growing up, as if trying to efface the horrors of the wreck. The scene must have been dreadful to those who first arrived at the spot, after the event. The house, safe on its grass plot; its door standing wide; the beds and clothes of the family showing that they had sprung up from sleep, and so fled from the only place where they would have been safe; no one there; a deadly silence brooding over the quiet spot, and chaotic desolation around;--it is no wonder that the house remains deserted, and the valley untenanted.
Some miles further on, the traveller may witness what comfortable cheer may be afforded by dwellers in the wilderness. All travellers in the White Mountains know Ethan A. Crawford's hospitality. He cannot be said to live in solitude, inasmuch as there is another house in the valley: but everybody is aware how little sociability there is between two dwellers in a lonely place. One may enjoy life there; and several may get on well; but two never: and Ethan Crawford's is a virtual solitude, except for three months in the year. The fate of the Willeys was uppermost in our minds when we arrived; and we were little prepared for such entertainment as we found. After a supper of fine lake trout, a son of our host played to us on a nameless instrument, made by the joiners who put the house together, and highly creditable to their ingenuity. It was something like the harmonica in form, and the bagpipes in tone; but, well-played as it was by the boy, it was highly agreeable. Then Mr.
Crawford danced an American jig, to the fiddling of a relation of his.
The dancing was somewhat solemn; but its good faith made up for any want of mirth. He had other resources for the amusement of his guests: a gun wherewith he was wont to startle the mountain echoes, till, one day, it burst: (leaving nothing for us to do but to look at the fragments:) also, a horn, which, blown on a calm day, brings a chorus of sweet responses from the far hill sides. Retirement in such a valley, and with such resources as Ethan Crawford's, is attractive enough to the passing traveller; and, to judge by the countenance of the host, anything but dispiriting to those who have made trial of it.
No solitude can be more romantic than that at the mouth of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky; so called, not because any mammoth-bones have been found there, but because it is the largest explored cave in the world. I was told, not only by the guides, but by a gentleman who is learned in caves, that it can be travelled through, in different directions, to the extent of sixty miles. We could not think of achieving the entire underground journey; but we resolved to see all we could; and, for that purpose, preferred devoting the half of two days to the object, to one entire day, the weariness of which would probably curtail our rambles.
After a most interesting and exciting journey of nearly two nights and a day from Nashville, Tennessee, our party, consisting of four, arrived at Bell's hotel, twelve miles from the cave, at half-past seven, on a bright May morning. We slept till one o'clock, and then set off in a stage and four for the cave. My expectations had been so excited, that every object on the road seemed to paint itself on my very spirit; and I now feel as if I saw the bright hemp fields, the oak copses, the gorgeous wild flowers, and clear streams, running over their limestone beds, that adorned our short journey.
The house at the cave stands on the greenest sward that earth and dews can produce; and it grows up to the very walls of the dwelling. The well, with its sweep,--a long pole, with a rope and bucket at one end, laid across the top of a high post,--this primitive well, on the same plot of turf, and the carriage in which two travellers--young men--had just arrived, were the only occupiers of the grass, besides the house.
We lost no time in proceeding to the cave. The other party of travellers and the guides carried lamps, and grease to trim them with; an ample supply of both; for the guides know something of the horrors of being left in darkness in the mazes of a cave. We went down a steep path into a glen, from which the golden sunlight seemed reflected, as from water; so bright was the May verdure. The guides carried our cloaks; which seemed to us very ridiculous; for we were panting with the heat. But, when we had wound down to the yawning, shadowy cave, with its diamond drips and clustering creepers about the entrance, a blast of wintry wind gushed from it, and chilled our very hearts. I found it possible to stand on one foot, and be in the midst of melting heat; and leaning forward on the other, to feel half frozen. The humming birds must be astonished, when they flit across the entrance, to meet winter in the middle of the glen, and emerge into summer again on the other side.
The entrance of the cave serves as an ice-house to the family of the guide. They keep their meat there, and go to refresh themselves when relaxed by the heat. The temperature is delightful, after the first two or three minutes; and we were glad to leave our cloaks by the way side.
