Not more than a quarter of a mile from the house where we spent the night, the road turns abruptly, and, leaving the valley, enters among the hills, winding along a mountain-side and overlooking a deep gorge through which the Little River comes in white sheets and hurrying rapids. Great heights, clothed with verdure, dominate the pass, so that our way lies in shadow, only pierced here and there by rays of sunlight that fill the dusky greenness with a shimmer of gold. The road is a mere shelf—narrow as that along the French Broad, and more dangerous, inasmuch as one is at least on a level with the latter river, while here one has the pleasing prospect (in case necessity requires one to pass another vehicle) of being pushed over a precipice varying in depth from fifty to a hundred feet, to the rocks and rushing water below. We do not go over, however, despite an encounter with two wagons at one of the narrowest points of the road. It is a matter requiring much time and ingenuity to engineer past them without an accident, but Eric and John—having relieved themselves of their human freight as a matter of precaution—manage to do so successfully. The morning is all before us in which to reach Buck Forest, so we take advantage of the pause to clamber over rocks and through laurel-bushes to a point from which we command a view of the river as it sweeps down at a declination of forty or fifty degrees, and— “... like a steed in frantic fit That flings the froth from curb and bit,” whirls in eddying foam and spray over, under, and around the massive rocks that bar its course. “This stream has a troubled time of it altogether,” says Charley, who has gone out farther than anyone else dares venture, and deaf to our remonstrances stands on a narrow, shelving ledge overlooking the surging current. “From its fountain until it reaches the valley which we have just left—where the French Broad immediately swallows it up—it flows over a bed of rock, and is broken into endless falls and rapids—several of them exceedingly grand.” “It strikes me that the entire country seems to have a rock foundation,” says Mr. Lanier. “Look at that mountain over there! It is solid rock, with a few feet of soil on the surface.” “The effect is picturesque in the extreme,” says Mrs. Cardigan, regarding the mountain in question with approbation. Certainly nothing can be finer than this splendid height, as it rises above the stream for at least a thousand feet, its great side covered with tangled greenness save in places where the rock is uncovered and stands forth boldly in gray cliffs, while, by throwing our heads far back as we look upward, we can see the crest outlined against the intense silvery-blue sky.