“Nature has known no change, felt no decay,
For untold ages in this ancient land;
Her dark woods wave, her rivers hold their way,
Majestic as when first from Nature’s hand;
Down the dread depths, as in the dawn of time,
The raging cataracts their waters urge.”
There is no danger in the matter—only the discomfort of being
thoroughly drenched and rendered almost senseless by the volume of
pouring water. I do not hear the conversation—that is reported to me
later—but I have a suspicion of what causes the delay, and I am not
greatly surprised when Charley emerges from behind the fall, bearing
Sylvia’s dripping figure.
“She has fallen into the water!” everybody cries, and we rush toward
the stone on which he places her.
But she does not receive us very graciously. As soon as she is able to
gasp anything, she says:
“Why do you come and stare at me? Of course I am wet, but that is not
terrible. It was my own fault”—Charley’s conscience-stricken expression
of countenance causes this statement, perhaps—“and I shall simply have
to go back to the hotel.”
“Indeed you must!” I say. “Or you will be ill. There is not a dry
thread on you.”
“You must take some brandy at once,” says Eric, producing a flask.
“How on earth did you chance to fall?” asks Mrs. Cardigan.
“I think the sooner you start, and the faster you ride, the better,”
says Mr. Lanier, solicitously.
“Suppose we all go back?” says Eric. “The rain has detained us until
it is late, and the other falls are much more difficult of access than
this one. You will find the bushes—through which you will have to break
in reaching them—very wet; and, altogether, we had better defer the
remainder of the expedition.”
We all agree to this. It _is_ late, it _is_ wet, and Sylvia’s draggled
appearance has a depressing effect upon our spirits. Poor Charley is
evidently a prey to the liveliest sentiments of remorse and regret. He
does not, as usual, assert his right to put Sylvia on her horse, and it
is only after she has been elevated to the saddle by Mr. Lanier that he
rides to her side and says:
“I can’t possibly tell you how sorry I am that I should have been rude
enough to cause your accident. I offer my most sincere apologies.”
“The accident does not matter at all,” replies Sylvia, indifferently.
When Aunt Markham sees this young lady, she is of a different opinion,
and hurries her away to change her dress, swallow hot draughts, and
be coddled generally. In the course of an hour or two, however, she
emerges in as bright looks and bright spirits as ever. I do not think
that she attached any importance to the little scene behind the fall,
or the trenchant monosyllable she was provoked into uttering—but
Charley is of a different mind, and when she appears he is guilty of
one of those acts of folly which even the wisest men commit in such
matters.
“I believe this is a piece of your property—which I have no right to
retain,” he says, coming up to her as she sits on the piazza, with
the rest of the party gathered in a group around, and he detaches
the knot of blue ribbon from his coat and presents it with an air of
overwhelming courtesy.
A quick flush springs to her face. She is hurt and surprised, but few
women are not able to hold their own when placed on the defensive like
this. The eyes which glance up at him have a gleam in their soft depths.
“Yes, it is mine,” she answers quietly. “Thank you for restoring it.”
Then she takes the ribbon, fastens it carelessly on the side of her
“bonny-brown hair,” and turns to Mr. Lanier with a smile.
“Is it the worse for passing a night on Castle Rock?” she asks.
“Not when _you_ wear it,” he answers, a flash of brightness lighting up
his face.
After this, a return of hope plainly comes to this gentleman, and
once more he is Sylvia’s loyal slave. I do not wish to say that she
absolutely encourages him, but with Charley on one side to enrage, and
Mrs. Cardigan on the other to disappoint, the temptation to do so is
strong—and not altogether resisted.
The next day we make an expedition to the other falls, and find their
beauty worthy of all praise. Where the High Fall leaps in splendor
through the dark-green woods that echo its reverberating roar, and
where the Triple Falls sweep in white cascades over successive ledges
of rock, one feels that “their colors and their forms” are indeed
“An appetite—a feeling and a love
That has no need of a remoter charm.”
