﻿C. S. Sargent — Journey of Andre Michaux. 471 



ing of the 9th of December, and the evidence favors the belief 

 that it was the falls of the Toxaway. The principal Indian 

 trail, leading from the low country to the Cherokee hunting 

 ground on Hogback at the head of the Tuckasegee Eiver, 

 passes by the mouth of the Toxaway to the falls of that river, 

 and then up through the deep ravine north of the Hogback 

 Mountain separating it from Tigertail. Michaux, guided by 

 his Cherokee and anxious to reach the highest mountain in the 

 region, would naturally have followed the more beaten Toxa- 

 way trail which leads directly up Hogback, the highest moun- 

 tain in this neighborhood, rather than by the Horse Pasture to 

 Chimney Top and the less elevated mountains which surround 

 Casher's Valley. He probably camped that night in the shelter 

 of the deep ravine north of Tigertail, where he would have 

 found no pine wood for the fire, and which to-day is covered 

 with a dense forest of deciduous trees. On the 10th, had he as- 

 cended the mountains from this camping place, he might have 

 reached the spot where the waters of the Savannah and Ten- 

 nessee spring from the opposite sides of a narrow ridge. He 

 would have found the mountain forests abounding with Magno- 

 lia aunculata and M. acuminata, and he w T ould have been 

 obliged to cross a great thicket of Rhododendrons, the only one, 

 it is said, three miles wide in all this part of the country. It 

 is to-day the greatest bear ground in all the Carolina mountains, 

 and according to tradition one of the most famous of the Cher- 

 okee hunting resorts. A chain of high mountains stretching 

 from west to east may be seen from Hogback. It is now called 

 the Balsam Eange. 



The distance from the summit of Hogback to the head of the 

 Keowee is not more than fifteen miles by the Indian trail. 

 Michaux might therefore have made the ascent from his camp 

 under Tigertail, gathered his Magnolia, and returned to the 

 junction of the two rivers on the evening of the second day. 

 He could hardly have done it in less time at that season of the 

 year, especially if he penetrated far into the Khododenclron 

 thicket. 



A little plain less than a hundred acres in extent, now con- 

 verted into a corn field and dotted with the homes of a few 

 poor families, marks the junction of the Toxaway and the 

 Horse Pasture. The mountains which are " exposees au sud," 

 that is, which face the left bank of the Keowee below the junc- 

 tion of its two mountain branches, are still covered with M. 

 auriculaia. Prom the opposite shore at the foot of the moun- 

 tains which face the north, fifty paces below the junction, the 

 Cherokee hunting trail, as smooth and hard to-day under the 

 tireless steps of the moon-shiners as it was ninety-eight years 

 ago when Michaux saw it, leaves the river, crosses the little 



