In the year VI (1798) there was published at Paris a book written by a retired captain of artillery, Ferdinand Marie Bayard, described on the title page, “A Journey Into the Interior of the United States, to Bath, Winchester, the Shenandoah Valley, etc., etc., During the Summer of 1791.” It is strange that this book has not been translated. It is interesting as a sort of sentimental journey of a very intelligent man (member of the Society of Sciences Letters and Arts at Paris), who visited a spot not often mentioned by the early traveler in this country. Captain Bayard was born at Moulins la Marche in 1768, and was living in 1836. He was in his twenty-third year the summer of 1791. He had already retired from the army and become a traveler in various parts of the world. Captain Bayard seems to have landed at Baltimore, with his wife and small boy. He remarks, “The months of June, July and August are bad for children if kept in town in this country. Bath, situated 120 miles from Baltimore, and near the Valley of the Shenandoah, offered a stopping place in the country and a point of departure from which to visit that fertile region, where, beneath skies almost always serene, the inhabitants cultivate a generous soil, which rewards liberally the slightest efforts of human industry. I wished to see this promised land, from the bosom of which an innumerable population is beginning to arise, prosperous and content, and already passing the limits of the Valley to occupy the vast spaces beyond. Besides, before returning home, I desired to gain a knowledge of the American people, and this I could better compass in the country than in the towns. For the trip I hired a carriage at Baltimore, at 41 francs the passenger, baggage included. The owner was the driver, and a very skilful one, as we learned on the road, which is often abominable and extremely dangerous. “Four miles south of the Potomac [by way of Ellicott’s Lower Mill, Ellicott’s Upper Mill, the Red House, the Monocacy River, Fredericktown, and Middletown] we arrived at Bath, in Virginia. The town is situated in a triangular and very narrow gorge. The mountain to the west is high and steep, and in the month of March snow and earth become loosened from the declivity and descend in avalanches. The houses built next to this dangerous mountain are protected by heavy palisades. Several people, having neglected the precaution, have had their houses engulfed. The residents boast of the climate--the winter not too cold, and the heat of summer moderate. Bath has two public buildings--the theatre and the bathhouse. The first is a log edifice, and the second a framed barrack, partitioned into eight cells, in each of which there are steps arranged for the convenience of the bathers. The spring is hard by. The water is dispensed in a goblet by the man in charge. The water is clear, lukewarm, and insipid, but very efficacious.