304 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
Range, tightly inclosing the narrow Cane River 
Valley, is a jumble of wild mountains, among which 
Yeates Knob reaches an elevation of six thousand 
feet, while to the north of the range lies the valley 
of Little Crabtree Creek between the Blacks and the 
rugged mountains beyond. Hence the valleys that 
nearly surround the Black Mountains are deep and 
narrow, and the streams rushing through them are 
very swift, clear, and, from the rapidity with which 
they rise during a storm, dangerous, the Estatoe, or 
Toe River, as it is commonly called, and its branches 
being among the most dangerous of the mountain 
streams. 
There is the same glorious wildness in the Black 
Mountain country that one feels in the regions of 
the Smokies and the Balsams ; and whoever ascends 
the Black Mountains, excepting perhaps over the 
trail to Mount Mitchell, unless he is a mountaineer 
of experience, must take a guide or run the risk of 
getting lost in the rhododendrons that heavily clothe 
the slopes of the mountain. To get lost in the rho- 
dodendron on one of these big mountains, where the 
foliage is too dense for one to see the sky, and where 
the strong, twisted limbs form a labyrinth in places 
utterly impassable, is an experience none would 
court, for, besides the trap woven by the rhododen- 
dron limbs, wild streams rush down, ledges and 
chasms obstruct the way, and fogs, the real danger 
in the mountains, are frequent. 
But on a pleasant summer day what is more de- 
lightful than a climb to the top of Mount Mitchell! 
