precipices overhang the road and river that are known as the Paint Rocks, where the rushing torrent forces its way through a gorge between the Great Smoky and Bald Mountains and then emerges in Tennessee, to finally fall into the Tennessee River at the junction with the Holston just above Knoxville. These rocks received their name from Indian pictures and signs painted upon them. William Gillmore Simms, the Carolina author, tells in _Tselica_ the legend of this spot, founded on the tradition of the Cherokees that a siren lives on the French Broad who allures the hunter to the stream and strangles him in her embrace. Thus have the American aborigines reproduced in their way on this beautiful river the romantic legends of the Lorelie Rock on the Rhine, where, the ancient German legend tells us so interestingly, there dwelt another beautiful siren whose seductive music lured her lovers to the rock, when she drowned them in the waves washing its base. CAROLINA AND GEORGIA. Eastward from the Blue Ridge the extended line of the Piedmont Branch of the Southern Railway parallels the base of the range on its route from Washington southwest to Atlanta. The railroad from Asheville southeast to Columbia and Charleston crosses it at Spartansburg in South Carolina. This is a prosperous little town in a region of iron and gold-mines, with also a development of mineral springs, attractive as a summer resort to the people of Charleston and residents of the South Carolina lowlands. Ten miles northeast of Spartansburg is the Revolutionary battlefield of the Cowpens, getting its name from the adjacent cow-pasture in the olden time. Here on a hill-range called the Thickety Mountain, January 17, 1781, the British under Tarleton were signally defeated. The railway passes through a rolling country, and thirty-three miles farther northeast is King's Mountain, where the previous battle was fought, October 7, 1780, in which the British under Colonel Ferguson were also defeated and a large part of their forces captured. Beyond, the boundary is crossed from South to North Carolina and Charlotte is reached, having cotton factories and gold mines and twelve thousand people, the county-seat of Mecklenburg, where the famous resolutions were passed, May 20, 1775, demanding independence. Farther northeast is Salisbury, where was located one of the chief Confederate prisons during the Civil War, and the National Cemetery now contains the graves of over twelve thousand soldiers who died there in captivity. Beyond this, the Yadkin River is crossed, and the route enters the tobacco district. Here is Greensboro', and near it the Revolutionary battle of Guilford Court House was fought March 15, 1781, when Lord Cornwallis defeated General Greene. To the eastward is Chapel Hill, the seat of the University of North Carolina, with three hundred students. Farther east is the great tobacco town of Durham, with large factories and six thousand people