"Sing of timber, iron and steel; of coal heaved by brawny miners into the bituminous bin of the Nation; of oil gushers and gas flow; of vitrolite and chromium, plastics and neon, rayon and nylon; of glass stained for cathedrals of Europe; of billions of kilowatts from coal, and potentially more water power; of fluorescent bulbs at Fairmont, and poisonous red flakes in the Kanawha sky from metallurgical plants--fire poppies blooming in the night. "Sing of deeds and events of deathless renown; of Morgan Morgan and his first white settlement at Bunker Hill; of James Rumsey and his steamboat on the Potomac; of Chesapeake and Ohio's epic completion across the State in '73 to the tune of legendary John Henry's steel-driving ballad in Big Bend tunnel; of turnpikes, taverns and toll houses long abandoned; of our leaders, Negro and white, in business, industry, education, religion and government; of our stalwarts of union labor whose vision, social comprehension and courage helped to bring a new day for all; of our cherished democracy, flexible and self-righting in a world where popular rule is a rarity. "I have catalogued in clumsy prose what a Thomas Dunn English or a Roy Lee Harmon could peel off in crisp, singing lines. Surely we have gifted souls who can illumine our story in song--the story of Mountaineers Always Free, of West Virginians always Mountaineers--for a better understanding by the country at large ... of this land of heroic past, exhilarating present, and promising future." A journey through the Mountain State convinces the traveler that on her side of the Blue Ridge West Virginia offers as many wonders under the earth as above it, if one is not a claustrophobe. There's Gandy Sinks where my friends of the Speleological Society were trapped by a cloudburst on August 1, 1940; and Seneca Caverns, in Monongahela National Forest, once the refuge of Seneca Indians about twenty miles west of Franklin on U. S. Route 33, and six miles from Spruce Knob. Caves as unbelievably beautiful as the Luray Caverns of Virginia, where the great council room of the Seneca tribe remains as it was in the day of the redskins. There is even a legend about Snow Bird, the only daughter of Bald Eagle and White Rock, his wife. Inside the cavern, if you look carefully, there is to be seen the outline of the lovely face of Snow Bird on the great stone wall. There are a Wigwam, and an Iceberg, an Alligator, and the Golden Horseshoe and Balcony of the Metropolitan, all in natural stone formation.