The ladies tied handkerchiefs over their heads, and tucked up their gowns for the scramble over the loose limestone; looking thereby very picturesque, and not totally unlike the witches in Macbeth. The gloom, the echo of the footsteps, the hollow sound of voices, the startling effect of lights seen unexpectedly in a recess, in a crevice, or high overhead,--these impressions may be recalled in those who have wandered in caves, but can never be communicated to those who have not. It is in vain to describe a cave. Call it a chaos of darkness and rocks, with wandering and inexplicable sounds and motions, and all is done.
Everything appears alive: the slowly growing stalactites, the water ever dropping into the plashing pool, the whispering airs,--all seem conscious. The coolness, vastness, suggestions of architecture, and dim disclosures, occasion different feelings from any that are known under the lights of the sky. The air in the neighbourhood of the waterfall was delicious to breathe; and the pool was so clear that I could not, for some time, see the water, in a pretty full light. That Rembrandt light on the drip of water, on the piled rocks, and on our figures,--light swallowed up before it could reach the unseen canopy under which we stood, can never be forgotten. Milton's lake of fire might have brought the roof into view:--nothing less.
The young guides, brothers, were fine dashing youths, as Kentucky youths are. They told us some horrible tales, and one very marvellous story about darkness and bewilderment in the labyrinth of the cave. They told us (before they knew that any of us were English) that "all the lords and lights of England had been to see the cave, except the king." While they were about it, they might as well have included his majesty.
Perhaps they have, by this time; good stories being of very rapid growth. They reported that ladies hold on in the cave better than gentlemen. One of the party supposed this was because they were lighter; but the guide believed it was owing to their having more curiosity.
I was amused at their assurances about the number of miles that we had walked; and thought it as good a story as any they had told us: but, to my utter amazement, I found, on emerging from the cave, that the stars were shining resplendently down into the glen, while the summer lightning was quivering incessantly over the "verdurous wall" which sprang up to a lofty height on either hand. There seemed to be none of the coolness of night abroad. A breathless faintness came over us on quitting the freshness of the cave, and taught us the necessary caution of resting awhile at the entrance.
Supper was ready when we returned; and then the best room was assigned to the three ladies, while the gentlemen were to have the loft. We saw the stars through chinks in our walls; but it was warm May, and we feared no cold. Shallow tin-pans,--milk-pans, I believe,--were furnished to satisfy our request for ewer and basin. The windows had blinds of paper-hanging; a common sort of window-blind at hotels, and in country places. Before it was light, I was wakened by a strong cold breeze blowing upon me; and at dawn, I found that the entire lower half of the window was absent. A deer had leaped through it, a few weeks before; and there had been no opportunity of mending it. But everything was clean; everybody was obliging; the hostess was motherly; and the conclusion that we came to in the morning was that we had all slept well, and were ready for a second ramble in the cave.
We saw, this day, the Grotto and the Deserted Chamber. Few visitors attempt the grotto, the entrance to it being in one part only a foot and a half high. We were obliged, not only to go on hands and knees, but to crawl lying flat. It is a sensation worth knowing, to feel oneself imprisoned in the very heart of a mountain, miles from the sun-light, and with no mode of escape but the imperceptible hole which a child might block up in five minutes. Never was there a more magnificent prison or sepulchre. Whether the singularity of our mode of access magnified to our eyes the beauties we had thereby come into the midst of, or whether Nature does work most _con amore_ in retired places, this grotto seemed to us all by far the most beautiful part of the cave. The dry sandy floor was pleasant to the tread, after the loose limestone; the pillars were majestic; the freaks of nature most wild and elegant.
The air was so fresh and cool that, if only a Rosicrucian lamp could be hung in this magnificent chamber, it would be the place of all others in which to spend the sultry summer's day,--entering when the beauties of the sunrise had given place to glare, and issuing forth at the rising of the evening star.
