by following Charles Dickens's path to the Penitentiary, and
afterwards visited Girard College. He concludes as follows:]
Even in this city of Penn the distinctive marks of Quakerism are dying
out. The Quaker dress does not seem much more common in Philadelphia
than in any other city, nor do they use the "thee" and "thou" in the
streets; but at their own firesides, where the old people sit, they
still speak the old language. A Quaker in the streets is not to be
distinguished from other Philadelphians. I was talking to Mr. C----
about this, and he said, "Let me introduce you to a Quaker; I am a
member of the church myself." L---- was not quite clear whether he was
a Quaker or not. His parents had been; his sons certainly were not. Some
of the best of the Southern soldiers came from the city of the Quakers.
There is a story of a Quaker girl, who was exchanging rings with her
lover as he set off to join the army; when they parted she said, "Thee
must not wear it on thy trigger-finger, George."
Dined with Mr. L----, the publisher. He showed us over his enormous
store, which seemed to be a model of discipline and organization, and
described the book-market of America as being, like the Union, one and
indivisible, and opened his ledger, in which were the names of customers
in every State in the Union. He told us that he had about five thousand
open accounts with different American booksellers. His policy is to keep
in stock everything that a country bookseller requires, from a Bible to
a stick of sealing-wax, so that when their stores get low they are able
to write to him for everything they want. He contends, as other
Philadelphians do, that New York is not the capital of America, but only
its chief port of import, and that Philadelphia is the chief centre for
distribution. Mr. Hepworth Dixon had been here not long before, and, as
was right and fitting in the city of Quakers, a high banquet had been
held in honor of the vindicator of William Penn.
[Thence Mr. Latham went to Baltimore, of which he describes the
following old-time experience: "When an American train reaches
a town it does not dream of pulling up short in a suburb, but
advances slowly through the streets; the driver on the engine
rings a large bell, and a man on horseback rides in front to
clear the way. Thus we entered Baltimore, arrived at the
terminus and uncoupled the engine; and then, still sitting in
the railway-car, were drawn by a team of horses along the
street-rails to the terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway
on the other side of the town." He is talking of antediluvian
days. We have reformed all that. After some experience in duck
and partridge shooting, and a taste of terrapin soup, he
proceeded to Washington. Of his varied experience there we can
give but a single out-door example.]
We went this morning over the Capitol, an enormous edifice still in
progress; parts of it are continually built on to, and rebuilt, to meet
the wants of the legislature. The two new white marble wings are very
beautiful and nearly complete, and the dome is on the same scale with
them, and of the same material. The centre is now out of proportion
since the wings were built, and is of stone, painted white to match the
rest in color and preserve it from the frost. If the South had succeeded
in seceding it might have sufficed; but now it is bound to grow, and
Congress are going to vote the amount of dollars necessary to make the
Capitol complete. When completed it will be magnificent.
We are very unlucky in seeing these great marble palaces (for several of
the public buildings of Washington are of this material) with the snow
upon the ground. Against the pure white snow they appear dingy; under a
summer sun they must show to far greater advantage. What ancient Athens
appeared like, surrounding its marble temples, I can hardly realize; but
the effect of the splendid public buildings in Washington is very much
detracted from by the sheds and shanties which are near them. The
builders of Washington determined that it should be a great city, and
staked out its streets accordingly twice the width and length of any
other streets: rightly is it named the city of magnificent distances.
But although the Potomac is certainly wide enough, and apparently deep
enough, to justify a certain amount of trade, and its situation is more
central than that of Philadelphia, the town has never grown to fill the
outlines traced for it.
To make a Washington street, take one marble temple or public office, a
dozen good houses of brick, and a dozen of wood, and fill in with sheds
and fields. Some blight seems to have fallen upon the city. It is the
only place we have seen which is not full of growth and vitality. I have
even heard its inhabitants tell stories of nightly pig-hunts in the
streets, and of the danger of tumbling over a cow on the pavement on a
dark night; but this must refer to by-gone times.
One of the most curious and characteristic of the great public buildings
of Washington is the Patent Office, in which a working model is
deposited of every patent taken out in the United States for the
improvement of machinery.
This assemblage of specimens is an exhibition of which all Americans are
proud, as a proof of the activity of American ingenuity working in every
direction. Capacity to take out a patent is a quality necessary to make
up the character of the perfect citizen. Labor is honorable, but the man
who can invent a labor-saving machine is more honorable; he has gained a
step in the great struggle with the powers of nature. An American who
has utilized a water-power feels, I take it, two distinct and separate
pleasures: first, in that dollars and cents drip off his water-wheel,
and, secondly, in that he has inveigled the water-sprites into doing his
work. If you tell an American that you are going to Washington, his
first remark is not, "Then you will see Congress sitting," but, "Mind
you go and see the Patent Office."
