HIGHLANDS 259 
bringing up at a smart station among the flaming 
azaleas of Highlands! 
From Franklin you can go out to climb the steep 
sides of the Nantahala, where the road winds up 
among gigantic trees — which, alas, may be all 
gone now — and on over the gap and down to the 
lower but very picturesque country beyond, where 
Standing Indian, the last and one of the highest 
summits of the Blue Ridge, looks calmly over the 
head of Chunky Gal Mountain crouching at his feet. 
Although the Nantahalas abound in beautiful 
flowers, they also have a reputation for the produc- 
tion of "ramps," as the people call the wild onions 
that are abundant enough in some regions to be a 
nuisance to the farmer. Cattle sometimes eat ramps 
and are poisoned, though it is said that, if they eat 
them in the spring before other greens sprout, they 
get used to them and can consume them without in- 
jury. Ramps are pretty notwithstanding their mal- 
odorous and other bad qualities, and "ramp coves," 
with the thousand other plants that fill them, are not 
as bad as the name implies. 
The Nantahala Range rises steeply to a narrow 
edge whose summits are five thousand feet or more 
high, and one discovers that it is this steepness, to- 
gether with the absence of near, high mountains, 
that gives the range its strong individual line against 
the sky. 
Another favorite road winds down through the 
forest from Highlands to Whiteside Cove, where one 
ought to stay awhile and become acquainted with 
