ling chalybeate springs, and beautified by some of the loveliest scenery in America. The Highland Rim sends forth sulphurous and chalybeate springs too numerous to mention, and even West Tennessee, from Kentucky to Mississippi, pours forth great volumes of mineral waters from the deep strata that lie beneath the level surface.

There are many of these springs that have a reputation co-extensive with the Union, on account of their curative properties. It cannot be doubted that the pure air, magnificent scenery, cooling breezes, and other healthful influences, will make these watering places favorite summer resorts for all the states lying in a lower latitude. Especially do we refer to those places in East Tennessee and on the Cumberland Table Land, many of which are handsomely improved, and offer accommodations equal to the best. During the past summer they were crowded with persons fleeing from cholera, and the miasmata which infest lower districts. Swarms of visitors from Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, Mobile, as well as from Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga, sought these airy retreats, where blankets are in request during the hottest nights of summer. Not even the spring region of Virginia or of New York can surpass that of Tennessee, in the splendor of the climate, the delightful coolness of the atmosphere, the wildness and picturesqueness of the scenery, or the health-giving properties of the water.

CHAPTER XVII.

TRANSPORTATION-RIVERS.

The State of Tennessee is abundantly supplied with navigable streams. The Mississippi River, always navigable, rolls its turbid current along the western limit; and the Tennessee and Cumberland, with their tributaries, drain more than three-fourths of the entire surface of the State. Of the tributaries of the Mississippi, the Forked Deer and its tributaries (Obion River and South Forked Deer), the Big Hatchie and Wolf River are the largest and most important. The Forked Deer is navigable for steamboats, at times, as far up as Dyersburg, the county seat of Dyer county, and some have gone as far as Jackson. Big Hatchie is also navigable for several miles, though the amount of shipping done on this stream is quite small, considering the fertility of the region through which it flows. These confluents of the Mississippi pass through a region remarkable for the fertility of its soil, and its capability of subsisting a dense population. These streams have sluggish currents and earthy banks, and oftentimes rise in fearful floods over the level country through which they flow. Most of the streams of West Tennessee, by their course, denote a warped surface of the country. Flowing, for the most part, in a north-westerly direction until they reach a point within fifteen miles of the Mississippi River, they then turn nearly at right angles, flow south-west, and empty into the Mississippi, generally where that river makes a convex curve. But little, if anything, has been done by the Government to improve the navigation of these streams, and, indeed, little can be done, except to keep the channels cleared of snags and driftwood, and the banks free from overhanging trees. In the year 1838, the Legislature appropriated $93,000 for the improvement of the Obion, Forked Deer and Big Hatchie.

TENNESSEE RIVER.

This is the largest tributary of the Ohio, and so far as volume of water and length are concerned, it is as much entitled to be called the main stream as the Ohio. It is, in many respects, a remarkable stream. It drains an area of 41,000 square miles, and its total length, from the source of its longest confluent to the mouth is 1,100 miles. Its fall within that distance is 2,000 feet, and its average width 1,500 feet. Rising in the south-west portion of Virginia, and bearing the name of Holston until its union with the Clinch, near Kingston, in Roane county, it sweeps down the Valley of East Tennessee in a rapid current until it passes Chattanooga, a short distance below which it breaks through Walden's Ridge in tumultuous whirls, by a series of bends, into the Sequatchie Valley, where the current grows less turbulent, flowing quietly down this valley for a distance of sixty miles, and at Guntersville, Alabama, takes a direction nearly west by north. Between Lauderdale and Lawrence counties, in Alabama, 330 miles below Knoxville, it spreads in a broad, shallow expansion called Muscle Shoals, flowing over flint and limestone rocks for twenty miles, forming an almost insurmountable barrier to navigation, yet affording the very finest water privileges. On the Mississippi line, at Chickasaw, it turns north-west, and forms the boundary line between Alabama and Mississipppi; and after a circuit of 300 miles in Alabama, re-enters Tennessee, flowing north, and emptying into the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky, 800 miles from the union of the Clinch and Holston rivers.

Regarding the Holston as the Tennessee, its principal tributaries from the north are the Clinch, Sequatchie, Paint Rock, Flint, Elk and Duck rivers, and Shoal and other creeks; from the south the Watauga, French Broad, Little Tennessee, and Hiwassee, and Big Sandy from the west. Many of these tributaries, especially the Clinch, French Broad and Hiwassee, are navigable for considerable distances, and during the spring freshets, large quantities of produce are transported down these streams on flat and keel-boats to Chattanooga and other points.

