Presently the sunset fades, and twilight softly melts into moonlight. All along their dark crests the mountains are touched with silver, while the pearly radiance bathes valley, and rock, and stream, with a flood of enchantment. The coach and the hours drag slowly on, but the night grows more and more beautiful. We cross again and again a swift, bright stream, which we are told is the Swannanoa, and at last we find ourselves journeying along its banks. Is this an enchanted land of pastoral delight to which we have come? It is impossible not to believe so. Fertile fields and softly swelling hills surround us; houses gleam in the moonlight; the level road over which even the coach rolls smoothly is immediately on the river-bank. We see the current rippling and swirling over its rocky bed with a music which fills all the lustrous night with sweetness. Lovely depths of foliage—drooping trees and tangled vines—fringe its banks. Nothing can be conceived more fairy-like than this charming river. Though I am growing very sleepy, I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration, and the gentleman by my side begins to explain that “Swannanoa” does not mean “beautiful,” but “great road, or pass, over the mountains.” I listen with disgusted incredulity, and before he concludes have fallen asleep, indifferent to the fact that it is the hard wood of the coach against which my head rests. [Illustration: Asheville.] When I wake we are entering Asheville. The coach is rattling up a long, stony street, lights are gleaming, and there seems a great deal of movement about. Our journey is at an end, and with a sense of grateful repose we soon lie down to sleep, waiting for the morning to show us what manner of place this is which we have entered in the still, bright beauty of an August midnight. CHAPTER II. “Wandering as in a magic dream, By shadowy wood and crystal stream, By mountain-peak and forest-dell, Where fauns and fairies love to dwell, We enter the enchanted clime, Forgotten in the lapse of time, The golden land of fair idlesse, Of sylvan sports and joyousness.” [Illustration] A day of summer warmth, yet with a stimulating quality in the air unlike the languid heat we left below, a cloudless sky, a flood of sunshine, a sparkling mist draping the distant azure mountains—this is the aspect with which Buncombe greets the strangers within her borders when they open their windows the next morning.