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 Jine 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 H. ininctatum^ 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 



