96 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
rumble in '85, we were told, since when he has been 
as quiet as of old. 
To look at the rocky wall of the mountain and see 
the clean, new granite gives one an intimation of 
what has happened. Great slabs and cliffs have split 
off and settled down, no doubt "rumbling" as they 
went, and the crack that suddenly appeared on top 
has grown to a chasm ten feet wide, one hundred 
feet deep, and three or four hundred yards long. 
Curiosity prompts you to approach the Old Rum- 
bling Bald over a pleasant path where one passes a 
lonely cabin that might be a child of the old gray 
mountain, and out of which comes a lovely little 
girl with glorious blue eyes, her face framed in a wide- 
ruffled pink sunbonnet. In one hand she carries a 
pretty basket of green things, and in the other a 
great bunch of roses and snowballs. We climbed Old 
Bald's rocky front, stopping for a long draught of 
icy water from a spring that comes out of the rocks, 
and to admire the thrifty appearance of the peach 
trees in an orchard on the stony slope. We were 
told that these bore peaches of exceptionally fine 
quality, after which we were not at all surprised to 
learn that they were in the thermal belt! 
At last we get to a great crack in the mountain — 
not the chasm on top, but a crack lower down, that 
makes a series of caves, from the threshold of which 
one looks out between massive walls of granite far 
down the valley, over the tops of the near mountains, 
and across to the blue line of the horizon against 
which stands outlined the beautiful King's Moun- 
