From the peak to the Widow Patten’s, where we proposed to pass the night, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, every step of the road bad, in five and a half hours.  Halfway down we came out upon a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house in ruins.  Here had been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war, but now abandoned.  Above it we turned aside for the view from Elizabeth rock, named from the daughter of the proprietor of the hotel, who often sat here, said Big Tom, before she went out of this world.  It is a bold rocky ledge, and the view from it, looking south, is unquestionably the finest, the most pleasing and picture-like, we found in these mountains.  In the foreground is the deep gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite is the great wall of the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most capricious and inexplicable system) making off to the Blacks.  The depth of the gorge, the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the scene to the sunny south made this view both grand and charming.  Nature does not always put the needed dash of poetry into her extensive prospects.

Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashion used to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side through a forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and at length struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, which led us to the first settlement.  Just at night,—­it was nearly seven o’clock,—­we entered one of the most stately forests I have ever seen, and rode for some distance in an alley of rhododendrons that arched overhead and made a bower.  It was like an aisle in a temple; high overhead was the somber, leafy roof, supported by gigantic columns.  Few widows have such an avenue of approach to their domain as the Widow Patten has.

Cheering as this outcome was from the day’s struggle and storm, the Professor seemed sunk in a profound sadness.  The auguries which the Friend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and a royal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind.  “Alas,” he said,

  “Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
   And make me travel forth without my cloak,
   To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
   Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? 
   ’T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
   To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
   For no man well of such a salve can speak
   That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace: 
   Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief: 
   Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.”

“Loss of what?” cried the Friend, as he whipped up his halting steed.

“Loss of self-respect.  I feel humiliated that I consented to climb this mountain.”

“Nonsense!  You’ll live to thank me for it, as the best thing you ever did.  It’s over and done now, and you’ve got it to tell your friends.”