“Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole.”

Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest, and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.  In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States—­a continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or distance.  The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of the atmosphere.  Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day before, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim inaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwest horizon, King’s Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distant one hundred and fifty miles.  To the north Roan falls from this point abruptly, and we had, like a map below us, the low country all the way into Virginia.  The clouds lay like lakes in the valleys of the lower hills, and in every direction were ranges of mountains wooded to the summits.  Off to the west by south lay the Great Smoky Mountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.

Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged to contrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills.  The rock here is a sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite.  And all the hills are tree-covered.  To many this clothing of verdure is most restful and pleasing.  I missed the sharp outlines, the delicate artistic sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granite peaks and ridges, with the purple and violet color of the northern mountains, and which it seems to me that limestone and granite formations give.  There are none of the great gorges and awful abysses of the White Mountains, both valleys and mountains here being more uniform in outline.  There are few precipices and jutting crags, and less is visible of the giant ribs and bones of the planet.

Yet Roan is a noble mountain.  A lady from Tennessee asked me if I had ever seen anything to compare with it—­she thought there could be nothing in the world.  One has to dodge this sort of question in the South occasionally, not to offend a just local pride.  It is certainly one of the most habitable of big mountains.  It is roomy on top, there is space to move about without too great fatigue, and one might pleasantly spend a season there, if he had agreeable company and natural tastes.

Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascending on the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain is merely a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which the horses picked their way painfully.  The travelers endeavored to present a dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies who waved good-by from the hotel, as they took their way over the waste and wind-blown declivities, but it was only a show, for the horses would neither caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day) down-hill over the slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderers turned with regret from the society of leisure and persiflage to face the wilderness of Mitchell County.