THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 245 
nature of the people with whom they are intimately 
associated in all kinds of work, from ploughing a 
furrow or working a sorghum press to hauling logs 
over almost impassable roads or bearing their owners 
over almost impassable trails. 
The way up the mountain is now enchanting in 
its perfection of wildness. Oaks tower above you as 
you go, and tall locusts shade you, a giant chestnut 
here, a lordly cherry there, a stately ash, a royal 
tulip tree, mammoth hemlocks, standing where they 
please, all remind you that this is a primeval forest, 
planted by nature and by her husbanded through 
the millenniums. Here, too, along the cliffs and the 
streams, the rose-bay, splendid in the literal meaning 
of the word, adds to the shining of its polished leaves 
that of regal flower masses, for up here it is yet in 
bloom, although the time is August. These noble 
rhododendrons, that blossom with a freedom and a 
loveliness of color that belong with these vast sky- 
domed spaces, sometimes are not purple at all, but a 
clear bright rose-color seldom seen at lower levels. 
In the forest where the rocks are hidden from view 
under a thick carpet of moss, your horse wades knee- 
deep in luscious ferns, or his hoofs sink out of sight 
in tender oxalis leaves whose crowding flowers em- 
broider a rosy and white design over the green floor. 
You pass into a parklike grove of great beech trees, 
still and sweet. You see a large turkey on the top- 
most limb of a dead tree suddenly expand his wings 
and float away with incredible speed and lightness. 
A domestic turkey walking on the ground gives no 
