LINVILLE FALLS 345 
the abyss is hidden by impenetrable rhododendron 
jungles. 
When you get to the open, rocky edge, you forget 
to look upstream to the fall, because of the wonder- 
ful blanket of trees that covers the opposite side of 
the narrow gorge. There is nothing like it: the walls 
seem made of foliage; the river far below runs 
through walls of living green, the crowns of superb 
forest trees that have managed to grow on what 
appears to be an upright cliff. You scarcely see the 
stems, only the green crowns of the hardwood trees 
blending their colors and their shapes with black 
interspersed shadows and interwoven with the dark- 
green of firs and the pale feathery effect of white 
pines, a marvelous tapestry wrought by the hand of 
nature. 
The steepness of the walls makes this growth of 
large trees the more remarkable, and your heart 
aches to recall that this whole gorge, one of the 
wonders of the mountains, has been bought by a 
lumber company. But looking at that tapestried 
wall falling sheer into the mountain torrent below, 
your sympathy takes a humorous leap to the side of 
the lumber company. Any tree they can get out of 
there they will have earned! Float the logs down- 
stream? " Not down that stream, unless you want to 
collect wood pulp somewhere beyond the foothills," 
a man who knows the gorge assures you. 
As you stand on the brink of the precipice you 
hear the confused thunder of the fall, that at this 
distance is a mere white ribbon hung from the end 
