By Robert G. Hiden
Brevard, N.C., July 27—The tourist, be he fiction writer or newspaper hack, wastes his time trying to describe this beautiful region surrounding the picturesque town of Brevard, nestling on a knoll overlooking the enticing valleys of the French Broad and Davidson rivers. It’s no use; he can’t do it.
You’ll find no more attractive, no more fascinating county, if you are looking for ideal summer climate, where the mercury seldom reaches 85 in the hottest part of mid-summer, and drops to about 60 at night. You sleep in the purest air, and find yourself reaching for a blanket by 9 o’clock.
Scenery for 50 miles around Brevard is equally as picturesque as anything found in Switzerland. This region is familiarly known as “The Little Switzerland of America;” but even that scarcely does it justice. There are innumerable fairy like waterfalls from two to 10 miles or more distant. The mountain tops, all clothed in a wealth of freshest green foliage, reach from 2,500 to 4,500 feet. The streams are swift, cold and crystal-like in clearness. Hundreds of smiling meadows greet the eye in every direction. Roads for motoring are excellent, some of them for 10 to 40 miles or more, as good as scrupulously exacting travelers could wish. People living here the year round are cultured, hospitable and ever considerate of the visitors. They invariably give you “a lift” when a vacant seat offers the opportunity.
All reasonable comforts and conveniences are provided by hotels, boarding houses and tea houses. Motor cars are quite moderate in charges; everything is immaculately clean. For rest and recreation—motoring, horse-back riding, hiking, mountain climbing, tennis, baseball, dancing and fishing—there is no place in all this great country which appeals more to busy men and women and growing, normal children than right here in Transylvania county, within 10 to 20 hours of all the big cities of the south. And this includes Kentucky, Arkansas and Maryland.
The Managing Editor of The Age-Herald, who asked me to send him some outing stories from this region during the summer, is too busy and too thoughtful of his readers to burden them with descriptive “stuff,” so the writer will be reasonable accordingly.
Trips to Chimney Rock and Caesar’s Head, both within three hours from Brevard by motor car, offered inspiration for a paragraph or so. The former strangely resembles a great chimney and rises several hundred feet above its surroundings. It is reached by an excellent coiling road four miles from the village of Chimney Rock, and there are many wooden platforms and stairways from which you look down almost perpendicularly for 1,000 feet. From the cafeteria on the rock, one of the most enticing, indeed, magnificent views to be dreamed of for years after once studying it, spreads itself for miles. Mammoth mountains ranging in altitude above the sea level from 3,000 to 4,800 feet, literally enclose a valley of surpassing beauty. A fascinating cold, clear stream tumbles and steals its way through boulders and roars over cliffs along the route. No lover of nature in her most fetching moods can forget this view. It is worth a trip of hundreds of miles to see. And yet it lies only three hours from Brevard over an excellent road with hundreds of beauties and freaks of nature, touched up by smiling vales, towering heights and lovely water falls, as only a Higher Power could, all along the road.
Story of Caesar’s Head
And Caesar’s Head—a huge overhanging rock strongly resembling the features of a man, 3,000 feet amid the clouds at times—presenting a sweeping view of grandeur and beauty, defying description! The moon stealing above a lofty peak the other night. All was quiet, weird, awe-inspiring.
“The light was neither night’s nor day’s,
But one which life-like, had a beauty in its doubt.”
A nightingale's silvery voice was the only sound to penetrate the dense stillness. Two little cloudlets, wandering in their orphanage, drifted across the moon, bringing a mysterious haze. The bird continued his serenade that breathed a subtle announcement of his lonesomeness. There were no young lovers in the party. What a pity! Those clear notes from the nightingale’s throat would have been an ideal wedding song away up there in cloudland with Nature doing her best. The dream was rudely jostled by a prosaic so-much-an-hour chauffeur in ham-and-egg tone bawling, all aboard for Brevard!
