RETURN FROM PITTSBURG 311 



rooms, and served as ball-room and assembly-room for 

 the guests at the baths. There were no other public 

 buildings here. Over the only spring used as a bath 

 there is a thin boxed covering, and other bathing- 

 places are merely stuck about with branches of trees. 

 The number of guests assembled here during the past 

 August ran to 560 ; but very few of them came for 

 their health or the water ; they seek society and dis- 

 traction, and make little journeys on horse-back of 

 2-300 miles, for frequently acquaintances living very 

 far apart have appointments fixed for Bath-town. At 

 this time there come many merchants and keepers of 

 taverns and boarding-houses, who stay during the 

 season to serve the guests, but these notwithstanding 

 find few conveniences here. The public amusements 

 are horse-racing, play, and dancing ; at the balls one or 

 at most two blacks supply the company with woful 

 horn-pipes and jigs. The inhabitants of the place 

 themselves possess almost nothing but their cabins 

 which they let to the visitors, living in winter on what 

 they can earn during the ' genteel season.' They are 

 besides very indolent and careless, so much so that 

 nobody has taken the trouble to set out gardens and 

 attempt vegetables and other things they need, but 

 they all prefer to bring in everything from abroad. 

 The season was now over + and the merchants gone ; 

 and at this time, what seems incredible for a place in 

 Virginia, not a pipe of tobacco was to be had in the 

 whole town. 



Among the thin-shale sandstones lying about the 

 springs, I found by accident two showing plain im- 

 pressions of pectinites and entrochites ; I could find no 

 more and these which I had happened upon were un- 

 heard of wonders to the inhabitants. 



