grape, and still gay with bloom. The habitations on the way are
mostly board shanties and mean frame cabins, but the railway is
introducing ambitious architecture here and there in the form of
ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses; ornamentation is apt to
precede comfort in our civilization.

Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from Roan
Mountain), and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea. The visitor
will find here a good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful in
a July evening), and obliging people. This railway from Johnson
City, hanging on the edge of the precipices that wall the gorge of
the Doe, is counted in this region by the inhabitants one of the
engineering wonders of the world. The tourist is urged by all means
to see both it and Linville Falls.

The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, is
not probably expected to take stock of moral conditions. But this
Mitchell County, although it was a Union county during the war and is
Republican in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps prefer
another adverb to "although"), has had the worst possible reputation.
The mountains were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woods
were full of grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as
"native brandy," quarrels and neighborhood difficulties were
frequent, and the knife and pistol were used on the slightest
provocation. Fights arose about boundaries and the title to mica
mines, and with the revenue officers; and force was the arbiter of
all disputes. Within the year four murders were committed in the
sparsely settled county. Travel on any of the roads was unsafe. The
tone of morals was what might be expected with such lawlessness. A
lady who came up on the road on the 4th of July, when an excursion