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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Horseback, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: On Horseback
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: August 20, 2016 [EBook #3126]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON HORSEBACK ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ON HORSEBACK
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+“The way to mount a horse”--said the Professor.
+
+“If you have no ladder--put in the Friend of Humanity.”
+
+The Professor had ridden through the war for the Union on the right
+side, enjoying a much better view of it than if he had walked, and knew
+as much about a horse as a person ought to know for the sake of his
+character. The man who can recite the tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims,
+on horseback, giving the contemporary pronunciation, never missing an
+accent by reason of the trot, and at the same time witch North Carolina
+and a strip of East Tennessee with his noble horsemanship, is a kind of
+Literary Centaur of whose double instruction any Friend of Humanity may
+be glad to avail himself.
+
+“The way to mount a horse is to grasp the mane with the left hand
+holding the bridle-rein, put your left foot in the stirrup, with the
+right hand on the back of the saddle, and---”
+
+Just then the horse stepped quickly around on his hind feet, and looked
+the Professor in the face. The Superintendents of Affairs, who occupy
+the flagging in front of the hotel, seated in cane-bottomed chairs
+tilted back, smiled. These useful persons appear to have a life-lease
+of this portion of the city pavement, and pretty effectually block it up
+nearly all day and evening. When a lady wishes to make her way through
+the blockade, it is the habit of these observers of life to rise and
+make room, touching their hats, while she picks her way through, and
+goes down the street with a pretty consciousness of the flutter she
+has caused. The war has not changed the Southern habit of sitting
+out-of-doors, but has added a new element of street picturesqueness in
+groups of colored people lounging about the corners. There appears to be
+more leisure than ever.
+
+The scene of this little lesson in horsemanship was the old town of
+Abingdon, in southwest Virginia, on the Virginia and East Tennessee
+railway; a town of ancient respectability, which gave birth to the
+Johnstons and Floyds and other notable people; a town, that still
+preserves the flavor of excellent tobacco and, something of the
+easy-going habits of the days of slavery, and is a sort of educational
+center, where the young ladies of the region add the final graces of
+intellectual life in moral philosophy and the use of the globes to their
+natural gifts. The mansion of the late and left Floyd is now a seminary,
+and not far from it is the Stonewall Jackson Institute, in the midst
+of a grove of splendid oaks, whose stately boles and wide-spreading
+branches give a dignity to educational life. The distinction of the
+region is its superb oak-trees. As it was vacation in these institutions
+of learning, the travelers did not see any of the vines that
+traditionally cling to the oak.
+
+The Professor and the Friend of Humanity were about starting on a
+journey, across country southward, through regions about which the
+people of Abingdon could give little useful information. If the
+travelers had known the capacities and resources of the country, they
+would not have started without a supply train, or the establishment
+of bases of provisions in advance. But, as the Professor remarked,
+knowledge is something that one acquires when he has no use for it. The
+horses were saddled; the riders were equipped with flannel shirts and
+leather leggings; the saddle-bags were stuffed with clean linen, and
+novels, and sonnets of Shakespeare, and other baggage, it would have
+been well if they had been stuffed with hard-tack, for in real life meat
+is more than raiment.
+
+The hotel, in front of which there is cultivated so much of what the
+Germans call sitzfleisch, is a fair type of the majority of Southern
+hotels, and differs from the same class in the North in being left a
+little more to run itself. The only information we obtained about it was
+from its porter at the station, who replied to the question, “Is it
+the best?” “We warrant you perfect satisfaction in every respect.”
+ This seems to be only a formula of expression, for we found that
+the statement was highly colored. It was left to our imagination to
+conjecture how the big chambers of the old house, with their gaping
+fireplaces, might have looked when furnished and filled with gay
+company, and we got what satisfaction we could out of a bygone bustle
+and mint-julep hilarity. In our struggles with the porter to obtain the
+little items of soap, water, and towels, we were convinced that we had
+arrived too late, and that for perfect satisfaction we should have been
+here before the war. It was not always as now. In colonial days the
+accommodations and prices at inns were regulated by law. In the old
+records in the court-house we read that if we had been here in 1777, we
+could have had a gallon of good rum for sixteen shillings; a quart bowl
+of rum toddy made with loaf sugar for two shillings, or with brown sugar
+for one shilling and sixpence. In 1779 prices had risen. Good rum sold
+for four pounds a gallon. It was ordered that a warm dinner should cost
+twelve shillings, a cold dinner nine shillings, and a good breakfast
+twelve shillings. But the item that pleased us most, and made us regret
+our late advent, was that for two shillings we could have had a “good
+lodging, with clean sheets.” The colonists were fastidious people.
+
+Abingdon, prettily situated on rolling hills, and a couple of thousand
+feet above the sea, with views of mountain peaks to the south, is a
+cheerful and not too exciting place for a brief sojourn, and hospitable
+and helpful to the stranger. We had dined--so much, at least, the public
+would expect of us--with a descendant of Pocahontas; we had assisted on
+Sunday morning at the dedication of a new brick Methodist church, the
+finest edifice in the region--a dedication that took a long time, since
+the bishop would not proceed with it until money enough was raised in
+open meeting to pay the balance due on it: a religious act, though it
+did give a business aspect to the place at the time; and we had been the
+light spots in the evening service at the most aristocratic church of
+color. The irresponsibility of this amiable race was exhibited in the
+tardiness with which they assembled: at the appointed time nobody was
+there except the sexton; it was three quarters of an hour before the
+congregation began to saunter in, and the sermon was nearly over before
+the pews were at all filled. Perhaps the sermon was not new, but it was
+fervid, and at times the able preacher roared so that articulate sounds
+were lost in the general effect. It was precisely these passages of
+cataracts of sound and hard breathing which excited the liveliest
+responses,--“Yes, Lord,” and “Glory to God.” Most of these responses
+came from the “Amen corner.” The sermon contained the usual vivid
+description of the last judgment--ah, and I fancied that the
+congregation did not get the ordinary satisfaction out of it. Fashion
+had entered the fold, and the singing was mostly executed by a choir in
+the dusky gallery, who thinly and harshly warbled the emotional hymns.
+It occupied the minister a long time to give out the notices of the
+week, and there was not an evening or afternoon that had not its
+meetings, its literary or social gathering, its picnic or fair for the
+benefit of the church, its Dorcas society, or some occasion of religious
+sociability. The raising of funds appeared to be the burden on the
+preacher's mind. Two collections were taken up. At the first, the boxes
+appeared to get no supply except from the two white trash present. But
+the second was more successful. After the sermon was over, an elder
+took his place at a table within the rails, and the real business of the
+evening began. Somebody in the Amen corner struck up a tune that had
+no end, but a mighty power of setting the congregation in motion. The
+leader had a voice like the pleasant droning of a bag-pipe, and the
+faculty of emitting a continuous note like that instrument, without
+stopping to breathe. It went on and on like a Bach fugue, winding and
+whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of the catch without a
+break. The effect was soon visible in the emotional crowd: feet began
+to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in, with spurts of
+ejaculation; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, the members began
+to leave their seats and pass before the table and deposit their
+contributions. It was a cent contribution, and we found it very
+difficult, under the contagious influence of the hum from the Amen
+corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent. If anything could
+extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, it would be the buzzing
+of this tune. It went on and on, until the house appeared to be drained
+dry of its cash; and we inferred by the stopping of the melody that
+the preacher's salary was secure for the time being. On inquiring,
+we ascertained that the pecuniary flood that evening had risen to the
+height of a dollar and sixty cents.
+
+All was ready for the start. It should have been early in the morning,
+but it was not; for Virginia is not only one of the blessed regions
+where one can get a late breakfast, but where it is almost impossible to
+get an early one. At ten A. M. the two horsemen rode away out of sight
+of the Abingdon spectators, down the eastern turnpike. The day was warm,
+but the air was full of vitality and the spirit of adventure. It was
+the 22d of July. The horses were not ambitious, but went on at an easy
+fox-trot that permits observation and encourages conversation. It
+had been stipulated that the horses should be good walkers, the one
+essential thing in a horseback journey. Few horses, even in a country
+where riding is general, are trained to walk fast. We hear much of
+horses that can walk five miles an hour, but they are as rare as white
+elephants. Our horses were only fair walkers. We realized how necessary
+this accomplishment is, for between the Tennessee line and Asheville,
+North Carolina, there is scarcely a mile of trotting-ground.
+
+We soon turned southward and descended into the Holston River Valley.
+Beyond lay the Tennessee hills and conspicuous White-Top Mountain (5530
+feet), which has a good deal of local celebrity (standing where the
+States of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina corner), and had been
+pointed out to us at Abingdon. We had been urged, personally and
+by letter, to ascend this mountain, without fail. People recommend
+mountains to their friends as they do patent medicines. As we leisurely
+jogged along we discussed this, and endeavored to arrive at some rule of
+conduct for the journey. The Professor expressed at once a feeling about
+mountain-climbing that amounted to hostility,--he would go nowhere that
+he could not ride. Climbing was the most unsatisfactory use to which a
+mountain could be put. As to White-Top, it was a small mountain, and
+not worth ascending. The Friend of Humanity, who believes in
+mountain-climbing as a theory, and for other people, and knows the value
+of being able to say, without detection, that he has ascended any high
+mountain about which he is questioned,--since this question is the first
+one asked about an exploration in a new country,--saw that he should
+have to use a good deal of diplomacy to get the Professor over any
+considerable elevation on the trip. And he had to confess also that a
+view from a mountain is never so satisfactory as a view of a mountain,
+from a moderate height. The Professor, however, did not argue the matter
+on any such reasonable ground, but took his stand on his right as a
+man not to ascend a mountain. With this appeal to first principles,--a
+position that could not be confuted on account of its vagueness
+(although it might probably be demonstrated that in society man has no
+such right), there was no way of agreement except by a compromise. It
+was accordingly agreed that no mountain under six thousand feet is worth
+ascending; that disposed of White-Top. It was further agreed that any
+mountain that is over six thousand feet high is too high to ascend on
+foot.
+
+With this amicable adjustment we forded the Holston, crossing it twice
+within a few miles. This upper branch of the Tennessee is a noble
+stream, broad, with a rocky bed and a swift current. Fording it is
+ticklish business except at comparatively low water, and as it
+is subject to sudden rises, there must be times when it seriously
+interrupts travel. This whole region, full of swift streams, is without
+a bridge, and, as a consequence, getting over rivers and brooks and
+the dangers of ferries occupy a prominent place in the thoughts of
+the inhabitants. The life necessarily had the “frontier” quality all
+through, for there can be little solid advance in civilization in the
+uncertainties of a bridgeless condition. An open, pleasant valley, the
+Holston, but cultivation is more and more negligent and houses are few
+and poorer as we advance.
+
+We had left behind the hotels of “perfect satisfaction,” and expected
+to live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remunerated
+hospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants. We were to dine at
+Ramsey's. Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place of
+entertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot in
+the sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, we magnified
+Ramsey's in our imagination,--the nobility of its situation, its
+cuisine, its inviting restfulness,--and half decided to pass the night
+there in the true abandon of plantation life. Long before we reached
+it, the Holston River which we followed had become the Laurel, a most
+lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we forded continually, for the
+valley became too narrow much of the way to accommodate a road and
+a river. Eagerly as we were looking out for it, we passed the great
+Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was the first of a little settlement
+of two houses and a saw-mill and barn. It was a neat log house of two
+lower rooms and a summer kitchen, quite the best of the class that we
+saw, and the pleasant mistress of it made us welcome. Across the road
+and close, to the Laurel was the spring-house, the invariable adjunct
+to every well-to-do house in the region, and on the stony margin of
+the stream was set up the big caldron for the family washing; and
+here, paddling in the shallow stream, while dinner was preparing, we
+established an intimacy with the children and exchanged philosophical
+observations on life with the old negress who was dabbling the clothes.
+What impressed this woman was the inequality in life. She jumped to the
+unwarranted conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich,
+and spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting
+shoes and tobacco. It was useless to point out to her that her alfresco
+life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the happy lot of
+any one who could loiter all day by this laughing stream, undisturbed by
+debt or ambition. Everybody about the place was barefooted, except the
+mistress, including the comely daughter of eighteen, who served our
+dinner in the kitchen. The dinner was abundant, and though it seemed
+to us incongruous at the time, we were not twelve hours older when we
+looked back upon it with longing. On the table were hot biscuit, ham,
+pork, and green beans, apple-sauce, blackberry preserves, cucumbers,
+coffee, plenty of milk, honey, and apple and blackberry pie. Here we had
+our first experience, and I may say new sensation, of “honey on pie.” It
+has a cloying sound as it is written, but the handmaiden recommended it
+with enthusiasm, and we evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from
+an uncultivated society, when we declared our inexperience of “honey on
+pie.” “Where be you from?” It turned out to be very good, and we have
+tried to introduce it in families since our return, with indifferent
+success. There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about
+the world at large, nor much stir of social life. The gayety of madame
+appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and grandmaw,
+up the river a few miles, where she was raised.
+
+Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims went gayly
+along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun,
+which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way. Inspired
+by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and the dainties of
+the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:
+
+  “So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
+   Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
+   The which he will not every hour survey,
+   For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
+   Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
+   Since seldom coming, in the long year set,
+   Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are,
+   Or captain jewels in the carcanet.”
+
+Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed. The Laurel
+became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valley narrowed down
+to the riverway, with standing room, however, for stately trees along
+the banks. The oaks, both black and white, were, as they had been
+all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage. There is a certain
+dignity in riding in such stately company, and the travelers clattered
+along over the stony road under the impression of possible high
+adventure in a new world of such freshness. Nor was beauty wanting. The
+rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached their climax, and now
+began to strew the water and the ground with their brilliant petals,
+dashing all the way with color; but they were still matchlessly
+beautiful. Great banks of pink and white covered the steep hillsides;
+the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hung their rich clusters
+over the river; avenues of glory opened away in the glade of the stream;
+and at every turn of the winding way vistas glowing with the hues
+of romance wrenched exclamations of delight and wonder from the
+Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend. In the deep recesses of
+the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like the splashes of splendor
+on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, these wonders of color,--the
+glowing summer-heart of the woods.
+
+It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out in the
+river, or the river in the road. In the few miles to Egger's (this was
+the destination of our great expectations for the night) the stream was
+crossed twenty-seven times,--or perhaps it would be more proper to say
+that the road was crossed twenty-seven times. Where the road did not
+run in the river, its bed was washed out and as stony as the bed of the
+stream. This is a general and accurate description of all the roads
+in this region, which wind along and in the streams, through narrow
+valleys, shut in by low and steep hills. The country is full of springs
+and streams, and between Abingdon and Egger's is only one (small)
+bridge. In a region with scarcely any level land or intervale, farmers
+are at a disadvantage. All along the road we saw nothing but mean
+shanties, generally of logs, with now and then a decent one-story frame,
+and the people looked miserably poor.
+
+As we picked our way along up the Laurel, obliged for the most part to
+ride single-file, or as the Professor expressed it,
+
+  “Let me confess that we two must be twain,
+   Although our undivided loves are one,”
+
+we gathered information about Egger's from the infrequent hovels on the
+road, which inflamed our imaginations. Egger was the thriving man of
+the region, and lived in style in a big brick house. We began to feel
+a doubt that Egger would take us in, and so much did his brick
+magnificence impress us that we regretted we had not brought apparel fit
+for the society we were about to enter.
+
+It was half-past six, and we were tired and hungry, when the domain
+of Egger towered in sight,--a gaunt, two-story structure of raw brick,
+unfinished, standing in a narrow intervale. We rode up to the gate, and
+asked a man who sat in the front-door porch if this was Egger's, and if
+we could be accommodated for the night. The man, without moving, allowed
+that it was Egger's, and that we could probably stay there. This person,
+however, exhibited so much indifference to our company, he was such a
+hairy, unkempt man, and carried on face, hands, and clothes so much more
+of the soil of the region than a prudent proprietor would divert from
+raising corn, that we set him aside as a poor relation, and asked
+for Mr. Egger. But the man, still without the least hospitable stir,
+admitted that that was the name he went by, and at length advised us to
+“lite” and hitch our horses, and sit on the porch with him and enjoy the
+cool of the evening. The horses would be put up by and by, and in fact
+things generally would come round some time. This turned out to be the
+easy way of the country. Mr. Egger was far from being inhospitable, but
+was in no hurry, and never had been in a hurry. He was not exactly a
+gentleman of the old school. He was better than that. He dated from
+the time when there were no schools at all, and he lived in that placid
+world which is without information and ideas. Mr. Egger showed his
+superiority by a total lack of curiosity about any other world.
+
+This brick house, magnificent by comparison with other dwellings in this
+country, seemed to us, on nearer acquaintance, only a thin, crude shell
+of a house, half unfinished, with bare rooms, the plastering already
+discolored. In point of furnishing it had not yet reached the “God bless
+our Home” stage in crewel. In the narrow meadow, a strip of vivid green
+south of the house, ran a little stream, fed by a copious spring, and
+over it was built the inevitable spring-house. A post, driven into the
+bank by the stream, supported a tin wash-basin, and here we performed
+our ablutions. The traveler gets to like this freedom and primitive
+luxury.
