“Oh, set us down together in some place
Where not a voice can break our heaven of bliss,
Where naught but rocks and I can see her face
Softening beneath the marvel of thy grace,
Where not a foot our vanished steps can track—
The golden age, the golden age come back!”
“To-day,” says Eric, when we start from Flat Rock the next morning, “we
shall cross the Blue Ridge, and go down to the lower world again.”
“How do we cross?” asks Aunt Markham. “By Hickory-Nut Gap?”
“Partly,” he answers. “We go through the Reedy Patch Gap, and come into
Hickory-Nut about a third of the way down—high enough for the grandest
scenery, however.”
“If you wish to appreciate the elevation of the country,” says
Charley, “observe that in approaching the Blue Ridge we shall not rise
at all—but simply travel on a level until we begin to descend the
mountains.”
We accordingly observe this—which, indeed, could hardly fail to be
observed by anyone who either enters or leaves the transmontane region.
As we bowl along the excellent roads of Henderson, with the blue chain
of mountains directly in our front, we are hardly able to realize that
when evening comes they will be no longer in front, but behind us.
The day is beautiful, an autumn crispness in the air, an autumn glory
in the streaming sunshine and richly-tinted foliage. We look wistfully
at the lovely landscape as we travel onward. There is something of
sadness in saying farewell to this fair land, in ending the pleasant
Bohemian existence of the past two months, and turning our faces toward
the ordinary life which awaits us in the world below. But we remind
each other that all summer holidays must end, and that ours has been a
decided success. It is true that we are all a half-dozen shades darker
than when we left home, but complexions are not the only things in the
world to be considered, and we have gained health and strength enough
to make us regard tan and sunburn with philosophy.
“How differently we should feel if we had gone to a fashionable
watering-place!” says Sylvia. “What unsatisfactory sensations of
the _vanitas vanitatum_ order one has at the fag end of a season of
that description! One has spent a great deal of money, ruined any
number of dresses, danced oneself thin, conceived a disgust for one’s
fellow-creatures—and had hardly three days of real enjoyment to pay for
it all!—while in Arcadia one spends little money, needs few dresses,
and enjoys oneself to the top of one’s bent! Hereafter I shall throw my
cap in the air and cry ‘_Vive la Nature!_’”
“Yes,” asserts Charley. “No doubt you will—for a month. We shall see
whether your pastoral fever lasts till next summer. I prophesy that it
will have died into ashes before that time.”
“Which means, I suppose, that you are already anxious to leave me
behind when you take your hunting-trip to the Balsam,” she retorts.
“But I mean to go! I give you warning of that.”
“‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’” he replies, with a
smile.
In profitable conversation like this we pass the time as we travel on,
drawing nearer and nearer to the mountains, which begin to lose their
blue tint and loom in dark, rugged masses before us. Presently we
enter fairly among them, and Eric says, as a clear, rapid stream comes
dashing in turbulent beauty across our path:
“This is Reedy Patch Creek. We shall cross it more than a dozen times
before we reach the Broad River, to which it is bound.”
“Pray tell me,” says Aunt Markham, “what is the origin of this name?
Reedy Patch—how absurd!”
“It seems so,” says Eric. “I can throw no light on its origin, further
than that at some remote time there must have been a patch of reeds
somewhere about here.”
Like all gaps, this Reedy Patch is a narrow defile, winding through the
heart of the mountains which hem it on each side, and follows closely
the impetuous stream already mentioned. The latter pours downward in
foaming rapids and cascades, and, although forced once to turn a rude
mill, for the remainder of its way dashes uncurbed over the rocks that
strew its course, and crosses our road again and again, so that we have
the music of its water first on one side and then on the other. The way
is wild and beautiful, but the road is the worst which we have found in
all our wanderings. Apart from its natural disadvantages, it has been
badly washed by the heavy August rains, and altogether it is so hard on
the vehicles that John shakes his head forebodingly, and, whenever we
stop to water the horses, he goes round and shakes all the wheels.
