MIDWAY in the Appalachian System that reaches nearly from the St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, where nature has run riot in her prodigality of chains and cross-chains of "dolorous mountain summit," there, where the corners of several States come together, stands the Blue Ridge, thrown up like a barrier at the back of the great Atlantic plain. Like its companion range, the Great Smokies, it takes its name from the atmospheric haze which ever bedims it when viewed from any distance. With an elevation of some four thousand feet, rising in some of its apices to over six thousand, it is the highest part of the North American continent east of the Rockies.

Climb the Blue Ridge from the plain by one of the "Gaps" which are found at intervals, and which are mostly rugged fissures formed by water erosion, with roadways precariously hung on to their sides, and you find that it is no ordinary mountain that you have ascended. There is no "go-down" on the farther side, but a vast billowy Hinterland, all once a forest, though now mostly cleared, but all still the very apotheosis of the unlevel. To get the fullest effect of the Ridge, and to carry away the deepest impression of it, one should approach it from behind. Seen from thence, the extent and the suddenness of

the stupendous dip are sublime, giving a suggestion of the world's rim or jumping-off place. After sojourning in that rude highland, with eye and mind wearied by its seemingly endless upheaval, one who for the first time emerges on the Blue Ridge crest, with its glorious expansive panorama spread out beneath, can scarce refrain from venting his feelings in a shout-the shout of the prisoner gaining liberty-the Thalassa-shout of the sea-hungry Greek again beholding his beloved element. Here at last to the everlasting hills is an end. In that haziness away beyond the terraced spurs and foothills, you feel and know instinctively there are flat country and macadam roads and railways and towns, and other things pertaining to a twentieth century civilisation.

Away from your feet, like a long unpirned thread, runs the road, winding down and ever down the mountain face, till, dwindling to the thinnest drawn fibre, it is lost from view in the far depths. The drive down this declivity is taken with caution-brakes hard crammed on, and team well in hand. Even then, it is one that is pregnant with possibilities and big with thrills. The roadway, from the inner bank to the outer edge, has been closely gauged to the width of a vehicle, and the

close to that unfenced, unkerbed outer edge where the ground drops away at a desperate angle into the tree-tops and the general landscape. Even the local teamster keeps the best part of one eye in that direction. The curious stranger glues both eyes there; while the extra-timid passenger keeps his averted, or with discreetly closed lids. In the light of day that roadway is out too décolleté to meet with his approval. A careful lookout has to be kept ahead for other vehicles, for only at certain points is it possible to pass. Many of the trees by the roadside have had slices chopped out of their trunks, indicating the severe wear and tear on brake-blocks and the necessity of frequently refacing them. Many of the Gap roads are kept up by toll levy, and their surfaces made good after rains, as they well need to be. Considering the amount of wheel traffic passing over these Gap roads, and the apparent risks, especially on many of the bends, accidents are amazingly few. The draught animals of the country have much to do with this, being particularly docile and free from skittish ways. When the catastrophe of a waggon somersaulting off the road brink has to be recorded, it is generally the case that the driver was neither a novice nor a stranger to the route. It is averred that among the wreckage of the outfit, fragments of bottleglass and a whiffed suggestion

leading to a suspicion that the overthrow may have been brought about by the old and experienced jehu running up against some young and inexperienced spirit.

Many parts of the Blue Ridge have long been notorious for the stilling which was carried on there, mostly on the illicit plan. Of late years the business was very brisk, so much of the surrounding country having "gone dry,' or adopted liquor - prohibitive legislation-and the less accessible clefts and corners of the Ridge were among the last places to be patrolled. Whisky made from maize, and brandy from apples, after the fashion of their forbears, were the fluids these distillers chiefly handled, and they could hardly conceive, in their crude casuistry, that their industry should be matter for anybody's or any government's interference. Their own production, high proof, hard and hot, was the one and only article to edify their home-trained palate, and they felt shy of more refined substitutes. Properly rectified and matured spirit was them even as the Loch Katrine water, when first piped into the city of Glasgow, was to the old lady who had all her life been used to the Molendinar or some equally noisome local supply, and who characterised the new beverage as "puir fushionless stuff, wi' neither smell nor taste aboot it."

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At the present time extreme vigilance is being exercised by

the United States officers in the Ridge country. Coppers and worms are being hunted for and destroyed, and the possessors taken in charge. Considering what sort of type some few of these old-timers are, and their readiness to employ powder and lead for enforcing their arguments on rights and personal liberties, the work takes resolution. It was the holder of a backlying Blue Ridge claim who, when inquiry was being made a few years ago by a State official as to land titles and abstracts, reached down his long-barrelled gun from its brackets on the rafters, and startled the interrogating official by remarking, "Thar's my title." It says a good deal for the tact of the raiding revenue men that they are performing their cleaning-up task with practically no blood-letting accompaniments. From one recent Court alone some twenty-five or thirty illicit ones of the "bootleg" proclivity were sent to government positions behind the bars for various terms. The days of " moonshining" in the Blue Ridge appear to be wellnigh over.

with agriculture are seen wherever there is a likely spot upon which can be hung a cornstalk, or on which they can sprout a bean.

Farming on these erofts is a prolonged and fierce warfare with nature, and the crofter warrior unfortunately has not enough of the gleam of battle in his eye to make a successful campaigner. Too often the spoils from the mountain battlefield are all too easily borne home.

Climatic conditions change with wonderful rapidity as one descends the Blue Ridge. On the top there is a bracing air and a moderately brief summer. On the face there are in places strips known as "Thermal Belts," where frosts are said to be unknown. During winter time the whole of the higher levels may be covered knee-deep with snow, while only a mile or two down the atmosphere may be balmy, and never a flake have fallen. The dweller in these genial regions is of the easy-going, listless kind that may be sumtotalled in the word "shiftless,"

the kind that works by fits and fancies, and always happens to have one of these attacks just a short time behind the right and proper season. The owner of his own acres, he pays rent to no man, but among the landed proprietors of the earth he is certainly the "submerged tenth." "Po' White" the southern darkies contemptuously style him; and if his case is a specially bad one, they emphasise their expression with