marching of the two armies. Their farms were plundered by both factions; and they often came near starvation themselves. In Knoxville the majorities are usually Republican, although the struggle is sometimes very close. In Chattanooga Repub. In Chattanooga Republican municipal rule is also purchased at the expense of a careful fight. In the mountain counties people are not very much engrossed with general politics; their local affairs alone occupy their attention. At the period of my visit the school-law allowed each county to decide for itself as to taxation for the support of free schools, and thus far no very marked progress has been made in the State. Tennessee admits the disagreeable fact that she ranks third in illiteracy in the Union, but her population does not seem as yet to feel the situation very keenly. Knoxville has good schools, with about fourteen hundred scholars as an average attendance; it also supports four colored schools. Chattanooga's regular attendance is about one thousand, and it also has two large colored schools. On the whole, Eastern Tennessee

seems to make as much progress in education as other sections of the State, in proportion to its population. Some of its counties have totally refused to have any public schools; while others have levied small taxes for supporting winter sessions. The Peabody fund has been very active in East Tennessee, and it is largely due to its influential distribution that a feeling in favor of schools is gradually taking root among the masses. The founding of two or three Normal schools in the State is a prime necessity. In a commonwealth which has thus far succeeded in getting only one-fifth of its four hundred thousand pupil children into schools, the education of capable teachers is certainly of first importance.

Knoxville is the seat of the East Tennessee University, and the State Asylum for deaf and dumb persons. The University has latterly received a large share of the $200,000 appropriated as the "Agricultural Fund" of the State, and will serve as the Agricultural College. It now has some three hundred students. The Methodist

Episcopal Church contemplates founding a college at Knoxville; and there, or at Chattanooga, the people of one of the grandest mineral regions on this continent should not fail to establish a school of mines.

The peaks of the Cumberland, the Clinch, and the Smoky, furnish

Knoxville with many beautiful mountain views; and the eye dwells with delight on the route from Chattanooga even to Greenville, upon the fields so beautifully cultivated, on the noble orchards, and the forests of mammoth corn-stalks. The soil in this elevated valley is generally rich, second only to that of the western prairies, the summers are long, but never excessively hot; there is only a light snow-fall in winter; in the valleys the water is limestone; on the hills freestone and chalybeate. On the table lands grow rye, oats, and all vegetables; in the valleys wheat and corn attain extraordinary size. Apples, peas, peaches and wild grapes are cultivated in profusion, and the grazing lands are no whit poorer than those of the North Carolina mountain region, which are so perfect and inexpensive. Land ranges in value from $5 to $35 per acre.

Through this fruitful country, and almost on the line of the railroad of to-day, ran the "great Indian war-path" eighty years ago. When one reflects upon the vast territory cleared, settled and dominated within three generations, by the Tennesseean, he cannot refrain from admiration, nor will he refuse to believe in the greatest possibilities in the future.

The Ducktown copper region, in Eastern Tennessee, near the North Carolina line, is worthy a visit from all interested in the State's development. It is the

only locality in the commonwealth yielding copper ore in any considerable quantity. Although traces of the metal are to be met with in the Unaka Mountains, they do not indicate veins of any importance. Ducktown is a mountain basin that belongs physically to Georgia and North Carolina. In the vicinity of the mines,two thousand feet above sea level,deep ravines alternate with sharp ridges, at whose base the Ocoee river worms its way towards the main Unaka range-when it becomes a torrent, roaring over huge rocks in its passage through the narrows. As early as 1836, the attention of geologists was drawn to the mineral deposits near the junction of the Ocoee and the Hiwassee rivers, and indications of copper were finally discovered by men who were searching for gold.

One of these men, while washing in the Hiwassee for gold, found great numbers of crystals of red copper ore. Soon after, the black oxide, which has, thus far, been the most important ore of the mines, was found; but it was not until 1850 that mining was begun in earnest. The gentlemen who opened the mines found themselves surrounded by a rough population, who took no interest whatever in any improvements; and on one occasion, when they had called a meeting of the township, and explained to the assembled citizens that civilization and wealth would follow upon

the opening of the mines, one of the assembly arose and said that most of those present had come to the mountains to get away from civilization, and if it followed them too closely, they would migrate again!

This was discouraging; but the owners of the mines opened day and Sabbath schools, and built roads over the hitherto almost impassable mountains; meantime sinking shafts and employing the few whom they could prevail upon to undertake regular labor. Between 1851 and the close of 1855, a number of mines were opened and worked successfully in this region, and during that time eight of them produced and shipped 14,291 tons, worth more than a million of dollars. A few years later a consolidated company, called The Union," was formed from a number of the most prosperous organizations, and its works now extend over twenty-five hundred acres. Refineries were constructed, and although the company was prevented from working much of the time during the war, it has been very prosperous. The refining works have yielded nearly a million and a half pounds of refined copper since the war. In most of the Ducktown mines

the operations have been confined to the zones of black and red copper ore, below which lie zones of iron and copper pyrites. The smelting works of the Union Consolidated Company are very extensive.

Lead and zinc are pretty liberally scattered through Eastern Tennessee, and in Bradley and Monroe counties lead mines have been opened. At Mossy Creek, in Jefferson County, and in the mountains beyond, there are numerous irregular veins of zinc ore. The gold found in the eastern portion of the State has been insignificant in quantity, although, in 1831, there was a genuine gold fever concerning the discoveries along the Hiwassee.