Muscle Shoals practically divide the Tennessee River into two distinct navigable streams. But for this single obstacle an easy, cheap

and desirable water communication could be had between the southeastern states and the vast fertile region watered by the tributaries of

the Mississippi. Its value, as a highway of commerce, early commanded the attention of our statesmen, who saw that, by removing the obstructions which the Muscle Shoals presented, the means would be secured of rapidly developing the population, wealth and resources of one of the finest agricultural and mineral regions on the continent.

Accordingly, (we condense from the able report of Major McFarland) the Board of Internal Improvement, as early as 1828, was directed by an act of Congress, approved the same year, May 23, to make an examination of the Muscle Shoals, with a view to opening them to navigation, and to submit a plan and estimate therefor, which plan and estimate were submitted December 18, 1830, and were approved by the President in March following.

The salient features of this project were the formation of three basins, by the construction of dams across the river, one below Brown's Ferry, one below Elk River Shoals, and one below Campbell's Ferry, and their connection with each other, and with the deep water at Florence, by a canal along the northern shore.

The construction of these basins was rendered necessary by the provision of the act of Congress, that the scheme should provide for bringing the southern shore of the river into direct water-communication with the canal, which it was well understood would, if built, have to pass the shoals on their northern side.

To carry out the scheme of improvement presented by the board, which also related to the construction of certain works at Colbert's Shoals below Florence, Congress appropriated four hundred thousand acres of the public lands lying within the State of Alabama, which were to be sold and the proceeds applied to the construction of the works recommended by the board; and the execution of the work was confided to the State of Alabama, with the single condition that the work should be begun at the deep water, near Florence, and carried up the river as far as the funds available would permit.

The funds accruing from this source, however, being manifestly inadequate to the completion of the work as designed by the board, the commissioners of the State of Alabama, who had the work in charge, deemed it best to apply them to the construction of that section of the proposed canal which was to connect the deep water at Lamb's Ferry with the deep water at Campbell's Ferry; and upon their application, Congress removed the restriction which it had placed upon them in respect to beginning the work at Florence, and gave them the author

ity asked for to enable them to construct this middle section of the canal first; and the board of internal improvement was ordered to reexamine the question in relation to this proposed change in its scheme, and to report a modified plan and estimate accordingly.

Their report bears date March 25, 1831, and in it they state that it is "a plan not presented or approved by this board." And they further add, in relation to it, "that it will overcome about fourteen miles and six-eighths of the impediments of the river; but after passing these, a boat cannot go farther for want of the improvements to pass over the impediments above and below." The work, however, was begun that year, 1831. In July, 1836, water was first let into the canal, which a few months later was thrown open to navigation-its lower terminus being in the eddy of Campbell's Ferry (now Bainbridge Ferry), and the upper terminus being about three miles below the Lamb's Ferry eddy, the funds not being sufficient to admit of the completion of the work to the eddy itself, where, however, it was eventually carried under a small additional appropriation.

The width of the canal, as finished, varied from sixty to seventy feet at the water-surface, with a depth of six feet, and lock chambers thirty-two feet wide by one hundred and twenty feet between mitersills, with an average lift of five feet.

The work, so far as done, was well done, and the canal was, for a time, extensively used; but the very objection to the scheme, urged by the board of internal improvements in their modified report of March 25, 1831, found constant verification in the fact that boats which had passed through the canal were stopped commonly by the Elk River Shoals above, or the Little Muscle Shoals below; so that often scores. of vessels lay idly at one obstruction or the other, waiting for a rise in the river to enable them to pass.

In a letter dated May 14, 1838, Mr. Thomas Williams, the chief engineer of the canal, says:

"A great quantity of cotton has passed through the Muscle Shoals Canal, but for some weeks past, the unusual lowness of the water has completely suspended navigation; not that there is any difficulty in passing through the canal itself, but the water on the shoals above and below it (Elk River and the Little Muscle Shoals), is so shallow as to prevent boats from getting into it. There were, a few days ago, about seventy large flatboats, loaded with cotton (all of which had passed through the canal), lying at Campbell's Ferry, waiting for a rise in the