On our way to the Deserted Chamber, we cut off half a mile by a descent through a crevice, and a re-ascent by another. We were presently startled by the apparition of two yellow stars, at what appeared an immeasurable distance. In this cave, I was reminded, after a total forgetfulness of many years, of the night-mare visitations of my childhood; especially of the sense of infinite distance, which used to terrify me indescribably. Here, too, the senses and the reason were baulked. Those two yellow stars might have been worlds, many millions of miles off in space, or,--what they were,--two shabby lamps, fifty yards off. A new visitor had arrived; and the old man of the solitary house had brought him down, in hopes of meeting our larger party. One of the gentlemen presently slipped on the loose stones, and fell into a hole, with his back against a sharp rock; and he seemed at first unable to rise. This was the only misadventure we had; and it did not prove a serious one. He was somewhat shaken and bruised, and rendered unwilling to go with the rest to the Bottomless Pit: but there was no eventual injury. He and I staid in the Deserted Chamber, while our companions disappeared, one by one, through a crevice, on their way to the pit. The dead silence, and the glimmer of our single lamp, were very striking; and we were more disposed to look round upon the low-roofed apartment, piled with stones as far as the eye could reach, than to talk. I tried to swallow a piece of bread or cake, very like a shoe-sole, and speculated upon these piles of stones;--by whose hand they were reared, and how long ago. There is much cane--doubtless, once used for fuel--scattered about the deeper recesses of the cave; and these stones were evidently heaped up by human hands: and those not Indian. It is supposed that this cave was made use of by that mysterious race which existed before the Indians, and of which so many curious traces remain in the middle States of the West; a race more civilized, to judge by the works of their hands, than the Indians have ever been; but of which no tradition remains.
Our party returned safe, and refreshed by a draught of water, better worth having than my luncheon of bread. When we left the cave, our guides insisted upon it that we had walked, this morning, ten or eleven miles. I pronounced it four. Others of the party said seven; and the point remains unsettled. We all agreed that it was twice as much as we could have accomplished in the heat above ground; and perhaps the most remarkable walk we had ever taken in our lives. Our hostess was with us the whole time; and it was amusing to see in her the effect of custom.
She trod the mazes of this cave just as people do the walks of their own garden.
The gush of sun-light pouring in at the mouth of the cave, green and soft, as we emerged from the darkness, was exquisitely beautiful. So was the foliage of the trees, after the rigid forms which had been printing themselves upon our eye-sight for so many hours. As we sat at the entrance, to accustom ourselves to the warm outward air, I saw, growing high in the steep woods, the richest of kalmias, in full bloom. One of the gentlemen ran to bring me some; and when it came, it was truly a feast to the eye. How apt are we to look upon all things as made for us!
How many seasons has this kalmia bloomed?
We were truly sorry to bid farewell to our motherly hostess, and her "smart" sons. Theirs is a singular mode of life; and it left nearly as vivid an impression on our minds as their mighty neighbour, the cave. If any of us should ever happen to be banished, and to have a home to seek, I fancy we should look out for a plot of green sward, among flowering kalmias, near the mouth of an enormous cave, with humming birds flitting about it by day, and fire-flies and summer lightning by night.
In strong contrast in my mind with such a scene as this, stands a gay encampment in the wilderness, at which I soon after arrived. The watering places among the Virginia mountains are as new and striking a spectacle as the United States can afford. The journeyings of those who visit them are a perpetual succession of contrasts. I may as well give the whole journey from Cincinnati to the eastern base of the Alleghanies.
We left Cincinnati at noon on the 25th of June: as sultry a summer's day as ever occurs on the Ohio. The glare was reflected from the water with a blinding and scorching heat; and feather fans were whisking all day in the ladies' cabin of our steam-boat. Hot as it was, I could not remain in the shady cabin. The shores of the Ohio are so beautiful, that I could not bear to lose a single glimpse between the hills. It is holiday-travelling to have such a succession of pictures as I saw there made to pass noiselessly before one's eyes. There were the children running among the gigantic trees on the bank, to see the boat pass; the girl with her milk-pail, half way up the hill; the horseman on the ridge, or the wagoner with his ox-team pausing on the slope. Then there was the flitting blue jay under the cool shadow of the banks; the butterflies crossing the river in zig-zag flight; the terrapins (small turtle) floundering in the water, with their pert little heads above the surface; and the glancing fire-flies every night.
