Just before reaching Valley river, the traveler will notice a large, white house, situated in a fine orchard. Mrs. Walker’s is known through the western counties as a place of excellent accommodation. At this point, the road to the lower valley of the Nantihala, turns abruptly to the right. It is a rough way through an uninviting country, thinly inhabited, poor in farming lands, and devoid of scenery. After miles of weary travel, the road disappears from the sunlight into a deep ravine. A stream disputes passage with the swampy road, which is fairly built upon the springy roots of the rhododendrons. It seems to be the bottom of some deep-sunk basin, which at one time was the center of a lake, whose waters, finding a way out, left a rich deposit for a luxuriant forest to spring from. The trunks of the trees are covered with yellowish-green moss. Matted walls of living and dead rhododendrons and kalmias line the way. Your horse will stumble wearily along, especially if it is soon after a rain; and if a buggy is behind him, it will take a good reinsman to keep it from upsetting in the axle-deep ruts, over low stumps and half-rotten logs. Keep up your spirits, and think little of the convenience of the place for the accomplishment of a dark deed. Soon it comes to an end, and a firmer, though rough, road leads into an open forest, and gradually descends a narrow valley between prodigiously high mountains. The passage of Red Marble gap is now made, and the valley of the Nantihala again entered twelve miles below where the State road crosses at Monday’s. The first view of it will cause you to rise in your stirrups. It is a narrow valley, with one farm-house lying in the foreground. Around it rise massive mountain walls, perfectly perpendicular, veiled with woods, and in height fully 2,000 feet. Directly before you is a parting of the tremendous ranges, and through this steep-sided gap, purple lines of mountains, rising one behind another, bar the vision. The picture of these far-away ranges, in the subdued coloring of distance, is of inspiring grandeur. The river is unseen at this point; but, if the Cheowah Mountain road is ascended, its white line of waters will be visible, as it issues from the wild gorge at the head of the valley; and; bickering along between wood-fringed banks, by the farm-house, under and out from under the birches, at length disappears in the wilderness leading toward the great gap.