“Anything wrong?” asks Eric, turning to watch this operation.
“No, sir, nothing wrong _yit_,” answers John, with a strong emphasis on
the last word. “One of these wheels is pretty weak, though, and I don’t
think it’ll go much farther.”
“It will carry us down the mountain, won’t it?”
“It _may_,” returns John, cautiously, “if the roads git better. _These_
is enough to tare a carriage to pieces.”
“The roads will get better when we enter Hickory-Nut,” says Rupert.
“Don’t you remember how good they were as we came up?”
“There’s bin some heavy freshets since then,” observes John, darkly.
In consequence of the weak wheel, a good deal of walking is done by
the occupants of the carriage, over those parts of the road which are
particularly bad. We travel at such a slow rate of progress that our
passage through the gap seems endless. As we advance the scene grows
wilder and more beautiful with every step. Great mountains inclose us
on all sides—their tall crests towering against the blue sky, and their
forest-clad sides burning with the gorgeous tints of autumn.
Rough though the road may be, this part of the journey is a delight.
The encircling hills “clasp us in their deep repose,” as they stand
before, around, behind— the farther ones wearing a faint, mauve-like
haze over their mighty shoulders. We are in the heart of the Blue
Ridge, and its heights hem us like the serried ranks of an army.
“Mountains are beautiful when one views them from a distance,” says
Sylvia, “but they are sublime when one is among them! Nothing else in
the world impresses one with such a sense of steadfast, unchangeable
grandeur. The sea shifts: _these_ never do. One finds one’s self
repeating all the time, ‘Fixed as the everlasting hills.’”
“But they are not everlasting,” says Eric. “Geology—”
At that word Sylvia stops her ears.
“I don’t believe in geology,” she says. “I believe in common-sense
and—poetry.”
“Two rather incompatible things, are they not?” asks Charley.
“We shall be at the foot of the Bald—the shaking Bald—this evening,”
says Rupert. “I wish it would give us a few shakes.”
“If it did you would soon become anxious to leave the neighborhood,”
says Eric. “The shakes of the Bald are not trifling. I was fortunate
enough to be on the mountain when one of them occurred. It was the most
severe earthquake I ever felt, accompanied by a rumbling noise unlike
any other noise that I ever heard.”
“Earthquakes are common in this region, are they not?” asks Sylvia.
“Not exactly common, but they occur at intervals. The earliest Cherokee
traditions give accounts of them, and they have often occurred since
white men have held the country. None, however, have been so long
continued as the shocks of the Bald—which rumbled and shook with slight
intermissions for more than a month.”
“Whereupon all the people who lived on or near the mountain forsook
their business, and became extremely pious—until the rumbling and
shaking ceased,” says Charley. “Then they forgot their piety with as
much celerity as they had gained it.”
“A certain Methodist preacher is said to be accountable for the whole
excitement,” says Eric. “Being disgusted with the hard-heartedness of
his flock, and their insensibility to all his appeals, he desired the
Lord to make the mountain move beneath their feet. Shortly afterward
the mountain _did_ move, and a gratifying number of instantaneous
conversions took place.”
We are strolling along the road while we talk in this manner, the
carriages being some distance ahead, with Aunt Markham’s bonnet nodding
to and fro, in testimony to the roughness of the road, over the lowered
phaeton top. Far above us rise the mountains, beside us brawls the
stream, on the banks which inclose our way glowing leaves shine,
the delicate fronds of ferns appear, tiny streams trickle—there is
perpetual moisture and perpetual shade.
Presently the carriage stops: Aunt Markham turns and beckons us to draw
near.
“It strikes me that we had better take our luncheon,” she says.
“Not yet,” answers Eric. “It is early, and we have not passed through
the Reedy Patch. Wait till we reach the Broad River, where we enter
Hickory-Nut Gap. That will be a good halting-place, and there is a
house near there where John can buy something for the horses.”
“Very well,” says Aunt Markham, resignedly, “but it is my opinion that
we shall spend the day passing through Reedy Patch.”
