The range of the thermometer is less on the Tablelands than in the adjacent valleys. I have had access to the carefully taken observations of the Lookout Mountain Educational Institute, such published accounts as have been made by Professor Safford, State Geologist, Mr. Killebrew, the thorough and painstaking private record of Captain John P. Long, of Chattanooga, and many more of less length of time. From all these I deduce the fact that the summer days are seven or eight degrees cooler on the mountains than in the Tennessee Valley at Chattanooga, and five or six degrees cooler than in the Sequatchee Valley, as far up as Dunlay and Pikeville. The nights on the table are cooler than in the lower lands by several more degrees than the days; how much I have thus far not been able to state. The late fall months, the winter, and early spring are not so much colder than the valleys as the summer months, the difference between the average temperature of the mountains and valleys being at that time four or five degrees less than in the summer.

There is no record of so hot a day ever having occurred on the Cumberladd Mountains as to cause mercury to run so high as 95° F., or so cold a day as to cause it to run so low as 10° below zero.

In the average winter the ground rarely freezes to a greater depth than 2 or 3 inches, and it remains frozen but a few days at a time. Ice has been known to form 8 inches thick, but in ordinary winters, 3 or 4 is the maximum. Snow falls every winter, more or less, and sometimes remains for a week. Old people have a remembrance of a foot of snow which lasted for a week.

Walden's Ridge has a total population of a little more than 4,000, scattered over 600 square miles of surface. The number of dwellings is about 800. Ninety per cent. of these are log houses; 70 per cent. of them are without glass windows; light being furnished through the doorways, always open in the daytime, the shuttered window openings, and the open spaces between the logs of the walls. Less than 2 per cent. of these houses have plastered walls or ceilings, and less than 5 per cent. have ceiled walls or ceilings. About 20 per cent. of them are fairly well chinked with clay between the logs, the remainder being but indifferently built in that particular. Fully 90 per cent. of these abodes admit of free access of air at all times of day and night, through the floors beneath as well as the walls and roof above. It is the custom of the people to guard against the coldest of days and nights by hanging bed clothes against the walls, and many good housewives have a supply of tidy drapery which they keep alone for this purpose.

Wood, always at hand, is the only fuel in use. The whole heating apparatus consists in one large open fireplace, built of stone, communicating with a large chimney outside the house at one end, and frequently scarcely as high as the one story building which supports it. This chimney is constructed in such a manner as to be a great ventilator of the whole room, quite sufficient, it would be thought, if there were no other means of ventilation. It is usually made of stone at the base, and that part above the fire is of sticks laid upon one another, cobhouse fashion, and plastered over inside and between with similar clay as that with which the house walls are chinked.

Very few of these houses are more than one story high. They are all covered with long split oak shingles--the people there call them "boards"--rifted from the trunks of selected trees. There is no sheathing on the roof beneath these shingles. They are nailed down upon the flat hewn poles running across the rafters, at convenient distances. Looking up through the many openings in the roof in one of these house, one would think that this would be but poor protection against rain, but they rarely leak.

Not one family in fifty is provided with a cooking stove. They bake their bread in flat iron kettles, with iron covers, covered with hot coals and ashes. These they call ovens. The meat is fried, with only the exception of when accompanied by "turnip greens."

The question, "What is the principal food of the people who live on these mountains?" has been asked by me several hundred times. The almost invariable answer has been, "Corn bread, bacon, and coffee." Occasionally biscuits and game have been mentioned in the answers. All food is eaten hot. Coffee is usually an accompaniment of all three meals, and is drunk without cream and often without sugar. Some families eat beef and mutton for one or two of the colder months in the year on rare occasions, though beef is commonly considered "onfit to go upon," as I was told upon several occasions, and mutton sustains less reputation. Chickens are used for food while they are young and tender enough to fry, on occasions of quarterly meetings, visits of "kinfolks" or the "preachers" and the traveling doctors. Fat young lambs are plenty in many settlements from March to October, and can be had at fifty cents each, but I could not learn that one was ever eaten.

A large majority of the adult population use tobacco in some shape--the men by chewing or smoking, the women by smoking or dipping snuff. They never have dyspepsia, nor do they ever get flesh, after they pass out of childhood, though nearly all the children are ruddy in appearance, and well rounded with fat.

One physical type prevails among the people in middle life, and carries along into old age but little change; and old age is common there. Nearly every house has its old man or old woman, or both. Everybody, father and mother, and frequently grandfather and grandmother, is still on hand, looking as brisk and moving about as lively as the newer generations. After they pass their forty years, they never seem to grow any older for the next twenty or thirty, and the grandfathers and grandmothers can scarcely be selected, by comparison, from their own children and grandchildren. The men are taller than the average, and the women, relatively, taller than the men. They are all thin featured, bright eyed, long haired, sharp looking people, with every appearance of strength and power of endurance.