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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart
+
+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: Our Southern Highlanders
+
+Author: Horace Kephart
+
+Release Date: March 20, 2010 [EBook #31709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter, who discovered the body of Prof. Elisha
+Mitchell where he perished near the summit of the Peak that afterward
+was named in his honor]
+
+
+
+
+  OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+  BY
+
+  HORACE KEPHART
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK OF CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT," "CAMP
+  COOKERY," "SPORTING FIREARMS," ETC.
+
+
+  _Illustrated_
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  MCMXVI
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+
+  OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+
+  All rights reserved
+
+
+  First Printing, November 1913
+  Second Printing, December 1913
+  Third Printing, January 1914
+  Fourth Printing, April 1914
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+   I. "SOMETHING HIDDEN; GO AND FIND IT"       11
+
+  II. "THE BACK OF BEYOND"                     28
+
+ III. THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS                50
+
+  IV. A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES               75
+
+   V. MOONSHINE LAND                          110
+
+  VI. WAYS THAT ARE DARK                      126
+
+ VII. A LEAF FROM THE PAST                    145
+
+VIII. "BLOCKADERS" AND "THE REVENUE"          167
+
+  IX. THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE            191
+
+   X. THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS                 212
+
+  XI. THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT                  234
+
+ XII. HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE          256
+
+XIII. THE MOUNTAIN DIALECT                    276
+
+ XIV. THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS               305
+
+  XV. THE BLOOD-FEUD                          327
+
+ XVI. WHO ARE THE MOUNTAINEERS?               354
+
+XVII. "WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES"                378
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter              _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                FACING PAGE
+
+Map of Appalachia                                         8
+
+A family of pioneers in the twentieth century            16
+
+"The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs"     24
+
+At the Post-Office                                       32
+
+The author in camp in the Big Smokies                    40
+
+"Bob"                                                    48
+
+"There are few jutting crags"                            56
+
+The bears' home--laurel and rhododendron                 64
+
+The old copper mine                                      72
+
+"What soldiers these fellows would make under
+leadership of some backwoods Napoleon"                   80
+
+"By and by up they came, carrying the bear on
+the trimmed sapling"                                     88
+
+Skinning a frozen bear                                   96
+
+"... Powerful steep and laurely...."                    104
+
+Mountain still-house hidden in the laurel               112
+
+Moonshine still, side view                              120
+
+Moonshine still in full operation                       128
+
+Corn mill and blacksmith forge                          136
+
+A tub-mill                                              152
+
+Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel
+Creek in which the author lived alone for three years   160
+
+A mountain home                                         176
+
+Many of the homes have but one window                   192
+
+The schoolhouse                                         208
+
+"At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a
+worn and faded look"                                    216
+
+The misty veil of falling water                         232
+
+An average mountain cabin                               240
+
+A bee-gum                                               248
+
+Let the women do the work                               264
+
+"Till the sky-line blends with the sky itself"          288
+
+Whitewater Falls                                        312
+
+The road follows the creek--there may be a dozen
+fords in a mile                                         320
+
+"Dense forest and luxuriant undergrowth"                336
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: APPALACHIA
+
+The wavy black line shows the outer boundaries of Southern Appalachian
+Region. The shaded portion shows the chief areas covered by high
+mountains, 3,000 to 6,700 feet above sea-level.]
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"SOMETHING HIDDEN; GO AND FIND IT"
+
+
+In one of Poe's minor tales, written in 1845, there is a vague allusion
+to wild mountains in western Virginia "tenanted by fierce and uncouth
+races of men." This, so far as I know, was the first reference in
+literature to our Southern mountaineers, and it stood as their only
+characterization until Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") began
+her stories of the Cumberland hills.
+
+Time and retouching have done little to soften our Highlander's
+portrait. Among reading people generally, South as well as North, to
+name him is to conjure up a tall, slouching figure in homespun, who
+carries a rifle as habitually as he does his hat, and who may tilt its
+muzzle toward a stranger before addressing him, the form of salutation
+being:
+
+"Stop thar! Whut's you-unses name? Whar's you-uns a-goin' ter?"
+
+Let us admit that there is just enough truth in this caricature to give
+it a point that will stick. Our typical mountaineer is lank, he is
+always unkempt, he is fond of toting a gun on his shoulder, and his
+curiosity about a stranger's name and business is promptly, though
+politely, outspoken. For the rest, he is a man of mystery. The great
+world outside his mountains knows almost as little about him as he does
+of it; and that is little indeed. News in order to reach him must be of
+such widespread interest as fairly to fall from heaven; correspondingly,
+scarce any incidents of mountain life will leak out unless they be of
+sensational nature, such as the shooting of a revenue officer in
+Carolina, the massacre of a Virginia court, or the outbreak of another
+feud in "bloody Breathitt." And so, from the grim sameness of such
+reports, the world infers that battle, murder, and sudden death are
+commonplaces in Appalachia.
+
+To be sure, in Miss Murfree's novels, as in those of John Fox, Jr., and
+of Alice MacGowan, we do meet characters more genial than feudists and
+illicit distillers; none the less, when we have closed the book, who is
+it that stands out clearest as type and pattern of the mountaineer? Is
+it not he of the long rifle and peremptory challenge? And whether this
+be because he gets most of the limelight, or because we have a furtive
+liking for that sort of thing (on paper), or whether the armed outlaw be
+indeed a genuine protagonist--in any case, the Appalachian people remain
+in public estimation to-day, as Poe judged them, an uncouth and fierce
+race of men, inhabiting a wild mountain region little known.
+
+The Southern highlands themselves are a mysterious realm. When I
+prepared, eight years ago, for my first sojourn in the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which form the master chain of the Appalachian system, I
+could find in no library a guide to that region. The most diligent
+research failed to discover so much as a magazine article, written
+within this generation, that described the land and its people. Nay,
+there was not even a novel or a story that showed intimate local
+knowledge. Had I been going to Teneriffe or Timbuctu, the libraries
+would have furnished information a-plenty; but about this housetop of
+eastern America they were strangely silent; it was _terra incognita_.
+
+On the map I could see that the Southern Appalachians cover an area much
+larger than New England, and that they are nearer the center of our
+population than any other mountains that deserve the name. Why, then, so
+little known? Quaintly there came to mind those lines familiar to my
+boyhood: "Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain;
+and see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein,
+whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that
+they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that
+they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strongholds; and what the land
+is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not."
+
+In that dustiest room of a great library where "pub. docs." are stored,
+I unearthed a government report on forestry that gave, at last, a clear
+idea of the lay of the land. And here was news. We are wont to think of
+the South as a low country with sultry climate; yet its mountain chains
+stretch uninterruptedly southwestward from Virginia to Alabama, 650
+miles in an air line. They spread over parts of eight contiguous States,
+and cover an area somewhat larger than England and Scotland, or about
+the same as that of the Alps. In short, the greatest mountain system of
+eastern America is massed in our Southland. In its upper zone one sleeps
+under blankets the year round.
+
+In all the region north of Virginia and east of the Black Hills of
+Dakota there is but one summit (Mount Washington, in New Hampshire) that
+reaches 6,000 feet above sea level, and there are only a dozen others
+that exceed 5,000 feet. By contrast, south of the Potomac there are
+forty-six peaks, and forty-one miles of dividing ridges, that rise above
+6,000 feet, besides 288 mountains and some 300 miles of divide that
+stand more than 5,000 feet above the sea. In North Carolina alone the
+mountains cover 6,000 square miles, with an _average_ elevation of 2,700
+feet, and with twenty-one peaks that overtop Mount Washington.
+
+I repeated to myself: "Why, then, so little known?" The Alps and the
+Rockies, the Pyrennees and the Harz are more familiar to the American
+people, in print and picture, if not by actual visit, than are the
+Black, the Balsam, and the Great Smoky Mountains. It is true that summer
+tourists flock to Asheville and Toxaway, Linville and Highlands, passing
+their time at modern hotels and motoring along a few macadamed roads,
+but what do they see of the billowy wilderness that conceals most of the
+native homes? Glimpses from afar. What do they learn of the real
+mountaineer? Hearsay. For, mark you, nine-tenths of the Appalachian
+population are a sequestered folk. The typical, the average mountain
+man prefers his native hills and his primitive ancient ways.
+
+We read more and talk more about the Filipinos, see more of the Chinese
+and the Syrians, than of these three million next-door Americans who are
+of colonial ancestry and mostly of British stock. New York, we say, is a
+cosmopolitan city; more Irish than in Dublin, more Germans than in
+Munich, more Italians than in Rome, more Jews than in nine Jerusalems;
+but how many New Yorkers ever saw a Southern mountaineer? I am sure that
+a party of hillsmen fresh from the back settlements of the Unakas, if
+dropped on the streets of any large city in the Union, and left to their
+own guidance, would stir up more comment (and probably more trouble)
+than would a similar body of whites from any other quarter of the earth;
+and yet this same odd people is more purely bred from old American stock
+than any other element of our population that occupies, by itself, so
+great a territory.
+
+The mountaineers of the South are marked apart from all other folks by
+dialect, by customs, by character, by self-conscious isolation. So true
+is this that they call all outsiders "furriners." It matters not whether
+your descent be from Puritan or Cavalier, whether you come from
+Boston or Chicago, Savannah or New Orleans, in the mountains you are a
+"furriner." A traveler, puzzled and scandalized at this, asked a native
+of the Cumberlands what he would call a "Dutchman or a Dago." The fellow
+studied a bit and then replied: "Them's the outlandish."
+
+
+[Illustration: A Family of Pioneers in the Twentieth Century]
+
+
+Foreigner, outlander, it is all one; we are "different," we are "quar,"
+to the mountaineer. He knows he is an American; but his conception of
+the metes and bounds of America is vague to the vanishing point. As for
+countries over-sea--well, when a celebrated Nebraskan returned from his
+trip around the globe, one of my backwoods neighbors proudly informed
+me: "I see they give Bryan a lot of receptions when he kem back from the
+other world."
+
+No one can understand the attitude of our highlanders toward the rest of
+the earth until he realizes their amazing isolation from all that lies
+beyond the blue, hazy skyline of their mountains. Conceive a shipload of
+emigrants cast away on some unknown island, far from the regular track
+of vessels, and left there for five or six generations, unaided and
+untroubled by the growth of civilization. Among the descendants of such
+a company we would expect to find customs and ideas unaltered from the
+time of their forefathers. And that is just what we do find to-day among
+our castaways in the sea of mountains. Time has lingered in Appalachia.
+The mountain folk still live in the eighteenth century. The progress of
+mankind from that age to this is no heritage of theirs.
+
+Our backwoodsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, of their connecting
+chains, and of the outlying Cumberlands, are still thinking essentially
+the same thoughts, still living in much the same fashion, as did their
+ancestors in the days of Daniel Boone. Nor is this their fault. They are
+a people of keen intelligence and strong initiative when they can see
+anything to win. But, as President Frost says, they have been
+"beleaguered by nature." They are belated--ghettoed in the midst of a
+civilization that is as aloof from them as if it existed only on another
+planet. And so, in order to be fair and just with these, our backward
+kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize ourselves to the extent of
+_going back_ and getting an eighteenth century point of view.
+
+But, first, how comes it that the mountain folk have been so long
+detached from the life and movement of their times? Why are they so
+foreign to present-day Americanism that they innocently call all the
+rest of us foreigners?
+
+The answer lies on the map. They are creatures of environment, enmeshed
+in a labyrinth that has deflected and repelled the march of our nation
+for three hundred years.
+
+In 1728, when Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, was running the
+boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, he finally was
+repulsed by parallel chains of savage, unpeopled mountains that rose
+tier beyond tier to the westward, everywhere densely forested, and
+matted into jungle by laurel and other undergrowth. In his _Journal_,
+writing in the quaint, old-fashioned way, he said: "Our country has now
+been inhabited more than 130 years by the English, and still we hardly
+know anything of the Appalachian Mountains, that are nowhere above 250
+miles from the sea. Whereas the French, who are later comers, have
+rang'd from Quebec Southward as far as the Mouth of Mississippi, in the
+bay of Mexico, and to the West almost as far as California, which is
+either way above 2,000 miles."
+
+A hundred and thirty years later, the same thing could have been said of
+these same mountains; for the "fierce and uncouth races of men" that Poe
+faintly heard of remained practically undiscovered until they startled
+the nation on the scene of our Civil War, by sending 180,000 of their
+riflemen into the Union Army.
+
+If a corps of surveyors to-day should be engaged to run a line due west
+from eastern Virginia to the Blue Grass of Kentucky, they would have an
+arduous task. Let us suppose that they start from near Richmond and
+proceed along the line of 37� 50'. The Blue Ridge is not especially
+difficult: only eight transverse ridges to climb up and down in fourteen
+miles, and none of them more than 2,000 feet high from bottom to top.
+Then, thirteen miles across the lower end of The Valley, a curious
+formation begins.
+
+As a foretaste, in the three and a half miles crossing Little House and
+Big House mountains, one ascends 2,200 feet, descends 1,400, climbs
+again 1,600, and goes down 2,000 feet on the far side. Beyond lie steep
+and narrow ridges athwart the way, paralleling each other like waves at
+sea. Ten distinct mountain chains are scaled and descended in the next
+forty miles. There are few "leads" rising gradually to their crests.
+Each and every one of these ridges is a Chinese wall magnified to
+altitudes of from a thousand to two thousand feet, and covered with
+thicket. The hollows between them are merely deep troughs.
+
+In the next thirty miles we come upon novel topography. Instead of wave
+following wave in orderly procession, we find here a choppy sea of small
+mountains, with hollows running toward all points of the compass.
+Instead of Chinese walls, we now have Chinese puzzles. The innate
+perversity of such configuration grows more and more exasperating as we
+toil westward. In the two hundred miles from the Greenbrier to the
+Kentucky River, the ridges are all but unscalable, and the streams
+sprangle in every direction like branches of mountain laurel.
+
+The only roads follow the beds of tortuous and rock-strewn water
+courses, which may be nearly dry when you start out in the morning, but
+within an hour may be raging torrents. There are no bridges. One may
+ford a dozen times in a mile. A spring "tide" will stop all travel, even
+from neighbor to neighbor, for a day or two at a time. Buggies and
+carriages are unheard of. In many districts the only means of
+transportation is with saddlebags on horseback, or with a "tow sack"
+afoot. If the pedestrian tries a short-cut he will learn what the
+natives mean when they say: "Goin' up, you can might' nigh stand up
+straight and bite the ground; goin' down, a man wants hobnails in the
+seat of his pants."
+
+James Lane Allen was not writing fiction when he said of the far-famed
+Wilderness Road into Kentucky: "Despite all that has been done to
+civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic
+thoroughfare remains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its
+sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and
+loose boulders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity....
+One such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for
+profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally. Many
+were infidels--there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is known
+that the more pious companies of them, as they traveled along, would now
+and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers
+before they could go further. Perhaps one of the provocations to
+homicide among the mountain people should be reckoned this road. I have
+seen two of the mildest of men, after riding over it for a few hours,
+lose their temper and begin to fight--fight their horses, fight the
+flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses."
+
+Such difficulties of intercommunication are enough to explain the
+isolation of the mountaineers. In the more remote regions this
+loneliness reaches a degree almost unbelievable. Miss Ellen Semple, in a
+fine monograph published in the _Geographical Journal_, of London, in
+1901, gave us some examples:
+
+     "These Kentucky mountaineers are not only cut off from the outside
+     world, but they are separated from each other. Each is confined to
+     his own locality, and finds his little world within a radius of a
+     few miles from his cabin. There are many men in these mountains who
+     have never seen a town, or even the poor village that constitutes
+     their county-seat.... The women ... are almost as rooted as the
+     trees. We met one woman who, during the twelve years of her married
+     life, had lived only ten miles across the mountain from her own
+     home, but had never in this time been back home to visit her father
+     and mother. Another back in Perry county told me she had never been
+     farther from home than Hazard, the county-seat, which is only six
+     miles distant. Another had never been to the post-office, four
+     miles away; and another had never seen the ford of the Rockcastle
+     River, only two miles from her home, and marked, moreover, by the
+     country store of the district."
+
+
+When I first went into the Smokies, I stopped one night in a single-room
+log cabin, and soon had the good people absorbed in my tales of travel
+beyond the seas. Finally the housewife said to me, with pathetic
+resignation: "Bushnell's the furdest ever I've been." Bushnell, at that
+time, was a hamlet of thirty people, only seven miles from where we sat.
