THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 285 
Campbell" went up there with a boy hunting for 
stock, and while they were off, some one stole their 
rations. Next day Campbell hid them and said to his 
boy, "Well, Andy, we'll 'scape them cats to-night." 
Old Sally Reese took the rations, everybody knew, 
and the ridge from that day was named, in her 
honor, "Scape Cat." 
In all this region turkeys, domestic as well as wild, 
are common, and a "gang of turkeys" is about as 
ordinary a sight as a gang of chickens, but we were 
not prepared way up here on the Little East Fork 
of the Pigeon River to behold a gang of peacocks. 
When we admired them with a sort of anticipatory 
pleasure in the time to come, when peacocks will 
sun themselves on the walls in the charming gar- 
dens that charming people will make here, we were 
brought violently to earth by learning that the real 
value of the peacock is in its superiority to chicken 
meat. Peacocks, you learn, provide the finest dish 
you ever ate — and their tongues are not even men- 
tioned. 
If you want to climb to Shining Rock, you will 
find a trail going up from here, and at the top one of 
those balds so common to these mountains, and 
always so delightful. The top of Shining Rock 
Mountain is so level that we were told that men and 
women had been seen running footraces all over it. 
There are small firs here and there, and splendid 
groups of Rhododendron Catawhiense whose royal red 
flowers must transform Shining Rock into a garden 
of delight at their blooming season. Also huckle- 
