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+Project Gutenberg Etext of On Horseback, by Charles Dudley Warner
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+Title: On Horseback
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+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
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+
+
+
+
+On Horseback
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"The way to mount a horse"- said the Professor.
+
+"If you have no ladder--put in the Friend of Humanity.
+
+The Professor had ridden through the war for the Union on the right
+side, enjoying a much better view of it than if he had walked, and
+knew as much about a horse as a person ought to know for the sake of
+his character.  The man who can recite the tales of the Canterbury
+Pilgrims, on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, never
+missing an accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witch
+North Carolina and a strip of East Tennessee with his noble
+horsemanship, is a kind of Literary Centaur of whose double
+instruction any Friend of Humanity may be glad to avail himself.
+
+"The way to mount a horse is to grasp the mane with the left hand
+holding the bridle-rein, put your left foot in the stirrup, with the
+right hand on the back of the saddle, and---"
+
+Just then the horse stepped quickly around on his hind feet, and
+looked the Professor in the face.  The Superintendents of Affairs,
+who occupy the flagging in front of the hotel, seated in cane-
+bottomed chairs tilted back, smiled.  These useful persons appear to
+have a life-lease of this portion of the city pavement, and pretty
+effectually block it up nearly all day and evening.  When a lady
+wishes to make her way through the blockade, it is the habit of these
+observers of life to rise and make room, touching their hats, while
+she picks her way through, and goes down the street with a pretty
+consciousness of the flutter she has caused.  The war has not changed
+the Southern habit of sitting out-of-doors, but has added a new
+element of street picturesqueness in groups of colored people
+lounging about the corners.  There appears to be more leisure than
+ever.
+
+The scene of this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town of
+Abingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennessee
+railway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to the
+Johnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that still
+preserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of the easy-
+going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educational
+center, where the young ladies of the region add the final graces of
+intellectual life in moral philosophy and the use of the globes to
+their natural gifts.  The mansion of the late and left Floyd is now a
+seminary, and not far from it is the Stonewall Jackson Institute, in
+the midst of a grove of splendid oaks, whose stately boles and wide-
+spreading branches give a dignity to educational life.  The
+distinction of the region is its superb oak-trees.  As it was
+vacation in these institutions of learning, the travelers did not see
+any of the vines that traditionally cling to the oak.
+
+The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on a
+journey, across country southward, through regions about which the
+people of Abingdon could give little useful information.  If the
+travelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, they
+would not have started without a supply train, or the establishment
+of bases of provisions in advance.  But, as the Professor remarked,
+knowledge is something that one acquires when he has no use for it.
+The horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirts
+and leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen,
+and novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it would
+have been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in real
+life meat is more than raiment.
+
+The hotel, in front of which there is cultivated so much of what the
+Germans call sitzfleisch, is a fair type of the majority of Southern
+hotels, and differs from the same class in the North in being left a
+little more to run itself.  The only information we obtained about it
+was from its porter at the station, who replied to the question, "Is
+it the best?"  "We warrant you perfect satisfaction in every
+respect."  This seems to be only a formula of expression, for we
+found that the statement was highly colored.  It was left to our
+imagination to conjecture how the big chambers of the old house, with
+their gaping fireplaces, might have looked when furnished and filled
+with gay company, and we got what satisfaction we could out of a
+bygone bustle and mint-julep hilarity.  In our struggles with the
+porter to obtain the little items of soap, water, and towels, we were
+convinced that we had arrived too late, and that for perfect
+satisfaction we should have been here before the war.  It was not
+always as now.  In colonial days the accommodations and prices at
+inns were regulated by law.  In the old records in the court-house we
+read that if we had been here in 1777, we could have had a gallon of
+good rum for sixteen shillings; a quart bowl of rum toddy made with
+loaf sugar for two shillings, or with brown sugar for one shilling
+and sixpence.  In 1779 prices had risen.  Good rum sold for four
+pounds a gallon.  It was ordered that a warm dinner should cost
+twelve shillings, a cold dinner nine shillings, and a good breakfast
+twelve shillings.  But the item that pleased us most, and made us
+regret our late advent, was that for two shillings we could have had
+a "good lodging, with clean sheets." The colonists were fastidious
+people.
+
+Abingdon, prettily situated on rolling hills, and a couple of
+thousand feet above the sea, with views of mountain peaks to the
+south, is a cheerful and not too exciting place for a brief sojourn,
+and hospitable and helpful to the stranger.  We had dined--so much,
+at least, the public would expect of us--with a descendant of
+Pocahontas; we had assisted on Sunday morning at the dedication of a
+new brick Methodist church, the finest edifice in the region--
+a dedication that took a long time, since the bishop would not
+proceed with it until money enough was raised in open meeting to pay
+the balance due on it: a religious act, though it did give a business
+aspect to the place at the time; and we had been the light spots in
+the evening service at the most aristocratic church of color.  The
+irresponsibility of this amiable race was exhibited in the tardiness
+with which they assembled: at the appointed time nobody was there
+except the sexton; it was three quarters of an hour before the
+congregation began to saunter in, and the sermon was nearly over
+before the pews were at all filled.  Perhaps the sermon was not new,
+but it was fervid, and at times the able preacher roared so that
+articulate sounds were lost in the general effect.  It was precisely
+these passages of cataracts of sound and hard breathing which excited
+the liveliest responses,--"Yes, Lord," and "Glory to God."  Most of
+these responses came from the "Amen corner."  The sermon contained
+the usual vivid description of the last judgment--ah, and I fancied
+that the congregation did not get the ordinary satisfaction out of
+it.  Fashion had entered the fold, and the singing was mostly
+executed by a choir in the dusky gallery, who thinly and harshly
+warbled the emotional hymns.  It occupied the minister a long time to
+give out the notices of the week, and there was not an evening or
+afternoon that had not its meetings, its literary or social
+gathering, its picnic or fair for the benefit of the church, its
+Dorcas society, or some occasion of religious sociability.  The
+raising of funds appeared to be the burden on the preacher's mind.
+Two collections were taken up.  At the first, the boxes appeared to
+get no supply except from the two white trash present.  But the
+second was more successful.  After the sermon was over, an elder took
+his place at a table within the rails, and the real business of the
+evening began.  Somebody in the Amen corner struck up a tune that had
+no end, but a mighty power of setting the congregation in motion.
+The leader had a voice like the pleasant droning of a bag-pipe, and
+the faculty of emitting a continuous note like that instrument,
+without stopping to breathe.  It went on and on like a Bach fugue,
+winding and whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of the
+catch without a break.  The effect was soon visible in the emotional
+crowd: feet began to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in,
+with spurts of ejaculation; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, the
+members began to leave their seats and pass before the table and
+deposit their contributions.  It was a cent contribution, and we
+found it very difficult, under the contagious influence of the hum
+from the Amen corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent.
+If anything could extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, it
+would be the buzzing of this tune.  It went on and on, until the
+house appeared to be drained dry of its cash; and we inferred by the
+stopping of the melody that the preacher's salary was secure for the
+time being.  On inquiring, we ascertained that the pecuniary flood
+that evening had risen to the height of a dollar and sixty cents.
+
+All was ready for the start.  It should have been early in the
+morning, but it was not; for Virginia is not only one of the blessed
+regions where one can get a late breakfast, but where it is almost
+impossible to get an early one.  At ten A. M.  the two horsemen rode
+away out of sight of the Abingdon spectators, down the eastern
+turnpike.  The day was warm, but the air was full of vitality and the
+spirit of adventure.  It was the 22d of July.  The horses were not
+ambitious, but went on at an easy fox-trot that permits observation
+and encourages conversation.  It had been stipulated that the horses
+should be good walkers, the one essential thing in a horseback
+journey.  Few horses, even in a country where riding is general, are
+trained to walk fast.  We hear much of horses that can walk five
+miles an hour, but they are as rare as white elephants.  Our horses
+were only fair walkers.  We realized how necessary this
+accomplishment is, for between the Tennessee line and Asheville,
+North Carolina, there is scarcely a mile of trotting-ground.
+
+We soon turned southward and descended into the Holston River Valley.
+Beyond lay the Tennessee hills and conspicuous White-Top Mountain
+(5530 feet), which has a good deal of local celebrity (standing where
+the States of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina corner), and
+had been pointed out to us at Abingdon.  We had been urged,
+personally and by letter, to ascend this mountain, without fail.
+People recommend mountains to their friends as they do patent
+medicines.  As we leisurely jogged along we discussed this, and
+endeavored to arrive at some rule of conduct for the journey.  The
+Professor expressed at once a feeling about mountain-climbing that
+amounted to hostility,--he would go nowhere that he could not ride.
+Climbing was the most unsatisfactory use to which a mountain could be
+put.  As to White-Top, it was a small mountain, and not worth
+ascending.  The Friend of Humanity, who believes in mountain-climbing
+as a theory, and for other people, and knows the value of being able
+to say, without detection, that he has ascended any high mountain
+about which he is questioned,--since this question is the first one
+asked about an exploration in a new country,--saw that he should have
+to use a good deal of diplomacy to get the Professor over any
+considerable elevation on the trip.  And he had to confess also that
+a view from a mountain is never so satisfactory as a view of a
+mountain, from a moderate height.  The Professor, however, did not
+argue the matter on any such reasonable ground, but took his stand on
+his right as a man not to ascend a mountain.  With this appeal to
+first principles,--a position that could not be confuted on account
+of its vagueness (although it might probably be demonstrated that in
+society man has no such right), there was no way of agreement except
+by a compromise.  It was accordingly agreed that no mountain under
+six thousand feet is worth ascending; that disposed of White-Top.  It
+was further agreed that any mountain that is over six thousand feet
+high is too high to ascend on foot.
+
+With this amicable adjustment we forded the Holston, crossing it
+twice within a few miles.  This upper branch of the Tennessee is a
+noble stream, broad, with a rocky bed and a swift current.  Fording
+it is ticklish business except at comparatively low water, and as it
+is subject to sudden rises, there must be times when it seriously
+interrupts travel.  This whole region, full of swift streams, is
+without a bridge, and, as a consequence, getting over rivers and
+brooks and the dangers of ferries occupy a prominent place in the
+thoughts of the inhabitants.  The life necessarily had the "frontier"
+quality all through, for there can be little solid advance in
+civilization in the uncertainties of a bridgeless condition.  An
+open, pleasant valley, the Holston, but cultivation is more and more
+negligent and houses are few and poorer as we advance.
+
+We had left behind the hotels of "perfect satisfaction," and expected
+to live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remunerated
+hospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants.  We were to dine at
+Ramsey's.  Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place of
+entertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot in
+the sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, we
+magnified Ramsey's in our imagination,--the nobility of its
+situation, its cuisine, its inviting restfulness,--and half decided
+to pass the night there in the true abandon of plantation life.  Long
+before we reached it, the Holston River which we followed had become
+the Laurel, a most lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we forded
+continually, for the valley became too narrow much of the way to
+accommodate a road and a river.  Eagerly as we were looking out for
+it, we passed the great Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was the
+first of a little settlement of two houses and a saw-mill and barn.
+It was a neat log house of two lower rooms and a summer kitchen,
+quite the best of the class that we saw, and the pleasant mistress of
+it made us welcome.  Across the road and close, to the Laurel was the
+spring-house, the invariable adjunct to every well-to-do house in the
+region, and on the stony margin of the stream was set up the big
+caldron for the family washing; and here, paddling in the shallow
+stream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy with
+the children and exchanged philosophical observations on life with
+the old negress who was dabbling the clothes.  What impressed this
+woman was the inequality in life.  She jumped to the unwarranted
+conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and
+spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting
+shoes and tobacco.  It was useless to point out to her that her
+alfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the
+happy lot of any one who could loiter all day by this laughing
+stream, undisturbed by debt or ambition.  Everybody about the place
+was barefooted, except the mistress, including the comely daughter of
+eighteen, who served our dinner in the kitchen.  The dinner was
+abundant, and though it seemed to us incongruous at the time, we were
+not twelve hours older when we looked back upon it with longing.  On
+the table were hot biscuit, ham, pork, and green beans, apple-sauce,
+blackberry preserves, cucumbers, coffee, plenty of milk, honey, and
+apple and blackberry pie.  Here we had our first experience, and I
+may say new sensation, of "honey on pie." It has a cloying sound as
+it is written, but the handmaiden recommended it with enthusiasm, and
+we evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from an uncultivated
+society, when we declared our inexperience of "honey on pie."  "Where
+be you from?"  It turned out to be very good, and we have tried to
+introduce it in families since our return, with indifferent success.
+There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about the
+world at large, nor much stir of social life.  The gayety of madame
+appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and
+grandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.
+
+Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims went
+gayly along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoon
+sun, which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way.
+Inspired by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and the
+dainties of the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:
+
+    "So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
+     Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
+     The which he will not every hour survey,
+     For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
+     Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
+     Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
+     Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are,
+     Or captain jewels in the carcanet."
+
+Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed.  The
+Laurel became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valley
+narrowed down to the riverway, with standing room, however, for
+stately trees along the banks.  The oaks, both black and white, were,
+as they had been all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage.
+There is a certain dignity in riding in such stately company, and the
+travelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression of
+possible high adventure in a new world of such freshness.  Nor was
+beauty wanting.  The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached
+their climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground with
+their brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they were
+still matchlessly beautiful.  Great banks of pink and white covered
+the steep hillsides; the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hung
+their rich clusters over the river; avenues of glory opened away in
+the glade of the stream; and at every turn of the winding way vistas
+glowing with the hues of romance wrenched exclamations of delight and
+wonder from the Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend.  In
+the deep recesses of the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like the
+splashes of splendor on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, these
+wonders of color,--the glowing summer-heart of the woods.
+
+It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out in
+the river, or the river in the road.  In the few miles to Egger's
+(this was the destination of our great expectations for the night)
+the stream was crossed twenty-seven times,--or perhaps it would be
+more proper to say that the road was crossed twenty-seven times.
+Where the road did not run in the river, its bed was washed out and
+as stony as the bed of the stream.  This is a general and accurate
+description of all the roads in this region, which wind along and in
+the streams, through narrow valleys, shut in by low and steep hills.
+The country is full of springs and streams, and between Abingdon and
+Egger's is only one (small) bridge.  In a region with scarcely any
+level land or intervale, farmers are at a disadvantage.  All along
+the road we saw nothing but mean shanties, generally of logs, with
+now and then a decent one-story frame, and the people looked
+miserably poor.
+
+As we picked our way along up the Laurel, obliged for the most part
+to ride single-file, or as the Professor expressed it,
+
+    "Let me confess that we two must be twain,
+     Although our undivided loves are one,"
+
+we gathered information about Egger's from the infrequent hovels on
+the road, which inflamed our imaginations.  Egger was the thriving
+man of the region, and lived in style in a big brick house.  We began
+to feel a doubt that Egger would take us in, and so much did his
+brick magnificence impress us that we regretted we had not brought
+apparel fit for the society we were about to enter.
+
+It was half-past six, and we were tired and hungry, when the domain
+of Egger towered in sight,--a gaunt, two-story structure of raw
+brick, unfinished, standing in a narrow intervale.  We rode up to the
+gate, and asked a man who sat in the front-door porch if this was
+Egger's, and if we could be accommodated for the night.  The man,
+without moving, allowed that it was Egger's, and that we could
+probably stay there.  This person, however, exhibited so much
+indifference to our company, he was such a hairy, unkempt man, and
+carried on face, hands, and clothes so much more of the soil of the
+region than a prudent proprietor would divert from raising corn, that
+we set him aside as a poor relation, and asked for Mr. Egger.  But
+the man, still without the least hospitable stir, admitted that that
+was the name he went by, and at length advised us to "lite" and hitch
+our horses, and sit on the porch with him and enjoy the cool of the
+evening.  The horses would be put up by and by, and in fact things
+generally would come round some time.  This turned out to be the easy
+way of the country.  Mr. Egger was far from being inhospitable, but
+was in no hurry, and never had been in a hurry.  He was not exactly a
+gentleman of the old school.  He was better than that.  He dated from
+the time when there were no schools at all, and he lived in that
+placid world which is without information and ideas.  Mr. Egger
+showed his superiority by a total lack of curiosity about any other
+world.
+
+This brick house, magnificent by comparison with other dwellings in
+this country, seemed to us, on nearer acquaintance, only a thin,
+crude shell of a house, half unfinished, with bare rooms, the
+plastering already discolored.  In point of furnishing it had not yet
+reached the "God bless our Home" stage in crewel.  In the narrow
+meadow, a strip of vivid green south of the house, ran a little
+stream, fed by a copious spring, and over it was built the inevitable
+spring-house.  A post, driven into the bank by the stream, supported
+a tin wash-basin, and here we performed our ablutions.  The traveler
+gets to like this freedom and primitive luxury.
+
+The farm of Egger produces corn, wheat, grass, and sheep; it is a
+good enough farm, but most of it lies at an angle of thirty-five to
+forty degrees.  The ridge back of the house, planted in corn, was as
+steep as the roof of his dwelling.  It seemed incredible that it ever
+could have been plowed, but the proprietor assured us that it was
+plowed with mules, and I judged that the harvesting must be done by
+squirrels.  The soil is good enough, if it would stay in place, but
+all the hillsides are seamed with gullies.  The discolored state of
+the streams was accounted for as soon as we saw this cultivated land.
+No sooner is the land cleared of trees and broken up than it begins
+to wash.  We saw more of this later, especially in North Carolina,
+where we encountered no stream of water that was not muddy, and saw
+no cultivated ground that was not washed.  The process of denudation
+is going on rapidly wherever the original forests are girdled (a
+common way of preparing for crops), or cut away.
+
+As the time passed and there was no sign of supper, the question
+became a burning one, and we went to explore the kitchen.  No sign of
+it there.  No fire in the stove, nothing cooked in the house, of
+course.  Mrs. Egger and her comely young barefooted daughter had
+still the milking to attend to, and supper must wait for the other
+chores.  It seemed easier to be Mr. Egger, in this state of
+existence, and sit on the front porch and meditate on the price of
+mules and the prospect of a crop, than to be Mrs. Egger, whose work
+was not limited from sun to sun; who had, in fact, a day's work to do
+after the men-folks had knocked off; whose chances of neighborhood
+gossip were scanty, whose amusements were confined to a religious
+meeting once a fortnight.  Good, honest people these, not unduly
+puffed up by the brick house, grubbing away year in and year out.
+Yes, the young girl said, there was a neighborhood party, now and
+then, in the winter.  What a price to pay for mere life!
+
+Long before supper was ready, nearly nine o'clock, we had almost lost
+interest in it.  Meantime two other guests had arrived, a couple of
+drovers from North Carolina, who brought into the circle--by this
+time a wood-fire had been kindled in the sitting-room, which
+contained a bed, an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper--a
+rich flavor of cattle, and talk of the price of steers.  As to
+politics, although a presidential campaign was raging, there was
+scarcely an echo of it here.  This was Johnson County, Tennessee, a
+strong Republican county but dog-gone it, says Mr.  Egger, it's no
+use to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest of the State.  Yes,
+they'd got a Republican member of Congress,--he'd heard his name, but
+he'd forgotten it.  The drover said he'd heard it also, but he didn't
+take much interest in such things, though he wasn't any Republican.
+Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed.  Even the
+Professor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't wake
+up a discussion out of such a state of mind.
+
+Alas!  the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp,
+on a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse
+the delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not
+lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated
+through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork
+swimming in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers
+raw, coffee (so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially
+asked for (the correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie.
+This was not the pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,--two
+thick slabs of dough, with a squeezing of apple between.  The
+profusion of this supper staggered the novices, but the drovers
+attacked it as if such cooking were a common occurrence) and did
+justice to the weary labors of Mrs. Egger.
+
+Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several rooms
+and several beds in each room.  Upon consultation with the drovers,
+they said they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, and
+we gave up their society for the night.  The beds in our chamber had
+each one sheet, and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modern
+spirit; for in one corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decoration
+of our Queen Anne drawing-rooms,--the spinning-wheel.  Soothed by
+this concession to taste, we crowded in between the straw and the
+home-made blanket and sheet, and soon ceased to hear the barking of
+dogs and the horned encounters of the drovers' herd.
+
+We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy of
+the supper) with more respect than regret.  His total charge for the
+entertainment of two men and two horses--supper, lodging, and
+breakfast--was high or low, as the traveler chose to estimate it.  It
+was $1.20: that is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten cents
+for each meal and lodging.
+
+Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut Laurel
+Gap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina,--the next
+available halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, and
+turning out to be twenty-two, and a rough road.  There is a little
+settlement about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we had
+the company of the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl.
+Neither she nor any other people we encountered had any dialect or
+local peculiarity of speech.  Indeed, those we encountered that
+morning had nothing in manner or accent to distinguish them.  The
+novelists had led us to expect something different; and the modest
+and pretty young lady with frank and open blue eyes, who wore gloves
+and used the common English speech, had never figured in the fiction
+of the region.  Cherished illusions vanish often on near approach.
+The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note, except the occasional
+use of "hit" for "it."
+
+The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, the
+thermometer mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty of
+the way, the ride became tedious before we reached the summit.  On
+the summit is the dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous in
+these parts.  We stopped at the house for a glass of milk; the
+colonel was absent, and while the woman in charge went after it, we
+sat on the veranda and conversed with a young lady, tall, gent, well
+favored, and communicative, who leaned in the doorway.
+
+"Yes, this house stands on the line.  Where you sit, you are in
+Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina."
+
+"Do you live here?"
+
+"Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's.  I live
+over the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville.  I thought I'd
+be where I could step into North Carolina easy."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify about
+some pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got into
+a little difficulty,--and I did n't want to.  I never has no
+difficulty with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothing
+against nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me."
+
+"Did you come alone?"
+
+"Why, of course.  I come across the mountain by a path through the
+woods.  That's nothing."
+
+A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl.  This surely must be the Esmeralda
+who lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virgin
+purity and sentiment.  As she talked on, she turned from time to time
+to the fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from her
+pretty lips, with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that was
+not assumed, but belongs to our free-born American girls.  I cannot
+tell why this habit of hers (which is no worse than the sister habit
+of "dipping") should take her out of the romantic setting that her
+face and figure had placed her in; but somehow we felt inclined to
+ride on farther for our heroine.
+
+"And yet," said the Professor, as we left the site of the colonel's
+thriving distillery, and by a winding, picturesque road through a
+rough farming country descended into the valley,--"and yet, why fling
+aside so readily a character and situation so full of romance, on
+account of a habit of this mountain Helen, which one of our best
+poets has almost made poetical, in the case of the pioneer taking his
+westward way, with ox-goad pointing to the sky:
+
+    "'He's leaving on the pictured rock
+     His fresh tobacco stain.'
+
+"To my mind the incident has Homeric elements.  The Greeks would have
+looked at it in a large, legendary way.  Here is Helen, strong and
+lithe of limb, ox-eyed, courageous, but woman-hearted and love-
+inspiring, contended for by all the braves and daring moonshiners of
+Cut Laurel Gap, pursued by the gallants of two States, the prize of a
+border warfare of bowie knives and revolvers.  This Helen,
+magnanimous as attractive, is the witness of a pistol difficulty on
+her behalf, and when wanted by the areopagus, that she may neither
+implicate a lover nor punish an enemy (having nothing, this noble
+type of her sex) against nobody), skips away to Mount Ida, and there,
+under the aegis of the flag of her country, in a Licensed Distillery,
+stands with one slender foot in Tennessee and the other in North
+Carolina"
+
+"Like the figure of the Republic itself, superior to state
+sovereignty," interposed the Friend.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Professor, urging up Laura Matilda (for
+so he called the nervous mare, who fretted herself into a fever in
+the stony path), "I was quite able to get the woman out of that
+position without the aid of a metaphor.  It is a large and Greek
+idea, that of standing in two mighty States, superior to the law,
+looking east and looking west, ready to transfer her agile body to
+either State on the approach of messengers of the court; and I'll be
+hanged if I didn't think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed,
+combined with her lofty moral attitude, added something to the
+picture."
+
+The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremest
+defense of the privileges of beauty,--that he even held in abeyance
+judgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gum
+was as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.
+
+    "When I consider everything that grows
+     Holds in perfection but a little moment..."
+
+The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashing
+through the stream.  No sooner had we descended than the fording of
+streams began again.  The Friend had been obliged to stipulate that
+the Professor should go ahead at these crossings, to keep the
+impetuous nag of the latter from throwing half the contents of the
+stream upon his slower and uncomplaining companion.
+
+What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the long
+wearisomeness of the way!--not that the distance was great, but miles
+and miles more than expected.  How charming the open glades of the
+river, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and what
+a panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingled
+with the lighter pink and white of the laurel!  In this region the
+rhododendron is called laurel) and the laurel (the sheep-laurel of
+New England) is called ivy.
+
+At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, open
+farming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decent
+dwellings.  Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a post
+office and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling of
+the proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house.
+Worth's has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region where
+places of accommodation are few.  The proprietor, now an elderly man,
+whose reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow up
+about him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come up
+into the modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education and
+glimpses of city life and foreign travel.  I fancy that nothing but
+tradition and a remaining Southern hospitality could induce this
+private family to suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man.  Our
+travelers are not apt to be surprised at anything in American life,
+but they did not expect to find a house in this region with two
+pianos and a bevy of young ladies, whose clothes were certainly not
+made on Cut Laurel Gap, and to read in the books scattered about the
+house the evidences of the finishing schools with which our country
+is blessed, nor to find here pupils of the Stonewall Jackson
+Institute at Abingdon.  With a flush of local pride, the Professor
+took up, in the roomy, pleasant chamber set apart for the guests, a
+copy of Porter's "Elements of Moral Science."
+
+"Where you see the 'Elements of Moral Science,'" the Friend
+generalized, "there'll be plenty of water and towels;" and the sign
+did not fail.  The friends intended to read this book in the cool of
+the day; but as they sat on the long veranda, the voice of a maiden
+reading the latest novel to a sewing group behind the blinds in the
+drawing-room; and the antics of a mule and a boy in front of the
+store opposite; and the arrival of a spruce young man, who had just
+ridden over from somewhere, a matter of ten miles' gallop, to get a
+medicinal potion for his sick mother, and lingered chatting with the
+young ladies until we began to fear that his mother would recover
+before his return; the coming and going of lean women in shackly
+wagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the cows, splashing
+through the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing for the hand
+of the milker,--all these interruptions, together with the generally
+drowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the study of
+the Elements.  And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest, went
+on their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianos
+and the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is not
+treated of in the text-book referred to, they were content with a
+bill double that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.
+
+The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be content
+to feed on natural beauties.  And it is an unfortunate truth in
+natural history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after a
+time, if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food.
+There is no landscape in the world that is agreeable after two days
+of rusty-bacon and slack biscuit.
+
+"How lovely this would be," exclaimed the Professor, if it had a
+background of beefsteak and coffee!
+
+We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguished
+locally as Three Top Creek,--or, rather, we were riding in it,
+crossing it thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (and
+water) road, under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendron
+illuminating the way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in the
+stream, all the ten miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination.
+We had heard a great deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map,
+it was down in the itinerary furnished by a member of the Coast
+Survey.  We looked forward to it as a sweet place of repose from the
+noontide heat.  Alas!  Elk Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store,
+encumbered with dry-goods boxes, fly-blown goods, flies, loafers.  In
+reply to our inquiry we were told that they had nothing to eat, for
+us, and not a grain of feed for the horses.  But there was a man a
+mile farther on, who was well to do and had stores of food,--old man
+Tatern would treat us in bang-up style.  The difficulty of getting
+feed for the horses was chronic all through the journey.  The last
+corn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not come in, and the
+country was literally barren.  We had noticed all along that the hens
+were taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put forward as an
+article of diet.
+
+We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to
+imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose.  His house is
+of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft
+accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney.  The chimney is a
+huge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in
+fact, the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms were
+then built against it.  The proprietor sat in a little railed
+veranda.  These Southern verandas give an air to the meanest
+dwelling, and they are much used; the family sit here, and here are
+the washbasin and pail (which is filled from the neighboring spring-
+house), and the row of milk-pans.  The old man Tatern did not welcome
+us with enthusiasm; he had no corn,--these were hard times.  He
+looked like hard times, grizzled times, dirty times.  It seemed time
+out of mind since he had seen comb or razor, and although the lovely
+New River, along which we had ridden to his house,--a broad, inviting
+stream,--was in sight across the meadow, there was no evidence that
+he had ever made acquaintance with its cleansing waters.  As to corn,
+the necessities of the case and pay being dwelt on, perhaps he could
+find a dozen ears.  A dozen small cars he did find, and we trust that
+the horses found them.
+
+We took a family dinner with old man Tatern in the kitchen, where
+there was a bed and a stove,--a meal that the host seemed to enjoy,
+but which we could not make much of, except the milk; that was good.
+A painful meal, on the whole, owing to the presence in the room of a
+grown-up daughter with a graveyard cough, without physician or
+medicine, or comforts.  Poor girl! just dying of "a misery."
+
+In the spare room were two beds; the walls were decorated with the
+gay-colored pictures of patent-medicine advertisements--a favorite
+art adornment of the region; and a pile of ancient illustrated papers
+with the usual patent-office report, the thoughtful gift of the
+member for the district.  The old man takes in the "Blue Ridge
+Baptist," a journal which we found largely taken up with the
+experiences of its editor on his journeys roundabout in search of
+subscribers.  This newspaper was the sole communication of the family
+with the world at large, but the old man thought he should stop it,--
+he did n't seem to get the worth of his money out of it.  And old man
+Tatem was a thrifty and provident man.  On the hearth in this best
+room--as ornaments or memento mori were a couple of marble
+gravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on bases and
+ready for use, except the lettering.  These may not have been so
+mournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple,
+humble faith; they may have been taken for debt.  But as parlor
+ornaments they had a fascination which we could not escape.
+
+It was while we were bathing in the New River, that afternoon, and
+meditating on the grim, unrelieved sort of life of our host, that the
+Professor said, "judging by the face of the 'Blue Ridge Baptist,' he
+will charge us smartly for the few nubbins of corn and the milk."
+The face did not deceive us; the charge was one dollar.  At this rate
+it would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhaps
+he is not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.
+
+It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climb
+the sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem.  But we
+entered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rode
+under the shade of great oaks.  The way, which began by the New
+River, soon led us over the hills to the higher levels of Watauga
+County.  So far on our journey we had been hemmed in by low hills,
+and without any distant or mountain outlooks.  The excessive heat
+seemed out of place at the elevation of over two thousand feet, on
+which we were traveling.  Boone, the county seat of Watauga County,
+was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and the
+trend of the roads had notified us that everything in this region
+tends towards Boone as a center of interest.  The simple ingenuity of
+some of the guide-boards impressed us.  If, on coming to a fork, the
+traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,
+
+      To BOONE 10 M.
+If he was to go to the left, it read,
+      .M 01 ENOOB oT
+
+A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,
+unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to this
+capital.  When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders
+over gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns,
+the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet above
+Albemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highest
+village east of the Rocky Mountains.  The Professor said that it
+might be so, but it was a God-forsaken place.  Its inhabitants
+numbered perhaps two hundred and fifty, a few of them colored.  It
+had a gaunt, shaky court-house and jail, a store or two, and two
+taverns.  The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges and
+lawyers and their clients during the session of the court.  The court
+is the only excitement and the only amusement.  It is the event from
+which other events date.  Everybody in the county knows exactly when
+court sits, and when court breaks.  During the session the whole
+county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children.  They camp
+there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them,
+perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the
+neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit.  To be fond of
+lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new
+conditions.  The early settlers of New England were.
+
+Notwithstanding the elevation of Boone, which insured a pure air, the
+thermometer that afternoon stood at from 85 to 89 deg.  The flies
+enjoyed it.  How they swarmed in this tavern!  They would have
+carried off all the food from the dining-room table (for flies do not
+mind eating off oilcloth, and are not particular how food is cooked),
+but for the machine with hanging flappers that swept the length of
+it; and they destroy all possibility of sleep except in the dark.