+
+The farm of Egger produces corn, wheat, grass, and sheep; it is a good
+enough farm, but most of it lies at an angle of thirty-five to forty
+degrees. The ridge back of the house, planted in corn, was as steep as
+the roof of his dwelling. It seemed incredible that it ever could have
+been plowed, but the proprietor assured us that it was plowed with
+mules, and I judged that the harvesting must be done by squirrels. The
+soil is good enough, if it would stay in place, but all the hillsides
+are seamed with gullies. The discolored state of the streams was
+accounted for as soon as we saw this cultivated land. No sooner is the
+land cleared of trees and broken up than it begins to wash. We saw more
+of this later, especially in North Carolina, where we encountered no
+stream of water that was not muddy, and saw no cultivated ground that
+was not washed. The process of denudation is going on rapidly wherever
+the original forests are girdled (a common way of preparing for crops),
+or cut away.
+
+As the time passed and there was no sign of supper, the question became
+a burning one, and we went to explore the kitchen. No sign of it there.
+No fire in the stove, nothing cooked in the house, of course. Mrs. Egger
+and her comely young barefooted daughter had still the milking to attend
+to, and supper must wait for the other chores. It seemed easier to be
+Mr. Egger, in this state of existence, and sit on the front porch and
+meditate on the price of mules and the prospect of a crop, than to be
+Mrs. Egger, whose work was not limited from sun to sun; who had, in
+fact, a day's work to do after the men-folks had knocked off; whose
+chances of neighborhood gossip were scanty, whose amusements were
+confined to a religious meeting once a fortnight. Good, honest people
+these, not unduly puffed up by the brick house, grubbing away year in
+and year out. Yes, the young girl said, there was a neighborhood party,
+now and then, in the winter. What a price to pay for mere life!
+
+Long before supper was ready, nearly nine o'clock, we had almost lost
+interest in it. Meantime two other guests had arrived, a couple of
+drovers from North Carolina, who brought into the circle--by this time
+a wood-fire had been kindled in the sitting-room, which contained a bed,
+an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper--a rich flavor of cattle,
+and talk of the price of steers. As to politics, although a presidential
+campaign was raging, there was scarcely an echo of it here. This was
+Johnson County, Tennessee, a strong Republican county but dog-gone it,
+says Mr. Egger, it's no use to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest
+of the State. Yes, they'd got a Republican member of Congress,--he'd
+heard his name, but he'd forgotten it. The drover said he'd heard it
+also, but he didn't take much interest in such things, though he wasn't
+any Republican. Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed. Even
+the Professor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't
+wake up a discussion out of such a state of mind.
+
+Alas! the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp, on
+a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse the
+delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not
+lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated
+through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork swimming
+in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers raw, coffee
+(so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially asked for (the
+correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie. This was not the
+pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,--two thick slabs of
+dough, with a squeezing of apple between. The profusion of this supper
+staggered the novices, but the drovers attacked it as if such cooking
+were a common occurrence and did justice to the weary labors of Mrs.
+Egger.
+
+Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several rooms and
+several beds in each room. Upon consultation with the drovers, they said
+they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, and we gave up
+their society for the night. The beds in our chamber had each one sheet,
+and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modern spirit; for in one
+corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decoration of our Queen Anne
+drawing-rooms,--the spinning-wheel. Soothed by this concession to taste,
+we crowded in between the straw and the home-made blanket and sheet, and
+soon ceased to hear the barking of dogs and the horned encounters of the
+drovers' herd.
+
+We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy of
+the supper) with more respect than regret. His total charge for
+the entertainment of two men and two horses--supper, lodging, and
+breakfast--was high or low, as the traveler chose to estimate it. It was
+$1.20: that is, thirty cents for each individual, or ten cents for each
+meal and lodging.
+
+Our road was a sort of by-way up Gentry Creek and over the Cut Laurel
+Gap to Worth's, at Creston Post Office, in North Carolina,--the next
+available halting place, said to be fifteen miles distant, and turning
+out to be twenty-two, and a rough road. There is a little settlement
+about Egger's, and the first half mile of our way we had the company of
+the schoolmistress, a modest, pleasant-spoken girl. Neither she nor
+any other people we encountered had any dialect or local peculiarity of
+speech. Indeed, those we encountered that morning had nothing in manner
+or accent to distinguish them. The novelists had led us to expect
+something different; and the modest and pretty young lady with frank and
+open blue eyes, who wore gloves and used the common English speech, had
+never figured in the fiction of the region. Cherished illusions vanish
+often on near approach. The day gave no peculiarity of speech to note,
+except the occasional use of “hit” for “it.”
+
+The road over Cut Laurel Gap was very steep and stony, the thermometer
+mounted up to 80 deg., and, notwithstanding the beauty of the way, the
+ride became tedious before we reached the summit. On the summit is the
+dwelling and distillery of a colonel famous in these parts. We stopped
+at the house for a glass of milk; the colonel was absent, and while the
+woman in charge went after it, we sat on the veranda and conversed with
+a young lady, tall, gent, well favored, and communicative, who leaned in
+the doorway.
+
+“Yes, this house stands on the line. Where you sit, you are in
+Tennessee; I'm in North Carolina.”
+
+“Do you live here?”
+
+“Law, no; I'm just staying a little while at the colonel's. I live over
+the mountain here, three miles from Taylorsville. I thought I'd be where
+I could step into North Carolina easy.”
+
+“How's that?”
+
+“Well, they wanted me to go before the grand jury and testify about
+some pistol-shooting down by our house, some friends of mine got into
+a little difficulty,--and I did n't want to. I never has no difficulty
+with nobody, never says nothing about nobody, has nothing against
+nobody, and I reckon nobody has nothing against me.”
+
+“Did you come alone?”
+
+“Why, of course. I come across the mountain by a path through the woods.
+That's nothing.”
+
+A discreet, pleasant, pretty girl. This surely must be the Esmeralda who
+lives in these mountains, and adorns low life by her virgin purity
+and sentiment. As she talked on, she turned from time to time to the
+fireplace behind her, and discharged a dark fluid from her pretty lips,
+with accuracy of aim, and with a nonchalance that was not assumed, but
+belongs to our free-born American girls. I cannot tell why this habit of
+hers (which is no worse than the sister habit of “dipping”) should take
+her out of the romantic setting that her face and figure had placed her
+in; but somehow we felt inclined to ride on farther for our heroine.
+
+“And yet,” said the Professor, as we left the site of the colonel's
+thriving distillery, and by a winding, picturesque road through a rough
+farming country descended into the valley,--“and yet, why fling aside
+so readily a character and situation so full of romance, on account of
+a habit of this mountain Helen, which one of our best poets has almost
+made poetical, in the case of the pioneer taking his westward way, with
+ox-goad pointing to the sky:
+
+  “'He's leaving on the pictured rock
+   His fresh tobacco stain.'
+
+“To my mind the incident has Homeric elements. The Greeks would have
+looked at it in a large, legendary way. Here is Helen, strong and lithe
+of limb, ox-eyed, courageous, but woman-hearted and love-inspiring,
+contended for by all the braves and daring moonshiners of Cut Laurel
+Gap, pursued by the gallants of two States, the prize of a border
+warfare of bowie knives and revolvers. This Helen, magnanimous as
+attractive, is the witness of a pistol difficulty on her behalf, and
+when wanted by the areopagus, that she may neither implicate a lover
+nor punish an enemy (having nothing, this noble type of her sex against
+nobody), skips away to Mount Ida, and there, under the aegis of the flag
+of her country, in a Licensed Distillery, stands with one slender foot
+in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina...”
+
+“Like the figure of the Republic itself, superior to state sovereignty,”
+ interposed the Friend.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the Professor, urging up Laura Matilda (for
+so he called the nervous mare, who fretted herself into a fever in the
+stony path), “I was quite able to get the woman out of that position
+without the aid of a metaphor. It is a large and Greek idea, that of
+standing in two mighty States, superior to the law, looking east and
+looking west, ready to transfer her agile body to either State on the
+approach of messengers of the court; and I'll be hanged if I didn't
+think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed, combined with her
+lofty moral attitude, added something to the picture.”
+
+The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremest
+defense of the privileges of beauty,--that he even held in abeyance
+judgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gum
+was as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.
+
+  “When I consider everything that grows
+   Holds in perfection but a little moment...”
+
+The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashing through
+the stream. No sooner had we descended than the fording of streams
+began again. The Friend had been obliged to stipulate that the Professor
+should go ahead at these crossings, to keep the impetuous nag of the
+latter from throwing half the contents of the stream upon his slower and
+uncomplaining companion.
+
+What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the long
+wearisomeness of the way!--not that the distance was great, but miles
+and miles more than expected. How charming the open glades of the
+river, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and what a
+panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingled with the
+lighter pink and white of the laurel! In this region the rhododendron is
+called laurel and the laurel (the sheep-laurel of New England) is called
+ivy.
+
+At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, open
+farming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decent
+dwellings. Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a post
+office and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling of the
+proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house. Worth's
+has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region where places of
+accommodation are few. The proprietor, now an elderly man, whose
+reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow up about
+him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come up into the
+modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education and glimpses of
+city life and foreign travel. I fancy that nothing but tradition and
+a remaining Southern hospitality could induce this private family to
+suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man. Our travelers are not apt
+to be surprised at anything in American life, but they did not expect to
+find a house in this region with two pianos and a bevy of young ladies,
+whose clothes were certainly not made on Cut Laurel Gap, and to read
+in the books scattered about the house the evidences of the finishing
+schools with which our country is blessed, nor to find here pupils
+of the Stonewall Jackson Institute at Abingdon. With a flush of local
+pride, the Professor took up, in the roomy, pleasant chamber set apart
+for the guests, a copy of Porter's “Elements of Moral Science.”
+
+“Where you see the 'Elements of Moral Science,'” the Friend generalized,
+“there'll be plenty of water and towels;” and the sign did not fail. The
+friends intended to read this book in the cool of the day; but as they
+sat on the long veranda, the voice of a maiden reading the latest novel
+to a sewing group behind the blinds in the drawing-room; and the antics
+of a mule and a boy in front of the store opposite; and the arrival of
+a spruce young man, who had just ridden over from somewhere, a matter
+of ten miles' gallop, to get a medicinal potion for his sick mother, and
+lingered chatting with the young ladies until we began to fear that his
+mother would recover before his return; the coming and going of lean
+women in shackly wagons to trade at the store; the coming home of the
+cows, splashing through the stream, hooking right and left, and lowing
+for the hand of the milker,--all these interruptions, together with the
+generally drowsy quiet of the approach of evening, interfered with the
+study of the Elements. And when the travelers, after a refreshing rest,
+went on their way next morning, considering the Elements and the pianos
+and the refinement, to say nothing of the cuisine, which is not treated
+of in the text-book referred to, they were content with a bill double
+that of brother Egger, in his brick magnificence.
+
+The simple truth is, that the traveler in this region must be content
+to feed on natural beauties. And it is an unfortunate truth in natural
+history that the appetite for this sort of diet fails after a time,
+if the inner man is not supplied with other sort of food. There is no
+landscape in the world that is agreeable after two days of rusty-bacon
+and slack biscuit.
+
+“How lovely this would be,” exclaimed the Professor, if it had a
+background of beefsteak and coffee!
+
+We were riding along the west fork of the Laurel, distinguished locally
+as Three Top Creek,--or, rather, we were riding in it, crossing it
+thirty-one times within six miles; a charming wood (and water) road,
+under the shade of fine trees with the rhododendron illuminating the
+way, gleaming in the forest and reflected in the stream, all the ten
+miles to Elk Cross Roads, our next destination. We had heard a great
+deal about Elk Cross Roads; it was on the map, it was down in the
+itinerary furnished by a member of the Coast Survey. We looked forward
+to it as a sweet place of repose from the noontide heat. Alas! Elk
+Cross Roads is a dirty grocery store, encumbered with dry-goods boxes,
+fly-blown goods, flies, loafers. In reply to our inquiry we were told
+that they had nothing to eat, for us, and not a grain of feed for the
+horses. But there was a man a mile farther on, who was well to do and
+had stores of food,--old man Tatern would treat us in bang-up style. The
+difficulty of getting feed for the horses was chronic all through the
+journey. The last corn crop had failed, the new oats and corn had not
+come in, and the country was literally barren. We had noticed all along
+that the hens were taking a vacation, and that chickens were not put
+forward as an article of diet.
+
+We were unable, when we reached the residence of old man Tatem, to
+imagine how the local superstition of his wealth arose. His house is
+of logs, with two rooms, a kitchen and a spare room, with a low loft
+accessible by a ladder at the side of the chimney. The chimney is a huge
+construction of stone, separating the two parts of the house; in fact,
+the chimney was built first, apparently, and the two rooms were then
+built against it. The proprietor sat in a little railed veranda. These
+Southern verandas give an air to the meanest dwelling, and they are much
+used; the family sit here, and here are the washbasin and pail (which is
+filled from the neighboring spring-house), and the row of milk-pans.
+The old man Tatern did not welcome us with enthusiasm; he had no
+corn,--these were hard times. He looked like hard times, grizzled times,
+dirty times. It seemed time out of mind since he had seen comb or razor,
+and although the lovely New River, along which we had ridden to his
+house,--a broad, inviting stream,--was in sight across the meadow, there
+was no evidence that he had ever made acquaintance with its cleansing
+waters. As to corn, the necessities of the case and pay being dwelt on,
+perhaps he could find a dozen ears. A dozen small cars he did find, and
+we trust that the horses found them.
+
+We took a family dinner with old man Tatern in the kitchen, where there
+was a bed and a stove,--a meal that the host seemed to enjoy, but which
+we could not make much of, except the milk; that was good. A painful
+meal, on the whole, owing to the presence in the room of a grown-up
+daughter with a graveyard cough, without physician or medicine, or
+comforts. Poor girl! just dying of “a misery.”
+
+In the spare room were two beds; the walls were decorated with the
+gay-colored pictures of patent-medicine advertisements--a favorite art
+adornment of the region; and a pile of ancient illustrated papers with
+the usual patent-office report, the thoughtful gift of the member for
+the district. The old man takes in the “Blue Ridge Baptist,” a journal
+which we found largely taken up with the experiences of its editor on
+his journeys roundabout in search of subscribers. This newspaper was the
+sole communication of the family with the world at large, but the old
+man thought he should stop it,--he did n't seem to get the worth of his
+money out of it. And old man Tatem was a thrifty and provident man. On
+the hearth in this best room--as ornaments or memento mori were a couple
+of marble gravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on
+bases and ready for use, except the lettering. These may not have been
+so mournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple,
+humble faith; they may have been taken for debt. But as parlor ornaments
+they had a fascination which we could not escape.
+
+It was while we were bathing in the New River, that afternoon, and
+meditating on the grim, unrelieved sort of life of our host, that the
+Professor said, “judging by the face of the 'Blue Ridge Baptist,' he
+will charge us smartly for the few nubbins of corn and the milk.” The
+face did not deceive us; the charge was one dollar. At this rate it
+would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhaps he is
+not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.
+
+It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climb
+the sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem. But we
+entered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rode under
+the shade of great oaks. The way, which began by the New River, soon led
+us over the hills to the higher levels of Watauga County. So far on our
+journey we had been hemmed in by low hills, and without any distant
+or mountain outlooks. The excessive heat seemed out of place at the
+elevation of over two thousand feet, on which we were traveling. Boone,
+the county seat of Watauga County, was our destination, and, ever since
+morning, the guideboards and the trend of the roads had notified us that
+everything in this region tends towards Boone as a center of interest.
+The simple ingenuity of some of the guide-boards impressed us. If, on
+coming to a fork, the traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,
+
+   To BOONE 10 M.
+If he was to go to the left, it read, .M 01 ENOOB oT
+
+A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,
+unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to this capital.
+When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders over gentle
+hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns, the Friend
+informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet above Albemarle Sound, and
+believed by its inhabitants to be the highest village east of the
+Rocky Mountains. The Professor said that it might be so, but it was a
+God-forsaken place. Its inhabitants numbered perhaps two hundred and
+fifty, a few of them colored. It had a gaunt, shaky court-house and
+jail, a store or two, and two taverns. The two taverns are needed to
+accommodate the judges and lawyers and their clients during the session
+of the court. The court is the only excitement and the only amusement.
+It is the event from which other events date. Everybody in the county
+knows exactly when court sits, and when court breaks. During the session
+the whole county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children.
+They camp there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of
+them, perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the
+neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit. To be fond of
+lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new conditions.
+The early settlers of New England were.
+
+Notwithstanding the elevation of Boone, which insured a pure air, the
+thermometer that afternoon stood at from 85 to 89 deg. The flies enjoyed
+it. How they swarmed in this tavern! They would have carried off all
+the food from the dining-room table (for flies do not mind eating
+off oilcloth, and are not particular how food is cooked), but for the
+machine with hanging flappers that swept the length of it; and they
+destroy all possibility of sleep except in the dark. The mountain
+regions of North Carolina are free from mosquitoes, but the fly has
+settled there, and is the universal scourge. This tavern, one end of
+which was a store, had a veranda in front, and a back gallery, where
+there were evidences of female refinement in pots of plants and flowers.
