Just west of the tunnel, and close beside the track, the rocks have been broken and leveled into a small smooth space, and here, on the 26th of September, 1881, that gloomiest day in the decade for our people, were celebrated as impressive memorial services for Garfield, the noble man and beloved president, then lying dead on his stately catafalque in Cleveland, as were anywhere seen. The weather itself, in these remote and lonely mountains, seemed in unison with the sadness of the nation, for heavy black clouds swept overhead, and the wind made solemn moanings in the shaken trees. It was under circumstances so fittingly mournful that an excursion party, gathered from nearly every state in the Union, paused to express the universal sorrow, and to conceive the foundation of the massive monument which catches the traveler’s eye on the brink of the gorge, and upon whose polished tablet are engraved these words:
XI
ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER.
There in the gorges that widen, descending
From cloud and from cold into summer eternal,