This mountain pass not being in Kentucky, it might be asked why in a series of articles on Kentucky it should deserve a place. The answer is plain: not because a Kentuckian selected it as the site of a hoped for city, or because Kentuckians have largely developed it, or because Kentuckians largely own it, and have stamped upon it a certain excellent social tone; but for the reason that if the idea of its development is carried out, it will gather towards itself a vast net-work of railways from eastern Kentucky, the Atlantic seaboard, the South, and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which will profoundly affect the inner life of Kentucky, and change its relations to different parts of the Union. Big Stone Gap! It does not sound very big. What is it? At a certain point of this continuation of Cumberland Mountain, called Stone Mountain, the main fork of Powell's River has in the course of ages worn itself a way down to a practical railroad pass at water-level, thus opening connection between the coking coal on the north and the iron ores on the south of the mountain. No pass that I have ever seen--except those made by the Doe River in the Cranberry region of North Carolina--has its wild, enrapturing loveliness; towering above on each side are the mountain walls, ancient and gray and rudely disordered; at every coign of vantage in these, grasping their precipitous buttresses as the claw of a great eagle might grasp the uttermost brow of a cliff, enormous trees above trees, and amid the trees a green lace-work of undergrowth. Below, in a narrow, winding channel piled high with bowlders, with jutting rocks and sluice-like fissures--below and against these the river hurls itself, foaming, roaring, whirling, a long cascade of white or lucent water. This is Big Stone Gap, and the valley into which the river pours its full strong current is the site of the town. A lofty valley it is, having an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea, with mountains girdling it that rise to the height of 4000--a valley the surface of which gently rolls and slopes towards these encircling bases with constant relief to the eye, and spacious enough, with those opening into it, to hold a city of the population of New York.