370 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
the sky, the forest shutting from view the outer 
world. Once, there were large wild cherry trees on 
the slopes of the Grandfather, but the wood being 
valuable, — it is what the people call mahogany, — 
there are only saplings left, and a few patriarchs 
that, though useless for lumber, give an air of dignity 
to the forest in company with the clear gray shafts 
of the tulip-trees, the grand old chestnuts, the oaks, 
the maples, beeches, birches, ashes, and lindens that 
mingle their foliage with that of the pines and 
spruces. 
You pass beside or under large detached boulders 
covered with saxifrages, sedums, mosses, and ferns, 
and in whose crevices mountain-ash trees and 
twisted hemlocks have taken root as though for pur- 
poses of decoration ; and in the damp hollows away 
from the path great jack- vines hang from the tree- 
tops. The rock ledges sometimes make caves where 
bears were wont to live, for the Grandfather was 
once a famous place for bears. Squirrels still "use 
on the mountain, ' ' as the people say, and a ' ' boomer ' ' 
will be apt to bark down at you as you go along. 
You hear the waters of a stream in the ravine below, 
and here and there you cross a natural garden of 
"balimony" or some other precious herb that the 
people gather in the season. About two thirds of the 
way up you take a path that branches off to the left 
and leads you over the mossy rocks to an open place 
on the edge of a gorge where looking off you see the 
clear-cut profile of the Grandfather sculptured on the 
edge of a rocky bluff, the bushy hair that rises from 