“I hope not,” says Eric. “Now, Alice, you had better enter the carriage
for a while.”
I enter accordingly, and we press on more rapidly for the next mile or
two. The descent is now very marked, and before long we cross Reedy
Patch Creek for the last time, and reach the Broad River.
Why this stream should have such a misnomer attached to it no one can
say— further than that the early settlers of the country (in a spirit
of irony, it is supposed) named all the narrow rivers they could find
“Broad.”
“First Broad and Second Broad are below here,” says Eric. “This is
properly Rocky Broad—and you must admit that the first part of the name
is well bestowed.”
“We admit that,” says Sylvia, “since there seem to be more rocks than
water in the channel. Is it so along its entire course?”
“It is this way until it leaves the mountains,” says Eric. “It rises
in this gap, and not far above here Hickory-Nut Creek flows into it.
Now we enter the grandest pass in the whole line of the Blue Ridge, and
if you can restrain your anxiety for luncheon a little longer, mother,
we can halt at a delightful wayside spring in the midst of the finest
scenery.”
“I can wait very easily,” says Aunt Markham, who does not fancy this
allusion to her appetite.
So we go on, crossing the river, and keeping it on our right as we turn
down Hickory-Nut Gap. We are not more than three miles from the foot of
the mountains, but along this three miles, as Eric has said, is some of
the finest scenery of the magnificent pass. Much as we have heard of
it, we are almost awestruck by its grandeur.
“Swannanoa is nothing, _nothing_ to this!” cries Sylvia, as we wind
downward, pausing at every few steps.
Indeed, not only Swannanoa Gap, but everything else that we have seen
is dwarfed to comparative insignificance by the majestic beauty that
surrounds us. What was the gorge of the French Broad to these mighty
mountains which rise more than two thousand feet over our heads, and
stand not more than a quarter of a mile apart, while far down in the
green chasm below us the Broad River whirls and foams around its
countless rocks? The day has now reached its zenith, and is perfect in
splendor. Our road, on the eastern side of the gap, is well shaded,
but the sunlight falls broadly on the mass of varied foliage beneath,
bringing out every vivid color and jewel-like tint.
Suddenly Rupert, who is riding in front, halts abruptly and points
across the gorge. The next moment we see what he is indicating. Far up,
over the top of a mountain, a stream of flashing silver falls down the
bare face of a rock, and is lost to sight amid the verdure which meets
it. The sunlight strikes the cascade with dazzling effect, and draws
the arc of a prismatic rainbow upward from its spray.
“That water,” says Eric, “falls three hundred and fifty feet, and most
of it is dissolved into spray before it reaches the bottom of the rock.”
“How high is it above us?” asks Sylvia.
“About nine hundred feet. If we had time, you might climb up to it. I
did so once, but found the ascent very steep. Now see what a superb
mountain stands next! It is like a castle—only no castle was ever half
so grand. And yonder is a glimpse of the Chimney Rock. We shall see it
better as we get farther down.”
We pause, enraptured and overwhelmed. A castle, indeed! What castle
ever built by mortal hands would not seem a flimsy toy beside this
immense mountain, with its sides of solid rock, worn smooth by the
floods of uncounted centuries, and rising sheer and bare for more than
a thousand feet? On one side of this the peculiar rocks which form
the Chimney stand—so high and so apparently toppling that it seems as
if the slightest touch would send them down the precipice which they
overlook.
“Here is the spring where we stop for dinner,” says Eric. “This
arrangement has been a feature of Hickory-Nut Gap from time immemorial.
You find these springs scattered all along the road to the top of the
mountains.”
“How pleasant and Arcadian!” says Sylvia, regarding kindly the
primitive arrangement of which he speaks. A small stream comes
trickling down through mossy rocks, and is conducted into a miniature
trough of bark, through which it flows, and pours from its mouth in a
clear, inviting thread of crystal. On the outstretched bough of a tree
near by a gourd hangs.