+When I lived alone on "the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek,"
+there were women in the neighborhood, young and old, who had never seen
+a railroad, and men who had never boarded a train, although the Murphy
+branch ran within sixteen miles of our post-office. The first time that
+a party of these people went to the railroad, they were uneasy and
+suspicious. Nearing the way-station, a girl in advance came upon the
+first negro she ever saw in her life, and ran screaming back: "My
+goddamighty, Mam, thar's the boogerman--I done seed him!"
+
+But before discussing the mountain people and their problems, let us
+take an imaginary balloon voyage over their vast domain. South of the
+Potomac the Blue Ridge is a narrow rampart rising abruptly from the
+east, one or two thousand feet above its base, and descending sharply to
+the Shenandoah Valley on the west. Across the Valley begin the
+Alleghanies. These mountains, from the Potomac through to the northern
+Tennessee border, consist of a multitude of narrow ridges with steep
+escarpment on both sides, running southwesterly in parallel chains, and
+each chain separated from its neighbors by deep, slender dales. Wherever
+one goes westward from the Valley he will encounter tier after tier of
+these ridges, as I have already described.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs"--Linville River and
+Falls, N. C. The walls of one gorge are from 500 to 2,000 feet high.]
+
+
+As a rule, the links in each chain can be passed by following small
+gaps; but often one must make very wide detours. For example, Pine
+Mountain (every link has its own distinct name) is practically
+impassable for nearly 150 miles, except for two water gaps and five
+difficult crossings. Although it averages only a mile thick, the people
+on its north side, generally, know less about those on the south than a
+Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutchmen.
+
+The Alleghanies together have a width of from forty to sixty miles.
+Westward of them, for a couple of hundred miles, are the labyrinthine
+roughs of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
+
+In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies coalesce,
+but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well
+as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in
+the north. The southeast front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarpment,
+rising abruptly from the Piedmont Plateau of Carolina. Not one river
+cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the
+westward are higher and much more massive. It is the watershed of this
+whole mountain region. The streams rising on its northwestern front flow
+down into central plateaus, and thence cut their way through the Unakas
+in deep and precipitous gorges, draining finally into the Gulf of
+Mexico, through the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
+
+The northwestern range, which corresponds to the Alleghanies of
+Virginia, now assumes a character entirely different from them. Instead
+of parallel chains of low ridges, we have here, on the border of North
+Carolina and Tennessee, a single chain that dwarfs all others in the
+Appalachian system. It is cut into segments by the rivers (Nolichucky,
+French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee) that drain the
+interior plateaus, and each segment has a distinct name of its own
+(Iron, Northern Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi
+mountains). The Carolina mountaineers still call this system
+collectively the Alleghanies, but the U. S. Geological Survey has given
+it a more distinctive name, the Unakas. While the Blue Ridge has only
+seven peaks that rise above 5,000 feet, the Unakas have 125 summits
+exceeding 5,000, and ten that are over 6,000 feet.
+
+Connecting the Unaka chain with the Blue Ridge are several transverse
+ranges, the Stone, Beech, Roan, Yellow, Black, Newfound, Pisgah, Balsam,
+Cowee, Nantahala, Tusquitee, and a few minor mountains, which as a whole
+are much higher than the Blue Ridge, 156 summits rising over 5,000
+feet, and thirty-six over 6,000 feet above sea-level.
+
+In northern Georgia the Unakas and the Blue Ridge gradually fade away
+into straggling ridges and foothills, which extend into small parts of
+South Carolina and Alabama.
+
+The Cumberland Plateau is not attached to either of these mountain
+systems, but is rather a prolongation of the roughs of eastern Kentucky.
+It is separated from the Unakas by the broad valley of the Tennessee
+River. The Plateau rises very abruptly from the surrounding plains. It
+consists mainly of tableland gashed by streams that have cut their way
+down in deep narrow gulches with precipitous sides.
+
+Most of the literature about our Southern mountaineers refers only to
+the inhabitants of the comparatively meagre hills of eastern Kentucky,
+or to the Cumberlands of Tennessee. Little has been written about the
+real mountaineers of southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, and
+the extreme north of Georgia. The great mountain masses still await
+their annalist, their artist, and, in some places, even their explorer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"THE BACK OF BEYOND"
+
+
+Of certain remote parts of Erin, Jane Barlow says: "In Bogland, if you
+inquire the address of such or such person, you will hear not very
+infrequently that he or she lives 'off away at the Back of Beyond.'... A
+Traveler to the Back of Beyond may consider himself rather exceptionally
+fortunate, should he find that he is able to arrive at his destination
+by any mode of conveyance other than 'the two standin' feet of him.'
+Often enough the last stage of his journey proceeds down some boggy
+_boreen_, or up some craggy hill-track, inaccessible to any wheel or
+hoof that ever was shod."
+
+So in Appalachia, one steps shortly from the railway into the primitive.
+Most of the river valleys are narrow. In their bottoms the soil is rich,
+the farms well kept and generous, the owners comfortable and urbane. But
+from the valleys directly spring the mountains, with slopes rising
+twenty to forty degrees or more. These mountains cover nine-tenths of
+western North Carolina, and among them dwell a majority of the native
+people.
+
+The back country is rough. No boat nor canoe can stem its brawling
+waters. No bicycle nor automobile can enter it. No coach can endure its
+roads. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle-bags, and shackly
+little sleds that are dragged over the bare ground by harnessed steers.
+This is the country that ordinary tourists shun. And well for such that
+they do, since whoso cares more for bodily comfort than for freedom and
+air and elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pastures.
+To him the backwoods could be only what Burns called Argyleshire: "A
+country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly
+overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage
+inhabitants."
+
+When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.
+This for more reasons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and
+romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm
+of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American history; and,
+in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the
+present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my pioneer
+ancestors of a century or two ago. Besides, I wanted to enjoy a free
+life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of
+the chase, and the man's game of matching my woodcraft against the
+forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides.
+
+So, casting about for a biding place that would fill such needs, I
+picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of
+those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of
+this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there
+was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got
+permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins.
+
+A mountain settlement consists of all who get their mail at the same
+place. Ours was made up of forty-two households (about two hundred
+souls) scattered over an area eight miles long by two wide. These are
+air-line measurements. All roads and trails "wiggled and wingled around"
+so that some families were several miles from a neighbor. Fifteen homes
+had no wagon road, and could be reached by no vehicle other than a
+narrow sled. Quill Rose had not even a sledpath, but journeyed full five
+miles by trail to the nearest wagon road.
+
+Medlin itself comprised two little stores built of rough planks and
+bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings. A mile and a half
+away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also
+as church. Scattered about the settlement were seven tiny tub-mills for
+grinding corn, some of them mere open sheds with a capacity of about a
+bushel a day. Most of the dwellings were built of logs. Two or three,
+only, were weatherboarded frame houses and attained the dignity of a
+story and a half.
+
+All about us was the forest primeval, where roamed some sparse herds of
+cattle, razorback hogs, and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were in all
+the streams. Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a
+common nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the vast woodland
+that encompassed it.
+
+The post-office occupied a space about five feet square, in a corner of
+one of the stores. There was a daily mail, by rider, serving four other
+communities along the way. The contractor for this service had to
+furnish two horses, working turnabout, pay the rider, and squeeze his
+own profit, out of $499 a year. In Star Route days the mail was carried
+afoot, two barefooted young men "toting the sacks on their own wethers"
+over this thirty-two-mile round trip, for forty-eight cents a day; and
+they boarded themselves!
+
+In the group that gathered at mail time I often was solicited to "back"
+envelopes, give out the news, or decipher letters for men who could not
+read. Several times, in the postmaster's absence, I registered letters
+for myself, or for someone else, the law of the nation being suspended
+by general consent.
+
+Our stores, as I have said, were small, yet many of their shelves were
+empty. Oftentimes there was no flour to be had, no meat, cereals, canned
+goods, coffee, sugar, or oil. It excited no comment at all when Old Pete
+would lean across his bare counter and lament that "Thar's lots o' folks
+a-hurtin' around hyur for lard, and I ain't got none."
+
+I have seen the time when our neighborhood could get no salt nor tobacco
+without making a twenty-four-mile trip over the mountain and back, in
+the dead of winter. This was due, partly, to the state of the roads, and
+to the fact that there would be no wagon available for weeks at a time.
+Wagoning, by the way, was no sinecure. Often it meant to chop a fallen
+tree out of the road, and then, with handspikes, "man-power the log
+outen the way." Sometimes an axle would break (far upon the mountain,
+of course); then a tree must be felled, and a new axle made on the spot
+from the green wood, with no tools but axe and jackknife.
+
+
+[Illustration: At the Post-Office]
+
+
+Trade was mostly by barter, in which 'coon skins and ginseng had the
+same rank as in the days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Long credits
+were given on anticipated crops; but the risks were great and the market
+limited by local consumption, as it did not pay to haul bulky
+commodities to the railroad. Hence it was self-preservation for the
+storekeepers to carry only a slender stock of essentials and take pains
+to have little left through unproductive times.
+
+As a rule, credit would not be asked so long as anything at all could be
+offered in trade. When Bill took the last quart of meal from the house,
+as rations for a bear hunt, his patient Marg walked five miles to the
+store with a skinny old chicken, last of the flock, and offered to
+barter it for "a dustin' o' salt." There was not a bite in her house
+beyond potatoes, and "'taters don't go good 'thout salt."
+
+In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every
+man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler,
+miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as
+barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he died. One
+farmer was also the wagoner of the district, as well as storekeeper,
+magistrate, veterinarian, and accoucheur. He also owned the only
+"tooth-pullers" in the settlement: a pair of universal forceps that he
+designed, forged, filed out, and wielded with barbaric grit. His wife
+kept the only boarding-house for leagues around. Truly, an accomplished
+couple!
+
+About two-thirds of our householders owned their homes. Of the remainder
+about three-fifths were renters and two-fifths were squatters, in the
+sense that these last were permitted to occupy ground for the sake of
+reporting trespass and putting out fires--or, maybe, to prevent them
+doing both. Nearly all of the wild land belonged to Northern timber
+companies who had not yet begun operations (they have done so within the
+past three years).
+
+Titles were confused, owing to careless surveys, or guesswork, in the
+past. Many boundaries overlapped, and there were bits of no-man's land
+here and there, covered by no deed and subject to entry by anyone who
+discovered them. Our old frontier always was notorious for
+happy-go-lucky surveys and neglect to make legal entry of claims. Thus
+Boone lost the fairest parts of the Kentucky he founded, and was
+ejected and sent adrift. In our own time, overlapping boundaries have
+led to bitter litigation and murderous feuds.
+
+As our territory was sparsely occupied, there were none of those
+"perpendicular farms" so noticeable in older settlements near the river
+valleys, where men plow fields as steep as their own house roofs and
+till with the hoe many an acre that is steeper still. John Fox tells of
+a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his own cornfield and broke his neck.
+I have seen fields in Carolina where this might occur, as where a
+forty-five degree slope is tilled to the brink of a precipice. A woman
+told me: "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees--yes, I have;" and
+another: "Many's the hill o' corn I've propped up with a rock to keep it
+from fallin' down-hill."[1]
+
+Even in our new region many of the fields suffered quickly from erosion.
+When a forest is cleared there is a spongy humus on the ground surface
+that is extremely rich, but this washes away in a single season. The
+soil beneath is good, but thin on the hillsides, and its soluble,
+fertile ingredients soon leach out and vanish. Without terracing, which
+I have never seen practiced in the mountains of the South, no field with
+a surface slope of more than ten degrees (about two feet in ten) will
+last more than a few years. As one of my neighbors put it: "Thar, I've
+cl'ared me a patch and grubbed hit out--now I can raise me two or three
+severe craps!"
+
+"Then what?" I asked.
+
+"When corn won't grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple
+o' years."
+
+"Then you'll rotate, and grow corn again?"
+
+"La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn't raise a
+cuss-fight."
+
+"But then you must move, and begin all over again. This continual moving
+must be a great nuisance."
+
+He rolled his quid and placidly answered: "Huk-uh; when I move, all I
+haffter do is put out the fire and call the dog."
+
+His apparent indifference was only philosophy expressed with sardonic
+humor; just as another neighbor would say, "This is good, strong land,
+or it wouldn't hold up all the rocks there is around hyur."
+
+Right here is the basis for much of what strangers call shiftlessness
+among the mountaineers. But of that, more anon in other chapters.
+
+In clearing new ground, everyone followed the ancient custom of girdling
+the tree trunks and letting them stand in spectral ugliness until they
+rotted and fell. This is a quick and easy way to get rid of the shade
+that otherwise would stunt the crops, and it prevents such trees as
+chestnut, buckeye and basswood from sprouting from the stumps. In the
+fields stood scores of gigantic hemlocks, deadened, that never would be
+used even for fuel, save as their bark furnished the women with
+quick-burning stove-wood in wet weather. No one dreamt that hemlock ever
+would be marketable. And this was only five years ago!
+
+The tillage was as rude and destructive as anything we read of in
+pioneer history. The common plow was a "bull-tongue," which has aptly
+been described as "hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim."
+The harrows were of wood, throughout, with locust teeth (a friend and I
+made one from the green trees in half a day, and it lasted three seasons
+on rocky ground). Sometimes no harrow was used at all, the plowed ground
+being "drug" with a big evergreen bough. This needed only to be withed
+directly to a pony's tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and
+the picture of prehistoric agriculture would have been complete. After
+the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the
+entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows
+while their mother toiled like a man.
+
+Corn was the staple crop--in fact, the only crop of most farmers. Some
+rye was raised along the creek, and a little oats, but our settlement
+grew no wheat--there was no mill that could grind it. Wheat is raised,
+to some extent, in the river bottoms, and on the plateaus of the
+interior. I have seen it flailed out on the bare ground, and winnowed by
+pouring the grain and chaff from basket to basket while the women
+fluttered aprons or bed-sheets. Corn is topped for the blade-fodder, the
+ears gathered from the stalk, and the main stalks afterwards used as
+"roughness" (roughage). The cribs generally are ramshackle pens, and
+there is much waste from mold and vermin.
+
+The Carolina mountains are, by nature, one of the best fruit regions in
+eastern America. Apples, grapes, and berries, especially, thrive
+exceeding well. But our mountaineer is no horticulturist. He lets his
+fruit trees take care of themselves, and so, everywhere except on select
+farms near the towns, we see old apple and peach trees that never were
+pruned, bristling with shoots, and often bearing wizened fruit, dry and
+bitter, or half rotted on the stem.
+
+So, too, the gardens are slighted. Late in the season our average garden
+is a miniature jungle, chiefly of weeds that stand high as one's head.
+Cabbage and field beans survive and figure mightily in the diet of the
+mountaineer. Potatoes generally do well, but few farmers raise enough to
+see them through the winter. Generally some tobacco is grown for family
+consumption, the strong "twist" being smoked or chewed indifferently.
+
+An interesting crop in our neighborhood was ginseng, of which there were
+several patches in cultivation. This curious plant is native throughout
+the Appalachians, but has been exterminated in all but the wildest
+regions, on account of the high price that its dried root brings. It has
+long since passed out of our pharmacopoeia, and is marketed only in
+China, though our own people formerly esteemed it as a panacea for all
+ills of the flesh. Colonel Byrd, in his "History of the Dividing Line,"
+says of it:
+
+     "Though Practice wilt soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able
+     Footman, yet, as a help to bear Fatigue I us'd to chew a Root of
+     Ginseng as I Walk't along. This kept up my Spirits, and made me
+     trip away as nimbly in my half Jack-Boots as younger men cou'd in
+     their Shoes. This Plant is in high Esteem in China, where it sells
+     for its Weight in Silver.... Its vertues are, that it gives an
+     uncommon Warmth and Vigour to the Blood, and frisks the Spirits,
+     beyond any other Cordial. It chears the Heart, even of a Man that
+     has a bad Wife, and makes him look down with great Composure on the
+     crosses of the World. It promotes insensible Perspiration,
+     dissolves all Phlegmatick and Viscous Humours, that are apt to
+     obstruct the Narrow channels of the Nerves. It helps the Memory and
+     would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the Lungs,
+     much more than Scolding itself. It comforts the Stomach, and
+     Strengthens the Bowels, preventing all Colicks and Fluxes. In one
+     Word, it will make a Man live a great while, and very well while he
+     does live. And what is more, it will even make Old Age amiable, by
+     rendering it lively, chearful, and good-humour'd."
