FROM the top of Tryon Mountain on a fair spring day, a snow-white cloud was seen lying above the northern horizon. It was so beautiful in the pure blue of the sky that the eye involuntarily turned to it again and again; and then, some trick of the light revealed an opalescent world below, and all at once one realized that the cloud was the snow-covered crest of the Black Mountains, which can be seen from Tryon Peak on a clear day.
After this one saw the Black Mountains in the distance, like the Smokies ethereally blue or again pearly white. But unlike the impression created by the Smokies, this of the Blacks vanished upon near acquaintance, perhaps in part because the name stamped another vision on the mind. It is hard to escape the influence of a name, and the Black Mountains live in your memory as a group of night-black domes topping a long black mountain crest that lightens to varied shades of green as it descends towards the valleys, or else loses itself below in depths of blue shadows, which is the way it appears when one is near it.
Nowhere is the rounded contour of the Southern mountains so striking as in the high balsam-covered summits. Mitchell's High Peak, as it is now called, used to be the Black Dome, a name poetical and profoundly descriptive. When near enough, perhaps on some neighboring slope or summit, the balsam-covered mountains are impressive to solemnity. The dark, unbroken mantle of fir trees covering all heights and hollows throws back the light with singular depth and softness, the color varying from deepest green to inky black, in which lie intense indigo shadows.
The range of the Black Mountains, which is only fifteen miles in length, has, it will be remembered, thirteen summits above six thousand feet high This short, high range, standing on a base less than five miles wide, its slopes sweeping up from either side to the crests more than three thousand feet above the surrounding valley bottoms, is, wherever visible, the most notable feature in the landscape.
It runs north and south, its southern extremity merging into the Blue Ridge, which here, in its very irregular windings, comes so close to the Black Mountains as to leave only a narrow and deep valley, that of the South Toe River, between. Two of the highest points of the Blue Ridge, Graybeard and the Pinnacle, noted landmarks, lie close to the Blacks.
To the southwest of the Black Mountains, practically a continuation of them, lies the short high chain of the Great Craggy Mountains in which Craggy Dome and Bullhead Mountain rise, in the one case a little above six thousand feet, in the other, a little below. To the west of the Black Mountain Range, tightly inclosing the narrow Cane River Valley, is a jumble of wild mountains, among which Yeates Knob reaches an elevation of six thousand feet, while to the north of the range lies the valley of Little Crabtree Creek between the Blacks and the rugged mountains beyond. Hence the valleys that nearly surround the Black Mountains are deep and narrow, and the streams rushing through them are very swift, clear, and, from the rapidity with which they rise during a storm, dangerous, the Estatoe, or Toe River, as it is commonly called, and its branches being among the most dangerous of the mountain streams.
There is the same glorious wildness in the Black Mountain country that one feels in the regions of the Smokies and the Balsams; and whoever ascends the Black Mountains, excepting perhaps over the trail to Mount Mitchell, unless he is a mountaineer of experience, must take a guide or run the risk of getting lost in the rhododendrons that heavily clothe the slopes of the mountain. To get lost in the rhododendron on one of these big mountains, where the foliage is too dense for one to see the sky, and where the strong, twisted limbs form a labyrinth in places utterly impassable, is an experience none would court, for, besides the trap woven by the rhododen- dron limbs, wild streams rush down, ledges and chasms obstruct the way, and fogs, the real- danger in the mountains, are frequent. But on a pleasant summer day what is more delightful than a climb to the top of Mount Mitchell! One can easily get to the Black Mountain country by way of the railroad that now crosses the Blue Ridge a few miles to the north of there; or one can follow the old route from the Black Mountain Station in the Swannanoa Valley, taking a long ride to the summit of Mount Mitchell and spending the night in a cave; or there is that two days' drive from Asheville to the foot of the mountain, over roads which, speaking after the fashion of the Italians, are carriageable - though barely so. The road, good enough for some miles out of Asheville, runs northward to the Ivy River up which it follows through the "Ivy Country," so named because of the luxuriance with which the mountain laurel or "ivy" densely covered this region.
At the forks of the river the road goes up the North Ivy, where the Craggy Mountains loom into view at the gaps, and where the valley, squeezed tightly in between the steep sides of the mountains, is as wild as a valley can be that contains picturesque little houses and has its slopes all tawny with chestnut bloom. It is a wild valley where sourwood loads the air with dainty perfume, morning-glories twine smilingly about the bushes, and deep-red or lavender bee-balm makes flower-gardens of the damp places. The road, zigzagging endlessly about, finally gets up out of thk valley, crosses a wide gap, and descends into the Cane River Valley near the house of Big Tom Wilson, the most famous bear-hunter of this region. Continuing up Cane River for a few miles you cross a picturesque ford and soon reach the house of Adoiphus Wilson, Big Tom's son, at the foot of Mount Mitchell. It is very wild here, the glorious wildness of this country where everything is softened and sweetened by the beautiful growths and the touch of the sun in the sparkling air. Near the house the woods are fine, the path through them takes you past basins of clear green water and past damp places full of flowers and down to a stream that hastens along, broad, swift, and clear, and famous for its trout.