+The landlord himself kept tavern very much as a hostler would, but we
+had to make a note in his favor that he had never heard of a milk punch.
+And it might as well be said here, for it will have to be insisted on
+later, that the traveler, who has read about the illicit stills till
+his imagination dwells upon the indulgence of his vitiated tastes in the
+mountains of North Carolina, is doomed to disappointment. If he wants
+to make himself an exception to the sober people whose cooking will make
+him long for the maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him.
+We had found no bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and
+water, slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and bacon
+incrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drink
+stronger than buttermilk. And we can say that, so far as our example
+is concerned, we left the country as temperate as we found it. How can
+there be mint juleps (to go into details) without ice? and in the summer
+there is probably not a pound of ice in all the State north of Buncombe
+County.
+
+There is nothing special to be said about Boone. We were anxious to
+reach it, we were glad to leave it; we note as to all these places
+that our joy at departing always exceeds that on arriving, which is
+a merciful provision of nature for people who must keep moving. This
+country is settled by genuine Americans, who have the aboriginal
+primitive traits of the universal Yankee nation. The front porch in the
+morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally covered with the
+whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the evening there in the
+sedative occupation of whittling.
+
+We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles, through
+noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons,--a charming
+wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keep the promise
+of its name. Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and a dirty, flyblown
+store. While the Professor consulted the blacksmith about a loose shoe,
+the Friend carried his weariness of life without provisions up to a
+white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiled milk. This house was
+occupied by flies. They must have numbered millions, settled in black
+swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, the veranda; the kitchen was
+simply a hive of them. The only book in sight, Whewell's--“Elements of
+Morality,” seemed to attract flies. Query, Why should this have such a
+different effect from Porter's? A white house,--a pleasant-looking
+house at a distance,--amiable, kindly people in it,--why should we have
+arrived there on its dirty day? Alas! if we had been starving, Valle
+Crusis had nothing to offer us.
+
+So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the
+Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and passing
+under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape, and the only
+outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge, rounded up into
+the sky, with a green hood on it. From the summit we had the first
+extensive prospect during our journey. The road can be described as
+awful,--steep, stony, the horses unable to make two miles an hour on it.
+Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin without barns or outhouses,
+and a little patch of feeble corn. The women who regarded the passers
+from their cabin doors were frowzy and looked tired. What with the heat
+and the road and this discouraged appearance of humanity, we reached
+the residence of Dugger, at Banner's Elk, to which we had been directed,
+nearly exhausted. It is no use to represent this as a dash across
+country on impatient steeds. It was not so. The love of truth is
+stronger than the desire of display. And for this reason it is
+impossible to say that Mr. Dugger, who is an excellent man, lives in
+a clean and attractive house, or that he offers much that the pampered
+child of civilization can eat. But we shall not forget the two eggs,
+fresh from the hens, whose temperature must have been above the normal,
+nor the spring-house in the glen, where we found a refuge from the flies
+and the heat. The higher we go, the hotter it is. Banner's Elk boasts an
+elevation of thirty-five to thirty-seven hundred feet.
+
+We were not sorry, towards sunset, to descend along the Elk River
+towards Cranberry Forge. The Elk is a lovely stream, and, though not
+very clear, has a reputation for trout; but all this region was under
+operation of a three-years game law, to give the trout a chance to
+multiply, and we had no opportunity to test the value of its reputation.
+Yet a boy whom we encountered had a good string of quarter-pound trout,
+which he had taken out with a hook and a feather rudely tied on it, to
+resemble a fly. The road, though not to be commended, was much better
+than that of the morning, the forests grew charming in the cool of the
+evening, the whippoorwill sang, and as night fell the wanderers, in
+want of nearly everything that makes life desirable, stopped at the Iron
+Company's hotel, under the impression that it was the only comfortable
+hotel in North Carolina.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Cranberry Forge is the first wedge of civilization fairly driven into
+the northwest mountains of North Carolina. A narrow-gauge railway,
+starting from Johnson City, follows up the narrow gorge of the Doe
+River, and pushes into the heart of the iron mines at Cranberry,
+where there is a blast furnace; and where a big company store, rows of
+tenement houses, heaps of slag and refuse ore, interlacing tracks, raw
+embankments, denuded hillsides, and a blackened landscape, are the signs
+of a great devastating American enterprise. The Cranberry iron is in
+great esteem, as it has the peculiar quality of the Swedish iron. There
+are remains of old furnaces lower down the stream, which we passed on
+our way. The present “plant” is that of a Philadelphia company,
+whose enterprise has infused new life into all this region, made it
+accessible, and spoiled some pretty scenery.
+
+When we alighted, weary, at the gate of the pretty hotel, which crowns
+a gentle hill and commands a pleasing, evergreen prospect of many gentle
+hills, a mile or so below the works, and wholly removed from all sordid
+associations, we were at the point of willingness that the whole country
+should be devastated by civilization. In the local imagination this
+hotel of the company is a palace of unequaled magnificence, but probably
+its good taste, comfort, and quiet elegance are not appreciated after
+all. There is this to be said about Philadelphia,--and it will go far
+in pleading for it in the Last Day against its monotonous rectangularity
+and the babel-like ambition of its Public Building,--that wherever its
+influence extends, there will be found comfortable lodgings and the
+luxury of an undeniably excellent cuisine. The visible seal that
+Philadelphia sets on its enterprise all through the South is a good
+hotel.
+
+This Cottage Beautiful has on two sides a wide veranda, set about with
+easy chairs; cheerful parlors and pretty chambers, finished in
+native woods, among which are conspicuous the satin stripes of the
+cucumber-tree; luxurious beds, and an inviting table ordered by a
+Philadelphia landlady, who knows a beefsteak from a boot-tap. Is it
+“low” to dwell upon these things of the senses, when one is on a tour in
+search of the picturesque? Let the reader ride from Abingdon through a
+wilderness of cornpone and rusty bacon, and then judge. There were,
+to be sure, novels lying about, and newspapers, and fragments of
+information to be picked up about a world into which the travelers
+seemed to emerge. They, at least, were satisfied, and went off to their
+rooms with the restful feeling that they had arrived somewhere and no
+unquiet spirit at morn would say “to horse.” To sleep, perchance to
+dream of Tatem and his household cemetery; and the Professor was heard
+muttering in his chamber,
+
+  “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
+   The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
+   But then begins a journey in my head,
+   To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd.”
+
+The morning was warm (the elevation of the hotel must be between
+twenty-five hundred and three thousand feet), rainy, mildly rainy; and
+the travelers had nothing better to do than lounge upon the veranda,
+read feeble ten-cent fictions, and admire the stems of the white
+birches, glistening in the moisture, and the rhododendron--trees, twenty
+feet high, which were shaking off their last pink blossoms, and look
+down into the valley of the Doe. It is not an exciting landscape,
+nothing bold or specially wild in it, but restful with the monotony of
+some of the wooded Pennsylvania hills.
+
+Sunday came up smiling, a lovely day, but offering no church privileges,
+for the ordinance of preaching is only occasional in this region.
+The ladies of the hotel have, however, gathered in the valley a
+Sunday-school of fifty children from the mountain cabins. A couple
+of rainy days, with the thermometer rising to 80 deg., combined with
+natural laziness to detain the travelers in this cottage of ease. They
+enjoyed this the more because it was on their consciences that they
+should visit Linville Falls, some twenty-five miles eastward, long held
+up before them as the most magnificent feature of this region, and on no
+account to be omitted. Hence, naturally, a strong desire to omit it. The
+Professor takes bold ground against these abnormal freaks of nature, and
+it was nothing to him that the public would demand that we should see
+Linville Falls. In the first place, we could find no one who had ever
+seen them, and we spent two days in catechizing natives and strangers.
+The nearest we came to information was from a workman at the furnace,
+who was born and raised within three miles of the Falls. He had heard
+of people going there. He had never seen them himself. It was a good
+twenty-five miles there, over the worst road in the State we'd think it
+thirty before we got there. Fifty miles of such travel to see a little
+water run down-hill! The travelers reflected. Every country has a local
+waterfall of which it boasts; they had seen a great many. One more would
+add little to the experience of life. The vagueness of information,
+to be sure, lured the travelers to undertake the journey; but the
+temptation was resisted--something ought to be left for the next
+explorer--and so Linville remains a thing of the imagination.
+
+Towards evening, July 29, between showers, the Professor and the Friend
+rode along the narrow-gauge road, down Johnson's Creek, to Roan Station,
+the point of departure for ascending Roan Mountain. It was a ride of
+an hour and a half over a fair road, fringed with rhododendrons, nearly
+blossomless; but at a point on the stream this sturdy shrub had formed
+a long bower where under a table might have been set for a temperance
+picnic, completely overgrown with wild grape, and still gay with bloom.
+The habitations on the way are mostly board shanties and mean frame
+cabins, but the railway is introducing ambitious architecture here
+and there in the form of ornamental filigree work on flimsy houses;
+ornamentation is apt to precede comfort in our civilization.
+
+Roan Station is on the Doe River (which flows down from Roan Mountain),
+and is marked at 1265 feet above the sea. The visitor will find here a
+good hotel, with open wood fires (not ungrateful in a July evening), and
+obliging people. This railway from Johnson City, hanging on the edge of
+the precipices that wall the gorge of the Doe, is counted in this region
+by the inhabitants one of the engineering wonders of the world. The
+tourist is urged by all means to see both it and Linville Falls.
+
+The tourist on horseback, in search of exercise and recreation, is not
+probably expected to take stock of moral conditions. But this Mitchell
+County, although it was a Union county during the war and is Republican
+in politics (the Southern reader will perhaps prefer another adverb to
+“although”), has had the worst possible reputation. The mountains
+were hiding-places of illicit distilleries; the woods were full of
+grog-shanties, where the inflaming fluid was sold as “native brandy,”
+ quarrels and neighborhood difficulties were frequent, and the knife
+and pistol were used on the slightest provocation. Fights arose about
+boundaries and the title to mica mines, and with the revenue officers;
+and force was the arbiter of all disputes. Within the year four murders
+were committed in the sparsely settled county. Travel on any of the
+roads was unsafe. The tone of morals was what might be expected with
+such lawlessness. A lady who came up on the road on the 4th of July,
+when an excursion party of country people took possession of the cars,
+witnessed a scene and heard language past belief. Men, women, and
+children drank from whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a
+wild orgy resulted. Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the
+license of the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom
+of manners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on canvas,
+made the journey horrible.
+
+The unrestrained license of whisky and assault and murder had produced a
+reaction a few months previous to our visit. The people had risen up in
+their indignation and broken up the groggeries. So far as we observed
+temperance prevailed, backed by public-opinion. In our whole ride
+through the mountain region we saw only one or two places where liquor
+was sold.
+
+It is called twelve miles from Roan Station to Roan Summit. The distance
+is probably nearer fourteen, and our horses were five hours in walking
+it. For six miles the road runs by Doe River, here a pretty brook shaded
+with laurel and rhododendron, and a few cultivated patches of ground,
+and infrequent houses. It was a blithe morning, and the horsemen would
+have given full indulgence to the spirit of adventure but for the
+attitude of the Professor towards mountains. It was not with him a
+matter of feeling, but of principle, not to ascend them. But here lay
+Roan, a long, sprawling ridge, lifting itself 6250 feet up into the
+sky. Impossible to go around it, and the other side must be reached. The
+Professor was obliged to surrender, and surmount a difficulty which he
+could not philosophize out of his mind.
+
+From the base of the mountain a road is very well engineered, in easy
+grades for carriages, to the top; but it was in poor repair and stony.
+We mounted slowly through splendid forests, specially of fine chestnuts
+and hemlocks. This big timber continues till within a mile and a half
+of the summit by the winding road, really within a short distance of the
+top. Then there is a narrow belt of scrubby hardwood, moss-grown, and
+then large balsams, which crown the mountain. As soon as we came
+out upon the southern slope we found great open spaces, covered with
+succulent grass, and giving excellent pasturage to cattle. These rich
+mountain meadows are found on all the heights of this region. The
+surface of Roan is uneven, and has no one culminating peak that commands
+the country, like the peak of Mount Washington, but several eminences
+within its range of probably a mile and a half, where various views can
+be had. Near the highest point, sheltered from the north by balsams,
+stands a house of entertainment, with a detached cottage, looking
+across the great valley to the Black Mountain range. The surface of the
+mountain is pebbly, but few rocks crop out; no ledges of any size are
+seen except at a distance from the hotel, on the north side, and the
+mountain consequently lacks that savage, unsubduable aspect which
+the White Hills of New Hampshire have. It would, in fact, have been
+difficult to realize that we were over six thousand feet above the sea,
+except for that pallor in the sunlight, that atmospheric thinness and
+want of color which is an unpleasant characteristic of high altitudes.
+To be sure, there is a certain brilliancy in the high air,--it is apt to
+be foggy on Roan,--and objects appear in sharp outline, but I have often
+experienced on such places that feeling of melancholy, which would,
+of course, deepen upon us all if we were sensible that the sun was
+gradually withdrawing its power of warmth and light. The black balsam is
+neither a cheerful nor a picturesque tree; the frequent rains and mists
+on Roan keep the grass and mosses green, but the ground damp. Doubtless
+a high mountain covered with vegetation has its compensation, but for me
+the naked granite rocks in sun and shower are more cheerful.
+
+The advantage of Roan is that one can live there and be occupied for a
+long time in mineral and botanical study. Its mild climate, moisture,
+and great elevation make it unique in this country for the botanist. The
+variety of plants assembled there is very large, and there are many, we
+were told, never or rarely found elsewhere in the United States. At any
+rate, the botanists rave about Roan Mountain, and spend weeks at a time
+on it. We found there ladies who could draw for us Grey's lily (then
+passed), and had kept specimens of the rhododendron (not growing
+elsewhere in this region) which has a deep red, almost purple color.
+
+The hotel (since replaced by a good house) was a rude mountain
+structure, with a couple of comfortable rooms for office and
+sitting-room, in which big wood fires were blazing; for though the
+thermometer might record 60 deg., as it did when we arrived, fire was
+welcome. Sleeping-places partitioned off in the loft above gave
+the occupants a feeling of camping out, all the conveniences being
+primitive; and when the wind rose in the night and darkness, and the
+loose boards rattled and the timbers creaked, the sensation was not
+unlike that of being at sea. The hotel was satisfactorily kept, and
+Southern guests, from as far south as New Orleans, were spending the
+season there, and not finding time hang heavy on their hands. This
+statement is perhaps worth more than pages of description as to the
+character of Roan, and its contrast to Mount Washington.
+
+The summer weather is exceedingly uncertain on all these North Carolina
+mountains; they are apt at any moment to be enveloped in mist; and it
+would rather rain on them than not. On the afternoon of our arrival
+there was fine air and fair weather, but not a clear sky. The distance
+was hazy, but the outlines were preserved. We could see White Top, in
+Virginia; Grandfather Mountain, a long serrated range; the twin towers
+of Linville; and the entire range of the Black Mountains, rising from
+the valley, and apparently lower than we were. They get the name of
+Black from the balsams which cover the summits.
+
+The rain on Roan was of less annoyance by reason of the delightful
+company assembled at the hotel, which was in a manner at home there,
+and, thrown upon its own resources, came out uncommonly strong in
+agreeableness. There was a fiddle in the house, which had some of the
+virtues of that celebrated in the history of old Mark Langston; the
+Professor was enabled to produce anything desired out of the literature
+of the eighteenth century; and what with the repartee of bright women,
+big wood fires, reading, and chat, there was no dull day or evening on
+Roan. I can fancy, however, that it might tire in time, if one were not
+a botanist, without the resource of women's society. The ladies staying
+here were probably all accomplished botanists, and the writer is
+indebted to one of them for a list of plants found on Roan, among which
+is an interesting weed, catalogued as Humana, perplexia negligens. The
+species is, however, common elsewhere.
+
+The second morning opened, after a night of high wind, with a
+thunder-shower. After it passed, the visitors tried to reach Eagle
+Cliff, two miles off, whence an extensive western prospect is had, but
+were driven back by a tempest, and rain practically occupied the
+day. Now and then through the parted clouds we got a glimpse of a
+mountain-side, or the gleam of a valley. On the lower mountains, at wide
+intervals apart, were isolated settlements, commonly a wretched cabin
+and a spot of girdled trees. A clergyman here, not long ago, undertook
+to visit some of these cabins and carry his message to them. In
+one wretched hut of logs he found a poor woman, with whom, after
+conversation on serious subjects, he desired to pray. She offered no
+objection, and he kneeled down and prayed. The woman heard him, and
+watched him for some moments with curiosity, in an effort to ascertain
+what he was doing, and then said:
+
+“Why, a man did that when he put my girl in a hole.”
+
+Towards night the wind hauled round from the south to the northwest, and
+we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some rocks are
+piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset. In every
+direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained of the vast
+horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States--a continental
+prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled for variety or distance. The
+grandeur of mountains depends mostly on the state of the atmosphere.
