motion was obtained by the reaction of a current squirted through the stern of the boat against the water of the river, the current being pumped by steam.  This action, so primitive, so remote from the principle of the engine now used, seems hardly worthy to be connected with the great revolutionary invention of steam-travel; yet Washington certified his opinion that “the discovery is of vast importance, and may be of the greatest usefulness in our inland navigation.”  James Rumsey, with just a suspicion of the irritability of talent, accused Fitch of “coming pottering around” his Virginia work-bench and carrying off his ideas, to be afterward developed in Philadelphia.  It is certain that the development was great.  Rumsey died in England of apoplexy at a public lecture where he was explaining his contrivance.

A sun-burnt, dark-eyed young Virginian now guides us up the mountain-road to the Springs, where we find a full-blown Ems set in the midst of the wilderness.  The Springs of Berkeley, originally included in the estates of Lord Fairfax, and by him presented to the colony, were the first fashionable baths opened in this country.  One half shudders to think how primitive they were in the first ages, when the pools were used by the sexes alternately, and the skurrying nymphs hastened to retreat at the notification that their hour was out and that the gentlemen wanted to come in.  They were populous and civilized in the pre-Revolutionary era when Washington began to frequent them and became part owner in the surrounding land.  The general’s will mentions his property in “Bath,” as the settlement was then called.  The Baroness de Reidesel (wife of the German general of that name taken with Burgoyne at Saratoga) spent with her invalid husband the summer of 1779 at Berkeley, making the acquaintance of Washington and his family; and whole pages of her memoirs are devoted to the quaint picture of watering-place life at that date.

[Illustration:  SCENE AT CUMBERLAND NARROWS.]

Berkeley Springs are probably as enjoyable as any on the continent.  There is none of that aspect of desolation and pity-my-sorrows so common at the faded resorts of the unhappy South, yet a pleasant rurality is impressed on the entertainment.  The principal hotel is a vast building, curiously rambling in style:  the dining-room, for instance, is a house in itself, planted in a garden.  Here, when the family is somewhat small and select, will be presented the marvels of Old Dominion cooking—­the marrowy flannel-cake, the cellular waffle, the chicken melting in a beatitude of cream gravy:  when the house is pressed with its hundreds of midsummer guests these choice individualities of kitchen chemistry are not attainable; but even then the bread, the roast, the coffee—­a great chef is known by the quality of his simples—­are of the true Fifth Avenue style of excellence.  Captain Potts (we have come to the lands where the hotel-keepers