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Slyland Institute.-- This school was started about 1891 by Miss Emily C. Prudden. She conducted it for a short time, after which it was turned over to the American Missionary Association. About 1912 this association reconveyed it to Miss Prudden, since which time it has not been open. It was a girls' school, with industrial training, and did a vast amount of good. It was located at Blowing Rock.

The Silverstone public school house is now said to be the best in Watauga County, containing four large rooms and an auditorium with a seating capacity of from 800 to 1,000 people. The chief movers and workers in this were John Mast, Larkin Pennell, Newton Mast, A. J. Wilson, A. L. Wilson and T. P. Adams. It cost, without paint or equipment, $2,000.00, all of which is fully paid. The present term is five months, and in another year it will probably be nine full months. Silverstone School District was the first in the State to vote a special tax to continue the school two months and for compulsory attendance.

Walnut Grove Institute.-- In December, 1903, Finley P. Mast agreed to give three acres on the Old Meeting House hill, where the Cove Creek Baptist Church used to stand, for a school building and campus. T. C. McBride, J. H. Bingham, D. C, W. H. and J. C. Mast agreeing to give $100.00 each, and to procure all subscriptions possible, begun work and finished the school house in August, 1904. It is large and convenient. This district then voted a tax of thirty cents on each hundred dollars of property and ninety cents on each poll for six years, without a dissenting vote. In 1910 the same tax was renewed for five years, with but two votes in the negative. Not one dollar was paid to complete the actual work of construction of the institute, W. E. Dugger, Ben. Dugger, J. C. Smith, D. C., W. H., J. H. and J. C. Mast doing the work themselves.

Other Schools and Academies.-- Cove Creek Academy was built about 1885, Enoch Swift, J. H. McBride, W. F. Sherwood and Asa Wilson being active in its inauguration and subsequent support. Rev. Wiley Swift, who is so active in the cause of the factory children's interests, is a son of Enoch Swift. The academy at Valle Crucis was built about 1909, and W. W. Mast,

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T. H. Taylor, T. C. Baird, J. M. Shull, D. F. Mast, W. E. Shipley, C. D. Taylor, W. H. Mast and D. F. Baird were its principal promoters.

Valle Crucis School for Girls.-- On the site of the old Ives school has been reared several large and convenient buildings in which a school for girls is taught. It was opened about 1903, Rt. Rev. Junius M. Horner, bishop of the Missionary District of Asheville, being ex-officio its head and directing mind. Many of the girls of the neighborhood have taken advantage of this opportunity to gain an education, while at the same time learning many useful lessons in domestic affairs. Great good is being accomplished and the people are coming more and more to apprenciate the advantages offered by this school.

First Agricultural Instruction.-- From De Rosset's "Church History of North Carolina" we learn that Bishop Ives had a herd of blooded cattle sent to Valle Crucis, from which it was intended to produce a finer breed of cattle in this section. Also, from Haywood's "Bishops of North Carolina," that the Valle Crucis Farm was early put under the direction of a young agriculturist from New York, which was the first practical instruction ever given in any school or college in North Carolina.

Prominent in the Cause.-- Messrs. D. D. and B. B. Dougherty, of Boone, have been and still are active in the cause of education, as is also Col. E. F. Lovill, who for years has done yeoman service for the Appalachian Training School without reward or the hope of reward. He has been for years chairman of the board of trustees. These gentlemen also have been active in trying to get railroads to this section, and have not abated one whit of their efforts because of failure. Moses H. Cone, deceased, late of Blowing Rock, not only built a school house there, but agreed to contribute four dollars for every dollar that was given by anyone else. His loss was irreparable.

The Lenoir School Lands.-- On the 16th day of February, 1858, the late William Avery Lenoir conveyed to Thomas Farthing, trustee, five tracts of mountain lands, aggregating about two thousand acres, lying principlly on Beech Creek and the waters of Curtis's Creek and Elk River. The considerations moving him thereto were his appreciation of "the kind regard

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manifested toward him by the citizens of Watauga County, to promote the settlement of this new county and the education of the children in the same, and Thomas Farthing's promise to execute the trust without charge or dedication except for taxes, etc." Mr. Farthing was the trustee who was to sell such lands as he could and invest the proceeds in interest-bearing securities for fifteen years after the date of the deed, and then turn the sum so resulting over to such a school board as the State might provide, and if none were so provided, to the school authorities of Watauga County for the education of its children. The Civil War came on, however, and Thomas Farthing died without having executed the trust, whereupon his widow and heirs and W. W. Lenoir, representing the estate of W. A. Lenoir, also deceased, on the 11th of August, 1877, joined in a deed conferring this trust on R. H. Farthing, son of Thomas. The lands have been sold and the proceeds applied as directed. (deed Book L, p. 409.)

School House Loan Fund.-- By chapter 372, Laws 1911, a permanent fund was established to aid in the construction of school houses. This fund was provided from the "fines, forfeitures and penalties" in criminal cases, and the same was to be loaned to such school committees as might need such money to aid in the erection of school houses, to be repaid in ten annual installments, the whole bearing only four per cent. interest.

Samuel Lusk.-- This gentleman was not a schoolmaster, but he was a most conscientious stonemason, and was employed to build a chimney for a schoolhouse on Mat Camp. When the chimney was finished it drew well--very well indeed, but it was in the wrong direction, and instead of drawing the smoke from the fireplace up the flue and out at the top of the chimney, it drew the air from the top of the chimney down into the schoolroom, thereby causing the chimney to smoke outrageously. It was said by James Reagan that it even drew the buzzards out of the sky. This hurt Uncle Sammy's feelings inexpressibly. He came from Lincoln County to the Castle Settlement a few miles above what is now called Todd, but afterwards moved to Dutch Creek, near Valle Crucis, where he died, leaving a family of highly respected children.

