LETTERXVI.
Of the Country between the South-west and Blue Mountains.—Copper and Iron Mines.—Lynchburgh.—New London.—Armoury here.—Description of the Road over the Blue Mountains.—Peaks of Otter, highest of the Mountains.—Supposed Height.—Much over-rated.—German Settlers numerous beyond the Blue Mountains.—Singular Contrast between the Country and the Inhabitants on each Side of the Mountains.—Of the Weevil.—Of the Hessian Fly.—Bottetourt County.—Its Soil.—Salubrity of the Climate.—Medicinal Springs here.—Much frequented.
Fincastle, May.
THE country between the South-west Mountains and the Blue Ridge is very fertile, and it is much more thickly inhabitedthan the lower parts of Virginia. The climate is good, and the people have a healthy and robust appearance. Several valuable mines of iron and copper have been discovered here, for the working of some of which works have been established; but till the country becomes more populous it cannot be expected that they will be carried on with much spirit.
BLUE MOUNTAINS.
Having crossed the South-west Mountains, I passed along through this county to Lynchburgh, a town situated on the south side of Fluvanna River, one hundred and fifty miles above Richmond. This town contains about one hundred houses, and a warehouse for the inspection of tobacco, where about two thousand hogsheads are annually inspected. It has been built entirely within the last fifteen years, and is rapidly increasing, from its advantageous situation for carrying on trade with the adjacent country. The boats, in which the produce is conveyed down the river, are from forty-eight to fifty-four feet long, but very narrow in proportion to their breadth. Three men are sufficient to navigate one of these boats, and they can go to Richmond and back again in ten days. They fall down with the stream, but work their way back again with poles. The cargo carried in these boats is always proportionate to the depth of water in the river, which varies very much. When I passed itto Lynchburgh, there was no difficulty in riding across, yet when I got upon the opposite banks I observed great quantities of weeds hanging upon the trees, considerably above my head though on horseback, evidently left there by a flood. This flood happened in the preceding September, when the waters rose fifteen feet above their usual level.
A few miles from Lynchburgh, towards the Blue Mountains, is a small town called New London, in which there is a magazine, and also an armoury, erected during the war. About fifteen men were here employed, as I passed through, repairing old arms and furbishing up others; and indeed, from the slovenly manner in which they keep their arms, I should imagine that the same number must be constantly employed all the year round. At one end of the room lay the musquets, to the amount of about five thousand, all together in a large heap, and at the opposite end lay a pile of leathern accoutrements, absolutely rotting for want of common attention. All the armouries throughout the United States are kept much in the same style.
Between this place and the Blue Mountains the country is rough and hilly, and but very thinly inhabited. The few inhabitants, however, met with here are, uncommonly robustand tall; it is rare to see a man amongst them who is not six feet high. These people entertain a high opinion of their own superiority in point of bodily strength over the inhabitants of the low country. A similar race of men is found all along the Blue Mountains.
The Blue Ridge is thickly covered with large trees to the very summit; some of the mountains are rugged and extremely stony, others are not so, and on these last the soil is found to be rich and fertile. It is only in particular places that this ridge of mountains can be crossed, and at some of the gaps the ascent is steep and difficult; but at the place where I crossed it, which was near the Peak of Otter, on the south side, instead of one great mountain to pass over, as might be imagined from an inspection of the map, there is a succession of small hills, rising imperceptibly one above the other, so that you get upon the top of the ridge before you are aware of it.
PEAKS OF OTTER.
The Peaks of Otter are the highest mountains in the Blue Ridge, and, measured from their bases, are supposed to be more lofty than any others in North America. According to Mr. Jefferson, whose authority has been quoted nearly by every person that has written on the subject since the publication of his Notes on Virginia, the principal peak is aboutfour thousand feet in perpendicular height; but it must be observed, that Mr. Jefferson does not say that he measured the height himself; on the contrary, he acknowledges that the height of the mountains in America has never yet been ascertained with any degree of exactness; it is only from certain data, from which he says a tolerable conjecture may be formed, that he supposes this to be the height of the loftiest peak. Positively to assert that this peak is not so high, without having measured it in any manner, would be absurd; as I did not measure it, I do not therefore pretend to contradict Mr. Jefferson; I have only to say, that the most elevated of the peaks of Otter appeared to me but a very insignificant mountain in companion with Snowden, in Wales; and every person that I conversed with that had seen both, and I conversed with many, made the same remark. Now the highest peak of Snowden is found by triangular admeasurement to be no more than three thousand five hundred and sixty-eight feet high, reckoning from the quay at Carnarvon. None of the other mountains in the Blue Ridge are supposed, from the same data, to be more than two thousand feet in perpendicular height.
