So we go on, with our backs to the glory which is behind. The ascent of Beaucatcher is not difficult. A very excellent road leads over it to a highly cultivated cove in the mountains behind, where day begins an hour or two later, and ends an hour or two earlier, than in Asheville. We leave this road at the gap where it crosses the mountain, and follow a steep path to the top of the knob which rises on the right. “One could not easily drive up here,” says Sylvia, as we clamber over the rocks, “but it would be quite possible to ride without difficulty.” [Illustration: The Ascent.] “Shall we try it to-morrow, if saddle-horses are to be found in Asheville?” asks her attendant. “I thought we were to return to the Sulphur Spring to-morrow,” she says, laughing. Eric and I reach the summit first. It is smooth, level, and green. There is a grass-grown fortification where a Confederate battery was once planted, and close beside it a dead tree that, from Asheville and miles beyond, presents the perfect appearance of a large cross. We mount the fortification just as the sun sinks behind the distant mountains. At our feet Asheville is spread, but we scarcely glance at the picture which the town presents, crowning the verdant beauty of its summer hills, with the fertile valleys of the French Broad and Swannanoa on each side. Our gaze turns beyond—to the azure world that stretches, far as the eye can reach, to the golden gateway of the sun—an infinity of loveliness, with the sunset radiance trembling on the crests of more than a hundred peaks. The atmosphere is so transparent that it is impossible to say how far the range of one’s vision extends. Mountains rise behind mountains, until they recede away into dimmest distance, their trending lines lying faint and far against the horizon. Blue as heaven and soft as clouds, the nearer ranges stand—serried rank behind rank, and peak upon peak. The view is so boundless and so beautiful that the imagination is for a time overwhelmed. Are those sapphire heights the Delectable Mountains?—and do those dazzling clouds veil the jasper walls of the city of God? It almost seems so. The sunset sky is a miracle of loveliness—of tints which it would be presumption to attempt to describe—and the majestic sides of Pisgah grow softly purple as the incarnadine glow falls over its towering pinnacle. “Oh, what a scene!” says Sylvia, with a long sigh. She stands like one entranced, gazing at the farthest peaks where their blue outlines melt into the sunset gold. “I scarcely thought there were so many mountains in the world,” says Adèle Dupont.