whose thin walls came the keen autumn winds, and whose slender partitions allowed one to hear every movement and tone of voice of all his adjacent fellow-sleepers. The fifteen counties of North-eastern Georgia cover a territory of seven thousand square miles, traversed here and there by the Appalachian chain, which, leaving North Carolina on its western boundary, pushes into hundreds of spurs and outliers which shape the romantic scenery of Rabun, Habersham, Towne, Union, White, Fannin, Gilmer and Lumpkin counties. There, in valleys elevated nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level, are rivers and rivulets upon whose courses some of the most majestic cascades upon the continent are found. Attracted by the fame of those noble waterfalls, Toccoa and Tallulah, we left the line of rail, and wandered in and out among the peaks and ravines for several days.

Rabun Gap is the passage from Western North Carolina, through the Blue Ridge, into the Georgia gold and iron field. Rabun county itself is one succession of dark blue giant ridges, until, descending gradually, one reaches the little town of Clayton. The populations in the mountains along the border devote some attention to illicit distilling, and are, consequently, a little suspicious of strangers who penetrate to their fastnesses. A worthy clergyman from the lower counties was journeying peacefully on a religious errand, to the neighboring State, through the passes of Rabun, shortly before our visit, when he suddenly, one day, saw thirteen guns pointed at him by as many men, and had to dismount and prove, at the rifles' muzzles, that he was not a revenue officer.

From "Whiteside," in North Carolina, to Rabun Gap, it is only forty-five or fifty miles on an air-line, but the detours through the ravines make it much more to the traveler. When one arrives at Clayton, he feels very much as if he had left the world behind him. The quaint hamlet lies in a valley encircled with mountains. As you enter, you have that feeling of being imprisoned and of desire to escape-so common to the wanderer among the Alleghanies and the

GRAND CHASM-TUGALOO RIVER.

Blue Ridge. There seems no possible outlet; the town appears to have been conveyed there by enchantment; yet a little careful observation will show you the roads piercing the passes in the valleys. Not far from Clayton are the falls of the Eastatoia, or, as the mountaineers call them, "Rabun Falls," where a succession of brilliant cascades plunge down the

chasm in a mountain side. Clambering to the top of this natural stairway in the rocks, one may obtain an outlook over the Valley of the Tennessee, miles beyond Clayton, and may note the mountain billows rolling away, apparently innumerable, until the eye tires of the immensity!

I have had occasion to describe the mountain "hack" to you-a red wagon, mounted on super-fragile springs, and graced with seats, which, at every start made by the horses, bid fair to leave the vehicle. In such a conveyance, behind two splendid horses, did we depart from one of the forests towns on the Air-Line Railway one morning in mid October, and climb the red hills which are so abundant in Northern Georgia. Mile after mile we journeyed through lands which might be made very valuable by a year or two of careful culture, by plantations or farms whose owners had deserted them, or tracts which the old settlers, having adopted the new labor system, were putting into most wonderful order; now dashing over the firm roads, through stretches of dreary forest, where battalions of black jacks guarded the solemn way; and now along mountain sides, where paths were narrow and ravines were on either hand.

A few miles from the little hill-town of Clarksville, whither we were journeying, we came upon a large assembly of negroes, in a high open field, backed by a noble uplift of mountains in the distance. It was Sunday afternoon, and the dusky citizens were returning to their devotions, the scene of which was a log-cabin, inhabited by a negro, whom we judged to be the neighborhood blacksmith, as a shop near by was encumbered with wheels and old iron. As we approached the "bars" leading into the meadow, the mass of the negroes had gathered inside and outside the cabin, and were singing a wild hymn, marked with that peculiar monotonous refrain which distinguishes all their music. Nothing could have been more picturesque than this grouping of swart and gaily costumed peasantry, disposed around the dowdy cabin, with the afternoon sun glinting on their upturned faces; the noble peaks in the far background, mysterious in their garments of subtile blue, and inspiring in their majesty, added deliciously to the effect of the whole. As the singers became excited, their bodies moved rhythmically, and clinging to each other's hands, they seemed about breaking into the passion

ate warmth of some barbaric ceremony. But our momentary fears of barbarism were checked when we heard the cracked voice of the venerable pastor, and saw the assembly kneel, and bow their heads at the words

"Let us address de Almighty wid pra'r." While the minister was praying, the young negroes who, during the singing, had been disporting beside a neighboring brook, left off their pranks, and hastened to join the kneeling throng about the cabin. As we drove away, we could hear the solemn pleading of the ebony Jacob as he wrestled with the angel of prayer, and the nervous responses of the brethren and sisters, when their souls took fire from the inspiration of the moment.

