“The immediate locality of this tunnel is upon a small stream called Buck-eye, or Stock Creek.  This last name owes its origin to its valley having been resorted to by the herdsmen of the country, for the attainment of a good range, or choice pasture-ground, for their cattle.  The creek rises in Powell’s mountain, and is tributary to Clinch river, which it enters at the distance of between two and three miles below the tunnel.  The aspect of the surrounding country, and especially of that to the northward of the tunnel, and constituting the southerly slope of the mountain just mentioned, is exceedingly diversified, and broken by elevated spurs and ridges, separated from each other by deep chasms, walled with cliffs and mural precipices, often presenting exceedingly narrow passes, but occasionally widening into meadows or bottoms of considerable extent.  The mural precipices just mentioned occur very frequently, bounding the valleys of the streams generally in this part of the country, and opposing ramparts of formidable height, and in many places utterly insurmountable.  Such are the features peculiarly characteristic of Wild Cat Valley, the Valley of Copper Creek, of Powell’s and Clinch rivers, and of numerous other streams of less note, all of which are situated within a few miles of the Natural Tunnel.

“To form an adequate idea of this remarkable and truly sublime object, we have only to imagine the creek to which it gives a passage, meandering through a deep, narrow valley, here and there bounded on both sides by walls, or revetements, of the character above intimated, and rising to the height of two or three hundred feet above the stream; and that a portion of one of these chasms, instead of presenting an open, thorough cut from the summit to the base of the high grounds, is intercepted by a continuous unbroken ridge, more than three hundred feet high, extending entirely across the valley, and perforated transversely at its base, after the manner of an artificial tunnel, and thus affording a spacious subterranean channel for the passage of the stream.

“The entrance to the Natural Tunnel on the upper side of the ridge is imposing and picturesque in a high degree; but on the lower side the grandeur of the scene is greatly heightened by the superior magnitude of the cliffs, which exceed in loftiness, and which rise perpendicularly—­and, in some instances, in an impending manner—­two or three hundred feet; and by which the entrance on this side is almost environed, as it were, by an amphitheatre of rude and frightful precipices.