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 Tennessee River, having concentrated into one mass, the numerous 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 mountain, 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 of the Look-Out mountain overlooks the whole country. And to those who can be delighted with the view of an interminable forest, penetrated by the windings of a bold river, interspersed 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-tullēē-ton-tannâ-tâ-kunnâ-ēē;" literally, "mountains looking at each other." I have already remarked that the limestone of this mountain lies in horizontal strata: one mile east from its base it is inclined. Like the Cumberland, it contains immense rocks of sandstone, but of a coarser grain, verging occasionally into pudding stone. I was told by a white man, a professed millwright, that among these sandstone rocks, he knew of many which were suitable for millstones. At the missionary establishment, called "Brainerd," eight miles east of the mountain, I saw one of them which was used for this purpose to much advantage. It is composed of fine and large grains of silicious stones, nearly white, and resembling pebbles of white quartz: the texture is firm. _Silicious Minerals, &c._