20 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
of a winter's morning. The sugar-trees might yield 
a good profit to thrifty harvesters, but the time- 
honored method of chopping a hole in the trunk and 
sticking in a bit of bark to conduct the sap into a 
wooden trough on the ground, although time-sav- 
ing, does not produce results that command fancy 
prices, particularly as the rest of the process is equally 
free and easy. The troughs stand on the ground 
through the remainder of the year collecting water, 
twigs, leaves, and anything else that may chance to 
fall into them. In the winter all this freezes into a 
solid cake which the practical mountaineer has dis- 
covered can be turned out whole, thus giving less 
trouble than any other method of cleaning the 
troughs. Maple-sugar as made in the mountains 
may be black in color and diversified with many 
strong flavors, but the people have a pretty way of 
running it into empty eggshells, where it hardens, 
and can then be handed about and carried in the 
pocket with more regard to cleanliness than is ap- 
parent in any other part of its history. 
The stately wild cherry, or "mahogany," of the 
mountains, like the black walnut, has all but van- 
ished, its virtues being its undoing. Of the trees, un- 
known to the North, that one finds here, the most 
notable is the magnolia that lights up the woods in 
springtime with great ivory-white chalices brimmed 
with cloying fragrance. Walking in the forest you 
smell a penetrating, sweet odor that causes you to 
stand still and search the woods with your eyes until 
you see the white flowers shining in the distance. 