“‘Drink, weary pilgrims, drink, and pray’
that we may some time return to this beautiful country,” says Sylvia,
gayly, filling the gourd and offering it to the company.
None of us refuse the pledge. Even Aunt Markham looks on past dangers
and discomforts with philosophy, and declares that she has enjoyed the
expedition very much.
The spot selected for this last of our many wayside dinners is one
of the loveliest points on the gap. The road, which is uniformly
excellent—in this respect a great contrast to the one over Swannanoa—is
here arched with shade through which the warm sunbeams quiver and
dance, and fling capricious shadows on the way. A hundred feet below
the river rushes between a world of picturesque foliage, the changing
tints of which contrast strikingly with the rich green of the pines, as
they lift their tapering crests in all directions. Across the narrow
pass rises the mountain, on one side of which the flashing cascade
falls from its birthplace among the clouds, and on the other the
Chimney Rock leans into sight. Farther up the gorge great hills stand,
which have already drawn about them the blue robes of distance.
It is no wonder that we linger, loath to go down to the lower country
which is now so near. But Eric says at last that we must go on if we
wish to see the Pools. “A visit to them will take us a mile or two out
of our way,” he says, “and the house where I mean to spend the night is
several miles beyond the gap.”
On we go, therefore, and it is but a short distance farther before we
pass between the castellated heights that form the natural gateway of
this most grand of all approaches to our Eden of the Sky. One last
glance up the gorge, already draped in purple and azure, then a sharp
turn of the road, and Hickory-Nut Gap is crossed and left behind us.
It is with an absolute pang that we realize this.
“I feel inclined to turn round and go back,” says Sylvia.
“Keep heart!” says Charley, in a tone of consolation. “I have entered
into negotiations for a tract of land in Transylvania, where I mean to
erect a hunting-lodge, and where any or all of the present company will
be welcome.”
“Are you in earnest?” asks Eric, skeptically. “I have heard nothing of
such negotiations.”
“Probably not,” Charley serenely answers, “since they were conducted
while you were at Cæsar’s Head. I have found a place that I think will
suit me exactly.”
“Charley, you’re a trump!” cries Rupert, enthusiastically. “I’ll spend
every vacation with you!”
“And, unless you object, I’ll go shares in the purchase,” says Eric. “I
was thinking of such a place myself.”
“What is to become of us, Aunt Markham?” demands Sylvia. “We shall
never be able to command an escort for a watering-place again.”
“But I thought you had abjured watering-places?” I observe.
“She abjured them with the saving clause, ‘until I change my mind,’”
Charley remarks.
Not far from the gap we turn to the right, ford the river, and follow
a road which leads immediately along the foot of the mountains. On one
side the latter rise, on the other lies a fertile valley. We skirt the
hills, and reach presently a log-cabin, with its door overrun with
vines, and its tiny garden full of gaudy flowers. A man so tall that he
looks altogether out of proportion with his house comes out and bids us
“drive straight ahead” if we want to find the Pools.
“But, if we drive farther, can we find any place to turn?” Eric asks—a
very important question, since the road is of the narrowest possible
description.
“Oh, yes, plenty of places,” is the reassuring reply; so, despite a
remonstrance from John, who would prefer to halt where he is, we drive
on through some bars which Harrison has meanwhile let down.
“I wonder whar them places for turning is, Mass Eric?” says John,
presently, as we jolt along a rough road with a mountain on one side
and a steep declivity on the other.
“Not far ahead, I think,” replies Eric. “Here’s the stream—now you can
turn.”
“Let me out first,” cries Aunt Markham, who has an aversion to narrow
turns.
We all alight, and follow Eric up a hillside-path by the side of the
stream, which is a well-sized creek of crystal clearness. A more
charming glen than the one in which we find ourselves it would be
impossible to imagine. On each side the mountains rise sheer from
the bed of the stream, while between these walls of green the water
rushes downward in a succession of cascades, falling finally into three
circular pools, the sides of which are worn to the smoothness of the
most carefully-polished stone.
“That water must surely have a rotary motion,” I say, “to have chiseled
out such perfect wells.”
