WAITING FOR TIME TO CATCH UP.
Clifton Forge is forty miles east of White Sulphur Springs, and from this junction a branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Road runs northeast to form a connection with the Shenandoah Valley Railroad at Waynesborough. All the region hereabout is very rugged, and intersected by beautiful streams whose sources are springs that break out of the sides of mountains, and the waters are generally more or less impregnated with sulphur. Eighteen miles due north of Clifton Forge, and reached by a delightful road that winds through charming vales, is the village of Warm Springs, the capital of Bath county, and adjacent are the Warm Sulphur Springs, which attract so many visitors in search of health and fine scenery. It is a mountain town, whose population fluctuates with the season, for while the place is one of some animation from April to October, during the other months there are not enough people in the village to keep the mud-daubers out of the houses. A more picturesque district, however, can scarcely be found; too mountainous to permit agriculture, nature has given other blessings than fertility to the region. The climate is extremely invigorating, and the numerous springs possess medicinal properties of undoubted value, while the scenery is inspiring to even the most phlegmatic. One of the chief objects which serves to further diversify the landscape of high-lifted peaks, jutting cliffs, meandering brooks, green coverts, sylvan solitudes and cloistral caverns, is Falling Spring, a sheet of rainbow-flecked water that dashes over a ledge seventy feet high, and which, seen from a little distance, may be likened in appearance to the white trailing trousseau of a bride, so delicate, graceful, and gossamer-like is its form, so joyous is its laughter. After leaving Clifton Forge the road winds along the sinuous valley of James River, with charming views on both sides, until interest, charm and excitement are superseded by wonder as Natural Bridge, that marvelous curiosity of ages, is reached, and preparation is immediately made to examine and to photograph its astounding formation and immensity. This great natural wonder, which is an old acquaintance to all school-children, is two miles from the railway station, at the termination of a very deep gorge, through which flows a capricious little stream called Cedar Creek. At one time this feeble brook may have been a raging river, and needed bridging, but like an old man, it has lost the vigor of former days and fallen into the seventh age of decrepitude. But the bridge which Titans might have constructed still spans the creek’s deep bed and has grown in mightiness as the waters below subsided. To speak with mathematical exactness, without employing statistical details, it may be said that the Natural Bridge spans with graceful and architectural proportions the perpendicular ledges of Cedar Creek, which rise 200 feet above the stream. The center of its wondrous arch is forty feet in perpendicular thickness and sixty feet wide, while the span is exactly eighty-nine feet. A public highway utilizes the bridge, and it is the only means of passage for wagons within a mile either way, except by a steep bank, very difficult to ascend, a short distance below the gorge. Just above the bridge the creek bluffs are broken into masses that look like immense buttresses, pinnacled at places and reaching to a height of 250 feet. The most imposing view is obtained from a position fifty yards below the bridge, where the arch appears both lighter and higher, and the walls more dangerously precipitous. From this point of view this world-famous natural structure appears as perfect as if cut by design; a colossal arch that shines in the sun like variegated marble, without stratification or displacement, so high that the largest sailing vessel might pass under without touching the peak of her mainmast. On the abutments of the bridge are carved the names of many adventurous youths who sought fame by leaving a record of their reckless efforts to scale the dizzy heights of stone. George Washington was not above this ambition to win reputation by carving his name higher up than any of his fellow-youths, and for nearly seventy years he held the honor of being the most intrepid and expert wall-climber, for, like Ben Adam, his name led all the rest. But in 1818 this distinction was surrendered to James Piper, of Washington College, who performed the daring, and what was long thought to be impossible, feat of climbing from the foot of the abutment to the top of the arch, an exploit so dangerous that no one has since made a mad attempt to repeat it. Thomas Jefferson was moved to write a eulogium of this incomparable natural wonder in this wise:
HAWK’S NEST AND CAÑON OF THE KANAWHA RIVER, WEST VIRGINIA.—The scenery all through the Kanawha Valley is picturesque and splendid, but its full glory is not attained until it reaches a place about nine miles beyond the falls. Here, at the point called Hawk’s Nest, which is photographed on this page, the cliffs are majestic, rising to a height of 1200 feet, while immediately in the foreground of the picture a breast of the bluff extends out over the river in a perilous shelf 1000 feet high, from which lofty elevation the winding stream becomes a mere ribbon of white, lined on either side with the dark green colors of the mountain foliage.
GALBRAITH SPRINGS, TENNESSEE.