+
+
+Alas that only Chinamen and eighteenth-century Cavaliers could absorb
+the virtues of this sovereign herb!
+
+A successful ginseng grower of our settlement told me that two acres of
+the plant will bring an income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year, planting
+100,000 to the acre. The roots take eight years to mature. They weigh
+from one and a half to four ounces each, when fresh, and one-third of
+this dried. Two acres produce 25,000 roots a year, by progression. The
+dried root, at that time, brought five dollars a pound. At present, I
+believe, it is higher. Another friend of mine, who is in this business
+extensively, tried exporting for himself, but got only $6.50 a pound in
+Amoy, when the U. S. consul at that port assured him that the real
+market price was from $12.60 to $24.40. The local trader, knowing
+American prices, pocketed the difference.
+
+
+[Illustration: The Author in Camp in the Big Smokies]
+
+
+In times of scarcity many of our people took to the woods and gathered
+commoner medicinal roots, such as bloodroot and wild ginger (there are
+scores of others growing wild in great profusion), but made only a
+pittance at it, as synthetic drugs have mostly taken the place of herbal
+simples in modern medicine. Women and children did better, in the days
+before Christmas, by gathering galax, "hemlock" (_leucothoe_), and
+mistletoe, selling to the dealers at the railroad, who ship them North
+for holiday decorations. One bright lad from town informed me, with
+evident pride of geography, that "Some of this goes to London, England."
+Nearly everywhere in our woods the beautiful ruddy-bronze galax is
+abundant. Along the water-courses, _leucothoe_, which similarly turns
+bronze in autumn, and lasts throughout the winter, is so prolific as to
+be a nuisance to travelers, being hard to push through.
+
+Most of our farmers had neither horse nor mule. For the rough work of
+cultivating the hillsides a single steer hitched to the "bull-tongue"
+was better adapted, and the same steer patiently dragged a little sled
+to the trading post. On steep declivities the sled is more practical
+than a cart or wagon, because it can go where wheels cannot, it does not
+require so wide a track, and it "brakes" automatically in going
+downhill. Nearly all the farmer's hauling is downhill to his home, or
+down farther to the village. A sled can be made quite easily by one man,
+out of wood growing on the spot, and with few iron fittings, or none at
+all. The runners are usually made of natural sourwood crooks, this
+timber being chosen because it wears very smooth and does not fur up nor
+splinter.
+
+The hinterland is naturally adapted to grazing, rather than to
+agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the
+mountains, where there are "balds" covered with succulent wild grass
+that resembles Kentucky bluegrass. Clearing and sowing would extend such
+areas indefinitely. The cattle forage for themselves through eight or
+nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only
+attention given them is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark
+the calves. Nearly all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other
+blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges,
+but the backwoodsman does not want "critters that haffter be gentled and
+hand-fed." The result is that many families go without milk a great part
+of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.
+
+The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse,
+with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through
+winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the
+quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have
+had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten
+would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export--let the buyer
+fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any provision for
+taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.
+
+On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel
+all over the neighborhood to dispose of it in small portions. The
+carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the
+cheap "bilin' pieces" were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or
+whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an
+axe and a jackknife. The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a
+crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit
+it for boot-heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.
+
+Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool.
+The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep
+will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering
+hand of man and perish without his shepherding. Curiously enough, our
+mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat--an animal perfectly
+adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats
+would be more profitable to the small farmers of the wild mountains than
+cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which
+there is a vast superfluity in all the Southern mountains. Unlike the
+weak, timorous and stupid sheep, a flock of goats can fight their own
+battles against wild animals. They are hardy in any weather, and thrive
+from their own pickings where other foragers would starve.
+
+A good milch goat gives more and richer milk than the average mountain
+cow. And a kid yields excellent fresh meat in _manageable_ quantity, at
+a time when no one would butcher a beef because it would spoil. I used
+to shut my eyes and imagine the transformation that would be wrought in
+these mountains by a colony of Swiss, who would turn the coves into
+gardens, the moderate slopes into orchards, the steeper ones into
+vineyards, by terracing, and who would export the finest of cheese made
+from the surplus milk of their goats. But our native mountaineers--well,
+a man who will not eat beef nor drink fresh cow's milk, and who despises
+butter, cannot be interested in anything of the dairy order.
+
+The chickens ran wild and scratched for a living; hence were thin,
+tough, and poor layers. Eggs seldom were for sale. It was not of much
+use to try to raise many chickens where they were unprotected from
+hawks, minks, foxes, weasels and snakes.
+
+Honey often was procured by spotting wild bees to their hoard and
+chopping the tree, a mild form of sport in which most settlers are
+expert. Our local preacher had a hundred hives of tame bees, producing
+1,500 pounds of honey a year, for which he got ten cents a pound at the
+railroad.
+
+The mainstay of every farmer, aside from his cornfield, was his litter
+of razorback hogs. "Old cornbread and sowbelly" are a menu complete for
+the mountaineer. The wild pig, roaming foot-loose and free over hill and
+dale, picks up his own living at all seasons and requires no attention
+at all. He is the cheapest possible source of meat and yields the
+quickest return: "no other food animal can increase his own weight a
+hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of his life." And so he
+is regarded by his owner with the same affection that Connemara Paddy
+bestows upon "the gintleman that pays the rint."
+
+In physique and mentality, the razorback differs even more from a
+domestic hog than a wild goose does from a tame one. Shaped in front
+like a thin wedge, he can go through laurel thickets like a bear.
+Armored with tough hide cushioned by bristles, he despises thorns,
+brambles, and rattlesnakes, alike. His extravagantly long snout can
+scent like a cat's, and yet burrow, uproot, overturn, as if made of
+metal. The long legs, thin flanks, pliant hoofs, fit him to run like a
+deer and climb like a goat. In courage and sagacity he outranks all
+other beasts. A warrior born, he is also a strategist of the first
+order. Like man, he lives a communal life, and unites with others of his
+kind for purposes of defense.
+
+The pig is the only large mammal I know of, besides man, whose eyes
+will not shine by reflected light--they are too bold and crafty, I wit.
+The razorback has a mind of his own; not instinct, but _mind_--whatever
+psychologists may say. He thinks. Anybody can see that when he is not
+rooting or sleeping he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable
+understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an
+uncanny gift of reading men's thoughts, whenever those thoughts are
+directed against the peace and dignity of pigship. He bears grudges,
+broods over indignities, and plans redresses for the morrow or the week
+after. If he cannot get even with you, he will lay for your unsuspecting
+friend. And at the last, when arrested in his crimes and lodged in the
+pen, he is liable to attacks of mania from sheer helpless rage.
+
+If you camp out in the mountains, nothing will molest you but razorback
+hogs. Bears will flee and wildcats sneak to their dens, but the moment
+incense of cooking arises from your camp every pig within two miles will
+scent it and hasten to call. You may throw your arm out of joint: they
+will laugh in your face. You may curse in five languages: it is music to
+their titillating ears.
+
+Throughout summer and autumn I cooked out of doors, on the woodsman's
+range of forked stakes and a lug-pole spanning parallel beds of rock.
+When the pigs came, I fed them red-pepper pie. Then all said good-bye to
+my hospitality save one slab-sided, tusky old boar--and he planned a
+campaign. At the first smell of smoke he would start for my premises.
+Hiding securely in a nearby thicket, he would spy on the operations
+until my stew got to simmering gently and I would retire to the cabin
+and get my fists in the dough. Then, charging at speed, he would knock
+down a stake, trip the lug-pole, and send my dinner flying. Every day he
+would do this. It got so that I had to sit there facing the fire all
+through my cooking, or that beast of a hog would ruin me. With this I
+thought he was outgeneraled. Idle dream! He would slip off to my
+favorite neighbor's, break through the garden fence, and raise Ned
+instanter--all because he hated _me_, for that peppery fraud, and knew
+that Bob and I were cronies.
+
+I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own
+notion by calling it Be-liar. "That Be-liar," swore he, "would cross
+hell on a rotten rail to git into my 'tater patch!"
+
+Finally I could stand it no longer, and took down my rifle. It was a
+nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squirrels,
+was in good form. However, in the mountains it is more heinous to kill
+another man's pig than to shoot the owner. So I took craft for my guide,
+and guile for my heart's counsel. I stalked Belial as stealthily as ever
+hunter crept on an antelope against the wind. At last I had him dead
+right: broadside to me and motionless as if in a daydream. I knew that
+if I drilled his ear, or shot his tail clean off, it would only make him
+meaner than ever. He sported an uncommonly fine tail, and was proud to
+flaunt it. I drew down on that member, purposely a trifle scant, fired,
+and--away scuttled that boar, with a _broken_ tail that would dangle and
+cling to him disgracefully through life.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Bob"]
+
+
+Exit Belial! It was equivalent to a broken heart. He emigrated, or
+committed suicide, I know not which, but the Smoky Mountains knew him no
+more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS
+
+
+For a long time my chief interest was not in human neighbors, but in the
+mountains themselves--in that mysterious beckoning hinterland which rose
+right back of my chimney and spread upward, outward, almost to three
+cardinal points of the compass, mile after mile, hour after hour of
+lusty climbing--an Eden still unpeopled and unspoiled.
+
+I loved of a morning to slip on my haversack, pick up my rifle, or maybe
+a mere staff, and stride forth alone over haphazard routes, to enjoy in
+my own untutored way the infinite variety of form and color and shade,
+of plant and tree and animal life, in that superb wilderness that
+towered there far above all homes of men. (And I love it still, albeit
+the charm of new discovery is gone from those heights and gulfs that are
+now so intimate and full of memories).
+
+The Carolina mountains have a character all their own. Rising abruptly
+from a low base, and then rounding more gradually upward for 2,000 to
+5,000 feet above their valleys, their apparent height is more impressive
+than that of many a loftier summit in the West which forms only a
+protuberance on an elevated plateau. Nearly all of them are clad to
+their tops in dense forest and thick undergrowth. Here and there is a
+grassy "bald": a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a
+mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber-line, few
+jutting crags, no ribs and vertebr� of the earth exposed. Seldom does
+one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very cliffs are sheathed with
+trees and shrubs, so that one treading their edges has no fear of
+falling into an abyss.
+
+Pinnacles or serrated ridges are rare. There are few commanding peaks.
+From almost any summit in Carolina one looks out upon a sea of flowing
+curves and dome-shaped eminences undulating, with no great disparity of
+height, unto the horizon. Almost everywhere the contours are similar:
+steep sides gradually rounding to the tops, smooth-surfaced to the eye
+because of the endless verdure. Every ridge is separated from its
+sisters by deep and narrow ravines. Not one of the thousand water
+courses shows a glint of its dashing stream, save where some far-off
+river may reveal, through a gap in the mountain, one single shimmering
+curve. In all this vast prospect, a keen eye, knowing where to look, may
+detect an occasional farmer's clearing, but to the stranger there is
+only mountain and forest, mountain and forest, as far as the eye can
+reach.
+
+Characteristic, too, is the dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer
+intensified, that ever hovers over the mountains, unless they be swathed
+in cloud, or, for a few minutes, after a sharp rain-storm has cleared
+the atmosphere. Both the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains owe their
+names to this tenuous mist. It softens all outlines, and lends a
+mirage-like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles
+off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible until
+finally the sky-line blends with the sky itself.
+
+The foreground of such a landscape, in summer, is warm, soft, dreamy,
+caressing, habitable; beyond it are gentle and luring solitudes; the
+remote ranges are inexpressibly lonesome, isolated and mysterious; but
+everywhere the green forest mantle bespeaks a vital present; nowhere
+does cold, bare granite stand as the sepulchre of an immemorial past.
+
+And yet these very mountains of Carolina are among the ancients of the
+earth. They were old, very old, before the Alps and the Andes, the
+Rockies and the Himalayas were molded into their primal shapes. Upon
+them, in after ages, were born the first hardwoods of America--perhaps
+those of Europe, too--and upon them to-day the last great hardwood
+forests of our country stand in primeval majesty, mutely awaiting their
+imminent doom.
+
+The richness of the Great Smoky forest has been the wonder and the
+admiration of everyone who has traversed it. As one climbs from the
+river to one of the main peaks, he passes successively through the same
+floral zones he would encounter in traveling from mid-Georgia to
+southern Canada.
+
+Starting amid sycamores, elms, gums, willows, persimmons, chinquapins,
+he soon enters a region of beech, birch, basswood, magnolia, cucumber,
+butternut, holly, sourwood, box elder, ash, maple, buckeye, poplar,
+hemlock, and a great number of other growths along the creeks and
+branches. On the lower slopes are many species of oaks, with hickory,
+hemlock, pitch pine, locust, dogwood, chestnut. In this region nearly
+all trees attain their fullest development. On north fronts of hills the
+oaks reach a diameter of five to six feet. In cool, rich coves, chestnut
+trees grow from six to nine feet across the stump; and tulip poplars up
+to ten or eleven feet, their straight trunks towering like gigantic
+columns, with scarcely a noticeable taper, seventy or eighty feet to the
+nearest limb.
+
+Ascending above the zone of 3,000 feet, white oak is replaced by the no
+less valuable "mountain oak." Beech, birch, buckeye, and chestnut
+persist to 5,000 feet. Then, where the beeches dwindle until adult trees
+are only knee-high, there begins a sub-arctic zone of black spruce,
+balsam, striped maple, aspen and the "Peruvian" or red cherry.
+
+I have named only a few of the prevailing growths. Nowhere else in the
+temperate zone is there such a variety of merchantable timber as in
+western Carolina and the Tennessee front of the Unaka system. About a
+hundred and twenty species of native trees grow in the Smoky Forest
+itself. When Asa Gray visited the North Carolina mountains he
+identified, in a thirty-mile trip, a greater variety of indigenous trees
+than could be observed in crossing Europe from England to Turkey, or in
+a trip from Boston to the Rocky Mountain plateau. As John Muir has said,
+our forests, "however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to
+God; for they were the best He ever planted."
+
+The undergrowth is of almost tropical luxuriance and variety. Botanists
+say that this is the richest collecting ground in the United States.
+Whether one be seeking ferns or fungi or orchids or almost anything else
+vegetal, each hour will bring him some new delight. In summer the upper
+mountains are one vast flower garden: the white and pink of
+rhododendron, the blaze of azalea, conspicuous above all else, in
+settings of every imaginable shade of green.
+
+It was the botanist who discovered this Eden for us. Far back in the
+eighteenth century, when this was still "Cherokee Country," inhabited by
+no whites but a few Indian-traders, William Bartram of Philadelphia came
+plant-hunting into the mountains of western Carolina, and spread their
+fame to the world. One of his choicest finds was the fiery azalea, of
+which he recorded: "The epithet fiery I annex to this most celebrated
+species of azalea, as being expressive of the appearance of its flowers;
+which are in general of the color of the finest red-lead, orange, and
+bright gold, as well as yellow and cream-color. These various splendid
+colors are not only in separate plants, but frequently all the varieties
+and shades are seen in separate branches on the same plant; and the
+clusters of the blossoms cover the shrubs in such incredible profusion
+on the hillsides that, suddenly opening to view from dark shades, we
+are alarmed with apprehension of the woods being set on fire. This is
+certainly the most gay and brilliant flowering shrub yet known."
+
+And we of a later age, seeing the same wild gardens still unspoiled, can
+appreciate the almost religious fervor of those early botanists, as of
+Michaux, for example, who, in 1794, ascending the peak of Grandfather,
+broke out in song: "_Mont� au sommet de la plus haut montagne de tout
+l'Am�rique Septentrionale, chante avec mon compagnon-guide l'hymn de
+Marsellois, et cri�, 'Vive la Libert� et la R�publique Fran�aise!'_"
+
+Of course Michaux was wildly mistaken in thinking Grandfather "the
+highest mountain in all North America." It is far from being even the
+highest of the Appalachians. Yet we scarcely know to-day, to a downright
+certainty, which peak is supreme among our Southern highlands. The honor
+is conceded to Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains, northeast of
+Asheville. Still, the heights of the Carolina peaks have been taken
+(with but one exception, so far as I know) only by barometric
+measurements, and these, even when official, may vary as much as a
+hundred feet for the same mountain. Since the highest ten or a dozen of
+our Carolina peaks differ in altitude only one or two hundred feet,
+their actual rank has not yet been determined.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"There are few jutting crags"--Southeast profile of Whiteside Mountain,
+N. C.]
