After this the ascent begins in earnest. The road is almost perpendicular, and so narrow that there is barely room for the coach. On one side the mountain rises in a sheer cliff, on the other are precipices, down which the gaze is lost in twilight. At least once in every half-mile we ford a stream of considerable size, while innumerable rivulets cross our way. There is no point in our upward journey where we miss the music of flowing water. Clear as crystal and cold as ice, these streams come leaping in cascades down the rocky glens, flash along our path, bordered by ferns, shadowed by laurel and ivy, and at last plunge into the tangled greenness of the depths far below. It is impossible to write, in terms which will not seem extravagant, of the forest which covers the great mountains towering across the gorge. The evergreens especially attract our notice and admiration. We see familiar shrubs grown to stately trees, and trees to giants. The spruce-pine, here in its native air, towers to an almost incredible height, the hemlock, the white-pine, the “bonny ivy-tree,” the holly, and mountain-laurel—what words can describe the beauty of these, mingled with the lighter foliage of the oak, the chestnut, the maple, the ash, and countless others? Beautiful berries gleam, strange wild-flowers shine like stars, ferns run riot in luxuriance, velvet-like mosses cover every rock and fallen tree. Up, still up we go, as if we meant to pierce the very clouds. The horses strain, the coach sways, the air grows fresher; in the great shadow of the hills we forget the sultry heat of August lying over the parched country below. We feel that we are on our way to the land of the sky. I say as much to Aunt Markham, who resignedly expresses a hope that we may reach it. After a while the children, who have been devouring large slices of cake, cry out for water, and Mr. Pence obligingly stops by a spring that gushes out at the foot of a gray rock. Eric descends also, and asks for a cup. “You must all drink,” he says, “for this is the head of the Catawba River. A few miles from here, on the other side of the Ridge, is a spring which is called the head of the Swannanoa, so that in the course of one afternoon you can drink from the fountains of two rivers—one of which is bound to the Atlantic Ocean, the other to the Gulf of Mexico.” “Dear me!” says the old lady, “to think of their traveling so far! But I always thought the Swannanoa emptied into the French Broad.” “This is a beautiful place, Eric,” I say, hastily, looking at the narrow defile in which the coach stands, the escarpment of the bold cliff leaning over us, the green abyss on the other side, beyond which mountains hem the gap. “I wonder if Mr. Pence would not stop long enough for me to sketch it?” “Impossible,” answers Eric. “We have been so much delayed that I doubt if we shall reach Asheville before midnight.”