The Days of a Man 1:1877 



at a home audience. In 1859 Thoreau said that 

 John Brown was "not talking to Buncombe or his 

 constituents anywhere." 



But to get back to my party. Leaving Asheville, 

 we next followed to its source the Swannanoa, a 

 charming tributary of the French Broad, and climbed 

 Mount Mitchell in the Great Smokies, the highest 

 mountain east of the Rockies. 

 Mitchell's This wild, rough mass locally known as Black 

 Peak Mountain, beset with dark balsam firs, soft moss, 

 and many subalpine plants, rises 671 1 feet above 

 tidewater — that is, about 500 feet higher than 

 Mount Washington. It does not, however, give the 

 same impression of altitude because of the richness 

 of its vegetation under a warmer sky. On its tower- 

 ing summit, under an overhanging rock, we passed 

 a night. 



[As a matter of fact it has two summits of about 

 equal height, Mitchell's Peak and Clingman's Dome, 

 named respectively for Professor Elisha Mitchell of 

 the University of North Carolina, and General T. L. 

 Clingman. The controversy between these two 

 gentlemen as to which top is the higher Mitchell 

 closed dramatically by a fatal fall from one of his 

 cliffs, and on the very summit of the Peak, after a 

 picturesque funeral, he was buried in a rock-hewn 

 sepulcher over which the wind in the balsams sighs 

 a perpetual requiem.] 

 The Returning then to Asheville, we started on a long 



Santee ^.wd pictutcsque stage trip through the hopefully 

 named hamlet of Travellers Rest down to Green- 

 ville in South Carolina. Here and at Spartanburg 

 we explored the headwaters of the Saluda and 

 Ennoree, the latter a tributary of the Broad which 

 I 162 3 



