steel road (that well-worn phrase of the "iron way" is a complete
misnomer) with another glance of familiarity at the beautiful
confluence of Sir John's Run with the Potomac, where the sunny waters
still seem to murmur of the landing of Braddock's army and the novel
disturbance of James Rumsey's steamer. The mountains extending from
this point, the recesses of the Blue Ridge, in their general trend
south-westerly through the State, are one great pharmacy of curative
waters. Jordan and Capper Springs, in the neighborhood of Winchester,
lie thirty or forty miles to the south; and beneath those are imbedded
the White, Black, Yellow, and we know not how many other colors in the
general spectrum of Sulphurs. It would perhaps be our duty to indicate
more exactly the Bethesdas of this vast natural sanitarium, to which
our present course gives us the key, but that task has already been
performed, in a complete and very attractive manner, by Mr. Edward A.
Pollard in his little work _The Virginia Tourist_. Our present task is
to attain the main wall of the Alleghany Mountains, which we do at the
town of Cumberland, after passing through the grand curved tunnel at
Pawpaw Ridge, and crossing Little Cacapon Creek, and traversing the
South Branch, which is the larger and true Potomac, and admiring the
lofty precipices, with arched and vaulted strata, on South Branch
Mountain and at Kelly's Rocks and Patterson Creek.

[Illustration: CLIFF VIEW, CUMBERLAND NARROWS.]

It is but a prosaic consideration, but the bracing air of the
mountain-ride from Berkeley Springs down to the railway station, and
the rapid career thence to Cumberland, have given us the appetites of
ogres. We carry our pilgrim scrip into the town of Cumberland without
much hope of having it generously filled, for this coaly capital,
lost among its mountains, had formerly the saddest of reputations for