ELISHA MITCHELL. 2 8/ 



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 

 investigating the value of the number which is used in calculat- 

 ing heights by barometrical observations. To this end he had 

 provided himself with four of Green's Smithsonian barometers, 

 and sent one of them to Savannah to be employed in contem- 

 poraneous observations 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 barometrical and 

 thermometrical observations for several days at each of these 

 points, and thus obtain reliable data for a full discussion of 

 questions concerning measurements by barometer in the lati- 

 tude of the region. He began to survey about the middle of 

 June. On the 2yth 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 secur- 

 ing 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 fol- 

 lowed to a point where the guides declared, from its irregulari- 

 ties and the evidences that the wanderer had become no longer 

 able to pick his course, that darkness had overtaken him ; 

 thence along a small creek to a place now called Mitchell's 

 Falls ; and there, on the yth 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 