+Grandfather loomed up much more loftily than the day before, the giant
+range of the Blacks asserted itself in grim inaccessibility, and we
+could see, a small pyramid on the southwest horizon, King's Mountain in
+South Carolina, estimated to be distant one hundred and fifty miles. To
+the north Roan falls from this point abruptly, and we had, like a map
+below us, the low country all the way into Virginia. The clouds lay like
+lakes in the valleys of the lower hills, and in every direction were
+ranges of mountains wooded to the summits. Off to the west by south lay
+the Great Smoky Mountains, disputing eminence with the Blacks.
+
+Magnificent and impressive as the spectacle was, we were obliged to
+contrast it unfavorably with that of the White Hills. The rock here is a
+sort of sand or pudding stone; there is no limestone or granite. And
+all the hills are tree-covered. To many this clothing of verdure is most
+restful and pleasing. I missed the sharp outlines, the delicate artistic
+sky lines, sharply defined in uplifted bare granite peaks and ridges,
+with the purple and violet color of the northern mountains, and which it
+seems to me that limestone and granite formations give. There are none
+of the great gorges and awful abysses of the White Mountains, both
+valleys and mountains here being more uniform in outline. There are few
+precipices and jutting crags, and less is visible of the giant ribs and
+bones of the planet.
+
+Yet Roan is a noble mountain. A lady from Tennessee asked me if I
+had ever seen anything to compare with it--she thought there could be
+nothing in the world. One has to dodge this sort of question in the
+South occasionally, not to offend a just local pride. It is certainly
+one of the most habitable of big mountains. It is roomy on top, there is
+space to move about without too great fatigue, and one might pleasantly
+spend a season there, if he had agreeable company and natural tastes.
+
+Getting down from Roan on the south side is not as easy as ascending on
+the north; the road for five miles to the foot of the mountain is merely
+a river of pebbles, gullied by the heavy rains, down which the horses
+picked their way painfully. The travelers endeavored to present a
+dashing and cavalier appearance to the group of ladies who waved good-by
+from the hotel, as they took their way over the waste and wind-blown
+declivities, but it was only a show, for the horses would neither
+caracole nor champ the bit (at a dollar a day) down-hill over the
+slippery stones, and, truth to tell, the wanderers turned with regret
+from the society of leisure and persiflage to face the wilderness of
+Mitchell County.
+
+“How heavy,” exclaimed the Professor, pricking Laura Matilda to call her
+attention sharply to her footing--
+
+  “How heavy do I journey on the way,
+   When what I seek--my weary travel's end
+   Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
+   Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend!
+   The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
+   Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
+   As if by some instinct the wretch did know
+   His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
+   The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
+   That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
+   Which heavily he answers with a groan,
+   More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
+   For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
+   My grief lies onward and my joy behind.”
+
+This was not spoken to the group who fluttered their farewells,
+but poured out to the uncomplaining forest, which rose up in
+ever statelier--and grander ranks to greet the travelers as they
+descended--the silent, vast forest, without note of bird or chip of
+squirrel, only the wind tossing the great branches high overhead in
+response to the sonnet. Is there any region or circumstance of life that
+the poet did not forecast and provide for? But what would have been his
+feelings if he could have known that almost three centuries after these
+lines were penned, they would be used to express the emotion of an
+unsentimental traveler in the primeval forests of the New World? At any
+rate, he peopled the New World with the children of his imagination.
+And, thought the Friend, whose attention to his horse did not permit him
+to drop into poetry, Shakespeare might have had a vision of this vast
+continent, though he did not refer to it, when he exclaimed:
+
+  “What is your substance, whereof are you made,
+   That millions of strange shadows on you tend?”
+
+Bakersville, the capital of Mitchell County, is eight miles from the
+top of Roan, and the last three miles of the way the horsemen found
+tolerable going, over which the horses could show their paces. The
+valley looked fairly thrifty and bright, and was a pleasing introduction
+to Bakersville, a pretty place in the hills, of some six hundred
+inhabitants, with two churches, three indifferent hotels, and a
+court-house. This mountain town, 2550 feet above the sea, is said
+to have a decent winter climate, with little snow, favorable to
+fruit-growing, and, by contrast with New England, encouraging to people
+with weak lungs.
+
+This is the center of the mica mining, and of considerable excitement
+about minerals. All around, the hills are spotted with “diggings.” Most
+of the mines which yield well show signs of having been worked before,
+a very long time ago, no doubt by the occupants before the Indians. The
+mica is of excellent quality and easily mined. It is got out in large
+irregular-shaped blocks and transported to the factories, where it is
+carefully split by hand, and the laminae, of as large size as can be
+obtained, are trimmed with shears and tied up in packages for market.
+The quantity of refuse, broken, and rotten mica piled up about the
+factories is immense, and all the roads round about glisten with its
+scales. Garnets are often found imbedded in the laminae, flattened by
+the extreme pressure to which the mass was subjected. It is fascinating
+material, this mica, to handle, and we amused ourselves by experimenting
+on the thinness to which its scales could be reduced by splitting. It
+was at Bakersville that we saw specimens of mica that resembled the
+delicate tracery in the moss-agate and had the iridescent sheen of the
+rainbow colors--the most delicate greens, reds, blues, purples, and
+gold, changing from one to the other in the reflected light. In
+the texture were the tracings of fossil forms of ferns and the most
+exquisite and delicate vegetable beauty of the coal age. But the
+magnet shows this tracery to be iron. We were shown also emeralds and
+“diamonds,” picked up in this region, and there is a mild expectation in
+all the inhabitants of great mineral treasure. A singular product of the
+region is the flexible sandstone. It is a most uncanny stone. A slip of
+it a couple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in the
+hand like a half-frozen snake. This conduct of a substance that we have
+been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence in the
+stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does.
+
+This excitement over mica and other minerals has the usual effect of
+starting up business and creating bad blood. Fortunes have been
+made, and lost in riotous living; scores of visionary men have been
+disappointed; lawsuits about titles and claims have multiplied, and
+quarrels ending in murder have been frequent in the past few years. The
+mica and the illicit whisky have worked together to make this region one
+of lawlessness and violence. The travelers were told stories of the lack
+of common morality and decency in the region, but they made no note of
+them. And, perhaps fortunately, they were not there during court week
+to witness the scenes of license that were described. This court week,
+which draws hither the whole population, is a sort of Saturnalia.
+Perhaps the worst of this is already a thing of the past; for the
+outrages a year before had reached such a pass that by a common movement
+the sale of whisky was stopped (not interdicted, but stopped), and not a
+drop of liquor could be bought in Bakersville nor within three miles of
+it.
+
+The jail at Bakersville is a very simple residence. The main building is
+brick, two stories high and about twelve feet square. The walls are so
+loosely laid up that it seems as if a colored prisoner might butt his
+head through. Attached to this is a room for the jailer. In the lower
+room is a wooden cage, made of logs bolted together and filled with
+spikes, nine feet by ten feet square and perhaps seven or eight feet
+high. Between this cage and the wall is a space of eighteen inches in
+width. It has a narrow door, and an opening through which the food is
+passed to the prisoners, and a conduit leading out of it. Of course it
+soon becomes foul, and in warm weather somewhat warm. A recent prisoner,
+who wanted more ventilation than the State allowed him, found some
+means, by a loose plank, I think, to batter a hole in the outer wall
+opposite the window in the cage, and this ragged opening, seeming to the
+jailer a good sanitary arrangement, remains. Two murderers occupied this
+apartment at the time of our visit. During the recent session of court,
+ten men had been confined in this narrow space, without room enough for
+them to lie down together. The cage in the room above, a little larger,
+had for tenant a person who was jailed for some misunderstanding about
+an account, and who was probably innocent--from the jailer's statement.
+This box is a wretched residence, month after month, while awaiting
+trial.
+
+We learned on inquiry that it is practically impossible to get a jury to
+convict of murder in this region, and that these admitted felons would
+undoubtedly escape. We even heard that juries were purchasable here,
+and that a man's success in court depended upon the length of his purse.
+This is such an unheard-of thing that we refused to credit it. When the
+Friend attempted to arouse the indignation of the Professor about the
+barbarity of this jail, the latter defended it on the ground that
+as confinement was the only punishment that murderers were likely to
+receive in this region, it was well to make their detention disagreeable
+to them. But the Friend did not like this wild-beast cage for men, and
+could only exclaim,
+
+“Oh, murder! what crimes are done in thy name.”
+
+If the comrades wished an adventure, they had a small one, more
+interesting to them than to the public, the morning they left
+Bakersville to ride to Burnsville, which sets itself up as the capital
+of Yancey. The way for the first three miles lay down a small creek and
+in a valley fairly settled, the houses, a store, and a grist-mill
+giving evidence of the new enterprise of the region. When Toe River was
+reached, there was a choice of routes. We might ford the Toe at that
+point, where the river was wide, but shallow, and the crossing safe,
+and climb over the mountain by a rough but sightly road, or descend the
+stream by a better road and ford the river at a place rather dangerous
+to those unfamiliar with it. The danger attracted us, but we promptly
+chose the hill road on account of the views, for we were weary of the
+limited valley prospects.
+
+The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a very respectable
+stream in size, and not to be trifled with after a shower. It gradually
+turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky, becomes part of the
+Tennessee system. We crossed it by a long, diagonal ford, slipping and
+sliding about on the round stones, and began the ascent of a steep hill.
+The sun beat down unmercifully, the way was stony, and the horses did
+not relish the weary climbing. The Professor, who led the way, not for
+the sake of leadership, but to be the discoverer of laden blackberry
+bushes, which began to offer occasional refreshment, discouraged by the
+inhospitable road and perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of
+things in general, cried out:
+
+  “Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,--
+   As, to behold desert a beggar born,
+   And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
+   And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
+   And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
+   And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
+   And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
+   And strength by limping sway disabled,
+   And art made tongue-tied by authority,
+   And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
+   And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
+   And captive good attending captain ill:
+   Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
+   Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.”
+
+In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of the
+inequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often put
+at disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazen assumption
+raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest merit to plod along
+in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attack a blackberry
+bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, and desirous of getting
+a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill. At the top he encountered
+a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom he entered into conversation
+and extracted all the discouragement the man had as to the road to
+Burnsville.
+
+Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively. There are few
+exhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a high
+ridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above the point
+of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when he encountered
+the blackberry bushes. Luckily the Friend soon fell in with a like
+temptation, and dismounted. He discovered something that spoiled his
+appetite for berries. His coat, strapped on behind the saddle, had
+worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book was gone. This
+was serious business. For while the Professor was the cashier, and
+traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the Friend represented
+the sub-treasury. That very morning, in response to inquiry as to the
+sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed, without counting, a roll of
+bills. These bills had now disappeared, and when the Friend turned back
+to communicate his loss, in the character of needy nothing not trimm'd
+in jollity, he had a sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.
+
+Going back on such a journey is the woefulest experience, but retrace
+our steps we must. Perhaps the pocket-book lay in the road not half a
+mile back. But not in half a mile, or a mile, was it found. Probably,
+then, the man on the sorrel horse had picked it up. But who was the man
+on the sorrel horse, and where had he gone? Probably the coat worked
+loose in crossing Toe River and the pocket-book had gone down-stream.
+The number of probabilities was infinite, and each more plausible than
+the others as it occurred to us. We inquired at every house we had
+passed on the way, we questioned every one we met. At length it began
+to seem improbable that any one would remember if he had picked up a
+pocketbook that morning. This is just the sort of thing that slips an
+untrained memory.
+
+At a post office or doctor's shop, or inn for drovers, it might be
+either or neither, where several horses were tied to the fence, and a
+group of men were tilted back in cane chairs on the veranda, we unfolded
+our misfortune and made particular inquiries for a man on a sorrel
+horse. Yes, such a man, David Thomas by name, had just ridden towards
+Bakersville. If he had found the pocket-book, we would recover it. He
+was an honest man. It might, however, fall into hands that would freeze
+to it.
+
+Upon consultation, it was the general verdict that there were men in
+the county who would keep it if they had picked it up. But the assembly
+manifested the liveliest interest in the incident. One suggested Toe
+River. Another thought it risky to drop a purse on any road. But there
+was a chorus of desire expressed that we should find it, and in this
+anxiety was exhibited a decided sensitiveness about the honor of
+Mitchell County. It seemed too bad that a stranger should go away with
+the impression that it was not safe to leave money anywhere in it. We
+felt very much obliged for this genuine sympathy, and we told them that
+if a pocket-book were lost in this way on a Connecticut road, there
+would be felt no neighborhood responsibility for it, and that nobody
+would take any interest in the incident except the man who lost, and the
+man who found.
+
+By the time the travelers pulled up at a store in Bakersville they
+had lost all expectation of recovering the missing article, and were
+discussing the investment of more money in an advertisement in the
+weekly newspaper of the capital. The Professor, whose reform sentiments
+agreed with those of the newspaper, advised it. There was a group of
+idlers, mica acquaintances of the morning, and philosophers in front of
+the store, and the Friend opened the colloquy by asking if a man named
+David Thomas had been seen in town. He was in town, had ridden in within
+an hour, and his brother, who was in the group, would go in search of
+him. The information was then given of the loss, and that the rider had
+met David Thomas just before it was discovered, on the mountain beyond
+the Toe. The news made a sensation, and by the time David Thomas
+appeared a crowd of a hundred had drawn around the horsemen eager for
+further developments. Mr. Thomas was the least excited of the group as
+he took his position on the sidewalk, conscious of the dignity of the
+occasion and that he was about to begin a duel in which both reputation
+and profit were concerned. He recollected meeting the travelers in the
+morning.
+
+The Friend said, “I discovered that I had lost my purse just after
+meeting you; it may have been dropped in Toe River, but I was told back
+here that if David Thomas had picked it up, it was as safe as if it were
+in the bank.”
+
+“What sort of a pocket-book was it?” asked Mr. Thomas.
+
+“It was of crocodile skin, or what is sold for that, very likely it is
+an imitation, and about so large indicating the size.”
+
+“What had it in it?”
+
+“Various things. Some specimens of mica; some bank checks, some money.”
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“Yes, a photograph. And, oh, something that I presume is not in another
+pocket-book in North Carolina,--in an envelope, a lock of the hair of
+George Washington, the Father of his Country.” Sensation mixed with
+incredulity. Washington's hair did seem such an odd part of an outfit
+for a journey of this kind.
+
+“How much money was in it?”
+
+“That I cannot say, exactly. I happen to remember four twenty-dollar
+United States notes, and a roll of small bills, perhaps something over a
+hundred dollars.”
+
+“Is that the pocket-book?” asked David Thomas, slowly pulling the loved
+and lost out of his trousers pocket.
+
+“It is.”
+
+“You'd be willing to take your oath on it?”
+
+“I should be delighted to.”
+
+“Well, I guess there ain't so much money in it. You can count it
+[handing it over]; there hain't been nothing taken out. I can't read,
+but my friend here counted it over, and he says there ain't as much as
+that.”
+
+Intense interest in the result of the counting. One hundred and ten
+dollars! The Friend selected one of the best engraved of the notes, and
+appealed to the crowd if they thought that was the square thing to do.
+They did so think, and David Thomas said it was abundant. And then said
+the Friend:
+
+“I'm exceedingly grateful to you besides. Washington's hair is getting
+scarce, and I did not want to lose these few hairs, gray as they are.
+You've done the honest thing, Mr. Thomas, as was expected of you. You
+might have kept the whole. But I reckon if there had been five hundred
+dollars in the book and you had kept it, it wouldn't have done you half
+as much good as giving it up has done; and your reputation as an honest
+man is worth a good deal more than this pocket-book. [The Professor
+was delighted with this sentiment, because it reminded him of a
+Sunday-school.] I shall go away with a high opinion of the honesty of
+Mitchell County.”
+
+“Oh, he lives in Yancey,” cried two or three voices. At which there was
+a great laugh.
+
+“Well, I wondered where he came from.” And the Mitchell County people
+laughed again at their own expense, and the levee broke up. It was
+exceedingly gratifying, as we spread the news of the recovered property
+that afternoon at every house on our way to the Toe, to see what
+pleasure it gave. Every man appeared to feel that the honor of the
+region had been on trial--and had stood the test.
+
+The eighteen miles to Burnsville had now to be added to the morning
+excursion, but the travelers were in high spirits, feeling the truth of
+the adage that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have
+lost at all. They decided, on reflection, to join company with the
+mail-rider, who was going to Burnsville by the shorter route, and could
+pilot them over the dangerous ford of the Toe.
+
+The mail-rider was a lean, sallow, sinewy man, mounted on a sorry sorrel
+nag, who proved, however, to have blood in her, and to be a fast walker
+and full of endurance. The mail-rider was taciturn, a natural habit
+for a man who rides alone the year round, over a lonely road, and has
+nothing whatever to think of. He had been in the war sixteen months, in
+Hugh White's regiment,--reckon you've heerd of him?
+
+“Confederate?”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“Was he on the Union or Confederate side?”
+
+“Oh, Union.”
+
+“Were you in any engagements?”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“Did you have any fighting?”
+
+“Not reg'lar.”
+
+“What did you do?”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“What did you do in Hugh White's regiment?”
