CHAPTER XII.
In the region of country just described and in the counties beyond abound the finest mineral springs, one or more being found on every plantation. At one place there were seven different springs, and the servants had a habit of asking the guests and family whether they would have—before breakfast—a glass of White Sulphur, Yellow Sulphur, Black Sulphur, Alleghany, Alum, or Limestone water!
The old Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs was a favorite place of resort for eastern Virginians and South Carolinians at a very early date, when it was accessible only by private conveyances, and all who passed the summer there went in private carriages. In this way certain old Virginia and South Carolina families met every season, and these old people told us that society there was never so good after the railroads and stages brought "all sorts of people, from all sorts of places." This, of course, we knew nothing about from experience, and it sounded rather egotistical in the old people to say so, but that is what they said.
Indeed, these "old folks" talked so much about what "used to be in their day" at the old White Sulphur, that I found it hard to convince myself that I had not been bodily present, seeing with my own eyes certain knee-buckled old gentlemen, with long queues, and certain Virginia and South Carolina belles attired in short-waisted, simple, white cambrics, who passed the summers there. These white cambrics, we were told, had been carried in minute trunks behind the carriages; and were considered, with a few jewels, and a long black or white lace veil thrown over the head and shoulders, a complete outfit for the reigning belles! Another curiosity was that these white cambric dresses—our grandmothers told us—required very little "doing up:" one such having been worn by Mrs. General Washington—so her granddaughter told me—a whole week without requiring washing! It must have been an age of remarkable women and remarkable cambrics! How little they dreamed then of an era when Saratoga trunks would be indispensable to ladies of much smaller means than Virginia and South Carolina belles!
To reach these counties flowing with mineral waters, the families from eastern Virginia and from South Carolina passed through a beautiful region of Virginia known as Piedmont, and those who had kinsfolk or acquaintances there usually stopped to pay them a visit. Consequently the Piedmont Virginians were generally too busy entertaining summer guests to visit the Springs themselves. Indeed, why should they? No more salubrious climate could be found than their own, and no scenery more grand and beautiful. But it was necessary for the tide-water Virginians to leave their homes every summer on account of chills and fevers.
In the lovely Piedmont region, over which the "Peaks of Otter" rear their giant heads, and chains of blue mountains extend as far as eye can reach, were scattered many pleasant and picturesque homes. And in this section my grandfather bought a plantation, when the ancestral estates in the eastern part of the State had been sold to repay the British debt, which estates, homesteads, and tombstones with their quaint inscriptions, are described in Bishop Meade's "Old Churches and Families of Virginia."
While the tide-water Virginians were already practicing all the arts and wiles known to the highest English civilization; sending their sons to be educated in England, and receiving therefrom brocaded silks and powdered wigs; and dancing the minuet at the Williamsburg balls with the families of the noblemen sent over to govern the colony,—Piedmont was still a dense forest, the abode of Indians and wild animals.
It was not strange, then, that the Piedmont Virginians never arrived at the opulent manner of living adopted by those on the James and York rivers, who, tradition tells us, went to such excess in high living as to have "hams boiled in champagne," and of whom other amusing and interesting tales have been handed down to us. Although the latter were in advance of the Piedmont Virginians in wealth and social advantages, they were not superior to them in honor, virtue, kindness, or hospitality.
It has been remarked that, "when natural scenery is picturesque, there is in the human character something to correspond; impressions made on the retina are really made on the soul, and the mind becomes what it contemplates."