The most important coal mining establishments in the State are the Etna mines, in Marion County, and the Sewanee Company's mines, which extend several miles under ground, not far from the location of the "University of the South." Some of the veins at these latter mines are seven feet thick.

The coal in these mountains can be mined for three cents per bushel, and the freights for coal on all the roads south of Nashville are low. All the Tennessee coals are bituminous; but as such they present numerous varieties.

One of the sources of future wealth for

Eastern Tennessee consists in its immense stores of variegated marble, the veins of which run through ten or twelve counties in that section. Besides the finer marbles there are, in the extreme eastern counties, black or dark-blue limestones, which, when polished, would make elegant marble slabs. There is marble enough in this section to build all the public buildings of the United States for the next five centuries.

war.

The siege of Knoxville, in 1863, is called to memory, but faintly, by the earthworks scattered about the town, and now nearly obliterated; but it was one of the most desperate struggles of the whole. Longstreet and his men, fresh from their triumphs at Chickamauga, fell upon Burnside's little force in the mountain city with savage eagerness, but were hurled back into the jaws of death. They charged towards the ditches only to be pitched headlong over the wires strung to trip them, and to be massacred. But the living charged over the dead who filled the ditches, and twice had planted their flag or leaped upon the fortifications before they were finally swept away. Pools of blood six inches deep were found in the bottom of the trenches when the assault was made on the morning after the repulse of November 29th, and hundreds of corpses were hastily buried in heaps. On the 5th of December following, the little army of the Ohio, which was literally at the point of starvation, was at liberty once more. The siege was raised.

The magnitude of the mineral resources in this section perhaps affords the strongest argument in favor of the immediate removal of the obstructions in the Tennessee River; but the arguments are really legion. This noble stream, sixth in magnitude in the United States, intersecting ten rich commonwealths-in connection with the Ohio, draining the gigantic coal areas of Tennessee and Alabama-never bearing upon its current, from its sources to its mouth, winter or summer, a particle of ice, and having half a dozen tributaries which could be rendered navigable by slack water improvement, should be made one of the main commercial arteries of the South. With the necessary improvements, navigation could be rendered practicable for thirteen hundred miles above Muscle Shoals in Alabama. Only steamers of the lightest draught now succeed in running to Knoxville and beyond during six or nine months of each year.

The soil of the great Tennessee plateau, the Cumberland table-land, is no less remarkable than the climate of that favored region. For the production of fruit, and for the raising of sheep and cattle, the immigrant will find it most admirably suited. Extending across the State from north to south, the plateau is, at least, forty miles wide from east to west, and can furnish homes for thousands of farmers, who need but little capital.

We made an extensive journey into Northern Georgia, one of the richest mineral and agricultural sections of the state, and abounding with grand and delightful mountain scenery. Scattered at rare intervals through the enormous counties of the north and north-east, is a population of half a million inhabitants, about one-fourth of whom are negroes. Agriculture is of course as yet the main dependence of the people; manufactures would be established at various points were there capital with which to establish them; and the few mining operations might be conducted on a much grander scale were it not for the universal dearth of money. The fertile uplands, too, which have been in hundreds of cases deserted by their old owners, because they refused to adapt themselves to the new order of things, and cultivate small farms thoroughly with rotation of crops, are now in some cases under thorough culture; deep ploughing and the much needed rotation has, in some cases, produced the most astonishing results. upon lands which had been deserted so long that they were considered waste. The emigration from this section has been very numerous, and one finds the negroes scattered about over vast areas of country, occupying little tracts of from one to twenty acres in size, on which they have erected small and extremely primitive cabins. In the more mountainous and border counties of North Georgia the visitor is constantly astonished at the apparent absence of human life along the vast stretches of good land. He may ride twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty miles without seeing a habitation or encountering a human being, and then may suddenly come upon a log meeting-house or a little village, in which five hundred negroes will be assembled for a "meeting" or festival. These people live in the nooks among the mountains, and along the edges of the streams, off the line of the main roads, and it is only on Sundays or on some especial occasion that one sees

them flocking together along the roads and through the forests which cover so many thousands of acres. Now and then one encounters a party of white men, hunting, fishing, or "riding to court;" but the loneliness and silence in many of the counties is almost oppressive, despite the beauty of the scenery.

But all the country needs is an industrious and energetic population to develop it. The forty counties of the northern, and the fifteen of the north-eastern section, are rich in minerals and in agricultural possibilities. They are, also, handy to markets, by comparison with many of the remote districts of the West. The Western and Atlantic, or State," road gives an outlet at Chattanooga or Atlanta, for the north-western counties, and connects at

66

GREENVILLE RACES.

Atlanta with, the routes branching out south, east and west in the State. The "Atlanta and Richmond Air Line" railroad also opens up a large portion of northeastern Georgia; forms the connecting link in an unbroken air line between New York and New Orleans; traverses a rich mineral region for six hundred miles, and terminates in Charlotte, in North Carolina. There is no reason why all this part of the State should not be opened up to immigration in a few years, as the conformation of the country makes the building of the routes extremely easy, and the average cost of railroad construction, per mile, is not more than $20,000.

The new link in the New York and New Orleans Air-Line, connecting Atlanta and Charlotte, had been finished but a few days

carpenter's shop, and. possibly, some small and primitive manufactory. made upeach of these "towns." The hotels were twostory wooden buildings, through