56 NORTH CAROLINA 



off into a huge perpendicular light-colored 

 cliff, said to be eighteen hundred feet in 

 depth, from which it derives its name and 

 much of its local distinction. Above this 

 cliff rises its knob of a summit, with the 

 sight of which I had grown familiar as one 

 of the principal points in the landscape 

 from the hotel veranda. 



The wagon carried us by a roundabout 

 course to the base of this rocky knob, and 

 there the majority of the party remained, 

 while two ladies and myself clambered up 

 a steep pitch to the summit, to take the 

 prospect and to feel that we had been 

 there, and perhaps to see a raven ; for 

 Whiteside had from the beginning been 

 held up to me as one of that bird's par- 

 ticular resorts. " Wait till you go to 

 Whiteside," I had been told again and 

 again. 



What had looked like a pyramidal rock 

 turned out to be the end of a long ridge, 

 over which we marched in Indian file for a 

 mile or more, picking flowers (the nodding 

 Trillium stylosum, especially, of which each 

 new specimen seemed pinker and prettier 

 than the last) and admiring the landscape, 



