Andersonville, Volume 1

ndaries of-the three great States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. It is such a place as, remembering the old Greek and Roman myths and superstiti

ng above the clouds, and his sacred solitude guarded from the rude invasion of armed hosts by range on range of batt

he face of the four thousand square miles of territory, of which Cumberland Gap is the central point. Miles of granite

ummits-sometimes hanging over the verge of beetling cliffs, as if placed there in waiting for

Caves, rich in quaintly formed stalactites and stalagmites, and their recesses filled with metallic salts of the most powerful and diverse natures; break the mountain sides at fr

tealthy copperheads, while long, wonderfully swift "blue racers" haunt the edges of the woods, and linger around the fields to chill

aggressive race, continually warring with its neighbors. When next the white man reached the country-a century and a half later-he found the Xualans had been swept away by the conquering Cherokees, and he witnessed there the most sanguinary contest between Indians of which our annals give any account-

ht it with the lives of many gallant adventurers. Half a century later Bo

urrell-and his gang. They infested the country for years, now waylaying the trader or drover threading his

ions on the Lower Mississippi. They left germs behind them, however, that develo

his legions to "liberate Kentucky," and it was whither they fled, beaten and shattered, after the disasters of Wild Cat and Mill Springs. In 1862 Kirby Smith led his army through the Gap on his way to overrun Kentucky and invade the North.

ate from the North the boundary would

ttled it a century ago. There has been but little change since then. The young men who have annually driven cattle to the distant markets in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, have brought back occasional stray bits of finery for the "women folks," and the latest improved fire-arms for themselves, but this is about all the innovations the progress of the world has been allowed to make. Wheeled vehicles are almost unknown; men and women travel on horseback as they did a century ago, the clothing is the