“What of that? We must go on.”
“Dar’s a bad pitch right yeh, an’ I wouldn’t risk hit foh no money.”
“Do you know exactly where we are? I can’t distinguish anything.”
“Yes, at de cliff spring.”
“The cliff spring. I remember it. All right;” and, saying this, the elderly passenger was climbing up beside the driver. “Let me take the reins,” he continued.
“You!” exclaimed the driver.
“Yes. I know this road like a book. I’ve driven over it many as dark nights as this, during forty years of my life.”
And as the driver told it to me: “I done jist let dat ole man pull dem ribbans outer my han’s, an’ I hel’ onter de brake, while he put dose hosses down aroun’ dat ben’; an’ in less ’en an houh we wuz stannin’ afoah de Henry hotel. Hit beat de debbil how dat wrinkled, rich-lookin’ ole fellah driv! Couldn’t fine out a ting ’bout him; no one peered ter know him. An’ I’m done badgered ter know who he wuz, enny how. He’d a made a crackin’ ole stage drivah; an’ dar’s no use talkin’ on dat pint!”
So went the story. Meanwhile your journey is progressing. The stage has rattled around a bend, leaving the neat, home-like, brick dwelling of Dr. Samuel Love, on the top of a wooded hill, beside the road; and then, before you, stretches an enchanting mountain landscape. On the summit of a plateau-like expanse, in the center of the scene, is a picturesque village. You see the clustered white frame and brick buildings, with the smoke curling above them from home fires; the modest church steeples, and, perhaps, if it is growing dusky, you may hear the mellow chiming of bells through the evening air. Majestic mountains rise on all sides into the blue sky. Afar, Old Bald, his brethren Balsams, Lickstone mountain, and Mount Serbal, lift their heads. In lofty outlines, the Junaluska group of Balsams stand black against the glowing western sky. Across a low, plank bridge, which covers a little stream coming from the rabbit-haunted hedges of a valley meadow,—up a mild declivity of hill,—through a long, yellow street with dwellings, a church, a court-house, a jail, hotels, and stores, on either side,—and you are in the center of Waynesville.
Waynesville, the county-seat of Haywood, is 2,756 feet above the ocean. Of the peaks in sight around it, five attain a height of 6,000 feet and upwards. Every mountain is clothed from base to summit with heavy woods. That chain arising in the south in lofty outlines, black with firs, is the Balsam. The Haywood mountains, bounding the northern line of vision, are, owing to their distance, arrayed in purple, and usually crowned with white masses of clouds, which at sunset turn to orange, run to molten gold and then blazing with scarlet resolve into darkness. The village occupies the most elevated portion of the plateau. Two parallel streets, crossed by four or five shorter ones, make up the general ground-work of the town. Interspersed with vacant, weed-grown lots, the dwellings and buildings, occupied by about 300 people, face on these winding thoroughfares. A few locust trees border the rough, stony walks. Apple and peach trees hang over thickly-planted gardens within the unpainted long board fences before many of the houses.