combined with natural laziness to detain the travelers in this
cottage of ease. They enjoyed this the more because it was on their
consciences that they should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-five
miles eastward, long held up before them as the most magnificent
feature of this region, and on no account to be omitted. Hence,
naturally, a strong desire to omit it. The Professor takes bold
ground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and it was nothing to
him that the public would demand that we should see Linville Falls.
In the first place, we could find no one who had ever seen them, and
we spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers. The nearest
we came to information was from a workman at the furnace, who was
born and raised within three miles of the Falls. He had heard of
people going there. He had never seen them himself. It was a good
twenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd think
it thirty before we got there. Fifty miles of such travel to see a
little water run down-hill! The travelers reflected. Every country
has a local waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many.
One more would add little to the experience of life. The vagueness
of information, to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake the
journey; but the temptation was resisted--something ought to be left
for the next explorer--and so Linville remains a thing of the
imagination.

Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and the
Friend rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, to
Roan Station, the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain. It
was a ride of an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed with
rhododendrons, nearly blossomless; but at a point on the stream this
sturdy shrub had formed a long bower where under a table might have
been set for a temperance picnic, completely overgrown with wild