FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 235 



It is especially the Alleghany Mountain which reveals the 

 perfect and perpetual wonder of the American autumn, a 

 chapter of the beauty of the world for which the old con- 

 tinents have no parallel, and the earth's surface but one 

 such spectacle. This comes of the extensive variety and 

 mixture of deciduous trees, also of the mingling of this nu- 

 merous class with the evergreen trees, in the woods of the 

 mountain. Each tree has a regular series of colors, or 

 hues and shades of color, through which its leaf passes, 

 after the death-stroke of the frost. These are of an end- 

 less variety, and of the most extraordinary brilliancy. 

 The solar spectrum is exhausted in this fantastic display 

 of colors. A single tree sometimes stands a pillar of fire, 

 or a glittering cloud of gold and purple, while again, 

 the crimson blood-dye is succeeded by a tree which has 

 taken its hue from the gaudy yellow of the nasturtion's 

 cup, or the " dolphin's back of gold." 



Thus the brilliant and diversified phenomenal has taken 

 its most gorgeous robes from the tints of the autumnal 

 forest. These phantom-pictures, like the other multiform 

 phases of the woods, are transitory, and soon pass away, 

 this whole world, vivid and flashing, being remembered like 

 the pomp and pageantry of some splendid dream. Once 

 seen it can never be forgotten. To the bright coloring of 

 the groves gradually but quickly succeeds the russet hue of 

 the dead and withered leaf, the d&Yk-brown, in which it 

 moulders away into dust. At length the death-dirge of 

 the vanishing foliage is sung, and the monotonous gray of 

 naked trees, relieved only by the dark-green of the pines, is 

 the color of the woods, while the ceaseless whistle of the 

 winter winds chills the heart with the thought of that cold- 

 ness which shall know no warmth, and of that sleep which 

 shall know no waking. 



The forests of the Alleghany, in utility and beauty, are 

 as exhaustless as its rocks and coal, its ocean of air, and 

 streams of water, and present a chapter of ceaseless and 

 perfect attractions. 