On the afternoon of this day, we were met by the storm which swept over the whole country, and which will be remembered as having caused the death of the son of Chief-Justice Marshall, at Baltimore, on his way to his dying father. I watched, from the deck, the approach of the storm.
First, the sky, above the white clouds, was of a dark grey, which might have been mistaken for the deep blue of twilight. Then a mass of black clouds came hurrying up below the white. Then a flash escaped from out of the upper grey, darting perpendicularly into the forest; and then another, exploding like the four rays of a star. I saw the squall coming in a dark line, straight across the river. Our boat was hurried under the bank to await it. The burst was furious: a roaring gust, and a flood of rain, which poured in under our cabin door, close shut as it was. All was nearly as dark as night for a while, and all silent but the elements. Then the day seemed to dawn again; but loud peals of thunder lasted long, and the lightning was all abroad in the air. Faint flashes now wandered by; and now a brilliant white zig-zag quivered across the sky. One splendid violet-coloured shaft shot straight down into the forest; and I saw a tall tree first blaze and then smoulder at the touch. A noble horse floated by, dead and swollen. When we drew out into the middle of the river, it was as if spring had come in at the heels of the dog-days; all was so cool and calm.
The company on board were of the lowest class we ever happened to meet with in our travels. They were obliging enough; as everybody is throughout the country, as far as my experience goes; but otherwise they were no fair specimens of American manners. One woman excited my curiosity from the beginning; but I entertained a much more agreeable feeling towards her when we parted, after several days' travelling in company. Her first deed was to ask where we were going; and her next, to take my book out of my lap, and examine it. Much of the rest of her time was occupied in dressing her hair, which was, notwithstanding, almost as rough as a negro's. She wore in her head a silver comb, another set with brilliants, and a third, an enormous tortoiseshell, so stuck in, on one side, as to remind the observer, irresistibly, of a unicorn. She pulled down her hair in company, and put it up again, many times in a day, whenever, as it seemed to me, she could not think of anything else to be doing. Her young companion, meantime, sat rubbing her teeth with dragon-root. The other cabin company seemed much of the same class. I was dressing in my state room between four and five the next morning, when an old lady, who was presently going ashore, burst in, and snatched the one tumbler glass from my hand. She was probably as much amazed at my having carried it out of sight as I was at her mode of recovering it.
I loved the early morning on the great rivers, and therefore rose at dawn. I loved the first grey gleams that came from between the hills, and the bright figures of people in white, (the men all in linen jackets in hot weather,) on the banks. I loved to watch the river craft; the fussy steamer making rapid way; the fairy canoe shooting silently across; the flat-boat, with its wreath of blue smoke, stealing down in the shadow of the banks, her navigators helping her along in the current by catching at the branches as they passed: and the perilous looking raft, with half-a-dozen people on it, under their canopy of green boughs, their shapeless floor bending and walloping in the middle of the stream. I loved the trees, looking as if they stood self-poised, their roots were washed so bare. I loved the dwellings that stood behind their screen, those on the eastern bank seeming fast asleep; those on the western shore gay with the flickering shadows cast on them by the breezy sunrise through the trees.
On passing Catletsburgh we bade adieu to glorious Kentucky. At that point, our eyes rested on three sovereign States at one glance, Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia. We landed at Guyandot, and proceeded by stage the next morning to Charleston, on the Kanawha river. The road, all the way to the Springs, is marvellously good for so wild a part of the country. The bridges over the streams are, some of them, prettily finished; and the accommodations by the road side are above the average.
The scenery is beautiful the whole way. We were leaving the great Western Valley; and the road offered a succession of ascents and levels.
