more recently by Professor Guyot of Boston, are ascertained to be the highest mountains in the United States, attaining an altitude of six thousand seven hundred and sixty feet above the ocean tides, nearly five hundred feet higher than the famous White Hills of New Hampshire.

bloodless. The last and most famous of these fights took place in 1788, when Colonel Tipton, the chief of the North Carolina party, was besieged in this house for several days by General Sevier, then Governor of Franklin.

As the details of this ignoble strife will add nothing to the renown of the brave and patriotic men who were unfortunately engaged in it, we prefer to pass them over in silence. For while the sterner duties of the historian may require that he should note impartially the evil and the good that men have done in their day and generation, we, in our idle and pleasant wander

The fame of these mighty peaks had reached the ears of our artist, and so fired his imagination that they had become the frequent theme of his sleeping and waking dreams. Now so near the realization of these romantic fancies, no wonder that he rode apart, silent and serious, with fascinated eyes fixed upon the land-ings, choose rather to remember the old Governscape before him.

or only as the hero and patriot, and in our recollections of the spot, to associate the pleasant cottage on Sinking Creek with its present accomplished and hospitable occupant.

But at length the Tennesseean draws his rein before the gate of a modest-looking country residence, pleasantly situated almost under the shadow of one of the advanced spurs of the It rained heavily during the night, but the Iron Mountains. Here we are on classic ground. morning rose blustering and bright; our adSoon after the war of our Independence, young venturers were upon the road betimes, and ereTennessee, with characteristic impatience of long found themselves amidst the ragged defiles parental authority, undertook to flout her re- of the mountains, with a keen wind blowing in spectable mother, and set up for herself before their faces. But in return, the dreary, leafless she was of age under the name of Franklin or landscape of the lower country had disappeared, Frankland. In those days the people of the and their road followed the course of a dashing, settlements did not understand the art of revo- sparkling, amber-tinted stream, shaded by forlutionizing by ballot, or blackguarding a dynasty ests of perennial beauty. There were waving out of power through the newspapers, but, hav- groves of the silver pine mingled with lofty firs ing recently delivered themselves from a kingly and hemlocks. There was the varnished holly, yoke by force of arms, were more ready to re- gemmed with its scarlet berries, and the snaky sort to the "ultima ratio regum," and had faith laurel, whose dense evergreen masses oftenin bullets and cold steel. Thus it was that times obstructed the road-a wilderness of rich the frequent collisions between the authority of and graceful foliage, defying the icy breath of the old and new governments were not always winter. About noon they halted upon the sum

"Good-evening, neighbor! How far to Grey | within the next mile encountered a party of three Briggs's?" "Well, four or five miles, p'raps-and are bout with John Barleycorn or some of his kinyou the men that have lost a horse?"

me of a time I wonst had with a painter in this | says I, 'some of the neighbors' children have very mountain."

"Tell us about it by all means," said the Squire.

"P'raps you gentlemen wouldn't believe that a man of my make could outrun a painter in a fair race?"

got lost in the mountain!' And so I listened agin, and heard it agin, closter like. Then I was sure it was a child, and was startin' off to look for it, when I looked up, and behold! about fifteen steps off, was a full-grown painter standin' lookin' me in the face. Well, I said Now Briggs is a stout, broad-shouldered man, it was cold, didn't I? but I broke out into a with a long back and short legs; he has a rug-sweat as if it was summer; and what do you ged, weather-beaten face, square head, and a think I did? nose prominent and red withal-but this latter circumstance most probably has nothing to do with his running.

After scrutinizing his host the Tennesseean ventured to express a doubt upon the subject.

"Well, I did do it," said Briggs, curtly, "and I'll tell you how it was. I was a smart young feller, you see, and thought myself a man if I wasn't one, and I had a sow that was a kind of a pet, you see. And so this sow had pigs, you see, and would stray off in the mountains every day or two, but most ginerally come home at night. Well, one night she didn't come home, and early in the mornin' I gits up to look for my sow, and as I passed the barn I puts two ears of corn in my pocket to toll her home with. Well, there was a little skift of snow on the ground, and I follered up a ridge of the mountain maybe about two mile, but nothing could I see of the sow, nor yet of her tracks.