The sudden drop from the sublime to the worse than ridiculous recalls that “Caesar’s Head,” despite its striking resemblance to the features of the eminent Roman statesman, did not so derive its name. The history of the name is something of a disappointment to one whose eyes have feasted on the wonderful beauty of the place and its surroundings. A mountaineer near here, whose domestic instinct was superior to his intellectual attainments, had a cur dog named “Caesar.” The mountaineer had never heard of the illustrious orator-statesman-engineer-soldier-historian; but was determined to perpetuate his love for the canine. Hence, “Caesar’s Head.”
I’m sorry to have to tell this truth, but facts are vital, even if sometimes disappointing.
Let’s leave this picture and drop back into a prose-poem, the trout fishing. Within a short distance of Brevard—4 to 10 miles—brook trout and rainbow—both cold water beauties and athletes from rise to net, take all kinds of “shots” at your “Maine Doctor,” “Lord Baltimore,” “Queen of Waters,” Couchman,” or other varieties, according to season, weather conditions and activities of live insects suggest. The federal government maintains an immense game and fish preserve for miles around Brevard. It comprises some 35,000 acres or more, and lies both in Transylvania and Buncombe counties—all mountain wilds with innumerable picturesque streams. These include Davidson River, a restless cold, clear rivulet toppling over boulders and stealing through rocks and rhododendron and mountain laurel in all the flush and blush of full bloom; Looking Glass creek, a charming little gurgling brook seeking the parent stream by leaps and bounds; and Grogan Creek, a perfect poem of ripples and rainbows through a wealth of foliage and flowers; Cauntrel and Bushy branches that touch off the picture with delicate shades and tints—Oh, well, a dozen others that thrill the poet and inspire the artist.
They are all stocked annually by the government since it took them over from Vanderbilt of Biltmore and dollar-mark distinction. Mr. Vanderbilt had stocked the streams for years before disposing of the property with deep-seated patriotic instinct for his native land.
Vanderbilt’s Lands
And “thereby lies a tale.” those of us who knew no better have been sympathizing most fervently with Mr. Vanderbilt over is heavy losses in having parted with some 50,000 or 60,000 acres of his vast and costly lands to the government for part of the great Appalachian game preserve in this region. The writer was one of the tender-hearted “hoi polloi” feeling so sorry for Mr. Vanderbilt, who, by the way, it is said to have invested some $15 million in these visions of beauty provided by Nature, and his splendid home at Biltmore. But I’ve been cured. A resident of Brevard smiled pityingly when I expressed by sympathy for the great financier.
“Why,” said he, “those lands cost Mr. Vanderbilt an average of less than $6 an acre. He sold the timber rights under rather rigid restrictions for about $12 an acre; the government took over the greater part of the cutover lands for $3 to $5 per acre. You need worry no more about the deal; the original purchases realized a reasonable profit from the transactions.”
There’s nothing like knowing how to finance a large business proposition with a genuinely patriotic spirit. Some of our highly successful captains of industry are real philanthropists; some others are just ordinary philanthropists, with an eye to profits as a side line.
And yet this deal gives us all an opportunity to wade the most picturesque streams of this country, whip them for miles with our light rods and dry flies, and come in as heroes with a creel full of speckled beauties taken from their native haunts amid conditons and surroundings of the most fascinating character.
Trout Streams
Back to the trout streams; they are far more interesting than money-grubbing and dollar-mark ambitions or achievements. In Mills River and Brodely Creek around the base of Mount Pisgah and literally lined with rhododendron and mountain laurel smiling on the fishermen all along the rapids and pools, two of us took the limit of 15 brooks and 15 rainbow in an afternoon. Anything less than 6 ½ inches in length for brook and 8 inches for rainbow, must be returned to the waters. They issue the fisherman a permit just 6 ½ inches long to guide him, and he pays $1 a day to fish.
