outh Carolina. The public conveyances
had taken me to Augusta, in Georgia. There I purchased a horse, a most
trusty companion, with whom I had many pleasant experiences: a sorrel,
yet retained by me in admiring memory. A valise strapped behind my
saddle, with a great coat spread upon that, furnished all that I
required of personal accommodation. My blood beat temperately with the
pulse of youth and health. I breathed the most delicious air in the
world. My travel tended to the region of the most beautiful scenery. The
weather of early January was as balmy as October; a light warm haze
mellowed the atmosphere, and cast the softest and richest hues over the
landscape. I retraced my steps from Augusta to Edgefield, which I had
passed in the stage coach. From Edgefield I went to Abbeville, and
thence to Pendleton. I was now in the old district of Ninety Six, just
at the foot of the mountains. My course was still westward. I journeyed
alone, or rather, I ought to say, in good company, for my horse and I
had established a confidential friendship, and we amused ourselves with
a great deal of pleasant conversation--in our way. Besides, my fancy was
busy, and made the wayside quite populous--with people of its own: there
were but few of any other kind.

In the course of my journey I met an incident, which I have preserved in
my journal. The reader of the tale which occupies this volume has some
interest in it.

"Upon a day," as the old ballads have it, one of the best days of this
exquisite climate, my road threaded the defiles of some of the grandest
mountains of the country. Huge ramparts of rock toppled over my path,
and little streams leaped, in beautiful cascades, from ledge to ledge,
and brawled along the channels, which often supplied the only footway
for my horse, and, gliding through tangled screens of rhododendron,
laurel, arbor vitae, and other evergreens, plunged into rivers, whose
waters exceed anything I had ever conceived of limpid purity. It may be
poetical to talk of liquid crystal, but no crystal has the absolute
perfection of the transparency of these streams. The more distant
mountain sides, where the opening valley offered them to my view, were
fortified with stupendous walls, or banks of solid and unbroken rock,
rising in successive benches one above another, with masses of dark pine
between; the highest forming a crest to the mountain, cutting the sky in
sharp profile, with images of castellated towers, b