136 NORTH CAROLINA 



I spent the greater part of a half day, the 

 valley with its road and its four or five 

 houses straight at my feet. A dark preci- 

 pice of bare rock bounded it on the right, a 

 green mountain on the left, and in the dis- 

 tance southward were ridges and peaks with- 

 out number. A few of the nearer hills I 

 knew the names of by this time : Fodder- 

 stack, Bearpen, Hogback, Chimneytop, Ter- 

 rapin, Shortoff, Scaly, and Whiteside. Sa- 

 tulah was the only ^/me name in the lot ; and 

 that, for a guess, is aboriginal. The North 

 American Indians had a genius for names, 

 as the Greeks had for sculpture and poetry, 

 and will be remembered for it. 



I had come to the brow of the cliffs, at a 

 place called Lover's Leap, in search of a 

 particular kind of rhododendron. It bore 

 a small flower, my informant had said, and 

 grew hereabout only in this one spot. It 

 proved to be R. punctatum, new to me, and 

 now (May 23) in early blossom. Four days 

 afterward, in the Cullowhee and Tuckasee- 

 gee valleys, I saw riverbanks and roadsides 

 lined with it ; very pretty, of course, being 

 a rhododendron, but not to be compared in 

 that respect with the purple rhododendron 