+The mountain regions of North Carolina are free from mosquitoes, but
+the fly has settled there, and is the universal scourge.  This
+tavern, one end of which was a store, had a veranda in front, and a
+back gallery, where there were evidences of female refinement in pots
+of plants and flowers.  The landlord himself kept tavern very much as
+a hostler would, but we had to make a note in his favor that he had
+never heard of a milk punch.  And it might as well be said here, for
+it will have to be insisted on later, that the traveler, who has read
+about the illicit stills till his imagination dwells upon the
+indulgence of his vitiated tastes in the mountains of North Carolina,
+is doomed to disappointment.  If he wants to make himself an
+exception to the sober people whose cooking will make him long for
+the maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him.  We had found
+no bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and water,
+slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and bacon
+incrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drink
+stronger than buttermilk.  And we can say that, so far as our example
+is concerned, we left the country as temperate as we found it.  How
+can there be mint juleps (to go into details) without ice? and in the
+summer there is probably not a pound of ice in all the State north of
+Buncombe County.
+
+There is nothing special to be said about Boone.  We were anxious to
+reach it, we were glad to leave it; we note as to all these places
+that our joy at departing always exceeds that on arriving, which is a
+merciful provision of nature for people who must keep moving.  This
+country is settled by genuine Americans, who have the aboriginal
+primitive traits of the universal Yankee nation.  The front porch in
+the morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally covered
+with the whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the evening
+there in the sedative occupation of whittling.
+
+We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles,
+through noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons,--a
+charming wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keep
+the promise of its name.  Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and a
+dirty, flyblown store.  While the Professor consulted the blacksmith
+about a loose shoe, the Friend carried his weariness of life without
+provisions up to a white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiled
+milk.  This house was occupied by flies.  They must have numbered
+millions, settled in black swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, the
+veranda; the kitchen was simply a hive of them.  The only book in
+sight, Whewell's--Elements of Morality," seemed to attract flies.
+Query, Why should this have such a different effect from Porter's?  A
+white house,--a pleasant-looking house at a distance,--amiable,
+kindly people in it,--why should we have arrived there on its dirty
+day?  Alas! if we had been starving, Valle Crusis had nothing to
+offer us.
+
+So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the
+Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and
+passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape,
+and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge,
+rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it.  From the summit we
+had the first extensive prospect during our journey.  The road can be
+described as awful,--steep, stony, the horses unable to make two
+miles an hour on it.  Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin
+without barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn.  The
+women who regarded the passers from their cabin doors were frowzy and
+looked tired.  What with the heat and the road and this discouraged
+appearance of humanity, we reached the residence of Dugger, at
+Banner's Elk, to which we had been directed, nearly exhausted.  It is
+no use to represent this as a dash across country on impatient
+steeds.  It was not so.  The love of truth is stronger than the
+desire of display.  And for this reason it is impossible to say that
+Mr. Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in a clean and attractive
+house, or that he offers much that the pampered child of civilization
+can eat.  But we shall not forget the two eggs, fresh from the hens,
+whose temperature must have been above the normal, nor the spring-
+house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies and the
+heat.  The higher we go, the hotter it is.  Banner's Elk boasts an
+elevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.
+
+We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk River
+towards Cranberry Forge.  The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though not
+very clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was under
+operation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance to
+multiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of its
+reputation.  Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string of
+quarter-pound trout, which he had taken out with a hook and a feather
+rudely tied on it, to resemble a fly.  The road, though not to be
+commended, was much better than that of the morning, the forests grew
+charming in the cool of the evening, the whippoorwill sang, and as
+night fell the wanderers, in want of nearly everything that makes
+life desirable, stopped at the Iron Company's hotel, under the
+impression that it was the only comfortable hotel in North Carolina.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into
+the northwest mountains of North Carolina.  A narrow-gauge railway,
+starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe
+River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry,
+where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rows
+of tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks,
+raw embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, are
+the signs of a great devastating American enterprise.  The Cranberry
+iron is in great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of the
+Swedish iron.  There are remains of old furnaces lower down the
+stream, which we passed on our way.  The present "plant" is that of a
+Philadelphia company, whose enterprise has infused new life into all
+this region, made it accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.
+
+When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, which
+crowns a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect of
+many gentle hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removed
+from all sordid associations, we were at the point of willingness
+that the whole country should be devastated by civilization.  In the
+local imagination this hotel of the company is a palace of unequaled
+magnificence, but probably its good taste, comfort, and quiet
+elegance are not appreciated after all.  There is this to be said
+about Philadelphia,--and it will go far in pleading for it in the
+Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity and the babel-like
+ambition of its Public Building,--that wherever its influence
+extends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the luxury of
+an undeniably excellent cuisine.  The visible seal that Philadelphia
+sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good hotel.
+
+This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set about
+with easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished in
+native woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of the
+cucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by a
+Philadelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap.  Is it
+"low" to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tour
+in search of the picturesque?  Let the reader ride from Abingdon
+through a wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge.
+There were, to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, and
+fragments of information to be picked up about a world into which the
+travelers seemed to emerge.  They, at least, were satisfied, and went
+off to their rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrived
+somewhere) and no unquiet spirit at morn would say "to horse."  To
+sleep, perchance to dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; and
+the Professor was heard muttering in his chamber,
+
+    "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
+     The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
+     But then begins a journey in my head,
+     To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd."
+
+The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be between
+twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy;
+and the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon the
+veranda, read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of the
+white birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron-
+trees, twenty feet high, which were shaking off their last pink
+blossoms, and look down into the valley of the Doe.  It is not an
+exciting landscape, nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restful
+with the monotony of some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.
+
+Sunday came up smiling, a lovely day, but offering no church
+privileges, for the ordinance of preaching is only occasional in this
+region.  The ladies of the hotel have, however, gathered in the
+valley a Sunday-school of fifty children from the mountain cabins.  A
+couple of rainy days, with the thermometer rising to 80 deg.,
+combined with natural laziness to detain the travelers in this
+cottage of ease.  They enjoyed this the more because it was on their
+consciences that they should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-five
+miles eastward, long held up before them as the most magnificent
+feature of this region, and on no account to be omitted.  Hence,
+naturally, a strong desire to omit it.  The Professor takes bold
+ground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and it was nothing to
+him that the public would demand that we should see Linville Falls.
+In the first place, we could find no one who had ever seen them, and
+we spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers.  The nearest
+we came to information was from a workman at the furnace, who was
+born and raised within three miles of the Falls.  He had heard of
+people going there.  He had never seen them himself.  It was a good
+twenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd think
+it thirty before we got there.  Fifty miles of such travel to see a
+little water run down-hill!  The travelers reflected.  Every country
+has a local waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many.
+One more would add little to the experience of life.  The vagueness
+of information, to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake the
+journey; but the temptation was resisted--something ought to be left
+for the next explorer--and so Linville remains a thing of the
+imagination.
+
+Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and the
+Friend rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, to
+Roan Station, the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain.  It
+was a ride of an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed with
+rhododendrons, nearly blossomless; but at a point on the stream this
+sturdy shrub had formed a long bower where under a table might have
+been set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wild
+grape, and still gay with bloom.  The habitations on the way are
+mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is
+introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of
+ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to
+precede comfort in our civilization.
+
+Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from Roan
+Mountain), and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea.  The visitor
+will find here a good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful in
+a July evening), and obliging people.  This railway from Johnson
+City, hanging on the edge of the precipices that wall the gorge of
+the Doe, is counted in this region by the inhabitants one of the
+engineering wonders of the world.  The tourist is urged by all means
+to see both it and Linville Falls.
+
+The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, is
+not probably expected to take stock of moral conditions.  But this
+Mitchell County, although it was a Union county during the war and is
+Republican in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps prefer
+another adverb to "although"), has had the worst possible reputation.
+The mountains were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woods
+were full of grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as
+"native brandy," quarrels and neighborhood difficulties were
+frequent, and the knife and pistol were used on the slightest
+provocation.  Fights arose about boundaries and the title to mica
+mines, and with the revenue officers; and force was the arbiter of
+all disputes.  Within the year four murders were committed in the
+sparsely settled county.  Travel on any of the roads was unsafe.  The
+tone of morals was what might be expected with such lawlessness.  A
+lady who came up on the road on the 4th of July, when an excursion
+party of country people took possession of the cars, witnessed a
+scene and heard language past belief.  Men, women, and children drank
+from whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a wild orgy
+resulted.  Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the license
+of the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom of
+manners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on canvas,
+made the journey horrible.
+
+The unrestrained license of whisky and assault and murder had
+produced a reaction a few months previous to our visit.  The people
+had risen up in their indignation and broken up the groggeries.  So
+far as we observed temperance prevailed, backed by public-opinion.
+In our whole ride through the mountain region we saw only one or two
+places where liquor was sold.
+
+It is called twelve miles from Roan Station to Roan Summit.  The
+distance is probably nearer fourteen, and our horses were five hours
+in walking it.  For six miles the road runs by Doe River, here a
+pretty brook shaded with laurel and rhododendron, and a few
+cultivated patches of ground, and infrequent houses.  It was a blithe
+morning, and the horsemen would have given full indulgence to the
+spirit of adventure but for the attitude of the Professor towards
+mountains.  It was not with him a matter of feeling, but of
+principle, not to ascend them.  But here lay Roan, a long, sprawling
+ridge, lifting itself 6250 feet up into the sky.  Impossible to go
+around it, and the other side must be reached.  The Professor was
+obliged to surrender, and surmount a  difficulty which he could not
+philosophize out of his mind.
+
+>From the base of the mountain a road is very well engineered, in easy
+grades for carriages, to the top; but it was in poor repair and
+stony.  We mounted slowly through splendid forests, specially of fine
+chestnuts and hemlocks.  This big timber continues till within a mile
+and a half of the summit by the winding road, really within a short
+distance of the top.  Then there is a narrow belt of scrubby
+hardwood, moss-grown, and then large balsams, which crown the
+mountain.  As soon as we came out upon the southern slope we found
+great open spaces, covered with succulent grass, and giving excellent
+pasturage to cattle.  These rich mountain meadows are found on all
+the heights of this region.  The surface of Roan is uneven, and has
+no one culminating peak that commands the country, like the peak of
+Mount Washington, but several eminences within its range of probably
+a mile and a half, where various views can be had.  Near the highest
+point, sheltered from the north by balsams, stands a house of
+entertainment, with a detached cottage, looking across the great
+valley to the Black Mountain range.  The surface of the mountain is
+pebbly, but few rocks crop out; no ledges of any size are seen except
+at a distance from the hotel, on the north side, and the mountain
+consequently lacks that savage, unsubduable aspect which the White
+Hills of New Hampshire have.  It would, in fact, have been difficult
+to realize that we were over six thousand feet above the sea, except
+for that pallor in the sunlight, that atmospheric thinness and want
+of color which is an unpleasant characteristic of high altitudes.  To
+be sure, there is a certain brilliancy in the high air,--it is apt to
+be foggy on Roan,--and objects appear in sharp outline, but I have
+often experienced on such places that feeling of melancholy, which
+would, of course, deepen upon us all if we were sensible that the sun
+was gradually withdrawing its power of warmth and light.  The black
+balsam is neither a cheerful nor a picturesque tree; the frequent
+rains and mists on Roan keep the grass and mosses green, but the
+ground damp.  Doubtless a high mountain covered with vegetation has
+its compensation, but for me the naked granite rocks in sun and
+shower are more cheerful.
+
+The advantage of Roan is that one can live there and be occupied for
+a long time in mineral and botanical study.  Its mild climate,
+moisture, and great elevation make it unique in this country for the
+botanist.  The variety of plants assembled there is very large, and
+there are many, we were told, never or rarely found elsewhere in the
+United States.  At any rate, the botanists rave about Roan Mountain,
+and spend weeks at a time on it.  We found there ladies who could
+draw for us Grey's lily (then passed), and had kept specimens of the
+rhododendron (not growing elsewhere in this region) which has a deep
+red, almost purple color.
+
+The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountain
+structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and sitting-
+room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the
+thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was
+welcome.  Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave the
+occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being
+primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the
+loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not
+unlike that of being at sea.  The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and
+Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the
+season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands.  This
+statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the
+character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.
+
+The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North
+Carolina mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in
+mist; and it would rather rain on them than not.  On the afternoon of
+our arrival there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky.
+The distance was hazy, but the outlines were preserved.  We could see
+White Top, in Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range;
+the twin towers of Linville; and the entire range of the Black
+Mountains, rising from the valley, and apparently lower than we were.
+They get the name of Black from the balsams which cover the summits.
+
+The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful
+company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,
+and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in
+agreeableness.  There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of
+the virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston;
+the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the
+literature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of
+bright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull
+day or evening on Roan.  I can fancy, however, that it might tire in
+time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women's
+society.  The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished
+botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of
+plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued
+as Humana, perplexia negligens.  The species is, however, common
+elsewhere.
+
+The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
+thunder-shower.  After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle
+Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had,
+but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the
+day.  Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a
+mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley.  On the lower mountains, at
+wide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched
+cabin and a spot of girdled trees.  A clergyman here, not long ago,
+undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to
+them.  In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom,
+after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray.  She
+offered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed.  The woman
+heard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an
+effort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said :
+
+"Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole."
+
+Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest,
+and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some
+rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.
+In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained
+of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States--a
+continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or
+distance.  The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of
+the atmosphere.  Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day
+before, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim
+inaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwest
+horizon, King's Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distant
+one hundred and fifty miles.  To the north Roan falls from this point
+abruptly, and we had, like a map below us, the low country all the
+way into Virginia.  The clouds lay like lakes in the valleys of the
+lower hills, and in every direction were ranges of mountains wooded
+to the summits.  Off to the west by south lay the Great Smoky
+Mountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.
+
+Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged to
+contrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills.  The rock here
+is a sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite.
+And all the hills are tree-covered.  To many this clothing of verdure
+is most restful and pleasing.  I missed the sharp outlines, the
+delicate artistic sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granite
+peaks and ridges, with the purple and violet color of the northern
+mountains, and which it seems to me that limestone and granite
+formations give.  There are none of the great gorges and awful
+abysses of the White Mountains, both valleys and mountains here being
+more uniform in outline.  There are few precipices and jutting crags,
+and less is visible of the giant ribs and bones of the planet.
+
+Yet Roan is a noble mountain.  A lady from Tennessee asked me if I
+had ever seen anything to compare with it--she thought there could be
+nothing in the world.  One has to dodge this sort of question in the
+South occasionally, not to offend a just local pride.  It is
+certainly one of the most habitable of big mountains.  It is roomy on
+top, there is space to move about without too great fatigue, and one
+might pleasantly spend a season there, if he had agreeable company
+and natural tastes.
+
+Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascending
+on the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain is
+merely a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which the
+horses picked their way painfully.  The travelers endeavored to
+present a dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies who
+waved good-by from the hotel, as they took their way over the waste
+and wind-blown declivities, but it was only a show, for the horses
+would neither caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day) down-
+hill over the slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderers
+turned with regret from the society of leisure and persiflage to face
+the wilderness of Mitchell County.
+
+"How heavy," exclaimed the Professor, pricking Laura Matilda to call
+her attention sharply to her footing
+
+    "How heavy do I journey on the way,
+     When what I seek--my weary travel's end
+     Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
+     Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!
+     The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
+     Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
+     As if by some instinct the wretch did know
+     His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
+     The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
+     That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
+     Which heavily he answers with a groan,
+     More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
+     For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
+     My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
+
+This was not spoken to the group who fluttered their farewells, but
+poured out to the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in ever
+statelier--and grander ranks to greet the travelers as they
+descended--the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip of
+squirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead in
+response to the sonnet.  Is there any region or circumstance of life
+that the poet did not forecast and provide for?  But what would have
+been his feelings if he could have known that almost three centuries
+after these lines were penned, they would be used to express the
+emotion of an unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of the
+New World?  At any rate, he peopled the New World with the children
+of his imagination.  And, thought the Friend, whose attention to his
+horse did not permit him to drop into poetry, Shakespeare might have
+had a vision of this vast continent, though he did not refer to it,
+when he exclaimed:
+
+    "What is your substance, whereof are you made,
+     That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"
+
+Bakersville, the capital of Mitchell County, is eight miles from the
+top of Roan, and the last three miles of the way the horsemen found
+tolerable going, over which the horses could show their paces.  The
+valley looked fairly thrifty and bright, and was a pleasing
+introduction to Bakersville, a pretty place in the hills, of some six
+hundred inhabitants, with two churches, three indifferent hotels, and
+a court-house.  This mountain town, 255O feet above the sea, is said
+to have a decent winter climate, with little snow, favorable to
+fruit-growing, and, by contrast with New England, encouraging to
+people with weak lungs.
+
+This is the center of the mica mining, and of considerable excitement
+about minerals.  All around, the hills are spotted with "diggings."
+Most of the mines which yield well show signs of having been worked
+before, a very long time ago, no doubt by the occupants before the
+Indians.  The mica is of excellent quality and easily mined.  It is
+got out in large irregular-shaped blocks and transported to the
+factories, where it is carefully split by hand, and the laminae, of
+as large size as can be obtained, are trimmed with shears and tied up
+in packages for market.  The quantity of refuse, broken, and rotten
+mica piled up about the factories is immense, and all the roads round
+about glisten with its scales.  Garnets are often found imbedded in
+the laminae, flattened by the extreme pressure to which the mass was
+subjected.  It is fascinating material, this mica, to handle, and we
+amused ourselves by experimenting on the thinness to which its scales
+could be reduced by splitting.  It was at Bakersville that we saw
+specimens of mica that resembled the delicate tracery in the moss-
+agate and had the iridescent sheen of the rainbow colors--the most
+delicate greens, reds, blues, purples, and gold, changing from one to
+the other in the reflected light.  In the texture were the tracings
+of fossil forms of ferns and the most exquisite and delicate
+vegetable beauty of the coal age.  But the magnet shows this tracery
+to be iron.  We were shown also emeralds and "diamonds," picked up in
+this region, and there is a mild expectation in all the inhabitants
+of great mineral treasure.  A singular product of the region is the
+flexible sandstone.  It is a most uncanny stone.  A slip of it a
+couple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in the
+hand like a half-frozen snake.  This conduct of a substance that we
+have been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence in
+the stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does.
+
+This excitement over mica and other minerals has the usual effect of
+starting up business and creating bad blood.  Fortunes have been
+made, and lost in riotous living; scores of visionary men have been
+disappointed; lawsuits about titles and claims have multiplied, and
+quarrels ending in murder have been frequent in the past few years.
+The mica and the illicit whisky have worked together to make this
+region one of lawlessness and violence.  The travelers were told
+stories of the lack of common morality and decency in the region, but
+they made no note of them.  And, perhaps fortunately, they were not
+there during court week to witness the scenes of license that were
+described.  This court week, which draws hither the whole population,
+is a sort of Saturnalia.  Perhaps the worst of this is already a
+thing of the past; for the outrages a year before had reached such a
+pass that by a common movement the sale of whisky was stopped (not
+interdicted, but stopped), and not a drop of liquor could be bought
+in Bakersville nor within three miles of it.
+
+The jail at Bakersville is a very simple residence.  The main
+building is brick, two stories high and about twelve feet square.
+The walls are so loosely laid up that it seems as if a colored
+prisoner might butt his head through.  Attached to this is a room for
+the jailer.  In the lower room is a wooden cage, made of logs bolted
+together and filled with spikes, nine feet by ten feet square and
+perhaps seven or eight feet high.  Between this cage and the wall is
+a space of eighteen inches in width.  It has a narrow door, and an
+opening through which the food is passed to the prisoners, and a
+conduit leading out of it.  Of course it soon becomes foul, and in
+warm weather somewhat warm.  A recent prisoner, who wanted more
+ventilation than the State allowed him, found some means, by a loose
+plank, I think, to batter a hole in the outer wall opposite the
+window in the cage, and this ragged opening, seeming to the jailer a
+good sanitary arrangement, remains.  Two murderers occupied this
+apartment at the time of our visit.  During the recent session of
+court, ten men had been confined in this narrow space, without room
+enough for them to lie down together.  The cage in the room above, a
+little larger, had for tenant a person who was jailed for some
+misunderstanding about an account, and who was probably innocent--
+from the jailer's statement.  This box is a wretched residence, month
+after month, while awaiting trial.
+
+We learned on inquiry that it is practically impossible to get a jury
+to convict of murder in this region, and that these admitted felons
+would undoubtedly escape.  We even heard that juries were purchasable
+here, and that a man's success in court depended upon the length of
+his purse.  This is such an unheard-of thing that we refused to
+credit it.  When the Friend attempted to arouse the indignation of
+the Professor about the barbarity of this jail, the latter defended
+it on the ground that as confinement was the only punishment that
+murderers were likely to receive in this region, it was well to make
+their detention disagreeable to them.  But the Friend did not like
+this wild-beast cage for men, and could only exclaim,
+
+"Oh, murder!  what crimes are done in thy name."
+
+If the comrades wished an adventure, they had a small one, more
+interesting to them than to the public, the morning they left
+Bakersville to ride to Burnsville, which sets itself up as the
+capital of Yancey.  The way for the first three miles lay down a
+small creek and in a valley fairly settled, the houses, a store, and
+a grist-mill giving evidence of the new enterprise of the region.
+When Toe River was reached, there was a choice of routes.  We might
+ford the Toe at that point, where the river was wide, but shallow,
+and the crossing safe, and climb over the mountain by a rough but
+sightly road, or descend the stream by a better road and ford the
+river at a place rather dangerous to those unfamiliar with it.  The
+danger attracted us, but we promptly chose the hill road on account
+of the views, for we were weary of the limited valley prospects.
+
+The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a very
+respectable stream in size, and not to be trifled with after a
+shower.  It gradually turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky,
+becomes part of the Tennessee system.  We crossed it by a long,
+diagonal ford, slipping and sliding about on the round stones, and
+began the ascent of a steep hill.  The sun beat down unmercifully,
+the way was stony, and the horses did not relish the weary climbing.
+The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but
+to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer
+occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and
+perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general,
+cried out:
+
+    "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,--
+     As, to behold desert a beggar born,
+     And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
+     And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
+     And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
+     And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
+     And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
+     And strength by limping sway disabled,
+     And art made tongue-tied by authority,
+     And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
+     And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
+     And captive good attending captain ill:
+     Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
+     Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."
+
+In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of the
+inequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often put
+at disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazen
+assumption raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest merit
+to plod along in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attack
+a blackberry bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, and
+desirous of getting a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill.
+At the top he encountered a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom he
+entered into conversation and extracted all the discouragement the
+man had as to the road to Burnsville.
+
+Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively.  There are few
+exhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a high
+ridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above the
+point of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when he
+encountered the blackberry bushes.  Luckily the Friend soon fell in
+with a like temptation, and dismounted.  He discovered something that
+spoiled his appetite for berries.  His coat, strapped on behind the
+saddle, had worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book
+was gone.  This was serious business.  For while the Professor was
+the cashier, and traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the
+Friend represented the sub-treasury.  That very morning, in response
+to inquiry as to the sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed,
+without counting, a roll of bills.  These bills had now disappeared,
+and when the Friend turned back to communicate his loss, in the
+character of needy nothing not trimm'd in jollity, he had a
+sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.
+
+Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retrace
+our steps we must.  Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not half
+a mile back.  But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found.
+Probably, then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up.  But
+who was the man on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone?  Probably
+the coat worked loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book had
+gone down-stream.  The number of probabilities was infinite, and each
+more plausible than the others as it occurred to us.  We inquired at
+every house we had passed on the way, we questioned every one we met.
+At length it began to seem improbable that any one would remember if
+he had picked up a pocketbook that morning.  This is just the sort of
+thing that slips an untrained memory.
+
+At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might be
+either or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence,, and
+a group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, we
+unfolded our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on a
+sorrel horse.  Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just ridden
+towards Bakersville.  If he had found the pocket-book, we would
+recover it.  He was an honest man.  It might, however, fall into
+hands that would freeze to it.
+
+Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men in
+the county who would keep it if they had picked it up.  But the
+assembly manifested the liveliest interest in the incident.  One
+suggested Toe River.  Another thought it risky to drop a purse on any
+road.  But there was a chorus of desire expressed that we should find
+it, and in this anxiety was exhibited a decided sensitiveness about
+the honor of Mitchell County.  It seemed too bad that a stranger
+should go away with the impression that it was not safe to leave
+money anywhere in it.  We felt very much obliged for this genuine
+sympathy, and we told them that if a pocket-book were lost in this
+way on a Connecticut road, there would be felt no neighborhood
+responsibility for it, and that nobody would take any interest in the
+incident except the man who lost, and the man who found.
+
+By the time the travelers pulled up at a store in Bakersville they
+had lost all expectation of recovering the missing article, and were
+discussing the investment of more money in an advertisement in the
+weekly newspaper of the capital.  The Professor, whose reform
+sentiments agreed with those of the newspaper, advised it.  There was
+a group of idlers, mica acquaintances of the morning, and
+philosophers in front of the store, and the Friend opened the
+colloquy by asking if a man named David Thomas had been seen in town.
+He was in town, had ridden in within an hour, and his brother, who
+was in the group, would go in search of him.  The information was
+then given of the loss, and that the rider had met David Thomas just
+before it was discovered, on the mountain beyond the Toe.  The news
+made a sensation, and by the time David Thomas appeared a crowd of a
+hundred had drawn around the horsemen eager for further developments.
+Mr. Thomas was the least excited of the group as he took his position
+on the sidewalk, conscious of the dignity of the occasion and that he
+was about to begin a duel in which both reputation and profit were
+concerned.  He recollected meeting the travelers in the morning.
+
+The Friend said, "I discovered that I had lost my purse just after
+meeting you; it may have been dropped in Toe River, but I was told
+back here that if David Thomas had picked it up, it was as safe as if
+it were in the bank."
+
+"What sort of a pocket-book was it?"  asked Mr. Thomas.
+
+"It was of crocodile skin, or what is sold for that, very likely it
+is an imitation, and about so large indicating the size."
+
+"What had it in it?"
+
+"Various things.  Some specimens of mica; some bank checks, some
+money."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"Yes, a photograph.  And, oh, something that I presume is not in
+another pocket-book in North Carolina,--in an envelope, a lock of the
+hair of George Washington, the Father of his Country."  Sensation
+mixed with incredulity.  Washington's hair did seem such an odd part
+of an outfit for a journey of this kind.
+
+"How much money was in it?"
+
+"That I cannot say, exactly.  I happen to remember four twenty-dollar
+United States notes, and a roll of small bills, perhaps something
+over a hundred dollars."
+
+"Is that the pocket-book?"  asked David Thomas, slowly pulling the
+loved and lost out of his trousers pocket.
+
+"It is."
+
+"You'd be willing to take your oath on it?"
+
+"I should be delighted to."
+
+"Well, I guess there ain't so much money in it.  You can count it
+[handing it over]; there hain't been nothing taken out.  I can't
+read, but my friend here counted it over, and he says there ain't as
+much as that."
+
+Intense interest in the result of the counting.  One hundred and ten
+dollars!  The Friend selected one of the best engraved of the notes,
+and appealed to the crowd if they thought that was the square thing
+to do.  They did so think, and David Thomas said it was abundant.
+And then said the Friend :
+
+"I'm exceedingly grateful to you besides.  Washington's hair is
+getting scarce, and I did not want to lose these few hairs, gray as
+they are.  You've done the honest thing, Mr. Thomas, as was expected
+of you.  You might have kept the whole.  But I reckon if there had
+been five hundred dollars in the book and you had kept it, it
+wouldn't have done you half as much good as giving it up has done;
+and your reputation as an honest man is worth a good deal more than
+this pocket-book.  [The Professor was delighted with this sentiment,
+because it reminded him of a Sunday-school.]  I shall go away with a
+high opinion of the honesty of Mitchell County."
+
+"Oh, he lives in Yancey," cried two or three voices.  At which there
+was a great laugh.
+
+"Well, I wondered where he came from."  And the Mitchell County
+people laughed again at their own expense, and the levee broke up.
+It was exceedingly gratifying, as we spread the news of the recovered
+property that afternoon at every house on our way to the Toe, to see
+what pleasure it gave.  Every man appeared to feel that the honor of
+the region had been on trial--and had stood the test.
+
+The eighteen miles to Burnsville had now to be added to the morning
+excursion, but the travelers were in high spirits, feeling the truth
+of the adage that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to
+have lost at all.  They decided, on reflection, to join company with
+the mail-rider, who was going to Burnsville by the shorter route, and
+could pilot them over the dangerous ford of the Toe.
+
+The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry
+sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a
+fast walker and full of endurance.  The mail-rider was taciturn, a
+natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely
+road, and has nothing whatever to think of.  He had been in the war
+sixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,--reckon you've heerd of
+him?
+
+"Confederate?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Was he on the Union or Confederate side?"
+
+"Oh, Union."
+
+"Were you in any engagements?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Did you have any fighting?"
+
+"Not reg'lar."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"What did you do in Hugh White's regiment?"
+
+"Oh, just cavorted round the mountains."
+
+"You lived on the country?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?"
+
+"That's about so.  Did n't make much difference which side was round,
+the country got cleaned out."
+
+"Plunder seems to have been the object?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"You got a living out of the farmers?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain
+marauder--on the right side.  His attachment to the word "which"
+prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to be
+only two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject of
+horses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were
+coming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring
+to excite our alarm.  He returned to the ford from every other
+conversational excursion, and after every silence.
+
+I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford.
+Folks is carried away there.  The Toe gits up sudden.  There's been
+right smart rain lately.
+
+If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll take
+your horses across.  Mebbe you're used to fording?  It's a pretty bad
+ford for them as don't know it.  But you'll get along if you mind
+your eye.  There's some rocks you'll have to look out for.  But
+you'll be all right if you follow me."
+
+Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers of
+his ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasure
+in trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned his
+attention to a trade.  "This hoss of mine," he said, "is just the
+kind of brute-beast you want for this country.  Your hosses is too
+heavy.  How'll you swap for that one o' yourn?"  The reiterated
+assertion that the horses were not ours, that they were hired, made
+little impression on him.  All the way to Burnsville he kept
+referring to the subject of a trade.  The instinct of "swap" was
+strong in him.  When we met a yoke of steers, he turned round and
+bantered the owner for a trade.  Our saddles took his fancy.  They
+were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would just
+suit him.  He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flung
+the United States mail pouch, apparently empty.  He dwelt upon the
+fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantages
+that would accrue to us from the exchange.  He did n't care if they
+had been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army saddle.
+The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged to a
+distinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was put
+there by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, and
+the owner would not part with it for money.  But the mail-rider said
+he did n't mind that.  He would n't mind swapping his new saddle for
+my old one and the rubber coat and leggings.  Long before we reached
+the ford we thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the,
+risk of drowning.  The ford was passed, in due time, with no
+inconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast high
+to the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks and
+slippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to be
+commended.  There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossing
+a swift broad stream.  It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream,
+while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.
+
+The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams
+and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.
+Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped.  The travelers
+endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land.
+Not much sold, he said.  "There was one sale of a big piece last
+year; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know
+what he got for it,"
+
+All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one
+room, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only
+occasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like
+a cob house, that served for a stable.  Not much cultivation, except
+now and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside,
+occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit.  Here
+and there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned,
+or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were just
+beginning life.  Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of the
+census of 1880 swarmed with children, and nearly all the women were
+thin and sickly.
+
+In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now and
+then a horse.  We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer,
+sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the
+mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much
+pride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.
