"The pure, healthful breezes, the life-giving air,
The beauteous landscapes, oft new, ever fair,
Are gifts that have come from the Father on high;
To Him be all praise for 'The Land of the Sky.'"
In the early days of Congress, a North Carolina member, who was making a long speech for home consumption, observed that several of his colleagues, becoming tired, had gone out, whereupon he bluntly told those who remained that they might go out too, if so inclined, as he "was only talking for Buncombe." This member, whose remark has become immortal as the title of a certain type of Congressional oratory, represented the county of Buncombe, which embraces a large portion of the "The Land of the Sky," and Asheville is the county-seat. This town has a permanent population of twelve thousand, and is one of the most elevated towns east of Denver, being at a height of nearly twenty-three hundred feet above the sea. It is built in the attractive valley of the French Broad River, surrounded by an amphitheatre of magnificent hills, and commands one of the finest mountain views in this country. The Swannanoa unites with the French Broad just above the town in a charming locality; there are various pleasant parks; and the tree-shaded streets are adorned by many fine buildings. To Asheville come the Northerner for equable mildness in winter and the Southerner for coolness in summer, the climate being dry and bright, and most restorative in lung and other similar troubles, while the whole surrounding region has had its scenic attractions made available by improved roads and paths. About two miles to the southeast is George Vanderbilt's noted chateau of Biltmore, the finest private residence in the United States, built upon the verge of a princely estate covering a hundred thousand acres of these glens and mountains. The house, which commands magnificent views, stands upon a terrace seven hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide, and cost $4,000,000, while nearly as much more is said to have been expended in constructing many miles of drives over the estate and in landscape gardening and improvements, which in time will make this one of the world's greatest show places. The building is an extensive French baronial hall of the days of King Francis I., elaborated from the chateaux of the Loire, exceedingly rich in every detail, and having the general effect heightened by the free employment of decorative sculpture. From the grand esplanade the outlook is upon the "wild tumult of mountains stretching away in every direction." There are various other fine houses in the Asheville suburbs, and the locality is steadily improving through the attractions it has for men of wealth who love a home amid the grandest charms of Nature. Routes have been opened in various directions from Asheville to develop the mountain district. One railroad goes for a hundred miles through the gorges and valleys southwestward along the base of the Great Smoky range. Another route is southeast through the romantic pass of the Hickory-nut Gap, where the Rocky Broad River penetrates the Blue Ridge, a splendid canyon of nine miles, with cliffs rising fifteen hundred feet and having the remarkable Chimney Rock built on high alongside the gorge, where it stands up an isolated sentinel. Bald Mountain, rising opposite, is celebrated in Mrs. Burnett's Esmeralda. Cæsar's Head, to the southward, is an outlier of these mountain ranges, bordering the lowlands; and standing on top of its southern brow, upon a precipice rising almost sheer for fifteen hundred feet, one can overlook the lower regions of South Carolina and Georgia for more than a hundred miles away.
The French Broad River, the chief stream of this charming region, got its name from the early hunters who came up from the settled regions of Carolina nearer the coast, and penetrating the mountains explored it. The Cherokees called it Tselica, or "The Roarer," a not inappropriate name. The hunters who came through the Blue Ridge by the Hickory-nut Gap in colonial times followed down the Rocky Broad that flowed out of it into this river, which was much larger, and as the region beyond the mountains was then controlled by the French, they named it the French Broad. It rises in the Blue Ridge range almost on the South Carolina boundary, and nearly interlocks its headwaters with those of the Congaree flowing out to the Atlantic. Its upper waters wind for forty miles through a beautiful and fertile valley, but in approaching Asheville the scenery changes, the hills press more closely upon the stream, its course becomes more rapid, and after a swift turmoil it plunges down the cataract at Mountain Island. Here a knob-topped rock rises fifty to seventy feet high, the stream forcing its way on either hand by a channel cut through the enclosing ridge, and it descends a cataract of forty-five feet, running away through a deep abyss. The river passes Asheville and flows in a most picturesque gorge through the high mountains, everywhere disclosing new beauties, the water rushing and roaring over ledges and boulders, going around sharp bends, receiving gushing tributaries coming down the mountain side or trickling over the face of some broad high cliff. Massive rocks rise on high, and the road is often on a shelf cut into their face, the river boiling along far down below. Then the valley broadens, and here, in a lovely vale surrounded by the mountains, are the North Carolina Hot Springs, a popular resort, with a climate even milder in winter than at Asheville, as the Great Smoky range protects it from the northern blasts. The curative properties of these springs are efficacious in rheumatic and cutaneous diseases. Beyond, the bold precipices overhang the road and river that are known as the Paint Rocks, where the rushing torrent forces its way through a gorge between the Great Smoky and Bald Mountains and then emerges in Tennessee, to finally fall into the Tennessee River at the junction with the Holston just above Knoxville. These rocks received their name from Indian pictures and signs painted upon them. William Gillmore Simms, the Carolina author, tells in Tselica the legend of this spot, founded on the tradition of the Cherokees that a siren lives on the French Broad who allures the hunter to the stream and strangles him in her embrace. Thus have the American aborigines reproduced in their way on this beautiful river the romantic legends of the Lorelie Rock on the Rhine, where, the ancient German legend tells us so interestingly, there dwelt another beautiful siren whose seductive music lured her lovers to the rock, when she drowned them in the waves washing its base.
