Of all these sections of ‘Alleghania,’ none is of more importance to the Federal Union than East Tennessee.  Immensely rich in minerals, with a healthy and agreeable climate and much rich soil, it is one of the finest countries on earth, lying under the temperate zone, and developes the most extraordinary physical perfection in the human form.  Its proportion of slaves to freemen is no greater than in the other mountain regions of the South—­its area is about equivalent to that of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island united.  In considering this with the loyalty of its inhabitants, and in studying ‘Cumberland Gap,’ the great natural highway of the Alleghany Range, the observer appreciates with pleasure the remark of Secretary Chase, who, in a recent interview with certain eastern capitalists, disclaimed on behalf of the Government and of General M’Clellan any purpose to send the army into winter quarters, remarking with much significance that ’a glance at the map will perhaps astonish those who have never reflected, how short is the distance from East Tennessee to Port Royal Harbor, and may suggest the possibility of cutting a great rebellion into two small pieces.’

In the mountain region of North Carolina we have ’the Piedmont of the Alleghanies.’  Its seventeen counties embrace a larger area (11,700 square miles) than the whole of Vermont.  Its scenery is of extraordinary beauty, its peaks are the highest east of the Rocky Mountains.  There is full ground for the belief that in North Carolina a majority of the people are Union at heart.  The following extract from ‘Alleghania’ will be read with interest as illustrating the assertion: 

In the Union camps of East Tennessee, there are numerous volunteers from Watauga and other adjacent counties over the border.  At the only popular election suffered to be held upon the question of Union and secession, the Union majority was as two to one; and even after the storm of Sumter, the vote in the convention of North Carolina on a proposition to submit the ordinance of secession to a vote of the people, received thirty-four yeas to seventy-three nays.  I have confidence that those thirty-four names, representing one-third of the State, were given by delegates from the western counties,—­the Alleghany counties,—­from the base and sides of the Blue Ridge,—­from a land of corn and cattle, not of cotton.  Again, when the news of the capture of Hatteras was announced in the legislature of North Carolina, it is evident from the language of the Raleigh newspapers that an irrepressible explosion of Union feeling—­even to an outburst of cheers, according to one statement—­occurred.  Nor is such a state of feeling surprising, when we remember that not even in Kentucky is the memory of Henry Clay more a fireside treasure of the people.  In this respect, the quiet, unobtrusive ‘North’ State was in striking contrast to its immediate neighbors—­South Carolina in one direction, and Atlantic Virginia in the