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Col. W. W. Presnell.-- This gentleman lost an arm in the Civil War and had to teach thereafter for a livelihood. His wife also lost an arm during the same trying period while helping to feed a cane mill. The first schoolmaster to whom he went was Eli Mast, who taught in one of the sang factories in the meadow just below Joseph Ward's barn on the old Whittington property. This was about 1847 or 1848. Mark Holtsclaw, Thomas Smith, Wm. Carver, Col. Joe B. Todd, Joshua Fletcher, Larkin Pips, Smith Reece, Jacob Hayes, D. C. Harman and Thomas Hodges were other schoolmasters who taught public schools on Brushy Fork from 1848 till the Civil War. Colonel Presnell also tells of a man called "Master" Huff, a school teacher, master being the most common designation for teachers at that time. He taught writing by causing the students to make straight marks, to which were added loops, called pot-hooks. The Dillsworth Speller prececed the Blue Back many years.

The Ablest Schoolmaster.-- But first and best among all these schoolmasters was Thomas Lanier Clingman, for, form 1843 till 1861, he was a teacher in every county in his congressional district. He spent a year or more in Watauga, mining in the Beech Mountains (1870, 1871) and is still well remembered by many of our older citizens. He was a fine angler an an unerring shop with rifle or pistol. And, though he did not teach little children in ante-bellum log school housed, he was constantly instructing the "big" children of these mountains around their firesides and on the hustings--not by books, but by word of mouth, enforced and made indelible by apt illustrations and in most practical ways. There may be more book-learning among us now than in former days, but no people were better versed in all useful information concerning crops, plants, woodcraft, the mechanic arts, minerals and the laws of nature than our unlettered ancestors. General Clingman kept them fully informed as to the progress of the outside world in all matters which concerned their material welfare, and at the same time, far more than all other combined kept the outside world posted as to the wonderful beauty, resources and advantages of this mountain region--its minerals, its physical phenomena and the progress

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of its inhabitants. Being a frequent contributor to Appelton's Journal, the National Intelligencer and other widely circulated periodicals, he was the first and only one to tell the world of the passing of the wonderfully brilliant meteor of 1860, of the destructive waterspouts of 1876, and of the apparent earthquake at the hed of Fines Creek, which he visited and explored in meteorological station on Mitchell's Peak, General Clingman had explained why the climate of the Asheville Plateau is the dryest east of the Rockies, and it was entirely through his influence that Dr. Arnold Guyot, of Princeton College, and Dr. S. B. Buckley visited and measured all the highest mountains in western North Carolina just before the Civil War. Calhoun, as early as 1835, had foretold the existence of the Blacks as the highest mountains east of the Mississippi, and, although Professor Mitchell actually measured them soon afterwards, his services to science were negatived by the uncertain data he took concerning their altitude. Compared with the work of Clingman, Buckley and Guyot among all out mountains, Mitchell's barometrical measurments among the Blacks was inconsiderable.

Statesman, Soldier, Scientist.-- When North Carolina makes up her jewels no gem among the brilliants that sparkle in her coronet of achievement will shine with "a purer, serener or a more resplendant light" than that of Thomas Lanier Clingman, for as statesman, soldier and scientist, as well as teacher, guide and friend, he was incorruptible, patriotic and inspiring. But for nothing that he did will his memory be more precious or more richly cherished than for his dignified and noble refusal to contend with an honorable gentleman whose mouth had been closed by death in an effort to establish the truth as to who had first visited and measured the highest peak of the Blck Mountain chain.

Country Above Fame.-- For at this time the county was torn and rent asunder by the demon of sectionalism, and Clingman found better use for his time and talents than in contending for an honor which, however great, was as dust in the scales when weighed against the welfare of his native State and section.

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Then, too, his fame was already secure, for he had met upon; the arena of House and senate the doughtiest and most skilful of the political gladiators of the fifties, and had lowered his sword to none. Looming blue-back on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, General Clingman knew that there was a yet statelier and more imposing pile than the Blacks, and that at the culmination of this gigantic range his name had been indisputably and forever linked with the grandest mountain of the Appalachian system-Clingman's Dome of the Great Smoky Mountains!

Our Mountain Heights Still Doubtful.-- Whether this incomparable mountain be higher or lower than the disputed peak of the Blacks, is still a doubtful point, for we are told by Horace Kephart that all our mountains still remain to be measured accurately. He says (p. 56): "Yet we scarcely know today, to a downright certainty, which peak is supreme among out Southern highlands. The honor is conceded to Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains, northeast of Asheville. Still, the heights of the Carolina peaks have been taken (with but one exception, so far as I know) only by barometric measurements, and these, even when official, may vary as much as a hundred feed for the same mountain. Since the highest ten or a dozen of our Carolina peaks differ in altitude only one or two hundred feet, their actual rank has not yet been determined. For long time ( p. 57) there was controversy as to whether Mount Mitchell or Clingman Dome was the crowning summit of eastern America. The Coast and Geodetic Survey gave the height of Mount Mitchell as 6,688 feet, but later figures of the United States Geological Survey are 6,711 and 6,712. In 1859 Buckley claimed for Clingman Dome of the Smokies an altitude of 6,941 feet. In recent government reports the Dome appears variously as 6,619 and 6,660 feet. In 1911 I was told by Mr. H. M. Ramsour that when he laid out the route of the railroad from Asheville to Murphy he ran a line of levels from a known datum on this road to the top of Clingman, and that the result was ‘four sixes' (6,666 feet above sea level). It is probable that the second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong either to Clingman Dome or

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