“Certainly it has a rotary motion,” answers Eric. “Throw a bough in,
and you will see it drawn under, disappear for some time, and finally
reappear on the opposite side of the pool, from which it will gradually
drift into the current.”
“The people here call that largest pool next the bank over yonder,
bottomless,” says Charley.
“Stuff!” says Eric. “But it is really forty or fifty feet deep by
actual measurement.”
“Not a nice place to go down in,” says Sylvia, with a slight shudder.
“Yet how lovely!”
Certainly the whole scene is lovely beyond all terms of praise or
description. Limpid water, gray rocks, semi-tropical foliage—who can
tire of these things in ever varied and picturesque combination?
“What a place for a painter!” says Sylvia; “better than many wilder
ones which we have seen. The Saluda Gorge, for instance, is far
grander, but this is full of the most romantic beauty.”
“Come higher,” says Charley, “and you will have a view of the upper
falls.”
We go above the cascade, which pours into the pools, and obtain a
partial view of a higher and less accessible fall. Just here an
enormous tree has been cut down, and forms a bridge across the stream.
In the centre, immediately under the bridge, is a point of rock that
the current does not cover, and to this Charley springs.
“There is a capital view of the upper fall from here,” he says; “the
only good view to be had.—Sylvia, do you think you could reach here?”
No! Sylvia essays to do so, and finds that she cannot, the intervening
water being too wide and too deep.
“But I can come that far on the tree,” she says, turning to climb the
bank.
“If you do, you will surely fall!” Aunt Markham and I remonstrate.
“No, you won’t, Sylvia!” cries Rupert, who has crossed. “It is very
good walking if your head don’t swim.”
“My head never swims,” asserts Sylvia, confidently.
She advances out on the trunk as she speaks. It is certainly wide
enough to afford good footing, but the farther end does not rest very
firmly against the opposite bank, and the consequence is that it shakes
as she walks. This, added to the fact of her elevation (six feet,
at least) above the stream, with a sweeping fall on each side, and
swift-rushing water underneath, makes her, as she afterward confesses,
suddenly and unaccountably giddy. She stops, and Charley, seeing her
change of color, springs into the water above which she has paused, and
seizes the only thing within his reach—one of her feet!
“Sit down!” he says, imperatively. “You’ll fall if you don’t!”
She obeys instantly, dropping down on the log with a slight gasp.
“I—don’t know what makes me so silly,” she says. “And _how_ am I to get
back?”
“Easily enough,” he answers. “Bend down and put your hands on my
shoulders— that is it!”
As soon as she bends within his reach he lifts her, staggering back a
little under her weight—for it is only in novels that muscular heroes
can bear substantial heroines as if they were feathers—but carries her
safely through the water to the dry rock. There he deposits her, with a
laugh.
“Set that against the Bridal-Veil Fall!” he says.
Sylvia on her part lifts her hand at once to her head.
“My hat!” she says. “I’ve lost it!”
“Yonder it goes!” cries Rupert, with unfeeling gayety. “Sailing
down-stream as fast as it can to the pools.”
We all turn just in time to see the hat whirled over the ledge of rock,
and, after bobbing about for a minute or two in the largest pool,
finally disappear.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” says Sylvia. “I have worn that hat all over the
mountains, and I wanted to take it home. How provoking to think of
losing it here, on _this_ side of the Blue Ridge!”
“Wait a bit,” says Charley. “You shall have it yet.”
He springs up the bank, darts lightly over the fallen tree, and we
watch him making his way through the dense undergrowth which lines the
opposite bank until he reaches the pool. There he provides himself with
a long, crooked stick and waits.
“Now,” says Eric, “when that hat reappears he is going to fish for it,
and ten to one he’ll tumble into the pool himself.”
“Oh, he must not do that!” cries Sylvia, alarmed. “The hat is not worth
any risk— in fact, I don’t care about it at all. Of course, it is
utterly ruined. Charley!” (elevating her voice), “O Charley! _please_
come away! Let the hat alone!”
