378 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
under the chestnut trees just beginning to open 
their burrs, away from the Grandfather out over a 
beautiful spur that ends in an open, rounded sum- 
mit. The road to this place has side paths that lead 
you to high cliffs, whence you look off towards 
Blowing Rock, and where the sweetest of mountain 
growths cling to the crevices and drape the edges 
of all the rocks. For some reason the trees here are 
small, the chestnuts being not much larger than 
bushes, but the nuts are proportionately large, the 
largest nuts one ever saw on our native chestnut 
trees, and they are peculiarly sweet, again a hint to 
the fruit-makers who from this could doubtless 
create a nut as large as the chestnuts of France and 
as sweet as those of America, The summit of this 
little mountain of the large chestnuts is one of your 
favorite places to go for a day of rest and contempla- 
tion. It is a lovely, soothing place, as it ought to be, 
for it is the Grandmother Mountain. 
