there shoot up into elevated peaks. On the summits of some, spread
plateaus, which afford the most commanding prospects, and offer all
advantages for cultivation, overhung by the purest atmosphere. No words
can picture the secluded beauty of some of the vales bordering the
creeks and small streams, which dash transparent as air over rocks,
moss-covered and time-worn--walled in by the precipitous sides of
mountains, down which pour numberless waterfalls.

The soil is rich beyond any tracts of the same character in the west.
Beautiful white, gray, and red marbles are found here; and sometimes
fine specimens of rock-crystals. Salt springs abound. It has lead mines;
and iron ore is no where more abundant. Its salt-petre caves are most
astonishing curiosities. One of them has been traced ten miles. Another,
on a high point of Cumberland mountain, has a perpendicular descent, the
bottom of which has never been sounded. They abound in prodigious
vaulted apartments and singular chambers, the roofs springing up into
noble arches, or running along for miles in regular oblong excavations.
The gloomy grandeur, produced by the faint illumination of torches in
these immense subterranean retreats, may be imagined, but not described.
Springs rise, and considerable streams flow through them, on smooth
limestone beds.

This is the very home of subterranean wonders, showing the noblest caves
in the world. In comparison with them, the celebrated one at Antiparos
is but a slight excavation. Spurs of the mountains, called the
"Enchanted Mountains," show traces impressed in the solid limestone, of
the footsteps of men, horses, and other animals, as distinctly as though
they had been made upon clay mortar. In places the tracks are such as
would be made by feet, that had slidden upon soft clay in descending
declivities.