FOR a long time the name of Asheville's streets were such as the public saw fit to bestow on them, every man applying to a street such name as he liked. This continued until December 4, 1876, when the town authorities appointed a committee, consisting of two aldermen P. Rollins and F. M. Miller and Colonel R. W. Pulliam, Captain Thomas W. Patton and Captain William M. Cocke, Jr., all now deceased, to give official names to all the streets. Some of the names then given yet remain, but many of them have disappeared. It would not be too much to say that the official work has not always improved upon the haphazard of earlier nomenclature in sound or propriety. Anyhow, Academy Street has been changed to Montford Avenue, Mulberry Street to Cumberland Avenue, Starnes Street to Hiawassee Street, North Main Street to Broadway, Beaverdam Street to Merrimon Avenue, Libbey Street to Liberty Street, Bridge Street to Central Avenue, White Oak Street to Oak Street, Pine Street to Furman Avenue, South Main Street to Biltmore Avenue, Bailey Street to Asheland Avenue, Maria Avenue to French Broad Avenue, Roberts Street to Bartlett Street, and Buxton Street to Park Avenue and the "Public Square" to "Pack Square."

The Public Library of Asheville was started in 1879 as a private benevolence. Asheville and Western North Carolina have not been entirely without a historical literature. The principal of the books on the subject are: (1) Francis Asbury's Journal, quoted above; (2) Charles Lanman's Letters from the Alleghany Mountains, 1849, republished in his Adventures in the Wilds of the United States and British American Provinces, 1856, vol. 1; (3) D. K. Bennett's Chronology of North Carolina, of which the parts on Western North Carolina were by the publisher, James M. Edney, 1858; (4) Henry E. Colton's Mountain Scenery, 1859; (5) The Land of the Sky by Christian Reid (Miss Frances Fisher afterwards Mrs. Tiernan), 1875; (6) T. L. Cling-man's Speeches and Writings, 1877; (7) W. G. Zeigler and B. S. Grosscup's Heart of the Alleghanies, 1883; (8) Standard Guide to Asheville and Western North Carolina, illustrated by Roger Davis,

published by Fred L. Jacobs, Asheville, N. C., 1.887; and (9) John Preston Arthur's Western North Carolina, 1914, published by the Edward Buncombe Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution of Asheville, N. C.

As bearing more particularly, although not exclusively, on the Cherokees may be mentioned a two-volume novel now extremely scarce,

entitled "Eoneguski or the Cherokee Chief: A Tale of Past Wars. By an American" (Judge Robert Strange of North Carolina), 1839; and Myths of the Cherokee, by James Mooney, published in 1902 as a part of the United States government publication "Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology."

On the botany of Western North Carolina a very clear and trustworthy guide to the trees and shrubs will be found in Dr. M. A. Curtis's Trees and Shrubs of North Carolina, originally published as Part III of "Emmons's Geological and Natural History Survey of North Carolina," 1860 reprinted as part of P. M. Hale's "Woods and Timbers of North Carolina," 1883; and on the gems of Western North Carolina a valuable treatise will be found in George Frederick Kunz's "History of the Gems Found in North Carolina," published as "Bulletin No. 12," being a part of J. Hyde Pratt's "North Carolina Geological and Economical Survey, 1907."

The book by Christian Reid mentioned above applied a new and popular name to the Asheville region, which at once became to the public and has since been frequently called "The Land of the Sky."

Finis.