PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 299 
extent on others. The large balds, such as that of 
the Roan, the Big Yellow, and other well-known 
forms, also give character and added beauty to the 
landscape, in which they appear like peaceful islands 
in the billowing sea of tree-clad mountains. 
There is a road leading out of Waynesville and up 
to what is known as the Eagle's Nest, on one of the 
Junaluska spurs of the Balsam Mountains. This 
road, which is brown in color instead of red, winds 
up through a forest of hardwood trees, and towards 
the top there opens out a wide, gently concave mea- 
dow of mingled blue-grass and white-clover, one of 
those beautiful natural meadows that occur so fre- 
quently on the slopes of the higher mountains, and 
where the fragrance of white-clover mingling sud- 
denly with the manifold sweet odors of the forest 
gives one a sensation of waking into the past inter- 
penetrated with the events of the present. 
There is a hotel at the top near a large spring of 
cold water that wells forth close to a fine outlook, as 
though nature had planned it that way on purpose. 
There, before your eyes, Pisgah, Cold Mountain, 
Shining Rock, Lickstone, and the other balds we 
know so well, stand amidst the lesser mountains; 
and that far blue line to the southwest between 
nearer heights they tell us is Cullowhee Mountain. 
But that which most strongly affects one here is the 
colors of the balsams that are close enough for you 
to look into the deep, soft hollows that lie on the 
wonderful green of the slopes like lakes of midnight 
blackness. 
