The interest of the staircase we have run up depends greatly on its pioneer character.  No mountain-chain had been crossed by a locomotive before the Alleghanies were outraged, as we see them, here and by this track.  As the railroad we follow was the first to take existence in this country, excepting some short mining roads, so the grade here used was the first of equal steepness, saving on some English roads of inferior length and no mountainous prestige.  Here the engineer, like Van Arnburgh in the lion’s den, first planted his conqueror’s foot upon the mane of the wilderness; and ’in this spot modern science first claimed the right to reapply that grand word of a French monarch, “Il n’y a plus de Pyrenees!”

[Illustration:  VALLEY FALLS, WEST VIRGINIA.]

We are on the crest of the Alleghanies.  On either side of the mountain-pass we have threaded rise the higher summits of the range; but, though we seem from the configuration of the land to be in a valley, we are met at every turn by the indications familiar to mountain-tops—­indications that are not without a special desolation and pathos.  Though all is green with summer, we can see that the vegetation has had a dolorous struggle for existence, and that the triumph of certain sparse trees here and there is but the survival of the strongest.  They stand scattered and scraggy, like individual bristles on a bald pate.  Their spring has been borrowed from summer, for the leafage here does not begin until late in June.  The whole scenery seems to array itself for the tourist like a country wife, with many an incompleteness in its toilet, and with a kind of haggard apology for being late.  Rough log-houses stand here and there among the laurels.  The tanned gentlemen standing about look like California miners, as you see them in the illustrations to Bret Harte’s stories.  Through this landscape, roughly blocked out, and covered still with Nature’s chips and shavings—­and seeming for that very reason singularly fresh and close to her mighty hand—­we fly for twenty miles.  We are still ascending, and the true apex of our path is only reached at the twentieth.  This was the climax which poet Willis came out to reach in a spirit of intense curiosity, intent to peer over and see what was on the other side of the mountains, and with some idea, as he says, of hanging his hat on the evening star.  His disgust, as a bard, when he found that the highest point was only named “Cranberry Summit,” was sublime.

“Willis was particularly struck,” said the landlord of the Glades Hotel, “with a quality of whisky we had hereabouts at the time of his visit.  In those days, before the ‘revenue,’ an article of rich corn whisky was made in small quantities by these Maryland farmers.  Mr. Willis found it agree with him particularly well, for it’s as pure as water, and slips through your teeth like flaxseed tea.  I explained to him how it gained in quality by being kept a few years, becoming like noble old brandy.  Mr. Willis was fired with the idea, and took a barrel along home with him, in the ambitious intention of ripening it.  In less than six months,” pursued the Boniface with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, “he sent for another barrel.”