310 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



pensity for dissipation and change, attract more guests 

 to these springs than any established proofs of their 

 curative qualities. At Augusta (also in the farther 

 and mountainous part of Virginia, but 120 miles south 

 of here) there are also some springs, similar to these 

 in taste and content, but said to be greatly warmer 

 so warm that it is unpleasant to bathe in them, so warm 

 that an egg (but only after 24 hours) becomes eatable 

 if immersed in them. At Augusta the houses are not 

 so numerous as here and therefore there are fewer 

 visitors. 



The little place grown up about these springs is 

 called Bath-town, which is as yet in poor circum- 

 stances, made up of little, contracted, wooden cabins or 

 houses scattered about without any order, most of 

 them with no glass in the windows, being only sum- 

 mer residences. Not a building of stone, although 

 stone is to be had there in plenty. The place lies in 

 that part of Virginia called New Virginia, because as 

 a frontier and mountain region it was later settled ; 

 the land belonged to the well-known Scottish Lord 

 Fairfax, recently dead, who possessed great estates in 

 land here and about Winchester. This singular man 

 withdrew in his youth from his father-land, where 

 gifts of fortune and posts of honor were in store for 

 him, and retired to the solitudinous woods of America 

 to live his own life in his own way. A disinclination 

 for European pomp and the social constraints, and an 

 inordinate fondness for solitude and love of the chase 

 brought him to this region. His house near Win- 

 chester was of two rooms only ; he had another here 

 at Bath-town, whither he was accustomed to come for 

 the cure, which was the largest in the place, had four 