+
+In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the
+rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a
+letter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with patent-
+medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an
+evidence of culture that was worth noting.  Mica was the rage.  Every
+one with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the
+mineral fever.  The impression was general that the mountain region
+of North Carolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral
+development, and the most extravagant expectations were entertained.
+Mica was the shining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also
+on the cards.
+
+The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very
+pleasing.  Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of
+2840 feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen.
+Most of the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabby
+court-house; around it are two small churches, a jail, an inviting
+tavern) with a long veranda, and a couple of stores.  On an
+overlooking hill is the seminary.  Mica mining is the exciting
+industry, but it is agriculturally a good country.  The tavern had
+recently been enlarged to meet the new demands for entertainment) and
+is a roomy structure, fresh with paint and only partially organized.
+The travelers were much impressed with the brilliant chambers, the
+floors of which were painted in alternate stripes of vivid green and
+red.  The proprietor, a very intelligent and enterprising man, who
+had traveled often in the North, was full of projects for the
+development of his region and foremost in its enterprises, and had
+formed a considerable collection of minerals.  Besides, more than any
+one else we met, he appreciated the beauty of his country, and took
+us to a neighboring hill, where we had a view of Table Mountain to
+the east and the nearer giant Blacks.  The elevation of Burnsville
+gives it a delightful summer climate, the gentle undulations of the
+country are agreeable, the views noble, the air is good, and it is
+altogether a "livable" and attractive place.  With facilities of
+communication, it would be a favorite summer resort.  Its nearness to
+the great mountains (the whole Black range is in Yancey County), its
+fine pure air, its opportunity for fishing and hunting, commend it to
+those in search of an interesting and restful retreat in summer.
+
+But it should be said that before the country can attract and retain
+travelers, its inhabitants must learn something about the preparation
+of food.  If, for instance, the landlord's wife at Burnsville had
+traveled with her husband, her table would probably have been more on
+a level with his knowledge of the world, and it would have contained
+something that the wayfaring man, though a Northerner, could eat.  We
+have been on the point several times in this journey of making the
+observation, but have been restrained by a reluctance to touch upon
+politics, that it was no wonder that a people with such a cuisine
+should have rebelled.  The travelers were in a rebellious mood most
+of the time.
+
+The evidences of enterprise in this region were pleasant to see, but
+the observers could not but regret, after all, the intrusion of the
+money-making spirit, which is certain to destroy much of the present
+simplicity.  It is as yet, to a degree, tempered by a philosophic
+spirit.  The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-bearded
+traveler for some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and the
+landlord fell into a conversation upon what Socrates calls the
+disadvantage of the pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all noble
+objects, and they let their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who was
+agreed to be the richest man in the world, or that ever lived.
+
+"All I want," said the long-bearded man, "is enough to be
+comfortable.  I would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it to
+me."
+
+"Nor I," said the landlord.  "Give me just enough to be comfortable."
+[The tourist couldn't but note that his ideas of enough to be
+comfortable had changed a good deal since he had left his little farm
+and gone into the mica business, and visited New York, and enlarged
+and painted his tavern.]  I should like to know what more Vanderbilt
+gets out of his money than I get out of mine.  I heard tell of a
+young man who went to Vanderbilt to get employment.  Vanderbilt
+finally offered to give the young man, if he would work for him, just
+what he got himself.  The young man jumped at that--he'd be perfectly
+satisfied with that pay.  And Vanderbilt said that all he got was
+what he could eat and wear, and offered to give the young man his
+board and clothes."
+
+"I declare" said the long-bearded man.  "That's just it.  Did you
+ever see Vanderbilt's house?  Neither did I, but I heard he had a
+vault built in it five feet thick, solid.  He put in it two hundred
+millions of dollars, in gold.  After a year, he opened it and put in
+twelve millions more, and called that a poor year.  They say his
+house has gold shutters to the windows, so I've heard."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said the landlord.  "I heard he had one door in
+his house cost forty thousand dollars.  I don't know what it is made
+of, unless it's made of gold."
+
+Sunday was a hot and quiet day.  The stores were closed and the two
+churches also, this not being the Sunday for the itinerant preacher.
+The jail also showed no sign of life, and when we asked about it, we
+learned that it was empty, and had been for some time.  No liquor is
+sold in the place, nor within at least three miles of it.  It is not
+much use to try to run a jail without liquor.
+
+In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived,
+leading between them a young man whom they had arrested,--it didn't
+appear on any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed and
+locked up.  The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had
+not used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about and
+threatened, and the neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound to
+enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.
+
+The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms
+with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not
+unwilling to go to jail.  But a practical difficulty arose.  The jail
+was locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the
+key, and no one could get in.  It did not appear that there was any
+provision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it.  The
+sheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and
+his captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence,
+rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust that
+the jail would be open some time.
+
+Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the
+jail.  But we took a personal leaf out of this experience.  Our
+Virginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had
+urged us not to venture into it without arms--take at least, they
+insisted, a revolver each.  And now we had to congratulate ourselves
+that we had not done so.  If we had, we should doubtless on that
+Sunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission
+into the Yancey County jail.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+>From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
+considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
+the capital of Buncombe County.  It is distant some forty to forty-
+five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads.  The
+easier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles,
+the first stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late
+afternoon when we were in condition to move.
+
+The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
+Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville,
+cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to
+Asheville.  He represented this route as shorter and infinitely more
+picturesque.  There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.
+With scarcely a moment's reflection and while the horses were
+saddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson's.  I could not at the
+time understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented.  I
+should hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend Mount
+Mitchell.  It was equally fixed in the Professor's mind not to do it.
+We had not discussed it much.  But it is safe to say that if he had
+one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell.
+"Not," as he put it,--
+
+    "Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
+     Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"
+
+had suggested the possibility that he could do it.
+
+But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
+to Wilson's.  When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
+although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy
+as anywhere--a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and
+never got off her horse.  You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's,
+you can go any way you please.
+
+Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
+Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most
+characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman,
+hunter, guide.  So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty,
+broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a few
+miles to Wilson's plantation.  There are little intervales along the
+river, where hay is cut and corn grown, but the region is not much
+cleared, and the stock browse about in the forest.  Wilson is the
+agent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand
+acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a
+wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams
+abounding in trout.  It is also the playground of the rattlesnake.
+With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching
+game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the
+few neighbors.  It is not that the cattle do much injury in the
+forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
+around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves
+against the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and
+lately they have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the
+fish.
+
+Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together
+frame house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a
+loft, and a spring-house in the rear.  Chickens and other animals
+have free run of the premises.  Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and
+hunter's gear depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen.
+In one room were three beds, in the other two, only one in the
+kitchen.  On the porch was a loom, with a piece of cloth in process.
+The establishment had the air of taking care of itself.  Neither Big
+Tom nor his wife was at home.  Sunday seemed to be a visiting day,
+and the travelers had met many parties on horseback.  Mrs.  Wilson
+was away for a visit of a day or two.  One of the sons, who was
+lounging on the veranda, was at last induced to put up the horses; a
+very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the visitors, was found in
+the kitchen, but no intelligible response could be got out of her.
+Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in charge, appeared.
+She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's (her brother was
+just married and lived up the river in the house where Mr. Murchison
+stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear that had
+been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before.  She expected
+him back by sundown--by dark anyway.  'Les he'd gone after the bear,
+and then you could n't tell when he would come.
+
+It appeared that Big Tom was a thriving man in the matter of family.
+More boys appeared.  Only one was married, but four had "got their
+time."  As night approached, and no Wilson, there was a good deal of
+lively and loud conversation about the stock and the chores, in all
+of which the girl took a leading and intelligent part, showing a
+willingness to do her share, but not to have all the work put upon
+her.  It was time to go down the road and hunt up the cows; the mule
+had disappeared and must be found before dark; a couple of steers
+hadn't turned up since the day before yesterday, and in the midst of
+the gentle contention as to whose business all this was, there was an
+alarm of cattle in the corn-patch, and the girl started off on a run
+in that direction.  It was due to the executive ability of this small
+girl, after the cows had been milked and the mule chased and the boys
+properly stirred up, that we had supper.  It was of the oilcloth,
+iron fork, tin spoon, bacon, hot bread and honey variety,
+distinguished, however, from all meals we had endured or enjoyed
+before by the introduction of fried eggs (as the breakfast next
+morning was by the presence of chicken), and it was served by the
+active maid with right hearty good-will and genuine hospitable
+intent.
+
+While it was in progress, after nine o'clock, Big Tom arrived, and,
+with a simple greeting, sat down and attacked the supper and began to
+tell about the bear.  There was not much to tell except that he
+hadn't seen the bear, and that, judged by his tracks and his sloshing
+around, he must be a big one.  But a trap had been set for him, and
+he judged it wouldn't be long before we had some bear meat.  Big Tom
+Wilson, as he is known all over this part of the State, would not
+attract attention from his size.  He is six feet and two inches tall,
+very spare and muscular, with sandy hair, long gray beard, and honest
+blue eyes.  He has a reputation for great strength and endurance; a
+man of native simplicity and mild manners.  He had been rather
+expecting us from what Mr. Murchison wrote; he wrote (his son had
+read out the letter) that Big Tom was to take good care of us, and
+anybody that Mr. Murchison sent could have the best he'd got.
+
+Big Tom joined us in our room after supper.  This apartment, with two
+mighty feather-beds, was hung about with all manner of stuffy family
+clothes, and had in one end a vast cavern for a fire.  The floor was
+uneven, and the hearthstones billowy.  When the fire was lighted, the
+effect of the bright light in the cavern and the heavy shadows in the
+room was Rembrandtish.  Big Tom sat with us before the fire and told
+bear stories.  Talk?  Why, it was not the least effort.  The stream
+flowed on without a ripple.  "Why, the old man," one of the sons
+confided to us next morning, "can begin and talk right over Mount
+Mitchell and all the way back, and never make a break."  Though Big
+Tom had waged a lifelong warfare with the bears, and taken the hide
+off at least a hundred of them, I could not see that he had any
+vindictive feeling towards the varmint, but simply an insatiable love
+of killing him, and he regarded him in that half-humorous light in
+which the bear always appears to those who study him.  As to deer--he
+couldn't tell how many of them he had slain.  But Big Tom was a
+gentleman: he never killed deer for mere sport.  With rattlesnakes,
+now, it was different.  There was the skin of one hanging upon a tree
+by the route we would take in the morning, a buster, he skinned him
+yesterday.  There was an entire absence, of braggadocio in Big Tom's
+talk, but somehow, as he went on, his backwoods figure loomed larger
+and larger in our imagination, and he seemed strangely familiar.  At
+length it came over us where we had met him before.  It was in
+Cooper's novels.  He was the Leather-Stocking exactly.  And yet he
+was an original; for he assured us that he had never read the
+Leather-Stocking Tales.  What a figure, I was thinking, he must have
+made in the late war!  Such a shot, such a splendid physique, such
+iron endurance!  I almost dreaded to hear his tales of the havoc he
+had wrought on the Union army.  Yes, he was in the war, he was
+sixteen months in the Confederate army, this Homeric man.  In what
+rank?"  Oh, I was a fifer!"
+
+But hunting and war did not by any means occupy the whole of Big
+Tom's life.  He was also engaged in "lawin'."  He had a long-time
+feud with a neighbor about a piece of land and alleged trespass, and
+they'd been "lawin'" for years, with no definite result; but as a
+topic of conversation it was as fully illustrative of frontier life
+as the bear-fighting.
+
+Long after we had all gone to bed, we heard Big Tom's continuous
+voice, through the thin partition that separated us from the kitchen,
+going on to his little boy about the bear; every circumstance of how
+he tracked him, and what corner of the field he entered, and where he
+went out, and his probable size and age, and the prospect of his
+coming again; these were the details of real everyday life, and
+worthy to be dwelt on by the hour.  The boy was never tired of
+pursuing them.  And Big Tom was just a big boy, also, in his delight
+in it all.
+
+Perhaps it was the fascination of Big Tom, perhaps the representation
+that we were already way off the Big Ivy route, and that it would, in
+fact, save time to go over the mountain and we could ride all the
+way, that made the Professor acquiesce, with no protest worth
+noticing, in the preparations that went on, as by a natural
+assumption, for going over Mitchell.  At any rate, there was an early
+breakfast, luncheon was put up, and by half-past seven we were riding
+up the Caney,--a half-cloudy day,--Big Tom swinging along on foot
+ahead, talking nineteen to the dozen.  There was a delightful
+freshness in the air, the dew-laden bushes, and the smell of the
+forest.  In half an hour we called at the hunting shanty of Mr.
+Murchison, wrote our names on the wall, according to custom, and
+regretted that we could not stay for a day in that retreat and try
+the speckled trout.  Making our way through the low growth and bushes
+of the valley, we came into a fine open forest, watered by a noisy
+brook, and after an hour's easy going reached the serious ascent.
+
+>From Wilson's to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles;
+we made it in five and a half hours.  A bridle path was cut years
+ago, but it has been entirely neglected.  It is badly washed, it is
+stony, muddy, and great trees have fallen across it which wholly
+block the way for horses.  At these places long detours were
+necessary, on steep hillsides and through gullies, over treacherous
+sink-holes in the rocks, through quaggy places, heaps of brush, and
+rotten logs.  Those who have ever attempted to get horses over such
+ground will not wonder at the slow progress we made.  Before we were
+halfway up the ascent, we realized the folly of attempting it on
+horseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as to go back.  The way
+was also exceedingly steep in places, and what with roots, and logs,
+and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb for the
+horses.
+
+What a magnificent forest!  Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, the
+cucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone),
+and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here in
+splendid array.  And this gigantic forest, with little diminution in
+size of trees, continued two thirds of the way up.  We marked, as we
+went on, the maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, the
+locust, and the guide pointed out in one section the largest cherry-
+trees we had ever seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sum if it
+could be got to market.  After the great trees were left behind, we
+entered a garden of white birches, and then a plateau of swamp, thick
+with raspberry bushes, and finally the ridges, densely crowded with
+the funereal black balsam.
+
+Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew.
+It was a poplar, or tulip.  It stands more like a column than a tree,
+rising high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhaps
+sixty, more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.
+
+Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet!  I think it
+might be called Big Tom.  It stood here, of course, a giant, when
+Columbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler
+will attach the name of Columbus to it.
+
+In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely the
+note of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwise
+primeval silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost like
+the sound of the wind in pine tops.  It was the humming of bees!  The
+upper branches were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tom
+was always on the alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which he
+could visit afterwards.  Honey hunting is one of his occupations.
+Collecting spruce gum is another, and he was continually hacking off
+with his hatchet knobs of the translucent secretion.  How rich and
+fragrant are these forests!  The rhododendron was still in occasional
+bloom' and flowers of brilliant hue gleamed here and there.
+
+The struggle was more severe as we neared the summit, and the footing
+worse for the horses.  Occasionally it was safest to dismount and
+lead them up slippery ascents; but this was also dangerous, for it
+was difficult to keep them from treading on our heels, in their
+frantic flounderings, in the steep, wet, narrow, brier-grown path.
+At one uncommonly pokerish place, where the wet rock sloped into a
+bog, the rider of Jack thought it prudent to dismount, but Big Tom
+insisted that Jack would "make it" all right, only give him his head.
+The rider gave him his head, and the next minute Jack's four heels
+were in the air, and he came down on his side in a flash.  The rider
+fortunately extricated his leg without losing it, Jack scrambled out
+with a broken shoe, and the two limped along.  It was a wonder that
+the horses' legs were not broken a dozen times.
+
+As we approached the top, Big Tom pointed out the direction, a half
+mile away, of a small pond, a little mountain tarn, overlooked by a
+ledge of rock, where Professor Mitchell lost his life.  Big Tom was
+the guide that found his body.  That day, as we sat on the summit, he
+gave in great detail the story, the general outline of which is well
+known.
+
+The first effort to measure the height of the Black Mountains was
+made in 1835, by Professor Elisha Mitchell, professor of mathematics
+and chemistry in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
+Mr. Mitchell was a native of Connecticut, born in Washington,
+Litchfield County, in 1793; graduated at Yale, ordained a
+Presbyterian minister, and was for a time state surveyor; and became
+a professor at Chapel Hill in 1818.  He first ascertained and
+published the fact that the Black Mountains are the highest land east
+of the Rocky Mountains.  In 1844 he visited the locality again.
+Measurements were subsequently made by Professor Guyot and by Senator
+Clingman.  One of the peaks was named for the senator (the one next
+in height to Mitchell is described as Clingman on the state map), and
+a dispute arose as to whether Mitchell had really visited and
+measured the highest peak.  Senator Clingman still maintains that he
+did not, and that the peak now known as Mitchell is the one that
+Clingman first described.  The estimates of altitudes made by the
+three explorers named differed considerably.  The height now fixed
+for Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285.  There
+are twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if
+we add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are
+some twenty in this State higher than the granite giant of New
+Hampshire.
+
+In order to verify his statement, Professor Mitchell (then in his
+sixty-fourth year) made a third ascent in June, 1857.  He was alone,
+and went up from the Swannanoa side.  He did not return.  No anxiety
+was felt for two or three days, as he was a good mountaineer, and it
+was supposed he had crossed the mountain and made his way out by the
+Caney River.  But when several days passed without tidings of him, a
+search party was formed.  Big Tom Wilson was with it.  They explored
+the mountain in all directions unsuccessfully.  At length Big Tom
+separated himself from his companions and took a course in accordance
+with his notion of that which would be pursued by a man lost in the
+clouds or the darkness.  He soon struck the trail of the wanderer,
+and, following it, discovered Mitchell's body lying in a pool at the
+foot of a rocky precipice some thirty feet high.  It was evident that
+Mitchell, making his way along the ridge in darkness or fog, had
+fallen off.  It was the ninth (or the eleventh) day of his
+disappearance, but in the pure mountain air the body had suffered no
+change.  Big Tom brought his companions to the place, and on
+consultation it was decided to leave the body undisturbed till
+Mitchell's friends could be present.
+
+There was some talk of burying him on the mountain, but the friends
+decided otherwise, and the remains, with much difficulty, were got
+down to Asheville and there interred.
+
+Some years afterwards, I believe at the instance of a society of
+scientists, it was resolved to transport the body to the summit of
+Mount Mitchell; for the tragic death of the explorer had forever
+settled in the popular mind the name of the mountain.  The task was
+not easy.  A road had to be cut, over which a sledge could be hauled,
+and the hardy mountaineers who undertook the removal were three days
+in reaching the summit with their burden.  The remains were
+accompanied by a considerable concourse, and the last rites on the
+top were participated in by a hundred or more scientists and
+prominent men from different parts of the State.  Such a strange
+cortege had never before broken the silence of this lonely
+wilderness, nor was ever burial more impressive than this wild
+interment above the clouds.
+
+We had been preceded in our climb all the way by a huge bear.  That
+he was huge, a lunker, a monstrous old varmint, Big Tom knew by the
+size of his tracks; that he was making the ascent that morning ahead
+of us, Big Tom knew by the freshness of the trail.  We might come
+upon him at any moment; he might be in the garden; was quite likely
+to be found in the raspberry patch.  That we did not encounter him I
+am convinced was not the fault of Big Tom, but of the bear.
+
+After a struggle of five hours we emerged from the balsams and briers
+into a lovely open meadow, of lush clover, timothy, and blue grass.
+We unsaddled the horses and turned them loose to feed in it.  The
+meadow sloped up to a belt of balsams and firs, a steep rocky knob,
+and climbing that on foot we stood upon the summit of Mitchell at one
+o'clock.  We were none too soon, for already the clouds were
+preparing for what appears to be a daily storm at this season.
+
+The summit is a nearly level spot of some thirty or forty feet in
+extent either way, with a floor of rock and loose stones.  The
+stunted balsams have been cut away so as to give a view.  The sweep
+of prospect is vast, and we could see the whole horizon except in the
+direction of Roan, whose long bulk was enveloped in cloud.  Portions
+of six States were in sight, we were told, but that is merely a
+geographical expression.  What we saw, wherever we looked, was an
+inextricable tumble of mountains, without order or leading line of
+direction,--domes, peaks, ridges, endless and countless, everywhere,
+some in shadow, some tipped with shafts of sunlight, all wooded and
+green or black, and all in more softened contours than our Northern
+hills, but still wild, lonesome, terrible.  Away in the southwest,
+lifting themselves up in a gleam of the western sky, the Great Smoky
+Mountains loomed like a frowning continental fortress, sullen and
+remote.  With Clingman and Gibbs and Holdback peaks near at hand and
+apparently of equal height, Mitchell seemed only a part and not
+separate from the mighty congregation of giants.
+
+In the center of the stony plot on the summit lie the remains of
+Mitchell.  To dig a grave in the rock was impracticable, but the
+loose stones were scooped away to the depth of a foot or so, the body
+was deposited, and the stones were replaced over it.  It was the
+original intention to erect a monument, but the enterprise of the
+projectors of this royal entombment failed at that point.  The grave
+is surrounded by a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitor
+adds one, and in the course of ages the cairn may grow to a good
+size.  The explorer lies there without name or headstone to mark his
+awful resting-place.  The mountain is his monument.  He is alone with
+its majesty.  He is there in the clouds, in the tempests, where the
+lightnings play, and thunders leap, amid the elemental tumult, in the
+occasional great calm and silence and the pale sunlight.  It is the
+most majestic, the most lonesome grave on earth.
+
+As we sat there, awed a little by this presence, the clouds were
+gathering from various quarters and drifting towards us.  We could
+watch the process of thunder-storms and the manufacture of tempests.
+I have often noticed on other high mountains how the clouds, forming
+like genii released from the earth, mount into the upper air, and in
+masses of torn fragments of mist hurry across the sky as to a
+rendezvous of witches.  This was a different display.  These clouds
+came slowly sailing from the distant horizon, like ships on an aerial
+voyage.  Some were below us, some on our level; they were all in
+well-defined, distinct masses, molten silver on deck, below trailing
+rain, and attended on earth by gigantic shadows that moved with them.
+This strange fleet of battle-ships, drifted by the shifting currents,
+was maneuvering for an engagement.  One after another, as they came
+into range about our peak of observation, they opened fire.  Sharp
+flashes of lightning darted from one to the other; a jet of flame
+from one leaped across the interval and was buried in the bosom of
+its adversary; and at every discharge the boom of great guns echoed
+through the mountains.  It was something more than a royal salute to
+the tomb of the mortal at our feet, for the masses of cloud were rent
+in the fray, at every discharge the rain was precipitated in
+increasing torrents, and soon the vast hulks were trailing torn
+fragments and wreaths of mist, like the shot-away shrouds and sails
+of ships in battle.  Gradually, from this long-range practice with
+single guns and exchange of broadsides, they drifted into closer
+conflict, rushed together, and we lost sight of the individual
+combatants in the general tumult of this aerial war.
+
+We had barely twenty minutes for our observations, when it was time
+to go; and had scarcely left the peak when the clouds enveloped it.
+We hastened down under the threatening sky to the saddles and the
+luncheon.  Just off from the summit, amid the rocks, is a complete
+arbor, or tunnel, of rhododendrons.  This cavernous place a Western
+writer has made the scene of a desperate encounter between Big Tom
+and a catamount, or American panther, which had been caught in a trap
+and dragged it there, pursued by Wilson.  It is an exceedingly
+graphic narrative, and is enlivened by the statement that Big Tom had
+the night before drunk up all the whisky of the party which had spent
+the night on the summit.  Now Big Tom assured us that the whisky part
+of the story was an invention; he was not (which is true) in the
+habit of using it; if he ever did take any, it might be a drop on
+Mitchell; in fact, when he inquired if we had a flask, he remarked
+that a taste of it would do him good then and there.  We regretted
+the lack of it in our baggage.  But what inclined Big Tom to
+discredit the Western writer's story altogether was the fact that he
+never in his life had had a difficulty with a catamount, and never
+had seen one in these mountains.
+
+Our lunch was eaten in haste.  Big Tom refused the chicken he had
+provided for us, and strengthened himself with slices of raw salt
+pork, which he cut from a hunk with his clasp-knife.  We caught and
+saddled our horses, who were reluctant to leave the rich feed,
+enveloped ourselves in waterproofs, and got into the stony path for
+the descent just as the torrent came down.  It did rain.  It
+lightened, the thunder crashed, the wind howled and twisted the
+treetops.  It was as if we were pursued by the avenging spirits of
+the mountains for our intrusion.  Such a tempest on this height had
+its terrors even for our hardy guide.  He preferred to be lower down
+while it was going on.  The crash and reverberation of the thunder
+did not trouble us so much as the swish of the wet branches in our
+faces and the horrible road, with its mud, tripping roots, loose
+stones, and slippery rocks.  Progress was slow.  The horses were in
+momentary danger of breaking their legs.  In the first hour there was
+not much descent.  In the clouds we were passing over Clingman,
+Gibbs, and Holdback.  The rain had ceased, but the mist still shut
+off all view, if any had been attainable, and bushes and paths were
+deluged.  The descent was more uncomfortable than the ascent, and we
+were compelled a good deal of the way to lead the jaded horses down
+the slippery rocks.
+
+>From the peak to the Widow Patten's, where we proposed to pass the
+night, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, every
+step of the road bad, in five and a half hours.  Halfway down we came
+out upon a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house in
+ruins.  Here had been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war,
+but now abandoned.  Above it we turned aside for the view from
+Elizabeth rock, named from the daughter of the proprietor of the
+hotel, who often sat here, said Big Tom, before she went out of this
+world.  It is a bold rocky ledge, and the view from it, looking
+south, is unquestionably the finest, the most pleasing and picture-
+like, we found in these mountains.  In the foreground is the deep
+gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite is the great wall of
+the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most capricious and
+inexplicable system) making off to the Blacks.  The depth of the
+gorge, the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the
+scene to the sunny south made this view both grand and charming.
+Nature does not always put the needed dash of poetry into her
+extensive prospects.
+
+Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashion
+used to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side through
+a forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and at
+length struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, which
+led us to the first settlement.  Just at night,--it was nearly seven
+o'clock,--we entered one of the most stately forests I have ever
+seen, and rode for some distance in an alley of rhododendrons that
+arched overhead and made a bower.  It was like an aisle in a temple;
+high overhead was the somber, leafy roof, supported by gigantic
+columns.  Few widows have such an avenue of approach to their domain
+as the Widow Patten has.
+
+Cheering as this outcome was from the day's struggle and storm, the
+Professor seemed sunk in a profound sadness.  The auguries which the
+Friend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and a
+royal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind.  "Alas," he
+said,
+
+    "Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
+     And make me travel forth without my cloak,
+     To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
+     Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
+     'T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
+     To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
+     For no man well of such a salve can speak
+     That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
+     Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
+     Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss."
+
+"Loss of what?"  cried the Friend, as he whipped up his halting
+steed.
+
+"Loss of self-respect.  I feel humiliated that I consented to climb
+this mountain."
+
+"Nonsense!  You'll live to thank me for it, as the best thing you
+ever did.  It's over and done now, and you've got it to tell your
+friends."
+
+"That's just the trouble.  They'll ask me if I went up Mitchell, and
+I shall have to say I did.  My character for consistency is gone.
+Not that I care much what they think, but my own self-respect is
+gone.  I never believed I would do it.  A man ca'nt afford to lower
+himself in his own esteem, at my time of life."
+
+The Widow Patten's was only an advanced settlement in this narrow
+valley on the mountain-side, but a little group of buildings, a
+fence, and a gate gave it the air of a place, and it had once been
+better cared for than it is now.  Few travelers pass that way, and
+the art of entertaining, if it ever existed, is fallen into
+desuetude.  We unsaddled at the veranda, and sat down to review our
+adventure, make the acquaintance of the family, and hear the last
+story from Big Tom.  The mountaineer, though wet, was as fresh as a
+daisy, and fatigue in no wise checked the easy, cheerful flow of his
+talk.  He was evidently a favorite with his neighbors, and not
+unpleasantly conscious of the extent of his reputation.  But he
+encountered here another social grade.  The Widow Patten was highly
+connected.  We were not long in discovering that she was an
+Alexander.  She had been a schoolmate of Senator Vance,--" Zeb Vance
+"he still was to her,--and the senator and his wife had stayed at her
+house.  I wish I could say that the supper, for which we waited till
+nine o'clock, was as "highly connected " as the landlady.  It was,
+however, a supper that left its memory.  We were lodged in a detached
+house, which we had to ourselves, where a roaring wood fire made
+amends for other things lacking.  It was necessary to close the doors
+to keep out the wandering cows and pigs, and I am bound to say that,
+notwithstanding the voices of the night, we slept there the sleep of
+peace.
+
+In the morning a genuine surprise awaited us; it seemed impossible,
+but the breakfast was many degrees worse than the supper; and when we
+paid our bill, large for the region, we were consoled by the thought
+that we paid for the high connection as well as for the
+accommodations.  This is a regular place of entertainment, and one is
+at liberty to praise it without violation of delicacy.
+
+The broken shoe of Jack required attention, and we were all the
+morning hunting a blacksmith, as we rode down the valley.  Three
+blacksmith's shanties were found, and after long waiting to send for
+the operator it turned out in each case that he had no shoes, no
+nails, no iron to make either of.  We made a detour of three miles to
+what was represented as a regular shop.  The owner had secured the
+service of a colored blacksmith for a special job, and was, not
+inclined to accommodate us; he had no shoes, no nails.  But the
+colored blacksmith, who appreciated the plight we were in, offered to
+make a shoe, and to crib four nails from those he had laid aside for
+a couple of mules; and after a good deal of delay, we were enabled to
+go on.  The incident shows, as well as anything, the barrenness and
+shiftlessness of the region.  A horseman with whom we rode in the
+morning gave us a very low estimate of the trustworthiness of the
+inhabitants.  The valley is wild and very pretty all the way down to
+Colonel Long's,--twelve miles,--but the wretched-looking people along
+the way live in a wretched manner.
+
+Just before reaching Colonel Long's we forded the stream (here of
+good size), the bridge having tumbled down, and encountered a party
+of picnickers under the trees--signs of civilization; a railway
+station is not far off.  Colonel Long's is a typical Southern
+establishment: a white house, or rather three houses, all of one
+story, built on to each other as beehives are set in a row, all
+porches and galleries.  No one at home but the cook, a rotund, broad-
+faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very appearance suggested good
+cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the children had gone up to
+the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere about the place; always
+was away when he was wanted.  Guess he'd take us in, mighty fine man
+the Colonel; and she dispatched a child from a cabin in the rear to
+hunt him up.  The Colonel was a great friend of her folks down to
+Greenville; they visited here.  Law, no, she didn't live here.  Was
+just up here spending the summer, for her health.  God-forsaken lot
+of people up here, poor trash.  She wouldn't stay here a day, but the
+Colonel was a friend of her folks, the firstest folks in Greenville.
+Nobody round here she could 'sociate with.  She was a Presbyterian,
+the folks round here mostly Baptists and Methodists.  More style
+about the Presbyterians.  Married?  No, she hoped not.  She did n't
+want to support no husband.  Got 'nuff to do to take care of herself.
+That her little girl?  No; she'd only got one child, down to
+Greenville, just the prettiest boy ever was, as white as anybody.
+How did she what? reconcile this state of things with not being
+married and being a Presbyterian?  Sho! she liked to carry some
+religion along; it was mighty handy occasionally, mebbe not all the
+time.  Yes, indeed, she enjoyed her religion.
+
+The Colonel appeared and gave us a most cordial welcome.  The fat and
+merry cook blustered around and prepared a good dinner, memorable for
+its "light" bread, the first we had seen since Cranberry Forge.  The
+Colonel is in some sense a public man, having been a mail agent, and
+a Republican.  He showed us photographs and engravings of Northern
+politicians, and had the air of a man who had been in Washington.
+This was a fine country for any kind of fruit,--apples, grapes,
+pears; it needed a little Northern enterprise to set things going.
