THE SULPHUR SPRINGS OF VA., AND THEIR VICINITY. 149 



the usu fruct, to Baltimore tov.'nsmen, Messrs. Ridgely, Hoffman, Barney, La- 

 trobe, Bonaparte, P. Thomas, Patterson and Glenn. On a site yet more elevated, 

 overlooking the whole square, stand the still more considerable and costly estab- 

 lishments of two wealthy Carolinians, Singleton and Hampton. Any one of them 

 is good enougJi, I should think, " for a prince," as must be anything that is good 

 enough for a Hampton. 



When the dinner-bell sounds here, it is amusing to see how simultaneously all 

 these cabins are emptied of their tenants, and how even all the dear ladies come 

 flocking to be fed, like pigeons called down from the dove-cot. Well, Sir, after 

 all, what would this world be worth but for them ? for 't is they that "give to 

 life its lustre and perfume, and we are weeds without them." 



Several Baltimoreans are here Avith and some without their families ; among 

 the former I see the distinguished Senator Johnson. Judge Cabell is here too, 

 on his way to the Supreme Court. Here, too, is the venerable Judge Brooke, 

 eighty-four years old, of the good old E,evolutionary army breed — straight as an 

 Indian — keeping well-up in his costume with the modern cut, except that he 

 would " go his death" upon the ivhite cravat ! — emblem of the old school to which 

 he belongs: in deportment and manners being courteous and communicative, 

 without giving or taking unseemly liberties. Here, too, is Governor Coles, full of 

 intelligence and interesting reminiscences of the times of Madison and Monroe, 

 those palmy days of ihe Republic — together with his amiable family; and Dr. 

 Mercer, a quiet, unostentatious, exceedingly well-informed and affable millionaire 

 planter of Mississippi — resident of New-Orleans in winter, where and with 

 whom Mr. Clay has spent his last two. Mew.— What think you of a plantation 

 with four or five hundred cattle, eight hundred swine, and yet not making more 

 than half its supply of provisions ? 



I must not close this rude sketch without a word about the roads and the con- 

 veyances. You leave Baltimore at Ik A. M. on the railroad, reach Winchester 

 that evening, and take Parish & Ficklin's superior line of post-coaches by a 

 Macadamized turnpike one hundred miles up the Valley of Staunton, sup- 

 ping and lodging next night comfortably at Cloverdale. The second morning 

 you breakfast at the " Warm Springs" on " mountain •nni^<o?i"-chops, venison 

 steaks, and bread in all possible and excellent varieties — French-rolls, biscuit^ 

 waffles, flannel-cakes, muffins and Indian-corn bread, in the cook only knows 

 how many forms, from egg-pone and batter-cakes to griddle-cakes and " scratch- 

 backs !" Don't forget, if you have never seen it, to run and look and won- 

 der at the warm bath, 9S° Fahrenheit, forty feet diameter and six feet deep, 

 if so deep you like to have it, and withal as clear as crystal and sparkling as 

 Champagne ! But mind, if once you plunge into it, there is no knowing when 

 you will get away. Mr. Jefferson came near dreaming his life away in it, so 

 delicious did he find it. Folks usually postpone, until they return from the other 

 Springs, to linger there for weeks, until Jack Frost comes along in earnest to 

 dispel the fogs and fevers of the low grounds." I enjoyed it for ten days en pas- 

 sant. If you are stiff in your joints, or drawn up with rheumatiz, you can stop 

 and get limbered, and straightened out and set up, at Dr. Goode's Hot Spring, 

 temperature 108° ! Surely it must come from somewhere very near to Old Nick's 

 furnace ! 



White Sulpiiub, Grcenbriar County, August 4, 1847. 



Turning back for a general review of the habits and husbandry of the region 

 through which I have passed, from Fredericksburg to Lewisburg, the county 

 town of Grcenbriar ; and having regard to its climate and capabilities, I should 

 say that as Nature forms it, it offers ample reward for skillful industry and 

 every resource for social enjoyment. Its inhabitants arc urbane, hospitable 

 and upright ; but, though far from being deficient in knowledge of the general 

 progress of agricultural improvement, in its implements and modes, it must yet 

 in truth be said that not many appear to be sufliciently impressed with the im- 

 portance of studying the principles pf that most important of all the arts on 

 which the mind and labors of civilized man can be employed.* In truth they 



[* Yet it is, coufes.-5cdly, by a better understanding of these principles — by the increasing 

 knowledge of the u-h>j and the wherefore as to the nature of the soils, the constituents of 

 (341) 



