IN CHAPTER XII. LIFE IN VIRGINIA. N the summer of 1837, after our session had closed on July 15th, Rev. Philip Slaughter, rector of Christ Church, Georgetown, asked me to go with him to the White Sulphur Springs. I was very glad to have the opportunity of seeing something of Virginia. We started at 5 A. M. on the stage to Warrenton Springs, which we reached that night. Often one had to wait days to get a seat, the stages being full. We stopped for some days at the house of his father, Captain Slaughter, a distinguished officer of the Revolution, whose daughter afterwards lived on the Hill, and remembered my visit and some remarks sixty years before. He was then living with a widowed daughter, and offered me his easygoing riding horse to use. He had been closely associated with Chief Justice Marshall, as Marshall served under him in the war, and was, he said, a splendid soldier. The Chief Justice had died a short time before. I used to dine with his son, James Keith Marshall, when I preached in Alexandria. I remember that blackberries were not eaten then, but were thought fit only for hogs, and tomatoes were rarely used. We went on to Charlottesville, where I met Revs. Richard K. Meade and Joseph Wilmer, afterward Bishop of Louisiana. Wilmer had just published a sermon on "Great Men who have become Christians," and he gave me a copy. We met Professor Gessner Harrison at the University of Virginia, which was then only twelve years old. There was at that time quite a lack of discipline and method, it seemed to me, in the course. They read very little Latin or Greek, but spent much time on grammar, &c. One of our bishops, a Master of Arts before the war, told me that he had never read any Homer, though a full graduate there. That is all changed now. One of the professors came into our hotel and drank at the bar a stiff glass of brandy, and it was said in excuse that he was an Englishman. We stopped at Covington and at last reached the White Sulphur. We had passed on our journey many family parties in their own carriages. At the Springs there were more than one hundred carriages owned by private parties, WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 103 and six four-in-hand carriages, and every morning they went out driving. Mrs. Dolly Madison was there with some young ladies named Walker. She often went about the grounds in her turban. The leaders of society in Virginia and in the South were there, such as the Tayloes, Hamiltons, Middletons and Pinckneys. I remember what a pretty woman Miss Pinckney was. One family from South Carolina had eleven horses and seven servants with them. Gambling went on openly, and near our cottage men assembled to play. The table and accommodations were poor and Mr. Caldwell, the proprietor, said when complaint was made: guests came to drink the water and not for high living at the table." Men went out hunting all the time, deer and other game being very abundant. The packs of hounds interested me greatly, being something entirely new. We stayed three weeks and Dr. Slaughter preached. He had a very happy faculty for selecting suitable texts, and his sermon there was on the Pool of Bethesda. Once, preaching in the woods to the soldiers, he took no text, but said: "The groves were God's first temples," and used that as his theme. Ex-Governor James Barbour of Virginia, a large man with a strong face, was there; he was a great talker and always had a group around him listening to his eloquent conversation. ExGovernor Sprigg of Maryland and many other prominent men met there. We visited all the other springs near by, and the Hawk's Nest, fifty miles away. This is a remarkable precipice, 1,100 feet in perpendicular height above the water, which roars and tumbles below and yet not the faintest sound is heard above. I spent the night in a log cabin, and its owner said he had seen a panther the day before and that he could shoot all the wild turkeys he wanted more easily than raising them. Rev. J. J. Page, when in West Virginia, knelt to pray in a oneroomed cabin, and the man came and shook him, thinking he was ill. They had never heard of God or the Christian religion. The Natural Bridge far surpassed my expectations, and there I received my first impression of sublimity. To see that vast dome, so to speak, the arch so regular, so graceful, and airy, of solid rock, the same with the sides, overwhelms the mind. It is all one solid piece. We came back by Staunton, where there was a frame church and a small, feeble congregation, which had not been long organized, where I preached. I visited Weyer's Cave nearby. I went also to Harper's Ferry, in which I was disappointed. Jefferson had never seen it when he wrote his fine description. Dr. French, in Alexandria, told me that buffalo had been killed the last ten years of the last century in Virginia. Where he lived he got certificates from several persons that their fathers had killed buffalo in Wytheville, and they were published in the American Naturalist, edited by my nephew. There is a place called Buffalo Lick Springs near Staunton. I never saw the dogwood which makes the spring so gay and spreads its level floors of white through the dull woods, until I came South, or the beautiful tulip poplar tree. The opossum, highly valued by the negro, is not found north of the Hudson. My son caught two in one night in his traps. Wild turkeys were abundant in Fairfax when I came. In August, 1832, five years before my trip through Virginia, I traveled in a buggy from Walpole through the White Mountains. The scenery was quite different from that in Virginia, and the trees and vegetation unlike. In both nature was in her prime, uninjured by the hand of man. I went up the valley of the Connecticut river, stopping at Hanover for the College Commencement; thence to Oxford, a beautiful town, Bath and Haverhill, the river in view all the way, lined occasionally with fine meadows, reaching Littleton, New