+
+
+For a long time there was controversy as to whether Mount Mitchell or
+Clingman Dome was the crowning summit of eastern America. The Coast and
+Geodetic Survey gave the height of Mount Mitchell as 6,688 feet; but
+later figures of the U. S. Geological Survey are 6,711 and 6,712. In
+1859 Buckley claimed for Clingman Dome of the Smokies an altitude of
+6,941 feet. In recent government reports the Dome appears variously as
+6,619 and 6,660. In 1911 I was told by Mr. H. M. Ramseur that when he
+laid out the route of the railroad from Asheville to Murphy he ran a
+line of levels from a known datum on this road to the top of Clingman,
+and that the result was "four sixes" (6,666 feet above sea-level). It is
+probable that second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong
+either to Clingman Dome or Guyot or LeConte, of the Smokies, or to
+Balsam Cone of the Black Mountains.
+
+In any case, the Great Smoky mountains are the master chain of the
+Appalachian system, the greatest mass of highland east of the Rockies.
+This segment of the Unakas forms the boundary between North Carolina
+and Tennessee from the Big Pigeon River to the McDaniel Bald.
+
+Although some parts of the Smokies are very rugged, with sharp changes
+of elevation, yet the range as a whole has no one dominating peak. Mount
+Guyot (pronounced _Gee_-o, with _g_ as in get), Mount LeConte, and
+Clingman Dome all are over 6,600 feet and under 6,700, according to the
+most trustworthy measurements. Many miles of the divide rise 6,000 feet
+above sea-level, with only small undulations like ocean swells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most rugged and difficult part of the Smokies (and of the United
+States east of Colorado) is in the sawtooth mountains between Collins
+and Guyot, at the headwaters of the Okona Lufty River. I know but few
+men who have ever followed this part of the divide, although during the
+present year trails have been cut from Clingman to Collins, or near it,
+and possibly others beyond to the northeastward.
+
+In August and September, 1900, Mr. James H. Ferriss and wife,
+naturalists from Joliet, Illinois, explored the Smokies to the Lufty Gap
+northeast of Clingman, collecting rare species of snails and ferns. No
+doubt Mrs. Ferriss is the only white woman who ever went beyond
+Clingman or even ascended the Dome itself. She stayed at the Lufty Gap
+while her husband and a Carolina mountaineer of my acquaintance
+struggled through to Guyot and returned. Of this trip Mr. Ferriss sent
+me the following account:
+
+"We bought another axe of a moonshiner, and, with a week's provisions on
+our backs, one of the guides and I took the Consolidated American Black
+Bear and Ruffed Grouse Line for Mount Guyot, twenty miles farther by map
+measurement. The bears were in full possession of the property, and we
+could get no information in the settlements, as the settlers do not
+travel this line. They did not know the names of the peaks other than as
+tops of the Great Smokies--knew nothing of the character of the country
+except that it was rough. The Tennesseeans seem afraid of the mountains,
+and the Cherokees of the North Carolina side equally so; for, two miles
+from camp, all traces of man, except surveyors' marks, had disappeared.
+In the first two days we routed eight bears out of their nests and mud
+wallows, and they seemed to stay routed, for upon our return we found
+the blackberry crop unharvested and had a bag pudding--'duff'--or what
+you call it.
+
+"A surveyor had run part of the line this year, which helped us
+greatly, and the bears had made well-beaten trails part of the way. In
+places they had mussed up the ground as much as a barnyard. We tried to
+follow the boundary line between the two States, which is exactly upon
+the top of the Smokies, but often missed it. The government [state]
+surveyor many years ago made two hacks upon the trees, but sometimes the
+linemen neglected to use their axes for half a mile or so. It took us
+three and one-half days to go, and two and one-half to return, and we
+arose with the morning star and worked hard all day. The last day and a
+half, going, there was nothing to guide us but the old hacks.
+
+"Equipped with government maps, a good compass, and a little conceit, I
+thought I could follow the boundary-line. In fact, at one time we
+intended to go through without a guide. A trail that runs through
+blackberry bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then there
+was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists growing thickly upon the
+ground as tomato vines, curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like
+a field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one place we
+walked fully a quarter of a mile over the tops of laurel bushes and
+these were ten or twelve feet in height, but blown over one way by the
+wind. Much of the trail was along rocky edges, sometimes but six inches
+or so wide, but almost straight down on both sides for hundreds of feet.
+One night, delayed by lack of water, we did not camp till dark, and,
+finding a smooth spot, lay down with a small log on each side to hold us
+from rolling out of bed. When daylight came we found that, had we rolled
+over the logs, my partner would have dropped 500 feet into Tennessee and
+I would have dropped as far into North Carolina, unless some friendly
+tree top had caught us. Sometimes the mountain forked, and these ridges,
+concealed by the balsams, would not be seen. Then there were round
+knobs--and who can tell where the highest ridge lies on a round mountain
+or a ball? My woolen shirt was torn off to the shoulders, and my
+partner, who had started out with corduroys, stayed in the brush until I
+got him a pair of overalls from camp."
+
+Even to the west of Clingman a stranger is likely to find some
+desperately rough travel if he should stray from the trail that follows
+the divide. It is easy going for anyone in fair weather, but when cloud
+settles on the mountain, as it often does without warning, it may be so
+thick that one cannot see a tree ten feet away. Under such circumstances
+I have myself floundered from daylight till dark through heart-breaking
+laurel thickets, and without a bite to eat, not knowing whither I was
+going except that it was toward the Little Tennessee River.
+
+In 1906 I spent the summer in a herders' hut on top of the divide, just
+west of the Locust Ridge (miscalled Chestnut Ridge on the map), about
+six miles east of Thunderhead. This time I had a partner, and we had a
+glorious three months of it, nearly a mile above sea-level, and only
+half a day's climb from the nearest settlement. One day I was alone,
+Andy having gone down to Medlin for the mail. It had rained a good
+deal--in fact, there was a shower nearly every day throughout the
+summer, the only semblance of a dry season in the Smokies being the
+autumn and early winter. The nights were cold enough for fires and
+blankets, even in our well-chinked cabin.
+
+Well, I had finished my lonesome dinner, and was washing up, when I saw
+a man approaching. This was an event, for we seldom saw other men than
+our two selves. He was a lame man, wearing an iron extension on one
+foot, and he hobbled with a cane. He looked played-out and gaunt. I met
+him outside. He smiled as though I looked good to him, and asked with
+some eagerness, "Can I buy something to eat here?"
+
+"No," I answered, "you can't buy anything here"--how his face
+fell!--"but I'll give you the best we have, and you're welcome."
+
+Then you should have seen that smile!
+
+He seemed to have just enough strength left to drag himself into the
+hut. I asked no questions, though wondering what a cripple, evidently a
+gentleman, though in rather bad repair, was doing on top of the Smoky
+Mountains. It was plain that he had spent more than one night
+shelterless in the cold rain, and that he was quite famished. While I
+was baking the biscuit and cooking some meat, he told his story. This is
+the short of it:
+
+"I am a Canadian, McGill University man, electrician. My company sent me
+to Cincinnati. I got a vacation of a couple of weeks, and thought I'd
+take a pedestrian tour. I can walk better than you'd think," and he
+tapped the short leg.
+
+I liked his grit.
+
+"I knew no place to go," he continued; "so I took a map and looked for
+what might be interesting country, not too far from Cincinnati. I picked
+out these mountains, got a couple of government topographical sheets,
+and, thinking they would serve like European ordnance maps, I had no
+fear of going astray. It was my plan to walk through to the Balsam
+Mountains, and so on to the Big Pigeon River. I went to Maryville,
+Tennessee, and there I was told that I would find a cabin every five or
+six miles along the summit from Thunderhead to the Balsams."
+
+I broke in abruptly: "Whoever told you that was either an impostor or an
+ignoramus. There are only four of these shacks on the whole Smoky range.
+Two of them, the Russell cabin and the Spencer place, you have already
+passed without knowing it. This is called the Hall cabin. None of these
+three are occupied save for a week or so in the fall when the cattle are
+being rounded up, or by chance, as my partner and I happen to be here
+now. Beyond this there is just one shack, at Siler's Meadow. It is down
+below the summit, hidden in timber, and you would never have seen it.
+Even if you had, you would have found it as bare as a last year's mouse
+nest, for nobody ever goes there except a few bear-hunters. From there
+onward for forty miles is an uninhabited wilderness so rough that you
+could not make seven miles a day in it to save your life, even if you
+knew the course; and there is no trail at all. Those government maps
+are good and reliable to show the _approaches_ to this wild country, but
+where you need them most they are good for nothing."
+
+
+[Illustration: The Bears' Home--Laurel and Rhododendron]
+
+
+"Then," said he, "if I had missed your cabin I would have starved to
+death, for I depended on finding a house to the eastward, and would have
+followed the trail till I dropped. I have been out in the laurel
+thickets, now, three days and two nights; so nothing could have induced
+me to leave this trail, once I found it, or until I could see out to a
+house on one side or other of the mountain."
+
+"You would see no house on either side from here to beyond Guyot, about
+forty miles. Had you no rations at all?"
+
+"I traveled light, expecting to find entertainment among the natives.
+Here is what I have left."
+
+He showed me a crumpled buckwheat flapjack, a pinch of tea, and a couple
+of ounces of brandy.
+
+"I was saving them for the last extremity; have had nothing to eat since
+yesterday morning. Drink the brandy, please; it came from Montreal."
+
+"No, my boy, that liquor goes down your own throat instanter. You're the
+chap that needs it. This coffee will boil now in a minute. I won't give
+you all the food you want, for it wouldn't be prudent; but by and by you
+shall have a bellyful."
+
+Then, as well as he could, he sketched the route he had followed. Where
+the trail from Tennessee crosses from Thunderhead to Haw Gap he had
+swerved off from the divide, and he discovered his error somewhere in
+the neighborhood of Blockhouse. There, instead of retracing his steps,
+he sought a short-cut by plunging down to the headwaters of Haw Creek,
+thus worming deeper and deeper into the devil's nest. One more day would
+have finished him. When I told him that the trip from Clingman to Guyot
+would be hard work for a party of experienced mountaineers, and that it
+would probably take them a week, during which time they would have to
+pack all supplies on their own backs, he agreed that his best course
+would be down into Carolina and out to the railroad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of animal life in the mountains I was most entertained by the raven.
+This extraordinary bird was the first creature Noah liberated from the
+ark--he must have known, even at that early period of nature study, that
+it was the most sagacious of all winged things. Or perhaps Noah and the
+raven did not get on well together and he rid himself of the pest at
+first opportunity. Doubtless there could have been no peace aboard a
+craft that harbored so inquisitive and talkative a fowl. Anyway, the
+wild raven has been superlatively shy of man ever since the flood.
+
+Probably there is no place south of Labrador where our raven (_Corvus
+corax principalis_) is seen so often as in the Smokies; and yet, even
+here, a man may haunt the tops for weeks without sight or sound of the
+ebon mystery--then, for a few days, they will be common. On the
+southeast side of the Locust Ridge, opposite Huggins's Hell, between
+Bone Valley and the main fork of Hazel Creek, there is a "Raven's Cliff"
+where they winter and breed, using the same nests year after year.
+Occasionally one is trapped, with bloody groundhog for bait; but I have
+yet to meet a man who has succeeded in shooting one.
+
+If the raven's body be elusive his tongue assuredly is not. No other
+animal save man has anything like his vocal range. The raven croaks,
+clucks, caws, chuckles, squalls, pleads, "pooh-poohs," grunts, barks,
+mimics small birds, hectors, cajoles--yes, pulls a cork, whets a scythe,
+files a saw--with his throat. As is well known, ravens can be taught
+human speech, like parrots; and I am told they show the same preference
+for bad words--which, I think, is quite in character with their
+reputation as thieves and butchers. However, I may be prejudiced, seeing
+that the raven's favorite dainties for his menu are the eyes of living
+fawns and lambs.
+
+A stranger in these mountains will be surprised at the apparent scarcity
+of game animals. It is not unusual for one to hunt all day in an
+absolute wilderness, where he sees never a fresh track of man, and not
+get a shot at anything fit to eat. The cover is so dense that one
+still-hunting (going without dogs) has poor chance of spying the game
+that lurks about him; and there really is little of it by comparison
+with such huntings fields as the Adirondacks, Maine, Canada, where game
+has been conserved for many years. It used to be the same up there. The
+late W. J. Stillman, writing in 1877 of the Maine woods, said:
+
+     "The most striking feature of the forest, after one has become
+     habituated to the gloom, the pathlessness, and the apparent
+     impenetrability of the screen it forms around him, is the absence
+     of animal life. You may wander for hours without seeing a living
+     creature.... One thinks of the woods and the wild beasts; yet in
+     all the years of my wilderness living I can catalogue the wild
+     creatures other than squirrels, grouse, and small birds (never
+     plenty, generally very rare) which I have accidentally encountered
+     and seen while wandering for hunting or mere pastime in the wild
+     forest; one deer, one porcupine, one marten (commonly called
+     sable), and maybe half a dozen hares. You may walk hours and not
+     see a living creature larger than a fly, for days together and not
+     see a grouse, a squirrel, or a bird larger than the Canada jay....
+     Lands running with game are like those flowing with milk and honey;
+     and when the sporting books tell you that game is abundant, don't
+     imagine that you are assured from starvation thereby. I have been
+     reduced, in a country where deer were swarming, to live several
+     days together on corn meal."
+
+
+It is much the same to-day in our Appalachian wilderness, where no
+protection worthy the name has ever been afforded the game and fish
+since Indian times. There is a class of woods-loafers, very common here,
+that ranges the forest at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or
+"hog rifles," killing bearing females as well as legitimate game,
+fishing at night, even using dynamite in the streams; and so, in spite
+of the fact that there is no better game harborage granted by Nature on
+our continent than the Carolina mountains, the deer are all but
+exterminated in most districts, turkeys and even squirrels are rather
+scarce, and good trout fishing is limited to stocked waters or streams
+flowing through virgin forest. The only game animal that still holds his
+own is the black bear, and he endures in few places other than the
+roughest districts, such as that southwest of the Sugarland Mountains,
+where laurel and cliffs daunt all but the hardiest of men.
+
+The only venomous snakes in the mountains are rattlers and copperheads,
+the former common, the latter rare. The chance of being bitten by one is
+about as remote as that of being struck by lightning--either accident
+_might_ happen, of course. The mountaineers have an absurd notion that
+the little lizard so common in the hills is rank "pizen." Oddly enough,
+they call it a "scorpion."
+
+From those two pests of the North Woods, black-flies and mosquitoes, the
+Smokies are mercifully exempt. At least there are no mosquitoes that
+bite or sting, except down in the river valleys where they have been
+introduced by railroad trains--and even there they are but a feeble
+folk. The reason is that in the mountains there is almost no standing
+water where they can breed.
+
+On the other hand, the common house-fly is extraordinarily numerous and
+persistent--a daily curse, even on top of Smoky. I imagine this is due
+to the wet climate, as in Ireland. Minute gnats (the "punkies" or
+"no-see-ums" of the North) are also offensively present in trout-fishing
+time. And every cabin is alive with fleas. A hundred nights I have
+anointed myself with citronella from head to foot, and outsmelt a cheap
+barber-shop, to escape their plague. In a tent, and without dogs, one
+can be immune.
+
+In most years there are very few chiggers, except on pine ridges. They
+are worse along rivers than in the mountains. The ticks of this country
+are not numerous, and seldom fasten on man.
+
+The climate of the Carolina mountains is pleasantly cool in summer. Even
+at low altitudes (1,600 to 2,000 feet) the nights generally are
+refreshing. It may be hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. The
+air is drier (less relative humidity) than in the lowlands,
+notwithstanding that there is greater rainfall here than elsewhere in
+the United States outside of Florida and the Puget Sound country. The
+annual rainfall varies a great deal according to locality, being least
+at Asheville (42 inches) and greatest on the southeastern slope of the
+Blue Ridge, where as much as 105 inches has been recorded in a year. The
+average rainfall of the whole region is 73 inches a year.[2]
+
+In general the mornings are apt to be lowery, with fogs hanging low
+until, say, 9 o'clock, so that one cannot predict weather for the day.
+Heavy dews remain on the bushes until about the same hour.
+
+The winters are short. What Northerners would call cold weather is not
+expected until Christmas, and generally it is gone by the end of
+February. Snow sometimes falls on the higher mountains by the first of
+October, and the last snow may linger there until April (exceptionally
+it falls in May). Tornadoes are unknown here, but sometimes a hurricane
+will sweep the upper ranges. On April 19, 1900, a blizzard from the
+northwest struck the Smokies. In twenty minutes everything was frozen.
+At Siler's Meadow seventeen cattle climbed upon each other for warmth
+and froze to death in a solid hecatomb. A herdsman who was out at the
+time, and narrowly escaped a similar fate, assured me that "that was the
+beatenest snowstorm ever I seen." In the valleys there may be a few days
+in January and February when the mercury drops to zero or a few
+degrees lower. On the high peaks, of course, the winter cold often is
+intense, and on the sunless north side of Clingman there are overhangs
+or crevices where a little ice may be found the year around.
+
+
+[Illustration: The old copper mine]
+
+
+Undoubtedly there is vast mineral wealth hidden in the Carolina
+mountains. A greater variety of minerals has been found here than in any
+other State save Colorado. But, for the present, it is a hard country to
+prospect in, owing to the thick covering of the forest floor. Not only
+is the underbrush very dense, but beneath it there generally is a thick
+stratum of clay overlaying the rocks, even on steep slopes. Gold has
+been found in numberless places, but finely disseminated. I do not know
+a locality in the mountains proper where a working vein has been
+discovered. At my cabin I did just enough panning to get a notion that
+if I could stand working in icy water ten hours a day I might average a
+dollar in yellow dust by it. The adjacent copper mine carries
+considerable gold. Silver and lead are not common, so far as known, but
+there are many good copper and iron properties. Gems are mined
+profitably in several of the western counties. The corundum, mica, talc,
+and monazite are, I believe, unexcelled in the United States. Building
+stone is abundant, and there is fine marble in various places. Kaolin is
+shipped out in considerable quantities. The rocks chiefly are gneisses,
+granites, metamorphosed marbles, quartzites, and slates, all of them far
+too old to bear fossils or coal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES
+
+
+"Git up, pup! you've scrouged right in hyur in front of the fire. You
+Dred! what makes you so blamed contentious?"
+
+Little John shoved both dogs into a corner, and strove to scrape some
+coals from under a beech forestick that glowed almost hot enough to melt
+brass.
+
+"This is the wust coggled-up fire I ever seed, to fry by. Bill, hand me
+some Old Ned from that suggin o' mine."
+
+A bearded hunchback reached his long arm to a sack that hung under our
+rifles, drew out a chuck of salt pork, and began slicing it with his
+jackknife. On inquiry I learned that "Old Ned" is merely slang for fat
+pork, but that "suggin" or "sujjit" (the _u_ pronounced like _oo_ in
+look) is true mountain dialect for a pouch, valise, or carryall, its
+etymology being something to puzzle over.
+
+Four dogs growled at each other under a long bunk of poles and hay that
+spanned one side of our cabin. The fire glared out upon the middle of an
+unfloored and windowless room. Deep shadows clung to the walls and
+benches, charitably concealing much dirt and disorder left by previous
+occupants, much litter of our own contributing.
+
+At last we were on a saddle of the divide, a mile above sea-level, in a
+hut built years ago for temporary lodgment of cattle-men herding on the
+grassy "balds" of the Smokies. A sagging clapboard roof covered its two
+rooms and the open space between them that we called our "entry." The
+State line between North Carolina and Tennessee ran through this
+uninclosed hallway. The Carolina room had a puncheon floor and a
+clapboard table, also better bunks than its mate; but there had risen a
+stiff southerly gale that made the chimney smoke so abominably that we
+were forced to take quarters in the neighbor State.
+
+Granville lifted the lid from a big Dutch oven and reported "Bread's
+done."
+
+There was a flash in the frying-pan, a curse and a puff from Little
+John. The coffee-pot boiled over. We gathered about the hewn benches
+that served for tables, and sat _� la Turc_ upon the ground. For some
+time there was no sound but the gale without and the munching of
+ravenous men.
+
+"If this wind 'll only cease afore mornin', we'll git us a bear
+to-morrow."
+
+A powerful gust struck the cabin, by way of answer; a great roaring
+surged up from the gulf of Defeat, from Desolation, and from the other
+forks of Bone Valley--clamor of ten thousand trees struggling with the
+blast.
+
+"Hit's gittin' wusser."
+
+"Any danger of this roost being blown off the mountain?" I inquired.
+
+"Hit's stood hyur twenty year through all the storms; I reckon it can
+stand one more night of it."
+
+"A man couldn't walk upright, outside the cabin," I asserted, thinking
+of the St. Louis tornado, in which I had lain flat on my belly, clinging
+to an iron post.
+
+The hunchback turned to me with a grave face. "I've seed hit blow, here
+on top o' Smoky, till a hoss couldn't stand up agin it. You'll spy,
+to-morrow, whar several trees has been wind-throwed and busted to
+kindlin'."
+
+I recalled that several, in the South, means many--"a good many," as our
+own tongues phrase it.
+
+"Oh, shucks! Bill Cope," put in "Doc" Jones, "whut do you-uns know about
+windstorms? Now, _I've_ hed some experiencin' up hyur that 'll do to tell
+about. You remember the big storm three year ago, come grass, when the
+cattle all huddled up a-top o' each other and friz in one pile, solid."
+
+Bill grunted an affirmative.
+
+"Wal, sir, I was a-herdin', over at the Spencer Place, and was out on
+Thunderhead when the wind sprung up. Thar come one turrible vyg'rous
+blow that jest nacherally lifted the ground. I went up in the sky, my
+coat ripped off, and I went a-sailin' end-over-end."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes. About half an hour later, I lit _spang_ in the mud, way down
+yander in Tuckaleechee Cove--yes, sir: ten mile as the crow flies, and a
+mile deeper 'n trout-fish swim."
+
+There was silence for a moment. Then Little John spoke up: "I mind about
+that time, Doc; but I disremember which buryin'-ground they-all planted
+ye in."
+
+"Planted! _Me?_ Huh! But I had one tormentin' time findin' my hat!"
+
+The cabin shook under a heavier blast, to match Bill's yarn.
+
+"Old Wind-maker's blowin' liars out o' North Car'lina. Hang on to yer
+hat, Doc! Whoop! hear 'em a-comin'!"
+
+"Durn this blow, anyhow! No bear 'll cross the mountain sich a night as
+this."
+
+"Can't we hunt down on the Carolina side?" I asked.
+
+"That's whar we're goin' to drive; but hit's no use if the bear don't
+come over."
+
+"How is that? Do they sleep in one State and eat in the other?"
+
+"Yes: you see, the Tennessee side of the mountain is powerful steep and
+laurely, so 't man nor dog cain't git over it in lots o' places; that's
+whar the bears den. But the mast, sich as acorns and beech and hickory
+nuts, is mostly on the Car'lina side; that's whar they hafter come to
+feed. So, when it blows like this, they stay at home and suck their paws
+till the weather clars."
+
+"So we'll have to do, at this rate."
+
+"I'll go see whut the el-e-ments looks like."
+
+We arose from our squatting postures. John opened the little clapboard
+door, which swung violently backward as another gust boomed against the
+cabin. Dust and hot ashes scattered in every direction. The dogs sprang
+up, one encroached upon another, and they flew at each other's throats.
+They were powerful beasts, dangerous to man as well as to the brutes
+they were trained to fight; but John was their master, and he soon
+booted them into surly subjection.
+
+"The older dog don't ginerally raise no ruction; hit's the younger one
+that's ill," by which he meant vicious. "You, Coaly, you'll git some o'
+that meanness shuck outen you if you tackle an old she-bear to-morrow!"
+
+"Has the young dog ever fought a bear?"
+
+"No; he don't know nothin'; but I reckon he'll pick up some larnin' in
+the next two, three days."
+
+"Have these dogs got the Plott strain? I've been told that the Plott
+hounds are the best bear dogs in the country."
+
+"'Tain't so," snorted John. "The Plott curs are the best: that is, half
+hound, half cur--though what we-uns calls the cur, in this case, raelly
+comes from a big furrin dog that I don't rightly know the breed of.
+Fellers, you can talk as you please about a streak o' the cur spilin' a
+dog; but I know hit ain't so--not for bear fightin' in these mountains,
+whar you cain't foller up on hossback, but hafter do your own runnin'."
+
+"What is the reason, John?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership
+of some Backwoods Napoleon!"]
+
+
+"Waal, hit's like this: a plumb cur, of course, cain't foller a cold
+track--he just runs by sight; and he won't hang--he quits. But,
+t'other way, no hound 'll raelly fight a bear--hit takes a big severe
+dog to do that. Hounds has the best noses, and they'll run a bear all
+day and night, and the next day, too; but they won't never tree--they're
+afeared to close in. Now, look at them dogs o' mine. A cur ain't got no
+dew-claws--them dogs has. My dogs can foller ary trail, same's a hound;
+but they'll run right in on the varmint, snappin' and chawin' and
+worryin' him till he gits so mad you can hear his tushes pop half a
+mile. He cain't run away--he haster stop every bit, and fight. Finally
+he gits so tired and het up that he trees to rest hisself. Then we-uns
+ketches up and finishes him."
+
+"Mebbe you-uns don't know that a dew-clawed dog is snake-proof----"
+
+But somebody, thinking that dog-talk had gone far enough, produced a
+bottle of soothing-syrup that was too new to have paid tax. Then we
+discovered that there was musical talent, of a sort, in Little John. He
+cut a pigeon-wing, twirled around with an imaginary banjo, and sang in a
+quaint minor:
+
+  Did you _ever_ see the devil,
+  With his _pitchfork_ and ladle,
+  And his _old_ iron shovel,
+  And his old gourd head?
+    O, I _will_ go to meetin',
+    And I _will_ go to meetin',
+    Yes, I _will_ go to meetin',
+    In an old tin pan.
+
+
+Other songs followed, with utter irrelevance--mere snatches from
+"ballets" composed, mainly, by the mountaineers themselves, though some
+dated back to a long-forgotten age when the British ancestors of these
+Carolina woodsmen were battling with lance and long-bow. It was one of
+modern and local origin that John was singing when there came a
+diversion from without--
+
+  La-a-ay down, boys,
+    Le's take a nap:
+  Thar's goin' to be trouble
+    In the Cumberland Gap--
+
+
+Our ears were stunned by one sudden thundering crash. The roof rose
+visibly, as though pushed upward from within. In an instant we were
+blinded by moss and dried mud--the chinking blown from between the logs
+of our shabby cabin. Dred and Coaly cowered as though whipped, while
+"Doc's" little hound slunk away in the keen misery of fear. We men
+looked at each other with lowered eyelids and the grim smile that
+denotes readiness, though no special eagerness, for dissolution. Beyond
+the "gant-lot" we could hear trees and limbs popping like skirmishers in
+action.
+
+Then that tidal wave of air swept by. The roof settled again with only a
+few shingles missing. We went to "redding up." Squalls broke against the
+mountainside, hither and yon, like the hammer of Thor testing the
+foundations of the earth. But they were below us. Here, on top, there
+was only the steady drive of a great surge of wind; and speech was
+possible once more.
+
+"Fellers, you want to mark whut you dream about, to-night: hit'll shore
+come true to-morrow."
+
+"Yes: but you mustn't tell whut yer dream was till the hunt's over, or
+it'll spile the charm."
+
+There ensued a grave discussion of dream-lore, in which the illiterates
+of our party declared solemn faith. If one dreamt of blood, he would
+surely see blood the next day. Another lucky sign for a hunter was to
+dream of quarreling with a woman, for that meant a she-bear; it was
+favorable to dream of clear water, but muddy water meant trouble.
+
+The wind died away. When we went out for a last observation of the
+weather we found the air so clear that the lights of Knoxville were
+plainly visible, in the north-north west, thirty-two miles in an air
+line. Not another light was to be seen on earth, although in some
+directions we could scan for nearly a hundred miles. The moon shone
+brightly. Things looked rather favorable for the morrow, after all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Brek-k-k-_fust_!"
+
+I awoke to a knowledge that somebody had built a roaring fire and was
+stirring about. Between the cabin logs one looked out upon a starry sky
+and an almost pitch-dark world. What did that pottering vagabond mean by
+arousing us in the middle of the night? But I was hungry. Everybody half
+arose on elbows and blinked about. Then we got up, each after his
+fashion, except one scamp who resumed snoring.
+
+"Whar's that brekfust you're yellin' about?"
+
+"Hit's for you-uns to help _git_! I knowed I couldn't roust ye no other
+way. Here, you, go down to the spring and fetch water. Rustle out, boys;
+we've got to git a soon start if you want bear brains an' liver for
+supper."
+
+The "soon start" tickled me into good humor.
+
+Our dogs were curled together under the long bunk, having popped indoors
+as soon as the way was opened. Somebody trod on Coaly's tail. Coaly
+snapped Dred. Instantly there was action between the four. It is
+interesting to observe what two or three hundred pounds of dog can do to
+a ramshackle berth with a man on top of it. Poles and hay and ragged
+quilts flew in every direction. Sleepy Matt went down in the midst of
+the m�l�e, swearing valiantly. I went out and hammered ice out of the
+wash-basin while Granville and John quelled the riot. Presently our
+frying-pans sputtered and the huge coffee-pot began to get up steam.
+
+"Waal, who dreamt him a good dream?"
+
+"I did," affirmed the writer. "I dreamt that I had an old colored woman
+by the throat and was choking dollars out of her mouth----"
+
+"Good la!" exclaimed four men in chorus; "you hadn't orter a-told."
+
+"Why? Wasn't that a lovely dream?"
+
+"Hit means a she-bear, shore as a cap-shootin' gun; but you've done
+spiled it all by tellin'. Mebbe somebody'll git her to-day, but _you_
+won't--your chanct is ruined."
+
+So the reader will understand why, in this veracious narrative, I cannot
+relate any heroic exploits of my own in battling with Ursus Major. And
+so you, ambitious one, when you go into the Smokies after that long-lost
+bear, remember these two cardinal points of the Law:
+
+     (1) Dream that you are fighting some poor old colored woman. (That
+     is easy: the victuals you get will fix up your dream, all right.)
+     And--
+
+     (2) Keep your mouth shut about it.
+
+
+There was still no sign of rose-color in the eastern sky when we sallied
+forth. The ground, to use a mountaineer's expression, was "all spewed up
+with frost." Rime crackled underfoot and our mustaches soon stiffened in
+the icy wind.
+
+It was settled that Little John Cable and the hunchback Cope should take
+the dogs far down into Bone Valley and start the drive, leaving
+Granville, "Doc," Matt, and myself to picket the mountain. I was given a
+stand about half a mile east of the cabin, and had but a vague notion of
+where the others went.
+
+By jinks, it was cold! I built a little fire between the buttressing
+roots of a big mountain oak, but still my toes and fingers were numb.
+This was the 25th of November, and we were at an altitude where
+sometimes frost forms in July. The other men were more thinly clad than
+I, and with not a stitch of wool beyond their stockings; but they seemed
+to revel in the keen air. I wasted some pity on Cope, who had no
+underwear worthy of the name; but afterwards I learned that he would not
+have worn more clothes if they had been given him. Many a night my
+companions had slept out on the mountain without blanket or shelter,
+when the ground froze and every twig in the forest was coated with rime
+from the winter fog.
+
+Away out yonder beyond the mighty bulk of Clingman Dome, which, black
+with spruce and balsam, looked like a vast bear rising to contemplate
+the northern world, there streaked the first faint, nebulous hint of
+dawn. Presently the big bear's head was tipped with a golden crown
+flashing against the scarlet fires of the firmament, and the earth
+awoke.
+
+A rustling some hundred yards below me gave signal that the gray
+squirrels were on their way to water. Out of a tree overhead hopped a
+mountain "boomer" (red squirrel), and down he came, eyed me, and
+stopped. Cocking his head to one side he challenged peremptorily: "Who
+are you? Stump? Stump? Not a stump. What the deuce!"
+
+I moved my hand.
+
+"Lawk--the booger-man! Run, run, run!"
+
+Somewhere from the sky came a strange, half-human note, as of someone
+chiding: "_Wal_-lace, _Wal_-lace, _Wat_!" I could get no view for the
+trees. Then the voice flexibly changed to a deep-toned "Co-_logne_,
+Co-_logne_, Co-_logne_," that rang like a bell through the forest
+aisles.
