FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 59 



beside the river and reached by one of the prettiest 

 tramcar drives I ever took in any land. At 

 Asheville, one of the most attractive towns on 

 my travels, I heard a curious story, for the truth 

 of which I am unable to vouch. Some years 

 ago, a soi-disant English duke, who claimed close 

 kinship with a well-known statesman of the Liberal 

 party, ran deep into debt and died insolvent in the 

 town. It was then discovered that his dukedom 

 was apocryphal and his relationship to the 

 politician a myth. His body was embalmed for 

 burial, but no money was forthcoming to pay 

 for the job, and they say that it is still on view 

 at the undertaker's store. I made no attempt to 

 view this grisly relic of a luckless impostor, and, 

 for aught I know to the contrary, the whole story 

 may have been a fabrication of the tramcar 

 acquaintance from whom I had it. 



The peculiar beauties of travel at high altitudes 

 must inevitably be bought at the price of pace. 

 On those dangerous gradients the brakes are 

 rarely off, and the time schedule is interpreted 

 with latitude, for if mountains no longer bring 

 forth mice, they bring forth " wrecks " when treated 

 carelessly, more especially when the rails are 

 slippery with rain. Therefore, my train, which 

 left Asheville that evening in a downpour, arrived 

 at Lake Toxaway a couple of hours late, in fact 

 only just before midnight. It was a tired and 

 hungry traveller that alighted, but there was 

 reassurance in the fairyland of lights mirrored 

 in the unseen lake and the promise of great 

 beauty with the sunrise. As my plans included 

 a drive of twenty or thirty miles next day, I 



