THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 105 
line of the Nantahala, beyond which the mountain 
country sinks to lower levels in Georgia. 
A knowledge of this regularity in the position of 
the more important mountains is helpful to the 
explorer, though it is by no means apparent to the 
casual observer, who, coming up among them, sees 
mountains on all sides, some rising close at hand in 
ridges, summits, and walls of foliage, and between 
these and over their heads others that show forth 
delicate, spirit-like forms against the sky. 
Although the mountains are so generally covered 
with hardwood and pine forests, the upper parts of 
the higher ones are clad in a dark, unbroken mantle 
of spruce and balsam fir, and many have "bald" 
summits that, covered with grass, make natural pas- 
tures, sometimes many hundred of acres in extent. 
One ascending to the plateau finds, as it were, the 
beautiful world on the slopes of the Blue Ridge lifted 
skyward with its fragrance, its flooding sunlight, 
and its marvelous colors unimpaired. The dreamy 
Unaka Range, with its superb group of the Great 
Smokies, takes the place of the Blue Ridge in the 
landscape, but it is more broken in contour, rising in 
massive domes and lovely rounded peaks. It is like 
the fabric of a dream as one sees it in the distance. 
Through the gorges that cleave its stupendous walls 
and add grandeur to the scenery, rush the rivers of 
the plateau to enter the Mississippi by way of the 
Tennessee and Ohio, — only one river breaking 
through the wall of the Blue Ridge to find its way 
eastward to the Atlantic, for the plateau slants to 