+
+Two names uttered distinctly from the air! Two scenes conjured in a
+breath, vivid but unrelated as in dreams: Wallace--an iron-bound
+Scottish coast; Cologne--tall spires, and cliffs along the Rhine! What
+magic had flashed such pictures upon a remote summit of the Smoky
+Mountains?
+
+The weird speaker sailed into view--a raven. Forward it swept with great
+speed of ebon wings, fairly within gunshot for one teasing moment. Then,
+as if to mock my gaping stupor, it hurtled like a hawk far into the safe
+distance, whence it flung back loud screams of defiance and chuckles of
+derision.
+
+As the morning drew on, I let the fire die to ashes and basked lazily in
+the sun. Not a sound had I heard from the dogs. My hoodoo was working
+malignly. Well, let it work. I was comfortable now, and that old bear
+could go to any other doom she preferred. It was pleasant enough to
+lie here alone in the forest and be free! Aye, it was good to be alive,
+and to be far, far away from the broken bottles and old tin cans of
+civilization.
+
+
+[Illustration: "By and by up they came, carrying the Bear on a trimmed
+sapling"]
+
+
+For many a league to the southward clouds covered all the valleys in
+billows of white, from which rose a hundred mountain tops, like islands
+in a tropic ocean. My fancy sailed among and beyond them, beyond the
+horizon's rim, even unto those far seas that I had sailed in my youth,
+to the old times and the old friends that I should never see again.
+
+But a forenoon is long-drawn-out when one has breakfasted before dawn,
+and has nothing to do but sit motionless in the woods and watch and
+listen. I got to fingering my rifle trigger impatiently and wishing that
+a wild Thanksgiving gobbler might blunder into view. Squirrels made
+ceaseless chatter all around my stand. Large hawks shrilled by me within
+tempting range, whistling like spent bullets. A groundhog sat up on a
+log and whistled, too, after a manner of his own. He was so near that I
+could see his nose wiggle. A skunk waddled around for twenty minutes,
+and once came so close that I thought he would nibble my boot. I was
+among old mossy beeches, scaled with polyphori, and twisted into
+postures of torture by their battles with the storms. Below, among
+chestnuts and birches, I could hear the _t-wee, t-wee_ of "joree-birds"
+(towhees), which winter in the valleys. Incessantly came the
+_chip-chip-cluck_ of ground squirrels, the saucy bark of the grays, and
+great chirruping among the "boomers," which had ceased swearing and were
+hard at work.
+
+Far off on my left a rifle cracked. I pricked up and listened intently,
+but there was never a yelp from a dog. Since it is a law of the chase to
+fire at nothing smaller than turkeys, lest big game be scared away, this
+shot might mean a gobbler. I knew that Matt Hyde could not, to save his
+soul, sit ten minutes on a stand without calling turkeys (and he _could_
+call them, with his unassisted mouth, better than anyone I ever heard
+perform with leaf or wing-bone or any other contrivance).
+
+Thus the slow hours dragged along. I yearned mightily to stretch my
+legs. Finally, being certain that no drive would approach my stand that
+day, I ambled back to the hut and did a turn at dinner-getting. Things
+were smoking, and smelt good, by the time four of our men turned up, all
+of them dog-tired and disappointed, but stoical.
+
+"That pup Coaly chased off atter a wildcat," blurted John. "We held the
+old dogs together and let him rip. Then Dred started a deer. It was that
+old buck that everybody's shot at, and missed, this three year back. I'd
+believe he's a hant if 't wasn't for his tracks--they're the biggest I
+ever seen. He must weigh two hunderd and fifty. But he's a foxy cuss.
+Tuk right down the bed o' Desolation, up the left prong of Roaring Fork,
+right through the Devil's Race-path (how a deer can git through thar I
+don't see!), crossed at the Meadow Gap, went down Eagle Creek, and by
+now he's in the Little Tennessee. That buck, shorely to God, has wings!"
+
+We were at table in the Carolina room when Matt Hyde appeared. Sure
+enough, he bore a turkey hen.
+
+"I was callin' a gobbler when this fool thing showed up. I fired a shoot
+as she riz in the air, but only bruk her wing. She made off on her legs
+like the devil whoppin' out fire. I run, an' she run. Guess I run her
+half a mile through all-fired thickets. She piped '_Quit--quit_,' but I
+said, 'I'll see you in hell afore I quit!' and the chase resumed.
+Finally I knocked her over with a birch stob, and here we are."
+
+Matt ruefully surveyed his almost denuded legs, evidence of his chase.
+"Boys," said he, "I'm nigh breechless!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+None but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another
+drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was
+fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But
+the stamina of these "withey" little men was even more remarkable than
+their endurance of cold. After a small slice of fried pork, a chunk of
+half-baked johnny-cake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh
+as ever.
+
+What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some
+backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together!--some man like Daniel
+Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!
+
+I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought
+from home. After his first deep draught, Little John exclaimed:
+
+"Hah! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it!"
+
+I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.
+
+We took new stands; but the afternoon passed without incident to those
+of us on the mountain tops. I returned to camp about five o'clock, and
+was surprised to see three of our men lugging across the "gant-lot"[3]
+toward the cabin a small female bear.
+
+"Hyur's yer old nigger woman," shouted John.
+
+The hunters showed no elation--in fact, they looked sheepish--and I
+suspected a nigger in the woodpile.
+
+"How's this? I didn't hear any drive."
+
+"There wa'n't none."
+
+"Then where did you get your bear?"
+
+"In one of Wit Hensley's traps, dum him! Boys, I wish t' we _hed_
+roasted the temper outen them trap-springs, like we talked o' doin'."
+
+"Was the bear alive?"
+
+"Live as a hot coal. See the pup's head!"
+
+I examined Coaly, who looked sick. The flesh was torn from his lower jaw
+and hung down a couple of inches. Two holes in the top of his head
+showed where the bear's tusks had tried to crack his skull.
+
+"When the other dogs found her, he rushed right in. She hadn't been
+trapped more'n a few hours, and she larned Coaly somethin' about the
+bear business."
+
+"Won't this spoil him for hunting hereafter?"
+
+"Not if he has his daddy's and mammy's grit. We'll know by to-morrow
+whether he's a shore-enough bear dog; for I've larned now whar they're
+crossin'--seed sign a-plenty and it's spang fraish. Coaly, old boy!
+you-uns won't be so feisty and brigaty after this, will ye!"
+
+"John, what do those two words mean?"
+
+"_Good_ la! whar was you fotch up? Them's common. They mean nigh about
+the same thing, only there's a differ. When I say that Doc Jones thar is
+brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he's stuck on hisself and
+wants to show off----"
+
+"And John Cable's sulkin' around with his nose out o' jint," interjected
+"Doc."
+
+"Feisty," proceeded the interpreter, "feisty means when a feller's
+allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the
+preacher comes. You know a feist is one o' them little bitty dogs that
+ginerally runs on three legs and pretends a whole lot."
+
+All of us were indignant at the setter of the trap. It had been hidden
+in a trail, with no sign to warn a man from stepping into it. In
+Tennessee, I was told, it is a penitentiary offense to set out a bear
+trap. We agreed that a similar law ought to be passed as soon as
+possible in North Carolina.
+
+"It's only two years ago," said Granville to me, "that Jasper
+Millington, an old man living on the Tennessee side, started acrost the
+mountain to get work at the Everett mine, where you live. Not fur from
+where we are now, he stepped into a bear trap that was hid in the
+leaves, like this one. It broke his leg, and he starved to death in it."
+
+Despite our indignation meeting, it was decided to carry the trapped
+bear's hide to Hensley, and for us to use only the meat as recompense
+for trouble, to say nothing of risk to life and limb. Such is the
+mountaineers' regard for property rights!
+
+The animal we had ingloriously won was undersized, weighing scant 175
+pounds. The average weight of Smoky Mountain bears is not great, but
+occasionally a very large beast is killed. Matt Hyde told us that he
+killed one on the Welch Divide in 1901, the meat of which, dressed,
+without the hide, weighed 434 pounds, and the hide "squared eight feet"
+when stretched for drying. "Doc" Jones killed a bear that was "kivered
+with fat, five inches thick."
+
+Afterwards I took pains to ask the most famous bear hunters of our
+region what were the largest bears they had personally killed. Uncle
+Jimmy Crawford, of the Balsam Mountains, estimated his largest at 500
+pounds gross, and the hide of another that he had killed weighed forty
+pounds after three days' drying. Quill Rose, of Eagle Creek, said that,
+after stripping the hide from one of his bears, he took the fresh skin
+by the ears and raised it as high as he could reach above his head, and
+that four inches of the butt end of the hide (not legs) trailed on the
+ground. "And," he added severely, "thar's no lie about it." Quill is six
+feet one and one-half inches tall. Black Bill Walker, of the middle
+prong of Little River (Tennessee side), told me "The biggest one I ever
+saw killed had a hide that measured ten feet from nose to rump,
+stretched for drying. The biggest I ever killed myself measured nine and
+a half feet, same way, and weighed a good four hundred net, which,
+allowin' for hide, blood, and entrails, would run full five hunderd live
+weight."
+
+
+[Illustration: Skinning a frozen bear]
+
+
+Within the past two years two bears of about 500 pounds each have been
+killed in Swain and Graham counties, the Cables getting one of them.
+The veteran hunters that I have named have killed their hundreds of
+bears and are men superior to silly exaggeration. In the Smoky Mountains
+the black bear, like most of the trees, attains its fullest development,
+and that it occasionally reaches a weight of 500 pounds when "hog fat"
+is beyond reasonable doubt, though the average would not be more than
+half that weight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We spent the evening in debate as to where the next drive should be
+made. Some favored moving six miles eastward, to the old mining shack at
+Siler's Meadow, and trying the headwaters of Forney's Creek, around Rip
+Shin Thicket and the Gunstick Laurel, driving towards Clingman Dome and
+over into the bleak gulf, southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, that I
+had named Godforsaken--a title that stuck. We knew there were bears in
+that region, though it was a desperately rough country to hunt in.
+
+But John and the hunchback had found "sign" in the opposite direction.
+Bears were crossing from Little River in the neighborhood of Thunderhead
+and Briar Knob, coming up just west of the Devil's Court House and
+"using" around Block House, Woolly Ridge, Bear Pen, and thereabouts.
+The motion carried, and we adjourned to bed.
+
+We breakfasted on bear meat, the remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, and
+wheat bread shortened with bear's grease until it was light as a
+feather; and I made tea. It was the first time that Little John ever saw
+"store tea." He swallowed some of it as if it had been boneset, under
+the impression that it was some sort of "yerb" that would be good for
+his insides. Without praising its flavor, he asked what it had cost,
+and, when I told him "a dollar a pound," reckoned that it was "rich
+man's medicine"; said he preferred dittany or sassafras or goldenrod.
+"Doc" Jones opined that it "looked yaller," and he even affirmed that it
+"tasted yaller."
+
+"Waal, people," exclaimed Matt, "I 'low I've done growed a bit, atter
+that mess o' meat. Le's be movin'."
+
+It was a hard pull for me, climbing up the rocky approach to Briar Knob.
+This was my first trip to the main divide, and my heart was not yet used
+to mountain climbing.
+
+The boys were anxious for me to get a shot. I was paying them nothing;
+it was share-and-share alike; but their neighborly kindness moved them
+to do their best for the outlander.
+
+So they put me on what was probably the best stand for the day. It was
+above the Fire-scald, a brul� or burnt-over space on the steep southern
+side of the ridge between Briar Knob and Laurel Top, overlooking the
+grisly slope of Killpeter. Here I could both see and hear an uncommonly
+long distance, and if the bear went either east or west I would have
+timely warning.
+
+This Fire-scald, by the way, is a famous place for wildcats. Once in a
+blue moon a lynx is killed in the highest zone of the Smokies, up among
+the balsams and spruces, where both the flora and fauna, as well as the
+climate, resemble those of the Canadian woods. Our native hunters never
+heard the word lynx, but call the animal a "catamount." Wolves and
+panthers used to be common here, but it is a long time since either has
+been killed in this region, albeit impressionable people see wolf tracks
+or hear a "pant'er" scream every now and then.
+
+I had shivered on the mountain top for a couple of hours, hearing only
+an occasional yelp from the dogs, which had been working in the thickets
+a mile or so below me, when suddenly there burst forth the devil of a
+racket.
+
+On came the chase, right in my direction. Presently I could distinguish
+the different notes: the deep bellow of old Dred, the hound-like baying
+of Rock and Coaly, and little Towse's feisty yelp.
+
+I thought that the bear might chance the comparatively open space of the
+Fire-scald, because there were still some ashes on the ground that would
+dust the dogs' nostrils and throw them off the scent. And such, I
+believe, was his intention. But the dogs caught up with him. They nipped
+him fore and aft. Time after time he shook them off; but they were true
+bear dogs, and, like Matt Hyde after the turkey, they knew no such word
+as quit.
+
+I took a last squint at my rifle sights, made sure there was a cartridge
+in the chamber, and then felt my ears grow as I listened. Suddenly the
+chase swerved at a right angle and took straight up the side of
+Saddle-back. Either the bear would tree, or he would try to smash on
+through to the low rhododendron of the Devil's Court House, where dogs
+who followed might break their legs. I girded myself and ran, "wiggling
+and wingling" along the main divide, and then came the steep pull up
+Briar Knob. As I was grading around the summit with all the lope that
+was left in me, I heard a rifle crack, half a mile down Saddle-back. Old
+"Doc" was somewhere in that vicinity. I halted to listen. Creation,
+what a rumpus! Then another shot. Then the warwhoop of the South, that
+we read about.
+
+By and by, up they came, John and Cope and "Doc," two at a time,
+carrying the bear on a trimmed sapling. Presently Hyde joined us, then
+came Granville, and we filed back to camp, where "Doc" told his story:
+
+"Boys, them dogs' eyes shined like new money. Coaly fit agin, all right,
+and got his tail bit. The bear div down into a sink-hole with the dogs
+a-top o' him. Soon's I could shoot without hittin' a dog, I let him have
+it. Thought I'd shot him through the head, but he fit on. Then I jumped
+down into the sink and kicked him loose from the dogs, or he'd a-killed
+Coaly. Waal, sir, he wa'n't hurt a bit--the ball jest glanced off his
+head. He riz an' knocked me down with his left paw, an' walked right
+over me, an' lit up the ridge. The dogs treed him in a minute. I went to
+shoot up at him, but my new hulls [cartridges] fit loose in this old
+chamber and this one drap [dropped] out, so the gun stuck. Had to git my
+knife out and fix hit. Then the dad-burned gun wouldn't stand roostered
+[cocked]; the feather-spring had jumped out o' place. But I held back
+with my thumb, and killed him anyhow.
+
+"Fellers," he added feelingly, "I wish t' my legs growed
+hind-side-fust."
+
+"_What_ fer?"
+
+"So 's 't I wouldn't bark my shins!"
+
+"Bears," remarked John, "is all left-handed. Ever note that? Hit's the
+left paw you wanter look out fer. He'd a-knocked somethin' out o' yer
+head if there'd been much in it, Doc."
+
+"Funny thing, but hit's true," declared Bill, "that a bear allers dies
+flat on his back, onless he's trapped."
+
+"So do men," said "Doc" grimly; "men who've been shot in battle. You go
+along a battlefield, right atter the action, and you'll find most o' the
+dead faces pintin' to the sky."
+
+"Bears is almost human, anyhow. A skinned bear looks like a great
+big-bodied man with long arms and stumpy legs."
+
+I did not relish this turn of the conversation, for we had two bears to
+skin immediately. The one that had been hung up over night was frozen
+solid, so I photographed her standing on her legs, as in life. When it
+came to skinning this beast the job was a mean one; a fellow had to drop
+out now and then to warm his fingers.
+
+The mountaineers have an odd way of sharing the spoils of the chase.
+They call it "stoking the meat," a use of the word _stoke_ that I have
+never heard elsewhere. The hide is sold, and the proceeds divided
+equally among the hunters, but the meat is cut up into as many pieces as
+there are partners in the chase; then one man goes indoors or behind a
+tree, and somebody at the carcass, laying his hand on a portion, calls
+out: "Whose piece is this?"
+
+"Granville Calhoun's," cries the hidden man, who cannot see it.
