I pushed through the tangled thickets under the scrubby oaks, and a minute after stood before the structure. It was a mill which even at this date would, if new, have been suited to a more open country. The side that faced us was farthest from the river. One door, up to which rotten steps led, and two windows, through one of which the tree before mentioned, spread its heavy limbs, were on the front. The siding was falling and hanging loosely in places from the upright timbers, and the entire structure was fast becoming a skeleton, for all the clapboards had been torn by the wind or thievish hands from the three remaining sides. The roof, in part, had fallen in, but had been caught by the shaky stringers of the upper, half-story floor. The spot on the river bank was peculiarly suited for a mill site. The channel of the stream above was rock bound, the banks being steep and narrow. Just before it reached the mill the body of waters compressed into an impetuous volume, shot over a fall of twenty feet. An outlet had been blasted through the solid rock close by the side of the fall, and a wooden race set up leading to the mill. This race had long since disappeared, worn away by time and water. The old wheel, though, hung in its place beside the structure almost under the fall, and above the mad waters, boiling and foaming below. Going around to one of the sides, we managed to clamber in and on the plank floor. There was half a partition through the center, forming on either side two rooms, each about 20 X 25 feet in dimensions. The mill-stones were yet in place, but the hopper and grain bins were missing. We seated ourselves on the floor at the back side of the building, and with our feet hanging over the green, rotten wheel, with the thin spray of the cataract now and then touching us, and the turbulent river sweeping onward below, he began as follows: “When I came here from Charleston, South Carolina, and settled, in the spring of 184-, the first thing I found necessary, after building my house, was a mill. As many families, apparently, lived in these valleys then as live here now. I was compelled to go to Murphy, a distance of eighteen miles, to get my flour and meal, or take my grain to a primitive hopper, two miles below on this river, and wait a day for it to grind a bushel. Either was an exasperating procedure. This site seemed the best adapted one along the river. The race was formed, a foundation laid, and, by the aid of a temporary saw, enough lumber was gotten out to finish this mill complete by the following summer.