The house is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two
sides. If one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air
and fair entertainment, this could be commended. It is an excellent
fruit region; apples especially are sound and of good flavor. That
may be said of all this part of the State. The climate is adapted to
apples, as the hilly part of New England is. I fancy the fruit
ripens slowly, as it does in New England, and is not subject to quick
decay like much of that grown in the West. But the grape also can be
grown in all this mountain region. Nothing but lack of enterprise
prevents any farmer from enjoying abundance of fruit. The industry
carried on at the moment at the Widow Sherrill's was the artificial
drying of apples for the market. The apples are pared, cored, and
sliced in spirals, by machinery, and dried on tin sheets in a
patented machine. The industry appears to be a profitable one
hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the aid of
invention.

While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
"Jane" and "Eliza," the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union. Madame Sherrill, who
carries on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of
strong and liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort
in the churches in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a
discouraging account of the unvital piety of the region.

The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles,
is rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque,
following the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it,