cottages are intended for the accommodation of
families, and contain two rooms each. This is by far the most extensive
watering place in the Union. Of the effect of such establishments on
_morals_ I shall say nothing. The reader will draw his own conclusions,
when he understands that the card-table, roulette, wheel of fortune, and
dice-box are amongst its principal amusements. Here, not unfrequently,
cotton bales, negroes, and even plantations, change owners in a night.
The scenery around is highly picturesque and romantic. Declivities and
mountains, sprinkled over with evergreens, are scattered in wild
confusion. A few miles from White Sulphur springs, you pass the dividing
line--the Alleghany ridge, and pass from Western into Middle Virginia.

_Chief Towns._--Wheeling is the principal commercial town, and a great
thoroughfare, in Western Virginia. It has a large number of stores, and
commission warehouses; and contains six or eight thousand inhabitants.
It is 92 miles by water, and 55 miles by land, from Pittsburg. It has
manufactures of cotton, glass, and earthenware. Boats are built here.
The Cumberland or National road crosses the Ohio at this place, over
which a bridge is about to be erected. The town is surrounded with bold,
precipitous hills, which contain inexhaustible quantities of coal. At
extreme low water, steamboats ascend no higher than Wheeling.

Charlestown, Wellsburgh, Parkersburgh, Point Pleasant, Clarksburgh,
Abington, Louisburg, and many others, are pleasant and thriving towns.

The climate of Western Virginia is preeminently salubrious. The people,
in their manners, have considerable resemblance to those of Western
Pennsylvania. There are fewer slaves, less wealth, more industry and
equality, than in the "Old Dominion," as Eastern Virginia is sometimes
called.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] See "Mitchell's Compendium of the Internal Improvements in the
United States," where much valuable information of the rail-roads and
canals of the United States is found in a small space.

[9] I have adopted the orthography of the legislature.

CHAPTER VIII.

MICHIGAN.

Extent,--Situation,--Boundaries;----Face of the Country; Rivers, Lakes,
&c., Soil and Productions;--Subdivisions, Counties;--Towns,
Detroit;--Education;--Improvements projected;--Boundary
Dispute;--Outline of the Constitution.

Michigan is a large triangular peninsula, surrounded on the east, north
and west, by lakes, and on the south by t