ul
wild trumpet-creepers in blossom, festooning the trees.

The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through the
channel of the Santee. It is not to be confounded with the French Broad,
which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs northward past
Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through the Warm Springs
Gap in the Bald Mountains. As the French claimed ownership of all the
affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was called the French Broad.

It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher than
Asheville. It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of leisure to
the scattered population; at every store and mill was a congregation of
loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and mules to the fences,
and had the professional air of the idler and gossip the world over. The
vehicles met on the road were a variety of the prairie schooner, long
wagons with a top of hoops over which is stretched a cotton cloth. The
wagons are without seats, and the canvas is too low to admit of sitting
upright, if there were. The occupants crawl in at either end, sit or
lie on the bottom of the wagon, and jolt along in shiftless
uncomfortableness.

Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
journey. Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the route
on horseback is impracticable. The distance to the Warm Springs is
thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the road is clear,
as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the railway, and the
valley is something more than river and rails. But below Marshall the
valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good portion of the way in
the old stage road. One can walk the track, but to ride a horse over its
sleepers and culverts and occasional bridges, and dodge the trains,
is neither safe nor agreeable. We sent our horses round--the messenger
taking the risk of leading them, between trains, over the last six or
eight miles,--and took the train.

The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
all the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low,
monotonous in form, and the stream