y a good house) was a rude mountain
structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and
sitting-room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the
thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was
welcome. Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave
the occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being
primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the
loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not
unlike that of being at sea. The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and
Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the
season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands. This
statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the
character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.

The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North Carolina
mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in mist; and it
would rather rain on them than not. On the afternoon of our arrival
there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky. The distance
was hazy, but the outlines were preserved. We could see White Top, in
Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range; the twin towers
of Linville; and the entire range of the Black Mountains, rising from
the valley, and apparently lower than we were. They get the name of
Black from the balsams which cover the summits.

The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful
company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,
and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in
agreeableness. There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of the
virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston; the
Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the literature
of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of bright women,
big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull day or evening on
Roan. I can fancy, however, that it might tire in time, if one were not
a botanist, without the resource of women's society. The ladies staying
here were probably all accomplished botanists, and the writer is
indebted to one of them for a list of plants found on Roan, among which
is an interesting weed, catalogued as Humana, perplexia negligens. The
species is, however, common elsewhere.

The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
thunder-sho