"Gentlemen, you can sleep here; good night," and she, with the children, retired to a log cabin some two hundred yards away, as fearless here alone with two small children, in a deep mountain gorge, upon a rainy night, with three strangers, as if a company of knights mounted guard about her couch.

Canova should have seen Emma Jean before he carved his lovely Hebe. She was about seventeen, lithe, lissom, and exquisitely formed, with light-brown hair, fair complexion, sweet but firm blue eyes, that looked modestly but confidently, small hands, and delicate feet encased in neatly fitting shoes. Moreover she was ready, bright, and perfectly self-possessed, modest in mien, delicate in speech, and sweet-voiced. This is no fancy sketch of our hostess; but it is not to be taken as a description of the typical mountain maiden. Such women are rare in this region. In a latter-day Southern novel of the mountains she would figure as something lovely in face and form, speaking Hottentot.

We left Emma Jean with lingering parting, prompted by genuine admiration for

womanly sweetness, modesty, and frank independence, and wound slowly up the valley, gazing at her vanishing form as she moved, pail in hand, amongst the cows. The sun was shining brightly as we began the ascent of the Roan, which I reserve for the next chapter.

CHAPTER V.

"Up-idee." (Longfellow.)

По the tourist who knows that fun is a rel

ative thing and enjoyment an imaginary state of the mind, donned as one puts on a coat, as often in rugged wilds and desert places as in gilded salons, I commend the Glen Air ascent of the Roan. Its views are finer, its ascents steeper, its hardships greater. A hundred brooks coming down into Little Rock Creek from both sides of the valley invite the tourist to stay awhile and whip a mile or so of noisy, tumultuous waters and then to find rest sweeter in his wagon seat. The best sport we have had was found in a stream one could step across.

After winding far to the right and as far to the left, we look down upon our road a thousand feet beneath us, where sweet farmhouses nestle in green orchards and fresh meadows stretch far away down the valley. The wind

ing creek is seen far below, foaming over rough granite ledges, pausing to turn a thrifty sawmill or to grind a meager grist for a waiting mill boy. Yonder the dark granite jaws of its deep gorge open to swallow some gentle brook that laughs and dances down some flowery dell, flashing in the sunlight, as youthful maiden glee dances into and is swallowed by matrimony. Yonder, between two steep ridges, enclosing a narrow vale, we can see almost the full length of a laughing brook, from source to mouth, gleaming in the sunlight, as

Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains—

From cloud and from crag

With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

Now the road grows steep and craggy as we rise to the backbone of some bold ridge, and walk and push and scotch and "blow" our good team of smoking horses. Our ascent is a going to and fro and up and down, across steep ridges and deep glens, drained

by tempting trout brooks. Now a lovely grass farm opens up on our way, lying high up on the Roan, with the finest meadows of redtop and timothy and excellent houses and outhouses. From this point we can see, in a gap above the timber line, the bald ridge of the Roan's indented backbone; and, descending some hundreds of yards, the great tramway built by some adventurous speculator, upon which to draw up hundreds of tons of wild cherry to the summit of the Roan, whence it was carried by a tramway of twelve miles down the Tennessee side to Roan Mountain Station and shipped thence to Boston.

Another steep climb and a turn in the road discloses a clear cool spring and a huge granite rock for a dining table. Snake medicine, old ham, ox tongue, beaten biscuit, corned beef, anchovy-stuffed olives, and water as clear as ever highest cloud distilled upon loftiest mountain's brow, to be rectified by sparkling mica sands and run over cool, mossy stones, for the qualification of old rye, invited the tired Wagonauts to dinner and repose.