From Wilson’s to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles; we made it in five and a half hours.  A bridle path was cut years ago, but it has been entirely neglected.  It is badly washed, it is stony, muddy, and great trees have fallen across it which wholly block the way for horses.  At these places long detours were necessary, on steep hillsides and through gullies, over treacherous sink-holes in the rocks, through quaggy places, heaps of brush, and rotten logs.  Those who have ever attempted to get horses over such ground will not wonder at the slow progress we made.  Before we were halfway up the ascent, we realized the folly of attempting it on horseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as to go back.  The way was also exceedingly steep in places, and what with roots, and logs, and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb for the horses.

What a magnificent forest!  Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, the cucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone), and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here in splendid array.  And this gigantic forest, with little diminution in size of trees, continued two thirds of the way up.  We marked, as we went on, the maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, the locust, and the guide pointed out in one section the largest cherry-trees we had ever seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sum if it could be got to market.  After the great trees were left behind, we entered a garden of white birches, and then a plateau of swamp, thick with raspberry bushes, and finally the ridges, densely crowded with the funereal black balsam.

Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew.  It was a poplar, or tulip.  It stands more like a column than a tree, rising high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhaps sixty, more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.

Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet!  I think it might be called Big Tom.  It stood here, of course, a giant, when Columbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler will attach the name of Columbus to it.

In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely the note of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwise primeval silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost like the sound of the wind in pine tops.  It was the humming of bees!  The upper branches were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tom was always on the alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which he could visit afterwards.  Honey hunting is one of his occupations.  Collecting spruce gum is another, and he was continually hacking off with his hatchet knobs of the translucent secretion.  How rich and fragrant are these forests!  The rhododendron was still in occasional bloom’ and flowers of brilliant hue gleamed here and there.