After dinner I left Franklin’s to ride over a good road up the Linville river. The afternoon passed without any occurrences or scenes of marked interest, and the sun was slowly sinking toward a mountain-rimmed horizon when, making a last inquiry in regard to my route, I entered a wilderness, unbroken by human habitation for nearly five miles. It was a great, green-lined way. Linns, birches, and hemlocks met over-head, rendering dark the shadows. Under this forest, grow in richest luxuriance dark hedges of rhododendron, too dense for easy penetration, and reaching up to the lower branches of the trees. It was late in season for their flowers, still many of them were white and purple with bloom. So deep and luxuriant was the foliage of the forest and its undergrowth, and so cold the waters of the stream that crossed and recrossed or occupied the road-bed itself, that the air was chilly at the hour in which I rode, and must be so even at noon-day. The shade continued to deepen, and the chilliness of the air increased; still, in spite of the apparent great distance I had covered, no house presented itself, and in only one place did the branches of the trees separate themselves sufficiently to see out. Then, far beyond, I saw the black summit of the Grandfather. That was all. The waters of the stream are of a rich, Rhine-wine color. At one point that day, I noticed, attached to a fence above the stream, a board bearing the words, “No fishing allowed on this land.” This is the only posted warning against angling that I have seen, or know of, in the mountains. In that twilight hour the stream seemed to sing a doleful refrain over the smooth boulders and gnarled ivy roots. An owl hooted from its hidden perch in a mossed pine; and a scared rabbit, interrupted in its evening meal on an apple dropped by some lonely wayfarer, fled across the road, and disappeared in the gloom of the thickets. A more dismal woodland for a twilight ride could not well be imagined in the possibilities of nature. It would naturally be more dismal to the unfamiliar traveler, tired with a long day’s ride, and despairing of reaching a farm-house before the approach of a cloudy night. Suddenly the forest on one side opened, and a clearing of dead, girdled trees, with brush fires blazing here and there among the white, standing trunks, lay before me. Further on was a meadow and a small house, from whose chimney a wreath of smoke was ascending straight to the zenith. Over the house and farm loomed the rock-crowned summit of the Peak of the Blue Ridge. An unshapely ledge cropped from the mountain’s top.