Lindsey's Guide Book to Western North Carolina (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890. Excerpt: ... further progress. Although surrounded by these monarchs of the Appalachians, strange to say, yon are now at an altitude no greater than that of Asheville. "gombroon," The mountain home or summer residence of U. S. Senator Z.B.Vance, is located but a few hundred yards from Mrs. Patton's, on a beautiful wooded spur of the Craggy Mountain. The building is new, having been completed less than a year ago; the house is of beautiful design and admirably adapted to the location, standing in a beautiful grove of stately oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks and pines--trees that drank the dews of heaven, or smiled in the sunshine, or braved the wind, and storm, and tempest an hundred years ago. Many of them, I dare say, were silent companions of the mountain crags and peak long before the turf beneath their branches were profaned or glorified by the foot of man, and quivered at the ominous sound of the first axe-falls of the pioneer that waked the echoes of these solitudes of forests, streams and mountains. Amongsuch trees, on such a spot, amid the mountains of his native State, has Buncombe's great son chosen to build his house. Strong contrast is the Senator's life here to what it is in Washington city, his winter residence. But it is a most restful change, and the whirl of political and social activitv and gaieties at the capital during the winter season, far from weaning him from North Carolina, "But binds him to his native mountains more." Here in his secluded mountain retreat he may say: "What now to me are the jars of life, Its petty cares, its harder throes? The hills are free from toil and strife, And clasp me in their deep repose." THE ASCENT TO MITCHELL'S jeEAK, The loftiest of Atlantic summits, and the monarch of the Appalachian system. The chief summit--once know...