Indeed, these "old folks" talked so much about what "used to be in their day" at the old White Sulphur, that I found it hard to convince myself that I had not been bodily present, seeing with my own eyes certain knee-buckled old gentlemen, with long queues, and certain Virginia and South Carolina belles attired in short-waisted, simple, white cambrics, who passed the summers there. These white cambrics, we were told, had been carried in minute trunks behind the carriages; and were considered, with a few jewels, and a long black or white lace veil thrown over the head and shoulders, a complete outfit for the reigning belles! Another curiosity was that these white cambric dresses--our grandmothers told us--required very little "doing up:" one such having been worn by Mrs. General Washington--so her granddaughter told me--a whole week without requiring washing! It must have been an age of remarkable women and remarkable cambrics! How little they dreamed then of an era when Saratoga trunks would be indispensable to ladies of much smaller means than Virginia and South Carolina belles! To reach these counties flowing with mineral waters, the families from eastern Virginia and from South Carolina passed through a beautiful region of Virginia known as Piedmont, and those who had kinsfolk or acquaintances there usually stopped to pay them a visit. Consequently the Piedmont Virginians were generally too busy entertaining summer guests to visit the Springs themselves. Indeed, why should they? No more salubrious climate could be found than their own, and no scenery more grand and beautiful. But it was necessary for the tide-water Virginians to leave their homes every summer on account of chills and fevers. In the lovely Piedmont region, over which the "Peaks of Otter" rear their giant heads, and chains of blue mountains extend as far as eye can reach, were scattered many pleasant and picturesque homes. And in this section my grandfather bought a plantation, when the ancestral estates in the eastern part of the State had been sold to repay the British debt, which estates, homesteads, and tombstones with their quaint inscriptions, are described in Bishop Meade's "Old Churches and Families of Virginia." While the tide-water Virginians were already practicing all the arts and wiles known to the highest English civilization; sending their sons to be educated in England, and receiving therefrom brocaded silks and powdered wigs; and dancing the minuet at the Williamsburg balls with the families of the noblemen sent over to govern the colony,--Piedmont was still a dense forest, the abode of Indians and wild animals.