HIGHLANDS 249 
down to the road which, from recent rains and the 
passing of tanbark wagons, is, indeed, as he puts it, 
"terribly gouted out." But you are now up the 
mountain and crossing the gap where, at the turn in 
the road, that long white waterfall comes gliding 
down the slanting cliff, and beyond it in the distance 
the Balsam Mountains rise, purple, indigo blue, and 
deep green against a cloudy sky. 
Just beyond here you get some one to guide you a 
mile or two along a wild ravine where the jack- vine 
grows, to the upper falls of the Tuckasegee, one of 
the grandest falls in the mountains, the thunder of 
which is heard for a long distance. Although not so 
high as the other cascade seen from the road, it is 
far more impressive, for the much wider sheet of 
water leaps over a vertical cliff bordered on either 
side with stern walls of granite. Striking a project- 
ing ledge it separates into two parts to leap again, a 
mass of foam, to the bottom of the ravine. 
It is cool and sweet in the spray of the thundering 
waters and you reluctantly turn back and climb out 
of the shadowy gorge where the tall trees are draped 
in vines, among them the great jack-vine whose 
cables sagging heavily from the tree-tops produce a 
weird effect in the semi-twilight of the gorge. Nothing 
in the forest is more suggestive of tropical growths 
than these enormous vines with their large leaves, 
the bark peeling in tatters from the stem that when 
dead separates for its whole length into flat ribbons, 
black and strange-looking. 
' Out of the dark gorge, up to the bright sunlight 
