I left my boulder at last, though it would have been good to remain there till night, and wandered along the bluffs to the Point. Here it was apparent at once that the wind had shifted. For the first time I caught sight of lofty mountains in the northeast; the Great Smokies, I was told, and could well believe it. I sat down straightway and looked at them, and had I known how things would turn, I would have looked at them longer; for in all my three weeks' sojourn in Chattanooga, that was the only half-day in which the atmosphere was even approximately clear. It was unfortunate, but I consoled myself with the charm of the foreground,--a charm at once softened and heightened, with something of the magic of distance, by the very conditions that veiled the horizon and drew it closer about us. It is truly a beautiful world that we see from Lookout Point: the city and its suburbs; the river with its broad meanderings, and, directly at our feet, its great Moccasin Bend; the near mountains,--Raccoon and Sand mountains beyond Lookout Valley, and Walden's Ridge across the river; and everywhere in the distance hills and high mountains, range beyond range, culminating in the Cumberland Mountains in one direction, and the Great Smokies in another. And as we look at the fair picture we think of what was done here,--of historic persons and historic deeds. At the foot of the cliffs on which we stand is White House plateau, the battlefield of Lookout Mountain. Chattanooga itself is spread out before us, with Orchard Knob, Cameron Hill, and the national cemetery. Yonder stretches the long line of Missionary Ridge, and farther south, recognizable by at least one of the government towers, is the battlefield of Chickamauga. Here, if anywhere, we may see places that war has made sacred. The feeling of all this is better enjoyed after one has grown oblivious to the things which at first do so much to cheapen the mountain,--the hotels, the photographers' shanties, the placards, the hurrying tourists, and the general air of a place given over to showmen. Much of this seeming desecration is unavoidable, perhaps; at all events, it is the part of wisdom to overlook it, as, fortunately, by the time of my third visit I was pretty well able to do. If that proves impossible, if the visitor is of too sensitive a temperament,--to call his weakness by no worse a name,--he can at least betake himself to the woods, and out of them see enough, as I did from my boulder, to repay him for all his trouble.