COTTON.
Beyond the Blue Ridge, after crossing by this route near the Peaks of Otter, I met withbut very few settlements till I drew near to Fincastle, in Bottetourt County. This town stands about twenty miles distant from the mountain, and about fifteen south of Fluvanna River. It was only begun about the year 1790, yet it already contains sixty houses, and is most rapidly increasing. The improvement of the adjacent country has likewise been very rapid, and land now bears nearly the same price that it does in the neighbourhood of York and Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants consist principally of Germans, who have extended their settlements from Pennsylvania along the whole of that rich track of land which runs through the upper part of Maryland, and from thence behind the Blue Mountains to the most southern parts of Virginia. These people, as I before mentioned, keep very much together, and are never to be found but where the land is remarkably good. It is singular, that although they form three fourths of the inhabitants on the western side of the Blue Ridge, yet not one of them is to be met with on the eastern side, notwithstanding that land is to be purchased in the neighbourhood of the South-west Mountains for one fourth of what is paid for it in Bottetourt County. They have many times, I am told, crossed the Blue Ridge to examine the land, but the red soil whichthey found there was different from what they had been accustomed to, and the injury it was exposed to from the mountain torrents always appeared to them an insuperable objection to settling in that part of the country. The difference indeed between the country on the eastern and on the western side of the Blue Ridge, in Bottetourt County, is astonishing, when it is considered that both are under the same latitude, and that this difference is perceptible within the short distance of thirty miles.
On the eastern side of the ridge cotton grows extremely well; and in winter the snow scarcely ever remains more than a day or two upon the ground. On the other side cotton never comes to perfection, the winters are severe, and the fields covered with snow for weeks together. In every farm yard you see sleighs or sledges, carriages used to run upon the snow. Wherever these carriages are met with, it may be taken for granted that the winter lasts in that part of the country for a considerable length of time, for the people would never go to the expence of building them, without being tolerably certain that they would be useful. On the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, in Virginia, not one of these carriages is to be met with.
It has already been mentioned, that thepredominant soil to the eastward of the Blue Ridge is a red earth, and that it is always a matter of some difficulty to lay down a piece of land in grass, on account of the rains, which are apt to wash away the seeds, together with the mould on the surface. In Bottetourt County, on the contrary, the soil consists chiefly of a rich brown mould, and throws up white clover spontaneously. To have a rich meadow, it is only necessary to leave a piece of ground to the hand of nature for one year. Again, on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains, scarcely any limestone is to be met with; on the opposite one, a bed of it runs entirely through the country, so that by some it is emphatically called the limestone county. In sinking wells, they have always to dig fifteen or twenty feet through a solid rock to get at the water.
INSECTS.
Another circumstance may also be mentioned, as making a material difference between the country on one side of the Blue Ridge and that on the other, namely, that behind the mountains the weevil is unknown. The weevil is a small insect of the moth kind, which deposits its eggs in the cavity of the grain, and particularly in that of wheat; and if the crops are stacked or laid up in the barn in sheaves, these eggs are there hatched, and the grain is in consequence totally destroyed.To guard against this in the lower parts of Virginia, and the other states where the weevil is common, they always thresh out the grain as soon as the crops are brought in, and leave it in the chaff, which creates a degree of heat sufficient to destroy the insect, at the same time that it does not injure the wheat. This insect has been known in America but a very few years; according to the general opinion, it originated on the eastern shore of Maryland, where a person, in expectation of a great rise in the price of wheat, kept over all his crops for the space of six years, when they were found full of these insects; from thence they have spread gradually over different parts of the country. For a considerable time the Patowmac River formed a barrier to their progress, and while the crops were entirely destroyed in Maryland, they remained secure in Virginia; but these insects at last found their way across the river. The Blue Mountains at present serve as a barrier, and secure the country to the westward from their depredations[24].