THE NATURAL BRIDGE AND TUNNEL OF VIRGINIA.
EDWARD A. POLLARD.
[The Old Dominion--to give Virginia its home title--is full
of natural wonders, some of them unsurpassed in beauty and
attractiveness elsewhere in the world. In number and variety of
mineral springs it stands unequalled; its caverns, Luray and
Weyer's, are rich in charms of subterranean scenery; and its
two remarkable examples of nature's grandeur, the Natural
Bridge and Natural Tunnel, are unique in their peculiar
characteristics. Edward A. Pollard, in his "Virginia Tourist,"
has ably described the various attractions of the Old Dominion,
and we select from this work his word picture of the Natural
Bridge. He made his way thither from Lynchburg, _via_ the James
River Canal.]
As the traveller enters the gap of the Blue Ridge from the east, the
winding courses of the stage-coach carry him up the mountain's side
until he has gained an elevation of hundreds of feet above the James
River, over the waters of which the zigzag and rotten road hangs
fearfully. On every side are gigantic mountains hemming him in; there
are black ravines in the great prison-house; and the lengthened arms of
the winds smite the strained ear with the sounds of the rapids below.
While he looks at the distance, a mountain rivulet, slight and
glittering from amid the primeval forest, dashes across his path, and,
leaping from rock to rock, goes joyously on its way.
On the North River the scenes are quieter. Emerging here, the traveller
sees a beautiful and fertile country opening before him, while still
westward the blue outlines of distant mountains in Rockbridge bound his
vision. The water landscape is beautiful. Lovely valleys debouch upon
the stream; there are peaceful shadows in the steel-blue waters, and on
the broad shoulders of the cattle on the banks we see the drapery of the
shadows of the trees beneath which they rest. The fisherman standing
leg-deep in the water can see his face as in a mirror.
But at present our way does not lie through these scenes. The canal-boat
is taking us along the James in the moonlit night, and by the time the
day has broken we are within two miles of the Natural Bridge. A rickety
team awaits us at the lock-house where we disembark. Through an air
filled with golden vapor, and with the mists of the morning yet hanging
in the trees by the wayside, we proceed on our journey. The old
stage-coach lumbers along under the thick, overhanging boughs of the
forest pines, which ever and anon scrape its top or strike in through
the windows, scattering the dew-drops in the very faces of the
passengers, or perhaps smiting their cheeks with their sharp-pointed
leaves.
The first view of the bridge is obtained half a mile from it at a turn
on the stage-road. It is revealed with the suddenness of an apparition.
Raised a hundred feet above the highest trees of the forest, and
relieved against the purple side of a distant mountain, a whitish-gray
arch is seen, in the effect of distance as perfect and clean-cut an arch
as its Egyptian inventor could have defined. The tops of trees are
waving in the interval, the upper half of which we only see, and the
stupendous arch that spans the upper air is relieved from the first
impression that it is man's masonry, the work of art, by the fifteen or
twenty feet of soil that it supports, in which trees and shrubbery are
firmly embedded,--the verdant crown and testimony of nature's great
work. And here we are divested of an imagination which we believe is
popular, that the bridge is merely a huge slab of rock thrown across a
chasm, or some such hasty and violent arrangement. It is no such thing.
The arch and whole interval are contained in one solid rock; the
average width of that which makes the bridge is eighty feet, and beyond
this the rock extends for a hundred feet or so in mural precipices,
divided by only a single fissure, that makes a natural pier on the upper
side of the bridge, and up which climb the hardy firs, ascending step by
step on the noble rock-work till they overshadow you.
This mighty rock, a single mass sunk in the earth's side, of which even
what appears is stupendous, is of the same geological character,--of
limestone covered to the depth of from four to six feet with alluvial
and clayey earth. The span of the arch runs from forty-five to sixty
feet wide, and its height to the under line is one hundred and
ninety-six feet, and to the head two hundred and fifteen feet. The form
of the arch approaches to the elliptical; the stage-road which passes
over the bridge runs from north to south, with an acclivity of
thirty-five degrees, and the arch is carried over on a diagonal
line,--the very line of all others the most difficult for the architect
to realize, and the one best calculated for picturesque effects. It is
the proportions of art in this wild, strange work of nature, its
adjustment in the very perfection of mechanical skill, its apparently
deliberate purpose, that create an interest the most curious and
thoughtful. The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and through which
traverses the beautiful Cedar Creek, is not otherwise easily passed for
several miles, either above or below the bridge. It is needful to the
spot, and yet so little likely to have survived the great fracture, the
evidences of which are visible around, and which has made a fissure of
about ninety feet through the breadth of a rock-ribbed hill, that we are
at first disposed to reflect upon it as the work of man. It is only when
we contemplate its full measure of grandeur that we are assured it
is the work of God. We have the pier, the arch, the studied angle of
ascent; and that nothing might be wanted in the evidences of design, the
bridge is guarded by a parapet of rocks, so covered with fine shrubs and
trees that a person travelling the stage-road running over it would, if
not informed of the curiosity, pass it unnoticed.
