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but tine close observing hunter, they became convinced that it was his 

 trail and sent a messenger back some five miles to inform the Buncombe 

 men, and telling them to hurry on as fast as they could. The Avriter with 

 Mr. Charles Mitchell and many others were in a deep valley on the head 

 waters. of another fork of the river, when the blast of a horn and the firing 

 of guns on a distant peak, made us aware that some discovery Avas made. 

 Hurrying with breathless haste up the steep mountain side in the direc- 

 tion of the guns we soon came np and found the greater part of our com- 

 pany watching for us, with the news that the Yancey company were upon 

 the trail we had been so earnestly seeking so many days. After a brief 

 consultation, two or three of our party a'eturned to the Mountain House 

 for provisions, and the balance of us started as fast as we could travel 

 along the main top towards our Yancey friends, and reached the high peak 

 just before dark. Here v\'e camped in a small cabin built by Mr. Jesse 

 Stepp, ate a hasty supper and threw ourselves upon the floor, without 

 covering, to rest. 



About 1 o'clock in the night, just as the writer was about closing his 

 eyes in troubled and uneasy slumber, a loud halloo was heard from the high 

 bluff that looms over the cabin. It was answered from .within and in a 

 moment every sleeper Avas upon his feet. Mr. Jesse Stepp, Capt. Robert 

 Patton and others, then came down and told us that the body Avas found. 

 Mournfully then indeed those hardy sons of the mountain seated them- 

 selves around the smouldering cabin fire, and on the trunks of the fallen 

 firs, and then, in the light of a glorious full moon, whose rays penciled the 

 dark damp forest with liquid silver, seven thousand feet above the tide- 

 washed sands of the Atlantic, the melancholj'^ tale was told. Many a heart 

 was stilled with sadness as the awful truth was disclosed and many a 

 rough face glittered with a tear in the refulgent moon-light as it looked 

 upon the marble pallor and statue-stillness of the stricken and bereaved 

 son, and thought of those far away whom this sudden evil Avould so deep- 

 ly afflict. 



It was as they expected. The deceased had undertaken to go the same 

 route to the settlements which he had formerly gone. They traced him 

 rapidly down the precipices of the mountain, until they reached the stream 

 (the Cat-tail fork), found his traces going down it — following on a hundred 

 yards or so, they, came to a rushing cataract some forty feet high, saw his 

 foot-prints trying to climb around the edge of the yawning precipice, saw 

 the moss torn up by the outstretched hand, and then — the solid, impression- 

 less granite refused to tell more of his fate. But clambering hastily to 

 the bottom of the roaring abyss, they found a basin worn out of the solid 

 rock by the frenzied torrent, at least fourteen feet deep, filled with clear 