+
+“Oh, just cavorted round the mountains.”
+
+“You lived on the country?”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?”
+
+“That's about so. Did n't make much difference which side was round, the
+country got cleaned out.”
+
+“Plunder seems to have been the object?”
+
+“Which?”
+
+“You got a living out of the farmers?”
+
+“You bet.”
+
+Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain
+marauder--on the right side. His attachment to the word “which”
+ prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to be only
+two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject of horses
+and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were coming to,
+and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring to excite
+our alarm. He returned to the ford from every other conversational
+excursion, and after every silence.
+
+“I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford. Folks
+is carried away there. The Toe gits up sudden. There's been right smart
+rain lately.
+
+“If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll take your
+horses across. Mebbe you're used to fording? It's a pretty bad ford
+for them as don't know it. But you'll get along if you mind your eye.
+There's some rocks you'll have to look out for. But you'll be all right
+if you follow me.”
+
+Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers of his
+ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasure
+in trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned his
+attention to a trade. “This hoss of mine,” he said, “is just the kind of
+brute-beast you want for this country. Your hosses is too heavy. How'll
+you swap for that one o' yourn?” The reiterated assertion that the
+horses were not ours, that they were hired, made little impression on
+him. All the way to Burnsville he kept referring to the subject of a
+trade. The instinct of “swap” was strong in him. When we met a yoke of
+steers, he turned round and bantered the owner for a trade. Our saddles
+took his fancy. They were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one
+of them would just suit him. He rode a small flat English pad, across
+which was flung the United States mail pouch, apparently empty. He
+dwelt upon the fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the
+advantages that would accrue to us from the exchange. He did n't care
+if they had been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army
+saddle. The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged
+to a distinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was put
+there by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, and the
+owner would not part with it for money. But the mail-rider said he did
+n't mind that. He would n't mind swapping his new saddle for my old one
+and the rubber coat and leggings. Long before we reached the ford we
+thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the risk of drowning.
+The ford was passed, in due time, with no inconvenience save that of wet
+feet, for the stream was breast high to the horses; but being broad and
+swift and full of sunken rocks and slippery stones, and the crossing
+tortuous, it is not a ford to be commended. There is a curious delusion
+that a rider has in crossing a swift broad stream. It is that he is
+rapidly drifting up-stream, while in fact the tendency of the horse is
+to go with the current.
+
+The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams
+and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.
+Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped. The travelers
+endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land. Not
+much sold, he said. “There was one sale of a big piece last year; the
+owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know what he got for
+it.”
+
+All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one room,
+chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only occasionally
+thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like a cob house,
+that served for a stable. Not much cultivation, except now and then
+a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside, occasionally a few
+apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit. Here and there was a house
+that had been half finished and then abandoned, or a shanty in which a
+couple of young married people were just beginning life. Generally the
+cabins (confirming the accuracy of the census of 1880) swarmed with
+children, and nearly all the women were thin and sickly.
+
+In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now
+and then a horse. We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer,
+sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the
+mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much pride
+as if they were bestriding fiery horses.
+
+In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the
+rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a letter
+to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with patent-medicine
+pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an evidence of
+culture that was worth noting. Mica was the rage. Every one with whom
+we talked, except the rider, had more or less the mineral fever. The
+impression was general that the mountain region of North Carolina was
+entering upon a career of wonderful mineral development, and the most
+extravagant expectations were entertained. Mica was the shining object
+of most “prospecting,” but gold was also on the cards.
+
+The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very
+pleasing. Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of 2840
+feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen. Most of
+the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabby court-house;
+around it are two small churches, a jail, an inviting tavern with a long
+veranda, and a couple of stores. On an overlooking hill is the seminary.
+Mica mining is the exciting industry, but it is agriculturally a good
+country. The tavern had recently been enlarged to meet the new demands
+for entertainment and is a roomy structure, fresh with paint and
+only partially organized. The travelers were much impressed with the
+brilliant chambers, the floors of which were painted in alternate
+stripes of vivid green and red. The proprietor, a very intelligent
+and enterprising man, who had traveled often in the North, was full
+of projects for the development of his region and foremost in its
+enterprises, and had formed a considerable collection of minerals.
+Besides, more than any one else we met, he appreciated the beauty of his
+country, and took us to a neighboring hill, where we had a view of
+Table Mountain to the east and the nearer giant Blacks. The elevation of
+Burnsville gives it a delightful summer climate, the gentle undulations
+of the country are agreeable, the views noble, the air is good, and
+it is altogether a “livable” and attractive place. With facilities of
+communication, it would be a favorite summer resort. Its nearness to the
+great mountains (the whole Black range is in Yancey County), its fine
+pure air, its opportunity for fishing and hunting, commend it to those
+in search of an interesting and restful retreat in summer.
+
+But it should be said that before the country can attract and retain
+travelers, its inhabitants must learn something about the preparation of
+food. If, for instance, the landlord's wife at Burnsville had traveled
+with her husband, her table would probably have been more on a level
+with his knowledge of the world, and it would have contained something
+that the wayfaring man, though a Northerner, could eat. We have been on
+the point several times in this journey of making the observation, but
+have been restrained by a reluctance to touch upon politics, that it was
+no wonder that a people with such a cuisine should have rebelled. The
+travelers were in a rebellious mood most of the time.
+
+The evidences of enterprise in this region were pleasant to see, but
+the observers could not but regret, after all, the intrusion of the
+money-making spirit, which is certain to destroy much of the present
+simplicity. It is as yet, to a degree, tempered by a philosophic spirit.
+The other guest of the house was a sedate, long-bearded traveler for
+some Philadelphia house, and in the evening he and the landlord fell
+into a conversation upon what Socrates calls the disadvantage of the
+pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of all noble objects, and they let
+their fancy play about Vanderbilt, who was agreed to be the richest man
+in the world, or that ever lived.
+
+“All I want,” said the long-bearded man, “is enough to be comfortable. I
+would n't have Vanderbilt's wealth if he'd give it to me.”
+
+“Nor I,” said the landlord. “Give me just enough to be comfortable.”
+ [The tourist couldn't but note that his ideas of enough to be
+comfortable had changed a good deal since he had left his little farm
+and gone into the mica business, and visited New York, and enlarged and
+painted his tavern.] “I should like to know what more Vanderbilt gets
+out of his money than I get out of mine. I heard tell of a young man who
+went to Vanderbilt to get employment. Vanderbilt finally offered to give
+the young man, if he would work for him, just what he got himself. The
+young man jumped at that--he'd be perfectly satisfied with that pay.
+And Vanderbilt said that all he got was what he could eat and wear, and
+offered to give the young man his board and clothes.”
+
+“I declare” said the long-bearded man. “That's just it. Did you ever see
+Vanderbilt's house? Neither did I, but I heard he had a vault built in
+it five feet thick, solid. He put in it two hundred millions of dollars,
+in gold. After a year, he opened it and put in twelve millions more,
+and called that a poor year. They say his house has gold shutters to the
+windows, so I've heard.”
+
+“I shouldn't wonder,” said the landlord. “I heard he had one door in
+his house cost forty thousand dollars. I don't know what it is made of,
+unless it's made of gold.”
+
+Sunday was a hot and quiet day. The stores were closed and the two
+churches also, this not being the Sunday for the itinerant preacher. The
+jail also showed no sign of life, and when we asked about it, we learned
+that it was empty, and had been for some time. No liquor is sold in the
+place, nor within at least three miles of it. It is not much use to try
+to run a jail without liquor.
+
+In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived, leading
+between them a young man whom they had arrested,--it didn't appear on
+any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed and locked up. The
+offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had not used it against
+anybody, but he had flourished it about and threatened, and the
+neighbors wouldn't stand that; they were bound to enforce the law
+against carrying concealed weapons.
+
+The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms
+with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not unwilling
+to go to jail. But a practical difficulty arose. The jail was locked
+up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the key, and no
+one could get in. It did not appear that there was any provision for
+boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it. The sheriff was sent
+for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and his captors loafed
+about the square all day, sitting on the fence, rolling on the grass,
+all of them sustained by a simple trust that the jail would be open some
+time.
+
+Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the
+jail. But we took a personal leaf out of this experience. Our Virginia
+friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had urged us
+not to venture into it without arms--take at least, they insisted, a
+revolver each. And now we had to congratulate ourselves that we had
+not done so. If we had, we should doubtless on that Sunday have been
+waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission into the Yancey
+County jail.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most
+considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and
+the capital of Buncombe County. It is distant some forty to forty-five
+miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads. The easier
+and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, the first
+stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoon when we
+were in condition to move.
+
+The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on
+Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville, cross
+Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to Asheville. He
+represented this route as shorter and infinitely more picturesque. There
+was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way. With scarcely a moment's
+reflection and while the horses were saddling, we decided to ride to Big
+Tom Wilson's. I could not at the time understand, and I cannot now, why
+the Professor consented. I should hardly dare yet confess to my
+fixed purpose to ascend Mount Mitchell. It was equally fixed in the
+Professor's mind not to do it. We had not discussed it much. But it is
+safe to say that if he had one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was
+not to climb Mitchell. “Not,” as he put it,--
+
+  “Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
+   Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,”
+
+had suggested the possibility that he could do it.
+
+But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down
+to Wilson's. When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy,
+although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy as
+anywhere--a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and never got
+off her horse. You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom's, you can go any
+way you please.
+
+Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount
+Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most characteristic
+productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman, hunter, guide. So
+we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty, broken country, crossed
+the Caney River, and followed it up a few miles to Wilson's plantation.
+There are little intervales along the river, where hay is cut and corn
+grown, but the region is not much cleared, and the stock browse about in
+the forest. Wilson is the agent of the New York owner of a tract of
+some thirteen thousand acres of forest, including the greater portion of
+Mount Mitchell, a wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and
+full of streams abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the
+rattlesnake. With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in
+watching game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle
+of the few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in
+the forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
+around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves against
+the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and lately they
+have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the fish.
+
+Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together frame
+house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a loft, and
+a spring-house in the rear. Chickens and other animals have free run
+of the premises. Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and hunter's gear
+depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen. In one room were
+three beds, in the other two, only one in the kitchen. On the porch was
+a loom, with a piece of cloth in process. The establishment had the
+air of taking care of itself. Neither Big Tom nor his wife was at home.
+Sunday seemed to be a visiting day, and the travelers had met many
+parties on horseback. Mrs. Wilson was away for a visit of a day or two.
+One of the sons, who was lounging on the veranda, was at last induced
+to put up the horses; a very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the
+visitors, was found in the kitchen, but no intelligible response could
+be got out of her. Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in
+charge, appeared. She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's
+(her brother was just married and lived up the river in the house where
+Mr. Murchison stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear
+that had been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before. She
+expected him back by sundown--by dark anyway. 'Les he'd gone after the
+bear, and then you could n't tell when he would come.
+
+It appeared that Big Tom was a thriving man in the matter of family.
+More boys appeared. Only one was married, but four had “got their time.”
+ As night approached, and no Wilson, there was a good deal of lively and
+loud conversation about the stock and the chores, in all of which the
+girl took a leading and intelligent part, showing a willingness to do
+her share, but not to have all the work put upon her. It was time to go
+down the road and hunt up the cows; the mule had disappeared and must
+be found before dark; a couple of steers hadn't turned up since the day
+before yesterday, and in the midst of the gentle contention as to whose
+business all this was, there was an alarm of cattle in the corn-patch,
+and the girl started off on a run in that direction. It was due to the
+executive ability of this small girl, after the cows had been milked and
+the mule chased and the boys properly stirred up, that we had supper.
+It was of the oilcloth, iron fork, tin spoon, bacon, hot bread and
+honey variety, distinguished, however, from all meals we had endured or
+enjoyed before by the introduction of fried eggs (as the breakfast next
+morning was by the presence of chicken), and it was served by the active
+maid with right hearty good-will and genuine hospitable intent.
+
+While it was in progress, after nine o'clock, Big Tom arrived, and, with
+a simple greeting, sat down and attacked the supper and began to tell
+about the bear. There was not much to tell except that he hadn't seen
+the bear, and that, judged by his tracks and his sloshing around, he
+must be a big one. But a trap had been set for him, and he judged it
+wouldn't be long before we had some bear meat. Big Tom Wilson, as he is
+known all over this part of the State, would not attract attention from
+his size. He is six feet and two inches tall, very spare and muscular,
+with sandy hair, long gray beard, and honest blue eyes. He has a
+reputation for great strength and endurance; a man of native simplicity
+and mild manners. He had been rather expecting us from what Mr.
+Murchison wrote; he wrote (his son had read out the letter) that Big Tom
+was to take good care of us, and anybody that Mr. Murchison sent could
+have the best he'd got.
+
+Big Tom joined us in our room after supper. This apartment, with two
+mighty feather-beds, was hung about with all manner of stuffy family
+clothes, and had in one end a vast cavern for a fire. The floor was
+uneven, and the hearthstones billowy. When the fire was lighted, the
+effect of the bright light in the cavern and the heavy shadows in the
+room was Rembrandtish. Big Tom sat with us before the fire and told bear
+stories. Talk? Why, it was not the least effort. The stream flowed on
+without a ripple. “Why, the old man,” one of the sons confided to us
+next morning, “can begin and talk right over Mount Mitchell and all the
+way back, and never make a break.” Though Big Tom had waged a lifelong
+warfare with the bears, and taken the hide off at least a hundred of
+them, I could not see that he had any vindictive feeling towards the
+varmint, but simply an insatiable love of killing him, and he regarded
+him in that half-humorous light in which the bear always appears to
+those who study him. As to deer--he couldn't tell how many of them he
+had slain. But Big Tom was a gentleman: he never killed deer for mere
+sport. With rattlesnakes, now, it was different. There was the skin of
+one hanging upon a tree by the route we would take in the morning,
+a buster, he skinned him yesterday. There was an entire absence, of
+braggadocio in Big Tom's talk, but somehow, as he went on, his backwoods
+figure loomed larger and larger in our imagination, and he seemed
+strangely familiar. At length it came over us where we had met him
+before. It was in Cooper's novels. He was the Leather-Stocking exactly.
+And yet he was an original; for he assured us that he had never read the
+Leather-Stocking Tales. What a figure, I was thinking, he must have
+made in the late war! Such a shot, such a splendid physique, such
+iron endurance! I almost dreaded to hear his tales of the havoc he had
+wrought on the Union army. Yes, he was in the war, he was sixteen months
+in the Confederate army, this Homeric man. In what rank? “Oh, I was a
+fifer!”
+
+But hunting and war did not by any means occupy the whole of Big Tom's
+life. He was also engaged in “lawin'.” He had a long-time feud with a
+neighbor about a piece of land and alleged trespass, and they'd
+been “lawin'” for years, with no definite result; but as a topic of
+conversation it was as fully illustrative of frontier life as the
+bear-fighting.
+
+Long after we had all gone to bed, we heard Big Tom's continuous voice,
+through the thin partition that separated us from the kitchen, going on
+to his little boy about the bear; every circumstance of how he tracked
+him, and what corner of the field he entered, and where he went out, and
+his probable size and age, and the prospect of his coming again; these
+were the details of real everyday life, and worthy to be dwelt on by the
+hour. The boy was never tired of pursuing them. And Big Tom was just a
+big boy, also, in his delight in it all.
+
+Perhaps it was the fascination of Big Tom, perhaps the representation
+that we were already way off the Big Ivy route, and that it would, in
+fact, save time to go over the mountain and we could ride all the way,
+that made the Professor acquiesce, with no protest worth noticing, in
+the preparations that went on, as by a natural assumption, for going
+over Mitchell. At any rate, there was an early breakfast, luncheon
+was put up, and by half-past seven we were riding up the Caney,--a
+half-cloudy day,--Big Tom swinging along on foot ahead, talking nineteen
+to the dozen. There was a delightful freshness in the air, the dew-laden
+bushes, and the smell of the forest. In half an hour we called at the
+hunting shanty of Mr. Murchison, wrote our names on the wall, according
+to custom, and regretted that we could not stay for a day in that
+retreat and try the speckled trout. Making our way through the low
+growth and bushes of the valley, we came into a fine open forest,
+watered by a noisy brook, and after an hour's easy going reached the
+serious ascent.
+
+From Wilson's to the peak of Mitchell it is seven and a half miles; we
+made it in five and a half hours. A bridle path was cut years ago, but
+it has been entirely neglected. It is badly washed, it is stony, muddy,
+and great trees have fallen across it which wholly block the way for
+horses. At these places long detours were necessary, on steep hillsides
+and through gullies, over treacherous sink-holes in the rocks, through
+quaggy places, heaps of brush, and rotten logs. Those who have ever
+attempted to get horses over such ground will not wonder at the slow
+progress we made. Before we were halfway up the ascent, we realized the
+folly of attempting it on horseback; but then to go on seemed as easy as
+to go back. The way was also exceedingly steep in places, and what with
+roots, and logs, and slippery rocks and stones, it was a desperate climb
+for the horses.