There were many rivulets and small waterfalls; the brier-rose was in full bloom along the ground; the road ran half way up the wooded hills, so that there were basins of foliage underneath, the whole apparently woven into so compact a mass by the wild vine, that it seemed as if one might walk across the valley on the tree tops. The next day's dawn broke over the salt works and coal pits, or rather caverns of coal, on the hill sides. The corn was less tall and rich, the trees were less lofty, and it was apparent that we were mounting to a higher region. It occurred to me, in a careless kind of way, that we were now not very far from the Hawk's Nest. Some ladies in the Guyandot Hotel had said to me, "Be sure you see the Hawk's Nest." "What is that?" "A place that travellers can see if they choose; the driver always stops a few minutes to let them see the Hawk's Nest." I had never heard of it before, and I never heard of it again. The world is fairly awakened to Niagara; but it is still drowsy about two scenes which moved me--the one more than Niagara, the other nearly as much; the platform at Pine Orchard House, on the top of the Catshills, and the Hawk's Nest.
The last of the Kanawha River, as we bade adieu to it on the 28th of June, was smooth and sweet, with its islets of rocks, and the pretty bridge by which we crossed the Gauley, and entered upon the ascent above New River. The Gauley and the New River join to make the Kanawha. The ascent of the mountains above New River is trying to weak nerves. The horses have to stop, here and there, to rest; and it appears that if they were to back three steps, it would be death. The road, however, is really broad, though it appears a mere ledge when the eye catches the depth below, where the brown river is rushing and brawling in its rocky bed. A passenger dropped his cap in the steepest part, and the driver made no difficulty about stopping to let him recover it. What a depth it was! like the dreamy visions of one's childhood of what winged messengers may first learn of man's dwelling-place, when they light on a mountain-top; like Satan's glimpses from the Mount of Soliloquy; like any unusual or forbidden peep from above into the retirements of nature, or the arrangements of man. On our left rose the blasted rocks which had been compelled to yield us a passage; but their aspect was already softened by the trails of crimson and green creepers which were spreading over their front. The unmeasured pent-house of wild vine was still below us on the right, with rich rhododendron blossoms bursting through, and rock-plants shooting up from every ledge and crevice at the edge of the precipice. After a long while, (I have nothing to say of time or distance, for I thought of neither,) a turn in the road shut out the whole from our sight. I leaned out of the stage, further and further, to catch, as I supposed, a last glimpse of the tremendous valley; and when I drew in again, it was with a feeling of deep grief that such a scene was to be beheld by me no more. I saw a house, a comfortable homestead, in this wild place, with its pasture and corn-fields about it; and I longed to get out, and ask the people to let me live with them.
In a few minutes the stage stopped. "If any of the passengers wish to go to the Hawk's Nest..." shouted the driver. He gave us ten minutes, and pointed with his whip to a beaten path in the wood to the right. It seems to me now that I was unaccountably cool and careless about it. I was absorbed by what I had seen, or I might have known, from the direction we were taking, that we were coming out above the river again.
We had not many yards to go. We issued suddenly from the covert of the wood, upon a small platform of rock;--a Devil's Pulpit it would be called, if its present name were not so much better;--a platform of rock, springing from the mountain side, without any visible support, and looking sheer down upon an angle of the roaring river, between eleven and twelve hundred feet below. Nothing whatever intervenes. Spread out beneath, shooting up around, are blue mountain peaks, extending in boundless expanse. No one, I believe, could look down over the edge of this airy shelf, but for the stunted pines which are fast rooted in it.
With each arm clasping a pine-stem, I looked over, and saw more, I cannot but think, than the world has in reserve to show me.
It is said that this place was discovered by Chief Justice Marshall, when, as a young man, he was surveying among the mountains. But how many Indians knew it before? How did it strike the mysterious race who gave place to the Indians? Perhaps one of these may have stood there to see the summer storm careering below; to feel that his foothold was too lofty to be shaken by the thunderpeals that burst beneath; to trace the quiverings of the lightnings afar, while the heaven was clear above his own head. Perhaps this was the stand chosen by the last Indian, from which to cast his lingering glance upon the glorious regions from which the white intruders were driving his race. If so, here he must have pined and died, or hence he must have cast himself down. I cannot conceive that from this spot any man could turn away, to go into exile.
