i88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Between the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude 

 the elevated plateaus have the further advantage that their climate 

 equalizes the contrasts of the season : it mitigates the summer more 

 than it aggravates the winter. Southerly winds predominate, and 

 melt the snow with the same breezes that cool the midsummer weeks, 

 for in the dog days the Mexican table-lands are considerably cooler 

 than our Northern prairie States. In the Alps of North Carolina, 

 Tennessee, and Northern Georgia land and labor are so cheap that even 

 people of moderate means can build a sanitarium of their own. It has 

 been often observed that the moral effect of a residence at a place 

 where consumptives congregate is not favorable to the cure of the dis- 

 ease ; and, moreover, a private establishment lessens the danger of con- 

 tagion. The cheapness of living may be inferred from the fact that 

 at the Chalybeate Springs of Benton, Tennessee, where board-ratfes 

 vary from fifty to seventy-five cents a day, the visitors from the sur- 

 rounding country towns, nevertheless, prefer to board on the co-opera- 

 tive plan : the proprietor of a kitchen-garden furnishes vegetables, a 

 stock-farmer fresh meat, the owner of a carriage free transportation, 

 and every family has a little cottage of its own. Summer-guests 

 who come to drink mountain air can build their cabins wherever they 

 find a convenient plateau, and contract with the next farmer for 

 all the comestibles they may need in addition to their canned pro- 

 visions. They can cook at their own fireplace. A log-house can be 

 made as airy as any tent, and is out and out moTe comfortable. A 

 rough-hewed porch-roof, projecting like the veranda of a Swiss chalet, 

 will keep the cabin both dry and airy ; square holes in the center of 

 each wall can serve as windows in fine weather, and during a storm 

 can be shut with a sliding-board. Between May and November the 

 winds in the Southern Alleghanies come from the south or southwest, 

 nine days out of ten, and, in order to get the full benefit of the pure 

 air, the house should face one of the thousand promontories of the 

 southwestern slope that rises in terraces from the " Piedmont coun- 

 ties " of North Carolina and Northern Georgia, with a free horizon to- 

 ward the plains of the Gulf-coast. Have the door on the south side, 

 and keep it wide open all night, as well as the windows or louvers in the 

 opposite wall. If the windows do not reach to the ground, spread 

 your bedclothes upon a hurdle-bedstead rather than on the floor, in 

 order to enjoy every afflatus of the night-breeze. Night and day one 

 can thus breathe mountain airs that have not been tainted by the 

 touch of earthly things since they left the pine-forests of the Mexi- 

 can Sierras. Every inspiration is a draught from the fountain-head of 

 the atmospheric stream. 



There is no need of living on oiled sardines where the brooks are 

 full of speckled trout. Those who must break the commandment 

 of Brahma (and the highland air confers certain immunities), may de- 

 vour their humble relatives in the form of wild-turkeys, quails, and 



