"Ahead of us was the descent into Tennessee.  The road had abruptly ended.  Beyond was a steep and rocky trail going down, down along a brawling torrent into the gloom of narrow gulfs that were choked with laurel and spruce and balsam.
      "This was the beginning of the Sugarlands, a country of ill fame, hidden deep in remote gorges, difficult of access, tenanted by a sparse population who preferred to be a a law unto themselves.  For many a year it had been known on our side of the mountains as Blockaders' Glory, which is the same as saying Moonshiners' Paradise, and we all believed it to be fitly named. 
      "Thus doth sinless North Carolina look down upon sinful Tennessee......
      ....."We slipped and slid.  The toes of our street shoes punished us.  Rocks of all sizes everywhere.  Any boulder less in size than a house we called a "pebble."
      ....."through a gap opening southeastward we got our first long-range view of a bit of the country through which we had descended.  More than three thousand feet above us rose those two sheer pinnacles of rock that they call the Chimneys.  They protrude like tusks from the top of a ridge so narrow that a man can sit down astraddle it and toss a pebble a thousand feet down through the air.  Yet such is the nature of rock and climate in this region that a cliff, wherever it is not quite vertical, will hold moisture and vegetation.  So the Chimneys are not bare, but clothed with little tough shrubs and bracken, or with balsam and spruce and rhododendron where the slopes will permit their roots to grapple."