At ten o’clock the two friends were breakfasting comfortably in the car, and running along down the Cumberland Valley.  What a contrast was this rich country, warm with color and suggestive of abundance, to the pale and scrimped coast land of Maine denuded of its trees!  By afternoon they were far down the east valley of the Shenandoah, between the Blue Ridge and the Massanutten range, in a country broken, picturesque, fertile, so attractive that they wondered there were so few villages on the route, and only now and then a cheap shanty in sight; and crossing the divide to the waters of the James, at sundown, in the midst of a splendid effect of mountains and clouds in a thunderstorm, they came to Natural Bridge station, where a coach awaited them.

This was old ground to King, who had been telling the artist that the two natural objects east of the Rocky Mountains that he thought entitled to the epithet “sublime” were Niagara Falls and the Natural Bridge; and as for scenery, he did not know of any more noble and refined than this region of the Blue Ridge.  Take away the Bridge altogether, which is a mere freak, and the place would still possess, he said, a charm unique.  Since the enlargement of hotel facilities and the conversion of this princely domain into a grand park, it has become a favorite summer resort.  The gorge of the Bridge is a botanical storehouse, greater variety of evergreens cannot be found together anywhere else in the country, and the hills are still clad with stately forests.  In opening drives, and cutting roads and vistas to give views, the proprietor has shown a skill and taste in dealing with natural resources, both in regard to form and the development of contrasts of color in foliage, which are rare in landscape gardening on this side of the Atlantic.  Here is the highest part of the Blue Ridge, and from the gentle summit of Mount Jefferson the spectator has in view a hundred miles of this remarkable range, this ribbed mountain structure, which always wears a mantle of beauty, changeable purple and violet.

After supper there was an illumination of the cascade, and the ancient gnarled arbor-vita:  trees that lean over it-perhaps the largest known specimens of this species-of the gorge and the Bridge.  Nature is apt to be belittled by this sort of display, but the noble dignity of the vast arch of stone was superior to this trifling, and even had a sort of mystery added to its imposing grandeur.  It is true that the flaming bonfires and the colored lights and the tiny figures of men and women standing in the gorge within the depth of the arch made the scene theatrical, but it was strange and weird and awful, like the fantasy of a Walpurgis’ Night or a midnight revel in Faust.