The Black Mountain country seems to you different from the country south of Asheville. Indeed, all this northern region has a quality of its own. It seems so free, so superbly wild, so very remote from the world, and for ages it has been remote, there having been no railroad within easy reach until very lately.
One advantage of settling down for a while in the Black Mountain country is that you will be more certain to visit Mount Mitchell in good weather; you can start when the right morning dawns. For this is a rainy country; the clouds hug close about the tops of the mountains sometimes weeks in succession; so that it is better to go to this region immediately after a general storm and there await the one perfect day. Not that this whole region is constantly deluged; on the contrary, the valleys. are often clear when the mountain-tops are smothered in clouds.
One can easily walk to the top of Mount Mitchell, but it will be well, if you mean to stay, to have your blankets and provisions for the night taken up on horseback. The best way is to let the guide go ahead, and then loiter on as you please, the hoof-marks affording a sure protection against getting lost. With a long staff you can cross the rushing trout stream dry shod on the proj ecting rocks, after which you begin a most joyous ascent into the clouds.
The lower part of the mountain is covered with hardwood trees, the path leading past a tulip tree that twenty years ago measured over thirty-three feet in circumference - no one seems to have had the "ambition" to measure it since. This majestic column had a narrow escape from destruction a few years ago when a mountaineer was with difficulty dissuaded from chopping into it to get an imaginary bee's nest. The fine natural forest is composed of many kinds of trees, among which the path winds, now in the woods, now across a stream, now through an open glade. The air, heavy with the honey-like odor of linden trees in full tloom above your head, murmurs with the myriads of bees that hover about the flowers. The uneven floor of the forest is covered with moss and large violet leaves. The white flower clusters of treelike rhododendrons gleam on the slopes. Laurel presents dense tangles on all sides. Hemlocks darken the way, ferns and moss every-where carpeting the earth beneath them.
About three miles up, you pass through what is known as the beech nursery, a level bench grown with small beeches where grass and flowers cover the floor, a friendly vestibule to the dark forest that lies above. For a little beyond here you enter the balsams, and it is like entering another world, for in the balsam groves no other trees grow, and the young trees and the bushes that so lighten other forests are entirely lacking here. The tall, dark columns of the trees stand so close together that looking ahead there seems scarcely room to pass. The overarching roof shuts out the light. The pillared aisles are dark and sombre. A deep-green, femlike moss covers the ground with an unbroken surface. This wonderful moss, sometimes a foot thick, curiously intensifies the loneliness of the forest. Over humps and hollows the flawless mantle lies, deep, soft, interminable, here and there patterned with lighter green oxalis leaves, always moist, always sucking in and ho1ding fast the clouds that enter, the rains that fall. Continually saturated with the mists of heaven this exquisite monster with its insatiable pure desire becomes the constantly renewing mother of the rivulets that trickle through the mossy carpet, uniting to descend in crystal streams to the earth below.
This still, dark forest, its sombre aisles unlighted by flowers, unwarmed by the sun, covering immense spaces of the upper world, seems to exist for itself alone, to resent, as it were, the intrusion of human life into its mysteries. But it does not exist for itself. It is lonely because absorbed with the gigantic task of endlessly and without rest transforming the clouds into the life-giving streams of the plains. For man to slaughter the trees and tear that marvelous veil of moss would be to strip fertilrty from the cotton and the and the cornfields that lie thirsting from the mountains to the sea.
Ascending through the balsam forests one seems under the spell of the Black Dome. The Black Mountains have received their baptism. No matter how delicately blue and ethereal distance may paint them, to think of them or to see them must ever after recall these sombre depths beneath the dark boughs. The path is wet and muddy in places, and also steep, but at last you pass up out of the dark balsams into a sunny meadow where blue eyebrights look up from the grass, and from which a stony trail bordered with rose-bay leads through stunted firs to the open top, where a monument standing alone on the very summit of the mountain gives a feeling of solemnity to the place. It was erected here in 1888 to the memory, as the legend on the side reads, of the "Rev. Elisha Mitchell, D.D., who, after being for thirty-nine years a professor in the University of North Carolina, lost his life in the scientific exploration of this mountain, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, June 27th, 1857."
Dr. Mitchell, being greatly attached to the mountain, then called Black Dome, and convinced that it was the highest in the Appalachians, had often been to the top to make his observations and prove his theory. One day he went up alone, and did not return at the appointed time. As soon as this became known, search was made, men and even women collecting from far and near, for Dr. Mitchell was greatly loved. The search, led by several old bear hunters, was finally given up when Dr. Mitchell's son, according to Big Tom, said to the men, "I give you a thousand thanks, but please hunt again tomorrow." Upon which Big Tom volunteered to take the lead and it is said he went searching for the miss ing man crying all the way.