+The travelers were indebted to the Colonel for a delightful noonday
+rest, and with regret declined his pressing invitation to pass the
+night with him.
+
+The ride down the Swannanoa to Asheville was pleasant, through a
+cultivated region, over a good road.  The Swannanoa is, however, a
+turbid stream.  In order to obtain the most impressive view of
+Asheville we approached it by the way of Beaucatcher Hill, a sharp
+elevation a mile west of the town.  I suppose the name is a
+corruption of some descriptive French word, but it has long been a
+favorite resort of the frequenters of Asheville, and it may be
+traditional that it is a good place to catch beaux.  The summit is
+occupied by a handsome private residence, and from this ridge the
+view, which has the merit of "bursting" upon the traveler as he comes
+over the hill, is captivating in its extent and variety.  The pretty
+town of Asheville is seen to cover a number of elevations gently
+rising out of the valley, and the valley, a rich agricultural region,
+well watered and fruitful, is completely inclosed by picturesque
+hills, some of them rising to the dignity of mountains.  The most
+conspicuous of these is Mount Pisgah, eighteen miles distant to the
+southwest, a pyramid of the Balsam range, 5757 feet high.  Mount
+Pisgah, from its shape, is the most attractive mountain in this
+region.
+
+The sunset light was falling upon the splendid panorama and softening
+it.  The windows of the town gleamed as if on fire.  From the steep
+slope below came the mingled sounds of children shouting, cattle
+driven home, and all that hum of life that marks a thickly peopled
+region preparing for the night.  It was the leisure hour of an August
+afternoon, and Asheville was in all its watering-place gayety, as we
+reined up at the Swannanoa hotel.  A band was playing on the balcony.
+We had reached ice-water, barbers, waiters, civilization.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise above
+the French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sort
+of fourteenth cousin to Saratoga.  It has no springs, but lying 2250
+feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pure
+atmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winter
+resort, it has acquired a watering-place air.  There are Southerners
+who declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the complete
+circuit of mountains shuts out any lively movement of air.  But the
+scenery is so charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roads
+so unusually passable for a Southern country, and the facilities for
+excursions so good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.
+
+Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is so
+irregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys that
+improvements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque.
+It is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts--the
+enterprise of taste and money-making struggling with the laissez
+faire of the South.  The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as a
+conservative element; he has not much inclination to change his
+clothes or his cabin, and his swarming presence gives a ragged aspect
+to the new civilization.  And to say the truth, the new element of
+Southern smartness lacks the trim thrift the North is familiar with;
+though the visitor who needs relaxation is not disposed to quarrel
+with the easy-going terms on which life is taken.
+
+Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulating
+to the riders from the wilderness.  The Professor, who does not even
+pretend to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about the
+streets (there is but one of much consideration), immensely
+entertained by the picturesque contrasts.  There was more life and
+amusement here in five minutes, he declared, than in five days of
+what people called scenery--the present rage for scenery, anyway,
+being only a fashion and a modern invention.  The Friend suspected
+from this penchant for the city that the Professor must have been
+brought up in the country.
+
+There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Asheville
+however, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave to
+it the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places.  We
+fancied that the lively movement in the streets had an air of
+unreality.  A band of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa were
+scraping and tooting and twanging with a hired air, and on the
+opposite balcony of the Eagle a rival band echoed and redoubled the
+perfunctory joyousness.  The gayety was contagious: the horses felt
+it; those that carried light burdens of beauty minced and pranced,
+the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to dash, the few passing
+equipages had an air of pleasure; and the people of color, the comely
+waitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded to the animation
+of the festive strains.  In the late afternoon the streets were full
+of people, wagons, carriages, horsemen, all with a holiday air,
+dashed with African color and humor--the irresponsibility of the most
+insouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more comical than
+humorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness, peculiar and
+amusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern abandon and
+Northern wealth, though the North was little represented at this
+season.
+
+As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still more
+animated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white and
+black throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro is
+preeminently a night bird.  In the hotels dancing was promised--the
+german was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors were
+groups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,--the young
+gentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing and
+hat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,
+with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engaging
+cordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic.  I do not
+know what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women were
+not superior to the Southern young men, but he is always asking
+questions nobody can answer.  At the Swannanoa were half a dozen
+bridal couples, readily recognizable by the perfect air they had of
+having been married a long time.  How interesting such young voyagers
+are, and how interesting they are to each other!  Columbus never
+discovered such a large world as they have to find out and possess
+each in the other.
+
+Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose.
+There was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a fine
+hotel has since been built) and we walked up to that round knob after
+dark.  It is a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, and
+was fortified during the war.  We found it illuminated with Chinese
+lanterns; and little tables set about under the trees, laden with
+cake and ice-cream, offered a chance to the stranger to contribute
+money for the benefit of the Presbyterian Church.  I am afraid it was
+not a profitable entertainment, for the men seemed to have business
+elsewhere, but the ladies about the tables made charming groups in
+the lighted grove.  Man is a stupid animal at best, or he would not
+make it so difficult for the womenkind to scrape together a little
+money for charitable purposes.  But probably the women like this
+method of raising money better than the direct one.
+
+The evening gayety of the town was well distributed.  When we
+descended to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected,
+black, white, and yellow, about a high platform, upon which four
+glaring torches lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read
+might decipher this legend on a standard at the back of the stage:
+
+                      HAPPY JOHN.
+            ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON.
+                   COME AND SEE HIM!
+
+Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a "bright" yellow
+girl, took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by
+his audience.  His face was blackened to the proper color of the
+stage-darky, and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and
+coat striped longitudinally according to Punch's idea of "Uncle Sam,"
+the coat a swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a bell-
+crowned white hat.  This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle
+all colors in the audience amazingly.  Mary, the "bright" woman (this
+is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing
+but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and
+had the assured or pert manner of all traveling sawdust performers.
+
+"Oh, yes," exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, "Happy John was
+sure enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking
+when he's not blackened up."
+
+Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayety
+and enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a
+ready, rude wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling
+of impudence, deference, and patronage, commenting upon them
+generally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humor
+that kept his hearers in a pleased excitement.  He handled the banjo
+and the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was not
+singing.  Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is in
+such a position than a man of the same caliber!) sang, in an
+untutored treble, songs of sentiment, often risque, in solo and in
+company with John, but with a cold, indifferent air, in contrast to
+the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.
+
+The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched
+lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic
+refrain :
+
+    "Mary's gone away wid de coon."
+
+All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of
+darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing,
+the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene.  The
+entertainment was quite free, with a "collection" occasionally during
+the performance.
+
+What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy
+John of the "nigger" side of the black man as a means of low comedy,
+and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color.  They appeared to
+appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, and
+Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and
+exaggerating the "nigger" peculiarities.  I presume none of them
+analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the
+pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery,
+and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the
+melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.
+
+A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the
+crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the
+yellow girl.  John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces
+into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes,
+called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on
+the platform and devour them.  He offered a prize of fifteen cents to
+the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his
+hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory.  The
+cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple
+of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece
+came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize.  Each one grasped his
+saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word
+"go," which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjo
+accompaniment.  To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it
+down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the
+task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved
+cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to
+see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging,
+and the crowd roaring.  As the combat deepened and the contestants
+strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of
+laughter.  The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his
+empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like
+a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable
+to speak.  The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but
+said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten
+cents to one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly
+increased his popularity.  And then he dismissed the assembly, saying
+that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not
+wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the
+courthouse.
+
+The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that out-
+doors; a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and
+stuck on the judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of
+black and white who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and
+cast only a fitful light upon the orator, who paced back and forth
+and pounded the rail.  It was to have been a joint discussion between
+the two presidential electors running in that district, but, the
+Republican being absent, his place was taken by a young man of the
+town.  The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of his
+opponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to give
+a portrait of his adversary.  He was represented as a cross between a
+baboon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum.
+"I intend," said the orator," to put him in a cage and exhibit him
+about the deestrict."  This political hit called forth great
+applause.  All his arguments were of this pointed character, and they
+appeared to be unanswerable.  The orator appeared to prove that there
+wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who wasn't an office-
+holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not an office-
+holder.  If there were any issues or principles in the canvass, he
+paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he
+never alluded to any.  In another state of society, such a speech of
+personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt
+his adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and
+the exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and
+enlightened political canvassing for votes.  The speaker who replied,
+opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first
+speaker had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in
+the gloom of a corner.  The young man was moderate in his sarcasm,
+and attempted to speak of national issues, but the crowd had small
+relish for that sort of thing.  At eleven o'clock, when we got away
+from the unsavory room (more than half the candles had gone out), the
+orator was making slow headway against the refished blackguardism of
+the evening.  The german was still "on" at the hotel when we ascended
+to our chamber, satisfied that Asheville was a lively town.
+
+The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking or
+driving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; livery
+stables abound, and the roads are good.  The Beau-catcher Hill is
+always attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of miles
+from town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in the
+valley, commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has the
+air of repose which is so seldom experienced in the location of a
+dwelling in America whence an extensive prospect is given.  Or if the
+visitor is disinclined to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of the
+hospitable Asheville Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front of
+the hotels, and talk with the colonels and judges and generals and
+ex-members of Congress, the talk generally drifting to the new
+commercial and industrial life of the South, and only to politics as
+it affects these; and he will be pleased, if the conversation takes a
+reminiscent turn, with the lack of bitterness and the tone of
+friendliness.  The negro problem is commonly discussed
+philosophically and without heat, but there is always discovered,
+underneath, the determination that the negro shall never again get
+the legislative upper hand.  And the gentleman from South Carolina
+who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is gone, and
+wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in politics--
+such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would do
+yourself.  This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social
+question, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much
+friendly and agreeable conversation.  It is that the Southern whites
+misapprehend and make a scarecrow of "social equality."  When, during
+the war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people
+of the Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be
+stated in the form of a question: "Do you want your daughter to marry
+a negro?"  Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and
+there has come no change in the social conditions whatever.  And
+there is no doubt that the social conditions would remain exactly as
+they are at the South if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which
+the Constitution tries to give him.  The most sensible view of this
+whole question was taken by an intelligent colored man, whose brother
+was formerly a representative in Congress.  "Social equality," he
+said in effect, "is a humbug.  We do not expect it, we do not want
+it.  It does not exist among the blacks themselves.  We have our own
+social degrees, and choose our own associates.  We simply want the
+ordinary civil rights, under which we can live and make our way in
+peace and amity.  This is necessary to our self-respect, and if we
+have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed that the race can
+improve.  I'll tell you what I mean.  My wife is a modest,
+intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat, and
+tastefully dressed.  Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not
+permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered
+into one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any
+refined woman would shrink from.  But along comes a flauntingly
+dressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be
+disgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy.  It
+is this sort of thing that hurts."
+
+We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),
+some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway that
+descends, a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap
+(2657 feet elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet).  The Swannanoa
+Summit is the dividing line between the waters that flow to the
+Atlantic and those that go to the Gulf of Mexico.  This fact was
+impressed upon us by the inhabitants, who derive a good deal of
+comfort from it.  Such divides are always matter of local pride.
+Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark before we reached Henry's to
+enable us to see the road in all its loops and parallels as it
+appears on the map, but we gained a better effect.  The hotel, when
+we first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light, was at the
+bottom of a well.  Beside it--it was sufficiently light to see that--
+a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as we
+learned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;
+and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in the
+world.  This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its feathery
+head of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the most
+charming effect.  We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, but
+were conscious of being--whirled on a circular descending grade, and
+very soon they were in sight again.  Again and again they disappeared
+and came to view, now on one side and now on the other, until our
+train seemed to be bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings and
+turnings, now through tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, to
+escape the inevitable attraction that was gravitating it down to the
+hospitable lights at the bottom of the well.  When we climbed back up
+the road in the morning, we had an opportunity to see the marvelous
+engineering, but there is little else to see, the view being nearly
+always very limited.
+
+The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob,
+offers little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place,
+and we could understand why it was full of visitors when we came to
+the table.  It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment in
+the State, and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers good
+chances for fishing and mountain climbing.
+
+In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refused
+to play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which clogged
+the conduit.  But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time,
+like a sulky geyser, mud and foul water.  When it got freedom and
+tolerable clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations,
+which were marked at short distances by the water falling off, giving
+the column the appearance of a spine.  The summit, always beating the
+air in efforts to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.
+
+There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville must
+make.  He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson and
+Transylvania to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, where
+the mountain system abruptly breaks down into the vast southern
+plain; where the observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, has
+behind him and before him the greatest contrast that nature can
+offer.  He must also take the rail to Waynesville, and visit the
+much-frequented White Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains,
+and penetrate the Great Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and make
+the acquaintance of the remnant of Cherokee Indians living on the
+north slope of Cheoah Mountain.  The Professor could have made it a
+matter of personal merit that he escaped all these encounters with
+wild and picturesque nature, if his horse had not been too disabled
+for such long jaunts.  It is only necessary, however, to explain to
+the public that the travelers are not gormandizers of scenery, and
+were willing to leave some portions of the State to the curiosity of
+future excursionists.
+
+But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it could
+not be evaded.  The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of
+Asheville.  In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us
+to make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region.
+We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was with
+high anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm,
+foggy morning.  We followed a very good road through a broken,
+pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated.
+There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills, and occasionally a
+shower swept across our path.  The conspicuous object toward which we
+traveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at the beginning
+of the Gap.
+
+At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner.  Her
+house, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquely
+situated on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view.
+The house is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two
+sides.  If one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air
+and fair entertainment, this could be commended.  It is an excellent
+fruit region; apples especially are sound and of good flavor.  That
+may be said of all this part of the State.  The climate is adapted to
+apples, as the hilly part of New England is.  I fancy the fruit
+ripens slowly, as it does in New England, and is not subject to quick
+decay like much of that grown in the West.  But the grape also can be
+grown in all this mountain region.  Nothing but lack of enterprise
+prevents any farmer from enjoying abundance of fruit.  The industry
+carried on at the moment at the Widow Sherrill's was the artificial
+drying of apples for the market.  The apples are pared, cored, and
+sliced in spirals, by machinery, and dried on tin sheets in a
+patented machine.  The industry appears to be a profitable one
+hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the aid of
+invention.
+
+While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
+"Jane" and "Eliza," the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
+never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
+photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
+stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union.  Madame Sherrill, who
+carries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of
+strong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort
+in the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a
+discouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.
+
+The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles,
+is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque,
+following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it,
+but roaring, rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and
+then tumbling down in rapids.  The noisy stream made the ride
+animated, and an occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a
+schoolhouse, a store with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the
+hitching rails, gave the Professor opportunity for remarks upon the
+value of life under such circumstances.
+
+The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to the
+uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices.  The
+inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally
+wooded.  I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country
+where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common.  It is
+only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable.
+About a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees,
+of the famous waterfall.  From the top of the high ridge on the
+right, a nearly perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks
+and is lost in the forest.  We could see nearly the whole of it, at a
+great height above us, on the opposite side of the river, and it
+would require an hour's stiff climb to reach its foot.  From where we
+viewed it, it seemed a slender and not very important, but certainly
+a very beautiful cascade, a band of silver in the mass of green
+foliage.  The fall is said to be 1400 feet.  Our colonel insists that
+it is a thousand.  It may be, but the valley where we stood is at
+least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could not believe that the
+ridge over which the water pours is much higher than 3000 feet, and
+the length of the fall certainly did not appear to be a quarter of
+the height of the mountain from our point of observation.  But we had
+no desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we found
+that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as a
+personal grievance.  Mr. Logan once performed the functions of local
+judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises now
+in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wife
+is postmistress.  His house of entertainment is at the bottom of the
+valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay,
+although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
+
+It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
+which we had been for a month.  The Judge himself was reticent, as
+became a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster
+prospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and
+Logan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, this
+sentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civil
+battle] ever known in this world.  The thunder of the supreme
+struggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months,
+and will be felt from Pole to Pole."
+
+For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in.  There
+was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
+mosquitoes besides.  Had there not been other travelers staying here,
+we should have felt still more uneasy.  The house faced Bald
+Mountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some
+years ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters.  This is, in fact,
+the famous Shaking Mountain.  For a long time it had a habit of
+trembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion
+very different from that produced by an earthquake.  The only good
+that came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," and
+caused them to join the church.  It is not reported what became of
+the church afterwards.  It is believed now that the trembling was
+caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the mountain, which slowly
+parted asunder.  Bald Mountain is the scene of Mrs. Burnett's
+delightful story of "Louisiana," and of the play of "Esmeralda."
+A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder is asked
+to see resembles a hut, and which is called "Esmeralda's Cottage."
+But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did not discover any
+woman in the region who remotely answers to her description.
+
+In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and
+followed up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which
+the Judge said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless.
+These pools, not round, but on one side circular excavations, some
+twenty feet across, worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good
+specimens, and perhaps remarkable specimens, of "pot-holes."  They
+are, however, regarded here as one of the wonders of the world.  On
+the way to them we saw beautiful wild trumpet-creepers in blossom,
+festooning the trees.
+
+The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
+branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
+Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through
+the channel of the Santee.  It is not to be confounded with the
+French Broad, which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs
+northward past Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through
+the Warm Springs Gap in the Bald Mountains.  As the French claimed
+ownership of all the affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was
+called the French Broad.
+
+It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
+the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
+Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher
+than Asheville.  It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of
+leisure to the scattered population; at every store and mill was a
+congregation of loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and
+mules to the fences, and had the professional air of the idler and
+gossip the world over.  The vehicles met on the road were a variety
+of the prairie schooner, long wagons with a top of hoops over which
+is stretched a cotton cloth.  The wagons are without seats, and the
+canvas is too low to admit of sitting upright, if there were.  The
+occupants crawl in at either end, sit or lie on the bottom of the
+wagon, and jolt along in shiftless uncomfortableness.
+
+Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
+journey.  Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the
+route on horseback is impracticable.  The distance to the Warm
+Springs is thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the
+road is clear, as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the
+railway, and the valley is something more than river and rails.  But
+below Marshall the valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good
+portion of the way in the old stage road.  One can walk the track,
+but to ride a horse over its sleepers and culverts and occasional
+bridges, and dodge the trains, is neither safe nor agreeable.  We
+sent our horses round--the messenger taking the risk of leading them,
+between trains, over the last six or eight miles,--and took the
+train.
+
+The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
+all the way.  The scenery is the reverse of bold.  The hills are low,
+monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a
+pretty turn and "reach," with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on
+either side.  The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of
+rocks, with an occasional little island covered with low bushes.  The
+rock seems to be a clay formation, rotten and colored.  As we
+approach Warm Springs the scenery becomes a little bolder, and we
+emerge into the open space about the Springs through a narrower
+defile, guarded by rocks that are really picturesque in color and
+splintered decay, one of them being known, of course, as the "Lover's
+Leap," a name common in every part of the modern or ancient world
+where there is a settlement near a precipice, with always the same
+legend attached to it.
+
+There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel--since
+burned and rebuilt--(which may be briefly described as a palatial
+shanty) stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep,
+rapid, turbid stream.  A bridge once connected it with the road on
+the opposite bank, but it was carried away three or four years ago,
+and its ragged butments stand as a monument of procrastination, while
+the stream is crossed by means of a flatboat and a cable.  In front
+of the hotel, on the slight slope to the river, is a meager grove of
+locusts.  The famous spring, close to-the stream, is marked only by a
+rough box of wood and an iron pipe, and the water, which has a
+temperature of about one hundred degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house
+below, in which is a pool for bathing.  The bath is very agreeable,
+the tepid water being singularly soft and pleasant.  It has a
+slightly sulphurous taste.  Its good effects are much certified.  The
+grounds, which might be very pretty with care, are ill-kept and
+slatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was left to the
+easy-going nature of the servants.  The main house is of brick, with
+verandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade of thirteen huge
+brick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen States,--a relic
+of post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the resort of
+Southern fashion and romance.  These columns have stood through one
+fire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of the
+structure.  The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, with
+galleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly seven
+hundred feet long.  In a rear building is a vast, barrack-like
+dining-room, with a noble ball-room above, for dancing is the
+important occupation of visitors.
+
+The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has a
+picturesqueness of its own.  Even the ugly little brick structure
+near the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage.  No
+doubt we liked the place better than if it had been smart, and
+enjoyed the neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life is
+taken there.  There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowls
+tiptoeing about the verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor was
+a sort of guarantee that we should meet him later on in the dining-
+room.  There was nothing incongruous in the presence of pigs,
+turkeys, and chickens on the grounds; they went along with the good-
+natured negro-service and the general hospitality; and we had a
+mental rest in the thought that all the gates would have been off the
+hinges, if there had been any gates.  The guests were very well
+treated indeed, and were put under no sort of restraint by
+discipline.  The long colonnade made an admirable promenade and
+lounging-place and point of observation.  It was interesting to watch
+the groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, the
+mounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study the
+colors on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neat
+cottage and flower-garden.  The type of people was very pleasantly
+Southern.  Colonels and politicians stand in groups and tell stories,
+which are followed by explosions of laughter; retire occasionally
+into the saloon, and come forth reminded of more stories, and all
+lift their hats elaborately and suspend the narratives when a lady
+goes past.  A company of soldiers from Richmond had pitched its tents
+near the hotel, and in the evening the ball-room was enlivened with
+uniforms.  Among the graceful dancers--and every one danced well, and
+with spirit was pointed out the young widow of a son of Andrew
+Johnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village.  But the
+Professor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted whether
+here it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the owner
+of this region than to be connected with a President of the United
+States.
+
+A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broad
+and the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of in
+order to appreciate either.  This was the great highway of trade and
+travel.  At certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession
+of herds of cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of
+trains of big wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered
+by the Tennessee.  Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters
+in coach and four, with a great retinue of household servants, and
+kept up for months that unique social life, a mixture of courtly
+ceremony and entire freedom, the civilization which had the drawing-
+room at one end and the negro-quarters at the other,--which has
+passed away.  It was a continuation into our own restless era of the
+manners and the literature of George the Third, with the accompanying
+humor and happy-go-lucky decadence of the negro slaves.  On our way
+down we saw on the river-bank, under the trees, the old hostelry,
+Alexander's, still in decay,--an attractive tavern, that was formerly
+one of the notable stopping-places on the river.  Master, and fine
+lady, and obsequious, larking darky, and lumbering coach, and throng
+of pompous and gay life, have all disappeared.  There was no room in
+this valley for the old institutions and for the iron track.
+
+    "When in the chronicle of wasted time
+     I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
+     And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
+     In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
+     We, which now behold these present days,
+     Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."
+
+This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
+in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
+French Broad.
+
+The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
+idle resort.  The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he
+alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft.  There is at the
+Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites,
+known vulgarly as heavy-spar.  It is the weight of this heaviest of
+minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value.  The rock
+is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign
+substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of the
+process it is as white and fine as the best bolted flour.  This heavy
+adulterant is shipped to the North in large quantities,--the manager
+said he had recently an order for a hundred thousand dollars' worth
+of it.  What is the use of this powder?  Well, it is of use to the
+dealer who sells white lead for paint, to increase the weight of the
+lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that it is mixed with powdered
+sugar.  The industry is profitable to those engaged in it.
+
+It was impossible to get much information about our route into
+Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross Paint
+Mountain.  Late one morning,--a late start is inevitable here,--
+accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope ferry,
+and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream and tree-
+shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water and
+overhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side of
+the river), to Paint Rock,--six miles.  This Paint Rock is a naked
+precipice by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a large
+local reputation.  It is said that its face shows painting done by
+the Indians, and hieroglyphics which nobody can read.  On this bold,
+crumbling cliff, innumerable visitors have written their names.  We
+stared at it a good while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics,
+but could see nothing except iron stains.  Round the corner is a
+farmhouse and place of call for visitors, a neat cottage, with a
+display of shells and minerals and flower-pots; and here we turned
+north crossed the little stream called Paint River, the only clear
+water we had seen in a month, passed into the State of Tennessee, and
+by a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain.  The open forest road,
+with the murmur of the stream below, was delightfully exhilarating,
+and as we rose the prospect opened,--the lovely valley below, Bald
+Mountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains rising as we came over
+the ridge.
+
+Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men,
+knew anything of the route, or could give us any information of the
+country beyond.  But as we descended in Tennessee the country and the
+farms decidedly improved,--apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.
+
+A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed to
+receive hospitality.  We passed by an old farm building to a new two-
+storied, gayly painted house on a hill.  We were deceived by
+appearances.  The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to
+offer us except some buttermilk.  Why should anybody be obliged to
+feed roving strangers?  As to our horses, the young woman with a baby
+in her arms declared,
+
+"We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get
+something at the other house."
+
+"Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in this
+region.  We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and
+for our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a
+few sonnets.  On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve
+miles farther, through a rolling, good farming country, offering
+little for comment, in search of a night's lodging with one of the
+brothers Snap.  But one brother declined our company on the plea that
+his wife was sick, and the other because his wife lived in
+Greenville, and we found ourselves as dusk came on without shelter in
+a tavernless land.  Between the two refusals we enjoyed the most
+picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at the crossing of Camp Creek,
+a swift little stream, that swirled round under the ledge of bold
+rocks before the ford.  This we learned was a favorite camp-meeting
+ground.  Mary was calling the cattle home at the farm of the second
+Snap.  It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and we were
+inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the
+cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
+
+It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this
+pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and
+intelligent farming.  Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with
+plenty of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity),
+who owes his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas.  He
+was a Unionist during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his
+county (Greene) has been Republican.  We had been riding all the
+afternoon through good land, and encountering a better class of
+farmers.  Peach-trees abounded (though this was an off year for
+fruit), and apples and grapes throve.  It is a land of honey and of
+milk.  The persimmon flourishes; and, sign of abundance generally, we
+believe, great flocks of turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the
+high air--hovered about.  This country was ravaged during the war by
+Unionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots as
+they passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving the
+farmers little to live on.  Mr. Alexander's farm cost him forty
+dollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize.  This was
+the first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace before
+meat, though there had been many tables that needed it more.  From
+the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;
+and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomed
+to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer and
+enjoy a real primitive woods life.
+
+Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
+fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling,
+rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt
+ranges, which we had on our right all day.  At noon we crossed the
+Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle
+girth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and
+came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a
+hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat
+of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one
+pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the
+currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage.  The
+big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell
+and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of
+mahogany, recalled rural New England.  Perhaps these refinements are
+due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is
+near.  We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the
+word fruit.  When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
+and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
+
+Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the
+oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,
+set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
+People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and
+a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want
+company.  The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here
+ever since the war.
+
+A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union.  Before noon we
+forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and
+were entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous
+and hospitable farmer.  This is a rich country.  We had met in the
+morning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to
+Jonesboro, and Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits
+before us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.
+
+It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
+withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she
+excelled any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she
+was by her own confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age
+till she has passed this point) and the testimony of others a hundred
+years old.  But age had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor
+the limberness of her tongue, nor her shrewd good sense.  She talked
+freely about the want of decency and morality in the young colored
+folks of the present day.  It was n't so when she was a girl.  Long,
+long time ago, she and her husband had been sold at sheriff's sale
+and separated, and she never had another husband.  Not that she
+blamed her master so much he could n't help it; he got in debt.  And
+she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the danger they are
+in.  The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he can borrow
+money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and pilin' up
+the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a ladder to
+get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and the man
+has to begin on the bottom rail again.  If she'd to live her life
+over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now.
+The thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and
+kept her eye on the neighborhood.  Going out that morning she had
+seen some fence up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr.
+Devault that she didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as
+white folks was much better than colored folks.  Slavery?  Yes,
+slavery was pretty bad--she had seen five hundred niggers in
+handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to be sent South.
+
+About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest,
+worth a visit if we could have spared the time.  In it is the large
+beech (six and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which
+Daniel Boone shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region.  He
+himself cut an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it
+is still distinctly legible:
+
+     D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.
+
+This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all
+parts of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for
+any more records of such devotion.  The grove is ancient looking, the
+trees are gnarled and moss-grown.  Hundreds of people go there, and
+the trees are carved all over with their immortal names.
+
+A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip
+of forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other
+adventure than the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road,
+with steam up, clattering along.  The devil himself could not invent
+any machine calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this.
+Jack took one look and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his
+rider's hat but did not succeed in getting rid of his burden or
+knocking down any trees.
+
+Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, with
+some three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by an ex-
+stage-driver.  The village, which lies on the Holston, has no
+drinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a well
+nor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crosses
+the river to a spring on the other side.  A considerable part of the
+labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge.  On a hill
+overlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a
+tower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those who
+have seen it.  It belonged to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter of
+Andrew Johnson.  The whole family of the ex-President have departed
+this world, but his memory is still green in this region, where he
+was almost worshiped--so the people say in speaking of him.
+
+Forlorn as was the hotel at Union, the landlord's daughters were
+beginning to draw the lines in rural refinement.  One of them had
+been at school in Abingdon.  Another, a mature young lady of fifteen,
+who waited on the table, in the leisure after supper asked the Friend
+for a light for her cigarette, which she had deftly rolled.
+
+"Why do you smoke?"
+
+"So as I shan't get into the habit of dipping.  Do you think dipping
+is nice?"
+
+The traveler was compelled to say that he did not, though he had seen
+a good deal of it wherever he had been.
+
+"All the girls dips round here.  But me and my sisters rather smoke
+than get in a habit of dipping."
+
+To the observation that Union seemed to be a dull place :
+
+"Well, there's gay times here in the winter--dancing.  Like to dance?
+Well, I should say!  Last winter I went over to Blountsville to a
+dance in the court-house; there was a trial between Union and
+Blountsville for the best dancing.  You bet I brought back the cake
+and the blue ribbon."
+
+The country was becoming too sophisticated, and the travelers
+hastened to the end of their journey.  The next morning Bristol, at
+first over a hilly country with magnificent oak-trees,--happily not
+girdled, as these stately monarchs were often seen along the roads in
+North Carolina,--and then up Beaver Creek, a turbid stream, turning
+some mills.  When a closed woolen factory was pointed out to the
+Professor (who was still traveling for Reform), as the result of the
+agitation in Congress, he said, Yes, the effect of agitation was
+evident in all the decayed dams and ancient abandoned mills we had
+seen in the past month.
+
+Bristol is mainly one long street, with some good stores, but
+generally shabby, and on this hot morning sleepy.  One side of the
+street is in Tennessee, the other in Virginia.  How handy for
+fighting this would have been in the war, if Tennessee had gone out
+and Virginia stayed in.  At the hotel--may a kind Providence wake it
+up to its responsibilities--we had the pleasure of reading one of
+those facetious handbills which the great railway companies of the
+West scatter about, the serious humor of which is so pleasing to our
+English friends.  This one was issued by the accredited agents of the
+Ohio and Mississippi Railway, and dated April 1, 1984.  One sentence
+will suffice:
+
+"Allow us to thank our old traveling friends for the many favors in
+our line, and if you are going on your bridal trip, or to see your
+girl out West, drop in at the general office of the Ohio and
+Mississippi Railway and we will fix you up in Queen Anne style.
+Passengers for Dakota, Montana, or the Northwest will have an
+overcoat and sealskin cap thrown in with all tickets sold on or after
+the above date."
+
+The great republic cannot yet take itself seriously.  Let us hope the
+humors of it will last another generation.  Meditating on this, we
+hailed at sundown the spires of Abingdon, and regretted the end of a
+journey that seems to have been undertaken for no purpose.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of On Horseback, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of On Horseback by Charles Dudley Warner
+#30 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner
+
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+Title: On Horseback
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3126]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/22/01]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of On Horseback, by Charles Dudley Warner
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+NOTE: This work has been previously published in [Etext #2674]
+The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Volume 4
+Project Gutenberg The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
+4warn10.txt or 4warn10.zip
+
+
+
+
+
+ON HORSEBACK
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+I
+
+"The way to mount a horse"--said the Professor.