+
+"Whose is this?"
+
+"Bill Cope's."
+
+And so on down the line. Everybody gets what chance determines for him,
+and there can be no charges of unfairness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde
+protesting to the hunchback:
+
+"Durn you, Bill Cope, you're so cussed crooked a man cain't lay cluss
+enough to you to keep warm!"
+
+Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like
+rifle-shots from the intense frost.
+
+Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.
+
+"Night afore last," he said, "Bill dremp that he seed a lot o' fat meat
+layin' on the table; an' it done come true. Last night I dremp me one
+that never was knowed to fail yet. Now you see!"
+
+It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured
+much--standers as well as drivers--but not a rifle had spoken up to the
+time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.
+
+Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those
+cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a
+steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling
+the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling
+into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.
+
+
+[Illustration: "....Powerful steep and Laurely...."]
+
+
+"All this," I apostrophized, "shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast
+and fish. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth
+the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and
+disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to
+toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases;
+the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will
+
+  "'... Get me to some far-off land
+    Where higher mountains under heaven stand ...
+    Where other thunders roll amid the hills,
+    Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills
+  With other strains through other-shapen boughs.'"
+
+
+Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but "Doc." The old
+man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday's scrimmage, but
+complained only of "a touch o' rheumatiz." Just how this disease had
+left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.
+
+It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of
+sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet
+afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.
+
+About nine o'clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired
+signals, but there was no answer. The last we had known of the drivers
+was that they had been beyond Thunderhead, six miles of hard travel to
+the westward. There was fog on the mountain. We did some uneasy
+speculating. Then Granville and Matt took the lantern and set out for
+Briar Knob. "Doc" was too stiff for travel, and I, being at that time a
+stranger in the Smokies, would be of no use hunting amid clouds and
+darkness. "Doc" and I passed a dreary three hours. Finally, at midnight,
+my shots were answered, and soon the dogs came limping in. Dred had been
+severely bitten in the shoulders and Rock in the head. Coaly was bloody
+about the mouth, where his first day's wound had reopened. Then came the
+four men, empty-handed, it seemed, until John slapped a bear's "melt"
+(spleen) upon the table. He limped from a bruised hip.
+
+"That bear outsharped us and went around all o' you-uns. We follered him
+clar over to the Spencer Place, and then he doubled and come back on the
+fur side o' the ridge. He crossed through the laurel on the Devil's
+Court House and tuk down an almighty steep place. It was plumb night by
+that time. I fell over a rock clift twenty feet down, and if 't hadn't
+been for the laurel I'd a-bruk some bones. I landed right in the middle
+of them, bear and dogs, fightin' like gamecocks. The bear clim a tree.
+Bill sung out 'Is it fur down thar?' and I said 'Purty fur.' 'Waal, I'm
+a-comin',' says he; and with that he grabbed a laurel to swing hisself
+down by, but the stem bruk, and down he come suddent, to jine the music.
+Hit was so dark I couldn't see my gun barrel, and we wuz all tangled up
+in greenbriers as thick as ploughlines. I had to fire twiste afore he
+tumbled. Then Matt an' Granville come. The four of us tuk turn-about
+crawlin' up out o' thar with the bear on our back. Only one man could
+handle him at a time--and he'll go a good two hunderd, that bear. We
+gutted him, and left him near the top, to fotch in the mornin'. Fellers,
+I'm bodaciously tired out. This is the time I'd give half what I'm worth
+for a gallon o' liquor--and I'd promise the rest!"
+
+"You'd orter see what Coaly did to that varmint," said Bill. "He bit a
+hole under the fore leg, through hide and ha'r, clar into the holler, so
+t' you can stick your hand in and seize the bear's heart."
+
+"John, what was that dream of yours?"
+
+"I dremp I stole a feller's overcoat. Now d'ye see? That means a bear's
+hide."
+
+Coaly, three days ago, had been an inconsequential pup; but now he
+looked up into my eyes with the calm dignity that no fool or braggart
+can assume. He had been knighted. As he licked his wounds he was proud
+of them. "Scars of battle, sir. You may have your swagger ribbons and
+prize collars in the New York dog show, but _this_ for me!"
+
+Poor Coaly! after two more years of valiant service, he was to meet an
+evil fortune. In connection with it I will relate a queer coincidence:
+
+Two years after this hunt, a friend and I spent three summer months in
+this same old cabin on top of Smoky. When Andy had to return North he
+left with me, for sale, a .30-30 carbine, as he had more guns than he
+needed. I showed this carbine to Quill Rose, and the old hunter said: "I
+don't like them power-guns; you could shoot clar through a bear and kill
+your dog on the other side." The next day I sold the weapon to Granville
+Calhoun. Within a short time, word came from Granville's father that
+"Old Reelfoot" was despoiling his orchard. This Reelfoot was a large
+bear whose cunning had defied our best hunters for five or six years. He
+got his name from the fact that he "reeled" or twisted his hind feet in
+walking, as some horses do, leaving a peculiar track. This seems rather
+common among old bears, for I have known of several "reelfoots" in
+other, and widely separated, regions.
+
+Cable and his dogs were sent for. A drive was made, and the bear was
+actually caught within a few rods of old Mr. Calhoun's stable. His teeth
+were worn to the gums, and, as he could no longer kill hogs, he had come
+down to an apple diet. He was large-framed, but very poor. The only
+hunters on the spot were Granville, with the .30-30, and a northern
+lumberman named Hastings, with a Luger carbine. After two or three shots
+had wounded the bear, he rose on his hind feet and made for Granville. A
+.30-30 bullet went clear through the beast at the very instant that
+Coaly, who was unseen, jumped up on the log behind it, and the missile
+gave both animals their death wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MOONSHINE LAND
+
+
+I was hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new
+to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek
+valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron "slick,"
+and, to some extent, lost my bearings.
+
+After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a
+little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep
+cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the
+Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log
+huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or
+loft, and without a sawed board showing in its construction. A thin curl
+of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a
+mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut
+through the log wall. The stones of this fireplace were not even
+plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise
+the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent
+risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite
+each other. These, helped by wide crevices between the unchinked logs,
+served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw November
+air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had
+hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep
+in muck that reached to the doorsill, two pigs scampered out through the
+opposite door.
+
+Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as
+big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was
+toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor
+some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.
+
+I shivered as I looked at this midget, comparing her only garment, a
+torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter's garb that seemed none too
+warm for such a day as this.
+
+Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl,
+I chose the quickest way to reassure her by saluting in the vernacular:
+
+"Howdy?"
+
+"Howdy?" she gasped.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"Tom Kirby."
+
+"Kirby? Oh! yes, I know him--we've been hunting together. Is your father
+at home?"
+
+"No, he's out somewheres."
+
+"Where is your mother?"
+
+"She's in the field, up yan, gittin' roughness."
+
+I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. "Roughness," in
+mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.
+
+"How far is it to the next house?"
+
+"I don't know; maw, she knows."
+
+"All right; I'll find her."
+
+I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was
+walking away from me, and I conjectured that "maw's" feet were under it;
+so I hailed:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a
+bare-headed, bare-footed woman, coarse featured but of superb
+physique--one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of
+shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two
+without letting it down.
+
+
+[Illustration: Moonshine Still-House Hidden in the Laurel]
+
+
+She flushed, then paled, staring at me round-eyed--frightened, I
+thought, by this apparition of a stranger whose approach she had not
+detected. To these people of the far backwoods everyone from outside
+their mountains is a doubtful character at best.
+
+However, Mistress Kirby quickly recovered her aplomb. Her mouth
+straightened to a thin slit. She planted herself squarely across my
+path, now regarding me with contracted lids and a hard glint, till I
+felt fairly bayoneted by those steel-gray eyes.
+
+"Good-morning. Is Mr. Kirby about?" I inquired.
+
+There was no answer. Instead, the thin slit opened and let out a yell of
+almost yodel quality, penetrating as a warwhoop--a yell that would carry
+near half a mile. I wondered what she meant by this; but she did not
+enlighten me by so much as a single word. It was puzzling, not to say
+disconcerting; but, charging it to the custom of a country that still
+was new to me, I found my tongue again, and started to give credentials.
+
+"My name is Kephart. I am staying at the Everett Mine on Sugar Fork----"
+
+Another yell that set the wild echoes flying.
+
+"I am acquainted with your husband; we've hunted together. Perhaps he
+has told you----"
+
+Yell number three, same pitch and vigor as before.
+
+By this time I was quite nonplussed. I waited for her to speak; but
+never a word did the woman deign. So there we stood and stared at each
+other in silence--I leaning on my rifle, she with red arms akimbo--till
+I grew embarrassed, half wondering, too, if the creature were demented.
+
+Suddenly a light flashed upon my groping wits. This amazon was on
+picket. Her three shrieks had been a signal to someone up the branch.
+Her attitude showed that there was no thoroughfare in that direction at
+present. Circumstances, whatever they were, forbade explanation.
+Clearly, the woman thought that I could not help seeing how matters
+stood. Not for a moment did she suspect but that her yells, her
+belligerent attitude, and her refusal to speak, were the conventional
+way, this world over, of intimating that there was a _contretemps_. She
+considered that if I was what I claimed to be, an acquaintance of her
+husband and on friendly footing, I would be gentleman enough to retire.
+If I was something else--an officer, a spy--well, she was there to stop
+me until the captain of the guard arrived.
+
+For one silly moment I was tempted to advance and see what this martial
+spouse would do if I tried to pass her on the trail. But a hunter's
+instinct made me glance forward to the upper corner of the field. There
+was thick cover beyond the fence, with a clear range of a hundred and
+fifty yards between it and me--too far for Tom to recognize me, I
+thought, but deadly range for his Winchester, I knew. One forward step
+of mine would put me in the status of an armed intruder. So I concluded
+that common sense would better become me at this juncture than a bit of
+fooling that surely would be misinterpreted, and that might end
+ingloriously.
+
+"Ah, well!" I remarked, "when your husband gets back, tell him, please,
+that I was sorry to miss him; though I did not call on any special
+business--just wanted to say 'Howdy?' you know. Good day!"
+
+I turned and went down the valley.
+
+All the way home I speculated on this queer adventure. What was going on
+"up yan"?
+
+A month before, when I had started for this wildest nook of the Smokies,
+a friend had intimated that I was venturing into a dubious
+district--Moonshine Land. It is but frank to confess that this prospect
+was not unpleasant. My only fear had been that I might not find any
+moonshiners, or that, having found them, I might not succeed in winning
+their confidence to the extent of learning their own side of an
+interesting story. As to how I could do this without getting tarred with
+the same stick, I was by no means clear; but I hoped that good luck
+might find a way. And now it seemed as if luck had indeed favored me
+with an excuse for broaching the topic to some friendly mountaineer, so
+I could at least see how he would take it.
+
+And it chanced (or was it chance?) that I had no more than finished
+supper, that evening, when a man called at my lonely cabin. He was the
+one that I knew best among my scattered neighbors. I gave him a rather
+humorous account of my reception by Madame Kirby, and asked him what he
+thought she was yelling about.
+
+There was no answering smile on my visitor's face. He pondered in
+silence, weighing many contingencies, it seemed, and ventured no more
+than a helpless "Waal, now I wonder!"
+
+It did not suit me to let the matter go at that; so, on a sudden
+impulse, I fired the question point-blank at him: "Do you suppose that
+Tom is running a still up there at the head of that little cove?"
+
+The man's face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I
+had noticed in Mistress Kirby's.
+
+"Jedgmatically, I don't know."
+
+"Excuse me! I don't want to know, either. But let me explain just what I
+am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as
+well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these
+mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger
+traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from
+almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may
+be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;[4] but there
+is one thing that I'm as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all.
+You know my habits; I like to explore--I never take a guide--and when I
+come to a place that's particularly wild and primitive, that's just the
+place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that,
+one of these days when I'm out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I
+should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation--what would
+happen? What would they do?"
+
+"Waal, sir, I'll tell you whut they'd do. They'd fust-place ask you some
+questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin' in that thar neck
+o' the woods. Then they'd git you to do some triflin' work about the
+still--feed the furnace, or stir the mash--jest so 's 't they could
+prove that you took a hand in it your own self."
+
+"What good would that do?"
+
+"Hit would make you one o' them in the eyes of the law."
+
+"I see. But, really, doesn't that seem rather childish? I could easily
+convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that's what it
+would amount to."
+
+"I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to
+convince. The judge 'd right up and want to know why you let grass go to
+seed afore you came and informed on them."
+
+He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: "I
+reckon you wouldn't be in no great hurry to do _that_."
+
+"No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would
+be likely to mistreat me?"
+
+"Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin' you? At the wust,
+s'posin' they was convicted by your own evidence, they'd only git a
+month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for
+it? Hit's all 'tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!"
+
+"I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense
+about this moonshining business. I'd like to learn the plain truth about
+it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about
+personal affairs, and don't want to learn incriminating details; but I
+would like to know how the business is conducted, and especially how it
+is regarded from the mountain people's own point of view. I have already
+learned that a stranger's life and property are safer here than they
+would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your
+country good to have that known. But I can't say that there is no
+moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it.
+Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don't seem ashamed of
+it."
+
+The man's face turned an angry red.
+
+"Mister, we-uns hain't no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary
+thing we do. We're poor; but we don't ax no favors. We stay 'way up hyar
+in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along,
+he's welcome to the best we've got, such as 'tis; but if he imposes on
+us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!"
+
+"And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition."
+
+"Hit is, under some sarcumstances."
+
+My guest stretched his legs, and "jedgmatically" proceeded to enlighten
+me.
+
+"Thar's plenty o' men and women grown, in these mountains, who don't
+know that the Government is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt
+who commands two-three judges and a gang o' revenue officers. They know
+thar's a president, because the men folks's voted for him, and the women
+folks's seed his pictur. They've heered tell about the judges; and
+they've seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They believe in
+supportin' the Government, because hit's the law. Nobody refuses to pay
+his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar'. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on
+the dollar; and that's all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten
+cents on twenty cents' worth o' liquor; and that's robbin' the people
+with a gun to their faces.
+
+"Of course, I ain't so ignorant as all that--I've traveled about the
+country, been to Asheville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o'
+times--and I know the theory. Theory says 't revenue is a tax on luxury.
+Waal, that's all right--anything in reason. The big fellers that
+makes lots of money out o' stillin', and lives in luxury, ought to pay
+handsome for it. But who ever seen luxury cavortin' around in these
+Smoky Mountains?"
+
+
+[Illustration: MOONSHINE MILL--SIDE VIEW
+
+The trails that lead hither are blind and rough. Behind the mill rises
+an almost precipitous mountain-side. Much of the corn is brought in on
+men's backs at the dead of night.]
+
+
+He paused for a reply. Even then, with my limited experience in the
+mountains, I could not help wincing at the idea. Often, in later times,
+this man's question came back to me with peculiar force. Luxury! in a
+land where the little stores were often out of coffee, sugar, kerosene,
+and even salt; where, in dead of winter, there was no meal, much less
+flour, to be had for love or money. Luxury! where I had to live on
+bear-meat (tough old sow bear) for six weeks, because the only side of
+pork that I could find for sale was full of maggots.
+
+My friend continued: "Whiskey means more to us mountain folks than hit
+does to folks in town, whar thar's drug-stores and doctors. Let ary
+thing go wrong in the fam'ly--fever, or snake bite, or somethin'--and we
+can't git a doctor up hyar less'n three days; and it costs scand'lous.
+The only medicines we-uns has is yerbs, which customarily ain't no good
+'thout a leetle grain o' whiskey. Now, th'r ain't no saloons allowed in
+all these western counties. The nighest State dispensary, even, is sixty
+miles away.[5] The law wunt let us have liquor shipped to us from
+anywhars in the State. If we git it sent to us from outside the State it
+has to come by express--and reg-lar old pop-skull it is, too. So, to be
+good law-abiding citizens, we-uns must travel back and forth at a heap
+of expense, or pay express rates on pizened liquor--and we are too
+durned poor to do ary one or t'other.
+
+"Now, yan's my field o' corn. I gather the corn, and shuck hit and grind
+hit my own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o' bread to eat--and
+I don't pay no tax, do I? Then why can't I make some o' my corn into
+pure whiskey to drink, without payin' tax? I tell you, _'taint fair_,
+this way the Government does! But, when all's said and done, the main
+reason for this 'moonshining,' as you-uns calls it, is bad roads."
