VIEWS NEAR ASHEVILLE.
Wooed by the spirit of adventure, you spur your horse higher and higher up the ascent, and find that some rich man has fixed his abode in more or less of grandeur atop the alpine plateau, and you look down upon humbler mountains and far away into the vista, where the locomotive is pushing its path from Henderson, or it may be Hickory Gap. Descending the road you follow along the bright, rippling stream, passing habitations of various kinds, now rude or humble, and now comfortable or charming. At last you reach a spot that the poet Moore would have raved about in undying song, for it is worthy of any singer, who, however tuneful, might well despair of bringing justice to the realm of so much beauty. The dwelling there is not a palace, but evidently the abode of taste and wealth. The garden is what you have dreamed about, when young and addicted to Lalla Rookh. What a wealth of flowers and how artistically displayed! The air is perfumed all about this fairy kingdom and you instinctively look askance for the apparition of Prince Charming, or the Fair One with the Golden Locks. The Prince I have not seen, but the Fair One was visible and, with her guidance, I am permitted, in a luxurious nook, to scan the surrounding glories. There is no other just such site for perfect habitation, for it is at the meeting of the waters, which glisten far below. Here the impetuous French Broad rushes to the embrace of the gentle Swannanoa, and here their mingled tides laughingly and pellucidly hasten to kiss the awaiting and absorbing sea. The mountains are marshalled on dress parade in one mighty ring around this centre of loveliness, and the dream you have fallen voluntarily into is only dissolved, and not unpleasantly, by the matter-of-fact tracks of steel that glisten at the base of the hill, and the snorting or clanging or whistling engine that plunges, with its train, toward the station, which is now, by local significance, well known as the place where our modern Kubla Khan, Mr. George Vanderbilt, must alight to visit the matchless pleasure dome he has decreed on the heights beyond the summer lodge of the Fair One with the Golden Locks, where, in imagination, we are now spectator. It is needless to repeat how much Mr. Vanderbilt has spent or will continue to spend upon what fame heralds as the most complete and magnificent estate owned by any private gentlemen, and one that few royal personages could obtain. Without summing up the oft-repeated and dry statistics of the dimension of his residence, out-houses, stables, barns and acres, it is enough to understand that, after the method of another marvelous man who has metamorphosed St. Augustine, unstinted opulence and modern art have met for material transformation. No amount of money could reproduce the natural splendor of the location, but science and skill and Aladdin’s lamp, which is ready money and a superabundance of it, can rear castles and improve grounds in a way to be worthy of such scenes of Arcadian majesty and beauty all around. It speaks well for the rich young man, who is highly educated, most accomplished, and a lover of literature in all of its development, while kind and gentle and benignant, that he should have determined upon this place of all the places in the world to rear his incomparable home and be a veritable monarch of much that he surveyed, though not all. And yet, having once had vision of this alluring sphere, it would be indeed a source of astonishment if it failed to exercise upon him the sorcery I so feebly portray. The fancy takes flight and pictures to itself what may be the result of such a scheme. Will he, when the palace is completed and everything exhausted to fashion it as he aspired, be any more content than he was before? Will he abandon the mighty Babylon of the East and abide at his gorgeous Southern hermitage, with its imperial setting? Will he simply flit there, from time to time, and, at other seasons, leave his domain, like a haunted palace, a stupendous show-place or proverbial folly? Will he settle there, and perchance wed the Fair One with the Golden Locks, becoming racy of the soil of the Old North State, dispensing joy, hospitality, munificence and rational bounty? Will he, having more than emulated the author of Vathek in construction, live, like Beckford, to behold the ruin of his aspiration? But what is the use of tossing these gilded juggler balls in the air of imagination, and making inquiries of that future which does not belong to any mortal? Suffice it practically, that young Mr. Vanderbilt has appreciated the South, yielded homage to her natural magnetism, and made his deeds speak louder than words of praise. Let us take for granted that he will never weary of his designs and that Providence has in store for him and his surroundings special and exceptional benedictions.
Adjacent to Mr. Vanderbilt’s principality are the grounds of the Kenilworth Inn, which would have delighted Amy Robsart and disarmed her enemies. Never did British beauty of any country preceding this command, even at the hands of royalty, so many comforts as the Kenilworth lavishly displays for the delectation of the most exacting creature. When this is said, what need of multiplying words or measuring with yard-sticks the magnificence of the various compartments of the house or its broad baronial park? Unless you are impervious to all enticement, you will be impelled to see these marvels through your own eyes and then compare your impressions with mine.
Perhaps you who visit Western North Carolina find instinct within you some of the fiery blood of Orion or Nimrod or Buffalo Bill, and wish to exercise it in the slaughter of beasts and birds. Well, with your improved weapon, with all modern lethal devices, in dear old clothes that are already creased in the seams and baggy at the knees, you may, with the rugged father of Esmeralda, or one of her tough, nimble brothers, follow the black bear to his cave or track partridges, grouse or squirrels to their leafy haunts, and make them acquainted with death or anguish. You may, even without having conned the pages of Isaak Walton, be impassioned for snaring diplomatic and pugnacious trout, with an insect engendered by the artificer or with the native minnow; and, if so, your selection of streams will be easy and your game-bag should be bulging with trophies when you homeward wend your way, with appetite of a ploughman for the fare of a French chef who has been beguiled by Col. Coxe as the presiding genius of his kitchen and larder. And the Colonel will, after supper, make merry with you, as becomes an elegant gentleman, who has carried his accomplishments all over the world, and who laughingly declares that he is “the only man extant who was killed on both sides during the war.” He had possessions at the North and South, and his respective substitutes were among the unreturning brave. So, by proxy, he was slain twice, and yet is still alive to the gratification of a host of friends and admirers. You will be sure to get an invitation from him to drive, with a jocund company of both sexes, in his tally-ho-coach, which is as well appointed as any in the land, and it is a memorable thing to see him handle the ribbons over four thoroughbreds that were nurtured on bluest and most succulent of Kentucky grass. A drive with Colonel Coxe and such ladies and gentlemen as he groups around him is an experience that you will fondle, some day, when business or a kindred commonplace tie fetters you to a dull or smoky town. You will then comprehend that poor girl, a rustic heroine and living martyr, when she could forgive the miserable man who had repaid her with ingratitude and desertion, but could not divine how, though he left her, he could leave “The Mountings.”
MOUNT MITCHELL—6700 FEET ABOVE THE SEA.
In a rollicking mood you may venture to pay a pop-call on Bill Nye, who, though he pokes perfunctory, periodical fun at the Sky Land, clings to it, when he can, like a fellow does to his skin, and, in serious interludes, loves even its occasionally disreputable roads, which are, at any rate, picturesque and informal. He may escort you to a friend’s place of concealment, the den of “the chemist,” the alchemist of moonshine whiskey, warranted, no doubt, to kill at three hundred yards. I have always pitied these proscribed brethren, the victims of our internal, or what no less a person than Thomas Jefferson is credited with denominating “infernal” law. The moonshiner naturally has as much right to boil his fruit or grain into spirits as the farmer has to put hominy hot in the caldron, but the law places a negative upon his claim, and fosters and pampers the trusts that so much trouble the Democratic conscience, but are ingeniously utilized to pay pensions or run the government. So the mountain chemist is given to hiding and, at times, when hunted too persistently, to shooting his pursuers. This is all wrong, because unlawful, but it is hard to instruct the grey matter of his brain on such subjects. It is grewsome to see these lank, leathery, unkempt, semi-barbarous brethren brought into court with manacles on their limbs and summarily consigned to doleful exile in distant dungeons. You will, when you see them and their wives and their progeny, wonder how such a country can produce such specimens of humanity, but it is easily understood when explanation is at hand. In that region are reared the best of cattle, sheep, poultry and fruits, but the moonshiner disdains them. He prefers, or habit and poverty compel him to prefer, soggy, hot biscuit, excessive coffee, cadaverous, greasy bacon, assassinated in a frying pan. He drinks too much of his own fiery decoction and too little of the salubrious water that leaps, gushes and sparkles on every hand. If one could capture young moonshiner girls and boys, feed them on civilized diet, girdle them with proper comfort, garment them decently, treat them amiably and educate them wholesomely, the transformation would be thorough, startling and supreme. It would be an object lesson conveying its own moral, and this would be the evolution of many Esmeraldas off the mimic stage, and many a sturdy, comely, valiant, intellectual man, who might succeed in the Senate such typical Carolinians as Vance and Ransom.