+
+"If you have no ladder--put in the Friend of Humanity."
+
+The Professor had ridden through the war for the Union on the right
+side, enjoying a much better view of it than if he had walked, and
+knew as much about a horse as a person ought to know for the sake of
+his character.  The man who can recite the tales of the Canterbury
+Pilgrims, on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, never
+missing an accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witch
+North Carolina and a strip of East Tennessee with his noble
+horsemanship, is a kind of Literary Centaur of whose double
+instruction any Friend of Humanity may be glad to avail himself.
+
+"The way to mount a horse is to grasp the mane with the left hand
+holding the bridle-rein, put your left foot in the stirrup, with the
+right hand on the back of the saddle, and---"
+
+Just then the horse stepped quickly around on his hind feet, and
+looked the Professor in the face.  The Superintendents of Affairs,
+who occupy the flagging in front of the hotel, seated in cane-
+bottomed chairs tilted back, smiled.  These useful persons appear to
+have a life-lease of this portion of the city pavement, and pretty
+effectually block it up nearly all day and evening.  When a lady
+wishes to make her way through the blockade, it is the habit of these
+observers of life to rise and make room, touching their hats, while
+she picks her way through, and goes down the street with a pretty
+consciousness of the flutter she has caused.  The war has not changed
+the Southern habit of sitting out-of-doors, but has added a new
+element of street picturesqueness in groups of colored people
+lounging about the corners.  There appears to be more leisure than
+ever.
+
+The scene of this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town of
+Abingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennessee
+railway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to the
+Johnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that still
+preserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of the easy-
+going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educational
+center, where the young ladies of the region add the final graces of
+intellectual life in moral philosophy and the use of the globes to
+their natural gifts.  The mansion of the late and left Floyd is now a
+seminary, and not far from it is the Stonewall Jackson Institute, in
+the midst of a grove of splendid oaks, whose stately boles and wide-
+spreading branches give a dignity to educational life.  The
+distinction of the region is its superb oak-trees.  As it was
+vacation in these institutions of learning, the travelers did not see
+any of the vines that traditionally cling to the oak.
+
+The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on a
+journey, across country southward, through regions about which the
+people of Abingdon could give little useful information.  If the
+travelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, they
+would not have started without a supply train, or the establishment
+of bases of provisions in advance.  But, as the Professor remarked,
+knowledge is something that one acquires when he has no use for it.
+The horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirts
+and leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen,
+and novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it would
+have been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in real
+life meat is more than raiment.
+
+The hotel, in front of which there is cultivated so much of what the
+Germans call sitzfleisch, is a fair type of the majority of Southern
+hotels, and differs from the same class in the North in being left a
+little more to run itself.  The only information we obtained about it
+was from its porter at the station, who replied to the question, "Is
+it the best?"  "We warrant you perfect satisfaction in every
+respect."  This seems to be only a formula of expression, for we
+found that the statement was highly colored.  It was left to our
+imagination to conjecture how the big chambers of the old house, with
+their gaping fireplaces, might have looked when furnished and filled
+with gay company, and we got what satisfaction we could out of a
+bygone bustle and mint-julep hilarity.  In our struggles with the
+porter to obtain the little items of soap, water, and towels, we were
+convinced that we had arrived too late, and that for perfect
+satisfaction we should have been here before the war.  It was not
+always as now.  In colonial days the accommodations and prices at
+inns were regulated by law.  In the old records in the court-house we
+read that if we had been here in 1777, we could have had a gallon of
+good rum for sixteen shillings; a quart bowl of rum toddy made with
+loaf sugar for two shillings, or with brown sugar for one shilling
+and sixpence.  In 1779 prices had risen.  Good rum sold for four
+pounds a gallon.  It was ordered that a warm dinner should cost
+twelve shillings, a cold dinner nine shillings, and a good breakfast
+twelve shillings.  But the item that pleased us most, and made us
+regret our late advent, was that for two shillings we could have had
+a "good lodging, with clean sheets." The colonists were fastidious
+people.
+
+Abingdon, prettily situated on rolling hills, and a couple of
+thousand feet above the sea, with views of mountain peaks to the
+south, is a cheerful and not too exciting place for a brief sojourn,
+and hospitable and helpful to the stranger.  We had dined--so much,
+at least, the public would expect of us--with a descendant of
+Pocahontas; we had assisted on Sunday morning at the dedication of a
+new brick Methodist church, the finest edifice in the region--
+a dedication that took a long time, since the bishop would not
+proceed with it until money enough was raised in open meeting to pay
+the balance due on it: a religious act, though it did give a business
+aspect to the place at the time; and we had been the light spots in
+the evening service at the most aristocratic church of color.  The
+irresponsibility of this amiable race was exhibited in the tardiness
+with which they assembled: at the appointed time nobody was there
+except the sexton; it was three quarters of an hour before the
+congregation began to saunter in, and the sermon was nearly over
+before the pews were at all filled.  Perhaps the sermon was not new,
+but it was fervid, and at times the able preacher roared so that
+articulate sounds were lost in the general effect.  It was precisely
+these passages of cataracts of sound and hard breathing which excited
+the liveliest responses,--"Yes, Lord," and "Glory to God."  Most of
+these responses came from the "Amen corner."  The sermon contained
+the usual vivid description of the last judgment--ah, and I fancied
+that the congregation did not get the ordinary satisfaction out of
+it.  Fashion had entered the fold, and the singing was mostly
+executed by a choir in the dusky gallery, who thinly and harshly
+warbled the emotional hymns.  It occupied the minister a long time to
+give out the notices of the week, and there was not an evening or
+afternoon that had not its meetings, its literary or social
+gathering, its picnic or fair for the benefit of the church, its
+Dorcas society, or some occasion of religious sociability.  The
+raising of funds appeared to be the burden on the preacher's mind.
+Two collections were taken up.  At the first, the boxes appeared to
+get no supply except from the two white trash present.  But the
+second was more successful.  After the sermon was over, an elder took
+his place at a table within the rails, and the real business of the
+evening began.  Somebody in the Amen corner struck up a tune that had
+no end, but a mighty power of setting the congregation in motion.
+The leader had a voice like the pleasant droning of a bag-pipe, and
+the faculty of emitting a continuous note like that instrument,
+without stopping to breathe.  It went on and on like a Bach fugue,
+winding and whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of the
+catch without a break.  The effect was soon visible in the emotional
+crowd: feet began to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in,
+with spurts of ejaculation; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, the
+members began to leave their seats and pass before the table and
+deposit their contributions.  It was a cent contribution, and we
+found it very difficult, under the contagious influence of the hum
+from the Amen corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent.
+If anything could extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, it
+would be the buzzing of this tune.  It went on and on, until the
+house appeared to be drained dry of its cash; and we inferred by the
+stopping of the melody that the preacher's salary was secure for the
+time being.  On inquiring, we ascertained that the pecuniary flood
+that evening had risen to the height of a dollar and sixty cents.
+
+All was ready for the start.  It should have been early in the
+morning, but it was not; for Virginia is not only one of the blessed
+regions where one can get a late breakfast, but where it is almost
+impossible to get an early one.  At ten A. M.  the two horsemen rode
+away out of sight of the Abingdon spectators, down the eastern
+turnpike.  The day was warm, but the air was full of vitality and the
+spirit of adventure.  It was the 22d of July.  The horses were not
+ambitious, but went on at an easy fox-trot that permits observation
+and encourages conversation.  It had been stipulated that the horses
+should be good walkers, the one essential thing in a horseback
+journey.  Few horses, even in a country where riding is general, are
+trained to walk fast.  We hear much of horses that can walk five
+miles an hour, but they are as rare as white elephants.  Our horses
+were only fair walkers.  We realized how necessary this
+accomplishment is, for between the Tennessee line and Asheville,
+North Carolina, there is scarcely a mile of trotting-ground.
+
+We soon turned southward and descended into the Holston River Valley.
+Beyond lay the Tennessee hills and conspicuous White-Top Mountain
+(5530 feet), which has a good deal of local celebrity (standing where
+the States of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina corner), and
+had been pointed out to us at Abingdon.  We had been urged,
+personally and by letter, to ascend this mountain, without fail.
+People recommend mountains to their friends as they do patent
+medicines.  As we leisurely jogged along we discussed this, and
+endeavored to arrive at some rule of conduct for the journey.  The
+Professor expressed at once a feeling about mountain-climbing that
+amounted to hostility,--he would go nowhere that he could not ride.
+Climbing was the most unsatisfactory use to which a mountain could be
+put.  As to White-Top, it was a small mountain, and not worth
+ascending.  The Friend of Humanity, who believes in mountain-climbing
+as a theory, and for other people, and knows the value of being able
+to say, without detection, that he has ascended any high mountain
+about which he is questioned,--since this question is the first one
+asked about an exploration in a new country,--saw that he should have
+to use a good deal of diplomacy to get the Professor over any
+considerable elevation on the trip.  And he had to confess also that
+a view from a mountain is never so satisfactory as a view of a
+mountain, from a moderate height.  The Professor, however, did not
+argue the matter on any such reasonable ground, but took his stand on
+his right as a man not to ascend a mountain.  With this appeal to
+first principles,--a position that could not be confuted on account
+of its vagueness (although it might probably be demonstrated that in
+society man has no such right), there was no way of agreement except
+by a compromise.  It was accordingly agreed that no mountain under
+six thousand feet is worth ascending; that disposed of White-Top.  It
+was further agreed that any mountain that is over six thousand feet
+high is too high to ascend on foot.
+
+With this amicable adjustment we forded the Holston, crossing it
+twice within a few miles.  This upper branch of the Tennessee is a
+noble stream, broad, with a rocky bed and a swift current.  Fording
+it is ticklish business except at comparatively low water, and as it
+is subject to sudden rises, there must be times when it seriously
+interrupts travel.  This whole region, full of swift streams, is
+without a bridge, and, as a consequence, getting over rivers and
+brooks and the dangers of ferries occupy a prominent place in the
+thoughts of the inhabitants.  The life necessarily had the "frontier"
+quality all through, for there can be little solid advance in
+civilization in the uncertainties of a bridgeless condition.  An
+open, pleasant valley, the Holston, but cultivation is more and more
+negligent and houses are few and poorer as we advance.
+
+We had left behind the hotels of "perfect satisfaction," and expected
+to live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remunerated
+hospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants.  We were to dine at
+Ramsey's.  Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place of
+entertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot in
+the sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, we
+magnified Ramsey's in our imagination,--the nobility of its
+situation, its cuisine, its inviting restfulness,--and half decided
+to pass the night there in the true abandon of plantation life.  Long
+before we reached it, the Holston River which we followed had become
+the Laurel, a most lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we forded
+continually, for the valley became too narrow much of the way to
+accommodate a road and a river.  Eagerly as we were looking out for
+it, we passed the great Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was the
+first of a little settlement of two houses and a saw-mill and barn.
+It was a neat log house of two lower rooms and a summer kitchen,
+quite the best of the class that we saw, and the pleasant mistress of
+it made us welcome.  Across the road and close, to the Laurel was the
+spring-house, the invariable adjunct to every well-to-do house in the
+region, and on the stony margin of the stream was set up the big
+caldron for the family washing; and here, paddling in the shallow
+stream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy with
+the children and exchanged philosophical observations on life with
+the old negress who was dabbling the clothes.  What impressed this
+woman was the inequality in life.  She jumped to the unwarranted
+conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and
+spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting
+shoes and tobacco.  It was useless to point out to her that her
+alfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the
+happy lot of any one who could loiter all day by this laughing
+stream, undisturbed by debt or ambition.  Everybody about the place
+was barefooted, except the mistress, including the comely daughter of
+eighteen, who served our dinner in the kitchen.  The dinner was
+abundant, and though it seemed to us incongruous at the time, we were
+not twelve hours older when we looked back upon it with longing.  On
+the table were hot biscuit, ham, pork, and green beans, apple-sauce,
+blackberry preserves, cucumbers, coffee, plenty of milk, honey, and
+apple and blackberry pie.  Here we had our first experience, and I
+may say new sensation, of "honey on pie." It has a cloying sound as
+it is written, but the handmaiden recommended it with enthusiasm, and
+we evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from an uncultivated
+society, when we declared our inexperience of "honey on pie."  "Where
+be you from?"  It turned out to be very good, and we have tried to
+introduce it in families since our return, with indifferent success.
+There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about the
+world at large, nor much stir of social life.  The gayety of madame
+appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and
+grandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.
+
+Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims went
+gayly along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoon
+sun, which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way.
+Inspired by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and the
+dainties of the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:
+
+    "So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
+     Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
+     The which he will not every hour survey,
+     For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
+     Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
+     Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
+     Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are,
+     Or captain jewels in the carcanet."
+
+Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed.  The
+Laurel became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valley
+narrowed down to the riverway, with standing room, however, for
+stately trees along the banks.  The oaks, both black and white, were,
+as they had been all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage.
+There is a certain dignity in riding in such stately company, and the
+travelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression of
+possible high adventure in a new world of such freshness.  Nor was
+beauty wanting.  The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached
+their climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground with
+their brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they were
+still matchlessly beautiful.  Great banks of pink and white covered
+the steep hillsides; the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hung
+their rich clusters over the river; avenues of glory opened away in
+the glade of the stream; and at every turn of the winding way vistas
+glowing with the hues of romance wrenched exclamations of delight and
+wonder from the Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend.  In
+the deep recesses of the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like the
+splashes of splendor on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, these
+wonders of color,--the glowing summer-heart of the woods.
+
+It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out in
+the river, or the river in the road.  In the few miles to Egger's
+(this was the destination of our great expectations for the night)
+the stream was crossed twenty-seven times,--or perhaps it would be
+more proper to say that the road was crossed twenty-seven times.
+Where the road did not run in the river, its bed was washed out and
+as stony as the bed of the stream.  This is a general and accurate
+description of all the roads in this region, which wind along and in
+the streams, through narrow valleys, shut in by low and steep hills.
+The country is full of springs and streams, and between Abingdon and
+Egger's is only one (small) bridge.  In a region with scarcely any
+level land or intervale, farmers are at a disadvantage.  All along
+the road we saw nothing but mean shanties, generally of logs, with
+now and then a decent one-story frame, and the people looked
+miserably poor.
+
+As we picked our way along up the Laurel, obliged for the most part
+to ride single-file, or as the Professor expressed it,
+
+    "Let me confess that we two must be twain,
+     Although our undivided loves are one,"
+
+we gathered information about Egger's from the infrequent hovels on
+the road, which inflamed our imaginations.  Egger was the thriving
+man of the region, and lived in style in a big brick house.  We began
+to feel a doubt that Egger would take us in, and so much did his
+brick magnificence impress us that we regretted we had not brought
+apparel fit for the society we were about to enter.
+
+It was half-past six, and we were tired and hungry, when the domain
+of Egger towered in sight,--a gaunt, two-story structure of raw
+brick, unfinished, standing in a narrow intervale.  We rode up to the
+gate, and asked a man who sat in the front-door porch if this was
+Egger's, and if we could be accommodated for the night.  The man,
+without moving, allowed that it was Egger's, and that we could
+probably stay there.  This person, however, exhibited so much
+indifference to our company, he was such a hairy, unkempt man, and
+carried on face, hands, and clothes so much more of the soil of the
+region than a prudent proprietor would divert from raising corn, that
+we set him aside as a poor relation, and asked for Mr. Egger.  But
+the man, still without the least hospitable stir, admitted that that
+was the name he went by, and at length advised us to "lite" and hitch
+our horses, and sit on the porch with him and enjoy the cool of the
+evening.  The horses would be put up by and by, and in fact things
+generally would come round some time.  This turned out to be the easy
+way of the country.  Mr. Egger was far from being inhospitable, but
+was in no hurry, and never had been in a hurry.  He was not exactly a
+gentleman of the old school.  He was better than that.  He dated from
+the time when there were no schools at all, and he lived in that
+placid world which is without information and ideas.  Mr. Egger
+showed his superiority by a total lack of curiosity about any other
+world.
+
+This brick house, magnificent by comparison with other dwellings in
+this country, seemed to us, on nearer acquaintance, only a thin,
+crude shell of a house, half unfinished, with bare rooms, the
+plastering already discolored.  In point of furnishing it had not yet
+reached the "God bless our Home" stage in crewel.  In the narrow
+meadow, a strip of vivid green south of the house, ran a little
+stream, fed by a copious spring, and over it was built the inevitable
+spring-house.  A post, driven into the bank by the stream, supported
+a tin wash-basin, and here we performed our ablutions.  The traveler
+gets to like this freedom and primitive luxury.
+
+The farm of Egger produces corn, wheat, grass, and sheep; it is a
+good enough farm, but most of it lies at an angle of thirty-five to
+forty degrees.  The ridge back of the house, planted in corn, was as
+steep as the roof of his dwelling.  It seemed incredible that it ever
+could have been plowed, but the proprietor assured us that it was
+plowed with mules, and I judged that the harvesting must be done by
+squirrels.  The soil is good enough, if it would stay in place, but
+all the hillsides are seamed with gullies.  The discolored state of
+the streams was accounted for as soon as we saw this cultivated land.
+No sooner is the land cleared of trees and broken up than it begins
+to wash.  We saw more of this later, especially in North Carolina,
+where we encountered no stream of water that was not muddy, and saw
+no cultivated ground that was not washed.  The process of denudation
+is going on rapidly wherever the original forests are girdled (a
+common way of preparing for crops), or cut away.
+
+As the time passed and there was no sign of supper, the question
+became a burning one, and we went to explore the kitchen.  No sign of
+it there.  No fire in the stove, nothing cooked in the house, of
+course.  Mrs. Egger and her comely young barefooted daughter had
+still the milking to attend to, and supper must wait for the other
+chores.  It seemed easier to be Mr. Egger, in this state of
+existence, and sit on the front porch and meditate on the price of
+mules and the prospect of a crop, than to be Mrs. Egger, whose work
+was not limited from sun to sun; who had, in fact, a day's work to do
+after the men-folks had knocked off; whose chances of neighborhood
+gossip were scanty, whose amusements were confined to a religious
+meeting once a fortnight.  Good, honest people these, not unduly
+puffed up by the brick house, grubbing away year in and year out.
+Yes, the young girl said, there was a neighborhood party, now and
+then, in the winter.  What a price to pay for mere life!
+
+Long before supper was ready, nearly nine o'clock, we had almost lost
+interest in it.  Meantime two other guests had arrived, a couple of
+drovers from North Carolina, who brought into the circle--by this
+time a wood-fire had been kindled in the sitting-room, which
+contained a bed, an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper--a
+rich flavor of cattle, and talk of the price of steers.  As to
+politics, although a presidential campaign was raging, there was
+scarcely an echo of it here.  This was Johnson County, Tennessee, a
+strong Republican county but dog-gone it, says Mr.  Egger, it's no
+use to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest of the State.  Yes,
+they'd got a Republican member of Congress,--he'd heard his name, but
+he'd forgotten it.  The drover said he'd heard it also, but he didn't
+take much interest in such things, though he wasn't any Republican.
+Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed.  Even the
+Professor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't wake
+up a discussion out of such a state of mind.
+
+Alas!  the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp,
+on a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse
+the delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not
+lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated
+through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork
+swimming in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers
+raw, coffee (so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially
+asked for (the correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie.
+This was not the pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,--two
+thick slabs of dough, with a squeezing of apple between.  The
+profusion of this supper staggered the novices, but the drovers
+attacked it as if such cooking were a common occurrence and did
+justice to the weary labors of Mrs. Egger.
+
+Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several rooms
+and several beds in each room.  Upon consultation with the drovers,
+they said they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, and
+we gave up their society for the night.  The beds in our chamber had
+each one sheet, and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modern
+spirit; for in one corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decoration
+of our Queen Anne drawing-rooms,--the spinning-wheel.  Soothed by
+this concession to taste, we crowded in between the straw and the
+home-made blanket and sheet, and soon ceased to hear the barking of
+dogs and the horned encounters of the drovers' herd.
+
+We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy of
+the supper) with more respect than regret.  His total charge for the
+entertainment of two men and two horses--supper, lodging, and
+breakfast--was high or low, as the traveler chose to estimate it.  It
+was $1.20: that is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten cents
+for each meal and lodging.
+
+Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut Laurel
+Gap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina,--the next
+available halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, and
+turning out to be twenty-two, and a rough road.  There is a little
+settlement about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we had
+the company of the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl.
+Neither she nor any other people we encountered had any dialect or
+local peculiarity of speech.  Indeed, those we encountered that
+morning had nothing in manner or accent to distinguish them.  The
+novelists had led us to expect something different; and the modest
+and pretty young lady with frank and open blue eyes, who wore gloves
+and used the common English speech, had never figured in the fiction
+of the region.  Cherished illusions vanish often on near approach.
+The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note, except the occasional
+use of "hit" for "it."
+
+The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, the
+thermometer mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty of
+the way, the ride became tedious before we reached the summit.  On
+the summit is the dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous in
+these parts.  We stopped at the house for a glass of milk; the
+colonel was absent, and while the woman in charge went after it, we
+sat on the veranda and conversed with a young lady, tall, gent, well
+favored, and communicative, who leaned in the doorway.
+
+"Yes, this house stands on the line.  Where you sit, you are in
+Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina."
+
+"Do you live here?"
+
+"Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's.  I live
+over the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville.  I thought I'd
+be where I could step into North Carolina easy."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify about
+some pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got into
+a little difficulty,--and I did n't want to.  I never has no
+difficulty with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothing
+against nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me."
+
+"Did you come alone?"
+
+"Why, of course.  I come across the mountain by a path through the
+woods.  That's nothing."
+
+A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl.  This surely must be the Esmeralda
+who lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virgin
+purity and sentiment.  As she talked on, she turned from time to time
+to the fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from her
+pretty lips, with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that was
+not assumed, but belongs to our free-born American girls.  I cannot
+tell why this habit of hers (which is no worse than the sister habit
+of "dipping") should take her out of the romantic setting that her
+face and figure had placed her in; but somehow we felt inclined to
+ride on farther for our heroine.
+
+"And yet," said the Professor, as we left the site of the colonel's
+thriving distillery, and by a winding, picturesque road through a
+rough farming country descended into the valley,--"and yet, why fling
+aside so readily a character and situation so full of romance, on
+account of a habit of this mountain Helen, which one of our best
+poets has almost made poetical, in the case of the pioneer taking his
+westward way, with ox-goad pointing to the sky:
+
+   "'He's leaving on the pictured rock
+     His fresh tobacco stain.'
+
+"To my mind the incident has Homeric elements.  The Greeks would have
+looked at it in a large, legendary way.  Here is Helen, strong and
+lithe of limb, ox-eyed, courageous, but woman-hearted and love-
+inspiring, contended for by all the braves and daring moonshiners of
+Cut Laurel Gap, pursued by the gallants of two States, the prize of a
+border warfare of bowie knives and revolvers.  This Helen,
+magnanimous as attractive, is the witness of a pistol difficulty on
+her behalf, and when wanted by the areopagus, that she may neither
+implicate a lover nor punish an enemy (having nothing, this noble
+type of her sex against nobody), skips away to Mount Ida, and there,
+under the aegis of the flag of her country, in a Licensed Distillery,
+stands with one slender foot in Tennessee and the other in North
+Carolina"
+
+"Like the figure of the Republic itself, superior to state
+sovereignty," interposed the Friend.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the Professor, urging up Laura Matilda (for
+so he called the nervous mare, who fretted herself into a fever in
+the stony path), "I was quite able to get the woman out of that
+position without the aid of a metaphor.  It is a large and Greek
+idea, that of standing in two mighty States, superior to the law,
+looking east and looking west, ready to transfer her agile body to
+either State on the approach of messengers of the court; and I'll be
+hanged if I didn't think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed,
+combined with her lofty moral attitude, added something to the
+picture."
+
+The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremest
+defense of the privileges of beauty,--that he even held in abeyance
+judgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gum
+was as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.
+
+    "When I consider everything that grows
+     Holds in perfection but a little moment..."
+
+The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashing
+through the stream.  No sooner had we descended than the fording of
+streams began again.  The Friend had been obliged to stipulate that
+the Professor should go ahead at these crossings, to keep the
+impetuous nag of the latter from throwing half the contents of the
+stream upon his slower and uncomplaining companion.
+
+What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the long
+wearisomeness of the way!--not that the distance was great, but miles
+and miles more than expected.  How charming the open glades of the
+river, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and what
+a panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingled
+with the lighter pink and white of the laurel!  In this region the
+rhododendron is called laurel and the laurel (the sheep-laurel of
+New England) is called ivy.
+
+At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, open
+farming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decent
+dwellings.  Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a post
+office and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling of
+the proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house.
+Worth's has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region where
+places of accommodation are few.  The proprietor, now an elderly man,
+whose reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow up
+about him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come up
+into the modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education and
+glimpses of city life and foreign travel.  I fancy that nothing but
+tradition and a remaining Southern hospitality could induce this
+private family to suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man.  Our
+travelers are not apt to be surprised at anything in American life,
+but they did not expect to find a house in this region with two
+pianos and a bevy of young ladies, whose clothes were certainly not
+made on Cut Laurel Gap, and to read in the books scattered about the
+house the evidences of the finishing schools with which our country
+is blessed, nor to find here pupils of the Stonewall Jackson
+Institute at Abingdon.  With a flush of local pride, the Professor
+took up, in the roomy, pleasant chamber set apart for the guests, a
+copy of Porter's "Elements of Moral Science."
+
+"Where you see the 'Elements of Moral Science,'" the Friend
+generalized, "there'll be plenty of water and towels;" and the sign
+did not fail.  The friends intended to read this book in the cool of
+the day; but as they sat on the long veranda, the voice of a maiden
+reading the latest novel to a sewing group behind the blinds in the
+drawing-room; and the antics of a mule and a boy in front of the
+store opposite; and the arrival of a spruce young man, who had just
+ridden over from somewhere, a matter of ten miles' gallop, to get a
+medicinal potion for his sick mother, and lingered chatting with the
+young ladies until we began to fear that his mother would recover
+before his return; the coming and going of lean women in shackly
+wagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the cows, splashing
+through the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing for the hand
+of the milker,--all these interruptions, together with the generally
+drowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the study of
+the Elements.  And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest, went
+on their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianos
+and the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is not
+treated of in the text-book referred to, they were content with a
+bill double that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.
+
+The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be content
+to feed on natural beauties.  And it is an unfortunate truth in
+natural history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after a
+time, if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food.
+There is no landscape in the world that is agreeable after two days
+of rusty-bacon and slack biscuit.
+
+"How lovely this would be," exclaimed the Professor, if it had a
+background of beefsteak and coffee!
+
+We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguished
+locally as Three Top Creek,--or, rather, we were riding in it,
+crossing it thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (and
+water) road, under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendron
+illuminating the way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in the
+stream, all the ten miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination.
+We had heard a great deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map,
+it was down in the itinerary furnished by a member of the Coast
+Survey.  We looked forward to it as a sweet place of repose from the
+noontide heat.  Alas!  Elk Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store,
+encumbered with dry-goods boxes, fly-blown goods, flies, loafers.  In
+reply to our inquiry we were told that they had nothing to eat, for
+us, and not a grain of feed for the horses.  But there was a man a
+mile farther on, who was well to do and had stores of food,--old man
+Tatern would treat us in bang-up style.  The difficulty of getting
+feed for the horses was chronic all through the journey.  The last
+corn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not come in, and the
+country was literally barren.  We had noticed all along that the hens
+were taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put forward as an
+article of diet.
+
+We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to
+imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose.  His house is
+of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft
+accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney.  The chimney is a
+huge construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in
+fact, the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms were
+then built against it.  The proprietor sat in a little railed
+veranda.  These Southern verandas give an air to the meanest
+dwelling, and they are much used; the family sit here, and here are
+the washbasin and pail (which is filled from the neighboring spring-
+house), and the row of milk-pans.  The old man Tatern did not welcome
+us with enthusiasm; he had no corn,--these were hard times.  He
+looked like hard times, grizzled times, dirty times.  It seemed time
+out of mind since he had seen comb or razor, and although the lovely
+New River, along which we had ridden to his house,--a broad, inviting
+stream,--was in sight across the meadow, there was no evidence that
+he had ever made acquaintance with its cleansing waters.  As to corn,
+the necessities of the case and pay being dwelt on, perhaps he could
+find a dozen ears.  A dozen small cars he did find, and we trust that
+the horses found them.
+
+We took a family dinner with old man Tatern in the kitchen, where
+there was a bed and a stove,--a meal that the host seemed to enjoy,
+but which we could not make much of, except the milk; that was good.
+A painful meal, on the whole, owing to the presence in the room of a
+grown-up daughter with a graveyard cough, without physician or
+medicine, or comforts.  Poor girl! just dying of "a misery."
+
+In the spare room were two beds; the walls were decorated with the
+gay-colored pictures of patent-medicine advertisements--a favorite
+art adornment of the region; and a pile of ancient illustrated papers
+with the usual patent-office report, the thoughtful gift of the
+member for the district.  The old man takes in the "Blue Ridge
+Baptist," a journal which we found largely taken up with the
+experiences of its editor on his journeys roundabout in search of
+subscribers.  This newspaper was the sole communication of the family
+with the world at large, but the old man thought he should stop it,--
+he did n't seem to get the worth of his money out of it.  And old man
+Tatem was a thrifty and provident man.  On the hearth in this best
+room--as ornaments or memento mori were a couple of marble
+gravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on bases and
+ready for use, except the lettering.  These may not have been so
+mournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple,
+humble faith; they may have been taken for debt.  But as parlor
+ornaments they had a fascination which we could not escape.
+
+It was while we were bathing in the New River, that afternoon, and
+meditating on the grim, unrelieved sort of life of our host, that the
+Professor said, "judging by the face of the 'Blue Ridge Baptist,' he
+will charge us smartly for the few nubbins of corn and the milk."
+The face did not deceive us; the charge was one dollar.  At this rate
+it would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhaps
+he is not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.
+
+It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climb
+the sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem.  But we
+entered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rode
+under the shade of great oaks.  The way, which began by the New
+River, soon led us over the hills to the higher levels of Watauga
+County.  So far on our journey we had been hemmed in by low hills,
+and without any distant or mountain outlooks.  The excessive heat
+seemed out of place at the elevation of over two thousand feet, on
+which we were traveling.  Boone, the county seat of Watauga County,
+was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and the
+trend of the roads had notified us that everything in this region
+tends towards Boone as a center of interest.  The simple ingenuity of
+some of the guide-boards impressed us.  If, on coming to a fork, the
+traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,
+
+      To BOONE 10 M.
+If he was to go to the left, it read,
+      .M 01 ENOOB oT
+
+A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,
+unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to this
+capital.  When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders
+over gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns,
+the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet above
+Albemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highest
+village east of the Rocky Mountains.  The Professor said that it
+might be so, but it was a God-forsaken place.  Its inhabitants
+numbered perhaps two hundred and fifty, a few of them colored.  It
+had a gaunt, shaky court-house and jail, a store or two, and two
+taverns.  The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges and
+lawyers and their clients during the session of the court.  The court
+is the only excitement and the only amusement.  It is the event from
+which other events date.  Everybody in the county knows exactly when
+court sits, and when court breaks.  During the session the whole
+county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children.  They camp
+there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them,
+perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the
+neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit.  To be fond of
+lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new
+conditions.  The early settlers of New England were.
+
+Notwithstanding the elevation of Boone, which insured a pure air, the
+thermometer that afternoon stood at from 85 to 89 deg.  The flies
+enjoyed it.  How they swarmed in this tavern!  They would have
+carried off all the food from the dining-room table (for flies do not
+mind eating off oilcloth, and are not particular how food is cooked),
+but for the machine with hanging flappers that swept the length of
+it; and they destroy all possibility of sleep except in the dark.
