WRITERS &
MOUNTAINS
4

RAILROADS &
TRAVEL AND TOURISM

"Space there is for all to travel, therefore is the world so wide." The man or woman who loves Nature for Nature's sake, loves the mountains best. It is their rugged crests which show forth the temper of the day. They smile in sunshine and frown in storm, and in the great creases of their rugged faces lie the deep shadows of the night while yet the noonday sun is high. There is nothing else in Nature which so inspires one to purer thoughts or so truly marks the insignificance of man, as the mountains. The baubles and necessities of life men may buy with money. To the rich may be given the power to surround themselves with luxuries- the handiwork of man -- and art, the product of painters' skill; but Nature has spread her canvas with a gorgeous scheme of coloring, with a depth and grandeur of background of which the finest paintings ever produced are but the feeblest imitations, the veriest mockeries. The handiwork of man may be shut within walls and viewed by but the favored few, but Nature's beauties are unveiled to all, the rich and the poor alike, and it is not the touch of gold, but the responsiveness of an artistic soul, which is the open sesame to their enjoyment. Yet Nature, prodigal though she may be, has bestowed her brightest jewels with far from lavish hands. It is but here and there that she has moulded her choicest gems and left them unveiled for man's enjoyment. But in no part of the world has she brought into happier combination a greater variety of lovely scenery than in that portion of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee where the Blue Ridge Mountains have been, by perhaps some mighty subterranean upheaval, shattered into a half-score of lateral and cross ranges. To be sure the White Mountains have their Washington, the Adirondacks their Marcy, but one may stand in Asheville and on any fair day count more than a score of mountain peaks higher than these."

The Land of the Sky and Beyond by Frank Presbrey (1895 ?)

From : Western North Carolina R.R. Scenery, "Land of the Sky", Portland, Me. : Chisholm Bros., 188?-] D. H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804

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