THE TOOTH OF TIME. 341 



I ascend to the cupola of the magnificent state-house at 

 Nashville, and take a survey of the surrounding country. 

 On every side spread out the broadly undulating fields of 

 grass and corn into the illimitable distance. A finer agri 

 cultural scene was never witnessed. A more beautiful 

 landscape, diversified with broad clearings, waving crops, 

 tufts of magnolia and poplar, shining mansions, withdraw 

 ing vales, and purple atmosphere, it has never been my 

 privilege to gaze upon. What is the substratum of all this 

 beauty of form and landscape ? Descending to the ground, 

 I find myself standing again upon the opened sepulchres 

 of Lower Silurian populations. I go down to the bank of 

 the Cumberland, and view the sharp-cut walls which frown 

 above the muddy current a hundred feet below. Here is a 

 deep perpendicular gorge chiseled by the river through 

 the marble strata of the Trenton and Cincinnati groups. 

 I set out upon an exploration of the charming country 

 mapped before me from the dome of the Capitol. Travel 

 ing eastward for sixty miles, I pass continuously over an 

 undulating exposure of the same strata. Here I find an 

 outer wall four hundred feet high, which bounds this mag 

 nificent basin of Middle Tennessee on every side (Fig. 95). 

 I climb to the top of this wall, and ascertain that it is at 

 this point, the western termination of a series of overlying 

 strata of Silurian and Devonian age, which to the west 

 have been swept away, but toward the east form an ele 

 vated plateau, through which the streams have scored deep 

 gorges four hundred feet down to the level of the central 

 basin. 



This &quot; highland rim,&quot; as my scientific friend, Professor 

 Saiford, styles it, is forty miles wide. We come then to 

 the foot of the Cumberland Mountains or, more properly, 

 Cumberland Table-land and ascend a thousand feet over 

 the outcropping edges of Lower Carboniferous strata, and 



