Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 23 palachian species. Thence up to the tops of the higher peaks there is a constant succession of changes—an intermingling and overlapping of the lower species with those which belong to greater elevations or more northern latitudes. Thus in ascending any of the higher mountains, as MoU0nrte^itscnenn Mount Mitchell, which, with its elevation of 6,711 feet, is the loftiest of them all, one may penetrate, in the rich and fertile coves about its base, a forest of oaks, hickories, maples, chestnuts, and tulip poplars, some of them large enough to lie suggestive of the giant trees on the Pacific coast. (See PI. XLIV.) Higher up one rides through forests of great hemlocks, chestnut oaks, beeches, and birches, and higher yet through groves of spruce and balsam. Covering the soil between these trees is a spongy mass of humus sometimes a foot and more in thickness, and over this in turn a luxuriant growth of shrubs and flowers and ferns. At last, as the top is reached, even the balsams become dwarfed, and there give place largely to clusters of rhododendron and patches of grass fringed with flowers, many of them such as are commonly seen about the hills and valleys of New England and southern Canada. In such an ascent one passes through, as it were, the w^hSevatiou^ changing of the seasons. Halfway up the slopes one may see, with fruit just ripening, the shrubs and plants the matured fruit of which was seen two or three weeks before on the Piedmont Plateau, 3,000 feet below; while 3,000 feet higher up the same species have now just opened wide their flowers. Fully a month divides the seasons above and below, separated by this nearlj' t>,000 feet of altitude. Remote from the railroads the forest on these moun- General forest tains is generally unbroken from the tops of ridge and peak down to the brook in the valley below, and to-day it is in much the same condition as for centuries past. (See PI. XVII.) In the more settled portions of the region, however, a different picture presents itself. Along the narrow mountain valleys are the cultivated fields about the settlements, where they ought to be. When the valleys Cnwtw fomt " " • deliriums for ag- were practically all cleared the increasing demands for "culture, lands to cultivate led to clearings successively higher and higher up the mountain slopes, with a pitch of 20 and 80 and even •!() degrees. From some of the peaks one may count these cleared mountain-side patches by the score. They have multiplied the more rapidly because their fer-
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).