusely Illustrated. Edited by NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D.

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GOOD WORDS is in every respect a first-class monthly, its contributions being
from the pens of the most able writers of England. It is now by far the most pop-
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contents embrace Novels, Tales, Sketches of Travel, Papers on* Science and Art,
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Profusely Illustrated, Edited by GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D.

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GOOD WORDS FOR THE YOUNG is a beautifully illustrated Magazine
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Oj" for sale at all the book and news sto'res.

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J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.. Publishers,

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WASHINGTON HOUSE,

Cor. eighth AND CHURCH STS.,

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA.

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♦ ♦ ♦

Offers Accommodations to the Traveling Public

Unsurpassed by any Hotel in Virginia.

Low Charges, Good Fare and Careful Attention.

ji@-OMNIBUS FREE.=^H

THE ORANGE, ALEXANDRIA AND MA-
NASSAS RAILROAD.

Passing out of \^ashington City, the main line of this road extends
through Piedmont Virginia, celebrated for fertile soil and unsurpassed
climate — a district made famous by events of the recent war — Ma-
nassas, the Rappahannock, Culpeper, the Rapidan, Orange, Gordons-
ville, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia, and to Lynch-
burg, connecting there to all the South-west.

At Gordonsville, going south, and at Charlottesville, northbound,
connection is made with the Chesapeake and Ohio R. R. \.o Richmond,
and all points in the Atlantic States south, and westward to Staunton,
Lexington, National Bridge, and all the notable Virginia Springs.
The Greenbrier White Sulphur is reached by continuous rail in twenty-
four hours from New York City.

At _ Manassas, a branch makes off over a beautiful and fertile
country through a gap of the Blue Ridge, and sixty-eight miles up the
Valley of Virginia to Harrisonburg, one hundred and forty-five miles
from Washington, passing the best farming and grass lands of the State.

The comfort and safety of the trains on this road are well known
and appreciated by the traveling public.

May. .870. I- M. BROADUS, G. T. A.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

The undersigned, Lessees of the

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS,

announce that these celebrated Springs, so long and
favorably known for their valuable Alterative
Waters, their charming summer climate, and the
large and fashionable crowds that annually resort to
them, will be opened for the season of 1870 on the

FIFTEENTH DAY OF MAY.

The location is 2000 feet above the level of the sea,
affording entire relief from summer prostrating heats.

Their capacity for accommodation is from 1500 to
2000 persons.

I^^Prof. Rosenberger's Celebrated Band will be in
attendance to enliven the Lawns and Ball-rooms.

\^ Masquerade and Fancy Balls will be given as
usual through the season.

|;^^An extensive Livery will be kept on the premises.

HOT AND WARM SULPHUR BATHS, so
efficacious in many cases, always at the command of
the visitor.

Neither effort nor expense will be spared to make
these Springs merit a patronage as liberal as they have
heretofore so constantly received.

t^^The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad is now
completed and running to the Springs, so tliat travelers
from every section of the Union can now reach them
by continuous railroad lines.

^^ATeleg'raphic line is in operation to the Springs.

Board per week $3S

" month of 30 days 90

Children and Colored Servtnts, half price.

White Servants, according to the accounnodntions furnished.

PEYTONS L CO.

White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., May 5, 1870.

OCT 10 1929

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