IF THESE papers are not so entirely horticultural as the readers of The American Garden have been accustomed to look for in their favorite magazine, the writer begs to say in explanation that he found certain other indigenous products of the Tennessee mountains, i.e., the men and women who have their being there, of quite as much interest as the fruits and flowers of that rugged soil. This was my thought as I stood upon the platform of a desolate little railway station and watched the train that had brought me - the only visible connecting link between myself and civilization - speeding away again into the busy world that lay beyond that furthest range of hills. Then I turned to my friend, who was waiting : "My mission can best be represented by a huge interrogation point," I said. "I want to know all about the mountains, the people, their history, habits, traditions, occupations, etc., etc., ad infinitum. I want to know everything about them that there is to know".

I bad come to the right market to buy my wares. The Colonel had been among the mountains for years - before the railroad, before the land companies and speculators, before the mining prospector, before the novelist and summer tourist. He was an encyclopedia of valuable information, but he had no intention of allowing me to acquire my knowledge at second hand ; I must get it by observation and experience.

"You are just in time. I have business to-morrow that will take me up the mountain, and to a typical mountain town. I will have horses ready at day-break".

It was mid-December ; we were on the Cumberland plateau. The morning dawned bright and warm and the mercury stood at 650 as we started out. The ground was dry and firm, and the dead leaves rattled crisply under our horses' feet while we went at a brisk pace along the bridle-path that led into the heart of the forest.

We were already on the "mountain" - that local apellation embracing all that gigantic upheaval of the plain which constitutes the plateau - at an elevation of some fifteen hundred feet. Our way lay along the undulations of this table-land, now up, now down, but gradually ascending for five hundred feet more. About us, as far as the eye could reach, was the forest; sometimes a vast expanse of spreading oaks, their sere foliage giving ruby glints in the sunlight; again a sombre wall of towering pines, standing tall and straight, and waving gracefully in the wind.

Upon the levels the vision could penetrate but a little way, because the trees clustered so thickly; but, from points of vantage upon some slight elevation, we could look far off over ridge and hollow, and over succeeding ridges beyond, until the definite sense of vision was lost in that last indefinable line of blue that blended the mountain and the sky in one. Back to earth again, and in the pine woods where the trees grow so close together, many hundred upon each acre, we see that the trunks are free from branches except at the very top. The dense shade that they make for themselves as they grow is unfavorable to the development of branches, the whole energy of the tree being expended in the effort to reach above its fellows to the light. This tendency to struggle toward the light is as apparent in the tree as it is in the plant which always turns toward the glass in the window-garden at home. So to this, the "excelsior" desire in nature, is due the smooth, tender boles of these pines, just tipped with spreading green branches, and rivalling palms in their gracefulness.

In these pine forests it is always twilight, except when it is blackest night. The direct rays of the sun rarely penetrate the green canopy. Some slanting ray of light finds here and there an opening, and wanders in below and flits like a will-o'-the-wisp among the tree trunks, growing ever more dim and mellow until it loses itself amid the pervading gloom.

Now and then we dip down into a ravine where a stream of fresh water runs, and upon whose banks the rhododendron and the mountain laurel grow. We stop to gather some leaves of the rhododendron, long, narrow, dark and glossy, like the leaves of the rubber plant. A big, yellow bud is at the axil of each cluster, looking as if it was ready to burst into sudden bloom, although it is mid-winter, and not mid-summer, by the calendar. The promise that it gives almost makes us wish that it had been our fortune to come later, when the bloom and not the bud alone could greet us. Yet our horses even now are sweating under their sharp work, and the sun is getting up straighter above the tree tops and sending down warmer rays upon us. While the horses refresh themselves with great draughts of cool water, we take a closer look at the characteristic vegetation about us.

A group of water-birches stands a little way up the ravine, and I have a fancy to strip some of their bark to make a mountain note-book. Stripping off the outer layers, which are somewhat rough and ragged, I find the inner surfaces smooth, firm and lighter in color, and taking the ink from my fountain pen very well. It is a fit medium to carry the notes of the mountain.

Besides the birches we find a sourwood (oxyden-drum), which bears such a pretty cluster of belllike blossoms that our English cousins have adopted it for ornamental planting, re-christening it "The American Lily of the Valley." Even under so sweet a name, no doubt, its foliage remains as acid to the tongue as here in its native habitat, where it amply justifies its name. A plant, as well as a prophet, may gain honor by journeying to a far land; our common mullein grows in many an English door-yard, where it is yclept "The American Flannel plant!" And they who do these things are right; for many a plant that we term a weed is full of grace and beauty; at the most, a weed is only a plant out of place; the milk-weed and the thistle are beautiful in bud and blossom, and more beautiful yet in the last scene of all, when, on wings of feathery cown they scatter their seeds abroad in the land that they may produce, each after its own kind.