No bait is allowed—only artificial lures. Dry flies are mostly used. A well-born, well-bred and reasonably intelligent brook trout and rainbow almost invariably spurns such “plugs” as douagiaes, rubber frogs, straw hoppers, wooden bungs, and the like. Your real cold water trout is no less artistic than game. He lives amid a riot of flowers, rocks, pure water and poetic surroundings. Hence, the more aesthetic your fly, as a rule, other things being equal, such as the fisherman’s experience and caution in his quest, the better success. You’ve got to know something of the game. If your trout sees the fisherman before he does the fly, the creel is apt to have little to do. No well-rounded and thoughtful trout with some knowledge of deductive logic and experience in the scheme of avoiding capture is easily buncoes by an amateur with more fishing clothes and outfits, not to speak of his yarns about achievements elsewhere, with the moral suggested, by the same than resourcefulness or skill. A cold water trout is a connoisseur in several respects. He knows a lot he can’t tell; but he can teach the amateur fisherman more than he can digest in years.
Get an 18-inch rainbow or a 12-inch brook in a cold stream chasing through Pisgah Forest 2,500 to 3,000 feet up to take our No. 10 “Professor” or “Parmachene Belle” in swift rapids about sunset, amid a wealth of mountain laurel and azalea in full bloom, watch your four-ounce rod double, hear your oiled line swish, note the leaps, dashes, darts and lunges of your prize beauty in his efforts to disgorge the fly, catch some momentary glimpses of his red streaks, listen to a lumbering companion green at the sport yelling: “For God’s sake don’t loose that wonderful boy!” and note the contest between ingenuity of fish and ambition of fisherman in the battle, and you’ve some sport that’s worth while. Then eat your prize beauty, in all the lusciousness of his pale pink flesh and delicious flavor when broiled to a turn for breakfast after you’ve rehearsed the whole thing in your dreams—well what’s the use? Just come on up and get the experience no writer can tell you about it so you’ll understand.
Fishing for Rainbow
The brook and rainbow range in size up here from 5 to 18 inches long, and from a few ounces to two pounds, occasionally more. Rainbow have been taken here as high as 2 ½ pounds. When the water is reasonably low and quite clear an experienced fly fisherman, during the better season, from June 1 to September 1, can easily fill his creel with the limit in three to five hours, if he knows the wading game and is willing to switch back and forth from dark to bright flies and try out a variety of colors and tones until he discovers what the trout demand. Rainbow, and especially brook, are highly discriminating, and little less exacting and sensitive than a debutante belle in a southern town. They want what they want at the proper moment under special conditions. Nothing else will do. You must figure all this out to a nicety. That’s part of the intricate game.
Recently two of us went over to what is known as the “Pink Beds” for an afternoon with the trout. We were properly equipped for wading, climbing, ducking or anything else, carried extra tips and a dozen varieties of flies. For an hour we had little success. Around sunset we were in ideal rapids, torrents, pools and ripples that rushed, roared, gurgled and sang as sweet music as any lover of nature ever adored. Colors and tints were ravishingly beautiful. Wood thrush, catbirds, robins, raising interesting families, and a dozen species of other song birds flitted back and forth in play and concert that provided a feast for the ear and a tonic for the soul. Mountain magnolia and banks of honeysuckle poured out their fragrance in competitive appeals to an additional sense. It was a vision of color, tone and rhythm.
And we put 14 speckled beauties in our creel, not even taking time to fight our way through a well-nigh impenetrable tangle of laurel to have it out with a big rattler lying 20 feet away on a moss-colored rock, and occasionally warning us in a fragmentary “sing.” Perhaps our courage with distracted by the more enticing surroundings. At any rate we left the rattler to have it out with more venturesome fishermen.
Pink Beds
Up to our return to Brevard, it had not occurred to me that the “Pink Beds,” a wild and weirdly beautiful forest lying for miles amid nature’s handiwork, was not named for the delicate and fragrant little flower which has been supplanted by hits more self-conscious city sister, the carnation. To our horror we learned the name came from another mountaineer who once lived over there under the euphonious surname of “Pink.” Well, at least the city directory can crow when adding this color to its Blacks, Reds, Greens, Blues, Browns, Whites, etc., while hoping some day for a Mr. and Mrs. Yellow.
From the front page of The Brevard News, Friday, Aug. 5, 1921. The photo shows trout fishing today in Mitchell River, N.C.
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