So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape, and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge, rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it.From the summit we had the first extensive prospect during our journey.The road can be described as awful,--steep, stony, the horses unable to make two miles an hour on it.Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin without barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn.The women who regarded the passers from their cabin doors were frowzy and looked tired.What with the heat and the road and this discouraged appearance of humanity, we reached the residence of Dugger, at Banner's Elk, to which we had been directed, nearly exhausted.It is no use to represent this as a dash across country on impatient steeds.It was not so.The love of truth is stronger than the desire of display.And for this reason it is impossible to say that Mr.Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in a clean and attractive house, or that he offers much that the pampered child of civilization can eat.But we shall not forget the two eggs, fresh from the hens, whose temperature must have been above the normal, nor the spring-house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies and the heat.The higher we go, the hotter it is.Banner's Elk boasts an elevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.
We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk River towards Cranberry Forge.The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though not very clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was under operation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance to multiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of its reputation.Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string of quarter-pound trout, which he had taken out with a hook and a feather rudely tied on it, to resemble a fly.The road, though not to be commended, was much better than that of the morning, the forests grew charming in the cool of the evening, the whippoorwill sang, and as night fell the wanderers, in want of nearly everything that makes life desirable, stopped at the Iron Company's hotel, under the impression that it was the only comfortable hotel in North Carolina.
II
Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into the northwest mountains of North Carolina.A narrow-gauge railway, starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry, where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rows of tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks, raw embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, are the signs of a great devastating American enterprise.The Cranberry iron is in great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of the Swedish iron.There are remains of old furnaces lower down the stream, which we passed on our way.The present "plant" is that of a Philadelphia company, whose enterprise has infused new life into all this region, made it accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.
When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, which crowns a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect of many gentle hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removed from all sordid associations, we were at the point of willingness that the whole country should be devastated by civilization.In the local imagination this hotel of the company is a palace of unequaled magnificence, but probably its good taste, comfort, and quiet elegance are not appreciated after all.There is this to be said about Philadelphia,--and it will go far in pleading for it in the Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity and the babel-like ambition of its Public Building,--that wherever its influence extends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the luxury of an undeniably excellent cuisine.The visible seal that Philadelphia sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good hotel.
This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set about with easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished in native woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of the cucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by a Philadelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap.Is it "low" to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tour in search of the picturesque? Let the reader ride from Abingdon through a wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge.
There were, to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, and fragments of information to be picked up about a world into which the travelers seemed to emerge.They, at least, were satisfied, and went off to their rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrived somewhere) and no unquiet spirit at morn would say "to horse." To sleep, perchance to dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; and the Professor was heard muttering in his chamber,"Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd."The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be between twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy;and the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon the veranda, read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of the white birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron-trees, twenty feet high, which were shaking off their last pink blossoms, and look down into the valley of the Doe.It is not an exciting landscape, nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restful with the monotony of some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.