While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of “Jane” and “Eliza,” the photographs of Confederate boys, who had never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union.  Madame Sherrill, who carries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of strong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort in the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a discouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.

The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan’s, nine miles, is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque, following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it, but roaring, rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and then tumbling down in rapids.  The noisy stream made the ride animated, and an occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a schoolhouse, a store with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the hitching rails, gave the Professor opportunity for remarks upon the value of life under such circumstances.

The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to the uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices.  The inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally wooded.  I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common.  It is only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable.  About a mile above judge Logan’s we caught sight, through the trees, of the famous waterfall.  From the top of the high ridge on the right, a nearly perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks and is lost in the forest.  We could see nearly the whole of it, at a great height above us, on the opposite side of the river, and it would require an hour’s stiff climb to reach its foot.  From where we viewed it, it seemed a slender and not very important, but certainly a very beautiful cascade, a band of silver in the mass of green foliage.  The fall is said to be 1400 feet.  Our colonel insists that it is a thousand.  It may be, but the valley where we stood is at least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could not believe that the ridge over which the water pours is much higher than 3000 feet, and the length of the fall certainly did not appear to be a quarter of the height of the mountain from our point of observation.  But we had no desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we found that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as a personal grievance.  Mr. Logan once performed the functions of local judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises now in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wife is postmistress.  His house of entertainment is at the bottom of the valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay, although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.