of old Mark Langston;
the Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the
literature of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of
bright women, big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull
day or evening on Roan. I can fancy, however, that it might tire in
time, if one were not a botanist, without the resource of women's
society. The ladies staying here were probably all accomplished
botanists, and the writer is indebted to one of them for a list of
plants found on Roan, among which is an interesting weed, catalogued
as Humana, perplexia negligens. The species is, however, common
elsewhere.

The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
thunder-shower. After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle
Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had,
but were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the
day. Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a
mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley. On the lower mountains, at
wide intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched
cabin and a spot of girdled trees. A clergyman here, not long ago,
undertook to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to
them. In one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom,
after conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray. She
offered no objection, and he kneeled down and prayed. The woman
heard him, and watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an
effort to ascertain what he was doing, and then said:

"Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole."

Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest,
and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some
rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset.
In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained
of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States--a
continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or
distance. The grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of
the atmosphere. Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day
before, the giant range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim
inaccessibility, and we could see, a small pyramid on the southwest
horizon, King's Mountain in South Carolina, estimated to be distant
one hundred and fifty miles. To the north Roan falls from this point
abruptly, and we had, like a map below us, t