46 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
you until you have found something in them to chew. 
Then they are yours in an intimate and peculiar 
manner. This desire to taste is doubtless a survival 
of the child in us that we never quite outgrow. When 
we go into the woods we in a sense revert to a more 
primitive state, and the sight of sassafras excites the 
gustatory nerve. Sassafras is abundant. It blossoms 
like a burst of sunshine along the edges of the yet 
leafless woods, each of its bare branches terminat- 
ing in a pretty amber ball of delicately fragrant 
and fringe-like flowers. There is nothing prettier 
than sassafras with the sun behind its blossoming 
twigs. One recalls a sassafras grove on a mountain 
slope that seemed to have been purposely planted, 
the trees were so regular in size and position, but the 
poor soul who owned it said it was a potato-field, 
and that the harder he tried to root out the sassa- 
fras the better it grew. We who do not depend upon 
sassafras-land for our potatoes love the aromatic 
plant whose roots, stems, leaves, and flowers yield 
a pleasant fragrance as well as a pleasant flavor to 
those who have not outgrown their youthful habit 
of browsing in the woods ; and whose history has also 
its finer flavor of romance, since the sassafras exists 
as a single species in the eastern part of the New 
World, while one other species has been found in 
China. 
With the sassafras one often finds its near relative 
the spice-bush, whose botanical name is Benzoin, 
because of its fragrance, and whose pungent, cam- 
phor-flavored bark is also pleasant to the taste. 
