40 LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN. 



The reader will perceive that I was not 

 exploring Lookout Mountain, and am in no 

 position to set forth its beauties. It is 

 eighty odd miles long, we are told, and in 

 some places more than a dozen miles wide. 

 I visited nothing but the northern point, the 

 Tennessee end, the larger part of the moun- 

 tain being in Georgia ; and even while there 

 I looked twice at the birds, and once at the 

 mountain itself. 



At noon, I lay for a long time upon a 

 flat boulder under the tall oaks of the west- 

 ern bluff, looking down upon the lower 

 woods, now in tender new leaf and most 

 exquisitely colored. There are few fairer 

 sights than a wooded mountain side seen 

 from above ; only one must not be too far 

 above, and the forest should be mainly de- 

 ciduous. The very thought brings before 

 my eyes the long, green slopes of Mount 

 Mansfield as they show from the road near 

 the summit, — beauty inexpressible and 

 never to be forgotten ; and miles of autumn 

 color on the sides of Kinsman, Cannon, 

 and Lafayette, as I have enjoyed it by the 

 hour, stretched in the September sunshine on 

 the rocks of Bald Mountain. Perhaps the 