From Clarksville, pleasant summer resort of the citizens of Savannah and other lowcountry towns, we caught a new glimpse of Mount Yonah, that lonely monarch of the Northern counties. The village is small and quiet; there are few farm-houses in the immediate vicinity; there is no bustle of trade, no railroad, and no prospect of one. Seven miles away the new Air-Line gives communication with the outer world. Habersham county, of which Clarksville is the county seat, was laid out by the famous "lottery act "of 1818, and has in it many valuable lands, adapted to the raising of wheat and corn.

A ride from Clarksville to the valley of Nacoochee, which comprises within its limits a series of the most exquisite landscapes in the world, is one of the charming specimens of this mountain. journey. There a gentleman, who has forsaken the low-lands, has built a grand mansion, with conservatories, lawns and parterres; there he and his visitors strike terror into the hearts of the mountain trout, and wander over the peaks and down the valleys at their will. Mount Yonah's summit affords beautiful glimpses of a wide expanse, covered with rich farms-for the Nacoochee valley is fertile, and its vicinity. is thickly settled.

The visitors at Clarksville considered us aristocrats because we maintained the dignity of a red wagon on our journey to Tallulah Falls. They had usually accomplished the route in the somewhat fatiguing but cautious ox-cart. The famous Falls, unquestionably among the grandest objects of natural scenery in America, are thirteen miles from Clarksville, and a portion of the journey lies over a new road

through the forest, which I can commend as execrable.

On the border of a vast rent in the hills stands a little hotel built of pine boards. From its verandas you look up at ravine sides of solid brown stone, down into leaping and foaming rapids, which seem singing war songs; over the tops of swaying pines, which, in the rich moonlight of a delicious autumn evening, stand out, black and frightful, like specters; and along paths cut in the steep descents, leading to rocky projections and treacherous knolls.

These falls were named by the Cherokees, who called them Tarrurah or Tallulah-" the terrible." The stream in which they are formed is the western branch of the Tugaloo River, and the rapids are, perhaps, ten miles from its junction with the Chatooga. For more than a mile the impetuous stream passes through a ridge of mountains, with awful parapets of stone piled upon either side, and finally rattles away through the "Grand Chasm." The rocky banks are in some places five hundred, in others not more than two hundred feet high; their bases are worn into fantastic and grotesque forms by the action of

the dashing waters; and the stream, at no point very wide, breaks into four cataracts, which vary from fifty to eighty feet in height, and into many others reaching twenty or thirty. From the highest points on the cliffs to the bottom of river bed, at one or two localities, the depth is nearly one thousand feet; and the spectator, dizzy and awe-struck, can but do as we did, look once, and turn his frightened and bewildered eyes away!

The "Lodore," the "Tempestia," the "Oceana," and the "Serpentine," are the names given to the four principal falls. The third fall, sometimes called the "Hurricane," is the most remarkable and interesting. Climbing to a rock directly overhanging it, and beneath which the waters are breaking across irregular shelving masses of stone, and foaming and dancing in passion in a whirlpool eighty feet below, one may gaze down stream to the sortie from the cañon. There the whole valley seems to pitch violently forward, as if it were the gate to Avernus; its rocky sides are mottled with lichens, and the beautiful colt's foot; and on the crests of the cliffs flourish pines, hemlocks, chestnuts, masses of ferns, and a profusion of greys and browns which no painter's brush can reproduce. Many trees lean as if looking shudderingly, and drawn involuntarily, towards the abyss. Beyond is a sheer precipice draped in hemlocks only, and

still beyond a projection ablaze with the strong autumn colors of the leaves, red, and scarlet, and yellow, above which runs up a hundred and fifty feet of naked, glittering rock, towering tremendously above the tallest trees, and standing in giant relief against the sky. Coming back to the banks near the "Hurricane" fall, we noticed that the ledges bent downward in three or four immense layers of dark flint, and that grasses grew over them, like strange beards upon monsters' faces. Here and there an old white tree trunk hung tottering on the ravine's edges. The descent to this fall is down a gully almost perpendicular in steepness; one is also compelled to pass through the "Needle's Eye," a low passage beneath rocks, and the "Post-office," where it was once the custom for the hundreds of visitors to write their names upon the smooth walls of a cave.

The cascades themselves are not so remarkable as the scenery around them. The rocks and the precipices are sc gintic that the stream seems but a silvery thread among them. Seen from the dizzy height known as " The Devil's Pulpit," or "The Lover's Leap," the cascades are like tiny lace veils, spread in the valley, or like frostbeds, such as one sees on meadows in the morning. The effect of a sojourn among the rocks at Lover's Leap at night, when the moonlight is brilliant, is magical. Far

TABLE MOUNTAIN.

below you the valley seems sheathed in molten silver; the song of the cascades is borne, now fiercely, now gently, to your ears by the varying breezes, while you grovel among the slippery pine and hemlock sprays and twigs, clinging to a rock, which is your only protection against a fall of a thosand feet down to the jagged peaks below.

