The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountain structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and sitting-room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was welcome.  Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave the occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not unlike that of being at sea.  The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands.  This statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.

The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North Carolina mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in mist; and it would rather rain on them than not.  On the afternoon of our arrival there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky.  The distance was hazy, but the outlines were preserved.  We could see White Top, in Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range; the twin towers of Linville; and the entire range of the Black Mountains, rising from the valley, and apparently lower than we were.  They get the name of Black from the balsams which cover the summits.

The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there, and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in agreeableness.  There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of the virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston; the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the literature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of bright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull day or evening on Roan.  I can fancy, however, that it might tire in time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women’s society.  The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued as Humana, perplexia negligens.  The species is, however, common elsewhere.

The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a thunder-shower.  After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had, but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the day.  Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley.  On the lower mountains, at wide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched cabin and a spot of girdled trees.  A clergyman here, not long ago, undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to them.  In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom, after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray.  She offered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed.  The woman heard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an effort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said: