MONTHLY 



JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



VOL, III. SEPTEMBER, 1847. NO. 3. 



REMARKS ON THLNGS IN GENERAL No. II. 



EY A RAMBLER I.N' THE MOUNTAINS OF VIRGINIA, 



WU/i i\'otes bij the Editor of The Fanners' Library, to zchom they were addressed. 



Warm Spkings, Va., July 18, 1847. 

 DKSCRIPTION OF MONTPKLIER. 



Your readers were conducted in my Jast, if they had the patience to fol- 

 low me, to Mojitpelicr, the residence of Doctor P. Thornton, in Rappahannock 

 County, Virginia *, and there might any valetudinarian — or well man either — 

 be well content to dwell, if in pursuit only of a climate as salubrious as the 

 far-famed Montpcllier in France — without having any occasion or desire for 

 the drugs, verdigris, perfumed waters and apothecaries for which the latter is 

 distinguished as well as for its healthy air. During three weeks of delightful 

 sojourn — realizing all that tradition tells us of the generous hospitality and good 

 living of old Virginia in her greatest prosperity — while you were being fried, 

 roasted and stewed, with the mercury rising well Up toward 100, it rarely got 

 up to SO at Montpelier — foiling always at night below the mark that inclines 

 you to pull up at least one blanket before dayligiit. 



As to the Establishment "per se," and in connection with the estate of 1,000 

 acres attached to it, all under view ; and the surrounding scenery, bounded on 

 all sides, within a few miles, by an irregular, undulating mountain outline, it is 

 but a just tribute to the taste that selected and improved it as a place of resi- 

 dence, to say that in my recent rambles from the Crescent City on the Mis- 

 sissippi to the " Hights of Abraham," on the St. Lawrence, I have seen no 

 establishment that combined so much pleasantness and natural beauty of climate 

 and scenery. 



A better idea may be had of the site itself by supposing a natural mound of 

 about Iv/o acres on its summit, sloping away on all sides to ten or twelve at its 

 base, situate in the center of a lake of oblong figure — covering altogether an in- 

 tervale of about iwo thousand acres of flat land. As the water forced its way and 

 escaped througli a fissure in the mountains, this mound doubtless showed itself, 

 at first a small ir-land in its midst — and finally, when the water had subsided, 

 leaving a bold stream only to traverse tiie Valley on its way to the Rappahannock, 

 there stood this beautiful mound, fitted by Is'ature for the residence of the pro- 

 prietor of the whole intervale. That proprietor was the lather of the present own- 

 er, and of a numerous family — his possessions here embraced ten thousand acres 

 in a body, v/hereof this estate i? all lliat remains in their hf-nds ; sharing in this 

 respect the common futc of the large domains of the old wealthy and high-hred 

 families of Virginia, at the close of the Revolution. The mountain sides in view 

 of Monti)elier arc covered with trees of almost all the kinds that lend to our au- 



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