32 NORTH CAROLINA 



road, and, freed at last from our incum- 

 brance, we quickened our pace. 



By this time it was growing dark. Bird 

 songs had ceased, and flowers had long been 

 invisible. But indeed, for the greater part 

 of the afternoon, we had been so taken up 

 with working our passage that I had found 

 small opportunity for natural history com- 

 ment. I recall a lovely rose-acacia shrub, 

 an endless display of pink azalea, — set off 

 here and there with the flat snowy clusters 

 of the dogwood, — thickets fringed with 

 drooping, white, sickly sweet Leucothoe ra- 

 cemes (which at the time I mistook for some 

 kind of Andromeda), the shouts of two 

 pileated woodpeckers, — always remember- 

 able, — a hooded warbler's song out of a 

 rhododendron thicket, and the sight of two 

 or three rough-winged swallows. These last 

 are worth mentioning, because in connection 

 with them there came out the astonishing 

 fact that the driver did not know what I 

 meant by swallows. Apparently he had 

 never heard the word, — which may help 

 readers to understand what a scarcity of 

 these airy birds there is in all that Allegha- 

 nian country. I should almost as soon have 



