Watauga is the highest county of the Appalachians. Few of its valleys dip below 3,000 feet above tide level, while a few peaks of its boundary chains lift to about 6,000. The spurs projecting into this highland basin are neither high nor abrupt, and the ascent from the interior to the crest of the great chains of the Blue Ridge, the Yellow mountain and the Stone and Iron, is at places so gradual as to be imperceptible. The bottoms along the Watagua river and its many branches, and along the New river and its branches in Watauga and Ashe counties, are well adapted to almost all the cereals, to vegetable roots, and to the hardier varieties of fruits. Ashe county bears a general resemblance to Watagua, but is about 1,000 feet lower, and consequently warmer. The climate of both counties is almost identical with the famous butter and cheese districts of central and western New York. Indeed, few sections of the eastern part of the United States are more inviting for stock raising and dairying. All the heavy mountain ranges of the southern Alleghanies furnish a large amount of wild vegetation nutritive for almost all kinds of domestic animals. The lofty tops are heavily sodded. Being cool and well watered, they are unsurpassed as pastures during at least seven months in the year. Stock in some localities has been known to subsist upon them during the entire year, but no prudent ranger will fail to provide for his cattle and horses at least three months’ feed and two months’ valley pasture. Sheep cannot with safety be turned out on the distant mountain range, but in most localities they will find abundant subsistance upon the nearer slopes. Almost anywhere on the luxurious uplands a goat would think himself in a paradise. A gentleman of large experience in the stock business in Ashe county informed the writer that most failures result from an attempt to keep larger herds than the valleys will sustain. Experience had taught him that it is never safe to multiply the number of horses and cattle beyond the number of acres of tillable valley land, while twice that number of sheep can be kept. The mountain slopes, however, now almost a waste of woodland, are fertile, and might be reduced, at small outlay, to valuable pastures, and thus the capacity of the country increased tenfold. These slopes are not, as in most mountain countries, rocky and broken by exposed ledges. To the very top there is a heavy covering of earth, surfaced by a black vegetable mold, which only needs the assistance of sunlight to bring forth grass in profusion. By simply grubbing out the undergrowth and deadening the large trees, the capacity for stock, of almost any locality of the trans-Blue Ridge portion of North Carolina, could be quadrupled. The price of valley land in Ashe, Alleghany and Watauga counties ranges from ten to fifteen dollars per acre. The mountains are purchasable at prices ranging from forty cents to three dollars per