forms only a
protuberance on an elevated plateau. Nearly all of them are clad to
their tops in dense forest and thick undergrowth. Here and there is a
grassy "bald": a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a
mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber-line, few
jutting crags, no ribs and vertebrae of the earth exposed. Seldom does
one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very cliffs are sheathed with
trees and shrubs, so that one treading their edges has no fear of
falling into an abyss.

Pinnacles or serrated ridges are rare. There are few commanding peaks.
From almost any summit in Carolina one looks out upon a sea of flowing
curves and dome-shaped eminences undulating, with no great disparity of
height, unto the horizon. Almost everywhere the contours are similar:
steep sides gradually rounding to the tops, smooth-surfaced to the eye
because of the endless verdure. Every ridge is separated from its
sisters by deep and narrow ravines. Not one of the thousand water
courses shows a glint of its dashing stream, save where some far-off
river may reveal, through a gap in the mountain, one single shimmering
curve. In all this vast prospect, a keen eye, knowing where to look, may
detect an occasional farmer's clearing, but to the stranger there is
only mountain and forest, mountain and forest, as far as the eye can
reach.

Characteristic, too, is the dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer
intensified, that ever hovers over the mountains, unless they be swathed
in cloud, or, for a few minutes, after a sharp rain-storm has cleared
the atmosphere. Both the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains owe their
names to this tenuous mist. It softens all outlines, and lends a
mirage-like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles
off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible until
finally the sky-line blends with the sky itself.

The foreground of such a landscape, in summer, is warm, soft, dreamy,
caressing, habitable; beyond it are gentle and luring solitudes; the
remote ranges are inexpressibly lonesome, isolated and mysterious; but
everywhere the green forest mantle bespeaks a vital present; nowhere
does cold, bare granite stand as the sepulchre of an immemorial past.

And yet these very mountains of Carolina are among the ancients of the
earth. They were old, very old, before the Alps and the Andes, the
Rockies and the Himalayas were molded into their primal