"The Southern highlands themselves are a mysterious realm. When I
prepared, eight years ago, for my first sojourn in the Great Smoky
Mountains, which form the master chain of the Appalachian system, I
could find in no library a guide to that region. The most diligent
research failed to discover so much as a magazine article, written
within this generation, that described the land and its people. Nay,
there was not even a novel or a story that showed intimate local
knowledge. Had I been going to Teneriffe or Timbuctu, the libraries
would have furnished information a-plenty; but about this housetop of
eastern America they were strangely silent; it was terra incognita."