286 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



question by other parties, but Prof. Mitchell himself never 

 doubted that he had been on the right spot. He wrote in the 

 summer of 1856: "I stood upon the highest peak some days 

 since, and could then distinguish the ridges over which my 

 guide, William Riddle, taking as nearly as he could a straight, 

 or, as it happened, a diagonal direction across them from the 

 neighbourhood of the Green Ponds, led me directly to the peak 

 we were in search of." 



After the survey of 1844, the Hon. Thomas L. Clingman 

 put forth a claim to having been the first to measure the real 

 culminating point of the Black Mountain, and undertook to 

 prove that Prof. Mitchell had been mistaken in the mountain 

 which he measured. The question thus raised was the subject 

 of an active controversy for several years. The highest moun- 

 tain was called Clingman's Peak, and Prof. Mitchell's name was 

 transferred to the peak which was described in his diary of 

 1835 as "a round three-knobby knob, equal to the highest," 

 which he had never assumed to climb or to measure. It was 

 as much to settle this dispute as for the sake of more accurate 

 measurement that Prof. Mitchell made his fifth visit to the 

 mountain in 1857, in which he lost his life. The question was 

 investigated by his friends after his death, when all the accessi- 

 ble evidence was collected and compared, and his priority in 

 measuring the peak, and the identity of the mountain he meas- 

 ured in 1835 w i tn tne rea l highest point, seem to have been 

 satisfactorily established. In evidence to support his claim, 

 Prof. Phillips brought forward the notes in his diary of 1835 

 and their exact correspondence with Prof. Guyot's profile ; the 

 testimony of William Wilson, one of the guides who went up 

 with him, and who gave in his certificate a correct description 

 of the topography of the summit, and of Nathaniel Allen, son 

 of Adoniram Allen, the other guide, deceased, who said that his 

 father had always spoken of that peak as the one which he as- 

 cended with Prof. Mitchell ; the certificate of four citizens who 

 accompanied William Wilson in September, 1857, while he re- 

 traced the steps of the ascent of 1835 ; the testimony of nu- 

 merous 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 



