AMONG THE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA. "You ain't a show, be ye?" said the | ing, alighting from their weary and mudsmall boy. The question was pardonable; the GREAT SOUTH expedition, and the travelers who had joined it, certainly presented a singular spectacle that rainy June evenVOL. VII.-33 bespattered horses at the door of a little inn, in a Tennessee mountain town, and proceeding to unload their baggage-wagon. Such mysterious array of traps the small boy's round, wondering eyes had never seen before. He controlled his curiosity until the tin case containing the artist's materials was produced, when he gave a prolonged whistle, and forthwith proceeded to inquire our qualities. Visions of magic lanterns and traveling mounte THE JUDGE. banks danced before his eyes; his heated imagination hinted at even the possibility of play-actors. No wonder. First alighted the Colonel, coming down with a solid thump in the sticky mud, and unbuckling from his saddle capacious bags and rolls of blankets; then taking from the wagon certain mysterious packages, he propounded the inquiry which is of such thrilling interest to mountain travelers after nightfall:: "Can we get to stay here to-night? "Reckon we can accommodate ye.' Next descended the Judge, his long, gray beard and Arabian mustache streaming with rain, his garments bedraggled, and his eyes dim with the sky-spray. He, likewise going to the wagon, took from it seductive valises, boxes which gave forth a cheering rattle of apparatus, and cans of various patterns, and hastened to shelter. A new accession of small boys silently viewed these proceedings with awe. But ah! the next figure which galloped lustily to the door, mounted on a prancing, delicate Kentucky mare! How did the juvenile by-standers gape at that short, alert youth, with spectacles on nose, and riding-whip swung cavalierly in hand; with white Marseilles trowsers mottled and drenched with mud and water; with jaunty gray hat, flabby and drooping; with overcoat tied about his neck, and a collection of minerals knotted in his handkerchief at his saddle-bow. He was no common traveler. It must-it must be a show! Or he with camp stool slung on his shoulders, and dripping umbrella in hand; with broad slouch hat crushed down over his eyes, and a variegated panorama of the road along which he had passed painted by the weather upon his back-the artist, whose hands were filled with the mystic tin box; behold him! the envied cynosure of boyish eyes. Then the writer,-clambering down from his horse's smoking sides, and hastening to join the others before the crackling and leaping flame in an old-fashioned fireplace, overhearing as he entered, however, a new come boy's wild guess : "If 'taint a show, it's 'rock-hunters,' I reckon." What mattered rain and mud, the ferrying of swollen streams, the breaking down of wagons, and the weary climbing of hills? The prospect before us was none the less inspiring. We were about to enter upon that vast elevated region which forms the southern division of the Appalachian mountain system, and constitutes the culminating point in the Atlantic barrier of the American continent. We stood at the gate of the lands through which runs the chain of the Iron, Smoky, and Unaka mountains, separating North Carolina from Eastern Tennessee. Beyond the blue line of hills faintly discerned in the rainy twilight from the windows of our little room lay the grand table-land, two thousand feet above the heated air of cities and the contagion of civilization; and there a score of mountain peaks reached up six thousand feet into the crystal atmosphere; torrents ran impetuously down their steep sides into noble valleys; there was the solitude of the cañon, the charm of the dizzy climb along the precipicebrink, the shade of the forests where no woodman's axe had yet profaned the thickets. It was a region compared to which the White Mountains seemed dwarfed and insignificant, for through an extent of more than one hundred and fifty miles, height after height towered in solemn magnificence, and the very valleys were higher up than the gaps in the White Mountain range! We were equipped for, and one day's journey advanced upon, our ramble among the peaks of Western North Carolina. We had come from Morristown, in Eastern Tennessee, where we left the railroad and met our cheery companions, the Judge, the Colonel, and "Jonas," and started across country, along the highways in the mountains. Through the thick rain-veil we had seen the noble outlines of English Mountain, and the distant and rugged sides of the Smoky; had passed over hill-sides covered with corn, where the white tree trunks in the "deadenings" stood like specters protesting against sacrilege to the forest; along banks of streams where intense and richly-colored foliage sent forth perfume, and past log farmhouses, where tall, gaunt farmers, clad in homespun, were patiently waiting for the rain to cease-until we came to the "Mouth of Chucky," as the ford just above the junction of the Nolichucky and French Broad Rivers is called. Time was when all the country bordering the rivers at their junction was romantic ground. The great Indian war trail," upon which so many scenes of violence and murder were enacted, ran not far from the banks of the Nolichucky, and the war-ford "upon the French Broad" was but a short 66 distance from Clifton, where we had halted for the night. From the time of the settlement along the banks of the two rivers, one hundred years ago, until early in the present century, the settler took his life in his hands daily, and the war-cry of the Indian was a familiar sound to his ears. The Nolichucky at the ford ran rapidly between great mountain banks, whose sides were so steep as to be inaccessible on foot, and just below gave its waters to the racing and roaring rapids of the "French Broad," whose unquiet wavelets seemed angry at being pent up among the cliffs. A long halloo brought the ferryman with his flat-boat from the opposite bank; the clumsy ark drifted us safely over to the stretch of winding road which finally led us through a still old town, hidden and moldering at the base of a hill; then along picturesque paths until we reached the placid Pigeon River, with the mountains near it mirrored in its rainrippled breast; crossed it, and dismounted at Clifton, to be confronted by the small boy with the abnormal appetite for "shows. When we were safely housed, and our drenched garments were drying before the fire, while supper's perfume hinted at bacon and biscuits, flanked by molasses syrup and blackest of coffee, the rain ceased, and we could catch a glimpse of the prosperous little town set down in a nook in. the mountains, with one railroad line giving it a hold on the outer world, and running directly through the main street. The river was fringed with trees, and overhanging vines and creepers; in every direction was the blue stretch of far away hills, or the shadow of luxuriant woods. Our lullaby that night was the murmur of the river and the cry of the whip-poor-will. Before dawn we were astir, and while the dwellers in cities were still asleep our little cavalcade was vigorously en route for the North Carolina line. Ahead, caracoling merrily from side to side of the highway on his coquettishly-pacing mare "Cricket," whose very motions were poetry, rode Jonas of the blond locks, our German companion, in his saddle graceful as a Centaur, in his motions alert as a cat, for he had ridden to many a battle in the cavalry saddles of Prus sian William's victorious army. THE CAÑON OF THE CATALOUCHE-SEEN FROM BENNETT'S." Our route that morning lay through the forest, along unused road-ways; and, constantly ascending, we caught from time to time exquisite views of the summits of English, the Smoky, and other mountains. Great mists were moving lightly away; now and then some monarch of the ranges had his lofty brow wrapped in the delicate embrace of white clouds, which trembled into fantastic shapes of smoke-wreaths and castles and towers, and sometimes seemed |