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.Acouple 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.Alady 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.