Let the evening come. At its approach, the keen-piped “bob-white” of the male quail grows less and less frequent in the fields, and after its call has entirely ceased, and the mountains grow gray, then finally resolve to black, formless masses, the cry of the whip-poor-will rings wild and peculiar out of the darkness above the meadows. If the night is free from rain, the forests and clearings will be ablaze with fire-flies. Millions of these insects spring into life with the dusk. Every yard of air is peopled with them; and for one who has never ventured into the country at night, their bright bodies flashing above the road, and under and amid the branches of the trees, would certainly fill him with profound astonishment. As has been described in the geographical sketch, in this volume, Western North Carolina is a mountainous expanse, measuring about 200 miles in length by an average breadth of mountain plateau of 30 miles, yet in all this area there is not one lake. This seems a singular fact when contrasted with what is known of the waters of other mountain regions. There is no lack of water, however, in the Carolina mountains. It gushes up from thousands of springs in every valley, on every mountain slope and summit; but nowhere does it find a deep, wide basin in which to rest itself before hurrying to the sea. There are a few ponds in some of the valleys, but they are small, and are all artificial. Many are stocked with trout, from which the owners’ tables are easily supplied. One of these ponds is at Estes’ place near Blowing Rock. Trout are, at intervals, bagged in the brooks near by, and then freed in its waters. The tourist can be paddled in a boat over the clear surface, under which the standing trunks of the flooded trees are visible, and may be fortunate enough to pull out a few fish; but the fascination of killing the game in the mountain torrents is wholly lost. Colonel Hampton, of Cashier’s valley, has a well stocked trout pond formed by the dammed up waters of Cashier creek. A screen fastened into the dam allows the escape of nothing but the water. The spawn is deposited high up the channels of the limpid streams, which empty into this pond. A fortune could be made in fish culture in the Carolina mountains. The valley of Jamestown, six miles east of Cashier’s valley, is admirably suited for an enterprise of this kind. A lake of six square miles could be formed here by damming, at a narrow gorge, a fork of Toxaway.