1857.] Correspondence of the Cincinnatus. 411 



The route from Cincinnati to the Cumberland Gap is tolerably 

 direct through Georgetown, Lexington, Richmond, London, Bar- 

 bourville, etc.; distance two hundred miles. The road is smoothly 

 graded to Richmond, thence through is exceedingly rough. Indeed, 

 I had no conception before of the degree of roughness Avhieh a road 

 might have and yet be passable, or in other words how rocky, steep, 

 sideling, muddy or loggy a road might be without dashing your car" 

 riage in pieces. It passes over the mountains, hardly ever aroiin I 

 them, and shows no signs of labor in the construction of four-fifths 

 of the distance, and yet this great and magnanimous State imposes a 

 toll of two or three cents to the mile upon every carriage which 

 escapes destruction in its passage through these gates ! No wonder 

 that the tide of travel avoids the State of Kentucky. The dwellings 

 along the road being few and remote, almost all are from necessity 

 inns, and the traveler will find comfortable accommodations (save, 

 perhaps, in the matter of geese-feathers), and generally his bill is 

 exactly double his bills in the State of Tennessee. More frequently, 

 however, in this latter State the traveler's calls are set down to the 

 account of a generous hospitality. 



The Cumberland River, at this place, is bordered by two noble 

 mountain ranges whose clifi"s are here sure nearly 2000 feet high 

 and almost seem to overhang the water. There is a point a mile or 

 two above this ford where the Cumberland evidently did once force 

 its way through one of these mountain ridges. Towering cliffs of 

 naked rock on both sides of the river stand frowning opposite at the 

 dizzy hight of near 2000 feet, exhibiting a scene far more bold and 

 sublime than the " Passage of the Potomac" at Harper's Ferry, 

 ■which the pen of Jefferson has so eloquently described. 



The " Cumberland Gap" is truly a notable point in travel. It is 

 in fact the only gate afforded by that lofty range between Kentucky 

 and Virginia or East Tennessee. In that gap also is found the junc- 

 tion of three States (or within half a mile of the gap), viz : Ken- 

 tucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Every railroad survey which has 

 yet been made from Lexington or Cincinnati to East Tennessee has 

 been laid through or under that gap, where it is generally agreed 

 there must be a tunnel three-fourths of a mile in length ; thence the 

 nearest point of junction with the Chatanooga road is, I think, at 

 Russelville. The importance of such a railroad both to the North 

 and the South, and especially to Cincinnati, can scarcely be over- 

 estimated. 



