MOUNT MITCHELL 313 
leys from which one gets superb views of the cloud- 
capped mountains that He on all sides. There is no 
more romantically beautiful valley in the moun- 
tains than that of Cane River, which, in its upper 
part, is over three thousand feet high, and nowhere 
falls below twenty-five hundred feet. It runs along 
the whole western base of the Black Mountain 
Range, and from it one sees round-pointed moun- 
tains delightfully grouped in the landscape, and 
quaint houses placed in a superb setting of moun- 
tains and streams. Cane River is named from the 
heavy canebrakes that clothe its banks in places, 
supplying fishpoles, pipestems, and reeds for the 
loom, but the river valley is more noted for the 
products of its farms — grain, grass, and apples. 
No one can visit this region in the summertime 
without noticing the orchards loaded with hand- 
some apples, fruit of so fine a quality that it took a 
prize at the Paris Exposition, the people tell you 
with pride. The land in the Cane River Valley is 
valuable, not only because it is fertile, but because 
the people love it so. One man we were told refused 
a hundred dollars an acre for his farm because "he 
was that foolish over it." And the inhabitants of 
the valley are fine and friendly, as you would expect 
of people who so love their homes. 
Up Cattail Branch, and doubtless elsewhere, you 
can yet find men able to fell a tree and with the 
primitive whipsaw convert it into boards on the 
spot, and in the Black Mountain country one has 
seen a man sitting under a tree in front of his house 
