[Illustration: MOUNT MITCHELL--6700 FEET ABOVE THE SEA.] In a rollicking mood you may venture to pay a pop-call on Bill Nye, who, though he pokes perfunctory, periodical fun at the Sky Land, clings to it, when he can, like a fellow does to his skin, and, in serious interludes, loves even its occasionally disreputable roads, which are, at any rate, picturesque and informal. He may escort you to a friend’s place of concealment, the den of “the chemist,” the alchemist of moonshine whiskey, warranted, no doubt, to kill at three hundred yards. I have always pitied these proscribed brethren, the victims of our internal, or what no less a person than Thomas Jefferson is credited with denominating “infernal” law. The moonshiner naturally has as much right to boil his fruit or grain into spirits as the farmer has to put hominy hot in the caldron, but the law places a negative upon his claim, and fosters and pampers the trusts that so much trouble the Democratic conscience, but are ingeniously utilized to pay pensions or run the government. So the mountain chemist is given to hiding and, at times, when hunted too persistently, to shooting his pursuers. This is all wrong, because unlawful, but it is hard to instruct the grey matter of his brain on such subjects. It is grewsome to see these lank, leathery, unkempt, semi-barbarous brethren brought into court with manacles on their limbs and summarily consigned to doleful exile in distant dungeons. You will, when you see them and their wives and their progeny, wonder how such a country can produce such specimens of humanity, but it is easily understood when explanation is at hand. In that region are reared the best of cattle, sheep, poultry and fruits, but the moonshiner disdains them. He prefers, or habit and poverty compel him to prefer, soggy, hot biscuit, excessive coffee, cadaverous, greasy bacon, assassinated in a frying pan. He drinks too much of his own fiery decoction and too little of the salubrious water that leaps, gushes and sparkles on every hand. If one could capture young moonshiner girls and boys, feed them on civilized diet, girdle them with proper comfort, garment them decently, treat them amiably and educate them wholesomely, the transformation would be thorough, startling and supreme. It would be an object lesson conveying its own moral, and this would be the evolution of many Esmeraldas off the mimic stage, and many a sturdy, comely, valiant, intellectual man, who might succeed in the Senate such typical Carolinians as Vance and Ransom.