292 National Geographic Magazine. 



trading was a«tive. Whiskey was on trial at other bars than 

 that of the court, and the long rifle, powder-horn and pouch had 

 not been left in the mountains. To a " tenderfoot " (who had 

 the day before been mistaken for. a rabbit or a revenue ofl&cer !) 

 the attentions of the crowd were not reassuring. 



The general opinion was, I felt, akin to that long afterward 

 expressed by Groundhog Cayce: "It air an awful thing ter kill a 

 man by accident;" and I staid but a very short time in Asheville. 



Riding away toward the sunset, I traversed the old plain 

 without seeing that it had had a continuous surface. I noted 

 the many gullies, and I lost in the multitude of details the wide 

 level from which they were carved. That the broader fact should 

 be obscured by the many lesser ones is no rare experience, and 

 perhaps there is no class of observations of which this has been 

 more generally true than of those involved in landscape study. 

 But when once the Asheville plain has been i-ecognized, it can 

 never again be ignored. It enters into every view, both as an 

 element of beauty and as evidence of change in the conditions 

 which determine topographic forms. Seldom in the mountains 

 can one get that distance of wooded level, rarely is the fore- 

 ground so like a gem proportioned to its setting; all about Ashe- 

 ville one meets with glimpses of river and valley, sunken in 

 reach beyond reach of woodland which stretch away to the blue 

 mountains. The even ridges form natural roadsites, and in 

 driving one comes ever and anon upon a fresh view down upon 

 the stream far across the plain and up to the heights. And to 

 the student of Appalachian history, the dissected plain is a sig- 

 nificant contradiction of the time honored phrase, "the everlast- 

 ing hills." That plain was a fact, the result of definite conditions 

 of erosion ; it exists no more in consequence of changes. What 

 were the original conditions? In what maniier have they 

 changed? Let us take account of certain other facts before 

 suggesting an answer. Of the mountains which wall the Ashe- 

 ville amphitheatre, the Blue Ridge on the east and the TJnaka 

 chain on the west are the two important ranges. The Blue 

 Ridge forms the divide between the tributaries of the Atlantic 

 and those of the Gulf of Mexico, and the streams which flow 

 westward from it all pass through the Unaka chain. It would 

 be reasonable to suppose that the rivers rose in the higher and 

 flowed through the lower of the two ranges, but they do not. 

 The Blue Ridge is an irregular, inconspicuous elevation but little 



