XXVIII 
MOUNT MITCHELL 
FROM the top of Tryon Mountain on a fair 
spring day, a snow-white cloud was seen lying 
above the northern horizon. It was so beautiful in 
the pure blue of the sky that the eye involuntarily 
turned to it again and again ; and then, some trick 
of the light revealed an opalescent world below, and 
all at once one realized that the cloud was the snow- 
covered crest of the Black Mountains, which can be 
seen from Tryon Peak on a clear day. 
After this one saw the Black Mountains in the 
distance, like the Smokies ethereally blue or again 
pearly white. But unlike the impression created by 
the Smokies, this of the Blacks vanished upon near 
acquaintance, perhaps in part because the name 
stamped another vision on the mind. It is hard to 
escape the influence of a name, and the Black Moun- 
tains live in your memory as a group of night-black 
domes topping a long black mountain crest that 
lightens to varied shades of green as it descends 
towards the valleys, or else loses itself below in depths 
of blue shadows, which is the way it appears when 
one is near it. 
Nowhere is the rounded contour of the Southern 
mountains so striking as in the high balsam-covered 
summits. Mitchell's High Peak, as it is now called, 
