A few miles from Brevard, the headwaters of the French Broad, and farther south, on the Jackson county side, the streams hidden in the wilderness of the Hog-back and emptying into the Toxaway, and the head-waters of the Chatooga, can be recommended to the followers of Isaak Walton. The writer does not know from actual experience of any trout inhabiting the Linville waters, but there are sign-boards on the banks prohibiting fishing. Close on the Mitchell and Watauga county boundary, is the Elk river, a famous trout stream. The best approach is from Tennessee, up the narrow-gauge railroad, through Carter county, to the Cranberry mines. From the old forge to Louis Banner’s, or Dugger’s, the distance is eight miles. The road winds upward along a clear, dark stream, rushing over light-colored rocks. Steep mountain sides, heavy with wild, brilliant forests, darken the highway with their shadows. In the morning and evening, the woods are filled with melodious birds. Logging camps are numerous in this neighborhood, the solitudes resounding with the crash of falling timbers and the songs, or more likely the oaths, of the lumbermen. Besides catching trout in the Elk, there is a good chance for killing deer along its margin, or in some of the vast hemlock forests in which the high valleys of the southwest corner of Watauga are embosomed. In Ashe county, the tributary creeks to the North fork of New river rise amid picturesque mountains, and teem with trout. [Illustration: OCHLAWAHA VALLEY, FROM DUN CRAGIN.] AFTER THE ANTLERS. Rise! Sleep no more! ’Tis a noble morn; The dews hang thick on the fringed thorn, And the frost shrinks back, like a beaten hound, Under the steaming, steaming ground. Behold where the billowy clouds flow by, And leave us alone in the clear gray sky! Our horses are ready and steady.--So, ho! I’m gone, like the dart from the Tartar’s bow. _Hark! Hark! Who calleth the maiden Morn From her sleep in the woods and the stubble corn? The horn,--the horn! The merry sweet ring of the hunter’s horn._ --_Barry Cornwall._ [Illustration: T]he Smoky chain, whose summit bears the long boundary line of North Carolina and Tennessee, attains its culmination between the deep, picturesque gaps of the French Broad and Little Tennessee, and is known as the Great Smoky mountains. For the distance of sixty-five miles it forms a mighty barrier, affording, with the exception of the Big Pigeon, no passage-way for mountain waters, and broken, except toward its southern end, by no gaps less than 5,000 feet in altitude. Nineteen peaks of over 6,000 feet in altitude, and 14 more within 400 feet of these figures, connected by massive ridges and interspersed by peaks but little lower than those just mentioned, make a marked cluster of massive mountains.