The Court House is a plain brick building of forty-five by thirty-five feet, with a very plain Courtroom on the second floor. From every window of the Court room you have a commanding prospect of the surrounding country. Much of the scenery is beautiful; some of the points are majestically grand and sublime in their wild and savage character. Along the banks of the Danand hill sides, you see something of rural life in quiet cottages and cultivated fields.
From the Court House the street makes a slight angle south of west from west, from which you can ascend to the summit of the mountain, on horseback, at the distance of about one and a half miles. Though the ascent is gradual, when you reach the summit, you find yourself from eight to twelve hundred fee above the river, at the east end of the street. From this point you have a prospect as extensive as the eye can command, and as grand as the imagination can conceive, in mountains, rocks and forests. To the North and West a curved outline of some eighty miles of the Blue Ridge bounds your horizon, its blue tints apparently commingling with the sky. South of West stands the Pilot Mountain in its castellated grandeur, rearing its craggy pinacle so high as to intercept the clouds in their course. South and East as far as the eye will bear you, stretches an interminable pine forest, interspersed with spots of cleared land until the earth and sky again seem to meet. In the comtemplation of this scene, although the poetry of the soul is stirred, you feel lonely and little in the immensity of space which bounds your horizon.
The roads leading tothe village are over rough and uneven ground, and little improved, but, from the energetic and enterprising character of the men who are settling the place, there is little doubt but they will be made in a short time quite possible.
A change has come over the spirit of the people of this whole region. Three years since it was regarded by all as being just beyond the confines of law and gospel. Where the devotees of Bachus, and the furies held their court untrammelled by the formalities of civilization, you now see a Division of the Sons of Temperance, numbering some sixty members, offering their devotions at nature's pure and sparkling fountains as they gush from the mountain's side. Many of this Division are calm thinking men, in who confidence may be justly reposed. On Sunday morning my be heard from the Temple of Justice, prayer and peans of praise to the architect of the Universe, for the spirtual and temporal prosperity of the citizens and country.
There are two Mineral springs in the neighborhood, which are attarcting some attention. The spring immediately at the village as not been improved, although it is thought to possess active medicinal properties. Mr. Thornton REDDICK'S spring, two miles north of the town, is in rapid progress of improvement for the accommodation of the afflicted. The water is a chalybeate, perhaps a saline chalybeate. The tests used in the examination of the spring were only such as to satisfy us that the carbonate of iron is one of the active ingredients of the water, and the solvent of the iron carbonic acid gass. This spring is situated on a long northern slope of the Saurtown Mountain, near the head of a slight ravine, and has been neatly cleansed and walled on three sides with rock laid in lime mortar, with an open front floored with rock. From one corner of this enclosure the mineral spring issues through a crevice of the primitive rock, affording over two gallons of water per minute, at the temperature of fifty eight degrees Fah. The water is clear as crystal, slight ordor, with a peculiar styptic tates and is thought to be well adapted to cases of disease of pure atony or debility. From the other corner of the enclosure issues a fine freestone spring, through a sedimentary rock, of apparently recent formation. Perhaps this sedimentary rock was produced by decomposition on the commingling of the waters of the two springs in the air. Mr. REDDICK has some eight cabins for the accommodation of families visiting the spring, in a forward state of completion.
About a mile North of the village, on a bluff of the Dan, is a deposite of lime stone. From one of th caves of this bluff, we got several very pretty specimens of stalactites, which is regarded as an unusual production for this region.
There fine, unusually fine, water power immediately at the village, not only on the Dan river, but on a mountain creek which empties into the river near the town. There are also in the neighborhood inexhaustible beds of iron ore, of superior quality; and some ten miles below this place, near the river are fine deposites of stone coal of good quality. Here the productive engergies of the manufacturer will at some not very distant period, be well rewarded.
On our return to the village from Reddick's spring, we overtook a formidable rattle snake on the side of the road, and soon prepared a lasso which was fastened to the end of a stick, and thrown round his neck, by which we conveyed him to town, where, after hearing him quiver his ten rattles as long as we wanted, we gagged him and, poured spirits of turpentine down his throat, which very soon killed him. He may be seen at any time at Mr. FULLERS, in a fine state of preservation in spirits. This was surely a gala day among these mountain snakeships, as there were six taken in that neighborhood on the same. day. -- People Press, August 2, 1851.