Birds -- Tennessee; Natural history -- Outdoor books; Tennessee -- Description and travel
Here, as at Signal Point, I made an addition to my local ornithology,
and this time too the bird was a hawk. We were standing on the edge
of the cliff, when a sparrow hawk, after alighting near us, took wing
and hung for some time suspended over the abyss, beating against the
breeze, and so holding itself steady,--a graceful piece of work,
the better appreciated for being seen from above. Here, also, for
the first time in my life, I was addressed as a "you-un." "Where
be you-uns from?" asked the woman at the cabin, after the ordinary
greetings had been exchanged. I believe, in my innocence, I had
always looked upon that word as an invention of story-writers.
Somewhere in this neighborhood we traversed a pine wood, in which
my first Walden pine warbler was trilling. Then, for some miles, we
drove along the Brow, with the glory of the world--valley, river,
and mountain--outspread before us, and the Great Smokies looming in
the background, barely visible through the haze. For seven miles, I
was told, one could drive along that mountain rim. Surely the city
of Chattanooga is happy in its suburbs. Here were many cottages, the
greater number as yet unopened; and not far beyond the one under
the piazza of which I had weathered the thunderstorm of the day
before, the road entered the forest again. Then, as the way grew
more and more difficult, we left the horse behind us, and by and by
came to a foot-path. This brought us at last to Falling Water Fall,
where Little Falling Water--after threading the swamp and passing
Mabbitt's Spring, as before described--tumbles over a precipice
which my companion, with his surveyor's eye, estimated to be one
hundred and fifty feet in height. The slender stream, broken into
jewels as it falls, strikes the bottom at some distance from the
foot of the cliffs, which here form the arc of a circle, and are
not perpendicular, but deeply hollowed. After enjoying the prospect
from this point,--holding to a tree and leaning over the edge of the
rocks,--we retraced our steps till we came to a steep, zigzag path,
which took us to the foot of the precipice. Here, as well as above,
were laurel and rhododendron in profusion. One big rhododendron-tree
grew on the face of the cliff, thirty feet over our heads, leaning
outward, and bearing at least fifty clusters of gorgeous rose-purple
flowers; and a smaller one, in a similar position, was equally full.
The hanging gardens of Babylon may have been more wonderful, but I
was well content.
From the point where we stood the ledge makes eastward for a long
distance, almost at right angles, and the cliffs for a mile--or,
more likely, for two or three miles--were straight before us, broken
everywhere into angles, light gray and reddish-brown intermixed, with
the late afternoon sun shining full upon them, and the green forest
fringing them above and sweeping away from them below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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