MOUNT MITCHELL 309 
and the cornfields that He thirsting from the moun- 
tains to the sea. 
Ascending through the balsam forests one seems 
under the spell of the Black Dome. The Black 
Mountains have received their baptism. No matter 
how delicately blue and ethereal distance may paint 
them, to think of them or to see them must ever 
after recall these sombre depths beneath the dark 
boughs. The path is wet and muddy in places, and 
also steep, but at last you pass up out of the dark 
balsams into a sunny meadow where blue eyebrights 
look up from the grass, and from which a stony trail 
bordered with rose-bay leads through stunted firs 
to the open top, where a monument standing alone 
on the very summit of the mountain gives a feeling 
of solemnity to the place. It was erected here in 
1888 to the memory, as the legend on the side reads, 
of the "Rev. Elisha Mitchell, D.D., who, after being 
for thirty-nine years a professor in the University of 
North Carolina, lost his life in the scientific explor- 
ation of this mountain, in the sixty-fourth year of his 
age, June 27th, 1857." 
Dr. Mitchell, being greatly attached to the moun- 
tain, then called Black Dome, and convinced that it 
was the highest in the Appalachians, had often been 
to the top to make his observations and prove his 
theory. One day he went up alone, and did not re- 
turn at the appointed time. As soon as this became 
known, search was made, men and even women col- 
lecting from far and near, for Dr. Mitchell was 
greatly loved. The search, led by several old bear 
