SKETCH OF ELISHA MITCHELL. 



405 



citizens respecting the landmarks and the geographical features, 

 particularly of the streams, by which the true highest peak is 

 located and identified.; and the testimony of the same citizens that 

 this peak was generally known through the country as Mount 

 Mitchell or Mitchell's High Peak, while the other mountain 

 (Party Knob) to which Prof. Mitchell's name has been attached 

 was not so known till after the visit of 1844. 



Prof. Mitchell's fifth visit to the Black Mountain, in 1857, was 

 made in view of the controversy with Dr. Clingman for the sake 

 of obtaining more careful and accurate measurements than he 

 had been able to secure before, and for the purpose of investigat- 

 ing the value of the number which is used in calculating heights 

 by barometrical observations. To this end he had provided him- 

 self with four of Green's Smithsonian barometers, and sent one of 

 them to Savannah to be employed in contemporaneous observa- 

 tions by Dr. Posey at the level of the ocean and nearly on the same 

 meridian as the Black Mountain. He further intended to connect 

 the beach-mark on the North Carolina Western Railroad survey by 

 a line determined by a spirit-level with the top of Mitchell's Peak. 

 After marking off points differing in height by five hundred or a 

 thousand feet, he designed to continue contemporaneous baromet- 

 rical and thermometrical observations for several days at each 

 of these points, and thus obtain reliable data for a full discus- 

 sion of questions concerning measurements by barometer in the 

 latitude of the region. He began the survey about the middle of 

 June. On the 27th of that month, when his work was about half 

 completed, he separated from his son, with the intention of going 

 across the mountain to the Caney River settlement to visit the 

 Wilsons and Mr. Riddle, his former guides, and securing their 

 assistance in identifying points which they had visited together. 

 He was never seen alive afterward. A storm arose that evening, 

 in which he probably perished. When it was found that he had 

 neither reached Mr. Wilson's nor returned to his lodgings, parties 

 started in search of him. As the search continued, and the news 

 spread that he was missing, the parties grew, and soon included 

 a considerable part of the mountain population of Yancey and 

 Buncombe Counties ; for the people were all warmly attached to 

 him. His trail was found and followed to a point where the 

 guides declared, from its irregularities and the evidences that the 

 wanderer had become no longer able to pick his course, that dark- 

 ness had overtaken him ; thence along a small creek to a place 

 now called Mitchell's Falls ; and there, on the 7th of July, the 

 body was found in the pool below the falls. The marks on the 

 bank showed that Prof. Mitchell had slipped forty-five feet down 

 the slope and then fallen fifteen feet into the pool. The body 

 was borne by the Yancey men, after the coroner's inquest, a dis- 