+
+What a magnificent forest! Oaks, chestnuts, Poplars, hemlocks, the
+cucumber (a species of magnolia, with a pinkish, cucumber-like cone),
+and all sorts of northern and southern growths meeting here in splendid
+array. And this gigantic forest, with little diminution in size of
+trees, continued two thirds of the way up. We marked, as we went on, the
+maple, the black walnut, the buckeye, the hickory, the locust, and the
+guide pointed out in one section the largest cherry-trees we had ever
+seen; splendid trunks, each worth a large sum if it could be got to
+market. After the great trees were left behind, we entered a garden of
+white birches, and then a plateau of swamp, thick with raspberry bushes,
+and finally the ridges, densely crowded with the funereal black balsam.
+
+Halfway up, Big Tom showed us his favorite, the biggest tree he knew. It
+was a poplar, or tulip. It stands more like a column than a tree, rising
+high into the air, with scarcely a perceptible taper, perhaps sixty,
+more likely a hundred, feet before it puts out a limb.
+
+Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet! I think it might
+be called Big Tom. It stood here, of course, a giant, when Columbus
+sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler will attach the
+name of Columbus to it.
+
+In the woods there was not much sign of animal life, scarcely the note
+of a bird, but we noticed as we rode along in the otherwise primeval
+silence a loud and continuous humming overhead, almost like the sound
+of the wind in pine tops. It was the humming of bees! The upper branches
+were alive with these industrious toilers, and Big Tom was always on the
+alert to discover and mark a bee-gum, which he could visit afterwards.
+Honey hunting is one of his occupations. Collecting spruce gum is
+another, and he was continually hacking off with his hatchet knobs of
+the translucent secretion. How rich and fragrant are these forests! The
+rhododendron was still in occasional bloom' and flowers of brilliant hue
+gleamed here and there.
+
+The struggle was more severe as we neared the summit, and the footing
+worse for the horses. Occasionally it was safest to dismount and lead
+them up slippery ascents; but this was also dangerous, for it was
+difficult to keep them from treading on our heels, in their frantic
+flounderings, in the steep, wet, narrow, brier-grown path. At one
+uncommonly pokerish place, where the wet rock sloped into a bog, the
+rider of Jack thought it prudent to dismount, but Big Tom insisted that
+Jack would “make it” all right, only give him his head. The rider gave
+him his head, and the next minute Jack's four heels were in the air, and
+he came down on his side in a flash. The rider fortunately extricated
+his leg without losing it, Jack scrambled out with a broken shoe, and
+the two limped along. It was a wonder that the horses' legs were not
+broken a dozen times.
+
+As we approached the top, Big Tom pointed out the direction, a half mile
+away, of a small pond, a little mountain tarn, overlooked by a ledge of
+rock, where Professor Mitchell lost his life. Big Tom was the guide
+that found his body. That day, as we sat on the summit, he gave in great
+detail the story, the general outline of which is well known.
+
+The first effort to measure the height of the Black Mountains was made
+in 1835, by Professor Elisha Mitchell, professor of mathematics and
+chemistry in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mr.
+Mitchell was a native of Connecticut, born in Washington, Litchfield
+County, in 1793; graduated at Yale, ordained a Presbyterian minister,
+and was for a time state surveyor; and became a professor at Chapel
+Hill in 1818. He first ascertained and published the fact that the Black
+Mountains are the highest land east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1844
+he visited the locality again. Measurements were subsequently made by
+Professor Guyot and by Senator Clingman. One of the peaks was named for
+the senator (the one next in height to Mitchell is described as Clingman
+on the state map), and a dispute arose as to whether Mitchell had really
+visited and measured the highest peak. Senator Clingman still maintains
+that he did not, and that the peak now known as Mitchell is the one that
+Clingman first described. The estimates of altitudes made by the three
+explorers named differed considerably. The height now fixed for Mount
+Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285. There are twelve
+peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if we add those
+in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are some twenty in
+this State higher than the granite giant of New Hampshire.
+
+In order to verify his statement, Professor Mitchell (then in his
+sixty-fourth year) made a third ascent in June, 1857. He was alone, and
+went up from the Swannanoa side. He did not return. No anxiety was felt
+for two or three days, as he was a good mountaineer, and it was supposed
+he had crossed the mountain and made his way out by the Caney River.
+But when several days passed without tidings of him, a search party was
+formed. Big Tom Wilson was with it. They explored the mountain in all
+directions unsuccessfully. At length Big Tom separated himself from his
+companions and took a course in accordance with his notion of that which
+would be pursued by a man lost in the clouds or the darkness. He
+soon struck the trail of the wanderer, and, following it, discovered
+Mitchell's body lying in a pool at the foot of a rocky precipice some
+thirty feet high. It was evident that Mitchell, making his way along
+the ridge in darkness or fog, had fallen off. It was the ninth (or the
+eleventh) day of his disappearance, but in the pure mountain air the
+body had suffered no change. Big Tom brought his companions to the
+place, and on consultation it was decided to leave the body undisturbed
+till Mitchell's friends could be present.
+
+There was some talk of burying him on the mountain, but the friends
+decided otherwise, and the remains, with much difficulty, were got down
+to Asheville and there interred.
+
+Some years afterwards, I believe at the instance of a society of
+scientists, it was resolved to transport the body to the summit of Mount
+Mitchell; for the tragic death of the explorer had forever settled in
+the popular mind the name of the mountain. The task was not easy. A
+road had to be cut, over which a sledge could be hauled, and the hardy
+mountaineers who undertook the removal were three days in reaching the
+summit with their burden. The remains were accompanied by a considerable
+concourse, and the last rites on the top were participated in by a
+hundred or more scientists and prominent men from different parts of
+the State. Such a strange cortege had never before broken the silence
+of this lonely wilderness, nor was ever burial more impressive than this
+wild interment above the clouds.
+
+We had been preceded in our climb all the way by a huge bear. That he
+was huge, a lunker, a monstrous old varmint, Big Tom knew by the size of
+his tracks; that he was making the ascent that morning ahead of us, Big
+Tom knew by the freshness of the trail. We might come upon him at any
+moment; he might be in the garden; was quite likely to be found in the
+raspberry patch. That we did not encounter him I am convinced was not
+the fault of Big Tom, but of the bear.
+
+After a struggle of five hours we emerged from the balsams and briers
+into a lovely open meadow, of lush clover, timothy, and blue grass. We
+unsaddled the horses and turned them loose to feed in it. The meadow
+sloped up to a belt of balsams and firs, a steep rocky knob, and
+climbing that on foot we stood upon the summit of Mitchell at one
+o'clock. We were none too soon, for already the clouds were preparing
+for what appears to be a daily storm at this season.
+
+The summit is a nearly level spot of some thirty or forty feet in extent
+either way, with a floor of rock and loose stones. The stunted balsams
+have been cut away so as to give a view. The sweep of prospect is vast,
+and we could see the whole horizon except in the direction of Roan,
+whose long bulk was enveloped in cloud. Portions of six States were in
+sight, we were told, but that is merely a geographical expression. What
+we saw, wherever we looked, was an inextricable tumble of mountains,
+without order or leading line of direction,--domes, peaks, ridges,
+endless and countless, everywhere, some in shadow, some tipped with
+shafts of sunlight, all wooded and green or black, and all in more
+softened contours than our Northern hills, but still wild, lonesome,
+terrible. Away in the southwest, lifting themselves up in a gleam of
+the western sky, the Great Smoky Mountains loomed like a frowning
+continental fortress, sullen and remote. With Clingman and Gibbs and
+Holdback peaks near at hand and apparently of equal height, Mitchell
+seemed only a part and not separate from the mighty congregation of
+giants.
+
+In the center of the stony plot on the summit lie the remains of
+Mitchell. To dig a grave in the rock was impracticable, but the loose
+stones were scooped away to the depth of a foot or so, the body was
+deposited, and the stones were replaced over it. It was the original
+intention to erect a monument, but the enterprise of the projectors of
+this royal entombment failed at that point. The grave is surrounded by
+a low wall of loose stones, to which each visitor adds one, and in the
+course of ages the cairn may grow to a good size. The explorer lies
+there without name or headstone to mark his awful resting-place. The
+mountain is his monument. He is alone with its majesty. He is there in
+the clouds, in the tempests, where the lightnings play, and thunders
+leap, amid the elemental tumult, in the occasional great calm and
+silence and the pale sunlight. It is the most majestic, the most
+lonesome grave on earth.
+
+As we sat there, awed a little by this presence, the clouds were
+gathering from various quarters and drifting towards us. We could watch
+the process of thunder-storms and the manufacture of tempests. I have
+often noticed on other high mountains how the clouds, forming like genii
+released from the earth, mount into the upper air, and in masses of torn
+fragments of mist hurry across the sky as to a rendezvous of witches.
+This was a different display. These clouds came slowly sailing from the
+distant horizon, like ships on an aerial voyage. Some were below us,
+some on our level; they were all in well-defined, distinct masses,
+molten silver on deck, below trailing rain, and attended on earth
+by gigantic shadows that moved with them. This strange fleet of
+battle-ships, drifted by the shifting currents, was maneuvering for an
+engagement. One after another, as they came into range about our peak
+of observation, they opened fire. Sharp flashes of lightning darted from
+one to the other; a jet of flame from one leaped across the interval
+and was buried in the bosom of its adversary; and at every discharge the
+boom of great guns echoed through the mountains. It was something more
+than a royal salute to the tomb of the mortal at our feet, for the
+masses of cloud were rent in the fray, at every discharge the rain
+was precipitated in increasing torrents, and soon the vast hulks were
+trailing torn fragments and wreaths of mist, like the shot-away shrouds
+and sails of ships in battle. Gradually, from this long-range practice
+with single guns and exchange of broadsides, they drifted into
+closer conflict, rushed together, and we lost sight of the individual
+combatants in the general tumult of this aerial war.
+
+We had barely twenty minutes for our observations, when it was time
+to go; and had scarcely left the peak when the clouds enveloped it. We
+hastened down under the threatening sky to the saddles and the luncheon.
+Just off from the summit, amid the rocks, is a complete arbor, or
+tunnel, of rhododendrons. This cavernous place a Western writer has made
+the scene of a desperate encounter between Big Tom and a catamount, or
+American panther, which had been caught in a trap and dragged it there,
+pursued by Wilson. It is an exceedingly graphic narrative, and is
+enlivened by the statement that Big Tom had the night before drunk up
+all the whisky of the party which had spent the night on the summit. Now
+Big Tom assured us that the whisky part of the story was an invention;
+he was not (which is true) in the habit of using it; if he ever did take
+any, it might be a drop on Mitchell; in fact, when he inquired if we
+had a flask, he remarked that a taste of it would do him good then and
+there. We regretted the lack of it in our baggage. But what inclined Big
+Tom to discredit the Western writer's story altogether was the fact that
+he never in his life had had a difficulty with a catamount, and never
+had seen one in these mountains.
+
+Our lunch was eaten in haste. Big Tom refused the chicken he had
+provided for us, and strengthened himself with slices of raw salt pork,
+which he cut from a hunk with his clasp-knife. We caught and saddled our
+horses, who were reluctant to leave the rich feed, enveloped ourselves
+in waterproofs, and got into the stony path for the descent just as the
+torrent came down. It did rain. It lightened, the thunder crashed, the
+wind howled and twisted the treetops. It was as if we were pursued by
+the avenging spirits of the mountains for our intrusion. Such a tempest
+on this height had its terrors even for our hardy guide. He preferred to
+be lower down while it was going on. The crash and reverberation of the
+thunder did not trouble us so much as the swish of the wet branches in
+our faces and the horrible road, with its mud, tripping roots, loose
+stones, and slippery rocks. Progress was slow. The horses were in
+momentary danger of breaking their legs. In the first hour there was not
+much descent. In the clouds we were passing over Clingman, Gibbs, and
+Holdback. The rain had ceased, but the mist still shut off all view, if
+any had been attainable, and bushes and paths were deluged. The descent
+was more uncomfortable than the ascent, and we were compelled a good
+deal of the way to lead the jaded horses down the slippery rocks.
+
+From the peak to the Widow Patten's, where we proposed to pass the
+night, is twelve miles, a distance we rode or scrambled down, every step
+of the road bad, in five and a half hours. Halfway down we came out upon
+a cleared place, a farm, with fruit-trees and a house in ruins. Here had
+been a summer hotel much resorted to before the war, but now abandoned.
+Above it we turned aside for the view from Elizabeth rock, named from
+the daughter of the proprietor of the hotel, who often sat here, said
+Big Tom, before she went out of this world. It is a bold rocky ledge,
+and the view from it, looking south, is unquestionably the finest, the
+most pleasing and picture-like, we found in these mountains. In the
+foreground is the deep gorge of a branch of the Swannanoa, and opposite
+is the great wall of the Blue Ridge (the Blue Ridge is the most
+capricious and inexplicable system) making off to the Blacks. The depth
+of the gorge, the sweep of the sky line, and the reposeful aspect of the
+scene to the sunny south made this view both grand and charming.
+Nature does not always put the needed dash of poetry into her extensive
+prospects.
+
+Leaving this clearing and the now neglected spring, where fashion used
+to slake its thirst, we zigzagged down the mountain-side through a
+forest of trees growing at every step larger and nobler, and at length
+struck a small stream, the North Fork of the Swannanoa, which led us to
+the first settlement. Just at night,--it was nearly seven o'clock,--we
+entered one of the most stately forests I have ever seen, and rode for
+some distance in an alley of rhododendrons that arched overhead and made
+a bower. It was like an aisle in a temple; high overhead was the somber,
+leafy roof, supported by gigantic columns. Few widows have such an
+avenue of approach to their domain as the Widow Patten has.
+
+Cheering as this outcome was from the day's struggle and storm, the
+Professor seemed sunk in a profound sadness. The auguries which the
+Friend drew from these signs of civilization of a charming inn and a
+royal supper did not lighten the melancholy of his mind. “Alas,” he
+said,
+
+  “Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
+   And make me travel forth without my cloak,
+   To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
+   Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
+   'T is not enough that through the cloud thou break,
+   To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
+   For no man well of such a salve can speak
+   That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:
+   Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief:
+   Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.”
+
+“Loss of what?” cried the Friend, as he whipped up his halting steed.
+
+“Loss of self-respect. I feel humiliated that I consented to climb this
+mountain.”
+
+“Nonsense! You'll live to thank me for it, as the best thing you ever
+did. It's over and done now, and you've got it to tell your friends.”
+
+“That's just the trouble. They'll ask me if I went up Mitchell, and I
+shall have to say I did. My character for consistency is gone. Not that
+I care much what they think, but my own self-respect is gone. I never
+believed I would do it. A man ca'nt afford to lower himself in his own
+esteem, at my time of life.”
+
+The Widow Patten's was only an advanced settlement in this narrow valley
+on the mountain-side, but a little group of buildings, a fence, and a
+gate gave it the air of a place, and it had once been better cared
+for than it is now. Few travelers pass that way, and the art of
+entertaining, if it ever existed, is fallen into desuetude. We
+unsaddled at the veranda, and sat down to review our adventure, make the
+acquaintance of the family, and hear the last story from Big Tom. The
+mountaineer, though wet, was as fresh as a daisy, and fatigue in no wise
+checked the easy, cheerful flow of his talk. He was evidently a favorite
+with his neighbors, and not unpleasantly conscious of the extent of
+his reputation. But he encountered here another social grade. The Widow
+Patten was highly connected. We were not long in discovering that she
+was an Alexander. She had been a schoolmate of Senator Vance,--“Zeb
+Vance” he still was to her,--and the senator and his wife had stayed at
+her house. I wish I could say that the supper, for which we waited
+till nine o'clock, was as “highly connected” as the landlady. It was,
+however, a supper that left its memory. We were lodged in a detached
+house, which we had to ourselves, where a roaring wood fire made amends
+for other things lacking. It was necessary to close the doors to
+keep out the wandering cows and pigs, and I am bound to say that,
+notwithstanding the voices of the night, we slept there the sleep of
+peace.
+
+In the morning a genuine surprise awaited us; it seemed impossible, but
+the breakfast was many degrees worse than the supper; and when we paid
+our bill, large for the region, we were consoled by the thought that we
+paid for the high connection as well as for the accommodations. This
+is a regular place of entertainment, and one is at liberty to praise it
+without violation of delicacy.
+
+The broken shoe of Jack required attention, and we were all the morning
+hunting a blacksmith, as we rode down the valley. Three blacksmith's
+shanties were found, and after long waiting to send for the operator it
+turned out in each case that he had no shoes, no nails, no iron to make
+either of. We made a detour of three miles to what was represented as a
+regular shop. The owner had secured the service of a colored blacksmith
+for a special job, and was, not inclined to accommodate us; he had no
+shoes, no nails. But the colored blacksmith, who appreciated the plight
+we were in, offered to make a shoe, and to crib four nails from those he
+had laid aside for a couple of mules; and after a good deal of delay,
+we were enabled to go on. The incident shows, as well as anything, the
+barrenness and shiftlessness of the region. A horseman with whom we rode
+in the morning gave us a very low estimate of the trustworthiness of
+the inhabitants. The valley is wild and very pretty all the way down to
+Colonel Long's,--twelve miles,--but the wretched-looking people along
+the way live in a wretched manner.
