240 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
impenetrable wildness, become a refuge, — glorious 
heights where you wander in imagination when 
weary of the dust of the world. 
For the Smoky Mountains are at once the most 
ethereal and the most substantial of created things, 
ethereal when you see them exquisitely blue or 
pearly white phantoms in the containing heavens, 
tremendous realities when you are among their wild 
cliffs and inclosed by their primeval forests. 
Unlike the Blue Ridge, the Smoky Mountains do 
not hold out inviting levels for man's occupation. 
They sweep in steep slopes up from both sides to a 
narrow summit, in places a mere knife-edge ridge, 
and their flanks are set with precipices, ravines, and 
deep moist coves out of which rise large forest trees. 
They are yet the home of the wild animals that have 
been driven from most oth^r parts of the mountains, 
and their rhododendron and laurel labyrinths are so 
dense and so extensive that to get lost in them may 
mean destruction. Their feet lie in the pleasant val- 
leys, their heads in the clouds. For a distance of 
over fifty miles the Tennessee and North Carolina 
state line runs along the crest of the Great Smoky 
Mountains without crossing a gap below five thou- 
sand feet high, while it surmounts Clingman Dome, 
Mount Guyot, and other summits at an elevation 
above six thousand feet. Below, these mountains 
are covered with the finest hardwood trees left in the 
United States; above, they are wrapped in spruce 
and balsam fir, a dark unbroken forest of which 
covers all but the very tops. For like the summits of 
