Knoxville contributed a handsome building to the “White City” of the Nashville Centennial, and afterwards the women of the city secured the removal of the building to Knoxville, where, at a point of vantage, it was re-erected and dedicated to the cause of woman’s advancement and to all the Muses. Knoxville is an old town as things go in America, yet much of it is new. Its population has increased tenfold within thirty-five years. It is therefore, in the main, modern in construction. In proportion to population it has by far the largest wholesale trade among the Southern cities. It enjoys a high degree of prosperity. It is the industrial, commercial and educational center of East Tennessee, and its future is full of promise. [Illustration] [Illustration] NASHVILLE “THE ADVANCE-GUARD OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.” BY GATES P. THRUSTON The beautiful site upon which the city of Nashville stands must have been famous in prehistoric times. Its natural salt spring near the bank of the Cumberland River was a noted resort of the Indian and buffalo. Some years ago, the huge bones of a mastodon were exhumed from the alluvial deposit upon its margin. Near the flowing spring was an ancient cemetery of the long-vanished Stone Grave race, the mound builders, of Tennessee, and upon the opposite bank of the river and in the adjacent valleys have been found not less than ten thousand rude stone cists containing their mortuary remains. These interesting memorials have yielded a vast store of archæological treasures, illustrating their arts and industries and telling a pathetic story of aboriginal life in the valley of the Cumberland. A race of Village Indians, probably akin to the Pueblo Builders or Village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, once made their home in Middle Tennessee and the adjacent territory. These industrious pottery makers and mound builders must have dwelt for several centuries in this lovely Garden of Eden. In an evil hour, unhappily, some destroyer came, perhaps the ancestors of the savage and vindictive Mohawk or Iroquois Indians of the north, and devastated their towns and homes and scattered or exterminated the humble and less warlike Villagers. The first white hunters and pioneers discovered in the shadowy forest only their strange and mysterious mounds, and the ancient lines of earthworks that had formed their forts. For perhaps a hundred years or more before the advent of the white man, the beautiful valley of the Cumberland seems to have been a wilderness uninhabited save by the wild animals of the forest.