The first trace was found eleven days after the disappearance, when Big Tom, sure of signs that no one less experienced in woodcraft could have seen, the mark of heel-tacks on a root, a stone displaced, weeds bent, a mark on a rotten log, went from point to point until he saw the missing man's hat on a log by a streamside. Above was a deep pool at the foot of a waterfall - the hat had floated down from there. Big Tom at this point tells the story thus. "I yelled and they answered me. They came on. 'I 've found his hat.' They all huddled up. And I walked on a log and saw him. 'Come around, boys, poor old feller, here he is.' 'Have you found him?' 'I have--'" and old Tom's voice breaks and the tears are steaming down his face. Dr. Mitchell, although so well acquainted with the mountain, was believed to have become lost in a fog and to have fallen over the precipice above the cataract whose icy water kept the body in perfect condition until it was finally buried on the summit of the mountain so dear to him, and whose name was changed in his honor.
Big Tom was the most famous bear hunter in this region, but when we saw him years ago his hunting days were over, and his tall form was bent with age, but he loved to tell of the by-gone days and his bear hunts, and to show you the heavy, old-fashioned rifle he prized above all modern inventions. But best of all the old man loved to tell of how they went in search of Dr. Mitchell and found him looking as natural as life in the pure water of the mountain pool. So strong an impression has this brave and gentle old hunter made upon his community that the spot where his little house stands in the Cane River Valley is marked on the government map - "Big Tom Wilson's."
The extreme top of Mount Mitchell is bare of trees excepting a few stunted firs; but yellow St. Johnswort blooms in cheerful profusion over the rocks that are daintily fringed with saxifrage and sedum, a few twisted rose-bays show traces of earlier bloom, and prickly gooseberry bushes are maturing fruit for the birds, while sounds in the leaves and a flutter of wings betray the presence of a flock of Juncos. On all sides the dark fir-clad slopes descend into the shadows below, where streams rush through ravines choked full of rhododendrons, and mossy slopes are impenetrable with laurel. Below the firs glorious hardwood trees cover the mountain-sides, the ravines, and the valleys, their intermingling hues of green blended and lost in tremendous depths of blue or purple spaces.
The view from the summit, off over the ocean of land that rolls in stormy waves to the far horizon, is stupendous. Beyond the impressive and dark masses of the near heights, the great mountains of the region, from the Grandfather to the Smokies, crowd the scene, melting as they recede into blue and misty shapes. Past the strong headlands of Craggy and the Blue Ridge, the mountains towards the south subside to rise again in far blue domes and pinnacles. Cultivated valleys, beautiful balds, uprising slopes, long curving lines, overlapping summits, it is difficult to disengage individual forms from the wonderfully blended whole. And here as elsewhere that which most moves the senses is the sweep of the near majestic slopes down into the deep blue spaces.
The cave near the top of the mountain is formed by an overhanging ledge, and here it is customary, for those wishing to watch the sunrise from the summit, to spend the night. And it is worth the effort, even if one only sees the mountains emerge from the clouds for a moment to be again swallowed up by them, for it is seldom that the visitor gets more than a glimpse of the whole world at one time, from Mitchell's cloud-capped peak. It was in this cave on top of Mount Mitchell that one once arrived in a pouring rain, after a perilous climb up the eastern slope, to find, as sole trace of former visitors, a little can partly full of condensed milk, which saved, no one's own life, but that of a young squirrel rescued on the way up, and who became the hero of many pleasant subsequent adventures.
The Black Mountain Country is very wild, and also very beautiful, the ascent of Mount Mitchell being but one of many reasons for going there. The streams are crystal clear, and everywhere picturesque houses are hidden away in the coves and valleys from which one gets superb views of the cloud-capped mountains that lie on all sides. There is no more romantically beautiful valley in the mountains than that of Cane River, which, in its upper part, is over three thousand feet high, and nowhere falls below twenty-five hundred feet. It runs along the whole western base of the Black Mountain Range, and from it one sees round-pointed mountains delightfully grouped in the landscape, and quaint houses placed in a superb setting of moun- tains and streams. Cane River is named from the heavy canebrakes that clothe its banks in places, supplying fishpoles, pipestems, and reeds for the loom, but the river valley is more note& for the products of its farms - grain, grass, and apples. No one can visit this region in the summertime without noticing the orchards loaded with handsome apples, fruit of so fine a quality that it took a prize at the Paris Exposition, the people tell you with pride. The land in the Cane River Valley is valuable, not only because it is fertile, but because the people love it so. One man we were told refused a hundred dollars an acre for his farm because "he was that foolish over it." And the inhabitants of the valley are fine and friendly, as you would expect of people who so love their homes.
Up Cattail Branch, and doubtless elsewhere, you can yet find men able to fell a tree and with the primitive whipsaw convert it into boards on the spot, and in the Black Mountain country one has seen a man sitting under a tree in front of his house shaving shingles by hand, those broad, strong shingles that add so much to the picturesqueness of a log house, and that last forever.
As you drive on down Cane River, now along the bank, now crossing a wide ford, you see a village ahead of you very beautifully placed in an opening between surrounding mountains. This is Burnsville, one of the most important and interesting mountain villages north of Asheville. Here are schools as well as hotels, and from points in and near the village are superb views of the high mountains. Within a short time Burnsville has come into easy communication with the outer world by way of the railroad that crosses the mountains a few miles to the north of here, and it is safe to predict that this gem of mountains will not be overlooked by those who on the way with money and love and knowledge to help transform the wilderness for the few into an earthly paradise for the many.