804 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Southern Mountains Present Vistas of Real Beauty When the Rhododendrons Burst Into Bloom. 
The Uncaught Trout 
It is’'a Pretty Wild Country This, Up Under the Shade of the Smoky 
Ramparts But Beautiful Beyond Compare 
By Donald Gillis. 
T HE rain clouds had passed, but the satur¬ 
ated slopes of the Great Smokies sent the 
storm water upoaring over the rocky bed 
of the Raven and filling the narrow valley with 
its clamor. Brimful, the little river in the forest 
ran discolored from bank to bank, dirty brown 
even to its foam churning against mossy boul¬ 
ders. On its flood came debris of driftwood and 
broken twigs, and overhanging rhododendrons 
sprinkled on it white petals tinged with rose. 
No time or place is this for the snowy-winged 
Coachman. Neither for Beaverkill, Quill nor 
Golden Spinner, and Palmers and Hackles would 
be but part and parcel of the tawny tide. Per¬ 
haps a Silver Doctor might make a flash to lure 
a rainbow from his rock-roofed domicile out 
into the wet to see the traveler with the silver 
raiment and the blue umbrella. But not likely. 
Substantial citizens stay at home in bad weather 
and cuss the administration for the short crop 
of grasshoppers. And fingerlings are not worth 
while. To-morrow may be another day. We 
will go to the dwelling of Nix and watch the 
chickens go to roost in their armored tree. 
This isn’t any war story in disguise. The roost 
tree is really iron-clad. Old ploughshares, crip¬ 
pled axes, fragments of stoves, rusty chains and 
broken locks are suspended by wires from the 
limbs. You might think this was a gallows tree 
where a hardware store had been lynched. But 
Mr. Nix is no lyncher, neither is he insane. 
Furthermore Nix is no stage name. The irons 
are where they are merely to protect the chick¬ 
ens from the winter’s cold. Every intelligent 
person knows, or ought to know, that iron at¬ 
tracts cold. Therefore, when chilly air comes 
to assail the sleeping fowls the irons are there to 
absorb it. The cold makes for the dangling 
irons and is swallowed alive and the chickens 
are saved. Whether the iron digests the cold 
and is then ready to absorb some more is a 
matter for discussion by chemists. Me, I am no 
chemist. I do not even know the physiological 
effect of fly oil on fish. 
Tomorrow comes indeed another day. The 
mist rises slowly from its wet bed and makes 
skyward where we feel but do not see that the 
sun is shining clearly. The Raven has largely 
clarified over night, but it is still murky. Not 
for another day will it regain its sparkling clear¬ 
ness. The better fishing will be further on, up 
further where the clay road ceases to cling to 
the bank and generously shed its red surface 
into the protesting stream. The best fish¬ 
ing is always further on, I have noticed, 
in any stream. So we hoof it for a 
couple of miles while the sun comes into view 
and warms up this fragment of the U. S. Some 
fishermen preach early rising, breakfast by lamp¬ 
light and beginning work at dusky dawn. Not 
for me. I am for union hours in beginning the 
day, a good meal and a pipe by the kitchen stove. 
The habits of fishes are not the same in all 
streams. In some waters they rise early, but up 
Raven way they don’t get busy until the sun 
shines good. Raven is a long, long way from 
the feverish activities of cities; the Raven is a 
good provider of grub, so why this early rising 
by prosperous trout? 
We go up where the river is smaller and also 
more rapid and rocky. Rock cliffs hang over it 
and big trees lean over dark pools behind house- 
size boulders. A tangle of rhododendron on 
each side keeps us in the stream, and casting 
must generally be overhead. The water comes 
swift and waist deep except where it spreads 
thin and shimmering over a slanting table of yel¬ 
low quartz. Mcst people never think of there 
being mountain streams in the South yet in 
Western North Carolina there are the highest 
mountains east of the Mississippi,—23 of them 
higher than Mt. Washington and 64 over 6,ooo 
feet high. And mountains and plenty of rain 
are apt to ensure trout streams, aren’t they? At 
any rate there are plenty of them between the 
Blue Ridge and the Smokies. I have caught 
mountain trout in South Carolina where the 
white water crashes over the State line with a 
waterfall. 
It is a pretty wild country this, up under the 
shadow of the Smoky ramparts. Rainfall and a 
Southern latitude make for profuse growth of 
vegetation, and altitude produces climatic condi¬ 
tions that add a variety of Northern flora. The 
forests of poplar, chestnut, oak, pine and hard¬ 
woods climb up and up to the dark balsam 
domes. The sun shows clearly the great mass of 
Mt. Guyot, the high peak so overgrown with 
underbrush that few others than timber cruisers 
have troubled to ascend it. 
This was the Indian country. Here it was 
that the Cherokees lived before the Government 
moved them to Indian Territory in 1846. Up 
stream a young fellow is fishing with a crooked 
pole. Slender and straight and brown hued the 
wild surroundings might make you fancy him an 
Indian. He is an Indian. Some of the Indians 
refused to go West and hid out in the woods and 
after much negotiation they were allowed to re¬ 
main and the United States provided them a 
reservation. Lower down their cabins are scat¬ 
tered along the Oconaluftee, and at Yellow Hill 
is the Government school. There are about a 
thousand Indians in this section. 
Having arrived where the water comes down 
crashing and flashing, slipping darkly by under¬ 
mined ledges, sparkling in swift runways and 
lying brown in deep pools it is to be expected 
that one will stop talking and go to fishing. 
Among my flies is one with a gold banded body 
and smoke colored wings. Wickhams Fancy 
meets the tastes of trout hereabouts. I am talk¬ 
ing now of dry fly Wickhams; I never used the 
wet fly variety of this gilded deceiver. I have 
used the wet fly Professor and it was 
good; of the dry fly Professor I can cheerfully 
say that I never knew of anyone who ever took 
a trout with it. Now I am even with this flar¬ 
ing winged imposter for the false expectations 
it has often raised in me. 
This started out to be a story about fishing, 
with a shadowy hint of how a large rainbow 
that lies under a submerged rock broke the tip 
of my $1.17 department store rod, but the story 
must stop, because no trout lies under that rock 
Sad to say, few trout lie under, around or near 
any rock anywhere in the Raven. Lo, the poor 
Indian, beats up walnut bark and poisons the 
fish to save the trouble of angling for them. Is 
it any wonder that a man who killed an Indian 
in this neighborhood a while back fell asleep 
while his trial was in progress? 