+
+Just before reaching Colonel Long's we forded the stream (here of
+good size), the bridge having tumbled down, and encountered a party of
+picnickers under the trees--signs of civilization; a railway station is
+not far off. Colonel Long's is a typical Southern establishment: a white
+house, or rather three houses, all of one story, built on to each other
+as beehives are set in a row, all porches and galleries. No one at home
+but the cook, a rotund, broad-faced woman, with a merry eye, whose very
+appearance suggested good cooking and hospitality; the Missis and the
+children had gone up to the river fishing; the Colonel was somewhere
+about the place; always was away when he was wanted. Guess he'd take us
+in, mighty fine man the Colonel; and she dispatched a child from a cabin
+in the rear to hunt him up. The Colonel was a great friend of her folks
+down to Greenville; they visited here. Law, no, she didn't live here.
+Was just up here spending the summer, for her health. God-forsaken lot
+of people up here, poor trash. She wouldn't stay here a day, but the
+Colonel was a friend of her folks, the firstest folks in Greenville.
+Nobody round here she could 'sociate with. She was a Presbyterian, the
+folks round here mostly Baptists and Methodists. More style about the
+Presbyterians. Married? No, she hoped not. She did n't want to support
+no husband. Got 'nuff to do to take care of herself. That her little
+girl? No; she'd only got one child, down to Greenville, just the
+prettiest boy ever was, as white as anybody. How did she what? reconcile
+this state of things with not being married and being a Presbyterian?
+Sho! she liked to carry some religion along; it was mighty handy
+occasionally, mebbe not all the time. Yes, indeed, she enjoyed her
+religion.
+
+The Colonel appeared and gave us a most cordial welcome. The fat and
+merry cook blustered around and prepared a good dinner, memorable for
+its “light” bread, the first we had seen since Cranberry Forge. The
+Colonel is in some sense a public man, having been a mail agent, and
+a Republican. He showed us photographs and engravings of Northern
+politicians, and had the air of a man who had been in Washington. This
+was a fine country for any kind of fruit,--apples, grapes, pears; it
+needed a little Northern enterprise to set things going. The travelers
+were indebted to the Colonel for a delightful noonday rest, and with
+regret declined his pressing invitation to pass the night with him.
+
+The ride down the Swannanoa to Asheville was pleasant, through a
+cultivated region, over a good road. The Swannanoa is, however, a turbid
+stream. In order to obtain the most impressive view of Asheville we
+approached it by the way of Beaucatcher Hill, a sharp elevation a mile
+west of the town. I suppose the name is a corruption of some descriptive
+French word, but it has long been a favorite resort of the frequenters
+of Asheville, and it may be traditional that it is a good place to catch
+beaux. The summit is occupied by a handsome private residence, and from
+this ridge the view, which has the merit of “bursting” upon the traveler
+as he comes over the hill, is captivating in its extent and variety. The
+pretty town of Asheville is seen to cover a number of elevations gently
+rising out of the valley, and the valley, a rich agricultural region,
+well watered and fruitful, is completely inclosed by picturesque hills,
+some of them rising to the dignity of mountains. The most conspicuous
+of these is Mount Pisgah, eighteen miles distant to the southwest, a
+pyramid of the Balsam range, 5757 feet high. Mount Pisgah, from its
+shape, is the most attractive mountain in this region.
+
+The sunset light was falling upon the splendid panorama and softening
+it. The windows of the town gleamed as if on fire. From the steep slope
+below came the mingled sounds of children shouting, cattle driven home,
+and all that hum of life that marks a thickly peopled region preparing
+for the night. It was the leisure hour of an August afternoon, and
+Asheville was in all its watering-place gayety, as we reined up at
+the Swannanoa hotel. A band was playing on the balcony. We had reached
+ice-water, barbers, waiters, civilization.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise above
+the French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sort of
+fourteenth cousin to Saratoga. It has no springs, but lying 2250
+feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pure
+atmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winter
+resort, it has acquired a watering-place air. There are Southerners who
+declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the complete circuit of
+mountains shuts out any lively movement of air. But the scenery is so
+charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roads so unusually
+passable for a Southern country, and the facilities for excursions so
+good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.
+
+Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is
+so irregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys that
+improvements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque. It
+is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts--the enterprise
+of taste and money-making struggling with the laissez faire of the
+South. The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as a conservative element;
+he has not much inclination to change his clothes or his cabin, and his
+swarming presence gives a ragged aspect to the new civilization. And
+to say the truth, the new element of Southern smartness lacks the
+trim thrift the North is familiar with; though the visitor who needs
+relaxation is not disposed to quarrel with the easy-going terms on which
+life is taken.
+
+Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulating to
+the riders from the wilderness. The Professor, who does not even pretend
+to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about the streets
+(there is but one of much consideration), immensely entertained by the
+picturesque contrasts. There was more life and amusement here in
+five minutes, he declared, than in five days of what people called
+scenery--the present rage for scenery, anyway, being only a fashion and
+a modern invention. The Friend suspected from this penchant for the city
+that the Professor must have been brought up in the country.
+
+There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Asheville
+however, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave to it
+the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places. We fancied
+that the lively movement in the streets had an air of unreality. A band
+of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa were scraping and tooting
+and twanging with a hired air, and on the opposite balcony of the Eagle
+a rival band echoed and redoubled the perfunctory joyousness. The gayety
+was contagious: the horses felt it; those that carried light burdens
+of beauty minced and pranced, the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to
+dash, the few passing equipages had an air of pleasure; and the people
+of color, the comely waitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded
+to the animation of the festive strains. In the late afternoon the
+streets were full of people, wagons, carriages, horsemen, all with a
+holiday air, dashed with African color and humor--the irresponsibility
+of the most insouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more
+comical than humorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness,
+peculiar and amusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern
+abandon and Northern wealth, though the North was little represented at
+this season.
+
+As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still more
+animated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white
+and black throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro is
+preeminently a night bird. In the hotels dancing was promised--the
+german was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors were
+groups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,--the young
+gentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing and
+hat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,
+with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engaging
+cordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic. I do not know
+what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women were not
+superior to the Southern young men, but he is always asking questions
+nobody can answer. At the Swannanoa were half a dozen bridal couples,
+readily recognizable by the perfect air they had of having been
+married a long time. How interesting such young voyagers are, and how
+interesting they are to each other! Columbus never discovered such a
+large world as they have to find out and possess each in the other.
+
+Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose. There
+was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a fine hotel has
+since been built) and we walked up to that round knob after dark. It is
+a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, and was fortified
+during the war. We found it illuminated with Chinese lanterns; and
+little tables set about under the trees, laden with cake and ice-cream,
+offered a chance to the stranger to contribute money for the benefit
+of the Presbyterian Church. I am afraid it was not a profitable
+entertainment, for the men seemed to have business elsewhere, but the
+ladies about the tables made charming groups in the lighted grove. Man
+is a stupid animal at best, or he would not make it so difficult for the
+womenkind to scrape together a little money for charitable purposes.
+But probably the women like this method of raising money better than the
+direct one.
+
+The evening gayety of the town was well distributed. When we descended
+to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected, black, white,
+and yellow, about a high platform, upon which four glaring torches
+lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read might decipher this
+legend on a standard at the back of the stage:
+
+           HAPPY JOHN.
+      ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON.
+          COME AND SEE HIM!
+
+Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a “bright” yellow girl,
+took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by his
+audience. His face was blackened to the proper color of the stage-darky,
+and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and coat striped
+longitudinally according to Punch's idea of “Uncle Sam,” the coat a
+swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a bell-crowned white
+hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in
+the audience amazingly. Mary, the “bright” woman (this is the universal
+designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl,
+who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert
+manner of all traveling sawdust performers.
+
+“Oh, yes,” exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, “Happy John was sure
+enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking when
+he's not blackened up.”
+
+Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayety and
+enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a ready, rude
+wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling of impudence,
+deference, and patronage, commenting upon them generally, administering
+advice and correction in a strain of humor that kept his hearers in a
+pleased excitement. He handled the banjo and the guitar alternately,
+and talked all the time when he was not singing. Mary (how much harder
+featured and brazen a woman is in such a position than a man of the
+same caliber!) sang, in an untutored treble, songs of sentiment, often
+risque, in solo and in company with John, but with a cold, indifferent
+air, in contrast to the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.
+
+The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched
+lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic
+refrain:
+
+  “Mary's gone away wid de coon.”
+
+All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of
+darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing, the
+laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene. The entertainment was
+quite free, with a “collection” occasionally during the performance.
+
+What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy
+John of the “nigger” side of the black man as a means of low comedy,
+and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color. They appeared to
+appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves,
+and Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and
+exaggerating the “nigger” peculiarities. I presume none of them analyzed
+the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay
+so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction
+of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this
+light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.
+
+A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the crowd
+more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the yellow girl.
+John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces into a saucer,
+and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes, called for two small
+darky volunteers from the audience to come up on the platform and devour
+them. He offered a prize of fifteen cents to the one who should first
+eat the contents of his dish, not using his hands, and hold up the
+saucer empty in token of his victory. The cake was tempting, and the
+fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple of boys in ragged shirts and
+short trousers and a suspender apiece came up shamefacedly to enter for
+the prize. Each one grasped his saucer in both hands, and with face over
+the dish awaited the word “go,” which John gave, and started off the
+contest with a banjo accompaniment. To pick up with the mouth the dry
+cake and choke it down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they
+went into the task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as
+if they loved cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the
+contestant to see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically
+encouraging, and the crowd roaring. As the combat deepened and the
+contestants strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into
+spasms of laughter. The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up
+his empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like
+a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable to
+speak. The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but said
+that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten cents to
+one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly increased
+his popularity. And then he dismissed the assembly, saying that he had
+promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not wish to run an
+opposition to the political meeting going on in the courthouse.
+
+The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that out-doors;
+a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and stuck on the
+judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of black and white
+who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and cast only a fitful
+light upon the orator, who paced back and forth and pounded the rail.
+It was to have been a joint discussion between the two presidential
+electors running in that district, but, the Republican being absent, his
+place was taken by a young man of the town. The Democratic orator took
+advantage of the absence of his opponent to describe the discussion
+of the night before, and to give a portrait of his adversary. He was
+represented as a cross between a baboon and a jackass, who would be a
+natural curiosity for Barnum. “I intend,” said the orator, “to put
+him in a cage and exhibit him about the deestrict.” This political hit
+called forth great applause. All his arguments were of this pointed
+character, and they appeared to be unanswerable. The orator appeared
+to prove that there wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who
+wasn't an office-holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not
+an office-holder. If there were any issues or principles in the canvass,
+he paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he
+never alluded to any. In another state of society, such a speech of
+personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt his
+adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and
+the exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and
+enlightened political canvassing for votes. The speaker who replied,
+opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first speaker
+had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom of
+a corner. The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted to
+speak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sort
+of thing. At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room
+(more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slow
+headway against the refished blackguardism of the evening. The german
+was still “on” at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfied
+that Asheville was a lively town.
+
+The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking or
+driving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; livery
+stables abound, and the roads are good. The Beau-catcher Hill is always
+attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of miles from
+town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in the valley,
+commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has the air of repose
+which is so seldom experienced in the location of a dwelling in America
+whence an extensive prospect is given. Or if the visitor is disinclined
+to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of the hospitable Asheville
+Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front of the hotels, and talk
+with the colonels and judges and generals and ex-members of Congress,
+the talk generally drifting to the new commercial and industrial life
+of the South, and only to politics as it affects these; and he will be
+pleased, if the conversation takes a reminiscent turn, with the lack of
+bitterness and the tone of friendliness. The negro problem is commonly
+discussed philosophically and without heat, but there is always
+discovered, underneath, the determination that the negro shall never
+again get the legislative upper hand. And the gentleman from South
+Carolina who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is
+gone, and wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in
+politics--such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would
+do yourself. This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social
+question, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much
+friendly and agreeable conversation. It is that the Southern whites
+misapprehend and make a scarecrow of “social equality.” When, during the
+war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people of the
+Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be stated
+in the form of a question: “Do you want your daughter to marry a negro?”
+ Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and there has
+come no change in the social conditions whatever. And there is no doubt
+that the social conditions would remain exactly as they are at the South
+if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which the Constitution tries
+to give him. The most sensible view of this whole question was taken by
+an intelligent colored man, whose brother was formerly a representative
+in Congress. “Social equality,” he said in effect, “is a humbug. We do
+not expect it, we do not want it. It does not exist among the blacks
+themselves. We have our own social degrees, and choose our own
+associates. We simply want the ordinary civil rights, under which we
+can live and make our way in peace and amity. This is necessary to our
+self-respect, and if we have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed
+that the race can improve. I'll tell you what I mean. My wife is a
+modest, intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat,
+and tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not
+permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered into
+one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any refined woman
+would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly dressed woman, of known
+disreputable character, whom my wife would be disgraced to know, and
+she takes any place that money will buy. It is this sort of thing that
+hurts.”
+
+We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),
+some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway that descends,
+a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap (2657 feet
+elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet). The Swannanoa Summit is the
+dividing line between the waters that flow to the Atlantic and those
+that go to the Gulf of Mexico. This fact was impressed upon us by the
+inhabitants, who derive a good deal of comfort from it. Such divides are
+always matter of local pride. Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark
+before we reached Henry's to enable us to see the road in all its loops
+and parallels as it appears on the map, but we gained a better effect.
+The hotel, when we first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light,
+was at the bottom of a well. Beside it--it was sufficiently light to see
+that--a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as
+we learned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;
+and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in the
+world. This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its feathery head
+of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the most charming
+effect. We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, but were conscious
+of being--whirled on a circular descending grade, and very soon they
+were in sight again. Again and again they disappeared and came to view,
+now on one side and now on the other, until our train seemed to be
+bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings and turnings, now through
+tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, to escape the inevitable
+attraction that was gravitating it down to the hospitable lights at the
+bottom of the well. When we climbed back up the road in the morning, we
+had an opportunity to see the marvelous engineering, but there is little
+else to see, the view being nearly always very limited.
+
+The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob, offers
+little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place, and we
+could understand why it was full of visitors when we came to the table.
+It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment in the State,
+and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers good chances for
+fishing and mountain climbing.
+
+In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refused
+to play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which clogged the
+conduit. But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time, like
+a sulky geyser, mud and foul water. When it got freedom and tolerable
+clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations, which were
+marked at short distances by the water falling off, giving the column
+the appearance of a spine. The summit, always beating the air in efforts
+to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.
+
+There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville must make.
+He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson and Transylvania
+to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, where the mountain
+system abruptly breaks down into the vast southern plain; where the
+observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, has behind him and
+before him the greatest contrast that nature can offer. He must also
+take the rail to Waynesville, and visit the much-frequented White
+Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains, and penetrate the Great
+Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and make the acquaintance of the
+remnant of Cherokee Indians living on the north slope of Cheoah
+Mountain. The Professor could have made it a matter of personal merit
+that he escaped all these encounters with wild and picturesque nature,
+if his horse had not been too disabled for such long jaunts. It is only
+necessary, however, to explain to the public that the travelers are not
+gormandizers of scenery, and were willing to leave some portions of the
+State to the curiosity of future excursionists.
+
+But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it could not
+be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of Asheville. In
+the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us to make the trip,
+it is the finest piece of scenery it this region. We were brought up on
+the precept “get the best,” and it was with high anticipations that we
+set out about eleven o'clock one warm, foggy morning. We followed a very
+good road through a broken, pleasant country, gradually growing wilder
+and less cultivated. There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills,
+and occasionally a shower swept across our path. The conspicuous object
+toward which we traveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at
+the beginning of the Gap.
+
+At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner. Her
+house, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquely situated
+on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view. The house
+is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two sides. If
+one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air and fair
+entertainment, this could be commended. It is an excellent fruit region;
+apples especially are sound and of good flavor. That may be said of all
+this part of the State. The climate is adapted to apples, as the hilly
+part of New England is. I fancy the fruit ripens slowly, as it does in
+New England, and is not subject to quick decay like much of that grown
+in the West. But the grape also can be grown in all this mountain
+region. Nothing but lack of enterprise prevents any farmer from enjoying
+abundance of fruit. The industry carried on at the moment at the Widow
+Sherrill's was the artificial drying of apples for the market. The
+apples are pared, cored, and sliced in spirals, by machinery, and
+dried on tin sheets in a patented machine. The industry appears to be a
+profitable one hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the
+aid of invention.
+
+While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
+“Jane” and “Eliza,” the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
+never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
+photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
+stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union. Madame Sherrill, who carries
+on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of strong and
+liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort in the churches
+in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a discouraging account of the
+unvital piety of the region.
+
+The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles, is
+rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque, following
+the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it, but roaring,
+rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and then tumbling
+down in rapids. The noisy stream made the ride animated, and an
+occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a schoolhouse, a store
+with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the hitching rails, gave the
+Professor opportunity for remarks upon the value of life under such
+circumstances.