24.There is another insect, which in a similar manner made its appearance, and afterwards spread through a great part of the country, very injurious also to the crops. It is called the Hessian fly, from having been brought over, as is supposed, in some forage belonging to the Hessian troops, during the war. This insect lodges itself in different parts of the stalk, while green, and makes such rapid devastations, that a crop which appears in the best possible state will, perhaps, be totally destroyed in the course of two or three days. In Maryland, they say, that if the land is very highly manured, the Hessian fly never attacks the grain; they also say, that crops raised upon land that has been worked for a long time are much less exposed to injury from these insects than the crops raised upon new land. If this is really the case, the appearance of the Hessian fly should be considered as a circumstance rather beneficial than otherwise to the country, as it will induce the inhabitants to relinquish that ruinous practice of working the same piece of ground year after year till it is entirely worn out, and then leaving it waste, instead of taking some pains to improve it by manure. This fly is not known at present south of the Patowmac River, nor behind the Blue Ridge.
24.There is another insect, which in a similar manner made its appearance, and afterwards spread through a great part of the country, very injurious also to the crops. It is called the Hessian fly, from having been brought over, as is supposed, in some forage belonging to the Hessian troops, during the war. This insect lodges itself in different parts of the stalk, while green, and makes such rapid devastations, that a crop which appears in the best possible state will, perhaps, be totally destroyed in the course of two or three days. In Maryland, they say, that if the land is very highly manured, the Hessian fly never attacks the grain; they also say, that crops raised upon land that has been worked for a long time are much less exposed to injury from these insects than the crops raised upon new land. If this is really the case, the appearance of the Hessian fly should be considered as a circumstance rather beneficial than otherwise to the country, as it will induce the inhabitants to relinquish that ruinous practice of working the same piece of ground year after year till it is entirely worn out, and then leaving it waste, instead of taking some pains to improve it by manure. This fly is not known at present south of the Patowmac River, nor behind the Blue Ridge.
24.There is another insect, which in a similar manner made its appearance, and afterwards spread through a great part of the country, very injurious also to the crops. It is called the Hessian fly, from having been brought over, as is supposed, in some forage belonging to the Hessian troops, during the war. This insect lodges itself in different parts of the stalk, while green, and makes such rapid devastations, that a crop which appears in the best possible state will, perhaps, be totally destroyed in the course of two or three days. In Maryland, they say, that if the land is very highly manured, the Hessian fly never attacks the grain; they also say, that crops raised upon land that has been worked for a long time are much less exposed to injury from these insects than the crops raised upon new land. If this is really the case, the appearance of the Hessian fly should be considered as a circumstance rather beneficial than otherwise to the country, as it will induce the inhabitants to relinquish that ruinous practice of working the same piece of ground year after year till it is entirely worn out, and then leaving it waste, instead of taking some pains to improve it by manure. This fly is not known at present south of the Patowmac River, nor behind the Blue Ridge.
MEDICINAL SPRINGS.
Bottetourt County is entirely surrounded by mountains; it is also crossed by various ridges of mountains in different directions, a circumstance which renders the climate particularly agreeable. It appears to me, that there is no part of America where the climate would be more congenial to the constitution of a native of Great Britain or Ireland. The frost in winter is more regular, but not severer than commonly takes place in those islands. In summer the heat is, perhaps, somewhat greater; but there is not a night in the year that a blanket is not found very comfortable. Before ten o’clock in the morning the heat is greatest; at that hour a breeze generally springs up from the mountains, and renders the air agreeable the whole day. Fever and ague are disorders unknown here, and the air is so salubrious,that persons who come hither afflicted with it from the low country, towards the sea, get rid of it in a very short time.
In the western part of the county are several medicinal springs, whereto numbers of people resort towards the latter end of summer, as much for the sake of escaping the heat in the low country, as for drinking the waters. Those most frequented are called the Sweet Springs, and are situated at the foot of the Alleghany Mountains. During the last season upwards of two hundred persons resorted to them with servants and horses. The accommodations at the springs are most wretched at present; but a set of gentlemen from South Carolina have, I understand, since I was there, purchased the place, and are going to erect several commodious dwellings in the neighbourhood, for the reception of company. Besides these springs there are others in Jackson’s Mountains, a ridge which runs between the Blue Mountains and the Alleghany. One of the springs here is warm, and another quite hot; a few paces from the latter a spring of common water issues from the earth, but which, from the contrast, is generally thought to be as remarkable for its coldness as the water of the adjoining one is for its heat: there is also a sulphur spring near these; leaves of trees falling into it become thickly incrusted withsulphur in a very short time, and silver is turned black almost immediately. At a future period the medicinal qualities of all these springs will probably be accurately ascertained; at present they are but very little known. As for the relief obtained by those persons that frequent the Sweet Springs in particular, it is strongly conjectured that they are more indebted for it to the change of the climate than to the rare qualities of the water.