some lover of plays and cider, recollecting Shakespeare's Midsummer
Night's slumber beneath the crabapple boughs, has named Crabtree
Creek. There is a point where the woody gorges of both these streams
can be commanded at once by the eye, and Nature gives us few landscape
_pendants_ more primitively wild and magnificent than these.

This ascent was made by the engineers of the company in the early
days of railroads, and when no one knew at what angle the friction of
wheels upon rails would be overcome by gravity. On the trial-trip the
railroad president kept close to the door, meaning, in the case of
possible discomfiture and retrogression, to take to the woods! But all
went well, and in due time was reached, as we now reach it, Altamont,
the alpine village perched two thousand six hundred and twenty-six
feet above the tide.

The interest of the staircase we have run up depends greatly on its
pioneer character. No mountain-chain had been crossed by a locomotive
before the Alleghanies were outraged, as we see them, here and by this
track. As the railroad we follow was the first to take existence in
this country, excepting some short mining roads, so the grade here
used was the first of equal steepness, saving on some English roads of
inferior length and no mountainous prestige. Here the engineer, like
Van Arnburgh in the lion's den, first planted his conqueror's foot
upon the mane of the wilderness; and 'in this spot modern science
first claimed the right to reapply that grand word of a French
monarch, "_Il n'y a plus de Pyrenées_!"

[Illustration: VALLEY FALLS, WEST VIRGINIA.]

We are on the crest of the Alleghanies. On either side of the