ASHEVILLE 121 
however, Ashevllle, the oldest, largest, and best- 
known town in the mountains, must be considered, 
since some knowledge of its history is necessary in 
order to understand the history of the mountains, 
including Biltmore. 
Leaving Biltmore the train soon reaches the city, 
for Asheville really is a city, with a population fall- 
ing a little short of twenty thousand. It lies in the 
valley of the French Broad River, which is far too 
narrow to hold it, so that the town has spread out 
over the surrounding hills, many of its houses, like 
those of Traumfest, standing with their lower regions 
on the slope beneath, and their front door decorously 
opening at street level. The history of Asheville, 
though not hoary with age, is yet interesting. Clearly 
to comprehend it one must retire to the year 1663, 
at which time Charles the Second of England gave 
"Carolina" so munificently to the lords proprietary, 
the territory thus summarily disposed of reaching 
from Virginia to Florida, and from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific. This tract was subsequently divided 
into several large states, one of them being North 
Carolina, or the "Old North State," as the people 
fondly called it. 
The Old North State, a territory larger than New 
York, the Empire State of the North, became the 
goal of so varied an emigration that in 1754 ^ public 
document declares its population to be composed of 
almost all the nations of Europe, and so fast did it 
grow that, at the time of the Revolution, North 
Carolina ranked fourth in population among the 
