258 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
eager search the country people have made for it. 
They sold it at the stores, where one large root was 
worth a week's wages. This inconspicuous little 
plant, with its power of healing Oriental ills, belongs 
to that mysterious brotherhood of the two continents, 
appearing only in the eastern United States and 
eastern Asia. 
Returning from the fall and following down the 
clear Cullasagee, Franklin in time comes to view 
where it lies so prettily on the blood-red waters of the 
Little Tennessee, with the Nantahala rising, an 
exquisite background, behind it. And seeing it thus 
in the mystical light of the summer day one has 
again that vision of what the earth might be, and 
will be, when future generations are moved by the 
power of beauty that is finally to conquer the world. 
Seven or eight miles before reaching Franklin, one 
passes the noted Corundum Hill, at Cullasagee, the 
site of the mine where, besides other less attractive 
minerals, men are in eager search of the gems that 
lie hidden in the heart of the ancient rocks. 
Franklin, although it is the county seat, seemed 
at the ends of the earth to us travelers from the wild 
interior, and now one hears with dismay that the 
railroad has come to it up from Tallulah Falls in 
Georgia, which makes one tremble for the next news 
from Highlands. The railroad does very well in 
some places, but imagine a locomotive smoking and 
puffing and screaming up that romantic valley of the 
Cullasagee where log houses and spinning-wheels 
consoled the eye in former days! And imagine it 