"So I thought I'd go a leetle further-about a quarter-and reached a pint of rocks, where I stopped and listened. In about a minute it appeared as if I heard a child cry. 'Good Lord,'

"Why, I hauled them two years of corn out of my pocket, and fired one at the painter's head. It didn't hit him, but just grazed his, ear, and so I flung the other right quick, and didn't stop to see where that hit, but turned and run. Well, as I run I looked backward like, and I see the critter gallopin' on my tracks; and so I run faster, keepin' down the ridge, about a half or three-quarters. But presently I heard the creeter pantin' behind me, and I gathered up a little stronger. I didn't make many tracks in a mile-I didn't; but I was gittin' blowed a little; and as I still heard the creeter jumpin' behind me, I couldn't help lookin' back, though I knowed I'd lose time by it. Well, good Lord! there was the dratted thing not three steps from my coat-tail, a-canterin' along, and not a hair turned. So I give a jump down the side of the ridge, and lit in a laurel, maybe about fifteen yards down; and, the cussed thing, it seemed to a missed me, and jumped up into a tree to see whar I was.

"Now, that laurel thicket was borderin' on a clearin', and I got into that, and the beast was

It was

afeard to foller me. But I didn't stop till I got | brother about it, and they took the dogs and to the house; and that's what I call beating a painter in a fair race."

their guns, and went out and killed it.
a thunderer, I tell ye."

Here the discourse was interrupted by the furious clatter of horses' hoofs upon the frozen road, and anon a loud hallo in front of the house. Briggs hurried out, and presently returned with three strangers, who, after being assured that all was right, informed the company that they were in pursuit of a horse-thief. Now, there is something delightful in the idea of a horse-thief. He is the intermediate between a common rogue and a highwayman. As highwaymen have long since starved out of this country, if it ever possessed them, the horsethief is the highest order of rogue known, and he is estimated accordingly.

"Go it, old horse!" exclaimed the Tennesseean. "He's after you, with his back up!"

"By George," cried the Squire, "if I ever harbored a doubt on the subject of that race, I have none now!"

"If he traveled at this rate when he was a boy," said Larkin, "it must have been a fast panther that followed him."

As the hill became steeper the guide's pace slackened, and after a while he didn't mind riding a spell.

The distance from Briggs's to the summit is estimated at five miles. The path is through an open forest, steep, and sometimes rocky, but a bold horseman would not hesitate to ride the whole distance up and down. Indeed, the feat has been accomplished by several ladies.

The pursuers were full of mystery and importance, while every body had something to say bearing on the subject. The Squire stated how the mountaineer had asked him if he had The height of the Roane has been estimated lost a horse, and how the drunken men had at six thousand and thirty-eight feet. Its sumcalled him a horse-thief. The statement was mit is generally bare of trees, but covered with listened to with much interest, and was supposed a luxuriant growth of grass, which in summer to have thrown some light on the subject. It affords excellent pasturage for cattle. This unproved, at least, that the rogue had been about. dulating meadow is spotted with tufts of laurel Having hastily refreshed themselves and their and stunted firs, and traversed by numerous horses, the night riders mounted, and their de- rocky gullies washed by the springs which ooze parture was the signal for bed. from the soil in many places; rounding gently toward the wooded declivities of the mountain in every direction except the southwest, where it terminates suddenly in a range of stupendous precipices many hundred feet in perpendicular height.

Long before the morning sun had showed his face in the frosty vales our adventurers had breakfasted, and were on their way toward the summit of the Roane. The party on horseback, swelled to four by the addition of a friendly neighbor, trotted along briskly in Indian file. At their head strode Grey Briggs on foot, skipping from rock to rock with surprising speed and agility, evidently exhibiting himself before the strangers to substantiate the panther story.

But the scene which meets the eye while standing on this summit, who shall attempt to describe? Any effort to convey to the reader the sensations experienced by the beholder would indeed be but a vain essay, an idle stringing to