The hollows are single, and walled around by cliffs, ever varying in
shape and height, and have seldom any perceptible communication with
each other. These hollows are of all dimensions, from the narrowness and
depth of a well, to the amplitude of one hundred yards. Winter's snow is
frequently found in these cavities at midsummer. The streams that burst
forth from every crevice are thrown, by the irregularities of the
surface, into numberless cascades, often disappear in mists or in
chasms, and emerge from subterranean channels, and, finally, either
subside into lakes, or quietly meander through the lower and more level
grounds.

Wherever nature left a flat it is made rugged and scarcely passable by
enormous and fallen trunks, accumulated by the storms of ages, and
forming, by their slow decay, a moss-covered soil, the haunt of rabbits
and lizards. These spots are obscured by the melancholy umbrage of
pines, whose eternal murmurs are in unison with vacancy and solitude,
with the reverberations of the torrents and the whistling of the blasts.
Hickory and poplar, which abound in the lowlands, find here no fostering
elements.

A sort of continued vale, winding and abrupt, leads into the midst of
this region and through it. This vale serves the purpose of a road. It
is a tedious maze and perpetual declivity, and requires, from the
passenger, a cautious and sure foot. Openings and ascents occasionally
present themselves on each side, which seem to promise you access to the
interior region, but always terminate, sooner or later, in insuperable
difficulties, at the verge of a precipice or the bottom of a steep.

Perhaps no one was more acquainted with this wilderness than I, but my
knowledge was extremely imperfect. I had traversed parts of it, at an