“Without concert--instinctively impelled by discontent and the wearisomeness of life exposed to bondage--men crossed the Alleghanies and descending into the basin of the Tennessee, made their homes in the valley of the Watauga. There no lawyer followed them; there no King’s Governor came to be their Lord; there the flag of England never waved. They rapidly extended their settlements. By degrees they took possession of the more romantic banks of the broader Nolachucky, whose sparkling waters spring out of the tallest mountains in the range. The climate was invigorating; the health-giving westerly wind blew at all seasons; in spring the wild crab-apple filled the air with the sweetest perfumes. A fertile soil gave to industry good crops of maize; the clear streams flowed pleasantly, without tearing floods; where the closest thickets of spruce and rhododendron flung the cooling shade furthest over the river, trout abounded. The elk and the red deer were not wanting in the natural parks of oak and hickory, of maple, elm, black oak and buckeye. Of quails and turkeys and pigeons there was no end. The golden eagle built its nest on the topmost ledge of the mountain, and might be seen wheeling in wide circles high above the pines, or dropping like a meteor upon its prey. The black bear, whose flesh was held to be the most delicate of meats, grew so fat upon the abundant acorns and chestnuts that he could be run down in a chase of a hundred yards; and sometimes the hunters gave chase to the coward panther, strong enough to beat off twenty dogs, yet flying from one.”[2] The entire valley of East Tennessee, extending from the southwestern border of Virginia to Northern Georgia, embedded in the mountains, offers peculiar attractions. Nearly fifty years ago an English gentleman, who had lived there several years, published a pamphlet in London,[3] in which he said: “To one who has resided some years in the valley of East Tennessee, breathing the pure air from its mountains and drinking of its crystal springs, enjoying the sunny smile of its temperature and the cooling shade of its noble forests, delighting the eye and the heart with its fields of fruitfulness which at every turn present a new aspect, it is not ‘England’s laughing meads,’ nor ‘her flowering orchard trees,’ nor yet Lomond and the Trosachs, with all their beauty and historical associations and the magic thrown around them by the exuberant imagination of the poet, that could tempt him again to quit the peaceful solitude, the clear blue sky, the song of the mocking-bird, the note of the dove, the hum of the humming-bird, and the silence of nature where all is echo.” [Illustration: HON. EDWARD EVERETT.] The Hon. Edward Everett, in an address he delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, February, 1864, which was called forth by the then suffering condition of the people of East Tennessee in consequence of the war, said of it: