"To California 



were meeting me at every step. But these 

 Cumberland Mountains were timbered with 

 oak, and were not unlike Wisconsin hills piled 

 upon each other, and the strange plants were 

 like those that were not strange. The sky was 

 changed only a little, and the winds not by a 

 single detectible note. Therefore, neither was 

 Tennessee a strange land. 



But soon came changes thick and fast. After 

 passing the mountainous corner of North Car- 

 olina and a little way into Georgia, I beheld 

 from one of the last ridge-summits of the Alle- 

 ghanies that vast, smooth, sandy slope that 

 reaches from the mountains to the sea. It is 

 wooded with dark, branchy pines which were 

 all strangers to me. Here the grasses, which 

 are an earth-covering at the North, grow wide 

 apart in tall clumps and tufts like saplings. 

 My known flower companions were leaving me 

 now, not one by one as in Kentucky and Ten- 

 nessee, but in whole tribes and genera, and com- 

 panies of shining strangers came trooping upon 

 me in countless ranks. The sky, too, was 

 [ 175] 



