Between Cheat river, at the fertile bottom called the Horse-shoe, and the summit of the mountain which divides the Western from the Atlantic waters, the country is thinly peopled, and only cultivated in the largest tributary vallies: the long spurs of the Backbone being too sterile to serve any other purpose than ranges for cattle and animals of the chase. The approach to the Great Backbone of the Alleghany region is here, as elsewhere on the western side, characterized by a broad and gentle acclivity, covered almost entirely with loose rocks of various sizes, many of them of the species of agglomerated quartz, familiar to the west under the name of country mill-stone, and valuable for the domestic molendinary uses of the simple and hardy race inhabiting those regions. There is little timber of large size, the growth being chiefly chestnut oak and small moss-grown white oaks, exhibiting upon their blackened roots the scathing effects of flames, which, through the negligence of hunters in firing the dry leaves, have often and fiercely swept down the mountain side. The more recent inroads of fire are denoted by large tracts of underwood, black and denuded of leaves, and so stiffened by scorching as to present vexatious obstacles to progress, independent of the minor, though, in that place, unimportant annoyance of soiled clothes and person. Large pine and birch trees, and a thicker undergrowth--detached blocks of stratified sandstone, some of them of huge size--and an increasing wildness and desolation in the aspect of the scenery, inform the traveller who may have ventured so far, that he is on the confines of the Alleghany wilderness. The mountain top, near Lord Fairfax's stone, is crowned with a bold irregular precipice, which the hunters belonging to the exploring party of which the writer of this article was a member, termed the Bear-holeing, from its being the winter abode of great numbers of those animals,--the numerous cavities of the rocks, and the tangled laurel thickets, affording them a secure refuge from foes, whether biped or canine. We were not without hope of being treated to the novelty of a bear hunt, our guides being veterans of the rifle, and accompanied by fine dogs, one of them as his master informed us, having engaged Sir Bruin more than fifty times.