Speaking of Vance, if you loitered in Sky Land, in midsummer, you might make your way to Gombroon, his highland roost, and be sure of an old-fashioned welcome. No man has a heartier nature and no man is more of an adorer, so to speak, of Western North Carolina. He would tell you characteristic anecdotes of his wonderful career and hold you, as the ancient mariner did the wedding guests, with wit and wisdom, such as Master Coleridge never “dreamt of in his philosophy.” So you would understand from him what potent possibilities this clime possesses, and how from the very elements there is distilled a subtle essence that holds in solution the formation of noble men and beautiful women.
If, for instance, you had an agreeable, harmonious company of friends and acquaintances at Battery Park Hotel, and longed for an ideal trip, not too long, and which would entertainingly add to your stock of enchantment, I doubt not that Mr. McKissick, who is young and genial and intelligent, as becomes a cavalier South Carolinian and manager of a great caravanserai, would suggest a trip to the Hot Springs, which, by rail, is not many miles away. If you could prevail upon McKissick to join your party, it would be an accentuated treat, for he has been an ardent, expert, accomplished newspaper man, and is bubbling over with high health and fresh humor. This maroon is altogether delicious. From the car window you get rapid but incessantly changing views of the French Broad, which, crossed and recrossed and paralleled, is never out of sight. It is mild and clear flowing; it is turbulent, swift and vocal; it is free from impediment; it is vexed with rapids and frustrated with boulders as if a battle of Titans had been contested to stormy demolition; it is always charming. The time consumed in the passage has never for an instant tormented you, and even the most voluble talker is content to let his tongue “keep Sunday”—as an old darkey said—in the presence of this water course which descends in glory through the mountain defiles. These mountains enclose you, but they are not like their Swiss family bare and bleak and tawny, but lush with emerald foliage or cultivated to their very brows. The Mountain Park Hotel at Hot Springs, like all first-class establishments hereabout, is equipped sumptuously. It has miles of piazzas. It nestles in a happy valley. The river runs hard by, and, at this point, is narrow but energetic. It is a cold stream, but here, a few feet from the surface, hot fountains are latent, and any positive disturbance of the earth-crust is followed by vaporous exhalations. The baths are seductive, the more so, perhaps, because you are immersed in dazzling marble tanks and the liquid purrs you like velvet in motion. You can drink vast quantities of this fluid for it has amazing lightness and makes a delicate stomach feel “like a gentleman.” Wondrous tales are told of its curative faculties, and I take for granted that a rheumatic or dyspeptic man or woman soon gets ashamed, in such ablution and bibulation, of racking muscles and azure imps. By what volcanic agency this phenomenon occurs we can only conjecture. The probability is that the central fires are nearer than usual to the surface, or that the boiling waters that can ordinarily be reached by hard, pertinacious mining toil, thousands of feet deep, find here some propulsion and channel of their own and need only a touch to make them disclose their virtues. If they do not “create a spirit under the ribs of death,” they spur on an appetite that may have lost all zest, and when a man is impatient for his meals and partakes of them with satisfaction, disease has small hold upon him.