The

Patton's, the collection of humble cabins, nestled at the very base of the chain of peaks. Our German companion sang his merriest songs that afternoon, and the Judge's cheery halloo was heard at every mile, for the loveliest phases of Nature gave us their inspiration. As we approached Patton's, the long ridges of "Craggy loomed up like ramparts to the eastward, and the sun tinged the sky above them crimson and purple. music from the ripples of the fork of the Swannanoa, which we were now ascending, drifted on the evening air; the kalmias, the azaleas, and the honeysuckles, sent forth their perfumes; the woodchoppers, their feet well protected against the snakes by stout boots, were strolling supperward, and gave us hearty good evenings; the cow-bells tinkled musically, and in a corner of Patton's yard a mountain smith was clanging his hammer against his anvil, seemingly keeping time with the refrain to which all Nature was moved. The evening was still and warm, even in that elevated region. While some of us remained in the cabin below, and listened to tales of Black Mountain adventure, the aspiring Jonas, with a companion, pushed on, a few miles beyond, that he might see sunrise from the heights, even though he had to sleep in a crazy and decaying house on the edge of a dizzy cliff, with the floor for his bed, and his saddle for a pillow.

It is twelve miles from Patton's to the summit of Mitchell's Peak, and the ascent, which is very arduous, is usually broken by stop at the "Mountain House," four miles from the foot, and another at the point where the government once maintained an observatory, on a rock six thousand five hundred and seventy-eight feet high, and three miles from the topmost height, which rises suddenly from the range, a mass of ragged projections, covered with deadened tree trunks. At early dawn we were on our road to the Mountain House, at first through thickets, then along a creek bed, where the cautious mountain horses walked with the greatest difficulty;

now fording a creek twenty times in half an hour, now bending as we came to tree trunks half fallen across the trail. The road wound snake-like upon the hillside, until at last we were compelled to clamber up perpendicular ascents, and ahead could see the Judge's figure, bent to the horse's neck, with his hands clinging to the mane, and his venerable head dodging the malicious boughs which now and then threatened him with the fate of Absalom. A slip upon a smooth stone frightened one of the horses so that he stood still and trembled for a moment, so well did he realize the result of a fall or roll backwards; sometimes the animals would stand and listen, with their ears ominously cocked as if watching for snakes; often they paused as if in mute despair at the task before them.

But after an hour and a half of this laborious climbing, during which we had ascended at least fifteen hundred feet, we heard the halloo of Jonas and his companion, and, scrambling up the track of a little water course, came out upon the plateau on whose edge stood the Mountain House.

The "house" is a small Swiss cottage, once solidly built of stout beams, but now

fast decaying. It was built by William Patton, a wealthy citizen of Charleston, and before the war was often the resort of gay parties, who dined merrily on the cliff's verge, and saluted the sunset with champagne. It stands but a few yards from the edge of the Balsam growth, where the vegetation changes, and the atmosphere is sensibly different. It is five thousand four hundred and sixty feet above the sea level, at the point in front of the Mountain House where one looks down into the valley, and sees the forest clad ridges creeping below him for miles; notes the twin peaks of Craggy, and their naked tops; then turns in mute wonder to the wood above him, and searches in vain for the peaks beyond. While at the windows of the Mountain House we seemed to be gazing from mid air down upon the Blue Ridge. The illusion was perfect. Below us the mists were rising solemnly and slowly; peak after peak was unveiled; vast horizons dawned upon us; we seemed to overtop the world.

We turned from this view of the valleys and entered the balsam thickets, pushing eagerly forward to Mount Mitchell.

And now we came into the region of the pink and scarlet rhododendrons. Whenever there was an opening in the trees the hill-side was aflame with them. Masses of their stout bushes hung along our path, and showered the fragile red blossoms upon us. The white mountain laurel, too, was omnipresent, but the scarlet banner usurped the greatest space. When we came to a narrow trail, where slippery rocks confronted us, and ragged balsam trunks compelled us to clamber over dangerous crags, we found the way strewn with a crimson carpet after our horses had struggled through. Here, too, were masses of evergreen, and red-pointed mosses, and the azaleas again, along the border of streamlets, and the purple rosebay and the tall grasses in the clearings, in whose midst nestled timorously tiny white blossoms and ground berries.