Along all its short course the Little River is a marvel of beauty, and
the day cannot be far distant when tourists will seek its picturesque
banks as they now seek better-known places. Indeed, nothing save its
remoteness from railroads—remoteness that would gladden Mr. Ruskin’s
soul, but which has altogether a contrary effect on the souls of the
inhabitants of the country—can account for the fact that this region
is now so little frequented. To artists it offers a field wild, fresh,
infinitely varied, and in some aspects scarcely less grand than that
Western scenery which many of them cross a continent to study; while
to sportsmen its attractions are not less great. The speckled trout
fill its streams, deer still abound in the coverts of its forests, and
he who chooses to seek the wild fastnesses of the Black and the Balsam
Mountains may carry back bear-skins and bear-stories in memory of his
adventures.
We spend several days at Buck Forest, and there are other hunts, of
which the result is different from those two already recorded. No
less than three deer “die the death” out in the dewy haunts of the
greenwood—two beautiful does and a fine stag. Eric, who shot the last,
presents its antlers to Mrs. Cardigan, in fulfillment of his promise.
Sylvia, however, does not obtain the fawn for which she expressed a
desire. But for that unlucky hour at the Bridal-Veil Fall, she might
perhaps obtain it; but Charley, who alone is likely to take any degree
of trouble to gratify her, has since then stood resolutely on his
dignity, and informs me confidentially that she has no heart—only a
large amount of vanity, which he has sternly determined to gratify no
longer.
I laugh (to myself) over this statement. I have heard something like
it on several similar occasions, though I am forced to admit that the
breach between these two seems wider and more serious now than ever
before. They treat each other with a politeness that is overpowering,
but their merry warfare of words is at an end, and on our various
expeditions it is no longer Charley who rides at Sylvia’s side, but
always Mr. Lanier.
At the end of a week we go to Cæsar’s Head, which place of resort
lies over the border of South Carolina. Four thousand five hundred
feet above the ocean stands the mountain—an outlying spur of the Blue
Ridge—which bears this name because on the abrupt precipice that
forms its southern face the jagged rocks wear the rude outline of a
profile, supposed (no man can say why) to resemble that of Cæsar. On
the summit, open to all the airs of heaven, stands an excellent hotel,
where from June to October a stream of visitors come and go.
From Buck Forest to this point the distance is short. We leave the
former place in the afternoon, and drive five or six miles along the
road leading to Jones’s Gap, the principal highway between Transylvania
and Upper South Carolina. This gap is said to be one of the most
beautiful and the most easily crossed along the line of the Blue Ridge;
but we do not follow it far enough to judge how well its reputation is
deserved. By the time that we are fairly hemmed between the walls of
the gorge, a road turns off, ascending a mountain, and a sign-board
says “Cæsar’s Head.”
We follow the road and wind upward for two or three miles, with
greenness surrounding us, through which scarcely a ray of sunlight
steals, with the musical dash of unseen water in the glens below, with
feathery ferns lining the road, and glancing streams dashing brightly
across our way. So gradual is the ascent that there is very little
strain on the horses, and now and then there are level stretches where
they trot easily, and the equestrians canter so far ahead that we only
catch an occasional gleam of Sylvia’s blue veil through the interlacing
foliage.
As we mount higher, the sun’s level lines of gold stream into the
forest-depths and make a quivering mystery of delight through the
wide-spreading boughs, among the brown, mossy boles, in the beds of
tall ferns—the woods seem spellbound into silence by the mellow glory
of the waning afternoon. Involuntarily Eric murmurs those lines which,
old and well known as they are, some days of this matchless season
bring ever to one’s mind:
“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky!
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.”
“I call it insufferable to remind one of that fact,” says Mrs.
Cardigan. “As if we did not know it, or as if we cared to remember it!”
“Or as if to-morrow would not be as lovely,” I chime in. “I hope nobody
will suggest that, on top of this mountain, days are ever other than
perfect. Ah, what a view!—Eric, stop the horses, pray, and tell us what
it is.”
