The musical name of Nantihala, as applied to the river, is a slight change from the Cherokee pronunciation of it--Nanteyaleh. Judging from the fact of different interpreters giving different meanings for the name, its signification is involved in obscurity. By some it is said to mean Noon-day Sun, from the fact of the mountains hugging it so closely that the sunlight strikes it only during the middle of the day. The other meaning is Maiden’s Bosom. The river is wholly in Macon county. Rising near the Georgia boundary, amid the wilds of the Standing Indian and Chunky Gal mountains--peaks of its bordering eastern and western ranges--it flows in a northerly and then north-easterly direction, and after a swift course of fifty miles, empties its waters into the Little Tennessee. The ragged, straggling range, sloping abruptly up from its eastern bank, takes the name of the river. This range breaks from the Blue Ridge, in Georgia, and trends north, with the Little Tennessee receiving its waters on one side, and the Nantihala, those on the other. The Valley River mountains, forming the Macon county western boundary, run parallel with the Nantihala range. It is in the narrow cradle between these two chains that the river is forever rocked. Through most of the distance from its sources to where it crosses the State road, the river flows at the feet of piny crags, under vast forests, and down apparently inaccessible slopes. Its upper waters teem with trout, and its lower, with the gamiest fish of the pure streams of level lands. The red deer brouses along its banks, and amid the laurel and brier thickets which shade its fountain-heads, the black bear challenges the pursuit of hounds and hunters. Near the State road are gems of woodland scenery, where all the natural character of the stream--its wildness--is absent; and under the soft sunlight and cool shadows of quiet woods, beside a swift, noiseless stretch of water, on which every leaf of the red-maple and birch is mirrored, and along which the gnarled roots of the whitened sycamore offer inviting seats, the stroller is vividly reminded of some lowland river, familiar, perhaps, to his boyhood. At these places, the basin is just such a one as you would like to plunge headlong into. The grass is green and lush along the banks, and the interlacing hedges, and brilliant vines drooping from the over-arching trees, would render concealment perfect. If you are not afraid of ice-cold water, a swim here would be most enjoyable, but even at noon in July or August, the temperature of the stream is near the freezing point.