But let him approach through the foliage to the side. More than two
hundred feet below is the creek, apparently motionless, except where it
flashes with light as it breaks on an obstruction in the channel; there
are trees, attaining to grander heights as they ascend the face of the
pier; and far below this bed of verdure the majestic rock rises with the
decision of a wall, and the spectator shrinks from contemplating the
grand but cruel depths, and turns away with dizzy sensations. But the
most effective view is from the base of the bridge, where you descend by
a circuitous and romantic path. Even to escape from the hot sun into
these verdant and cool bottoms is of itself a luxury, and it prepares
you for the deliberate enjoyment of the scene. Everything reposes in the
most delightful shade, set off by the streaming rays of the sun, which
shoot across the head of the picture far above you, and sweeten with
softer touches the solitude below.
Standing by the rippling, gushing waters of the creek, and raising your
eyes to the arch, massive and yet light and beautiful from its height,
its elevation apparently increased by the narrowness of its piers and by
its projection on the blue sky, you gaze on the great work of nature in
wonder and astonishment. Yet a hundred beauties beckon you from the
severe emotion of the sublime. When you have sustained this view of the
arch raised against the sky, its black patches here and there shaped by
imagination into grand and weird figures,--among them the eagle, the
lion's head, and the heroic countenance of Washington; when you have
taken in the proportions and circumstances of this elevated and wide
span of rock,--so wide that the skies seem to slope from it to the
horizon,--you are called to investigate other parts of the scene which
strain the emotions less, and are distributed around in almost endless
variety.
Looking through the arch, the eye is engaged with a various vista. Just
beyond rises the frayed, unseamed wall of rock; the purple mountains
stand out in the background; beneath them is a rank of hills and matted
woods enclosing the dell below, while the creek coursing away from them
appears to have been fed in their recesses. A few feet above the bridge
the stream deflects, and invites to a point of view of the most curious
effect. Taking a few steps backward, moving diagonally on the course of
the stream, we see the interval of sky between the great abutments
gradually shut out; thus apparently joined or lapped over, they give the
effect of the face of a rock, with a straight seam running down it, and
the imagination seizes the picture as of mighty gates closed upon us. We
are shut in a wild and perturbed scene by these gates of hell; behind
and around us is the contracted and high boundary of mountains and
hills, and in this close and vexed scene we are for a moment prisoners.
Now let us move across, step by step, to a position fronting where these
gates apparently close. Slowly they seem to swing open on unseen and
noiseless hinges; wider and wider grows the happy interval of sky, until
at last wide open stands the gate-way raised above the forest, resting
as it were on the brow of heaven,--a world lying beyond it, its rivers
and its hills expanding themselves to the light and splendor of the
unshadowed day.
To an observer of both places a comparison is naturally suggested
between the Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls in respect of the
sublime and the beautiful; and, indeed, as in this respect the two
greatest works of nature on this continent, they may well be used as
illustrations in our American schools of aesthetics. The first is unique
in its aspects of nature like art; it is nature with the proportions of
art. In its expressions of power, in its concentration of emotion, as
when we look at it distinct or complete, it is truly sublime; and its
effect is alleviated (for it is a maxim in aesthetics that the sublime
cannot be long sustained) by the picturesque scenery which surrounds it.
It is a greater natural curiosity and more wonderful than Niagara,
although it lacks the elements of sublimity which the other has in
sound, and of the visible, actual struggle in which it displays the
powers of nature. Niagara is a living thing, while the Natural Bridge
is _monumental_. The first represents the sublime as allied to the
terrific,--in contemplating it we are overwhelmed with a sense of our
insignificance; while the Natural Bridge associates the sublime with the
pleasing and curious, and, not transporting us as violently as Niagara,
entertains us more equably, and dismisses us, we think, with more
distinct and fruitful perceptions of the grandeur and beneficence and
variety of nature which have been distributed in the picture.
[Washington, a century and a half ago, carved his name at a
high elevation on the rock walls of the abyss. In 1818 these
walls were climbed to the top by James H. Piper, a student
of Washington College, Virginia. The narrative here given of
this daring feat is from the pen of William A. Caruthers.]
Mr. Piper, the hero of the occasion, commenced climbing on the opposite
side of the creek from the one by which the pathway ascends the ravine.