To climb Vesuvius is no more difficult than to scale the Black Mountain, for although one can reach the very top of the latter on horseback, he is in constant danger of breaking his limbs and those of his horse on the rough pathway. By the time we had reached "Mount Mitchell," and seated ourselves upon its rocks, our horses were as thoroughly enthusiastic as we were, and peered out over the crags with genuine curiosity.

From Mount Mitchell we saw that we were upon a center from whence radiated several mountain chains. To the south we could see even as far as the Cumberland line, and could readily discern the "Bald Mountain," and our old friend the Smoky; while nearer, in the same direction, we noted the Balsam range. Sweeping inward from the north-east coast were the long ridges of the Alleghanies; on the north the chain of the Black culminated in a fantastic rock pile; while on the south the ridges of Craggy once more stood revealed. To the east we could overlook the plains of North and South Carolina; on the north-east we saw Table Rock and the "Hawk Bill," twin mountains, piercing the clouds; while beyond them. rose the abrupt "Grandfather Mountain," and the bluff of the Roan. On the south were the high peaks of the Alleghanies, the Pinnacles, Rocky Knob, Gray Beard, Bear Wallow, and Sugar Loaf.

Our

Another hour and a half of climbing, then dashing through a clearing, we suddenly saw above us a crag two hundred feet high, with a stone-strewn path leading up it. Our horses sprang to their risky task; they rushed up the ascent,-slipped, caught against the edges of the stones, snorted with fear, then laid back their ears and gave a final leap, and we were on Mitchell's High Peak, utterly above Alleghanies, Blue Ridge, or Mount Washington. horses' ears brushed the clouds. In a few moments we were at Mitchell's grave. Here we were above the rhododendrons, and only a gnarled and stunted growth sprang up. The trees were nearly all dead; those still alive seemed lonely and miserable. The rude grave of the explorer, with the four rough slabs placed around it, recalled the history of the man, and the origin of the peak's name. The Rev. Dr. Elisha Mitchell, a native of Connecticut, graduate of Yale, and a professor of prominence in the University of North Carolina, established the fact by measurements, made from 1835 to 1844, that the Black was the highest range east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. He grew very much to love the work of studying these heights, and spent weeks in wandering alone among them. The rough mountaineers learned to revere him, and he became as skillful a woodsman as any of them. In June, of 1857, after accomplishing some difficult surveys, and, as it is supposed, having ascended the pinnacle

which now bears his name, he was descending into Yancey County, when, overtaken by night and a blinding storm, he strayed over a precipice on "Sugar Camp Creek," and was discovered some days afterwards, dead at the bottom of a waterfall, his body perfectly preserved in the limpid pool. His friends, the mountaineers, who mourned his loss bitterly, buried him in Asheville; but a year later his remains were carried to the mountain tops and there placed in a grave among the rocks he had loved so well.

Near the grave the government has established a signal house, where two brave fellows dare the storms which occur almost daily. The anger of the heavens, as witnessed from this stony perch in mid air, is frightful to contemplate, and many a day the lonely men have expected to see their only shelter hurled down into the ravines below. The view from the topmost peak is similar, in most respects, to that from lower Mount Mitchell; but the effect is more grand and imposing, and the mountains to the south and east seem

to stand out in bolder relief. A tremulous mist from time to time hung about us; the clouds now and then shut the lower world from our vision, and we seemed standing on a narrow precipice, toward whose edges we dared not venture.

As we descended, that afternoon, the pheasant strutted across our path; the cross-bill turned his head archly to look at us; the mountain boomer nervously skipped from tree to tree; the rocks seemed ablaze as we approached the rhododendron thickets; the brooks rippled never so musically, and the azalia's perfume was sweeter than ever before. Each member of the party, dropping bridle rein on his weary horse's neck, as we came once more into the open space where stands the "Mountain House," and looked down thousands of feet into the yawning valley; as the peace and silence, and eternal grandeur of the scene ripened in his soul, involuntarily bared his head in reverence. Goethe was right: