The farming lands surrounding the village are being settled principally by northern families. A railroad at no distant day will penetrate this plateau. A practicable route has been surveyed along the summit of the Blue Ridge from where the Rabun Gap Short Line crosses at the lowest gap in the range. A subscription list, in the form of enforceable contracts wherein each signer has bound himself to grade ready for the ties and rails certain sections of the route, has been completed. The prospects for the coming of the iron horse are of an encouraging character. The most convenient route to reach Highlands for the traveler who has not already entered the mountains for the summer, is from Walhalla, South Carolina, distant twenty-eight miles, on the Blue Ridge railroad. The lofty altitude of this plateau, and the precipitous fronts of its rimming mountains, bespeak, for its neighborhood, scenes of grandeur,--waterfalls, gorges, mad streams, crags, and forests which, when looked upon from above, with their appalling hush, wave back the observer. Whiteside, a few miles from the village, is a point which no sojourner in the mountains should fail to visit. A sight down a precipice’s “headlong perpendicular” of nearly 2,000 feet has something in it positively chilling. As the observer to secure a fair view lies flat on the ground with part of his head projected over a space of dread nothingness, the horrible sensations created, which in some minds culminate in an overpowering desire to gently slip away and out in air, are fancifully attributed to the influences of a “demon of the abyss.” The pure, apparently tangible air of the void, and the soft moss-like bed of the deep-down forest bordered by a silver stream, have an irresistible fascination, especially over one troubled with ennui. Get the guide to hold your feet when you crawl to the verge. There is a grand mountain prospect from the summit of Whiteside. The landmarks of four states are crowded within the vision. Mount Yonah, lifting its head in clouds, is the most marked point in Georgia; a white spot, known as the German settlement of Walhalla, is visible in the level plains of South Carolina; the Smoky Mountains bounding Tennessee line the northwestern horizon, and on all sides lie the valleys and peaks of the state, in which the feet of Whiteside are rooted.