On leaving Richmond our really rough work began. The roads would have been bad enough at any time, but the hard use by army trains in bad weather and the entire lack of repair had made them execrable. All the ordinary methods of keeping highways in order by local administration were suspended by the war, and the only work done upon them was what each wagon-master could do with his drivers to mend the worst places so that his train could get through. As we could not be sure of finding food for man or beast on the road, it was necessary to gauge our speed by the distance our wagons could make, so that we should not be separated from them. About twenty miles a day was the maximum, and though we sometimes got a little further, there were days when our journey was much less. South of Richmond and on the border between Madison and Rockcastle counties, we crossed Big Hill, the first of the outlying ranges of the Cumberland Mountains. These great ridges are nearly parallel to each other, and even the "gaps" in them are so high that there is always a long and hard pull for wagon teams in surmounting them. Over the summit we came down into the valleys tributary to the Rockcastle River. Twenty or twenty-five miles away another summit marks the boundary between this valley and the principal depression in which the Cumberland River finds its devious course to the south and west. The rocks are sandstone through which the Rockcastle River has cut deep gorges and chasms, and the weathering of the cliffs has left the strata and crevices exposed with so much of the regularity of layers of masonry as to tell at once the story of the impression made on the early explorers of the region, and the suggestion by Nature herself of a name for the beautiful stream that dashes along to join the Cumberland many miles below.