by E. Cornelius. 223 



Scenery. 



And here I cannot forbear pausing a moment to call your 

 attention to the grand and picturesque scenery which opens 

 to the view of the admiring spectator. The country is still 

 possessed by the aborigines, and the hand of civilization has 

 done but little to soften the wild aspect of nature. The Ten- 

 nessee River, having concentrated into one mass, the nume- 

 rous streams it has received in its course of three or four 

 hundred miles, glides through an extended valley with a rapid 

 and overwhelming current, half a mile in width. At this place, 

 a group of mountains stand ready to dispute its progress. First, 

 the " Look-Out," an independent range, commencing thirty 

 miles below, presents, opposite the River's course, its bold 

 and rocky termination of two thousand feet. Around its brow 

 is a pallisade of naked rocks, from seventy to one hundred feet. 

 The River flows upon its base, and instantly twines to the 

 right. Passing on for six miles further it turns again, and is 

 met by the side of the Rackoon mountain. Collecting its 

 strength into a channel of seventy yards, it severs the moun- 

 tain, and rushes tumultuously through the rocky defile, wafting 

 the trembling navigator at the rate of a mile in two or three 

 minutes. This passage is called " The Suck." The summit 

 pf the Look-Out mountain overlooks the whole country. And 

 to those who can be delighted with the view of an intermina- 

 ble forest, penetrated by the windings of a bold river, inter- 

 spersed with hundreds of verdant prairies, and broken by 

 many ridges and mountains, furnishes in the month of May, a 

 landscape, which yields to few others in extent, variety or 

 beauty. Even the aborigines have not been insensible to its 

 charms ; for in the name which they have given to the Look- 

 Out mountain we have a laconic, but very striking description 

 of the scenery. This name in the Cherokee language, without 

 the aspirated sounds, is " O-tuUee-ton-tanna-tfl-kunna-ee ;'' 

 literally, " mountains looking at each other." 



I have already remarked that the Umestone of this moun- 

 tain lies in horizontal strata : one mile east from its base it is 



