244 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
one hears thrilling tales of fisherman's luck and 
hunter's adventures, while one young man reluct- 
antly admits that he never did bear-hunt, but has 
only squirrel-hunted. 
And from Jim Mac's you go to the very top of the 
mountain, there where you step on the Tennessee 
line without knowing it. Not to one of those grand 
fir-clad summits that few people reach, but to a gap 
at an elevation of some fifty-five hundred feet lying 
on the ridge of the Smokies somewhere between 
Clingman's Dome and Mount Guyot, two of the 
great mountains of the range, Clingman having 
contended long and ardently with Mount Mitchell 
for the honor of being the highest mountain in the 
East. 
We follow an obscure trail that our guide says in 
wartime was a sort of road across the mountains, 
and that it passed near an alum mine where during 
those troublous times the women got something to 
set the dyes of their homespun clothes. The horses 
we ride were born and bred in the mountains, the 
only kind of horse one ought to ride here, for he 
knows the ways of the woods and will go over a log 
or under it, climb, one is tempted to say, anything 
but a tree, take the situation philosophically if he 
falls down or you fall off, get up himself, or, if he 
cannot, wait patiently for help, and when it comes 
he will assist rather than hinder by his efforts. This 
horse that never gets nervous or frightened is intel- 
ligent and companionable to a high degree, the 
mountain horses often seeming to share the kindly 
