348 Description of a Natural Tunnel. 



by elevated spurs and ridges, separated from each other by deep 

 chasms, walled with clifTs and mural precipices, often presenting 

 exceedingly narrow passes, but occasionally widening into 

 meadows or bottoms of considerable extent. The mural pre- 

 cipices just mentioned, occur very frequently, bounding the val- 

 leys of the streams generally in this part of the country, and 

 opposing ramparts of formidable height, and in many places 

 utterly insurmountable. Such are the features peculiarly cha- 

 racteristic of Wild Cat Valley, the Valley of Copper Creek, of 

 Powell's and Clinch rivers, and of numerous other streams of 

 less note, all of which are situated within a few miles of the 

 natural tunnel. 



To form an adequate idea of this remarkable and truly sub- 

 lime object, we have only to imagine the creek to which it gives 

 a passage, meandering through a deep narrow valley, here and 

 there bounded on both sides by walls or revetements of the charac- 

 ter above intimated, and rising to the height of two or three 

 hundred feet above the stream ; and that a portion of one of 

 these chasms, instead of presenting an open thorough cut from the 

 summit to the base of the high grounds, is intercepted by a con- 

 tinuous unbroken ridge more than three hundred feet high, ex- 

 tending entirely across the valley, and perforated transversely 

 at its base, after the manner of an artificial tunnel, and thus 

 affording a spacious subterranean channel for the passage of the 

 stream. 



The entrance to the natural tunnel on the upper side of the 

 ridge, is imposing and picturesque, in a high degree ; but on the 

 lower side, the grandeur of the scene is greatly heightened by 

 the superior magnitude of the cliffs, which exceed in loftiness, 

 and which rise perpendicularly — and in some instances in an im- 

 pending manner — two to three hundred feet; and by which the 

 entrance on this side is almost environed, as it were, by an am- 

 phitheatre of rude and frightful precipices. 



The observer, standing on the brink of the stream, at the dis- 

 tance of about one hundred yards below the debouchure of the 

 natural tunnel, has, in front, a view of its arched entrance, rising 

 seventy or eighty feet above the water, and surmounted by hori- 

 zontal stratifications of yellowish, white and grey rocks, in depth 

 nearly twice the height of the arch. On his left, a view of the 

 same mural precipice, deflected from the springing of the arch in 



