To the Southern
planter, however, who could go West with a party of stalwart negroes
to do the clearing, building, ploughing, and cooking and washing,
the wilderness had but few of the terrors it presented to the
Northern frontiersman. He was speedily provided with a very
tolerable home; not certainly the kind of home which the taste of a
man as well off at the North would be satisfied with, but a vastly
better one than any new settler in the Northwestern States ever had.
The springs in the Virginia mountains became popular a century ago,
and were greatly resorted to in much the same way. They were remote
and in the woods, but, owing to slavery, they swarmed from the very
first with servants who could not "give notice" if they did not like
the place, or felt lonesome.
The first accommodation at the springs consisted of a circle of
log-cabins with a dining-hall and ball-room in the centre, and this
constitutes the fundamental plan of a spring to this day. There is
now always a hotel in which a considerable number of the visitors
both sleep and eat, but the bulk of them, or a very large proportion
of them, still live in the long rows of one-storied wooden huts,
with galleries running along in front of the doors, which are
dignified with the name of "cottages," but are in reality simply the
log-cabin in the next stage of evolution; and the hotel has taken the
place of the original dining and ball-rooms to which all resorted.
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