But it cannot be that Marshall was more than the earliest of Saxon race who discovered this place. Nature's thrones are not left to be first mounted by men who can be made Chief Justices. We know not what races of wild monarchs may have had them first.
We travelled the rest of the day through an Alpine region, still full of beauty. The road is so new that the stopping places seemed to have no names. The accommodations were wonderfully good. At eleven we reached a place where we were allowed, not only to sup, but to lie down for two hours; a similar mercy to that afforded us the night before. Those who are impatient of fatigue should not attempt this method of reaching the Virginia Springs, though they are much to be pitied if they adopt any other. Our first re-entrance upon the world was at Lewisburg, at noon, on the 29th. It appears to be a neat village. The militia were parading: very respectable men, I do not doubt, but not much like soldiers. In a quarter of an hour we were off for the White Sulphur Springs, nine miles (of dusty road) from Lewisburg, and arrived there at half-past two, just as the company were dispersing about the walks, after dinner.
Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between our stage-coach society and that which was thronging the green area into which we were driven. We were heated, wearied, shabby, and all of one dust colour, from head to foot, and, I doubt not, looking very sheepish under the general stare. Every body else was gay and spruce, and at full leisure to criticise us. Gentlemen in the piazza in glossy coats and polished pumps; ladies in pink, blue, and white, standing on green grass, shading their delicate faces and gay head-dresses under parasols; never was there a more astonishing contrast than all this presented with what we had been seeing of late. The friends who were expecting us, however, were not ashamed of us, and came bounding over the green to welcome us, and carry us within reach of refreshment.
It was doubtful whether "a cabin" could be spared to us. We were fortunate in being so favoured as to be put in possession of one in the course of the afternoon. Several carriages full of visitors arrived within a few days, each with its load of trunks, its tin pail dangling behind (wherewith to water the horses in the wilderness) and its crowd of expecting and anxious faces at the windows, and were turned back to seek a resting-place elsewhere. That we were accommodated at all, I believe to this day to be owing to some secret self-denying ordinance on the part of our friends.
On one side of the green, are the large rooms, in which the company at the Springs dine, play cards, and dance. Also, the bar-room, and stage, post, and superintendent's offices. The cabins are disposed round the other sides, and dropped down, in convenient situations behind. These cabins consist of one, two, or more rooms, each containing a bed, a table, a looking-glass, and two or three chairs. All company is received in a room with a bed in it: there is no help for it. The better cabins have a piazza in front; and all have a back door opening upon the hill side; so that the attendants, and their domestic business, are kept out of sight.
The sulphur fountain is in the middle of the southern end of the green; and near it is the sulphur bathing-house. The fountain rises in the midst of a small temple, which is surmounted by a statue of Hygeia, presented to the establishment by a grateful visitor from New Orleans.
The water, pure and transparent, and far more agreeable to the eye than to the taste, forms a pool in its octagon-shaped cistern; and hither the visitors lounge, three times a day, to drink their two or three half-pint tumblers of nauseousness.
I heard many complaints, from new-comers, of the drowsiness caused by drinking the water. Some lay down to sleep more than once in the day; and others apologised for their dulness in society; but this is only a temporary effect, if one may judge by the activity visible on the green from morning till night. One of the greatest amusements was to listen to the variety of theories afloat about the properties and modes of application of the waters.
These springs had been visited only about fifteen years. No philosophising on cases appears to have been instituted: no recording, classifying, inferring, and stating. The patients come from distances of a thousand miles in every direction, with a great variety of complaints; they grow better or do not; they go away, and nobody is the wiser for their experience. It would be difficult to trace them, and to make a record of anything more than their experience while on the spot. The application of these waters will probably continue for a long time to be purely empirical. All that is really known to the patients themselves is, that they are first sleepy, then ravenous; that they must then leave the White Sulphur Spring, and go to the Warm Springs, to be bathed; then to the Sweet Springs, to be braced; and then home, to send all their ailing friends into Virginia next year.
