all at good prices. There had been more money hoarded, and more cotton reserved to be exchanged for money, in parts of the South than was at first supposed.

Tennessee and Kentucky are the two great mule-breeding States. East Tennessee takes first rank among the grazing sections of the South and West. Wild grass abounds in the uncultivated districts. Interminable forests on the mountain sides are carpeted with it. The woods are kept open and free from undergrowth by fires; and this native grass springs up and covers the ground. The mountains are full of deer which feed upon it. it. Many a beautiful range of thousands of acres is also afforded the farmers' stock, which is sent in vast numbers to occupy this wild, free, unfenced pasturage. Neighbors club together to make up a herd of four or five hundred head of cattle, enough to render profitable the employment of a herdsman. Farmers have but little hay to provide for the winter season. The climate is such that there is no month in the year during which cattle cannot gain at least a partial subsistence by grazing. This I account one of the great advantages of the country.

One of the great disadvantages is the want of a market. I saw a farmer in Jefferson County who had five thousand bushels of corn, for which he could find no sale near home ; and the cost of transportation was too great to think of taking it out of the State. Said he, "We find it for our interest to feed our farm-produce into stock, and drive it." I was told there was 66 a heap of thin, poor soil in East Tennessee." The ordinary land produces fifteen bushels of wheat, and thirty-five of corn to the acre. The lands on the river bottoms are incomparably better., Prices range from eight and ten to eighty and a hundred dollars per acre, according to the situation and quality. There are farms to be had in every section; it can scarcely be said that they are for sale, there being no sale for them. Such is the distress for money among holders of real estate, that land can be had in some of the most desirable locations almost at the buyer's own price. It is claimed that before the war the wheat of East Tennessee

MANUFACTURING FACILITIES.

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commanded the highest market-prices in Richmond and New York, as having that fine, enduring quality wheat derives only from good limestone soils. Fruits abound, apples, peaches, pears, plums; and both climate and soil are admirably adapted to the grape. The country is well watered, and its climate is mild and salubrious. Manufacturing facilities are abundant. There are forests and coal-mines, lead, zinc, iron, copper, marble, and unimproved water-power to any extent.

Farmers told me they were paying the freedmen from eight to fifteen dollars a month, and boarding them. They said, "We can afford to pay more than Virginians can, because we farm it better." They laughed at the Virginians' shiftless methods. Yet a few were beginning to learn that even they were not perfect in the business. One who had visited Iowa, where he saw men plough out two rows of corn at a time, and mow and reap with machinery, one hand doing the work of four or five men, said he had concluded that they in Tennessee did n't know anything.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

IN AND ABOUT CHATTANOOGA.

Two hundred and fifty miles from Knoxville, lying within a coil of the serpentine Tennessee, on its south bank, surrounded by mountains, is the town of Chattanooga. Here the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad connects with the Nashville and Chattanooga, and with the Western and Atlantic, making the place an important centre of railroad communications. The river is navigable for steamboats during eight months of the year. Here are shipped the principal exports of East Tennessee and of Southern Middle Tennessee. Hence the military importance of the place, and its historical in

terest.

Although embosomed amid strikingly bold and grand scenery, Chattanooga is anything but a lovely town. On the east, but a few miles distant, is Missionary Ridge,1 a range of forest-covered mountains rising from the river and sweeping away southward into Georgia. On the southwest is Lookout Mountain, with rugged, precipitous front overlooking the river and the town. Between this mountain and Missionary Ridge lies Chattanooga Valley. Rising steeply from the edge of the town, within the curve of the river which encloses it on the north and west, is Cameron Hill, a sort of miniature copy of Lookout. A miniature only by comparison; for it is a little mountain by itself: a peaked bluff, its summit flanked by forts, and crowned by a battery of a single huge gun.

If

you visit Chattanooga, climb, as I did, this hill the first fair morning after your arrival. Away on the south are the mountains of Georgia; on the

north, those of Tennessee.

1 Or Mission Ridge; named from an Indian mission formerly located in this vicinity.

Dividing these peaks and ranges with its shining cimetar, curves the river, overhung by precipitous crags. Far beneath you, as you look from the northern brow of the hill, ply the steamboats, breaking the surface into streaks of foam, and puffing white wreaths up into the clear, still air. Opposite, across the river, are clusters of high, wooded hills, with signal-stations on their peaks.

In the valley at the foot of Cameron, is Chattanooga, with its multitude of long, low, whitewashed wooden buildings, government store-houses, barracks, shops, rows of huts, and corrals, such as make haste always to spring up around an army's base of supplies. Surrounding the town are red earthworks, and hills of red earth with devious roads and paths winding over them.

I found a strangely mixed population in Chattanooga, traders, adventurers, soldiers, poor whites, refugees, and negroes. There were many Union men from the Cotton States, who had escaped into our lines during the war, and either could not or dared not return. Here is a sample of them,a lank, sallow, ragged individual with long black hair and wild beard, whose acquaintance I made in the streets. He was a shoemaker from Georgia. His Rebel neighbors had burned his house and shop, destroyed his tools, and forced him to flee for his life. He enlisted in our army, and had been fighting his daddy and two brothers.

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My daddy," said he, "is as good a Rebel as you'll find. He has grieved himself nigh-about to death because he did n't gain his independence."

I asked him how his father would receive him if he should go back.

"I allow we should n't git along together no hack! The first question I'd ask him would be if he 'd tuck the oath of allegiance. That would devil him to death. Then I'd ask him if he knowed whar his President Jeff was. Then he 'd jest let in to cussin' me. But I can't go back. The men that robbed me are jest as bad Rebels as ever, and they 'd burn my house again, or give me a bullet from behind some bush."