Journal of a tour through the United States and in Canada made during the years 1837-38 / by Charles Daubeny.

  • Daubeny, Charles, 1795-1867.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Journal of a tour through the United States and in Canada made during the years 1837-38 / by Charles Daubeny. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    flower. I reached the White Sulphur Spring about sunset, and took up my quarters at the inn kept by the proprietor. Wednesday, June 20th.—Spent the day at the White Sulphur Spring. The guests are accommodated in little wooden cabins ranged along the sides of a parallelogram, which, being painted, and decorated with galleries, supported in front on little wooden pillars, have a cheerful and picturesque appearance, perhaps all the more from their irregularity. The ground inclosed within these buildings slopes upwards to the north, and contains some fine trees. In the midst stands a circular temple, from which the spring issues. It smells strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen, blackens lead, and has a disagreeable saltish and bitter taste. The name of White Sulphur is given it from the white colour of the conferve that grow upon its surface. The view of the valley, and of the mountains that surround it, is extremely beau- tiful. In the afternoon I strolled out in the direction of Louis- burg, but met with few plants. Thursday, 21st.—The White Sulphur Spring did not offer any great inducement to a prolonged stay; the place indeed, though far from containing its usual complement of guests, was filling rapidly, but there was not much going on, except a snug little gambling establishment, conducted under some trees at a modest distance from the other parts of the Concern. No horses or car- riages were to be obtained ; and there seemed therefore to be but few resources for a solitarytraveller like myself. I was also anxious to get on to the Warm Springs, in order to verify the observa- tions, made with respect to the position of the rocks in that locality by professor Rogers, which promised to afford an im- portant confirmation of my own preconceived views, with respect to the connexion, between the existence of thermal waters, and that of great physical convulsions in the surrounding country. Professor Rogers had shewn, that these Thermal Waters gush out exactly at the point at which the rocks of the Alleghany chain appear to have been upheaved, the strata on the east of the springs dipping at an high angle to the east, those on the west of them to the west, and the same members of the series being repeated on either side of this anticlinal axis. Now, although we could build but little upon the existence of a warm spring in connexion with an ordinary fault, knowing how often cold springs appear under similar circumstances ; yet when we discover one of the former kind in a position, which an independent observer has fixed upon, as exactly coinciding with the line along which an entire range of mountains has been upheaved, we may fairly, I think, regard the correspondence between the two phenomena, as a proof of an identity, subsisting, T