Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/158

152 through the groves of mountain rose bay—the Catawba rhododendron (R. Catawbiense)—that grows only on the highest summits of this mountain land. On the summit of Lickstone Bald we later found it a shrub scarcely three feet in height, but on the Plott Balsams it was arborescent—a tree twenty feet high—and we rode the rest of the way under bowers of lilac and rose bloom. What I had read and heard of the scenery of Himalayan slopes was visibly present—the gorgeous blossoms of rhododendron jungles and the dark forests of fir bathed in the azure light of the upper world. Nowhere on this continent can one find a nearer approach to Himalayan vegetation, and I would fain add scenery—save for the absence of that snowy range that towers above the tree-line zone. The fir tree of these Carolina mountain tops is Eraser's balsam fir (Abies Fraseri), a distinct species, though closely allied to the common fir of northern evergreen forests. The same resin blisters are found on the trunk and limbs as in the northern species, and it is the exudation from these that fills the air with balsamic fragrance. The woodsmen of this region call the fir a "she balsam" in contradistinction to the spruces, which are called "he balsams" and on which no resin-filled blisters are found.

Plott Balsam is a more decided peak than any of the surrounding mountain summits. It falls away steeply on all sides from a level space on the top scarcely larger than the fiat roof of some tall building. This gives one the impression of great upliftedness—of standing on the pinnacle of an exceeding high mountain and beholding the kingdoms of the world. The timber had been felled on the very summit, presumably to give a lookout, and we had a superb view of the valley of the Richland more than three thousand feet below. In every direction mountain masses lay before us—orange beyond range—like a vast relief map. To the north, on the farthest verge of the horizon, loomed indistinctly the range of the Great Smokey. Toward the east and south the eye swept from Pisgah along a quadrant bounded by the hazy uplift of the Blue Ridge more than thirty miles away. It was not this vista of mountains, however, that impressed me most. It was the vastness of the sky with its cloud pageant. Here was the birthplace of the cumuli. Wisps of vapor, formed in the uprising currents on some high mountain top, streamed off in the wind like a banner, grew and grew, rolled into a fleecy mass, waxing greater, until the stately pile of the cumulus floated on with its fellows—a Phæacian fleet that would vanish in the sunset on some distant horizon.

The cumuli breed the thunderstorms that gather over these mountains in the early afternoons of summer. During the latter part of June and through July "thunder heads" would be hovering over the western ridges, casting their deep shadows on the slopes and the valley. Downpours of rain were frequent and one soon got accustomed