+The mountain regions of North Carolina are free from mosquitoes, but
+the fly has settled there, and is the universal scourge.  This
+tavern, one end of which was a store, had a veranda in front, and a
+back gallery, where there were evidences of female refinement in pots
+of plants and flowers.  The landlord himself kept tavern very much as
+a hostler would, but we had to make a note in his favor that he had
+never heard of a milk punch.  And it might as well be said here, for
+it will have to be insisted on later, that the traveler, who has read
+about the illicit stills till his imagination dwells upon the
+indulgence of his vitiated tastes in the mountains of North Carolina,
+is doomed to disappointment.  If he wants to make himself an
+exception to the sober people whose cooking will make him long for
+the maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him.  We had found
+no bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and water,
+slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and bacon
+incrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drink
+stronger than buttermilk.  And we can say that, so far as our example
+is concerned, we left the country as temperate as we found it.  How
+can there be mint juleps (to go into details) without ice? and in the
+summer there is probably not a pound of ice in all the State north of
+Buncombe County.
+
+There is nothing special to be said about Boone.  We were anxious to
+reach it, we were glad to leave it; we note as to all these places
+that our joy at departing always exceeds that on arriving, which is a
+merciful provision of nature for people who must keep moving.  This
+country is settled by genuine Americans, who have the aboriginal
+primitive traits of the universal Yankee nation.  The front porch in
+the morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally covered
+with the whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the evening
+there in the sedative occupation of whittling.
+
+We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles,
+through noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons,--a
+charming wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keep
+the promise of its name.  Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and a
+dirty, flyblown store.  While the Professor consulted the blacksmith
+about a loose shoe, the Friend carried his weariness of life without
+provisions up to a white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiled
+milk.  This house was occupied by flies.  They must have numbered
+millions, settled in black swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, the
+veranda; the kitchen was simply a hive of them.  The only book in
+sight, Whewell's--"Elements of Morality," seemed to attract flies.
+Query, Why should this have such a different effect from Porter's?  A
+white house,--a pleasant-looking house at a distance,--amiable,
+kindly people in it,--why should we have arrived there on its dirty
+day?  Alas! if we had been starving, Valle Crusis had nothing to
+offer us.
+
+So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the
+Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and
+passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape,
+and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge,
+rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it.  From the summit we
+had the first extensive prospect during our journey.  The road can be
+described as awful,--steep, stony, the horses unable to make two
+miles an hour on it.  Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin
+without barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn.  The
+women who regarded the passers from their cabin doors were frowzy and
+looked tired.  What with the heat and the road and this discouraged
+appearance of humanity, we reached the residence of Dugger, at
+Banner's Elk, to which we had been directed, nearly exhausted.  It is
+no use to represent this as a dash across country on impatient
+steeds.  It was not so.  The love of truth is stronger than the
+desire of display.  And for this reason it is impossible to say that
+Mr. Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in a clean and attractive
+house, or that he offers much that the pampered child of civilization
+can eat.  But we shall not forget the two eggs, fresh from the hens,
+whose temperature must have been above the normal, nor the spring-
+house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies and the
+heat.  The higher we go, the hotter it is.  Banner's Elk boasts an
+elevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.
+
+We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk River
+towards Cranberry Forge.  The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though not
+very clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was under
+operation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance to
+multiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of its
+reputation.  Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string of
+quarter-pound trout, which he had taken out with a hook and a feather
+rudely tied on it, to resemble a fly.  The road, though not to be
+commended, was much better than that of the morning, the forests grew
+charming in the cool of the evening, the whippoorwill sang, and as
+night fell the wanderers, in want of nearly everything that makes
+life desirable, stopped at the Iron Company's hotel, under the
+impression that it was the only comfortable hotel in North Carolina.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into
+the northwest mountains of North Carolina.  A narrow-gauge railway,
+starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe
+River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry,
+where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rows
+of tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks,
+raw embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, are
+the signs of a great devastating American enterprise.  The Cranberry
+iron is in great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of the
+Swedish iron.  There are remains of old furnaces lower down the
+stream, which we passed on our way.  The present "plant" is that of a
+Philadelphia company, whose enterprise has infused new life into all
+this region, made it accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.
+
+When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, which
+crowns a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect of
+many gentle hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removed
+from all sordid associations, we were at the point of willingness
+that the whole country should be devastated by civilization.  In the
+local imagination this hotel of the company is a palace of unequaled
+magnificence, but probably its good taste, comfort, and quiet
+elegance are not appreciated after all.  There is this to be said
+about Philadelphia,--and it will go far in pleading for it in the
+Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity and the babel-like
+ambition of its Public Building,--that wherever its influence
+extends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the luxury of
+an undeniably excellent cuisine.  The visible seal that Philadelphia
+sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good hotel.
+
+This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set about
+with easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished in
+native woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of the
+cucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by a
+Philadelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap.  Is it
+"low" to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tour
+in search of the picturesque?  Let the reader ride from Abingdon
+through a wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge.
+There were, to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, and
+fragments of information to be picked up about a world into which the
+travelers seemed to emerge.  They, at least, were satisfied, and went
+off to their rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrived
+somewhere and no unquiet spirit at morn would say "to horse."  To
+sleep, perchance to dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; and
+the Professor was heard muttering in his chamber,
+
+    "Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
+     The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
+     But then begins a journey in my head,
+     To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd."
+
+The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be between
+twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy;
+and the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon the
+veranda, read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of the
+white birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron-
+trees, twenty feet high, which were shaking off their last pink
+blossoms, and look down into the valley of the Doe.  It is not an
+exciting landscape, nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restful
+with the monotony of some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.
+
+Sunday came up smiling, a lovely day, but offering no church
+privileges, for the ordinance of preaching is only occasional in this
+region.  The ladies of the hotel have, however, gathered in the
+valley a Sunday-school of fifty children from the mountain cabins.  A
+couple of rainy days, with the thermometer rising to 80 deg.,
+combined with natural laziness to detain the travelers in this
+cottage of ease.  They enjoyed this the more because it was on their
+consciences that they should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-five
+miles eastward, long held up before them as the most magnificent
+feature of this region, and on no account to be omitted.  Hence,
+naturally, a strong desire to omit it.  The Professor takes bold
+ground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and it was nothing to
+him that the public would demand that we should see Linville Falls.
+In the first place, we could find no one who had ever seen them, and
+we spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers.  The nearest
+we came to information was from a workman at the furnace, who was
+born and raised within three miles of the Falls.  He had heard of
+people going there.  He had never seen them himself.  It was a good
+twenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd think
+it thirty before we got there.  Fifty miles of such travel to see a
+little water run down-hill!  The travelers reflected.  Every country
+has a local waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many.
+One more would add little to the experience of life.  The vagueness
+of information, to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake the
+journey; but the temptation was resisted--something ought to be left
+for the next explorer--and so Linville remains a thing of the
+imagination.
+
+Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and the
+Friend rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, to
+Roan Station, the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain.  It
+was a ride of an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed with
+rhododendrons, nearly blossomless; but at a point on the stream this
+sturdy shrub had formed a long bower where under a table might have
+been set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wild
+grape, and still gay with bloom.  The habitations on the way are
+mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is
+introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of
+ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to
+precede comfort in our civilization.
+
+Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from Roan
+Mountain), and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea.  The visitor
+will find here a good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful in
+a July evening), and obliging people.  This railway from Johnson
+City, hanging on the edge of the precipices that wall the gorge of
+the Doe, is counted in this region by the inhabitants one of the
+engineering wonders of the world.  The tourist is urged by all means
+to see both it and Linville Falls.
+
+The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, is
+not probably expected to take stock of moral conditions.  But this
+Mitchell County, although it was a Union county during the war and is
+Republican in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps prefer
+another adverb to "although"), has had the worst possible reputation.
+The mountains were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woods
+were full of grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as
+"native brandy," quarrels and neighborhood difficulties were
+frequent, and the knife and pistol were used on the slightest
+provocation.  Fights arose about boundaries and the title to mica
+mines, and with the revenue officers; and force was the arbiter of
+all disputes.  Within the year four murders were committed in the
+sparsely settled county.  Travel on any of the roads was unsafe.  The
+tone of morals was what might be expected with such lawlessness.  A
+lady who came up on the road on the 4th of July, when an excursion
+party of country people took possession of the cars, witnessed a
+scene and heard language past belief.  Men, women, and children drank
+from whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a wild orgy
+resulted.  Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the license
+of the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom of
+manners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on canvas,
+made the journey horrible.
+
+The unrestrained license of whisky and assault and murder had
+produced a reaction a few months previous to our visit.  The people
+had risen up in their indignation and broken up the groggeries.  So
+far as we observed temperance prevailed, backed by public-opinion.
+In our whole ride through the mountain region we saw only one or two
+places where liquor was sold.
+
+It is called twelve miles from Roan Station to Roan Summit.  The
+distance is probably nearer fourteen, and our horses were five hours
+in walking it.  For six miles the road runs by Doe River, here a
+pretty brook shaded with laurel and rhododendron, and a few
+cultivated patches of ground, and infrequent houses.  It was a blithe
+morning, and the horsemen would have given full indulgence to the
+spirit of adventure but for the attitude of the Professor towards
+mountains.  It was not with him a matter of feeling, but of
+principle, not to ascend them.  But here lay Roan, a long, sprawling
+ridge, lifting itself 6250 feet up into the sky.  Impossible to go
+around it, and the other side must be reached.  The Professor was
+obliged to surrender, and surmount a  difficulty which he could not
+philosophize out of his mind.
+
+>From the base of the mountain a road is very well engineered, in easy
+grades for carriages, to the top; but it was in poor repair and
+stony.  We mounted slowly through splendid forests, specially of fine
+chestnuts and hemlocks.  This big timber continues till within a mile
+and a half of the summit by the winding road, really within a short
+distance of the top.  Then there is a narrow belt of scrubby
+hardwood, moss-grown, and then large balsams, which crown the
+mountain.  As soon as we came out upon the southern slope we found
+great open spaces, covered with succulent grass, and giving excellent
+pasturage to cattle.  These rich mountain meadows are found on all
+the heights of this region.  The surface of Roan is uneven, and has
+no one culminating peak that commands the country, like the peak of
+Mount Washington, but several eminences within its range of probably
+a mile and a half, where various views can be had.  Near the highest
+point, sheltered from the north by balsams, stands a house of
+entertainment, with a detached cottage, looking across the great
+valley to the Black Mountain range.  The surface of the mountain is
+pebbly, but few rocks crop out; no ledges of any size are seen except
+at a distance from the hotel, on the north side, and the mountain
+consequently lacks that savage, unsubduable aspect which the White
+Hills of New Hampshire have.  It would, in fact, have been difficult
+to realize that we were over six thousand feet above the sea, except
+for that pallor in the sunlight, that atmospheric thinness and want
+of color which is an unpleasant characteristic of high altitudes.  To
+be sure, there is a certain brilliancy in the high air,--it is apt to
+be foggy on Roan,--and objects appear in sharp outline, but I have
+often experienced on such places that feeling of melancholy, which
+would, of course, deepen upon us all if we were sensible that the sun
+was gradually withdrawing its power of warmth and light.  The black
+balsam is neither a cheerful nor a picturesque tree; the frequent
+rains and mists on Roan keep the grass and mosses green, but the
+ground damp.  Doubtless a high mountain covered with vegetation has
+its compensation, but for me the naked granite rocks in sun and
+shower are more cheerful.
+
+The advantage of Roan is that one can live there and be occupied for
+a long time in mineral and botanical study.  Its mild climate,
+moisture, and great elevation make it unique in this country for the
+botanist.  The variety of plants assembled there is very large, and
+there are many, we were told, never or rarely found elsewhere in the
+United States.  At any rate, the botanists rave about Roan Mountain,
+and spend weeks at a time on it.  We found there ladies who could
+draw for us Grey's lily (then passed), and had kept specimens of the
+rhododendron (not growing elsewhere in this region) which has a deep
+red, almost purple color.
+
+The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountain
+structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and sitting-
+room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the
+thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was
+welcome.  Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave the
+occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being
+primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the
+loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not
+unlike that of being at sea.  The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and
+Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the
+season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands.  This
+statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the
+character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.
+
+The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North
+Carolina mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in
+mist; and it would rather rain on them than not.  On the afternoon of
+our arrival there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky.
+The distance was hazy, but the outlines were preserved.  We could see
+White Top, in Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range;
+the twin towers of Linville; and the entire range of the Black
+Mountains, rising from the valley, and apparently lower than we were.
+They get the name of Black from the balsams which cover the summits.
+
+The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful
+company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,
+and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in
+agreeableness.  There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of
+the virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston;
+the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the
+literature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of
+bright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull
+day or evening on Roan.  I can fancy, however, that it might tire in
+time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women's
+society.  The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished
+botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of
+plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued
+as Humana, perplexia negligens.  The species is, however, common
+elsewhere.
+
+The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
+thunder-shower.  After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle
+Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had,
+but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the
+day.  Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a
+mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley.  On the lower mountains, at
+wide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched
+cabin and a spot of girdled trees.  A clergyman here, not long ago,
+undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to
+them.  In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom,
+after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray.  She
+offered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed.  The woman
+heard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an
+effort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said:
+
+"Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole."
+
+Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest,
+and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some
+rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.
+In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained
+of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States--a
+continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or
+distance.  The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of
+the atmosphere.  Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day
+before, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim
+inaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwest
+horizon, King's Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distant
+one hundred and fifty miles.  To the north Roan falls from this point
+abruptly, and we had, like a map below us, the low country all the
+way into Virginia.  The clouds lay like lakes in the valleys of the
+lower hills, and in every direction were ranges of mountains wooded
+to the summits.  Off to the west by south lay the Great Smoky
+Mountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.
+
+Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged to
+contrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills.  The rock here
+is a sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite.
+And all the hills are tree-covered.  To many this clothing of verdure
+is most restful and pleasing.  I missed the sharp outlines, the
+delicate artistic sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granite
+peaks and ridges, with the purple and violet color of the northern
+mountains, and which it seems to me that limestone and granite
+formations give.  There are none of the great gorges and awful
+abysses of the White Mountains, both valleys and mountains here being
+more uniform in outline.  There are few precipices and jutting crags,
+and less is visible of the giant ribs and bones of the planet.
+
+Yet Roan is a noble mountain.  A lady from Tennessee asked me if I
+had ever seen anything to compare with it--she thought there could be
+nothing in the world.  One has to dodge this sort of question in the
+South occasionally, not to offend a just local pride.  It is
+certainly one of the most habitable of big mountains.  It is roomy on
+top, there is space to move about without too great fatigue, and one
+might pleasantly spend a season there, if he had agreeable company
+and natural tastes.
+
+Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascending
+on the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain is
+merely a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which the
+horses picked their way painfully.  The travelers endeavored to
+present a dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies who
+waved good-by from the hotel, as they took their way over the waste
+and wind-blown declivities, but it was only a show, for the horses
+would neither caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day) down-
+hill over the slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderers
+turned with regret from the society of leisure and persiflage to face
+the wilderness of Mitchell County.
+
+"How heavy," exclaimed the Professor, pricking Laura Matilda to call
+her attention sharply to her footing
+
+    "How heavy do I journey on the way,
+     When what I seek--my weary travel's end
+     Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
+     Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!
+     The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
+     Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
+     As if by some instinct the wretch did know
+     His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
+     The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
+     That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
+     Which heavily he answers with a groan,
+     More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
+     For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
+     My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
+
+This was not spoken to the group who fluttered their farewells, but
+poured out to the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in ever
+statelier--and grander ranks to greet the travelers as they
+descended--the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip of
+squirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead in
+response to the sonnet.  Is there any region or circumstance of life
+that the poet did not forecast and provide for?  But what would have
+been his feelings if he could have known that almost three centuries
+after these lines were penned, they would be used to express the
+emotion of an unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of the
+New World?  At any rate, he peopled the New World with the children
+of his imagination.  And, thought the Friend, whose attention to his
+horse did not permit him to drop into poetry, Shakespeare might have
+had a vision of this vast continent, though he did not refer to it,
+when he exclaimed:
+
+    "What is your substance, whereof are you made,
+     That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"
+
+Bakersville, the capital of Mitchell County, is eight miles from the
+top of Roan, and the last three miles of the way the horsemen found
+tolerable going, over which the horses could show their paces.  The
+valley looked fairly thrifty and bright, and was a pleasing
+introduction to Bakersville, a pretty place in the hills, of some six
+hundred inhabitants, with two churches, three indifferent hotels, and
+a court-house.  This mountain town, 2550 feet above the sea, is said
+to have a decent winter climate, with little snow, favorable to
+fruit-growing, and, by contrast with New England, encouraging to
+people with weak lungs.
+
+This is the center of the mica mining, and of considerable excitement
+about minerals.  All around, the hills are spotted with "diggings."
+Most of the mines which yield well show signs of having been worked
+before, a very long time ago, no doubt by the occupants before the
+Indians.  The mica is of excellent quality and easily mined.  It is
+got out in large irregular-shaped blocks and transported to the
+factories, where it is carefully split by hand, and the laminae, of
+as large size as can be obtained, are trimmed with shears and tied up
+in packages for market.  The quantity of refuse, broken, and rotten
+mica piled up about the factories is immense, and all the roads round
+about glisten with its scales.  Garnets are often found imbedded in
+the laminae, flattened by the extreme pressure to which the mass was
+subjected.  It is fascinating material, this mica, to handle, and we
+amused ourselves by experimenting on the thinness to which its scales
+could be reduced by splitting.  It was at Bakersville that we saw
+specimens of mica that resembled the delicate tracery in the moss-
+agate and had the iridescent sheen of the rainbow colors--the most
+delicate greens, reds, blues, purples, and gold, changing from one to
+the other in the reflected light.  In the texture were the tracings
+of fossil forms of ferns and the most exquisite and delicate
+vegetable beauty of the coal age.  But the magnet shows this tracery
+to be iron.  We were shown also emeralds and "diamonds," picked up in
+this region, and there is a mild expectation in all the inhabitants
+of great mineral treasure.  A singular product of the region is the
+flexible sandstone.  It is a most uncanny stone.  A slip of it a
+couple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in the
+hand like a half-frozen snake.  This conduct of a substance that we
+have been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence in
+the stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does.
+
+This excitement over mica and other minerals has the usual effect of
+starting up business and creating bad blood.  Fortunes have been
+made, and lost in riotous living; scores of visionary men have been
+disappointed; lawsuits about titles and claims have multiplied, and
+quarrels ending in murder have been frequent in the past few years.
+The mica and the illicit whisky have worked together to make this
+region one of lawlessness and violence.  The travelers were told
+stories of the lack of common morality and decency in the region, but
+they made no note of them.  And, perhaps fortunately, they were not
+there during court week to witness the scenes of license that were
+described.  This court week, which draws hither the whole population,
+is a sort of Saturnalia.  Perhaps the worst of this is already a
+thing of the past; for the outrages a year before had reached such a
+pass that by a common movement the sale of whisky was stopped (not
+interdicted, but stopped), and not a drop of liquor could be bought
+in Bakersville nor within three miles of it.
+
+The jail at Bakersville is a very simple residence.  The main
+building is brick, two stories high and about twelve feet square.
+The walls are so loosely laid up that it seems as if a colored
+prisoner might butt his head through.  Attached to this is a room for
+the jailer.  In the lower room is a wooden cage, made of logs bolted
+together and filled with spikes, nine feet by ten feet square and
+perhaps seven or eight feet high.  Between this cage and the wall is
+a space of eighteen inches in width.  It has a narrow door, and an
+opening through which the food is passed to the prisoners, and a
+conduit leading out of it.  Of course it soon becomes foul, and in
+warm weather somewhat warm.  A recent prisoner, who wanted more
+ventilation than the State allowed him, found some means, by a loose
+plank, I think, to batter a hole in the outer wall opposite the
+window in the cage, and this ragged opening, seeming to the jailer a
+good sanitary arrangement, remains.  Two murderers occupied this
+apartment at the time of our visit.  During the recent session of
+court, ten men had been confined in this narrow space, without room
+enough for them to lie down together.  The cage in the room above, a
+little larger, had for tenant a person who was jailed for some
+misunderstanding about an account, and who was probably innocent--
+from the jailer's statement.  This box is a wretched residence, month
+after month, while awaiting trial.
+
+We learned on inquiry that it is practically impossible to get a jury
+to convict of murder in this region, and that these admitted felons
+would undoubtedly escape.  We even heard that juries were purchasable
+here, and that a man's success in court depended upon the length of
+his purse.  This is such an unheard-of thing that we refused to
+credit it.  When the Friend attempted to arouse the indignation of
+the Professor about the barbarity of this jail, the latter defended
+it on the ground that as confinement was the only punishment that
+murderers were likely to receive in this region, it was well to make
+their detention disagreeable to them.  But the Friend did not like
+this wild-beast cage for men, and could only exclaim,
+
+"Oh, murder!  what crimes are done in thy name."
+
+If the comrades wished an adventure, they had a small one, more
+interesting to them than to the public, the morning they left
+Bakersville to ride to Burnsville, which sets itself up as the
+capital of Yancey.  The way for the first three miles lay down a
+small creek and in a valley fairly settled, the houses, a store, and
+a grist-mill giving evidence of the new enterprise of the region.
+When Toe River was reached, there was a choice of routes.  We might
+ford the Toe at that point, where the river was wide, but shallow,
+and the crossing safe, and climb over the mountain by a rough but
+sightly road, or descend the stream by a better road and ford the
+river at a place rather dangerous to those unfamiliar with it.  The
+danger attracted us, but we promptly chose the hill road on account
+of the views, for we were weary of the limited valley prospects.
+
+The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a very
+respectable stream in size, and not to be trifled with after a
+shower.  It gradually turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky,
+becomes part of the Tennessee system.  We crossed it by a long,
+diagonal ford, slipping and sliding about on the round stones, and
+began the ascent of a steep hill.  The sun beat down unmercifully,
+the way was stony, and the horses did not relish the weary climbing.
+The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but
+to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer
+occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and
+perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general,
+cried out:
+
+    "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,--
+     As, to behold desert a beggar born,
+     And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
+     And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
+     And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
+     And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
+     And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
+     And strength by limping sway disabled,
+     And art made tongue-tied by authority,
+     And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
+     And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
+     And captive good attending captain ill:
+     Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
+     Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."
+
+In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of the
+inequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often put
+at disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazen
+assumption raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest merit
+to plod along in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attack
+a blackberry bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, and
+desirous of getting a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill.
+At the top he encountered a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom he
+entered into conversation and extracted all the discouragement the
+man had as to the road to Burnsville.
+
+Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively.  There are few
+exhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a high
+ridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above the
+point of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when he
+encountered the blackberry bushes.  Luckily the Friend soon fell in
+with a like temptation, and dismounted.  He discovered something that
+spoiled his appetite for berries.  His coat, strapped on behind the
+saddle, had worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book
+was gone.  This was serious business.  For while the Professor was
+the cashier, and traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the
+Friend represented the sub-treasury.  That very morning, in response
+to inquiry as to the sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed,
+without counting, a roll of bills.  These bills had now disappeared,
+and when the Friend turned back to communicate his loss, in the
+character of needy nothing not trimm'd in jollity, he had a
+sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.
+
+Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retrace
+our steps we must.  Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not half
+a mile back.  But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found.
+Probably, then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up.  But
+who was the man on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone?  Probably
+the coat worked loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book had
+gone down-stream.  The number of probabilities was infinite, and each
+more plausible than the others as it occurred to us.  We inquired at
+every house we had passed on the way, we questioned every one we met.
+At length it began to seem improbable that any one would remember if
+he had picked up a pocketbook that morning.  This is just the sort of
+thing that slips an untrained memory.
+
+At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might be
+either or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence, and
+a group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, we
+unfolded our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on a
+sorrel horse.  Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just ridden
+towards Bakersville.  If he had found the pocket-book, we would
+recover it.  He was an honest man.  It might, however, fall into
+hands that would freeze to it.
+
+Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men in
+the county who would keep it if they had picked it up.  But the
+assembly manifested the liveliest interest in the incident.  One
+suggested Toe River.  Another thought it risky to drop a purse on any
+road.  But there was a chorus of desire expressed that we should find
+it, and in this anxiety was exhibited a decided sensitiveness about
+the honor of Mitchell County.  It seemed too bad that a stranger
+should go away with the impression that it was not safe to leave
+money anywhere in it.  We felt very much obliged for this genuine
+sympathy, and we told them that if a pocket-book were lost in this
+way on a Connecticut road, there would be felt no neighborhood
+responsibility for it, and that nobody would take any interest in the
+incident except the man who lost, and the man who found.
+
+By the time the travelers pulled up at a store in Bakersville they
+had lost all expectation of recovering the missing article, and were
+discussing the investment of more money in an advertisement in the
+weekly newspaper of the capital.  The Professor, whose reform
+sentiments agreed with those of the newspaper, advised it.  There was
+a group of idlers, mica acquaintances of the morning, and
+philosophers in front of the store, and the Friend opened the
+colloquy by asking if a man named David Thomas had been seen in town.
+He was in town, had ridden in within an hour, and his brother, who
+was in the group, would go in search of him.  The information was
+then given of the loss, and that the rider had met David Thomas just
+before it was discovered, on the mountain beyond the Toe.  The news
+made a sensation, and by the time David Thomas appeared a crowd of a
+hundred had drawn around the horsemen eager for further developments.
+Mr. Thomas was the least excited of the group as he took his position
+on the sidewalk, conscious of the dignity of the occasion and that he
+was about to begin a duel in which both reputation and profit were
+concerned.  He recollected meeting the travelers in the morning.
+
+The Friend said, "I discovered that I had lost my purse just after
+meeting you; it may have been dropped in Toe River, but I was told
+back here that if David Thomas had picked it up, it was as safe as if
+it were in the bank."
+
+"What sort of a pocket-book was it?"  asked Mr. Thomas.
+
+"It was of crocodile skin, or what is sold for that, very likely it
+is an imitation, and about so large indicating the size."
+
+"What had it in it?"
+
+"Various things.  Some specimens of mica; some bank checks, some
+money."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"Yes, a photograph.  And, oh, something that I presume is not in
+another pocket-book in North Carolina,--in an envelope, a lock of the
+hair of George Washington, the Father of his Country."  Sensation
+mixed with incredulity.  Washington's hair did seem such an odd part
+of an outfit for a journey of this kind.
+
+"How much money was in it?"
+
+"That I cannot say, exactly.  I happen to remember four twenty-dollar
+United States notes, and a roll of small bills, perhaps something
+over a hundred dollars."
+
+"Is that the pocket-book?"  asked David Thomas, slowly pulling the
+loved and lost out of his trousers pocket.
+
+"It is."
+
+"You'd be willing to take your oath on it?"
+
+"I should be delighted to."
+
+"Well, I guess there ain't so much money in it.  You can count it
+[handing it over]; there hain't been nothing taken out.  I can't
+read, but my friend here counted it over, and he says there ain't as
+much as that."
+
+Intense interest in the result of the counting.  One hundred and ten
+dollars!  The Friend selected one of the best engraved of the notes,
+and appealed to the crowd if they thought that was the square thing
+to do.  They did so think, and David Thomas said it was abundant.
+And then said the Friend:
+
+"I'm exceedingly grateful to you besides.  Washington's hair is
+getting scarce, and I did not want to lose these few hairs, gray as
+they are.  You've done the honest thing, Mr. Thomas, as was expected
+of you.  You might have kept the whole.  But I reckon if there had
+been five hundred dollars in the book and you had kept it, it
+wouldn't have done you half as much good as giving it up has done;
+and your reputation as an honest man is worth a good deal more than
+this pocket-book.  [The Professor was delighted with this sentiment,
+because it reminded him of a Sunday-school.]  I shall go away with a
+high opinion of the honesty of Mitchell County."
+
+"Oh, he lives in Yancey," cried two or three voices.  At which there
+was a great laugh.
+
+"Well, I wondered where he came from."  And the Mitchell County
+people laughed again at their own expense, and the levee broke up.
+It was exceedingly gratifying, as we spread the news of the recovered
+property that afternoon at every house on our way to the Toe, to see
+what pleasure it gave.  Every man appeared to feel that the honor of
+the region had been on trial--and had stood the test.
+
+The eighteen miles to Burnsville had now to be added to the morning
+excursion, but the travelers were in high spirits, feeling the truth
+of the adage that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to
+have lost at all.  They decided, on reflection, to join company with
+the mail-rider, who was going to Burnsville by the shorter route, and
+could pilot them over the dangerous ford of the Toe.
+
+The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry
+sorrel nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a
+fast walker and full of endurance.  The mail-rider was taciturn, a
+natural habit for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely
+road, and has nothing whatever to think of.  He had been in the war
+sixteen months, in Hugh White's regiment,--reckon you've heerd of
+him?
+
+"Confederate?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Was he on the Union or Confederate side?"
+
+"Oh, Union."
+
+"Were you in any engagements?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Did you have any fighting?"
+
+"Not reg'lar."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"What did you do in Hugh White's regiment?"
+
+"Oh, just cavorted round the mountains."
+
+"You lived on the country?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?"
+
+"That's about so.  Did n't make much difference which side was round,
+the country got cleaned out."
+
+"Plunder seems to have been the object?"
+
+"Which?"
+
+"You got a living out of the farmers?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain
+marauder--on the right side.  His attachment to the word "which"
+prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to be
+only two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject of
+horses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were
+coming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring
+to excite our alarm.  He returned to the ford from every other
+conversational excursion, and after every silence.
+
+"I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford.
+Folks is carried away there.  The Toe gits up sudden.  There's been
+right smart rain lately.
+
+"If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll take
+your horses across.  Mebbe you're used to fording?  It's a pretty bad
+ford for them as don't know it.  But you'll get along if you mind
+your eye.  There's some rocks you'll have to look out for.  But
+you'll be all right if you follow me."
+
+Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers of
+his ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasure
+in trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned his
+attention to a trade.  "This hoss of mine," he said, "is just the
+kind of brute-beast you want for this country.  Your hosses is too
+heavy.  How'll you swap for that one o' yourn?"  The reiterated
+assertion that the horses were not ours, that they were hired, made
+little impression on him.  All the way to Burnsville he kept
+referring to the subject of a trade.  The instinct of "swap" was
+strong in him.  When we met a yoke of steers, he turned round and
+bantered the owner for a trade.  Our saddles took his fancy.  They
+were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would just
+suit him.  He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flung
+the United States mail pouch, apparently empty.  He dwelt upon the
+fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantages
+that would accrue to us from the exchange.  He did n't care if they
+had been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army saddle.
+The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged to a
+distinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was put
+there by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, and
+the owner would not part with it for money.  But the mail-rider said
+he did n't mind that.  He would n't mind swapping his new saddle for
+my old one and the rubber coat and leggings.  Long before we reached
+the ford we thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the,
+risk of drowning.  The ford was passed, in due time, with no
+inconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast high
+to the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks and
+slippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to be
+commended.  There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossing
+a swift broad stream.  It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream,
+while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.
+
+The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams
+and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.
+Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped.  The travelers
+endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land.
+Not much sold, he said.  "There was one sale of a big piece last
+year; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know
+what he got for it,"
+
+All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one
+room, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only
+occasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like
+a cob house, that served for a stable.  Not much cultivation, except
+now and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside,
+occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit.  Here
+and there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned,
+or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were just
+beginning life.  Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of the
+census of 1880) swarmed with children, and nearly all the women were
+thin and sickly.
+
+In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now and
+then a horse.  We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer,
+sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the
+mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much
+pride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.