CAROLINA AND GEORGIA.
Eastward from the Blue Ridge the extended line of the Piedmont Branch of the Southern Railway parallels the base of the range on its route from Washington southwest to Atlanta. The railroad from Asheville southeast to Columbia and Charleston crosses it at Spartansburg in South Carolina. This is a prosperous little town in a region of iron and gold-mines, with also a development of mineral springs, attractive as a summer resort to the people of Charleston and residents of the South Carolina lowlands. Ten miles northeast of Spartansburg is the Revolutionary battlefield of the Cowpens, getting its name from the adjacent cow-pasture in the olden time. Here on a hill-range called the Thickety Mountain, January 17, 1781, the British under Tarleton were signally defeated. The railway passes through a rolling country, and thirty-three miles farther northeast is King's Mountain, where the previous battle was fought, October 7, 1780, in which the British under Colonel Ferguson were also defeated and a large part of their forces captured. Beyond, the boundary is crossed from South to North Carolina and Charlotte is reached, having cotton factories and gold mines and twelve thousand people, the county-seat of Mecklenburg, where the famous resolutions were passed, May 20, 1775, demanding independence. Farther northeast is Salisbury, where was located one of the chief Confederate prisons during the Civil War, and the National Cemetery now contains the graves of over twelve thousand soldiers who died there in captivity. Beyond this, the Yadkin River is crossed, and the route enters the tobacco district. Here is Greensboro', and near it the Revolutionary battle of Guilford Court House was fought March 15, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis defeated General Greene. To the eastward is Chapel Hill, the seat of the University of North Carolina, with three hundred students. Farther east is the great tobacco town of Durham, with large factories and six thousand people supported by this industry, whose education is cared for by Trinity College, which has been munificently endowed by the tobacco princes Colonels Duke and Carr. Twenty-five miles still farther east is Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, built on high ground near the Neuse River. It has a central Union Square from which fine streets diverge, and here is located the impressive State House, modelled after the Parthenon. Raleigh has various public institutions, and large cemeteries where the dead of both armies who fell in the Civil War are buried.
The Congaree River, flowing southeast out of the Blue Ridge, intersects the extensive Pine Barrens of South Carolina, and here on the railway route from Asheville via Spartansburg to Charleston is the South Carolina State capital, Columbia. It is built on the bluffs along the river, a few miles below its falls, and in a charming location, the view of the valley from the grounds of the Executive Mansion and Arsenal Hill being very fine. The South Carolina State House is a magnificent building on which a large sum has been expended, and in the grounds is a monument to the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolinians who served with distinction in the war with Mexico. It was here that the Nullification Ordinance was passed in 1832, and the Secession Ordinance in December, 1860. General Sherman, on his march from Atlanta to the sea in February, 1865, occupied Columbia, when, unfortunately, the city was set fire and a large portion destroyed. The Pine Barrens and sand hills of South Carolina stretch southwestward from the Congaree to the Savannah River, and in this region is the popular winter resort of Aiken, surrounded by vast forests of fragrant pines growing in a soil of white sand, the town being a gem in the way of gardens and shrubbery which, with the balmy atmosphere, make it additionally attractive. While Aiken does not have a large population, yet it has very wide streets to accommodate them, the main avenue being two hundred and five feet and the cross streets one hundred and fifty feet wide. Its attractiveness of climate is condensed into the statement that the Aiken winter is "four months of June." A few miles westward is the Savannah River, and here at the head of navigation is Augusta, Georgia, on the western bank, a great cotton mart and seat of textile factories, which have attracted a population of thirty-five thousand, the city being known as the "Lowell of the South." The Sibley Cotton Mill is regarded as being architecturally the handsomest factory in the world. The whole surrounding district is an almost universal cotton-field, thus furnishing the raw materials for this industry. Near this mill stands the tall chimney of the Confederate Powder Works, left as a grim memorial of the Civil War. The various mills are served by canals bringing the water for power from the Savannah River at a higher level above the city, with an ample fall. Augusta is regarded as one of the most beautiful of the Southern cities, having wide tree-embowered streets and many ornate buildings, and it fortunately escaped injury during the Civil War. It was laid out by General Oglethorpe, the Georgia founder, on the same artistic plan as Savannah, and he named it after the English princess, Augusta. The Savannah River, the largest of Georgia, and forming the boundary with South Carolina, rises in the Blue Ridge in close proximity to the headwaters of the Tennessee and the Chattahoochee. Its initial streams, the Tugaloo and Kiowee, unite in the Piedmont district to form the Savannah, which then flows four hundred and fifty miles past Augusta and Savannah to the sea.
ATLANTA AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.