Hampshire, where I was treated with attention from our letters of introduction. We next day drove the fifteen miles to White Mountains, through an unbroken "forest primeval " of the white pines one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty feet high, that had never felt the axe. Thirty years later I passed over the way and not one of them was left. The country was full of game; partridges I saw in the road; deer, wolves and bears were common and seen every day. I was much excited at seeing the fresh track of a bear. The week before a party passing through the Notch saw a wolf standing over the body of a deer. They drove the wolf off and took the deer of which they made a good feast. The mountain sides were grooved from summit to base by the sliding of earth, and the Notch seemed in process of being filled up by the torrents of sand and stones brought down. The clouds had been gathering around the bald summits, they enveloped the defile in mist as we came near and the violent wind bent down the stunted trees of the Notch. We fished one day at the falls of the Amonoosuck, a wild sylvan scene, an object of great interest anywhere but in the White Mountains. The Crawford House was the only hotel and it was full with its fifty-two guests when I was there. Old Crawford was living, and to entertain the guests used a speaking trumpet, the sound of which when softened by distance and far away among the hills resembled unearthly melody, and tones of more than mortal sweetness were sent back from their rocky caverns. We were prevented from ascending Mt. Washington by a snow storm in August, which Crawford said had never been known before. At that time visitors had to walk to the top, then horses were used until the railroad was made. With great interest did we watch the varying changes of that mountain, either when reflecting the evening or morning sunbeams, and when partly covered with snow. I once travelled with a man who said he could have bought, in 1834, the whole of Chicago for one hundred dollars an acre. Dr. Heman Humphrey, of Amherst, went out there and invested five hundred dollars. A few years after he was asked to sell it for twenty-five hundred dollars and he took the offer. The next sale was one hundred thousand. Its value now is immense, being in the heart of the city. It was incorporated as a city in this very year, March 4, 1837, population 4,170. The Potomac river when I first came was not only full of fish, but abounded in wild ducks, canvas-back and other choice varieties, and wild geese. Going up the river on the boat, I have often seen large spaces, acres, covered with ducks, and they did not seem timid. Dr. Richard Stuart, who lived lower down the Potomac in King George county, has told me that often he was kept awake by the noise of the ducks and geese feeding in the river. I went down to an association there with Bishop Meade and B. B. Leacock, who preached so well that they called him. He was very kind and helpful to me. We stayed at Cedar Grove, the beautiful and hospitable home of Dr Richard Stuart, and the table fairly groaned under the weight of his generous provision. His house was only a few yards from the river bank. The mocking birds used to sing all night, in the yard there, it seemed to me. Potomac means, I think, in the Indian language, stream of swans, and in a poem, "The Maid of the Doe," by C. Carter Lee, are these lines: "From thy south shore, great stream of swans, When I came to Fairfax county the farms were very large, but the land was generally poor. The negro slaves were numerous, but no one seemed to make money by farming or to care much for making it. Hospitality abounded, and living was most luxurious as far as the table was concerned. There was a marked difference from the northern ways in all external matters, and while often the houses were substantial and well built, the yard and farm was not kept with strict regard to appearances or to beauty. I remember enjoying a most luxurious dinner at a house not at all imposing, surrounded by a worm fence, though this was not usual. By the way, the worm fence is a curious survival of the past, and shows a country, such as Virginia and Maryland were, where wood and labor were most abundant, and saw mills scarce and nails costly. In the seventeenth century nails were mentioned in the wills as valuable assets. Society was then simple and in some respects patriarchal. The head of the house was a man who not only had his household looking up to him, but perhaps one to four hundred slaves, for whom he had to think and provide in many ways. Hugh S. Legaré defined feudalism as a scheme of organized anarchy, while the social system of the South on the contrary was both unorganized and conservative. It has been called "patriarchal in its upper stratum and pastoral in its lower one." Dress was a very simple thing comparatively. A young lady of the best families would have a handsome dress, which was worn on best occasions, and some simple lawn or gingham gowns, and she would then be ready to visit her friends, or even to go to the Springs. Fashions did not then change so often as now. The trunks were small, often of sole leather, or hair-covered narrow low boxes, such as could be easily carried on the top of the stage or the seat behind the carriage. Often in the mountains, where vehicles were not so much used, they would go off to a party or for a visit with sufficient clothing carried in a bag on the pommel of the saddle. Now we have changed all this, and no young lady can go off for a short visit without a dozen dresses, and a Noah's ark or a Saratoga hotel to hold them. Virginia had from the first some remarkable characteristics in a financial way. During the seventeenth century, from 16071700, there was so little coin in circulation that it might be said that it was not used, tobacco being the currency for everything, from the payment for groceries and goods to the hire of laborers, |