Presently Sylvia’s voice is heard asking if we do not want some information. “Eric is a walking guide-book,” she says, “and he has been telling me all about the country. We have crossed the Blue Ridge and left it behind, you know. These mountains on each side of us now are spurs of that chain—those on the left are called the hills of the Swannanoa, these on the right belong to the Black Mountain range. Eric says that in a little while we shall see the Black itself.” “_Vive le roi!_” I answer. “The Black is ‘the monarch of mountains’—at least the monarch of Atlantic mountains. One cares nothing about those enormous and no doubt ugly peaks in the West.” “There is very good philosophy in valuing what we have, and despising what we have not,” says Eric. “Yonder is the Black now! Look, what a fine peak!” “Very fine, indeed!” says Aunt Markham, gazing out of the wrong side of the coach and nodding approvingly at one of the hills of the Swannanoa. But I see what Eric means. Indeed if he had not spoken I think I should have known that the magnificent crest upthrust against the evening sky could only be the chief of Appalachian mountains. Shall I ever forget that first sight of its majestic beauty? Its splendid peaks were outlined with massive distinctness, and its dark-blue sides were purpling in the light of a luminous sunset. Round the pinnacle a few light clouds were floating, which caught the golden radiance of the west. “Those form the monarch’s crown,” says Eric. “It is rare to see the peaks of the Black free from clouds.” Besides the Black, there are other mountains—part of the same range—in sight. Nothing can be more superb than the great lines of Craggy as they trend westward. Its peaks, to the unscientific eye, look as high as the cloud-girt pinnacle of its mighty neighbor, and their effect is nearly as grand. That we see this beautiful range at sunset seems to us a very gracious boon of Fate. Magical shades of color melt and blend into each other as the nearer and farthest heights change their hues with the changing light. Finally a soft mist, neither blue nor purple, but something between the two, begins to steal over them, and deepen in all the clefts and gorges, as if they were drawing their robes about them for the night. It is not long that we have this view. The road turns, other mountains intervene, and we find ourselves facing a great pomp of sunset. In the midst of it rises, like a dream of the celestial country, a glorified azure peak of exquisite symmetry, and Eric says, “Pisgah!”