+
+In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the
+rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a
+letter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with patent-
+medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an
+evidence of culture that was worth noting.  Mica was the rage.  Every
+one with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the
+mineral fever.  The impression was general that the mountain region
+of North Carolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral
+development, and the most extravagant expectations were entertained.
+Mica was the shining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also
+on the cards.
+
+The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very
+pleasing.  Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of
+2840 feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen.
+Most of the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabby
+court-house; around it are two small churches, a jail, an inviting
+tavern) with a long veranda, and a couple of stores.  On an
+overlooking hill is the seminary.  Mica mining is the exciting
+industry, but it is agriculturally a good country.  The tavern had
+recently been enlarged to meet the new demands for entertainment and
+is a roomy structure, fresh with paint and only partially organized.
+The travelers were much impressed with the brilliant chambers, the
+floors of which were painted in alternate stripes of vivid green and
+red.  The proprietor, a very intelligent and enterprising man, who
+had traveled often in the North, was full of projects for the
+development of his region and foremost in its enterprises, and had
+formed a considerable collection of minerals.  Besides, more than any
+one else we met, he appreciated the beauty of his country, and took
+us to a neighboring hill, where we had a view of Table Mountain to
+the east and the nearer giant Blacks.  The elevation of Burnsville
+gives it a delightful summer climate, the gentle undulations of the
+country are agreeable, the views noble, the air is good, and it is
+altogether a "livable" and attractive place.  With facilities of
+communication, it would be a favorite summer resort.  Its nearness to
+the great mountains (the whole Black range is in Yancey County), its
+fine pure air, its opportunity for fishing and hunting, commend it to
+those in search of an interesting and restful retreat in summer.
+
+But it should be said that before the country can attract and retain
+travelers, its inhabitants must learn something about the preparation
+of food.  If, for instance, the landlord's wife at Burnsville had
+traveled with her husband, her table would probably have been more on
+a level with his knowledge of the world, and it would have contained
+something that the wayfaring man, though a Northerner, could eat.  We
+have been on the point several times in this journey of making the
+observation, but have been restrained by a reluctance to touch upon
+politics, that it was no wonder that a people with such a cuisine
+should have rebelled.  The travelers were in a rebellious mood most
+of the time.
+
+The evidences of enterprise in this region were pleasant to see, but
+the observers could not but regret, after all, the intrusion of the
+money-making spirit, which is certain to destroy much of the present
+simplicity.  It is as yet, to a degree, tempered by a philosophic
+spirit.  The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-bearded
+traveler for some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and the
+landlord fell into a conversation upon what Socrates calls the
+disadvantage of the pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all noble
+objects, and they let their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who was
+agreed to be the richest man in the world, or that ever lived.
+
+"All I want," said the long-bearded man, "is enough to be
+comfortable.  I would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it to
+me."
+
+"Nor I," said the landlord.  "Give me just enough to be comfortable."
+[The tourist couldn't but note that his ideas of enough to be
+comfortable had changed a good deal since he had left his little farm
+and gone into the mica business, and visited New York, and enlarged
+and painted his tavern.]  I should like to know what more Vanderbilt
+gets out of his money than I get out of mine.  I heard tell of a
+young man who went to Vanderbilt to get employment.  Vanderbilt
+finally offered to give the young man, if he would work for him, just
+what he got himself.  The young man jumped at that--he'd be perfectly
+satisfied with that pay.  And Vanderbilt said that all he got was
+what he could eat and wear, and offered to give the young man his
+board and clothes."
+
+"I declare" said the long-bearded man.  "That's just it.  Did you
+ever see Vanderbilt's house?  Neither did I, but I heard he had a
+vault built in it five feet thick, solid.  He put in it two hundred
+millions of dollars, in gold.  After a year, he opened it and put in
+twelve millions more, and called that a poor year.  They say his
+house has gold shutters to the windows, so I've heard."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said the landlord.  "I heard he had one door in
+his house cost forty thousand dollars.  I don't know what it is made
+of, unless it's made of gold."
+
+Sunday was a hot and quiet day.  The stores were closed and the two
+churches also, this not being the Sunday for the itinerant preacher.
+The jail also showed no sign of life, and when we asked about it, we
+learned that it was empty, and had been for some time.  No liquor is
+sold in the place, nor within at least three miles of it.  It is not
+much use to try to run a jail without liquor.
+
+In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived,
+leading between them a young man whom they had arrested,--it didn't
+appear on any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed and
+locked up.  The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had
+not used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about and
+threatened, and the neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound to
+enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.
+
+The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms
+with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not
+unwilling to go to jail.  But a practical difficulty arose.  The jail
+was locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the
+key, and no one could get in.  It did not appear that there was any
+provision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it.  The
+sheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and
+his captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence,
+rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust that
+the jail would be open some time.
+
+Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the
+jail.  But we took a personal leaf out of this experience.  Our
+Virginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had
+urged us not to venture into it without arms--take at least, they
+insisted, a revolver each.  And now we had to congratulate ourselves
+that we had not done so.  If we had, we should doubtless on that
+Sunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission
+into the Yancey County jail.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+>From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
+considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
+the capital of Buncombe County.  It is distant some forty to forty-
+five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads.  The
+easier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles,
+the first stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late
+afternoon when we were in condition to move.
+
+The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
+Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville,
+cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to
+Asheville.  He represented this route as shorter and infinitely more
+picturesque.  There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.
+With scarcely a moment's reflection and while the horses were
+saddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson's.  I could not at the
+time understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented.  I
+should hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend Mount
+Mitchell.  It was equally fixed in the Professor's mind not to do it.
+We had not discussed it much.  But it is safe to say that if he had
+one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell.
+"Not," as he put it,--
+
+    "Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
+     Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"
+
+had suggested the possibility that he could do it.
+
+But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
+to Wilson's.  When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
+although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy
+as anywhere--a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and
+never got off her horse.  You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's,
+you can go any way you please.
+
+Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
+Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most
+characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman,
+hunter, guide.  So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty,
+broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a few
+miles to Wilson's plantation.  There are little intervales along the
+river, where hay is cut and corn grown, but the region is not much
+cleared, and the stock browse about in the forest.  Wilson is the
+agent of the New York owner of a tract of some thirteen thousand
+acres of forest, including the greater portion of Mount Mitchell, a
+wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and full of streams
+abounding in trout.  It is also the playground of the rattlesnake.
+With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in watching
+game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle of the
+few neighbors.  It is not that the cattle do much injury in the
+forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
+around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves
+against the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and
+lately they have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the
+fish.
+
+Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together
+frame house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a
+loft, and a spring-house in the rear.  Chickens and other animals
+have free run of the premises.  Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and
+hunter's gear depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen.
+In one room were three beds, in the other two, only one in the
+kitchen.  On the porch was a loom, with a piece of cloth in process.
+The establishment had the air of taking care of itself.  Neither Big
+Tom nor his wife was at home.  Sunday seemed to be a visiting day,
+and the travelers had met many parties on horseback.  Mrs.  Wilson
+was away for a visit of a day or two.  One of the sons, who was
+lounging on the veranda, was at last induced to put up the horses; a
+very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the visitors, was found in
+the kitchen, but no intelligible response could be got out of her.
+Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in charge, appeared.
+She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's (her brother was
+just married and lived up the river in the house where Mr. Murchison
+stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear that had
+been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before.  She expected
+him back by sundown--by dark anyway.  'Les he'd gone after the bear,
+and then you could n't tell when he would come.
+
+It appeared that Big Tom was a thriving man in the matter of family.
+More boys appeared.  Only one was married, but four had "got their
+time."  As night approached, and no Wilson, there was a good deal of
+lively and loud conversation about the stock and the chores, in all
+of which the girl took a leading and intelligent part, showing a
+willingness to do her share, but not to have all the work put upon
+her.  It was time to go down the road and hunt up the cows; the mule
+had disappeared and must be found before dark; a couple of steers
+hadn't turned up since the day before yesterday, and in the midst of
+the gentle contention as to whose business all this was, there was an
+alarm of cattle in the corn-patch, and the girl started off on a run
+in that direction.  It was due to the executive ability of this small
+girl, after the cows had been milked and the mule chased and the boys
+properly stirred up, that we had supper.  It was of the oilcloth,
+iron fork, tin spoon, bacon, hot bread and honey variety,
+distinguished, however, from all meals we had endured or enjoyed
+before by the introduction of fried eggs (as the breakfast next
+morning was by the presence of chicken), and it was served by the
+active maid with right hearty good-will and genuine hospitable
+intent.
+
+While it was in progress, after nine o'clock, Big Tom arrived, and,
+with a simple greeting, sat down and attacked the supper and began to
+tell about the bear.  There was not much to tell except that he
+hadn't seen the bear, and that, judged by his tracks and his sloshing
+around, he must be a big one.  But a trap had been set for him, and
+he judged it wouldn't be long before we had some bear meat.  Big Tom
+Wilson, as he is known all over this part of the State, would not
+attract attention from his size.  He is six feet and two inches tall,
+very spare and muscular, with sandy hair, long gray beard, and honest
+blue eyes.  He has a reputation for great strength and endurance; a
+man of native simplicity and mild manners.  He had been rather
+expecting us from what Mr. Murchison wrote; he wrote (his son had
+read out the letter) that Big Tom was to take good care of us, and
+anybody that Mr. Murchison sent could have the best he'd got.
+
+Big Tom joined us in our room after supper.  This apartment, with two
+mighty feather-beds, was hung about with all manner of stuffy family
+clothes, and had in one end a vast cavern for a fire.  The floor was
+uneven, and the hearthstones billowy.  When the fire was lighted, the
+effect of the bright light in the cavern and the heavy shadows in the
+room was Rembrandtish.  Big Tom sat with us before the fire and told
+bear stories.  Talk?  Why, it was not the least effort.  The stream
+flowed on without a ripple.  "Why, the old man," one of the sons
+confided to us next morning, "can begin and talk right over Mount
+Mitchell and all the way back, and never make a break."  Though Big
+Tom had waged a lifelong warfare with the bears, and taken the hide
+off at least a hundred of them, I could not see that he had any
+vindictive feeling towards the varmint, but simply an insatiable love
+of killing him, and he regarded him in that half-humorous light in
+which the bear always appears to those who study him.  As to deer--he
+couldn't tell how many of them he had slain.  But Big Tom was a
+gentleman: he never killed deer for mere sport.  With rattlesnakes,
+now, it was different.  There was the skin of one hanging upon a tree
+by the route we would take in the morning, a buster, he skinned him
+yesterday.  There was an entire absence, of braggadocio in Big Tom's
+talk, but somehow, as he went on, his backwoods figure loomed larger
+and larger in our imagination, and he seemed strangely familiar.  At
+length it came over us where we had met him before.  It was in
+Cooper's novels.  He was the Leather-Stocking exactly.  And yet he
+was an original; for he assured us that he had never read the
+Leather-Stocking Tales.  What a figure, I was thinking, he must have
+made in the late war!  Such a shot, such a splendid physique, such
+iron endurance!  I almost dreaded to hear his tales of the havoc he
+had wrought on the Union army.  Yes, he was in the war, he was
+sixteen months in the Confederate army, this Homeric man.  In what
+rank?"  Oh, I was a fifer!"
+
+But hunting and war did not by any means occupy the whole of Big
+Tom's life.  He was also engaged in "lawin'."  He had a long-time
+feud with a neighbor about a piece of land and alleged trespass, and
+they'd been "lawin'" for years, with no definite result; but as a
+topic of conversation it was as fully illustrative of frontier life
+as the bear-fighting.
+
+Long after we had all gone to bed, we heard Big Tom's continuous
+voice, through the thin partition that separated us from the kitchen,
+going on to his little boy about the bear; every circumstance of how
+he tracked him, and what corner of the field he entered, and where he
+went out, and his probable size and age, and the prospect of his
+coming again; these were the details of real everyday life, and
+worthy to be dwelt on by the hour.  The boy was never tired of
+pursuing them.  And Big Tom was just a big boy, also, in his delight
+in it all.
+
+Perhaps it was the fascination of Big Tom, perhaps the representation
+that we were already way off the Big Ivy route, and that it would, in
+fact, save time to go over the mountain and we could ride all the
+way, that made the Professor acquiesce, with no protest worth
+noticing, in the preparations that went on, as by a natural
+assumption, for going over Mitchell.  At any rate, there was an early
+breakfast, luncheon was put up, and by half-past seven we were riding
+up the Caney,--a half-cloudy day,--Big Tom swinging along on foot
+ahead, talking nineteen to the dozen.  There was a delightful
+freshness in the air, the dew-laden bushes, and the smell of the
+forest.  In half an hour we called at the hunting shanty of Mr.
+Murchison, wrote our names on the wall, according to custom, and
+regretted that we could not stay for a day in that retreat and try
+the speckled trout.  Making our way through the low growth and bushes
+of the valley, we came into a fine open forest, watered by a noisy
+brook, and after an hour's easy going reached the serious ascent.
+
+>From Wilson's to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles;
+we made it in five and a half hours.  A bridle path was cut years
+ago, but it has been entirely neglected.  It is badly washed, it is
+stony, muddy, and great trees have fallen across it which wholly
+block the way for horses.  At these places long detours were
+necessary, on steep hillsides and through gullies, over treacherous
+sink-holes in the rocks, through quaggy places, heaps of brush, and
+rotten logs.  Those who have ever attempted to get horses over such
+ground will not wonder at the slow progress we made.  Before we were
+halfway up the ascent, we realized the folly of attempting it on
+horseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as to go back.  The way
+was also exceedingly steep in places, and what with roots, and logs,
+and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb for the
+horses.
+
+What a magnificent forest!  Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, the
+cucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone),
+and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here in
+splendid array.  And this gigantic forest, with little diminution in
+size of trees, continued two thirds of the way up.  We marked, as we
+went on, the maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, the
+locust, and the guide pointed out in one section the largest cherry-
+trees we had ever seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sum if it
+could be got to market.  After the great trees were left behind, we
+entered a garden of white birches, and then a plateau of swamp, thick
+with raspberry bushes, and finally the ridges, densely crowded with
+the funereal black balsam.
+
+Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew.
+It was a poplar, or tulip.  It stands more like a column than a tree,
+rising high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhaps
+sixty, more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.
+
+Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet!  I think it
+might be called Big Tom.  It stood here, of course, a giant, when
+Columbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler
+will attach the name of Columbus to it.
+
+In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely the
+note of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwise
+primeval silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost like
+the sound of the wind in pine tops.  It was the humming of bees!  The
+upper branches were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tom
+was always on the alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which he
+could visit afterwards.  Honey hunting is one of his occupations.
+Collecting spruce gum is another, and he was continually hacking off
+with his hatchet knobs of the translucent secretion.  How rich and
+fragrant are these forests!  The rhododendron was still in occasional
+bloom' and flowers of brilliant hue gleamed here and there.
+
+The struggle was more severe as we neared the summit, and the footing
+worse for the horses.  Occasionally it was safest to dismount and
+lead them up slippery ascents; but this was also dangerous, for it
+was difficult to keep them from treading on our heels, in their
+frantic flounderings, in the steep, wet, narrow, brier-grown path.
+At one uncommonly pokerish place, where the wet rock sloped into a
+bog, the rider of Jack thought it prudent to dismount, but Big Tom
+insisted that Jack would "make it" all right, only give him his head.
+The rider gave him his head, and the next minute Jack's four heels
+were in the air, and he came down on his side in a flash.  The rider
+fortunately extricated his leg without losing it, Jack scrambled out
+with a broken shoe, and the two limped along.  It was a wonder that
+the horses' legs were not broken a dozen times.
+
+As we approached the top, Big Tom pointed out the direction, a half
+mile away, of a small pond, a little mountain tarn, overlooked by a
+ledge of rock, where Professor Mitchell lost his life.  Big Tom was
+the guide that found his body.  That day, as we sat on the summit, he
+gave in great detail the story, the general outline of which is well
+known.
+
+The first effort to measure the height of the Black Mountains was
+made in 1835, by Professor Elisha Mitchell, professor of mathematics
+and chemistry in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
+Mr. Mitchell was a native of Connecticut, born in Washington,
+Litchfield County, in 1793; graduated at Yale, ordained a
+Presbyterian minister, and was for a time state surveyor; and became
+a professor at Chapel Hill in 1818.  He first ascertained and
+published the fact that the Black Mountains are the highest land east
+of the Rocky Mountains.  In 1844 he visited the locality again.
+Measurements were subsequently made by Professor Guyot and by Senator
+Clingman.  One of the peaks was named for the senator (the one next
+in height to Mitchell is described as Clingman on the state map), and
+a dispute arose as to whether Mitchell had really visited and
+measured the highest peak.  Senator Clingman still maintains that he
+did not, and that the peak now known as Mitchell is the one that
+Clingman first described.  The estimates of altitudes made by the
+three explorers named differed considerably.  The height now fixed
+for Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285.  There
+are twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if
+we add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are
+some twenty in this State higher than the granite giant of New
+Hampshire.
+
+In order to verify his statement, Professor Mitchell (then in his
+sixty-fourth year) made a third ascent in June, 1857.  He was alone,
+and went up from the Swannanoa side.  He did not return.  No anxiety
+was felt for two or three days, as he was a good mountaineer, and it
+was supposed he had crossed the mountain and made his way out by the
+Caney River.  But when several days passed without tidings of him, a
+search party was formed.  Big Tom Wilson was with it.  They explored
+the mountain in all directions unsuccessfully.  At length Big Tom
+separated himself from his companions and took a course in accordance
+with his notion of that which would be pursued by a man lost in the
+clouds or the darkness.  He soon struck the trail of the wanderer,
+and, following it, discovered Mitchell's body lying in a pool at the
+foot of a rocky precipice some thirty feet high.  It was evident that
+Mitchell, making his way along the ridge in darkness or fog, had
+fallen off.  It was the ninth (or the eleventh) day of his
+disappearance, but in the pure mountain air the body had suffered no
+change.  Big Tom brought his companions to the place, and on
+consultation it was decided to leave the body undisturbed till
+Mitchell's friends could be present.
+
+There was some talk of burying him on the mountain, but the friends
+decided otherwise, and the remains, with much difficulty, were got
+down to Asheville and there interred.
+
+Some years afterwards, I believe at the instance of a society of
+scientists, it was resolved to transport the body to the summit of
+Mount Mitchell; for the tragic death of the explorer had forever
+settled in the popular mind the name of the mountain.  The task was
+not easy.  A road had to be cut, over which a sledge could be hauled,
+and the hardy mountaineers who undertook the removal were three days
+in reaching the summit with their burden.  The remains were
+accompanied by a considerable concourse, and the last rites on the
+top were participated in by a hundred or more scientists and
+prominent men from different parts of the State.  Such a strange
+cortege had never before broken the silence of this lonely
+wilderness, nor was ever burial more impressive than this wild
+interment above the clouds.
+
+We had been preceded in our climb all the way by a huge bear.  That
+he was huge, a lunker, a monstrous old varmint, Big Tom knew by the
+size of his tracks; that he was making the ascent that morning ahead
+of us, Big Tom knew by the freshness of the trail.  We might come
+upon him at any moment; he might be in the garden; was quite likely
+to be found in the raspberry patch.  That we did not encounter him I
+am convinced was not the fault of Big Tom, but of the bear.
+
+After a struggle of five hours we emerged from the balsams and briers
+into a lovely open meadow, of lush clover, timothy, and blue grass.
+We unsaddled the horses and turned them loose to feed in it.  The
+meadow sloped up to a belt of balsams and firs, a steep rocky knob,
+and climbing that on foot we stood upon the summit of Mitchell at one
+o'clock.  We were none too soon, for already the clouds were
+preparing for what appears to be a daily storm at this season.
+
+The summit is a nearly level spot of some thirty or forty feet in
+extent either way, with a floor of rock and loose stones.  The
+stunted balsams have been cut away so as to give a view.  The sweep
+of prospect is vast, and we could see the whole horizon except in the
+direction of Roan, whose long bulk was enveloped in cloud.  Portions
+of six States were in sight, we were told, but that is merely a
+geographical expression.  What we saw, wherever we looked, was an
+inextricable tumble of mountains, without order or leading line of
+direction,--domes, peaks, ridges, endless and countless, everywhere,
+some in shadow, some tipped with shafts of sunlight, all wooded and
+green or black, and all in more softened contours than our Northern
+hills, but still wild, lonesome, terrible.  Away in the southwest,
+lifting themselves up in a gleam of the western sky, the Great Smoky
+Mountains loomed like a frowning continental fortress, sullen and
+remote.  With Clingman and Gibbs and Holdback peaks near at hand and
+apparently of equal height, Mitchell seemed only a part and not
+separate from the mighty congregation of giants.
+
+In the center of the stony plot on the summit lie the remains of
+Mitchell.  To dig a grave in the rock was impracticable, but the
+loose stones were scooped away to the depth of a foot or so, the body
+was deposited, and the stones were replaced over it.  It was the
+original intention to erect a monument, but the enterprise of the
+projectors of this royal entombment failed at that point.  The grave
+is surrounded by a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitor
+adds one, and in the course of ages the cairn may grow to a good
+size.  The explorer lies there without name or headstone to mark his
+awful resting-place.  The mountain is his monument.  He is alone with
+its majesty.  He is there in the clouds, in the tempests, where the
+lightnings play, and thunders leap, amid the elemental tumult, in the
+occasional great calm and silence and the pale sunlight.  It is the
+most majestic, the most lonesome grave on earth.
+
+As we sat there, awed a little by this presence, the clouds were
+gathering from various quarters and drifting towards us.  We could
+watch the process of thunder-storms and the manufacture of tempests.
+I have often noticed on other high mountains how the clouds, forming
+like genii released from the earth, mount into the upper air, and in
+masses of torn fragments of mist hurry across the sky as to a
+rendezvous of witches.  This was a different display.  These clouds
+came slowly sailing from the distant horizon, like ships on an aerial
+voyage.  Some were below us, some on our level; they were all in
+well-defined, distinct masses, molten silver on deck, below trailing
+rain, and attended on earth by gigantic shadows that moved with them.
+This strange fleet of battle-ships, drifted by the shifting currents,
+was maneuvering for an engagement.  One after another, as they came
+into range about our peak of observation, they opened fire.  Sharp
+flashes of lightning darted from one to the other; a jet of flame
+from one leaped across the interval and was buried in the bosom of
+its adversary; and at every discharge the boom of great guns echoed
+through the mountains.  It was something more than a royal salute to
+the tomb of the mortal at our feet, for the masses of cloud were rent
+in the fray, at every discharge the rain was precipitated in
+increasing torrents, and soon the vast hulks were trailing torn
+fragments and wreaths of mist, like the shot-away shrouds and sails
+of ships in battle.  Gradually, from this long-range practice with
+single guns and exchange of broadsides, they drifted into closer
+conflict, rushed together, and we lost sight of the individual
+combatants in the general tumult of this aerial war.
+
+We had barely twenty minutes for our observations, when it was time
+to go; and had scarcely left the peak when the clouds enveloped it.
+We hastened down under the threatening sky to the saddles and the
+luncheon.  Just off from the summit, amid the rocks, is a complete
+arbor, or tunnel, of rhododendrons.  This cavernous place a Western
+writer has made the scene of a desperate encounter between Big Tom
+and a catamount, or American panther, which had been caught in a trap
+and dragged it there, pursued by Wilson.  It is an exceedingly
+graphic narrative, and is enlivened by the statement that Big Tom had
+the night before drunk up all the whisky of the party which had spent
+the night on the summit.  Now Big Tom assured us that the whisky part
+of the story was an invention; he was not (which is true) in the
+habit of using it; if he ever did take any, it might be a drop on
+Mitchell; in fact, when he inquired if we had a flask, he remarked
+that a taste of it would do him good then and there.  We regretted
+the lack of it in our baggage.  But what inclined Big Tom to
+discredit the Western writer's story altogether was the fact that he
+never in his life had had a difficulty with a catamount, and never
+had seen one in these mountains.
+
+Our lunch was eaten in haste.  Big Tom refused the chicken he had
+provided for us, and strengthened himself with slices of raw salt
+pork, which he cut from a hunk with his clasp-knife.  We caught and
+saddled our horses, who were reluctant to leave the rich feed,
+enveloped ourselves in waterproofs, and got into the stony path for
+the descent just as the torrent came down.  It did rain.  It
+lightened, the thunder crashed, the wind howled and twisted the
+treetops.  It was as if we were pursued by the avenging spirits of
+the mountains for our intrusion.  Such a tempest on this height had
+its terrors even for our hardy guide.  He preferred to be lower down
+while it was going on.  The crash and reverberation of the thunder
+did not trouble us so much as the swish of the wet branches in our
+faces and the horrible road, with its mud, tripping roots, loose
+stones, and slippery rocks.  Progress was slow.  The horses were in
+momentary danger of breaking their legs.  In the first hour there was
+not much descent.  In the clouds we were passing over Clingman,
+Gibbs, and Holdback.  The rain had ceased, but the mist still shut
+off all view, if any had been attainable, and bushes and paths were
+deluged.  The descent was more uncomfortable than the ascent, and we
+were compelled a good deal of the way to lead the jaded horses down
+the slippery rocks.
+
+>From the peak to the Widow Patten's, where we proposed to pass the
+night, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, every
+step of the road bad, in five and a half hours.  Halfway down we came
+out upon a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house in
+ruins.  Here had been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war,
+but now abandoned.  Above it we turned aside for the view from
+Elizabeth rock, named from the daughter of the proprietor of the
+hotel, who often sat here, said Big Tom, before she went out of this
+world.  It is a bold rocky ledge, and the view from it, looking
+south, is unquestionably the finest, the most pleasing and picture-
+like, we found in these mountains.  In the foreground is the deep
+gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite is the great wall of
+the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most capricious and
+inexplicable system) making off to the Blacks.  The depth of the
+gorge, the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the
+scene to the sunny south made this view both grand and charming.
+Nature does not always put the needed dash of poetry into her
+extensive prospects.
+
+Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashion
+used to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side through
+a forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and at
+length struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, which
+led us to the first settlement.  Just at night,--it was nearly seven
+o'clock,--we entered one of the most stately forests I have ever
+seen, and rode for some distance in an alley of rhododendrons that
+arched overhead and made a bower.  It was like an aisle in a temple;
+high overhead was the somber, leafy roof, supported by gigantic
+columns.  Few widows have such an avenue of approach to their domain
+as the Widow Patten has.
+
+Cheering as this outcome was from the day's struggle and storm, the
+Professor seemed sunk in a profound sadness.  The auguries which the
+Friend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and a
+royal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind.  "Alas," he
+said,
+
+    "Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
+     And make me travel forth without my cloak,
+     To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
+     Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
+     'T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
+     To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
+     For no man well of such a salve can speak
+     That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
+     Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
+     Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss."
+
+"Loss of what?"  cried the Friend, as he whipped up his halting
+steed.
+
+"Loss of self-respect.  I feel humiliated that I consented to climb
+this mountain."
+
+"Nonsense!  You'll live to thank me for it, as the best thing you
+ever did.  It's over and done now, and you've got it to tell your
+friends."
+
+"That's just the trouble.  They'll ask me if I went up Mitchell, and
+I shall have to say I did.  My character for consistency is gone.
+Not that I care much what they think, but my own self-respect is
+gone.  I never believed I would do it.  A man ca'nt afford to lower
+himself in his own esteem, at my time of life."
+
+The Widow Patten's was only an advanced settlement in this narrow
+valley on the mountain-side, but a little group of buildings, a
+fence, and a gate gave it the air of a place, and it had once been
+better cared for than it is now.  Few travelers pass that way, and
+the art of entertaining, if it ever existed, is fallen into
+desuetude.  We unsaddled at the veranda, and sat down to review our
+adventure, make the acquaintance of the family, and hear the last
+story from Big Tom.  The mountaineer, though wet, was as fresh as a
+daisy, and fatigue in no wise checked the easy, cheerful flow of his
+talk.  He was evidently a favorite with his neighbors, and not
+unpleasantly conscious of the extent of his reputation.  But he
+encountered here another social grade.  The Widow Patten was highly
+connected.  We were not long in discovering that she was an
+Alexander.  She had been a schoolmate of Senator Vance,--" Zeb Vance
+"he still was to her,--and the senator and his wife had stayed at her
+house.  I wish I could say that the supper, for which we waited till
+nine o'clock, was as "highly connected" as the landlady.  It was,
+however, a supper that left its memory.  We were lodged in a detached
+house, which we had to ourselves, where a roaring wood fire made
+amends for other things lacking.  It was necessary to close the doors
+to keep out the wandering cows and pigs, and I am bound to say that,
+notwithstanding the voices of the night, we slept there the sleep of
+peace.
+
+In the morning a genuine surprise awaited us; it seemed impossible,
+but the breakfast was many degrees worse than the supper; and when we
+paid our bill, large for the region, we were consoled by the thought
+that we paid for the high connection as well as for the
+accommodations.  This is a regular place of entertainment, and one is
+at liberty to praise it without violation of delicacy.
+
+The broken shoe of Jack required attention, and we were all the
+morning hunting a blacksmith, as we rode down the valley.  Three
+blacksmith's shanties were found, and after long waiting to send for
+the operator it turned out in each case that he had no shoes, no
+nails, no iron to make either of.  We made a detour of three miles to
+what was represented as a regular shop.  The owner had secured the
+service of a colored blacksmith for a special job, and was, not
+inclined to accommodate us; he had no shoes, no nails.  But the
+colored blacksmith, who appreciated the plight we were in, offered to
+make a shoe, and to crib four nails from those he had laid aside for
+a couple of mules; and after a good deal of delay, we were enabled to
+go on.  The incident shows, as well as anything, the barrenness and
+shiftlessness of the region.  A horseman with whom we rode in the
+morning gave us a very low estimate of the trustworthiness of the
+inhabitants.  The valley is wild and very pretty all the way down to
+Colonel Long's,--twelve miles,--but the wretched-looking people along
+the way live in a wretched manner.
+
+Just before reaching Colonel Long's we forded the stream (here of
+good size), the bridge having tumbled down, and encountered a party
+of picnickers under the trees--signs of civilization; a railway
+station is not far off.  Colonel Long's is a typical Southern
+establishment: a white house, or rather three houses, all of one
+story, built on to each other as beehives are set in a row, all
+porches and galleries.  No one at home but the cook, a rotund, broad-
+faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very appearance suggested good
+cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the children had gone up to
+the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere about the place; always
+was away when he was wanted.  Guess he'd take us in, mighty fine man
+the Colonel; and she dispatched a child from a cabin in the rear to
+hunt him up.  The Colonel was a great friend of her folks down to
+Greenville; they visited here.  Law, no, she didn't live here.  Was
+just up here spending the summer, for her health.  God-forsaken lot
+of people up here, poor trash.  She wouldn't stay here a day, but the
+Colonel was a friend of her folks, the firstest folks in Greenville.
+Nobody round here she could 'sociate with.  She was a Presbyterian,
+the folks round here mostly Baptists and Methodists.  More style
+about the Presbyterians.  Married?  No, she hoped not.  She did n't
+want to support no husband.  Got 'nuff to do to take care of herself.
+That her little girl?  No; she'd only got one child, down to
+Greenville, just the prettiest boy ever was, as white as anybody.
+How did she what? reconcile this state of things with not being
+married and being a Presbyterian?  Sho! she liked to carry some
+religion along; it was mighty handy occasionally, mebbe not all the
+time.  Yes, indeed, she enjoyed her religion.
+
+The Colonel appeared and gave us a most cordial welcome.  The fat and
+merry cook blustered around and prepared a good dinner, memorable for
+its "light" bread, the first we had seen since Cranberry Forge.  The
+Colonel is in some sense a public man, having been a mail agent, and
+a Republican.  He showed us photographs and engravings of Northern
+politicians, and had the air of a man who had been in Washington.
+This was a fine country for any kind of fruit,--apples, grapes,
+pears; it needed a little Northern enterprise to set things going.
