CHAPTER IV. A mountain maiden, very fair, TURER the Five HERE are several ways to the Roan to notMountain, the easiest being to Roan Station, Johnson County, Tenn., and thence by carriage to Cloudland, on the summit. wagon ways ascend the mountain-two on the Tennessee and three on the Carolina side. The Wagonauts chose a winding jaunt around through the Carolina mountains and a picturesque and difficult ascent on the Carolina side. Our way led up Limestone Cove, through a broad valley by the side of North Indian Creek, a broad, clear, beautiful stream, fringed with elders and laurels. Yellow stubbles, meadows, and cornfields stretch on either side to the Blue Mountains, which wall in the cove from the big world outside and cut off here a wide, fertile, happy valley, which needs only transportation to make it the home of a prosperous community. ! Before us and to our right rises the long, whale-backed ridge of the Unaka Mountain -very like a whale and bare in patches, with what are called "huckleberry balds," which differ from the balds that lie above the timber line. Unaka, or Unicoi, is a generic term generally applied to a range of mountains, but here fastened upon a single peak. Rattling along over a level road, we entered a long lane. We had lifted up our voices in song, when memory suddenly brought up recollections of my last visit to this region. A cool twilight scene came back as vividly as if it had been yesterday. My father, my younger brother, and myself rode along this very lane, beguiling the loneliness of the dusk with song. The past beyond the gulf of war came back in clear outlines-not with grief, not with bitterness, but with that quiet sadness of mingled sorrow and pleasure that lies so hazily blue in the past, with shadows sweetly tempered by genial sunlight. Two of those voices are forever silent for this world. My voice was hushed and our song came to an end. I sat for a mile lost in rev ery-a fabric of mingled woof and warp, of dark and bright threads, woven by the marvelous shuttle of memory upon time's wonderful loom. Passing by the north west end of the Unaka, leaving it to our right and rear, we began to ascend, winding up steep hillsides. Valley farms became hillside fields, hills grew to mountains, and soon we were upon the wooded slopes of Iron Mountain. After winding upward for miles, a turn in the road, in Iron Mountain Gap, brought us in full view of the Roan, with its dark spruce and fir crowned bluffs, its heavily wooded slopes and bold cliffs of a thousand sheer feet or more of towering rock. Cloud-crowned, this grandest of all mountains stood dwarfing all surrounding peaks. Between us and the Roan lay a lovely valley, with many a hill and hollow, whose myriad streams were sending up each its contribution of fleecy mist, to climb the mountain sides and join the grey nubia that hung over the Roan. A view nigher at hand called for a moment's Platonic admiration-perhaps Plutonic in the glowing breast of the gushing Brutus. Two robust, handsome mountain girls, conscious of their own charms, sat in the door of a cabin by the roadside, smiling at each other and for Brutus and his dark moustache. The mists gathered about as Panier and I gazed at the glorious mountain scene and Brutus camped his soft eye upon the nigher view. Fine rain began to fall, shutting out all but the near view. Brutus thought it would be wise to seek shelter in the cabin, and expressed great concern for Panier's health. In the interest of a lowland maiden, we ordered Ben to drive on. Fortunately for him, Brutus's impressible heart is very soft and like the flesh of the fellow who was "stobbed" nineteen times and six to the "holler" at Napoleon, Ark., who said: "Stranger, look after them fellows I've been a ventilatin'; I've got powerful healin' flesh." But, alas! although his wounds heal by first intention, what enduring pangs he must leave behind as that dark moustache, far-gone smile, and Hamletic eye career through the country. Secured against the gentle rain, which we found only a pleasing variety, during the only half day that we had rain, we rolled on down the Carolina slope of Iron Mountain, meeting upon the way a solitary commercial traveler, sitting in lonely grandeur amongst his vast trunks and boxes. He gazed ahead, without so much as a curious glance, as Ben and his driver saluted. He reminded one of Eothen's account of meeting a British countryman seated upon his camel on the great desert between Palestine and Cairo, when the two exclusive Britons passed each other within twenty feet and merely touched caps. The drummer is usually a genial fellow, full of a ready humanity. He is, moreover, the most abused of men, in view of the actual sins he commits. In general he is a thorough business man, a man of the world, a pioneer of commerce, the right arm of business centers, a blessing to remote regions, and a civilizing agent, whom a small percentage of the unworthy have given a bad name. We found that the ubiquitous drummer, with his feminine array of trunks and boxes, had |