Eric stops the horses obediently, and with one accord we rise in the
carriage. We have not attained the summit yet, but we feel that it can
scarcely offer anything finer than this view of heights so near at hand
that their massive proportions stand fully revealed, draped in the
softest haze. One bare rock of immense size towers among the wooded
sides, and beyond is a glimpse—only a glimpse—of a marvelous gleaming
expanse, stretching away until it melts into the sky.
“How like the ocean!” says Aunt Markham, alluding to the last. “There
surely _must_ be ships out yonder.—Alice, we have seen nothing so
beautiful as this!”
I do not contradict the assertion, nor remind the speaker that she
has not had the advantage of standing on the Black Mountain. I, too,
am more than half inclined to think that we have seen nothing more
beautiful in all our wanderings.
“What is that rock, Eric?” I ask.
“It is the Table Rock,” Eric answers. “Apart from the mountain on which
it rests, it is five hundred feet in height.”
“There seems to have been a difficulty about finding names for all
these places,” says Mrs. Cardigan. “Else why should the nomenclature be
so much repeated? This is not the Table Rock we saw from the Black—”
“Hardly,” Eric laughs. “That was on the eastern side of the Blue
Ridge, in North Carolina; this is on the southern side, in South
Carolina.—Yes, we are coming!”
This is addressed to Charley, who has cantered back to beckon us
forward. “You’ll miss the sunset from the Head if you don’t come on!”
he shouts. “We are three-quarters of a mile from the top yet.”
So, we go on, and before long Eric turns the horses from the road,
drives up an eminence, and stops.
“Here is the Head,” he says. “You must go out on the rock for the view.”
It is only a few yards from the place where he has paused to the
jutting rock, scattered over with gray bowlders, which is the point of
lookout. We go to the verge and pause—mute. What can one say of such a
prospect as this which is spread before us unto the “fine faint limit
of the bounding day”?
At our feet the mountain drops in a sheer descent of eighteen hundred
or two thousand feet to the plain below, and, looking immediately
down, the eye rests on a dark-green sea—the top of a dense forest,
which clothes its base and spreads across a wild gorge to the chain of
mountains which bounds the view on the right.
These are the mountains of which we have already had a partial view,
and we see them now in all their grandeur, with the delicate haze
wrapping them like smoke, and deepening on each successive height
as they recede away. South and east, with counties spread out like
pleasure-grounds, and hills standing like mounds, the plains of South
Carolina extend and fade into azure distance. There is here no line
of trending hills, however remote, to form a boundary upon which the
eye can rest. On the contrary, we feel that only the infirmity of our
vision keeps us from seeing Charleston itself down by the sea, as our
gaze is lost in the glimmering mist where land and sky blend together,
while over the whole wide scene a magical blue light hangs like a
glamour of enchantment.
“It is the dizziest place I ever looked over,” says Mr. Lanier,
retreating from the edge of the precipice. “Heavens! if a man were to
fall!—Upon my word, Kenyon, unless your life is insured, I would advise
you to be a little more cautious.”
But Charley—who is seated on the verge, with his legs dangling
over—only laughs.
“My life is not insured, but I don’t mean to furnish you with a
sensation by falling over,” he says.—“I’ve been all through this forest
below here deer-hunting,” he goes on, addressing the rest of us. “You
can imagine what kind of a place it is from its name—‘The Dismal.’”
“All of you stop talking for a minute,” says Eric, “and listen. Do you
hear anything like the faint roar of distant waters?”
We are all silent for the space of a minute. Then Mrs. Cardigan says:
“_I_ hear it—it is wind among the trees below, is it not?”
“I hear it also,” says Sylvia, “and it seems to come from there.” She
points as she speaks to a deep, dark ravine between the mountains.
“You are right,” says Eric. “It _does_ come from there, and it is the
voice of the Saluda Falls. In some states of the atmosphere you can
hear it much more distinctly than we do now. Yet, as the crow flies,
the falls are at least three miles distant.”
