The Flat Rock valley is about two miles wide and four miles long, reaching from the Ochlawha to the crest of the Blue Ridge, and may be described as an undulating plain. It embraced, before the war, about twenty estates, among others the country seats of Count de Choiseue, the French consul-general, and E. Molyneux, the British consul-general. The valley, until recently, was reached in carriages by the low country people.
At the opening of summer the planter or merchant and his family, taking along the entire retinue of domestic servants, started for the cool, rural home in the highlands, where the luxurious living of the coast was maintained, to which additional gaiety and freedom was given by the invigorating climate and wildness of surroundings. Carriages and four, with liveried drivers, thronged the public highways. The Flat Rock settlement brought the highest development of American civilization into the heart of one of the most picturesque regions of the American continent. Wealthy and cultured audiences assembled at St. John’s church on each summer Sabbath. The magnificence of the ante-war period is no longer maintained; the number of aristocratic families has decreased, and some of the residences show the dilapidations of time; yet a refined and sociable air pervades the place, which, with the recollections of the past, makes it an interesting locality to visit. All who may have occasion to stop, will find a good hotel and hospitable entertainment at the hands of Henry Faunce, Esq., an eccentric but interesting landlord of the old school.
From Hendersonville to Buck Forest is twenty miles over a fair road. This place derives its name from the fact that the hills and mountains in the vicinity are reported to abound in deer. Of late years the amount of game has been rapidly decreasing, but even yet a well-organized and well-conducted chase is seldom barren of results. Buck Forest hotel is an old-fashioned frame house, situated in the midst of wild and inviting scenery. The traveler will recognize the place by the sign of an immense elk horn on a post, and by a line of deer heads and buck antlers under the full length veranda.
From Hendersonville to Cæsar’s Head is twenty miles. There are two roads—one up the valley of Green river, and the other to Little river, thence up that stream through Jones’ gap. Cæsar’s Head is also reached by stages from Greenville, South Carolina, on the Air Line railroad, distant twenty-four miles. The Little River road leads through the picturesque valley of the upper French Broad region. After traversing wide and fertile alluvions, the road enters, between close mountain slopes, a narrow gorge, through which the river, for a distance of four miles, rushes and roars in a continuous succession of sparkling cascades and rapids. The most noted point is Bridal Veil falls, so named from the silvery appearance of the spray in sunlight. It is not a sheer fall, but an almost vertical rapid with numerous breaks. On a bright day the colors of the rainbow play between the cañon walls.
Cæsar’s Head is a place about which much has been written, but no pen can describe the overpowering effect of the view from that precipice. I shall attempt to give only a few outlines to enable the reader, by the aid of his imagination, to form some idea of the bold and broken character of this part of the Blue Ridge.
One evening in August I crossed the state line through Jones gap, and rode along the backbone of the spur. A dark cloud had mantled the mountain tops all the afternoon. So dense was it, that the deep gorge of Little river had the appearance of a tunnel, reverberating monotonously with the sound of falling waters. On the south side of the ridge the cloud clung to the ground, making it impossible during the last three miles of the ride to see ten feet in any direction. No rain was falling, yet drops of water were soon trickling down the saddle and the chill of moisture penetrated my clothing. It was fast growing dark when a sound of laughter signaled the end of the journey. The indistinct outline of a large white house appeared a moment later, and on the long veranda sat numerous groups of men and women.
My thoroughly dampened condition must have appealed to the sympathies of the manager of the hotel, for I had scarcely entered my room when a servant appeared at the door with a tray of needed stimulants, after the fashion of the hospitable southern planter. Every attention was bestowed upon me, and a short time after I was in as agreeable a condition as I have ever been before or since. In the journal for the day, written up that evening, is this concluding sentence, which I had no inclination to change afterwards: “This establishment is managed by a man who knows his business, and is liberal enough to give his guests what they have a reasonable right to expect.”
At daybreak I joined Judge Presley, of Summerville, who has spent nine summers here and knows the surroundings perfectly. From an eminence near the hotel, the peaks of the Blue Ridge and its spurs can be counted for tens of miles in both directions, those in the distance resembling in the morning light, parapets of massive castle walls. “Do you see,” said the Judge, pointing in a northeasterly direction, “that oval line
