The attractions of this section of the grand plateau of the Alleghanies, was made known to the coast residents of South Carolina about the year 1820. Four years after that date, Daniel Blake, of Charleston, pioneered the way from the low country, and built a summer residence on Cane creek. Charles Bering was the founder of the Flat Rock settlement, in the year 1828, and made a purchase of land, built a summer residence, about four miles from the site of the present county-seat and near the crest of the Blue Ridge. His example was followed by Mitchell King and C. S. Memminger, Sr., a year or two later. The community soon became famous for refinement, and the place for healthfulness of climate and beauty of scenery. The Flat Rock valley is about two miles wide and four miles long, reaching from the Ochlawha to the crest of the Blue Ridge, and may be described as an undulating plain. It embraced, before the war, about twenty estates, among others the country seats of Count de Choiseue, the French consul-general, and E. Molyneux, the British consul-general. The valley, until recently, was reached in carriages by the low country people. At the opening of summer the planter or merchant and his family, taking along the entire retinue of domestic servants, started for the cool, rural home in the highlands, where the luxurious living of the coast was maintained, to which additional gaiety and freedom was given by the invigorating climate and wildness of surroundings. Carriages and four, with liveried drivers, thronged the public highways. The Flat Rock settlement brought the highest development of American civilization into the heart of one of the most picturesque regions of the American continent. Wealthy and cultured audiences assembled at St. John’s church on each summer Sabbath. The magnificence of the ante-war period is no longer maintained; the number of aristocratic families has decreased, and some of the residences show the dilapidations of time; yet a refined and sociable air pervades the place, which, with the recollections of the past, makes it an interesting locality to visit. All who may have occasion to stop, will find a good hotel and hospitable entertainment at the hands of Henry Faunce, Esq., an eccentric but interesting landlord of the old school. From Hendersonville to Buck Forest is twenty miles over a fair road. This place derives its name from the fact that the hills and mountains in the vicinity are reported to abound in deer. Of late years the amount of game has been rapidly decreasing, but even yet a well-organized and well-conducted chase is seldom barren of results. Buck Forest hotel is an old-fashioned frame house, situated in the midst of wild and inviting scenery. The traveler will recognize the place by the sign of an immense elk horn on a post, and by a line of deer heads and buck antlers under the full length veranda.