XI 
THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 
THE long, curving wall of the Blue Ridge, rising 
from the foothills like a rampart, guards the 
mountain region that lies beyond it so well that it 
is difficult to find an entrance through. But this 
charming wall, so abrupt on its eastern side, all but 
disappears when looked at from the west, for on 
that side it is often no higher than the plateau of 
which it forms the eastern boundary, although it 
rises here and there in notable peaks such as the 
Grandfather, the Pinnacle, Graybeard, and Stand- 
ing Indian Mountains. 
The plateau ! One ascends a thousand feet above 
Traumfest to find, not a flat tableland, but a new 
world of mountains, mountains that might have 
seated themselves aloft for the delectation of man- 
kind, so cool and fresh and yet so gracious do they 
appear to one coming up among them through some 
enchanted gate in the wall of the Blue Ridge. This 
plateau, which is about two hundred miles long, is 
bordered on the east by the long, irregular, un- 
broken, and winding wall of the Blue Ridge, and on 
thcwest by the parallel and more regular line of high 
and massive mountains known as the Unaka Range. 
The Unaka, unlike the Blue Ridge, is divided by 
deep gorges into several sections, one of these being 