But Charley is obstinate. He means to capture that hat, and, when it
reappears a minute later, he at once begins to chase it with his
stick. Sylvia watches him in great anxiety, as, with one arm around
a tree to steady himself, he leans far over the pool and fishes
indefatigably.
“I _know_ he will fall!” she says. “It is exactly the way he did at
Lover’s Retreat.”
“Don’t distress yourself,” says Eric. “If he falls, I will go down and
fish for _him_.”
“He’s got it on the stick,” says Rupert. “Now he’s drawn it out. Look,
Sylvia!”
Sylvia is looking. Charley waves the hat triumphantly, then turns and
makes his way up the bank, crosses the tree, and displays the dripping
prize to its owner. Luckily, it is merely a felt hat, with no other
trimming than a band of ribbon. Therefore, when dry, it will not be
much the worse for its wetting, and its owner regards it with pride and
complacency.
“It has been down to the bottom of the bottomless pool!” she says.
“What an adventure for it—and what a _souvenir_ for me! Thank you,
Charley, for restoring it to me—but what if you had fallen in yourself?”
“Should you have cared?” asks Charley. “By the law of reprisal, I ought
to have a ducking to pay for yours at the Bridal—”
“Why do you harp on that?” she interrupts, impatiently. “It was not
your fault—I said _that_ at the time.”
“It was my fault for trying to force an answer which you did not care
to give,” says Charley, “and you served me exactly right when you gave
it as you did.”
_Mem._: These two are on the rocks by the fallen tree alone; the others
have gone down to the pools, and only I—who lingered on the hillside to
gather some ferns— overhear this conversation.
“You shall not blame yourself even for that,” says Sylvia. “I deserved
all I got for being so—so contrary and provoking. A woman might at
least have the grace to tell the truth when she is asked for it.”
“She may be tender-hearted about telling it, if it should chance to be
an unpleasant truth,” says Charley. “Yet it is best to give a victim
the _coup de grâce_—as you gave it to me.”
“I think you are very unkind to attach importance to any pettish speech
I may have made at such a time as that,” she answers, stooping to
gather a flower from a crevice of the rock.
“What!” says Charley. “Not attach importance to such a forcible,
downright ‘No?’ By Jove! it would be an odd fellow who _didn’t!_”
Silence follows this. Sylvia has gone as far as she can go—has said all
that a woman can say. She ends the pause by rising and extending her
hand for the hat which he is still carrying.
“If you wish to abide by it I am quite willing for you to do so,” she
says, with the coldness of pride in her voice.
“If I wish to abide by it!” repeats Charley, taking the hand, while
the hat drops unheeded, and narrowly escapes floating off down-stream
again. “Do you think it likely I wish to do so—after all these years?
Sylvia, you know that I love you—that I shall love you till I die—but
if you are only drawing me back for your amusement, for God’s sake, let
me abide by that ‘No!’”
The earnestness of this appeal—earnestness so unlike Charley that it
startled even me among the ferns—touches Sylvia. She extends her other
hand—the soft, gray eyes look at him beseechingly.
“Don’t talk like that, Charley!” she says. “You make me sorrier than
ever that I uttered that foolish word. I never meant it. How could I
mean it when I love you with all my heart? Is that enough?”
Enough! One might have been pardoned for thinking so who saw him take
her into his arms, and then—ashamed of playing the spy—I go down the
hillside and leave them together.
* * * * *
“Look back!” says Eric, an hour later. “The Blue Ridge is behind you.”
We turn with one accord and look back as he directs. The grand,
dark-blue heights stand behind us, fold upon fold, peak overlooking
peak, knob rising beyond knob, the great crest of the famous Bald in
the distance, Harris’s Pinnacle near at hand, towering needle-like in
its eminence. And behind these splendid masses the sun is sinking in
clouds of ruby and gold, while the tender young moon gazes down from
the fleecy sapphire of the upper heaven.
And so we bid farewell to the Land of the Sky.
THE END.