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.
It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of which we had been for a month.The Judge himself was reticent, as became a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster prospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and Logan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, this sentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civil battle] ever known in this world.The thunder of the supreme struggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months, and will be felt from Pole to Pole."For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in.There was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of mosquitoes besides.Had there not been other travelers staying here, we should have felt still more uneasy.The house faced Bald Mountain, 4000 feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some years ago, and was visited by newspaper reporters.This is, in fact, the famous Shaking Mountain.For a long time it had a habit of trembling, as if in an earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion very different from that produced by an earthquake.The only good that came of it was that it frightened all the "moonshiners," and caused them to join the church.It is not reported what became of the church afterwards.It is believed now that the trembling was caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the mountain, which slowly parted asunder.Bald Mountain is the scene of Mrs.Burnett's delightful story of "Louisiana," and of the play of "Esmeralda."A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder is asked to see resembles a hut, and which is called "Esmeralda's Cottage."But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did not discover any woman in the region who remotely answers to her description.
In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and followed up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which the Judge said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless.
These pools, not round, but on one side circular excavations, some twenty feet across, worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good specimens, and perhaps remarkable specimens, of "pot-holes." They are, however, regarded here as one of the wonders of the world.On the way to them we saw beautiful wild trumpet-creepers in blossom, festooning the trees.
The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through the channel of the Santee.It is not to be confounded with the French Broad, which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs northward past Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through the Warm Springs Gap in the Bald Mountains.As the French claimed ownership of all the affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was called the French Broad.
It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher than Asheville.It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of leisure to the scattered population; at every store and mill was a congregation of loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and mules to the fences, and had the professional air of the idler and gossip the world over.The vehicles met on the road were a variety of the prairie schooner, long wagons with a top of hoops over which is stretched a cotton cloth.The wagons are without seats, and the canvas is too low to admit of sitting upright, if there were.The occupants crawl in at either end, sit or lie on the bottom of the wagon, and jolt along in shiftless uncomfortableness.
Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our journey.Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the route on horseback is impracticable.The distance to the Warm Springs is thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the road is clear, as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the railway, and the valley is something more than river and rails.But below Marshall the valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good portion of the way in the old stage road.One can walk the track, but to ride a horse over its sleepers and culverts and occasional bridges, and dodge the trains, is neither safe nor agreeable.We sent our horses round--the messenger taking the risk of leading them, between trains, over the last six or eight miles,--and took the train.