“And as the crow _doesn’t_ fly, they are considerably farther,” remarks
Charley. “I give you all warning that, if you let Eric persuade you to
go there, you may prepare for the roughest time you have had yet. The
road is dreadful as far as it extends, but after you leave it you have
to climb a thousand feet up and seven hundred down before you reach the
falls.”
“Can’t one go on horseback?” asks Sylvia.
“No—the horse was never born that could climb where you have to go!”
This does not sound very encouraging; but after all our experiences
we do not suffer ourselves to be dismayed by the prospect of a little
hard climbing. We only smile, and, seated on our rocky height, with
the world spread far below, watch the beautiful evening lights, the
wonderful soft shadows, shift and play over the great landscape, with
its ineffably distant horizon.
[Illustration: “‘It is the dizziest place I ever looked over.’”]
All around this horizon, as the sun drops behind the western mountains,
there comes a radiant, luminous glow—opalescent as the sea appears at
sunset or sunrise. I have never seen any other place which abounds
in such marvelous atmospheric effects as Cæsar’s Head, and we are
fortunate in witnessing some of the loveliest of these. Beyond the
mountains on our right, a farther pale-blue range extends, and behind
these the sun goes down in glory, turning the heights to violet, edged
by burning gold. It is not here that the chief beauty of the prospect
lies, however, but on the wide plain, with its changing tints, and the
transparent shimmering belt of color that encircles its vast line of
sky.
It is difficult to make up our minds to leave the scene even after the
dusk shades of twilight have begun to deepen over it, and Eric is at
last compelled to order us peremptorily to the carriages. It is a short
drive to the hotel, which stands on the crest of the mountain, with
the wonderful view visible from all its windows—a place of which to
dream, for rest, or work, or, best of all, for the recovery of lost or
shattered health.
“The air is like a tonic,” people say who come here and, instead
of leaving after a hurried glance at the prospect, are wise enough
to remain for days or weeks; yet, in truth, no tonic was ever
compounded of half the life-restoring properties which it possesses.
For lightness, dryness, and purity, it cannot be surpassed, while it
stimulates like an elixir of vitality, and is more brilliant in its
clearness than can be imagined.
How cordially we are received by the pleasant host and hostess, and how
well entertained, it is not easy to relate—but are not these things
written in the book of memory? Truly there are some charming havens
along the journey which men call life; and this mountain-lodge is one
of them. Aunt Markham is pleased at once by the spotless cleanliness
which distinguishes the house, the excellent and abundant table, the
ordering of the whole _ménage_.
“I have been in many more pretentious hotels, where things were not
half so well managed,” she says.
We find a small company—small, because the cool September nights, which
make us draw gladly round the blazing fires, are driving foolish people
down to the low-country, where heat and dust still reign supreme. It is
gratifying to relate that among this company are the friends whom Mrs.
Cardigan expected to meet, and concerning whom some of us have been
incredulous. Mr. Charlton and his party are gone, and Sylvia laughs
when she learns that the Duponts have been here.
“Fancy,” she says to me, “they passed Buck Forest the day we ascended
Rich Mountain! Don’t you _know_ that, if they had imagined for a moment
that we were there, they would have stopped?”
“It is a pity they did not,” I answer. “Adèle might have soothed
Charley’s feelings, while Monsieur Victor could have played third
string to your bow.”
She does not notice this remark.
“I wonder where they can have been all this time?” she says, and turns
back to our hostess to inquire.
When we separate for the night, Eric asks if we wish to be waked for
the sunrise the next morning, and receives an uncompromising negative
in reply. We do not gain very much by our refusal, however, since a
party of more enterprising tourists are determined not to miss the
phenomenon; and they walk about the passages at daylight, knock loudly
on each other’s doors, and call upon Jane, and Eliza, and Caroline, to
wake, in tones which rouse not only Jane, Eliza, and Caroline, but also
every one else in the house.
At breakfast Aunt Markham asks what are our plans for the day.
