Gena of the Appalachians

Far away from the great press of population and the busy throngs, in that part of the beautiful Appalachian country, better known to the tourist as "The Land of the Sky," in the very evening shadows of Mt. Mitchell itself, the mighty Snake lifts its domes. Standing alone and a little above the surrounding mountains, with its sharp peaks pushed up into the eternal blue a little more than six thousand feet, it has for fifty years smiled down upon a little hamlet at its base, and that hamlet is Blood Camp.

A dozen weatherbeaten houses, an unpretentious store, post-office and blacksmith shop was Blood Camp fifty years ago. With few changes, a few faces missing, and a proportionate increase in the number of graves in the little chestnut grove on the hill, Blood Camp is about the same today. In fact, it had been freely circulated "out in the world," as Granny Green would say, by a commercial traveler, that Blood Camp was finished. For three decades he had traveled through the hamlet, and during the time had failed to hear the sound of a saw or a hammer, -- hence it must be a "finished" town.