Routes have been opened in various directions from Asheville to develop the mountain district. One railroad goes for a hundred miles through the gorges and valleys southwestward along the base of the Great Smoky range. Another route is southeast through the romantic pass of the Hickory-nut Gap, where the Rocky Broad River penetrates the Blue Ridge, a splendid canyon of nine miles, with cliffs rising fifteen hundred feet and having the remarkable Chimney Rock built on high alongside the gorge, where it stands up an isolated sentinel. Bald Mountain, rising opposite, is celebrated in Mrs. Burnett's _Esmeralda_. Cæsar's Head, to the southward, is an outlier of these mountain ranges, bordering the lowlands; and standing on top of its southern brow, upon a precipice rising almost sheer for fifteen hundred feet, one can overlook the lower regions of South Carolina and Georgia for more than a hundred miles away. The French Broad River, the chief stream of this charming region, got its name from the early hunters who came up from the settled regions of Carolina nearer the coast, and penetrating the mountains explored it. The Cherokees called it Tselica, or "The Roarer," a not inappropriate name. The hunters who came through the Blue Ridge by the Hickory-nut Gap in colonial times followed down the Rocky Broad that flowed out of it into this river, which was much larger, and as the region beyond the mountains was then controlled by the French, they named it the French Broad. It rises in the Blue Ridge range almost on the South Carolina boundary, and nearly interlocks its headwaters with those of the Congaree flowing out to the Atlantic. Its upper waters wind for forty miles through a beautiful and fertile valley, but in approaching Asheville the scenery changes, the hills press more closely upon the stream, its course becomes more rapid, and after a swift turmoil it plunges down the cataract at Mountain Island. Here a knob-topped rock rises fifty to seventy feet high, the stream forcing its way on either hand by a channel cut through the enclosing ridge, and it descends a cataract of forty-five feet, running away through a deep abyss. The river passes Asheville and flows in a most picturesque gorge through the high mountains, everywhere disclosing new beauties, the water rushing and roaring over ledges and boulders, going around sharp bends, receiving gushing tributaries coming down the mountain side or trickling over the face of some broad high cliff. Massive rocks rise on high, and the road is often on a shelf cut into their face, the river boiling along far down below. Then the valley broadens, and here, in a lovely vale surrounded by the mountains, are the North Carolina Hot Springs, a popular resort, with a climate even milder in winter than at Asheville, as the Great Smoky range protects it from the northern blasts. The curative properties of these springs are efficacious in rheumatic and cutaneous diseases. Beyond, the bold