126 
TABLE MOUNTAIN PINE. 
Mountain, and on a wide stretch of high mountains for 
many miles north and south of this locality is very great, 
and no apprehensions need be entertained, nor is there the 
most distant probability of its ever being extirpated by the 
puny hand of man. On the vast precipices, slopes, impend- 
ing rocks and chasms of the Linville, a branch of the 
Catawba, it darkens the whole horizon and presents an 
imposing mass of intense and monotonous verdure. It 
generally occupies the summits of the highest rocky ridges, 
and sweeps over the most dangerous and inaccessible 
declivities to the margin of precipices, some of which, over- 
hanging the cove of Linville, are at least 1000 feet perpen- 
dicular. To the north, its peculiar verdure enables us to 
trace it by the eye continuously to the vicinity and summit 
of the Grandfather Mountain, and it seems, Mr. William 
Strickland, who introduced the species into England, (ac- 
cording to Loudon,) stated to Mr. Lambert, that he 
observed large forests of it along the Blue Mountains, on 
the frontiers of Virginia, so that it is by no means a scarce 
species, but affects the alpine heights of the highest of the 
Alleghanys, which can never be cultivated or made use of 
by man except for wild pasturage. 
At Dropmore, in England, in 1837, there was a speci- 
men which had attained the height of 34 feet, with a 
diameter of 1 foot 9 inches, (Loudon). In the character 
of its cones it approaches the P. Sabiniana of Oregon. 
The quality of its wood is unknown. 
John Lenthal, Esq., United States naval constructor, 
informs me that the Pine timber in most general use in the 
United States Navy, is the fine-grain long-leaf yellow-pine, 
( Pinus palustris,) from the southern parts of North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Georgia, which is fully equal, if 
not superior, to the Baltic timber. Upon this point also 
an incorrect idea prevails, founded upon the yellow-pine 
