The reader will perceive that I was not exploring Lookout Mountain, and am in no position to set forth its beauties. It is eighty odd miles long, we are told, and in some places more than a dozen miles wide. I visited nothing but the northern point, the Tennessee end, the larger part of the mountain being in Georgia; and even while there I looked twice at the birds, and once at the mountain itself.
At noon, I lay for a long time upon a flat boulder under the tall oaks of the western bluff, looking down upon the lower woods, now in tender new leaf and most exquisitely colored. There are few fairer sights than a wooded mountain side seen from above; only one must not be too far above, and the forest should be mainly deciduous. The very thought brings before my eyes the long, green slopes of Mount Mansfield as they show from the road near the summit,—beauty inexpressible and never to be forgotten; and miles of autumn color on the sides of Kinsman, Cannon, and Lafayette, as I have enjoyed it by the hour, stretched in the September sunshine on the rocks of Bald Mountain. Perhaps the earth itself will never be fully enjoyed till we are somewhere above it. The Lookout woods, as I now saw them, were less magnificent in sweep, but hardly less beautiful. And below them was the valley bottom,—Lookout Valley, once the field of armies, now the abode of peaceful industry: acres of brown earth, newly sown, with no trace of greenness except the hedgerows along the brooks and on the banks of Lookout Creek. And beyond the valley was Raccoon Mountain, wooded throughout; and behind that, far away, the Cumberland range, blue with distance.
A phœbe came and perched at my elbow, dropping a curtsey with old-fashioned politeness by way of "How are you, sir?" and a little afterward was calling earnestly from below. This is one of the characteristic birds of the mountain, and marks well the difference in latitude which even a slight elevation produces. I found it nowhere in the valley country, but it was common on Lookout and on Walden's Ridge. Then, behind me on the summit, another northern bird, the scarlet tanager, struck up a labored, rasping, breathless tune, hearty, but broken and forced. I say labored and breathless; but, happily, the singer was unaware of his infirmity (or can it be I was wrong?), and continued without interruption for at least half an hour. If he was uncomfortably short-breathed, he was very agreeably long-winded. Oven-birds sang at intervals throughout the day, and once I heard again the black-billed cuckoo. Yes, Hooker was right: Lookout Mountain is Northern, not Southern. But then, as if to show that it is not exactly Yankee land, in spite of oven-bird and black-bill, and notwithstanding all that Hooker and his men may have done, a cardinal took a long turn at whistling, and a Carolina wren came to his support with a cheery, cheery. A far-away crow was cawing somewhere down the valley, no very common sound hereabout; a red-eye, our great American missionary, was exhorting, of course; a black-poll, on his way to British America, whispered something, it was impossible to say what; and a squirrel barked. I lay so still that a black-and-white creeper took me for a part of the boulder, and alighted on the nearest tree-trunk. He goes round a bole just as he sings, in corkscrew fashion. Now and then I caught some of the louder phrases of a distant brown thrush, and once, when every one else fell silent, a catbird burst out spasmodically with a few halting, disjointed eccentricities, highly characteristic of a bird who can sing like a master when he will, but who seems oftener to enjoy talking to himself. Lizards rustled into sight with startling suddenness; and one big fellow disappeared so instantaneously—in "less than no time," as the Yankee phrase is—that I thought "quick as a lizard" might well enough become an adage. Here and there I remarked a chestnut-tree, the burs of last year still hanging; and chestnut oaks were among the largest and handsomest trees of the wood, as they were among the commonest. The temperature was perfect,—so says my penciled note. Let the confession not be overlooked, after all my railing at the fierce Tennessee sun. It made all the pleasure of the hour, too, that there were no troublesome insects. I had been in that country for ten days, the mercury had been much of the time above 90°, and I had not seen ten mosquitoes.
I left my boulder at last, though it would have been good to remain there till night, and wandered along the bluffs to the Point. Here it was apparent at once that the wind had shifted. For the first time I caught sight of lofty mountains in the northeast; the Great Smokies, I was told, and could well believe it. I sat down straightway and looked at them, and had I known how things would turn, I would have looked at them longer; for in all my three weeks' sojourn in Chattanooga, that was the only half-day in which the atmosphere was even approximately clear. It was unfortunate, but I consoled myself with the charm of the foreground,—a charm at once softened and heightened, with something of the magic of distance, by the very conditions that veiled the horizon and drew it closer about us.
It is truly a beautiful world that we see from Lookout Point: the city and its suburbs; the river with its broad meanderings, and, directly at our feet, its great Moccasin Bend; the near mountains,—Raccoon and Sand mountains beyond Lookout Valley, and Walden's Ridge across the river; and everywhere in the distance hills and high mountains, range beyond range, culminating in the Cumberland Mountains in one direction, and the Great Smokies in another. And as we look at the fair picture we think of what was done here,—of historic persons and historic deeds. At the foot of the cliffs on which we stand is White House plateau, the battlefield of Lookout Mountain. Chattanooga itself is spread out before us, with Orchard Knob, Cameron Hill, and the national cemetery. Yonder stretches the long line of Missionary Ridge, and farther south, recognizable by at least one of the government towers, is the battlefield of Chickamauga. Here, if anywhere, we may see places that war has made sacred.
The feeling of all this is better enjoyed after one has grown oblivious to the things which at first do so much to cheapen the mountain,—the hotels, the photographers' shanties, the placards, the hurrying tourists, and the general air of a place given over to showmen. Much of this seeming desecration is unavoidable, perhaps; at all events, it is the part of wisdom to overlook it, as, fortunately, by the time of my third visit I was pretty well able to do. If that proves impossible, if the visitor is of too sensitive a temperament,—to call his weakness by no worse a name,—he can at least betake himself to the woods, and out of them see enough, as I did from my boulder, to repay him for all his trouble.
The battlefield, as has been said, lies at the base of the perpendicular cliffs which make the bold northern tip of the mountain,—Lookout Point. I must walk over it, though there is little to see, and after a final look at the magnificent panorama I descended the steps to the head of the "incline," or, as I should say, the cable road. The car dropped me at a sentry-box marked "Columbus" (it was easy to guess in what year it had been named), and thence I strolled across the plateau,—so called in the narratives of the battle, though it is far from level,—past the Craven house and Cloud Fort, to the western slope looking down into Lookout Valley, out of which the Union forces marched to the assault. The place was peaceful enough on that pleasant May afternoon. The air was full of music, and just below me were apple and peach orchards and a vineyard.
In such surroundings, half wild, half tame, I had hope of finding some strange bird; it would be pleasant to associate him with a spot so famous. But the voices were all familiar: wood thrushes, Carolina wrens, bluebirds, summer tanagers, catbirds, a Maryland yellow-throat, vireos (red-eyes and white-eyes), goldfinches, a field sparrow (the dead could want no sweeter requiem than he was chanting, but the wood pewee should have been here also), indigo-birds, and chats. In one of the wildest and roughest places a Kentucky warbler started to sing, and I plunged downward among the rocks and bushes (here was maiden-hair fern, I remember), hoping to see him. It was only my second hearing of the song, and it would be prudent to verify my recollection; but the music ceased, and I saw nothing. At the turn, where the land begins to decline westward, I came to a low, semicircular wall of earth. Here, doubtless, on that fateful November morning, when clouds covered the mountain sides, the Confederate troops meant to make a stand against the invader. Now a wilderness of young blue-green persimmon-trees had sprung up about it, as about the Craven house was a similar growth of sassafras. I had already noticed the extreme abundance of sassafras (shrubs rather than trees) in all this country, and especially on Missionary Ridge.