Upwards of two hundred visitors were accommodated when I was in the White Sulphur Valley; and cabins were being built in all directions. The valley, a deep basin among the mountains; presents such beauties to the eye, as perhaps few watering-places in the world can boast. There has been no time yet to lay them open, for the benefit of the invalids; but there are plans for the formation of walks and drives through the woods, and along the mountain sides. At present, all is wild, beyond the precincts of the establishment; and, for the pleasure of the healthy, for those who can mount, and ramble, and scramble, it seems a pity that it should not remain so. The mocking-bird makes the woods ring with its delicious song; and no hand has bridged the rapid streams. If you want to cross them, you must throw in your own stepping-stones. If you desire to be alone, you have only to proceed from the gate of the establishment to the first turn in the road, force your way into the thicket, and look abroad from your retreat upon as sweet and untouched a scene of mountain and valley as the eye of the red man loves to rest upon. The gentlemen who are not invalids go out shooting in the wilderness. A friend of mine returned from such an expedition, the day after my arrival. He brought home a deer; had been overtaken by a storm in the mountains, and had, with his companions, made a house and a fire. Such amusements would diversify the occupations of Bath and Cheltenham very agreeably.
The morning after our arrival, we were too weary to be roused by the notice bell, which rings an hour before every meal; and we were ready only just in time for the last bell. Breakfast is carried to the cabins, if required; but every person who is able prefers breakfasting in company. On rainy mornings, it is a curious sight to see the company scudding across the green to the public-room, under umbrellas, and in cloaks and india-rubber shoes. Very unlike the slow pace, under a parasol, in a July sun.
There was less meat on the table at breakfast and tea than I was accustomed to see. The bread and tea were good. For the other eatables there is little to be said. It is a table spread in the wilderness; and a provision of tender meat and juicy vegetables for two or three hundred people is not to be had for the wishing. The dietary is sure to be improved, from year to year; the most that is to be expected at present is, that there should be enough for everybody. The sum paid for board per week is eight dollars; and other charges may make the expenses mount up to twelve. Pitchers of water and of milk may be seen, at every meal, all down the tables; little or no wine.
The establishment is under the management of the proprietor, who has been offered 500,000 dollars for it, that it may be conducted by a company of share-holders, who would introduce the necessary improvements. When I was there, the proprietor was still holding off from this bargain, the company not being willing to continue to him the superintendence of the concern. I hope that arrangements, satisfactory to all parties, may have been made by this time. The average gross receipts of a season were reported to be 50,000 dollars. It was added that these might easily be doubled, if all were done that might be.
Rheumatism and liver complaints seemed the most common grievances. Two little girls, perhaps four and five years old, sat opposite to me, who were sufferers from rheumatism. But the visitors who came for pleasure seemed to outnumber considerably those who came for health.
After breakfast, we sauntered about the green, and visited various new acquaintances in their piazzas. Then we went home for our bonnets, and rambled through the woods, till we were sent back by the rain, and took shelter beside the fountain. The effect was strange of seeing there a family of emigrants, parents and nine children, who were walking from North Carolina into Illinois. There must have been twins among these children, so many of them looked just alike. The contrast between this group of way-worn travellers, stopping out of curiosity to taste the waters, and the gay company among whom they very properly held up their independent heads, was striking to a stranger.
We dined at two; and afterwards found that a fire would be comfortable, though it was the last day of June. As many friends as our room would hold came home with us, and sat on the bed, table, and the few chairs we could muster, while one made the wood fire, and another bought ice-creams, which a country lad brought to the door. These ice-creams seemed to be thin custard, with a sprinkling of snow in it; but the boy declared that they were ice-creams when he left home. When we had finished our dessert, washed and returned the glasses, and joked and talked till the new-comers of our party grew ashamed of their drowsiness, we crossed the green to diversify the afternoon amusements of certain of our friends. Some were romping with their dogs; some reading books brought by themselves; (for there is no library yet;) some playing at chess or backgammon; all deploring the rain.
After tea, we stormed the great scales, and our whole party were