At the "Grand Chasm," which is properly the end of the ravine, where the stream, free from its barriers, becomes tranquil,after it has fought its way around the base of a mountain of dark granite, the formation of rock changes. There are no more of the slanting shelves, of the Avernus gates; but instead, there are rounded battlements, which, sloping and yielding, end in a ragged hill-side, strewn with bowlders, with blackened hemlocks, and with tree trunks prone, as if waiting for some landslide to hurl them into the stream. On the right looms up another cliff, with a slope like that of the walls rising from a castlemoat; this is thatched with foliage; hemlocks straggle along its summit; and in the recesses of the thickets which stretch in all directions from it, the holly spreads its thorny leaves, and the laurel its pendants.

Finally the stream is lost to view and flows under rocks, through a symmetrical gap half a mile away,-beyond which one can see a succession of peaks, whose heads are wrapped in cloud.

After "Tallulah," the falls of Toccoa, a single spray jet, falling one hundred and eighty-five feet, over a shelving rock, is a relief. Seated in a quiet and forest-enshrouded valley, through which Toccoa Creek runs, one can look up to the pouring waters with a sense of admiration, but without the awe inspired by the chasms and cascades of "the Terrible." Toccoa is situated near Toccoa City, an ambitious fledgling town on the Air-Line railroad, and thousands of visitors yearly watch its tremendous leap from the crag, around which a steep road winds along the ascents that conduct to "Tallulah."

The Ducktown copper region of Eastern Tennessee is no more remarkable than its continuation in Northern Georgia, where a vein seventeen feet thick has been found. In Fannin County there are large bodies of marble, and also an iron field on the southern slopes of the Iron Mountain range. A great deal has been said about the gold mines in the northern counties, and there are, no doubt, extensive deposits there.

The mines in the Nacoochee Valley, when first worked, on a very small scale, and with rude machinery, yielded from $2,000 to $3,000 to each workman yearly; and several millions of dollars have been obtained from the deposits since 1828. The Loud, Sprague, and Lewis mines, in the vicinity of Nacoochee, are believed to be exceptionally rich. In Rabun, Habersham, Carroll, and White counties there are known to be extensive deposits. In the Nacoochee Valley immense works for carrying out the California hydraulic process were erected before the war; but have since that time been only feebly carried on. In the section between the Tray and Yonah mountains some few diamonds have from time to time been found. Not far from this point are the head-waters of the Tennessee, which, passing through Rabun Gap, plunge headlong through the Appalachian, the Smoky, the Chilhowee, and Cumberland ranges, until merged in a broad and noble stream, they enter the fertile fields of Tennessee and Alabama. There, too, the Savannah rises; there the waters of the rainstorm divide, and flow in separate directions in the channels of the two mighty rivers. It is said that several good gold mines in Hall County have been opened, and worked as low as the water-level, and that they pay a small but steady profit. In Hall County is also situated the "Harris Lode," a notable silver mine; and in the neighboring divisions of Lumpkin, Forsyth and Clarke, topaz, amethysts, beryl, gold, plumbago, iron, granite, and gneiss have been found.* In Clarke County, where the

* At Dahlonega, in Lumpkin County, a pretty town commanding fine mountain views, the United States has a branch mint, and gold mines are quite extensively worked in the vicinity.

Georgia University is located, there is remarkable waterpower, and some cotton and woolen factories have been erected.

This mountain region, so rich in resource, has been as yet but little developed. With the completion of the railroad system, which is very comprehensive, and. almost

puts

every county within easy reach of markets, the more enterprising of the present residents think that new population and new methods of agriculture will come in. The valley lands now readily yield twenty to thirty bushels of corn and fifteen of wheat to the acre, without manures, and with no culture of consequence; deep plowing and rotation of crops would treble these amounts. The local farmers need the example of northern agriculture before their eyes. With lands which will produce infinitely finer and larger crops of clover, timothy, and red-lap, than those of Massachusetts, they still send to the Bay State for their hay. But living is cheaper than in the Western States, game is plentiful, and good land, "improved" in the Georgia sense, is to be had at reasonable prices.

The mineral developments of Northwestern Georgia are attracting much notice, because of their proximity to Chattanooga, and their intrinsic importance. The coal seams of the Lookout and Cumberland range which lie near Dade, Walker and Chatooga counties, vary from five to twenty feet in thickness. Along the borders of Tennessee, within the Georgia line, there are various profitable mines. The amount of iron deposits is remarkable; they lie in immediate contact with the coal, and extend forty or fifty miles into the State. At Little River, and in the vicinity, and on the Chatooga River, cotton factories are in successful operation, and pay large dividends. In Barton County there are extensive iron works, built by a man named Cooper. They were successfully worked by the Confederate government during the war. These works used charcoal until, on account of the enormous number of coal mines opened in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, they found that