+The travelers were indebted to the Colonel for a delightful noonday
+rest, and with regret declined his pressing invitation to pass the
+night with him.
+
+The ride down the Swannanoa to Asheville was pleasant, through a
+cultivated region, over a good road.  The Swannanoa is, however, a
+turbid stream.  In order to obtain the most impressive view of
+Asheville we approached it by the way of Beaucatcher Hill, a sharp
+elevation a mile west of the town.  I suppose the name is a
+corruption of some descriptive French word, but it has long been a
+favorite resort of the frequenters of Asheville, and it may be
+traditional that it is a good place to catch beaux.  The summit is
+occupied by a handsome private residence, and from this ridge the
+view, which has the merit of "bursting" upon the traveler as he comes
+over the hill, is captivating in its extent and variety.  The pretty
+town of Asheville is seen to cover a number of elevations gently
+rising out of the valley, and the valley, a rich agricultural region,
+well watered and fruitful, is completely inclosed by picturesque
+hills, some of them rising to the dignity of mountains.  The most
+conspicuous of these is Mount Pisgah, eighteen miles distant to the
+southwest, a pyramid of the Balsam range, 5757 feet high.  Mount
+Pisgah, from its shape, is the most attractive mountain in this
+region.
+
+The sunset light was falling upon the splendid panorama and softening
+it.  The windows of the town gleamed as if on fire.  From the steep
+slope below came the mingled sounds of children shouting, cattle
+driven home, and all that hum of life that marks a thickly peopled
+region preparing for the night.  It was the leisure hour of an August
+afternoon, and Asheville was in all its watering-place gayety, as we
+reined up at the Swannanoa hotel.  A band was playing on the balcony.
+We had reached ice-water, barbers, waiters, civilization.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise above
+the French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sort
+of fourteenth cousin to Saratoga.  It has no springs, but lying 2250
+feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pure
+atmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winter
+resort, it has acquired a watering-place air.  There are Southerners
+who declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the complete
+circuit of mountains shuts out any lively movement of air.  But the
+scenery is so charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roads
+so unusually passable for a Southern country, and the facilities for
+excursions so good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.
+
+Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is so
+irregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys that
+improvements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque.
+It is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts--the
+enterprise of taste and money-making struggling with the laissez
+faire of the South.  The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as a
+conservative element; he has not much inclination to change his
+clothes or his cabin, and his swarming presence gives a ragged aspect
+to the new civilization.  And to say the truth, the new element of
+Southern smartness lacks the trim thrift the North is familiar with;
+though the visitor who needs relaxation is not disposed to quarrel
+with the easy-going terms on which life is taken.
+
+Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulating
+to the riders from the wilderness.  The Professor, who does not even
+pretend to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about the
+streets (there is but one of much consideration), immensely
+entertained by the picturesque contrasts.  There was more life and
+amusement here in five minutes, he declared, than in five days of
+what people called scenery--the present rage for scenery, anyway,
+being only a fashion and a modern invention.  The Friend suspected
+from this penchant for the city that the Professor must have been
+brought up in the country.
+
+There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Asheville
+however, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave to
+it the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places.  We
+fancied that the lively movement in the streets had an air of
+unreality.  A band of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa were
+scraping and tooting and twanging with a hired air, and on the
+opposite balcony of the Eagle a rival band echoed and redoubled the
+perfunctory joyousness.  The gayety was contagious: the horses felt
+it; those that carried light burdens of beauty minced and pranced,
+the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to dash, the few passing
+equipages had an air of pleasure; and the people of color, the comely
+waitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded to the animation
+of the festive strains.  In the late afternoon the streets were full
+of people, wagons, carriages, horsemen, all with a holiday air,
+dashed with African color and humor--the irresponsibility of the most
+insouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more comical than
+humorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness, peculiar and
+amusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern abandon and
+Northern wealth, though the North was little represented at this
+season.
+
+As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still more
+animated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white and
+black throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro is
+preeminently a night bird.  In the hotels dancing was promised--the
+german was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors were
+groups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,--the young
+gentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing and
+hat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,
+with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engaging
+cordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic.  I do not
+know what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women were
+not superior to the Southern young men, but he is always asking
+questions nobody can answer.  At the Swannanoa were half a dozen
+bridal couples, readily recognizable by the perfect air they had of
+having been married a long time.  How interesting such young voyagers
+are, and how interesting they are to each other!  Columbus never
+discovered such a large world as they have to find out and possess
+each in the other.
+
+Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose.
+There was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a fine
+hotel has since been built) and we walked up to that round knob after
+dark.  It is a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, and
+was fortified during the war.  We found it illuminated with Chinese
+lanterns; and little tables set about under the trees, laden with
+cake and ice-cream, offered a chance to the stranger to contribute
+money for the benefit of the Presbyterian Church.  I am afraid it was
+not a profitable entertainment, for the men seemed to have business
+elsewhere, but the ladies about the tables made charming groups in
+the lighted grove.  Man is a stupid animal at best, or he would not
+make it so difficult for the womenkind to scrape together a little
+money for charitable purposes.  But probably the women like this
+method of raising money better than the direct one.
+
+The evening gayety of the town was well distributed.  When we
+descended to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected,
+black, white, and yellow, about a high platform, upon which four
+glaring torches lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read
+might decipher this legend on a standard at the back of the stage:
+
+                      HAPPY JOHN.
+            ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON.
+                   COME AND SEE HIM!
+
+Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a "bright" yellow
+girl, took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by
+his audience.  His face was blackened to the proper color of the
+stage-darky, and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and
+coat striped longitudinally according to Punch's idea of "Uncle Sam,"
+the coat a swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a bell-
+crowned white hat.  This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle
+all colors in the audience amazingly.  Mary, the "bright" woman (this
+is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing
+but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and
+had the assured or pert manner of all traveling sawdust performers.
+
+"Oh, yes," exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, "Happy John was
+sure enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking
+when he's not blackened up."
+
+Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayety
+and enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a
+ready, rude wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling
+of impudence, deference, and patronage, commenting upon them
+generally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humor
+that kept his hearers in a pleased excitement.  He handled the banjo
+and the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was not
+singing.  Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is in
+such a position than a man of the same caliber!) sang, in an
+untutored treble, songs of sentiment, often risque, in solo and in
+company with John, but with a cold, indifferent air, in contrast to
+the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.
+
+The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched
+lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic
+refrain:
+
+    "Mary's gone away wid de coon."
+
+All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of
+darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing,
+the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene.  The
+entertainment was quite free, with a "collection" occasionally during
+the performance.
+
+What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy
+John of the "nigger" side of the black man as a means of low comedy,
+and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color.  They appeared to
+appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, and
+Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and
+exaggerating the "nigger" peculiarities.  I presume none of them
+analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the
+pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery,
+and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the
+melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.
+
+A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the
+crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the
+yellow girl.  John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces
+into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes,
+called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on
+the platform and devour them.  He offered a prize of fifteen cents to
+the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his
+hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory.  The
+cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple
+of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece
+came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize.  Each one grasped his
+saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word
+"go," which John gave, and started off the contest with a banjo
+accompaniment.  To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it
+down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the
+task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved
+cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to
+see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging,
+and the crowd roaring.  As the combat deepened and the contestants
+strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of
+laughter.  The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his
+empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like
+a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable
+to speak.  The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but
+said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten
+cents to one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly
+increased his popularity.  And then he dismissed the assembly, saying
+that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not
+wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the
+courthouse.
+
+The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that out-
+doors; a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and
+stuck on the judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of
+black and white who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and
+cast only a fitful light upon the orator, who paced back and forth
+and pounded the rail.  It was to have been a joint discussion between
+the two presidential electors running in that district, but, the
+Republican being absent, his place was taken by a young man of the
+town.  The Democratic orator took advantage of the absence of his
+opponent to describe the discussion of the night before, and to give
+a portrait of his adversary.  He was represented as a cross between a
+baboon and a jackass, who would be a natural curiosity for Barnum.
+"I intend," said the orator," to put him in a cage and exhibit him
+about the deestrict."  This political hit called forth great
+applause.  All his arguments were of this pointed character, and they
+appeared to be unanswerable.  The orator appeared to prove that there
+wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who wasn't an office-
+holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not an office-
+holder.  If there were any issues or principles in the canvass, he
+paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he
+never alluded to any.  In another state of society, such a speech of
+personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt
+his adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and
+the exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and
+enlightened political canvassing for votes.  The speaker who replied,
+opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first
+speaker had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in
+the gloom of a corner.  The young man was moderate in his sarcasm,
+and attempted to speak of national issues, but the crowd had small
+relish for that sort of thing.  At eleven o'clock, when we got away
+from the unsavory room (more than half the candles had gone out), the
+orator was making slow headway against the refished blackguardism of
+the evening.  The german was still "on" at the hotel when we ascended
+to our chamber, satisfied that Asheville was a lively town.
+
+The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking or
+driving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; livery
+stables abound, and the roads are good.  The Beau-catcher Hill is
+always attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of miles
+from town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in the
+valley, commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has the
+air of repose which is so seldom experienced in the location of a
+dwelling in America whence an extensive prospect is given.  Or if the
+visitor is disinclined to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of the
+hospitable Asheville Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front of
+the hotels, and talk with the colonels and judges and generals and
+ex-members of Congress, the talk generally drifting to the new
+commercial and industrial life of the South, and only to politics as
+it affects these; and he will be pleased, if the conversation takes a
+reminiscent turn, with the lack of bitterness and the tone of
+friendliness.  The negro problem is commonly discussed
+philosophically and without heat, but there is always discovered,
+underneath, the determination that the negro shall never again get
+the legislative upper hand.  And the gentleman from South Carolina
+who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is gone, and
+wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in politics--
+such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would do
+yourself.  This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social
+question, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much
+friendly and agreeable conversation.  It is that the Southern whites
+misapprehend and make a scarecrow of "social equality."  When, during
+the war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people
+of the Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be
+stated in the form of a question: "Do you want your daughter to marry
+a negro?"  Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and
+there has come no change in the social conditions whatever.  And
+there is no doubt that the social conditions would remain exactly as
+they are at the South if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which
+the Constitution tries to give him.  The most sensible view of this
+whole question was taken by an intelligent colored man, whose brother
+was formerly a representative in Congress.  "Social equality," he
+said in effect, "is a humbug.  We do not expect it, we do not want
+it.  It does not exist among the blacks themselves.  We have our own
+social degrees, and choose our own associates.  We simply want the
+ordinary civil rights, under which we can live and make our way in
+peace and amity.  This is necessary to our self-respect, and if we
+have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed that the race can
+improve.  I'll tell you what I mean.  My wife is a modest,
+intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat, and
+tastefully dressed.  Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not
+permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered
+into one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any
+refined woman would shrink from.  But along comes a flauntingly
+dressed woman, of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be
+disgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy.  It
+is this sort of thing that hurts."
+
+We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),
+some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway that
+descends, a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap
+(2657 feet elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet).  The Swannanoa
+Summit is the dividing line between the waters that flow to the
+Atlantic and those that go to the Gulf of Mexico.  This fact was
+impressed upon us by the inhabitants, who derive a good deal of
+comfort from it.  Such divides are always matter of local pride.
+Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark before we reached Henry's to
+enable us to see the road in all its loops and parallels as it
+appears on the map, but we gained a better effect.  The hotel, when
+we first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light, was at the
+bottom of a well.  Beside it--it was sufficiently light to see that--
+a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as we
+learned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;
+and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in the
+world.  This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its feathery
+head of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the most
+charming effect.  We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, but
+were conscious of being--whirled on a circular descending grade, and
+very soon they were in sight again.  Again and again they disappeared
+and came to view, now on one side and now on the other, until our
+train seemed to be bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings and
+turnings, now through tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, to
+escape the inevitable attraction that was gravitating it down to the
+hospitable lights at the bottom of the well.  When we climbed back up
+the road in the morning, we had an opportunity to see the marvelous
+engineering, but there is little else to see, the view being nearly
+always very limited.
+
+The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob,
+offers little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place,
+and we could understand why it was full of visitors when we came to
+the table.  It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment in
+the State, and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers good
+chances for fishing and mountain climbing.
+
+In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refused
+to play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which clogged
+the conduit.  But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time,
+like a sulky geyser, mud and foul water.  When it got freedom and
+tolerable clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations,
+which were marked at short distances by the water falling off, giving
+the column the appearance of a spine.  The summit, always beating the
+air in efforts to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.
+
+There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville must
+make.  He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson and
+Transylvania to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, where
+the mountain system abruptly breaks down into the vast southern
+plain; where the observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, has
+behind him and before him the greatest contrast that nature can
+offer.  He must also take the rail to Waynesville, and visit the
+much-frequented White Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains,
+and penetrate the Great Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and make
+the acquaintance of the remnant of Cherokee Indians living on the
+north slope of Cheoah Mountain.  The Professor could have made it a
+matter of personal merit that he escaped all these encounters with
+wild and picturesque nature, if his horse had not been too disabled
+for such long jaunts.  It is only necessary, however, to explain to
+the public that the travelers are not gormandizers of scenery, and
+were willing to leave some portions of the State to the curiosity of
+future excursionists.
+
+But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it could
+not be evaded.  The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of
+Asheville.  In the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us
+to make the trip, it is the finest piece of scenery it this region.
+We were brought up on the precept "get the best," and it was with
+high anticipations that we set out about eleven o'clock one warm,
+foggy morning.  We followed a very good road through a broken,
+pleasant country, gradually growing wilder and less cultivated.
+There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills, and occasionally a
+shower swept across our path.  The conspicuous object toward which we
+traveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at the beginning
+of the Gap.
+
+At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner.  Her
+house, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquely
+situated on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view.
+The house is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two
+sides.  If one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air
+and fair entertainment, this could be commended.  It is an excellent
+fruit region; apples especially are sound and of good flavor.  That
+may be said of all this part of the State.  The climate is adapted to
+apples, as the hilly part of New England is.  I fancy the fruit
+ripens slowly, as it does in New England, and is not subject to quick
+decay like much of that grown in the West.  But the grape also can be
+grown in all this mountain region.  Nothing but lack of enterprise
+prevents any farmer from enjoying abundance of fruit.  The industry
+carried on at the moment at the Widow Sherrill's was the artificial
+drying of apples for the market.  The apples are pared, cored, and
+sliced in spirals, by machinery, and dried on tin sheets in a
+patented machine.  The industry appears to be a profitable one
+hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the aid of
+invention.
+
+While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
+"Jane" and "Eliza," the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
+never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
+photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
+stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union.  Madame Sherrill, who
+carries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of
+strong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort
+in the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a
+discouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.
+
+The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles,
+is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque,
+following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it,
+but roaring, rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and
+then tumbling down in rapids.  The noisy stream made the ride
+animated, and an occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a
+schoolhouse, a store with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the
+hitching rails, gave the Professor opportunity for remarks upon the
+value of life under such circumstances.
+
+The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to the
+uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices.  The
+inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally
+wooded.  I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country
+where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common.  It is
+only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable.
+About a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees,
+of the famous waterfall.  From the top of the high ridge on the
+right, a nearly perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks
+and is lost in the forest.  We could see nearly the whole of it, at a
+great height above us, on the opposite side of the river, and it
+would require an hour's stiff climb to reach its foot.  From where we
+viewed it, it seemed a slender and not very important, but certainly
+a very beautiful cascade, a band of silver in the mass of green
+foliage.  The fall is said to be 1400 feet.  Our colonel insists that
+it is a thousand.  It may be, but the valley where we stood is at
+least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could not believe that the
+ridge over which the water pours is much higher than 3000 feet, and
+the length of the fall certainly did not appear to be a quarter of
+the height of the mountain from our point of observation.  But we had
+no desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we found
+that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as a
+personal grievance.  Mr. Logan once performed the functions of local
+judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises now
+in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wife
+is postmistress.  His house of entertainment is at the bottom of the
+valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay,
+although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
+
+It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
+which we had been for a month.  The Judge himself was reticent, as
+became a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster
+prospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and
+Logan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, this
+sentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civil
+battle] ever known in this world.  The thunder of the supreme
+struggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months,
+and will be felt from Pole to Pole."
+
+For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in.  There
+was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
+mosquitoes besides.  Had there not been other travelers staying here,
+we should have felt still more uneasy.  The house faced Bald
+Mountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some
+years ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters.  This is, in fact,
+the famous Shaking Mountain.  For a long time it had a habit of
+trembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion
+very different from that produced by an earthquake.  The only good
+that came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," and
+caused them to join the church.  It is not reported what became of
+the church afterwards.  It is believed now that the trembling was
+caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the mountain, which slowly
+parted asunder.  Bald Mountain is the scene of Mrs. Burnett's
+delightful story of "Louisiana," and of the play of "Esmeralda."
+A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder is asked
+to see resembles a hut, and which is called "Esmeralda's Cottage."
+But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did not discover any
+woman in the region who remotely answers to her description.
+
+In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and
+followed up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which
+the Judge said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless.
+These pools, not round, but on one side circular excavations, some
+twenty feet across, worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good
+specimens, and perhaps remarkable specimens, of "pot-holes."  They
+are, however, regarded here as one of the wonders of the world.  On
+the way to them we saw beautiful wild trumpet-creepers in blossom,
+festooning the trees.
+
+The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
+branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
+Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through
+the channel of the Santee.  It is not to be confounded with the
+French Broad, which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs
+northward past Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through
+the Warm Springs Gap in the Bald Mountains.  As the French claimed
+ownership of all the affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was
+called the French Broad.
+
+It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
+the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
+Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher
+than Asheville.  It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of
+leisure to the scattered population; at every store and mill was a
+congregation of loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and
+mules to the fences, and had the professional air of the idler and
+gossip the world over.  The vehicles met on the road were a variety
+of the prairie schooner, long wagons with a top of hoops over which
+is stretched a cotton cloth.  The wagons are without seats, and the
+canvas is too low to admit of sitting upright, if there were.  The
+occupants crawl in at either end, sit or lie on the bottom of the
+wagon, and jolt along in shiftless uncomfortableness.
+
+Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
+journey.  Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the
+route on horseback is impracticable.  The distance to the Warm
+Springs is thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the
+road is clear, as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the
+railway, and the valley is something more than river and rails.  But
+below Marshall the valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good
+portion of the way in the old stage road.  One can walk the track,
+but to ride a horse over its sleepers and culverts and occasional
+bridges, and dodge the trains, is neither safe nor agreeable.  We
+sent our horses round--the messenger taking the risk of leading them,
+between trains, over the last six or eight miles,--and took the
+train.
+
+The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
+all the way.  The scenery is the reverse of bold.  The hills are low,
+monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a
+pretty turn and "reach," with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on
+either side.  The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of
+rocks, with an occasional little island covered with low bushes.  The
+rock seems to be a clay formation, rotten and colored.  As we
+approach Warm Springs the scenery becomes a little bolder, and we
+emerge into the open space about the Springs through a narrower
+defile, guarded by rocks that are really picturesque in color and
+splintered decay, one of them being known, of course, as the "Lover's
+Leap," a name common in every part of the modern or ancient world
+where there is a settlement near a precipice, with always the same
+legend attached to it.
+
+There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel--since
+burned and rebuilt--(which may be briefly described as a palatial
+shanty) stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep,
+rapid, turbid stream.  A bridge once connected it with the road on
+the opposite bank, but it was carried away three or four years ago,
+and its ragged butments stand as a monument of procrastination, while
+the stream is crossed by means of a flatboat and a cable.  In front
+of the hotel, on the slight slope to the river, is a meager grove of
+locusts.  The famous spring, close to-the stream, is marked only by a
+rough box of wood and an iron pipe, and the water, which has a
+temperature of about one hundred degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house
+below, in which is a pool for bathing.  The bath is very agreeable,
+the tepid water being singularly soft and pleasant.  It has a
+slightly sulphurous taste.  Its good effects are much certified.  The
+grounds, which might be very pretty with care, are ill-kept and
+slatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was left to the
+easy-going nature of the servants.  The main house is of brick, with
+verandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade of thirteen huge
+brick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen States,--a relic
+of post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the resort of
+Southern fashion and romance.  These columns have stood through one
+fire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of the
+structure.  The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, with
+galleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly seven
+hundred feet long.  In a rear building is a vast, barrack-like
+dining-room, with a noble ball-room above, for dancing is the
+important occupation of visitors.
+
+The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has a
+picturesqueness of its own.  Even the ugly little brick structure
+near the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage.  No
+doubt we liked the place better than if it had been smart, and
+enjoyed the neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life is
+taken there.  There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowls
+tiptoeing about the verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor was
+a sort of guarantee that we should meet him later on in the dining-
+room.  There was nothing incongruous in the presence of pigs,
+turkeys, and chickens on the grounds; they went along with the good-
+natured negro-service and the general hospitality; and we had a
+mental rest in the thought that all the gates would have been off the
+hinges, if there had been any gates.  The guests were very well
+treated indeed, and were put under no sort of restraint by
+discipline.  The long colonnade made an admirable promenade and
+lounging-place and point of observation.  It was interesting to watch
+the groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, the
+mounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study the
+colors on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neat
+cottage and flower-garden.  The type of people was very pleasantly
+Southern.  Colonels and politicians stand in groups and tell stories,
+which are followed by explosions of laughter; retire occasionally
+into the saloon, and come forth reminded of more stories, and all
+lift their hats elaborately and suspend the narratives when a lady
+goes past.  A company of soldiers from Richmond had pitched its tents
+near the hotel, and in the evening the ball-room was enlivened with
+uniforms.  Among the graceful dancers--and every one danced well, and
+with spirit was pointed out the young widow of a son of Andrew
+Johnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village.  But the
+Professor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted whether
+here it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the owner
+of this region than to be connected with a President of the United
+States.
+
+A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broad
+and the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of in
+order to appreciate either.  This was the great highway of trade and
+travel.  At certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession
+of herds of cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of
+trains of big wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered
+by the Tennessee.  Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters
+in coach and four, with a great retinue of household servants, and
+kept up for months that unique social life, a mixture of courtly
+ceremony and entire freedom, the civilization which had the drawing-
+room at one end and the negro-quarters at the other,--which has
+passed away.  It was a continuation into our own restless era of the
+manners and the literature of George the Third, with the accompanying
+humor and happy-go-lucky decadence of the negro slaves.  On our way
+down we saw on the river-bank, under the trees, the old hostelry,
+Alexander's, still in decay,--an attractive tavern, that was formerly
+one of the notable stopping-places on the river.  Master, and fine
+lady, and obsequious, larking darky, and lumbering coach, and throng
+of pompous and gay life, have all disappeared.  There was no room in
+this valley for the old institutions and for the iron track.
+
+    "When in the chronicle of wasted time
+     I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
+     And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
+     In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
+     We, which now behold these present days,
+     Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."
+
+This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
+in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
+French Broad.
+
+The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
+idle resort.  The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he
+alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft.  There is at the
+Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites,
+known vulgarly as heavy-spar.  It is the weight of this heaviest of
+minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value.  The rock
+is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign
+substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of the
+process it is as white and fine as the best bolted flour.  This heavy
+adulterant is shipped to the North in large quantities,--the manager
+said he had recently an order for a hundred thousand dollars' worth
+of it.  What is the use of this powder?  Well, it is of use to the
+dealer who sells white lead for paint, to increase the weight of the
+lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that it is mixed with powdered
+sugar.  The industry is profitable to those engaged in it.
+
+It was impossible to get much information about our route into
+Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross Paint
+Mountain.  Late one morning,--a late start is inevitable here,--
+accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope ferry,
+and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream and tree-
+shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water and
+overhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side of
+the river), to Paint Rock,--six miles.  This Paint Rock is a naked
+precipice by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a large
+local reputation.  It is said that its face shows painting done by
+the Indians, and hieroglyphics which nobody can read.  On this bold,
+crumbling cliff, innumerable visitors have written their names.  We
+stared at it a good while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics,
+but could see nothing except iron stains.  Round the corner is a
+farmhouse and place of call for visitors, a neat cottage, with a
+display of shells and minerals and flower-pots; and here we turned
+north crossed the little stream called Paint River, the only clear
+water we had seen in a month, passed into the State of Tennessee, and
+by a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain.  The open forest road,
+with the murmur of the stream below, was delightfully exhilarating,
+and as we rose the prospect opened,--the lovely valley below, Bald
+Mountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains rising as we came over
+the ridge.
+
+Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men,
+knew anything of the route, or could give us any information of the
+country beyond.  But as we descended in Tennessee the country and the
+farms decidedly improved,--apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.
+
+A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed to
+receive hospitality.  We passed by an old farm building to a new two-
+storied, gayly painted house on a hill.  We were deceived by
+appearances.  The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to
+offer us except some buttermilk.  Why should anybody be obliged to
+feed roving strangers?  As to our horses, the young woman with a baby
+in her arms declared,
+
+"We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get
+something at the other house."
+
+"Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in this
+region.  We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and
+for our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a
+few sonnets.  On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve
+miles farther, through a rolling, good farming country, offering
+little for comment, in search of a night's lodging with one of the
+brothers Snap.  But one brother declined our company on the plea that
+his wife was sick, and the other because his wife lived in
+Greenville, and we found ourselves as dusk came on without shelter in
+a tavernless land.  Between the two refusals we enjoyed the most
+picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at the crossing of Camp Creek,
+a swift little stream, that swirled round under the ledge of bold
+rocks before the ford.  This we learned was a favorite camp-meeting
+ground.  Mary was calling the cattle home at the farm of the second
+Snap.  It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and we were
+inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the
+cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
+
+It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this
+pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and
+intelligent farming.  Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with
+plenty of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity),
+who owes his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas.  He
+was a Unionist during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his
+county (Greene) has been Republican.  We had been riding all the
+afternoon through good land, and encountering a better class of
+farmers.  Peach-trees abounded (though this was an off year for
+fruit), and apples and grapes throve.  It is a land of honey and of
+milk.  The persimmon flourishes; and, sign of abundance generally, we
+believe, great flocks of turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the
+high air--hovered about.  This country was ravaged during the war by
+Unionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots as
+they passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving the
+farmers little to live on.  Mr. Alexander's farm cost him forty
+dollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize.  This was
+the first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace before
+meat, though there had been many tables that needed it more.  From
+the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;
+and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomed
+to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer and
+enjoy a real primitive woods life.
+
+Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
+fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling,
+rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt
+ranges, which we had on our right all day.  At noon we crossed the
+Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle
+girth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and
+came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a
+hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat
+of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one
+pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the
+currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage.  The
+big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell
+and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of
+mahogany, recalled rural New England.  Perhaps these refinements are
+due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is
+near.  We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the
+word fruit.  When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
+and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
+
+Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the
+oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,
+set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
+People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and
+a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want
+company.  The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here
+ever since the war.
+
+A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union.  Before noon we
+forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and
+were entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous
+and hospitable farmer.  This is a rich country.  We had met in the
+morning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to
+Jonesboro, and Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits
+before us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.
+
+It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
+withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she
+excelled any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she
+was by her own confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age
+till she has passed this point) and the testimony of others a hundred
+years old.  But age had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor
+the limberness of her tongue, nor her shrewd good sense.  She talked
+freely about the want of decency and morality in the young colored
+folks of the present day.  It was n't so when she was a girl.  Long,
+long time ago, she and her husband had been sold at sheriff's sale
+and separated, and she never had another husband.  Not that she
+blamed her master so much he could n't help it; he got in debt.  And
+she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the danger they are
+in.  The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he can borrow
+money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and pilin' up
+the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a ladder to
+get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and the man
+has to begin on the bottom rail again.  If she'd to live her life
+over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now.
+The thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and
+kept her eye on the neighborhood.  Going out that morning she had
+seen some fence up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr.
+Devault that she didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as
+white folks was much better than colored folks.  Slavery?  Yes,
+slavery was pretty bad--she had seen five hundred niggers in
+handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to be sent South.
+
+About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest,
+worth a visit if we could have spared the time.  In it is the large
+beech (six and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which
+Daniel Boone shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region.  He
+himself cut an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it
+is still distinctly legible:
+
+     D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.
+
+This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all
+parts of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for
+any more records of such devotion.  The grove is ancient looking, the
+trees are gnarled and moss-grown.  Hundreds of people go there, and
+the trees are carved all over with their immortal names.
+
+A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip
+of forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other
+adventure than the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road,
+with steam up, clattering along.  The devil himself could not invent
+any machine calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this.
+Jack took one look and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his
+rider's hat but did not succeed in getting rid of his burden or
+knocking down any trees.
+
+Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, with
+some three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by an ex-
+stage-driver.  The village, which lies on the Holston, has no
+drinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a well
+nor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crosses
+the river to a spring on the other side.  A considerable part of the
+labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge.  On a hill
+overlooking the village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a
+tower, the furniture of which is an object of wonder to those who
+have seen it.  It belonged to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter of
+Andrew Johnson.  The whole family of the ex-President have departed
+this world, but his memory is still green in this region, where he
+was almost worshiped--so the people say in speaking of him.
+
+Forlorn as was the hotel at Union, the landlord's daughters were
+beginning to draw the lines in rural refinement.  One of them had
+been at school in Abingdon.  Another, a mature young lady of fifteen,
+who waited on the table, in the leisure after supper asked the Friend
+for a light for her cigarette, which she had deftly rolled.
+
+"Why do you smoke?"
+
+"So as I shan't get into the habit of dipping.  Do you think dipping
+is nice?"
+
+The traveler was compelled to say that he did not, though he had seen
+a good deal of it wherever he had been.
+
+"All the girls dips round here.  But me and my sisters rather smoke
+than get in a habit of dipping."
+
+To the observation that Union seemed to be a dull place:
+
+"Well, there's gay times here in the winter--dancing.  Like to dance?
+Well, I should say!  Last winter I went over to Blountsville to a
+dance in the court-house; there was a trial between Union and
+Blountsville for the best dancing.  You bet I brought back the cake
+and the blue ribbon."
+
+The country was becoming too sophisticated, and the travelers
+hastened to the end of their journey.  The next morning Bristol, at
+first over a hilly country with magnificent oak-trees,--happily not
+girdled, as these stately monarchs were often seen along the roads in
+North Carolina,--and then up Beaver Creek, a turbid stream, turning
+some mills.  When a closed woolen factory was pointed out to the
+Professor (who was still traveling for Reform), as the result of the
+agitation in Congress, he said, Yes, the effect of agitation was
+evident in all the decayed dams and ancient abandoned mills we had
+seen in the past month.
+
+Bristol is mainly one long street, with some good stores, but
+generally shabby, and on this hot morning sleepy.  One side of the
+street is in Tennessee, the other in Virginia.  How handy for
+fighting this would have been in the war, if Tennessee had gone out
+and Virginia stayed in.  At the hotel--may a kind Providence wake it
+up to its responsibilities--we had the pleasure of reading one of
+those facetious handbills which the great railway companies of the
+West scatter about, the serious humor of which is so pleasing to our
+English friends.  This one was issued by the accredited agents of the
+Ohio and Mississippi Railway, and dated April 1, 1984.  One sentence
+will suffice:
+
+"Allow us to thank our old traveling friends for the many favors in
+our line, and if you are going on your bridal trip, or to see your
+girl out West, drop in at the general office of the Ohio and
+Mississippi Railway and we will fix you up in Queen Anne style.
+Passengers for Dakota, Montana, or the Northwest will have an
+overcoat and sealskin cap thrown in with all tickets sold on or after
+the above date."
+
+The great republic cannot yet take itself seriously.  Let us hope the
+humors of it will last another generation.  Meditating on this, we
+hailed at sundown the spires of Abingdon, and regretted the end of a
+journey that seems to have been undertaken for no purpose.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of On Horseback
+by Charles Dudley Warner
+
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