“Our plans for the day,” replies Sylvia, “may be briefly defined. We
intend to go to the Head, and—sit there. That view is like the ocean in
two respects: first, because of its immensity; secondly, because I feel
sure one can never weary of it.”
“You are right,” says a lady across the table. “I have been here six
weeks, and I do not feel any more as if I had exhausted it than I did
on the first day I came.”
After breakfast we carry out this programme: we go to the Head, and sit
there. It is the softest and fairest of half-summer, half-autumn days,
with fleecy clouds floating in battalions across the sky, and flinging
their shadows over the far-stretching prospect. The winds which come to
us are laden with freshness, and the varying lights and shades upon the
scene make a picture of which it is impossible to weary. We spend the
morning in the idlest fashion, climbing over the rocks, seeking shelter
from the sun in the cool shade of that cave-like cleft which forms
Cæsar’s mouth, sketching a little, talking a great deal.
“I realize now,” says Sylvia, “how an eagle feels when—
‘Clasping the crag with hookèd hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.’”
“I should not be surprised if some one of this party would add to the
resemblance by falling like a thunderbolt,” says Mr. Lanier, uneasily.
“You must all have very steady heads to climb so recklessly over these
rocks. I confess it makes me exceedingly giddy.”
“Then I should strongly advise you to choose the safe obscurity of
the background,” says Charley. “This is not a height to be tampered
with.—Hallo, Rupert! what are you about?”
“Only thinking of climbing this tree.”
The tree in question grows on one of the escarpments of the precipice,
and looks as if it would be a dizzy perch for an owl. Eric walks up to
the young gentleman who regards it with climbing intentions, collars,
shakes, and leads him away.
“Don’t let me hear of your doing so foolhardy a thing!” he says. “I
hoped you had more sense.”
“What an admirable place this would have been for some Indian lovers
to put an end to their existence!” says Mrs. Cardigan. “I wonder they
never thought of leaping from it!”
“What a blessing that they did not!” says Sylvia.
Having devoted the morning to the Head, we are conducted by our host
in the afternoon to a place a mile or two distant, called Stony
Point, from which we have an admirable view of the whole face of the
mountain as it sweeps round in a horseshoe curve, enclosing in its
arms that dark forest known as the Dismal. We realize its grandeur
more strikingly from this point than even from the summit, marking
distinctly its great face of rock extending for miles, and seeing
that on its cliff of lookout a human figure dwindles to a hardly
discernible pigmy. Immediately in front of us, as we sit enthroned on
the broken masses of stone from which the point takes its name, lies
the wild Saluda Gorge and the bold face of Table Rock, with a plumage
of dense forest spread over all the intervening space, and ravishing
tints of softest blues and purples ranging in hue from faintest mauve
to richest royal, on the splendid mountain-chain. We are on the left of
the Head, and, when we turn our gaze southward, the gleaming world of
the low-country lies below us, the westering sun shining on the roofs
and spires of Greenville, which is the most considerable town that we
overlook.
[Illustration: “‘Don’t let me hear of our doing so foolhardy a thing!’”]
The next day Eric announces that we must go to Saluda Falls.
“It is our most important expedition,” he says. “After that we can
take our time in exploring the different points of interest around the
mountains.”
Nobody demurs, so the wagon and the saddle-horses are ordered.
“It is useless to think of taking the phaeton over _that_ road,” Eric
says, in a tone which is calculated to give one a very poor opinion of
the road indeed.
Sylvia, Charley, and Mr. Lanier are, as usual, on horseback. Mrs.
Cardigan sits by Eric on the seat of the wagon, while chairs are
placed behind, in country fashion, for Rupert and myself. Now, if
anyone wishes to test the extreme of discomfort, let him attempt
to sit on a chair in an open vehicle of such shallow depth that it
amounts to no depth at all, and be conveyed over the steepest and
roughest of mountain roads. We endure it for a little while, then, as
a particularly steep descent and sharp curve appears before us, Rupert
makes a flying leap and alights on the ground.
“That is preferable to being pitched out, as I should have been,” he
says. “You had better follow my example, Alice.”
