time, upon the ever-changing display of beauty. “This,” said my friend, interrupting the silence, “is all very impressive. No one, whose feelings have any communion with nature, can escape the charm of these bold precipices, robed with vines, and crowned with golden forest. These curves are the materialization of beauty. That surging, dashing, foaming, torrent, gradually eroding its channel deeper into the adamantine granite, is a grand demonstration of the superiority of force over matter. The great drawback to this valley is its poverty of useful productions. Western North Carolina, it strikes me, may be compared to a great picture or poem; we never fail to derive pleasure from it, yet there is nothing in it to make money out of, or even to furnish a respectable living. While the scenery here is all that can possibly be desired, and the climate is almost perfect, this country can never be anything more than it is now, except, perhaps, in the number and size of its summer hotels. It hasn’t the resources.” “What is the extent of your knowledge of this country?” I inquired. “Oh, merely what I’ve seen from the railroad line, but I suppose it’s pretty much all alike.” My friend was mistaken, in supposing that the wealth of the Southern Alleghanies consists wholly in scenery and climate. He was also mistaken in supposing that railroad views had afforded him any considerable knowledge of the country. Madison county, back of the river bluffs, is almost wholly a succession of hills, coves and narrow valleys, nine-tenths of it timbered with a heavy growth of hard and soft woods. The slopes are remarkable for fertility, there being small particles of lime percolated through the soil. The cultivated grasses grow rank, and the cereals yield satisfactory harvests. But owing to the limited area of the valleys, and the almost entire absence of level land, ordinary farming can never be carried on in Madison with remunerative results. Too much labor is required to cultivate an acre of the slopes for the ordinary return in wheat or corn. It is in tobacco that the Madison county farmer has found his Eldorado. I know of no industry which offers so much inducement to the poor laborer as the cultivation of this crop. There is no staple product which derives its value so exclusively from labor, or yields to that labor a larger return. A few figures will serve to illustrate. Uncleared land can be purchased at an average price of $3 per acre, in small tracts. About one-third of the purchase will be found adapted to tobacco, making the cost of tillable land $9 an acre. Basing our estimates upon the production of the last three years, a yield of $200 from each acre planted may be expected. In addition to such other small crops as are needed to yield food for his family, an industrious man and two small boys can clear, prepare the soil, and cultivate four and one-half acres a year, which, if properly cured, will bring in the