We stepped from the cabin’s door into the gray light of the morning. The peaks of the Smoky, through which winds Ecanetle gap, were black in shade, while the jagged rim of mountains, toward the east, was tipped with fire, and above was an azure sky without a speck of cloud upon its face. Below us, as seen from the edge of the rail fence, looking far down across red and yellow forests, the fogs of the lower valleys, lying along the stream, appeared like great rivers of molten silver. This effect was caused by the sunlight streaming through the gaps of the mountains, upon the dense masses of vapor. The glory was beyond description. The kindled Morn, on joyous breezes borne, Breathed balmy incense on the mountains torn And tumbled; dreamy valleys rolled In Autumn’s glowing garments far Below; and cascades thundered Sparkling down the cedared cliff’s bold Faces: peaks perpendicular Shot up with summits widely sundered. The best time to visit this country is in October. The tourist who, after several months’ sojourn among the mountains, leaves for his lowland home, loses, by only a few weeks, the most pleasant season of the year. In this month is fully realized the truth of Shelley’s words: “There is a harmony In autumn and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard nor seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!” The skies are intensely blue, seldom streaked with clouds, and the rain-fall is the least of the year. The atmosphere is free from the haze, that through a great part of the summer pervading the air, renders the view less extended. In it one can distinguish tree-top from tree-top on the heights thousands of feet above him; and the most distant mountains are brought out in bold relief against the sky. The days are mild and temperate. Then it is that Autumn begins to tint the woodlands. Strange to say, although the forests on the summits are the last to bud and leaf in the spring, their foliage is the first scattered underfoot. Along the extreme heights on the northern slopes, the foot-prints of Autumn are first perceived. This is not because of stronger sunlight or deeper shade, but is due to the difference of forest growth between the north and south sides of the ranges. She earliest changes to a dull russet and bright yellow the upland groves of buckeye and linn, above whose margin the balsams remain darker and gloomier by the contrast; and touches into scarlet flame the foliage of the sugar-maple scattered widely apart amid the sturdier trees.