+
+The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to
+the uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices. The
+inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally
+wooded. I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country
+where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common. It is
+only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable. About
+a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees, of the
+famous waterfall. From the top of the high ridge on the right, a nearly
+perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks and is lost in the
+forest. We could see nearly the whole of it, at a great height above us,
+on the opposite side of the river, and it would require an hour's stiff
+climb to reach its foot. From where we viewed it, it seemed a slender
+and not very important, but certainly a very beautiful cascade, a band
+of silver in the mass of green foliage. The fall is said to be 1400
+feet. Our colonel insists that it is a thousand. It may be, but the
+valley where we stood is at least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could
+not believe that the ridge over which the water pours is much higher
+than 3000 feet, and the length of the fall certainly did not appear
+to be a quarter of the height of the mountain from our point of
+observation. But we had no desire to belittle this pretty cascade,
+especially when we found that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated
+from the 1400 as a personal grievance. Mr. Logan once performed the
+functions of local judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around
+the premises now in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact
+that his wife is postmistress. His house of entertainment is at the
+bottom of the valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a
+long stay, although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
+
+It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
+which we had been for a month. The Judge himself was reticent, as became
+a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster prospectus,
+sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and Logan, in which
+the Professor read, with shaking knees, this sentence: “Sure to be the
+greatest and hottest [campaign and civil battle] ever known in this
+world. The thunder of the supreme struggle and its reverberations will
+shake the continents for months, and will be felt from Pole to Pole.”
+
+For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in. There
+was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
+mosquitoes besides. Had there not been other travelers staying here, we
+should have felt still more uneasy. The house faced Bald Mountain, 4000
+feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some years ago, and
+was visited by newspaper reporters. This is, in fact, the famous Shaking
+Mountain. For a long time it had a habit of trembling, as if in an
+earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion very different from that
+produced by an earthquake. The only good that came of it was that it
+frightened all the “moonshiners,” and caused them to join the church. It
+is not reported what became of the church afterwards. It is believed now
+that the trembling was caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the
+mountain, which slowly parted asunder. Bald Mountain is the scene of
+Mrs. Burnett's delightful story of “Louisiana,” and of the play of
+“Esmeralda.” A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder
+is asked to see resembles a hut, and which is called “Esmeralda's
+Cottage.” But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did
+not discover any woman in the region who remotely answers to her
+description.
+
+In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and followed
+up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which the Judge
+said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless. These pools, not
+round, but on one side circular excavations, some twenty feet across,
+worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good specimens, and perhaps
+remarkable specimens, of “pot-holes.” They are, however, regarded here
+as one of the wonders of the world. On the way to them we saw beautiful
+wild trumpet-creepers in blossom, festooning the trees.
+
+The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
+branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
+Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through the
+channel of the Santee. It is not to be confounded with the French Broad,
+which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs northward past
+Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through the Warm Springs
+Gap in the Bald Mountains. As the French claimed ownership of all the
+affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was called the French Broad.
+
+It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
+the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
+Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher than
+Asheville. It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of leisure to
+the scattered population; at every store and mill was a congregation of
+loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and mules to the fences,
+and had the professional air of the idler and gossip the world over. The
+vehicles met on the road were a variety of the prairie schooner, long
+wagons with a top of hoops over which is stretched a cotton cloth. The
+wagons are without seats, and the canvas is too low to admit of sitting
+upright, if there were. The occupants crawl in at either end, sit or
+lie on the bottom of the wagon, and jolt along in shiftless
+uncomfortableness.
+
+Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
+journey. Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the route
+on horseback is impracticable. The distance to the Warm Springs is
+thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the road is clear,
+as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the railway, and the
+valley is something more than river and rails. But below Marshall the
+valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good portion of the way in
+the old stage road. One can walk the track, but to ride a horse over its
+sleepers and culverts and occasional bridges, and dodge the trains,
+is neither safe nor agreeable. We sent our horses round--the messenger
+taking the risk of leading them, between trains, over the last six or
+eight miles,--and took the train.
+
+The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
+all the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low,
+monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a
+pretty turn and “reach,” with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on
+either side. The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of rocks,
+with an occasional little island covered with low bushes. The rock seems
+to be a clay formation, rotten and colored. As we approach Warm Springs
+the scenery becomes a little bolder, and we emerge into the open space
+about the Springs through a narrower defile, guarded by rocks that are
+really picturesque in color and splintered decay, one of them being
+known, of course, as the “Lover's Leap,” a name common in every part
+of the modern or ancient world where there is a settlement near a
+precipice, with always the same legend attached to it.
+
+There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel--since burned
+and rebuilt--(which may be briefly described as a palatial shanty)
+stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep, rapid, turbid
+stream. A bridge once connected it with the road on the opposite bank,
+but it was carried away three or four years ago, and its ragged butments
+stand as a monument of procrastination, while the stream is crossed by
+means of a flatboat and a cable. In front of the hotel, on the slight
+slope to the river, is a meager grove of locusts. The famous spring,
+close to-the stream, is marked only by a rough box of wood and an
+iron pipe, and the water, which has a temperature of about one hundred
+degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house below, in which is a pool for
+bathing. The bath is very agreeable, the tepid water being singularly
+soft and pleasant. It has a slightly sulphurous taste. Its good effects
+are much certified. The grounds, which might be very pretty with care,
+are ill-kept and slatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was
+left to the easy-going nature of the servants. The main house is
+of brick, with verandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade
+of thirteen huge brick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen
+States,--a relic of post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the
+resort of Southern fashion and romance. These columns have stood through
+one fire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of
+the structure. The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, with
+galleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly seven hundred
+feet long. In a rear building is a vast, barrack-like dining-room, with
+a noble ball-room above, for dancing is the important occupation of
+visitors.
+
+The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has a
+picturesqueness of its own. Even the ugly little brick structure near
+the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage. No doubt
+we liked the place better than if it had been smart, and enjoyed the
+neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life is taken there.
+There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowls tiptoeing about the
+verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor was a sort of guarantee
+that we should meet him later on in the dining-room. There was nothing
+incongruous in the presence of pigs, turkeys, and chickens on the
+grounds; they went along with the good-natured negro-service and the
+general hospitality; and we had a mental rest in the thought that all
+the gates would have been off the hinges, if there had been any gates.
+The guests were very well treated indeed, and were put under no sort of
+restraint by discipline. The long colonnade made an admirable promenade
+and lounging-place and point of observation. It was interesting to watch
+the groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, the
+mounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study the colors
+on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neat cottage and
+flower-garden. The type of people was very pleasantly Southern. Colonels
+and politicians stand in groups and tell stories, which are followed by
+explosions of laughter; retire occasionally into the saloon, and come
+forth reminded of more stories, and all lift their hats elaborately and
+suspend the narratives when a lady goes past. A company of soldiers from
+Richmond had pitched its tents near the hotel, and in the evening the
+ball-room was enlivened with uniforms. Among the graceful dancers--and
+every one danced well, and with spirit was pointed out the young widow
+of a son of Andrew Johnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village.
+But the Professor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted
+whether here it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the
+owner of this region than to be connected with a President of the United
+States.
+
+A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broad and
+the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of in order to
+appreciate either. This was the great highway of trade and travel. At
+certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession of herds of
+cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of trains of big
+wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered by the Tennessee.
+Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters in coach and four,
+with a great retinue of household servants, and kept up for months that
+unique social life, a mixture of courtly ceremony and entire freedom,
+the civilization which had the drawing-room at one end and the
+negro-quarters at the other,--which has passed away. It was a
+continuation into our own restless era of the manners and the literature
+of George the Third, with the accompanying humor and happy-go-lucky
+decadence of the negro slaves. On our way down we saw on the river-bank,
+under the trees, the old hostelry, Alexander's, still in decay,--an
+attractive tavern, that was formerly one of the notable stopping-places
+on the river. Master, and fine lady, and obsequious, larking darky,
+and lumbering coach, and throng of pompous and gay life, have all
+disappeared. There was no room in this valley for the old institutions
+and for the iron track.
+
+  “When in the chronicle of wasted time
+   I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
+   And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
+   In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
+   We, which now behold these present days,
+   Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.”
+
+This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
+in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
+French Broad.
+
+The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
+idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone
+who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs
+a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as
+heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not
+its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed,
+sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and
+subjected to acids, and at the end of the process it is as white and
+fine as the best bolted flour. This heavy adulterant is shipped to the
+North in large quantities,--the manager said he had recently an order
+for a hundred thousand dollars' worth of it. What is the use of this
+powder? Well, it is of use to the dealer who sells white lead for paint,
+to increase the weight of the lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that
+it is mixed with powdered sugar. The industry is profitable to those
+engaged in it.
+
+It was impossible to get much information about our route into
+Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross
+Paint Mountain. Late one morning,--a late start is inevitable
+here,--accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope
+ferry, and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream
+and tree-shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water and
+overhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side of the
+river), to Paint Rock,--six miles. This Paint Rock is a naked precipice
+by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a large local
+reputation. It is said that its face shows painting done by the Indians,
+and hieroglyphics which nobody can read. On this bold, crumbling cliff,
+innumerable visitors have written their names. We stared at it a good
+while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics, but could see nothing
+except iron stains. Round the corner is a farmhouse and place of call
+for visitors, a neat cottage, with a display of shells and minerals and
+flower-pots; and here we turned north crossed the little stream called
+Paint River, the only clear water we had seen in a month, passed into
+the State of Tennessee, and by a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain.
+The open forest road, with the murmur of the stream below, was
+delightfully exhilarating, and as we rose the prospect opened,--the
+lovely valley below, Bald Mountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains
+rising as we came over the ridge.
+
+Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men, knew
+anything of the route, or could give us any information of the country
+beyond. But as we descended in Tennessee the country and the farms
+decidedly improved,--apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.
+
+A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed
+to receive hospitality. We passed by an old farm building to a new
+two-storied, gayly painted house on a hill. We were deceived by
+appearances. The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to
+offer us except some buttermilk. Why should anybody be obliged to feed
+roving strangers? As to our horses, the young woman with a baby in her
+arms declared,
+
+“We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get
+something at the other house.”
+
+“Roughness,” we found out at the other house, meant hay in this region.
+We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and for our own
+dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a few sonnets.
+On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve miles farther,
+through a rolling, good farming country, offering little for comment,
+in search of a night's lodging with one of the brothers Snap. But one
+brother declined our company on the plea that his wife was sick, and the
+other because his wife lived in Greenville, and we found ourselves
+as dusk came on without shelter in a tavernless land. Between the two
+refusals we enjoyed the most picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at
+the crossing of Camp Creek, a swift little stream, that swirled round
+under the ledge of bold rocks before the ford. This we learned was a
+favorite camp-meeting ground. Mary was calling the cattle home at the
+farm of the second Snap. It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and
+we were inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the
+cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
+
+It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this
+pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and
+intelligent farming. Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with plenty
+of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity), who owes
+his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas. He was a Unionist
+during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his county (Greene) has
+been Republican. We had been riding all the afternoon through good land,
+and encountering a better class of farmers. Peach-trees abounded (though
+this was an off year for fruit), and apples and grapes throve. It is
+a land of honey and of milk. The persimmon flourishes; and,
+sign of abundance generally, we believe, great flocks of
+turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the high air--hovered about.
+This country was ravaged during the war by Unionists and Confederates
+alternately, the impartial patriots as they passed scooping in corn,
+bacon, and good horses, leaving the farmers little to live on. Mr.
+Alexander's farm cost him forty dollars an acre, and yields good crops
+of wheat and maize. This was the first house on our journey where at
+breakfast we had grace before meat, though there had been many tables
+that needed it more. From the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in
+sight and not distant; and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which
+he was accustomed to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the
+summer and enjoy a real primitive woods life.
+
+Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
+fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling, rather
+unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt ranges,
+which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed the Nollechucky
+River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle girth, broad,
+rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and came to the
+little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a hospitable
+old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat of the hot
+day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one pretty girl in
+a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the currently received
+notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The big parlor, with its
+photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell and mineral, a piano and
+a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of mahogany, recalled rural New
+England. Perhaps these refinements are due to the Washington College (a
+school for both sexes), which is near. We noted at the tables in this
+region a singular use of the word fruit. When we were asked, Will you
+have some of the fruit? and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
+
+Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the oldest
+town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity, set
+picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight. People from
+further South find this an agreeable summering place, and a fair hotel,
+with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want company. The Warren
+Institute for negroes has been flourishing here ever since the war.
+
+A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
+forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and were
+entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous and
+hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in the morning
+wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to Jonesboro, and
+Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits before us as we
+lounged on the porch before dinner.
+
+It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
+withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she excelled
+any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she was by her own
+confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age till she has passed
+this point) and the testimony of others a hundred years old. But age
+had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor the limberness of her
+tongue, nor her shrewd good sense. She talked freely about the want of
+decency and morality in the young colored folks of the present day. It
+was n't so when she was a girl. Long, long time ago, she and her husband
+had been sold at sheriff's sale and separated, and she never had another
+husband. Not that she blamed her master so much he could n't help it;
+he got in debt. And she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the
+danger they are in. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he
+can borrow money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and
+pilin' up the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a
+ladder to get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and
+the man has to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her life
+over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now. The
+thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and kept her
+eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she had seen some fence
+up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr. Devault that she
+didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as white folks was much
+better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes, slavery was pretty bad--she had
+seen five hundred niggers in handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to
+be sent South.
+
+About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest, worth
+a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the large beech (six
+and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which Daniel Boone
+shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. He himself cut
+an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it is still
+distinctly legible:
+
+   D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.
+
+This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all parts
+of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for any more
+records of such devotion. The grove is ancient looking, the trees are
+gnarled and moss-grown. Hundreds of people go there, and the trees are
+carved all over with their immortal names.
+
+A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip of
+forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other adventure than
+the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road, with steam
+up, clattering along. The devil himself could not invent any machine
+calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this. Jack took one look
+and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his rider's hat but did not
+succeed in getting rid of his burden or knocking down any trees.
+
+Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, with
+some three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by an
+ex-stage-driver. The village, which lies on the Holston, has no
+drinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a well
+nor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crosses the
+river to a spring on the other side. A considerable part of the labor
+of the town is fetching water over the bridge. On a hill overlooking the
+village is a big, pretentious brick house, with a tower, the furniture
+of which is an object of wonder to those who have seen it. It belonged
+to the late Mrs. Stover, daughter of Andrew Johnson. The whole family of
+the ex-President have departed this world, but his memory is still green
+in this region, where he was almost worshiped--so the people say in
+speaking of him.
+
+Forlorn as was the hotel at Union, the landlord's daughters were
+beginning to draw the lines in rural refinement. One of them had been at
+school in Abingdon. Another, a mature young lady of fifteen, who waited
+on the table, in the leisure after supper asked the Friend for a light
+for her cigarette, which she had deftly rolled.
+
+“Why do you smoke?”
+
+“So as I shan't get into the habit of dipping. Do you think dipping is
+nice?”
+
+The traveler was compelled to say that he did not, though he had seen a
+good deal of it wherever he had been.
+
+“All the girls dips round here. But me and my sisters rather smoke than
+get in a habit of dipping.”
+
+To the observation that Union seemed to be a dull place:
+
+“Well, there's gay times here in the winter--dancing. Like to dance?
+Well, I should say! Last winter I went over to Blountsville to a dance
+in the court-house; there was a trial between Union and Blountsville for
+the best dancing. You bet I brought back the cake and the blue ribbon.”
+
+The country was becoming too sophisticated, and the travelers hastened
+to the end of their journey. The next morning Bristol, at first over a
+hilly country with magnificent oak-trees,--happily not girdled, as these
+stately monarchs were often seen along the roads in North Carolina,--and
+then up Beaver Creek, a turbid stream, turning some mills. When a closed
+woolen factory was pointed out to the Professor (who was still traveling
+for Reform), as the result of the agitation in Congress, he said, Yes,
+the effect of agitation was evident in all the decayed dams and ancient
+abandoned mills we had seen in the past month.
+
+Bristol is mainly one long street, with some good stores, but generally
+shabby, and on this hot morning sleepy. One side of the street is in
+Tennessee, the other in Virginia. How handy for fighting this would have
+been in the war, if Tennessee had gone out and Virginia stayed in. At
+the hotel--may a kind Providence wake it up to its responsibilities--we
+had the pleasure of reading one of those facetious handbills which the
+great railway companies of the West scatter about, the serious humor of
+which is so pleasing to our English friends. This one was issued by the
+accredited agents of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway, and dated April
+1, 1984. One sentence will suffice:
+
+“Allow us to thank our old traveling friends for the many favors in our
+line, and if you are going on your bridal trip, or to see your girl out
+West, drop in at the general office of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway
+and we will fix you up in Queen Anne style. Passengers for Dakota,
+Montana, or the Northwest will have an overcoat and sealskin cap thrown
+in with all tickets sold on or after the above date.”
+
+The great republic cannot yet take itself seriously. Let us hope the
+humors of it will last another generation. Meditating on this, we hailed
+at sundown the spires of Abingdon, and regretted the end of a journey
+that seems to have been undertaken for no purpose.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On Horseback, by Charles Dudley Warner
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