I decide before long that I will do so, for the road is simply terrible.
“It was only made last year,” Eric says, by way of apology; and Mrs.
Cardigan raises her eyebrows as she asks, “Do you call it made now?”
[Illustration: The New Road.]
In fact, it is _not_ made, farther than that the trees and undergrowth
have been cut away sufficiently to admit of the passage of a vehicle—if
passage it can be called when the wheels graze the trunks of trees that
line the way, when the turns are so abrupt that only the most careful
driving could save any wheeled conveyance from an overturn, and only
the best of springs stand the constant jolting over stumps, and roots,
and stones. Presently we reach a point where the wagon must be left,
and where the equestrians are told to dismount.
“The mountain behind Paint Rock was child’s-play to that!” says Mrs.
Cardigan, addressing Sylvia, and pointing to the height over which we
have to climb before we can obtain a glimpse of the falls.
“Not exactly child’s-play—only good training,” answers Sylvia, taking
off the water-proof which served her as a riding-skirt and throwing it
over her saddle.
Certainly Charley was right. Nothing which we have been called upon to
undertake before can equal this which we attempt now. Of the nearly
perpendicular ascent over rocks and through dense undergrowth, language
fails me to speak. Now and then—breathless with climbing, disordered in
attire—we pause and ask each other if anything that may be in store for
us can possibly repay us for such an exertion.
It is the highest possible tribute to the falls that we answer this
question unhesitatingly in the affirmative when we finally reach the
point from which their beauty fully bursts upon us.
A stream of flashing silver, of white foam and misty spray, leaps in
successive cascades through a world of green foliage, over massive
walls of rock, down a mountain gorge hundreds of feet in depth, and,
not content with this journey from the clouds, tumbles, whirls, and
surges over the rocks as it pours through the ravine.
The magnificence of the scene almost takes away our breath, and hushes
all terms of admiration on our lips. There are no words which would not
sound trivial and impertinent with the thunder of the cataract in our
ears and its tumultuous splendor before our eyes. We looked for nothing
half so beautiful, half so majestic in its beauty, as this, and we feel
as if we had wandered carelessly into a sanctuary. All around tower the
mountains, clothed to their crests with virgin forest. Far up—where the
green line of trees meets the blue of the overarching sky—we catch the
first silvery gleam of the water as it plunges downward, and we mark
it leap from point to point, over crags, and precipices, and masses of
rock, until it reaches the place where we stand.
“The height of the entire fall is seven hundred feet,” says Eric, when
he thinks that we are all as much impressed as can be desired. “And the
Veil yonder—that lovely cascade about midway—is one hundred and fifty.”
“Can one go behind that Veil?” asks Mrs. Cardigan, with a mischievous
glance at Sylvia.
“One can go behind it with a pretty good certainty of being well
wetted,” Charley answers. “I’ll take you up there if you say so.”
“I believe I would rather have a more careful guide,” she says,
glancing at Mr. Lanier.
But that gentleman pays no heed to the mute appeal. He is not fond
of unnecessary climbing, and has already remarked that he thinks a
waterfall can be best seen from the foot of it.
“One appreciates its height then,” he says, “and really, if there was a
greater volume of water here, this would be one of the finest cataracts
in the country.”
“I do not think that anything could make it more beautiful,” says
Sylvia, with her head thrown back, and her gaze fastened on the far
depths, where, over battlemented rocks, and amid a wealth of verdure,
the flashing water leaps, sending its spray and voice heavenward.
And in this opinion we agree. Nothing could add to the grandeur of this
gorge, into which the slanting sunbeams scarcely pierce, and where,
amid the misty gloom, the voice of the stream unceasingly sounds,
telling to the silent earth some secret whispered first on that ancient
day when time itself had birth. We linger for hours, and at last tear
ourselves reluctantly away—pausing for one last glance after another at
the plunging water, the abounding foliage, and picturesque rocks, which
form a scene so beautiful that the most insensible sight-seer could
never forget it.