Of the more peculiar features which I have met with in the Tallulah chasm the following are the only ones which have yet been christened, viz.: the Devil's Pulpit, the Devil's Dwelling, the Eagle's Nest, the Deer Leap, Hawthorn's Pool, and Hanck's Sliding Place.
_The Devil's Pulpit_ is a double-headed and exceedingly ragged cliff, which actually hangs over the ravine, and estimated to be over six hundred feet high. While standing upon the brow of this precipice I saw a number of buzzards sitting upon the rocks below, and appearing like a flock of blackbirds. While looking at them the thought came into my mind that I would startle them from their fancied security by throwing a stone among them. I did throw the stone, and with all my might too, but, instead of going across the ravine, as I supposed it would, it fell out of my sight, and apparently at the very base of the cliff upon which I was standing. This little incident gave me a realizing sense of the immense width and depth of the chasm. While upon this cliff also, with my arms clasped around a small pine tree, an eagle came sailing up the chasm in mid air, and, as he cast his eye upward at my insignificant form, he uttered a loud shriek as if in anger at my temerity, and continued on his way, swooping above the spray of the waterfalls.
The _Devil's Dwelling_ is a cave of some twenty feet in depth, which occupies a conspicuous place near the summit of a precipice overlooking the Honcon Fall. Near its outlet is a singular rock, which resembles (from the opposite side of the gorge) the figure of a woman in a sitting posture, who is said to be the wife or better-half of the devil. I do not _believe_ this story, and cannot therefore endorse the prevailing opinion.
The _Eagle's Nest_ is a rock which projects from the brow of a cliff reputed to be seven hundred feet high, and perpendicular. The finest view of this point is from the margin of the water, where it is grand beyond compare. To describe it with the pen were utterly impossible, but it was just such a scene as would have delighted the lamented Cole, and by a kindred genius alone can it ever be placed on the canvas.
The _Deer Leap_ is the highest cliff in the whole chasm, measuring about nine hundred feet, and differs from its fellows in two particulars. From summit to bottom it is almost without a fissure or an evergreen, and remarkably smooth; and over it, in the most beautiful manner imaginable, tumbles a tiny stream, which scatters upon the rocks below with infinite prodigality; the purest of diamonds and pearls appearing to be woven into wreaths of foam. It obtained its name from the circumstance that a deer was once pursued to this point by a hound, and in its terror, cleared a pathway through the air, and perished in the depths below.