HIGHLANDS 251 
hanced by those human touches that send us sight- 
seeing to foreign lands. Even in Italy, away from 
the seacoast there is nothing in the way of natural 
scenery more beautiful than our own Southern 
mountains, we lacking only that instinctive feeling 
for the beautiful that makes every son of that fair 
land build his house with pleasing lines and place it 
sympathetically in the landscape, the row of columns, 
the arcade, the terrace, the stone wall, the statue, 
put, as by inspiration, each in its perfect place. 
Nowhere in the mountains does one find more 
beautiful natural growths than at Highlands, where 
the laurel and rhododendron grow to trees and flam- 
ing azaleas set whole mountain-sides ablaze, and 
here one remembers finding wild lilies-of-the-valley. 
But that which characterizes the scenery of this 
region, separating it distinctly from the rest of the 
mountains, is the presence of the many bare preci- 
pices that on all sides drop into unseen abysses, the 
most terrible of all being the long wall of Whiteside 
Mountain, that makes a sheer descent of fifteen 
hundred feet and has the distinction of being the 
grandest precipice this side the Rockies. Yet even 
these cliffs cannot give a cruel aspect to the country, 
because over all their savage tops hang delicate vines 
and dainty shrubs. Smiling flowers of the rose-bay 
look fearlessly over the edge and the white lace of the 
fringe-bush sheds its perfume down the stern front 
of the rock. 
The nearest point of view at Highlands Is perhaps 
Black Rock, that drops in a sheer wall nearly a 
