APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 31 
The largest and most important part of the 
southern division of the new national forest will lie 
in the mountains of North Carolina, since from them 
are thrown off as from a common centre the princi- 
pal feeders to many of the great rivers , that cross the 
southern plains to the Atlantic on the east, and run 
to the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico east of the 
Mississippi River on the west. 
The first purchase made after the passing of the 
Weeks Bill was in North Carolina, where in Decem- 
ber of 191 1, eighteen thousand, five hundred acres 
of land in the district of Mount Mitchell on the 
watershed of the Catawba River became the nucleus 
of the Southern Appalachian National Park, for the 
immediate further extension of which lands are 
under consideration in the Nantahala, Mount 
Mitchell, and Pisgah areas. 
The coming of the national park means more than 
the preservation of the forests ; it means the opening 
of a glorious pleasure-ground in the eastern part of 
our continent, how glorious a pleasure-ground no one 
can know who has not climbed these flowery slopes 
so exquisitely warmed by the sun and cooled by the 
wind. The more stupendous aspects of nature are 
wanting here. Those majestic snow-clad peaks, 
those abysmal gorges, those rocks of blazing hue, 
those geysers and natural bridges, those strange 
geological formations and petrified forests, — all 
those marvels of a younger age that call the world 
to our Western parks, — no longer any of them exist 
here, for these ancient mountains, the oldest in the 
