An Antebellum Visit to Natural Bridge
[The following highlight features an account of Porte Crayon’s visit to the Natural Bridge in Virginia with his cousins. The text is from Virginia Illustrated: Containing A Visit to the Virginian Canaan, and The Adventures of Porte Crayon and His Cousins. For the full account of Natural Bridge, click HERE.]
(“View of the Natural Bridge, Virginia” print. | Source: The New York Public Library, 1835).
From Lexington our travelers pursued their journey for ten or twelve miles over an indifferent plank road, and about midday had the pleasure of lunching on cakes and beer with the old woman who keeps the toll-gate. At this point they left the main thoroughfare and turned their horses’ heads eastward, toward the Natural Bridge…
Porte started up, apologizing for his forgetfulness, and intimated to the ladies that if they would walk with him a short distance, they might have a distant glimpse of the bridge without delay. Starting from the tavern door, they followed the public road by a gentle ascent for sixty or eighty paces, when they came to a gate. Here Crayon entered, and, taking Minnie by the arm, he pushed aside the branches of an arbor vitae, and led her forward several paces, until they reached a sort of rocky barrier.
“Look clown, cousin!”
She shrieked, and would have fallen but for the support of her companion, who hastily withdrew her from the spot, and seated her, all pale and trembling, under the shade of an evergreen…
It appearing that there still remained several hours of daylight, our friends determined to visit the bridge below, where they were assured they might enjoy the grandeur of the scene unmixed with terror.
Following their leader down a rapidly descending path which wound around the abrupt point of a hill, they presently entered a grove of noble evergreens, and on emerging from this all stood still with one accord. In front and below them was the yawning gorge, rugged and wild, clothed as it were in sombre shadows, through which the light glanced from the cascades of Cedar Creek with faint and trembling sheen. Above, with its outline of tree and rock cutting sharp against the blue sky, rose the eternal arch; so massive, yet so light it springs, uniting its tremendous buttresses high in mid air, while beneath its stern shadow the eye can mark, in fair perspective, rocks, trees, hill-tops, and distant sailing clouds. There are few objects in nature which so entirely fill the soul as this bridge in its unique and simple grandeur. In consideration of the perfection of its adaptation to circumstances, the simplicity of its design, the sublimity of its proportions, the spectator experiences a fullness of satisfaction which familiarity only serves to increase; and while that sentiment of awe inseparable from the first impression may be weakened or disappear altogether, wonder and admiration grow with time.
Continuing their descent, our friends reached the banks of the stream, and passed beneath the arch, pausing at every step to feast their eyes upon the varying aspects in which the scene was presented. Crossing Cedar Creek under the bridge, they gained a point above on the stream, from whence the view is equally fine with that first obtained from the descending path on the opposite side. This picture exhibits the turn of the arch to greater advantage. Then the flanking row of embattle cliffs, their sides wreathed with dark foliage, and their bases washed by the stream, forms a noble addition to the scene.
The average height of these cliffs is about two hundred and fifty feet, the height of the bridge about two hundred and twenty. The span of the arch is ninety-three feet, its average width eighty, and its thickness in the centre fifty-five feet. It does not cross the chasm precisely at right angles, but in an oblique direction, like what engineers call a skew bridge. While the cliffs are perpendicular, and in some places overhanging, the abutments under the arch approach until their bases are not more than fifty feet apart. At ordinary times the stream docs not occupy more than half this space, although from its traces and water-marks it frequently sweeps through in an unbroken volume, extending from rock to rock. The top of the bridge is covered with a clay soil to the depth of several feet, which nourishes a considerable growth of trees, generally of the evergreen species. These, with masses of rock, serve to form natural parapets along the sides, as if for greater security, and entirely obscure the view of the chasm from the passer…
[Crayon] then pointed out the spread eagle which is pictured on the under side of the arch, scratching the eyes out of the British Lion, all of which the ladies were patriotic enough to see plainly…
[I]n the eagle’s other claw there appears to be a scroll upon which, is mapped a number of the golden provinces of a neighboring republic, while she appears to be endeavoring to swallow a long, irregularly-shaped object that resembles an island.
“ Your eagle,” quoth Fanny, u seems to be something of a cormorant.”
Porte went on to point out the spot where Washington is said to have written the initials of his name, although he confessed he had never been able to make them out. After considering the spot attentively, Fanny declared she did not believe that any mortal could have reached it without a ladder, and Dora said that, while she knew from her history that Washington was a great general and statesman, she never heard that he could climb better than other people. Minnie observed that, for her part, she had always felt averse to hearing such stories about Washington, or to believing he had ever done any thing so childish. It seemed rather a derogation from the dignity of his character, who had written his name so high upon…