He began down on the banks of the brook so far that we did not know
where he had gone, and were only apprised of his whereabouts by his
shouting above our heads. When we looked up, he was standing apparently
right under the arch, I suppose a hundred feet from the bottom, and that
on the smooth side, which is generally considered inaccessible without a
ladder. He was standing far above the spot where General Washington is
said to have inscribed his name when a youth. The ledge of the rock by
which he ascended to this perilous height does not appear from below to
be three inches wide, and runs almost at right angles to the abutment of
the bridge....
The ledge of rock on which he was standing appeared so narrow to us
below as to make us believe his position a very perilous one, and we
earnestly entreated him to come down. He answered us with loud shouts of
derision....
He soon after descended from that side, crossed the brook, and commenced
climbing on the side by which all visitors ascend the ravine. He first
mounted the rocks on this side, as he had done on the other, far down
the abutment, but not so far as on the opposite side. The projecting
ledge may be distinctly seen by any visitor. It commences four or five
feet from the pathway on the lower side, and winds round, gradually
ascending, until it meets the cleft of rock over which the celebrated
cedar stump hangs. Following this ledge to its termination, it brought
him thirty or forty feet from the ground, and placed him between two
deep fissures, one on each side of the gigantic column of rock on which
the aforementioned cedar stump stands.
This column stands out from the bridge, as separate and distinct as if
placed there by nature on purpose for an observatory to the wonderful
arch and ravine which it overlooks. A huge crack or fissure extends from
its base to the summit; indeed, it is cracked on both sides, but much
more perceptibly on one side than the other. Both of these fissures are
thickly overgrown with bushes, and numerous roots project into them
from trees growing on the precipice. It was between these that the
aforementioned ledge conducted him. Here he stopped, pulled off his coat
and shoes and threw them down to me. And this, in my opinion, is a
sufficient refutation of the story so often told, that he went up to
inscribe his name, and ascended so high that he found it more difficult
to return than to go forward. He could have returned easily from the
point where he disencumbered himself, but the fact that he did thus
prepare so early, and so near the ground, and after he had ascended more
than double that height on the other side, is clear proof that to
inscribe his name was not, and to climb the bridge was, his object. He
had already inscribed his name above Washington himself more than fifty
feet.
Around the face of this huge column, and between the clefts, he now
moved backward and forward, still ascending as he found convenient
foothold. When he had ascended about one hundred and seventy feet from
the earth, and had reached the point where the pillar overhangs the
ravine, his heart seemed to fail him. He stopped, and seemed to us to be
balancing midway between heaven and earth. We were in dread suspense,
expecting every moment to see him dashed in atoms at our feet. We had
already exhausted our powers of entreaty in persuading him to return,
but all to no purpose. Now it was perilous even to speak to him, and
very difficult to carry on conversation at all, from the immense height
to which he had ascended, and the noise made by the bubbling of the
little brook as it tumbled in tiny cascades over its rocky bed at our
feet. At length he seemed to discover that one of the clefts before
mentioned retreated backward from the overhanging position of the
pillar. Into this he sprang at once, and was soon out of sight and out
of danger.
There is not a word of truth in all that story about our hauling him up
with ropes, and his fainting away so soon as he landed on the summit.
Those acquainted with the localities will at once perceive its
absurdity; for we were beneath the arch, and it is half a mile round to
the top, and for the most part up a rugged mountain. Instead of fainting
away, Mr. Piper proceeded down the hill to meet us and obtain his hat
and shoes. We met about half-way, and then he lay down for a few moments
to recover himself of his fatigue.
[Virginia possesses another marvel of nature's handiwork of
the same general character as the Natural Bridge, and of
which Mr. Pollard's description may here fitly be given.]
After progressing about three miles from the ford of the Clinch River,
and after having repeatedly crossed its crooked tributary, Stock Creek,
we come to a small mountain or globular hill which is our wondrous
destination, for here is the Natural Tunnel. There is nothing which
advertises in advance this great wonder, or in any way excites the
expectations of the traveller. There is a common road, from which we
depart a few hundred yards to make a half circuit of the base of the
mountain, that goes clean over the ridge, leading to a settlement some
miles farther, called Rye Cove, and which was once the abode of a
fierce Indian tribe. This main road goes over the arch of the tunnel,
furnishing a curious convenience to the traveller, of which he would be
unaware, seeing nothing through the foliage but glimpses of the mural
rocks that guard and sustain the termination of the secret passage-way
many hundred feet below him. It is from this convenience that the
neighboring people name the gigantic work of nature we are proceeding to
explore a natural bridge. But this name is certainly insufficient and
paltry for a rock-work that on one flank at least extends some eight
hundred feet, and which, if regarded with reference to the breadth of
the interval it spans, is, in fact, a complication of bridges, arranged,
as we shall presently see, in one single massive spectacle.