he
jail. But we took a personal leaf out of this experience. Our Virginia
friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had urged us
not to venture into it without arms--take at least, they insisted, a
revolver each. And now we had to congratulate ourselves that we had
not done so. If we had, we should doubtless on that Sunday have been
waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission into the Yancey
County jail.

III

From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
the capital of Buncombe County. It is distant some forty to forty-five
miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads. The easier
and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, the first
stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoon when we
were in condition to move.

The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville, cross
Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to Asheville. He
represented this route as shorter and infinitely more picturesque. There
was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way. With scarcely a moment's
reflection and while the horses were saddling, we decided to ride to Big
Tom Wilson's. I could not at the time understand, and I cannot now, why
the Professor consented. I should hardly dare yet confess to my
fixed purpose to ascend Mount Mitchell. It was equally fixed in the
Professor's mind not to do it. We had not discussed it much. But it is
safe to say that if he had one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was
not to climb Mitchell. "Not," as he put it,--

"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,"

had suggested the possibility that he could do it.

But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
to Wilson's. When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy as
anywhere--a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and never got
off her horse. You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's, you can go any
way you please.

Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most characteristic
productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman, hunter, guide. So
we rode down B