The lady stood several minutes looking at the grand and beautiful view, with Baby Mitchell fast asleep under her belt. Then she went on, and at last they got to the top of the “bald,” and, with a last look back at the wide world below, the lady followed her guide on into the black fir forest. The black fir forest was very black indeed, and the fir trees towered up and up and up so high you could not see their tops, and so thick you could not see the sky through their branches. Oh, but it was dark under them!—it was like walking under thousands of Christmas trees before the candles and presents have been put on; only these trees were ten times as big as Christmas trees. They were balsam firs, the kind you get the sweet-smelling needles from to put into sofa pillows; only these were ten times as big as the balsam firs that grow in the North. But they smelled just as sweet as those, and all the forest was filled with the perfume of them. The ground was covered ankle deep with soft green moss that the lady’s feet sank into as she walked. And everywhere were the rhododendrons. It was too late for them to be in bloom; so they were not as lovely as they are sometimes. When you get into the rhododendrons, you cannot see up into the tree branches, because the rhododendron branches are tangled about you and above you with their stiff green leaves. They make the woods seem dreadfully black and gloomy; but when they are in bloom it is another matter. The lady and the guide went on and on under the twisted rhododendrons, and Baby Mitchell lay fast asleep under the lady’s belt. Then the guide lost the trail. It was, in fact, a great deal easier to lose it than to keep it. Indeed, it could hardly be called a trail at all, it was so little used, and one had to know the mountain very well indeed to get safely to the top. Such a wild and lovely forest as they found now, you never were in. I do not believe such balsam firs grow anywhere else in the world. Their dark green tops make the mountains look black, excepting when the air is hazy and makes them look faint and blue in the distance. But when the air is clear the mountains look black because of the fir trees that grow all the way up to their tops. And when anybody asks, you can tell them that is why the Black Mountains got their name; and Mount Mitchell, you know, is one of the Black Mountains,—the very highest one of all. Well, they lost the trail, the lady and her guide, and soon they had to creep on their hands and knees under the rhododendrons that twisted great tangly arms about them and tripped them up with roots that lay like giant snakes upon the ground. And then they came to awful precipices, and had to creep back again. And sometimes they had to climb over immense fallen logs, slippery with a deep coat of green moss.