On reaching the pleasant little village of Abingdon, in Washington county, a friend informed me that I must not fail to visit the salt-works of Smythe county. I did so, and the following is my account of Saltville, which is the proper name for the place in question: Its site was originally a salt-lick, to which immense herds of elk, buffalo, and deer, were in the habit of resorting; subsequently, the Indians applied the privilege to themselves, and then an occasional hunter came here for his supplies; but the regular business of transforming the water into salt did not commence until the year 1790. Saltville is located at the head of a valley near the base of the Clinch Mountains, and about one mile from the Holston river. All the population of the place, numbering perhaps three hundred inhabitants, are engaged in the manufacture of salt. The water here is said to be the strongest and purest in the world. When tested by a salometer, graded for saturation at twenty-five degrees, it ranges from twenty to twenty-two degrees, and twenty gallons of water will yield one bushel of salt, which weighs fifty pounds, (and not fifty-six as at the North,) and is sold at the rate of twenty cents per bushel, or one dollar and twenty cents per barrel. The water is brought from a depth of two hundred and twenty feet by means of three artesian wells, which keep five furnaces or salt-blocks, of eighty-four kettles each, in constant employment, and produce about two thousand bushels per day. The water is raised by means of horse-power, and twenty-five teams are constantly employed in supplying the furnaces with wood. The salt manufactured here is acknowledged to be superior in quality to that made on the Kanawha, in this State, or at Syracuse, in New-York, but the Northern establishments are by far the most extensive. The section of country supplied from this quarter is chiefly composed of Tennessee and Alabama; generally speaking, there is but one shipment made during the year, which is in the spring, and by means of flat-boats built expressly for the purpose. A dozen or two of these boats are always ready for business, and when the Holston is swollen by a freshet they are loaded and manned at the earliest possible moment, and away the singing boatmen go down the wild, winding, and narrow but picturesque stream, to their desired havens. The section of country supplied by the Kanawha is the northwest and the extreme south, while Syracuse, Liverpool, and Turk's Island supply the Atlantic seaboard. The Saltville reservoir of water seems to be inexhaustible, and it is supposed would give active employment to at least a dozen new furnaces. As already stated, the yielding wells are somewhat over two hundred feet deep; but within a stone's throw of these, other wells have been sunk to the depth of four, five, and six hundred feet, without obtaining a particle of the valuable liquid. The business of Saltville is carried on by private enterprise altogether, and the principal proprietor and director is a gentleman who comes from that noble stock which has given to this country such men as Patrick Henry and William H. Preston. I am at present the guest of this gentleman, and therefore refrain from giving his name to the public; but as his plantation is decidedly the most beautiful that I have seen in the whole Southern country, I must be permitted to give a particular description for the edification of my readers.