+
+"Bad roads?" I exclaimed. "What the----"
+
+"Jest thisaway: From hyar to the railroad is seventeen miles, with two
+mountains to cross; and you've seed that road! I recollect you-uns said
+every one o' them miles was a thousand rods long. Nobody's ever measured
+them, except by mountain man's foot-rule--big feet, and a long stride
+between 'em. Seven hundred pounds is all the load a good team can haul
+over that road, when the weather's good. Hit takes three days to make
+the round trip, less'n you break an axle, and then hit takes four. When
+you do git to the railroad, th'r ain't no town of a thousand people
+within fifty mile. Now us folks ain't even got wagons. Thar's only one
+sarviceable wagon in this whole settlement, and you can't hire it
+without team and driver, which is two dollars and a half a day. Whar one
+o' our leetle sleds can't go, we haffter pack on mule-back or tussle it
+on our own wethers. Look, then! The only farm produce we-uns can sell is
+corn. You see for yourself that corn can't be shipped outen hyar. We can
+trade hit for store credit--that's all. Corn _juice_ is about all we can
+tote around over the country and git cash money for. Why, man, that's
+the only way some folks has o' payin' their taxes!"
+
+"But, aside from the work and the worry," I remarked, "there is the
+danger of being shot, in this business."
+
+"Oh, we-uns don't lay _that_ up agin the Government! Hit's as fair for
+one as 'tis for t'other. When a revenuer comes sneakin' around, why,
+whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that's a 'fortune of war,' as the old
+sayin' is."
+
+There is no telegraph, wired or wireless, in the mountains, but there is
+an efficient substitute. It seemed as though, in one night, the news
+traveled from valley to cove, and from cove to nook, that I was
+investigating the moonshining business, and that I was apparently
+"safe." Each individual interpreted that word to suit himself. Some
+regarded me askance, others were so confiding that their very frankness
+threatened at times to become embarrassing.
+
+Thereafter I had many talks and adventures with men who, at one time or
+other, had been engaged in the moonshining industry. Some of these men
+had known the inside of the penitentiary; some were not without
+blood-guilt. I doubt not that more than one of them could, even now,
+find his way through night and fog and laurel thicket to some "beautiful
+piece of copper" that has not yet been punched full of holes. They knew
+that I was on friendly terms with revenue agents. What was worse, they
+knew that I was a scribbler. More than once I took notes in their
+presence while interviewing them, and we had the frankest understanding
+as to what would become of those notes.
+
+My immunity was not due to any promises made or hostages given, for
+there were none. I did not even pose as an apologist, but merely
+volunteered to give a fair report of what I heard and saw. They took me
+at my word. Had I used such representations as a mask and secretly
+played the spy or informer--well, I would have deserved whatever might
+have befallen me. As it was, I never met with any but respectful
+treatment from these gentry, nor, to the best of my belief, did they
+ever tell me a lie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WAYS THAT ARE DARK
+
+
+Our terms moonshiner and moonshining are not used in the mountains. Here
+an illicit distiller is called a blockader, his business is blockading,
+and the product is blockade liquor. Just as the smugglers of old Britain
+called themselves free-traders, thereby proclaiming that they risked and
+fought for a principle, so the moonshiner considers himself simply a
+blockade-runner dealing in contraband. His offense is only _malum
+prohibitum_, not _malum in se_.
+
+There are two kinds of blockaders, big and little. The big blockader
+makes unlicensed whiskey on a fairly large scale. He may have several
+stills, operating alternately in different places, so as to avert
+suspicion. In any case, the still is large and the output is quite
+profitable. The owner himself may not actively engage in the work, but
+may furnish the capital and hire confederates to do the distilling for
+him, so that personally he shuns the appearance of evil. These big
+fellows are rare. They are the ones who seek collusion with the
+small-fry of Government officialdom, or, failing in that, instruct their
+minions to "kill on sight."
+
+The little moonshiner is a more interesting character, if for no other
+reason than that he fights fair, according to his code, and
+single-handed against tremendous odds. He is innocent of graft. There is
+nothing between him and the whole power of the Federal Government,
+except his own wits and a well-worn Winchester or muzzleloader. He is
+very poor; he is very ignorant; he has no friends at court; his
+apparatus is crude in the extreme, and his output is miserably small.
+This man is usually a good enough citizen in other ways, of decent
+standing in his own community, and a right good fellow toward all the
+world, save revenue officers. Although a criminal in the eyes of the
+law, he is soundly convinced that the law is unjust, and that he is only
+exercising his natural rights. Such a man, as President Frost has
+pointed out, suffers none of the moral degradation that comes from
+violating his conscience; his self-respect is whole.
+
+In describing the process of making whiskey in the mountain stills, I
+shall confine myself to the operations of the little moonshiner,
+because they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our backwoodsmen.
+Every man in the big woods is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in
+extemporizing utensils, and even crude machines, out of the trees that
+grow around him, is of no mean order. As good cider as ever I drank was
+made in a hollowed log fitted with a press-block and operated by a
+handspike. It took but half a day's work to make this cider press, and
+the only tools used in its construction were an ax, a mattock in lieu of
+adze, an auger, and a jackknife.
+
+It takes two or three men to run a still. It is possible for one man to
+do the work, on so small a scale as is usually practiced, but it would
+be a hard task for him; then, too, there are few mountaineers who could
+individually furnish the capital, small though it be. So three men, let
+us say, will "chip in" five or ten dollars apiece, and purchase a
+second-hand still, if such is procurable, otherwise a new one, and that
+is all the apparatus they have to pay money for. If they should be too
+poor even to go to this expense, they will make a retort by inverting a
+half-barrel or an old wooden churn over a soap-kettle, and then all they
+have to buy is a piece of copper tubing for the worm.
+
+
+[Illustration: Moonshine Still in Full Operation]
+
+
+In choosing a location for their clandestine work, the first
+essential is running water. This can be found in almost any gulch; yet,
+out of a hundred known spring-branches, only one or two may be suitable
+for the business, most of them being too public. In a country where
+cattle and hogs run wild, and where a good part of every farmer's time
+is taken in keeping track of his stock, there is no place so secret but
+that it is liable to be visited at any time, even though it be in the
+depths of the great forest, several miles from any human habitation.
+Moreover, cattle, and especially hogs, are passionately fond of
+still-slop, and can scent it a great distance, so that no still can long
+remain unknown to them.[6] Consequently the still must be placed several
+miles away from the residence of anyone who might be liable to turn
+informer. Although nearly all the mountain people are indulgent in the
+matter of blockading, yet personal rivalries and family jealousies are
+rife among them, and it is not uncommon for them to inform against
+their enemies in the neighborhood.
+
+Of course, it would not do to set up a still near a common trail--at
+least in the far-back settlements. Our mountaineers habitually notice
+every track they pass, whether of beast or man, and "read the sign" with
+Indian-like facility. Often one of my companions would stop, as though
+shot, and point with his toe to the fresh imprint of a human foot in the
+dust or mud of a public road, exclaiming: "Now, I wonder who _that_
+feller was! 'Twa'n't (so-and-so), for he hain't got no squar'-headed
+bob-nails; 'twa'n't (such-a-one), 'cause he wouldn't be hyar at this
+time o' day"; and so he would go on, figuring by a process of
+elimination that is extremely cunning, until some such conclusion as
+this was reached, "That's some stranger goin' over to Little River
+[across the line in Tennessee], and he's footin' hit as if the devil was
+atter him--I'll bet he's stobbed somebody and is runnin' from the
+sheriff!" Nor is the incident closed with that; our mountaineer will
+inquire of neighbors and passersby until he gets a description of the
+wayfarer, and then he will pass the word along.
+
+Some little side-branch is chosen that runs through a gully so choked
+with laurel and briers and rhododendron as to be quite impassable, save
+by such worming and crawling as must make a great noise. Doubtless a
+faint cattle-trail follows the backbone of the ridge above it, and this
+is the workers' ordinary highway in going to and fro; but the descent
+from ridge to gully is seldom made twice over the same course, lest a
+trail be printed direct to the still-house.
+
+This house is sometimes inclosed with logs, but oftener it is no more
+than a shed, built low, so as to be well screened by the undergrowth. A
+great hemlock tree may be felled in such position as to help the
+masking, so long as its top stays green, which will be about a year.
+Back far enough from the still-house to remain in dark shadow when the
+furnace is going, there is built a sort of nest for the workmen, barely
+high enough to sit up in, roofed with bark and thatched all over with
+browse. Here many a dismal hour of night is passed when there is nothing
+to do but to wait on the "cooking." Now and then a man crawls on all
+fours to the furnace and pitches in a few billets of wood, keeping low
+at the time, so as to offer as small a target as possible in the flare
+of the fire. Such precaution is especially needed when the number of
+confederates is too small for efficient picketing. Around the little
+plot where the still-shed and lair are hidden, laurel may be cut in such
+way as to make a _cheval-de-frise_, sharp stubs being entangled with
+branches, so that a quick charge through them would be out of the
+question. Two or three days' work, at most, will build the still-house
+and equip it ready for business, without so much as a shingle being
+brought from outside.
+
+After the blockaders have established their still, the next thing is to
+make arrangements with some miller who will jeopardize himself by
+grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that corn which has been
+forced to sprout is a prime essential in the making of moonshine
+whiskey, and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn is an offense
+against the law of the United States no less than its distillation. Now,
+to any one living in a well-settled country, where there is, perhaps,
+only one mill to every hundred farms, and it is visited daily by men
+from all over the township, the finding of an accessory in the person of
+a miller would seem a most hopeless project. But when you travel in our
+southern mountains, one of the first things that will strike you is that
+about every fourth or fifth farmer has a tiny tub-mill of his own. Tiny
+is indeed the word, for there are few of these mills that can grind
+more than a bushel or two of corn in a day; some have a capacity of only
+half a bushel in ten hours of steady grinding. Red grains of corn being
+harder than white ones, it is a humorous saying in the mountains that "a
+red grain in the gryste [grist] will stop the mill." The appurtenances
+of such a mill, even to the very buhr-stones themselves, are fashioned
+on the spot. How primitive such a meal-grinder may be is shown by the
+fact that a neighbor of mine recently offered a new mill, complete, for
+sale at six dollars. A few nails, and a country-made iron rynd and
+spindle, were the only things in it that he had not made himself, from
+the raw materials.
+
+In making spirits from corn, the first step is to convert the starch of
+the grain into sugar. Regular distillers do this in a few hours by using
+malt, but at the little blockade still a slower process is used, for
+malt is hard to get. The unground corn is placed in a vessel that has a
+small hole in the bottom, warm water is poured over the corn and a hot
+cloth is placed over the top. As water percolates out through the hole,
+the vessel is replenished with more of the warm fluid. This is continued
+for two or three days and nights until the corn has put forth sprouts a
+couple of inches long. The diastase in the germinating seeds has the
+same chemical effect as malt--the starch is changed to sugar.
+
+The sprouted corn is then dried and ground into meal. This sweet meal is
+then made into a mush with boiling water, and is let stand two or three
+days. The "sweet mash" thus made is then broken up, and a little rye
+malt, similarly prepared in the meantime, is added to it, if rye is
+procurable. Fermentation begins at once. In large distilleries, yeast is
+added to hasten fermentation, and the mash can then be used in three or
+four days; the blockader, however, having no yeast, must let his mash stand
+for eight or ten days, keeping it all that time at a proper temperature
+for fermentation. This requires not only constant attention, but some
+skill as well, for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer in our
+mountain still-house. When done, the sugar of what is now "sour mash"
+has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The resulting liquid
+is technically called the "wash," but blockaders call it "beer." It is
+intoxicating, of course, but "sour enough to make a pig squeal."
+
+This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel with a closed head,
+connected with a spiral tube, the worm. The latter is surrounded by a
+closed jacket through which cold water is constantly passing. A wood
+fire is built in the rude furnace under the still; the spirit rises in
+vapor, along with more or less steam; these vapors are condensed in the
+cold worm and trickle down into the receiver. The product of this first
+distillation (the "low wines" of the trade, the "singlings" of the
+blockader) is a weak and impure liquid, which must be redistilled at a
+lower temperature to rid it of water and rank oils.
+
+In moonshiners' parlance, the liquor of second distillation is called
+the "doublings." It is in watching and testing the doublings that an
+accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if distillation be not
+carried far enough, the resulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and
+if carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will result. Regular
+distillers are assisted at this stage by scientific instruments by which
+the "proof" is tested; but the maker of "mountain dew" has no other
+instrument than a small vial, and his testing is done entirely by the
+"bead" of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that rise when the
+vial is tilted. When a mountain man is shown any brand of whiskey,
+whether a regular distillery product or not, he invariably tilts the
+bottle and levels it again, before tasting; if the bead rises and is
+persistent, well and good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the liquor
+at once.
+
+It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by
+running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a
+"thumpin'-chist." The advantage claimed is that "Hit allows you to make
+your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that's all."
+
+The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter,
+to rid it of most of its fusel oil. This having been done, we have
+moonshine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and ready for _immediate
+consumption_.
+
+I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the words here italicised; but
+I am stating facts.
+
+It is quite impracticable for a blockader to age his whiskey. In the
+first place, he is too poor to wait; in the second place, his product is
+very small, and the local demand is urgent; in the third place, he has
+enough trouble to conceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to say
+nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheerfully he might "waive the
+quantum o' the sin," but he is quite alive to "the hazard o'
+concealin'." So, while the stuff is yet warm from the still, it is taken
+by confederates and quickly disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the
+answer a moonshiner once made to me when I asked him how old the best
+blockade liquor ever got to be: "If it 'd git to be a month old, it 'd
+fool me!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by F. B. Laney
+
+Cornmill and Blacksmith Forge]
+
+
+They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of mine, the redoubtable Quill
+Rose, which, to those who know him, sounds like one of his own: "A
+slick-faced dude from Knoxville," said Quill, "told me once that all
+good red-liquor was aged, and that if I'd age my blockade it would bring
+a fancy price. Well, sir, I tried it; I kept some for three months--and,
+by godlings, _it aint so_."
+
+As for purity, all of the moonshine whiskey used to be pure, and much of
+it still is; but every blockader knows how to adulterate, and when one
+of them does stoop to such tricks he will stop at no halfway measures.
+Some add washing lye, both to increase the yield and to give the liquor
+an artificial bead, then prime this abominable fluid with pepper,
+ginger, tobacco, or anything else that will make it sting. Even
+buckeyes, which are poisonous themselves, are sometimes used to give the
+drink a soapy bead. Such decoctions are known in the mountains by the
+expressive terms "pop-skull," "bust head," "bumblings" ("they make a
+bumbly noise in a feller's head"). Some of them are so toxic that their
+continued use might be fatal to the drinker. A few drams may turn a
+normally good-hearted fellow into a raging fiend who will shoot or stab
+without provocation.
+
+As a rule, the mountain people have no compunctions about drinking,
+their ideas on this, as on other matters of conduct, being those current
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. Men, women and children drink
+whiskey in family concert. I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a
+spoonful at a time, by a babe that was still at the breast, and she
+never batted an eye (when I protested that raw whiskey would ruin the
+infant's stomach, the mother replied, with widened eyes: "Why, if
+there's liquor about, and she don't git none, _she jist raars_!"). In
+spite of this, taking the mountain people by and large, they are an
+abstemious race. In drinking, as in everything else, this is the Land of
+Do Without. Comparatively few highlanders see liquor oftener than once
+or twice a month. The lumberjacks and townspeople get most of the
+output; for they can pay the price.
+
+Blockade whiskey, until recently, sold to the consumer at from $2.50 to
+$3.00 a gallon. The average yield is only two gallons to the bushel of
+corn. Two and a half gallons is all that can be got out of a bushel by
+blockaders' methods, even with the aid of a "thumpin'-chist," unless
+lye be added. With corn selling at seventy-five cents to a dollar a
+bushel, as it did in our settlement, and taking into account that the
+average sales of a little moonshiner's still probably did not exceed a
+gallon a day, and that a bootlegger must be rewarded liberally for
+marketing the stuff, it will be seen that there was no fortune in this
+mysterious trade, before prohibition raised the price. Let me give you a
+picture in a few words.--
+
+Here in the laurel-thicketed forest, miles from any wagon road, is a
+little still, without so much as a roof over it. Hard by is a little
+mill. There is not a sawed board in that mill--even the hopper is made
+of clapboards riven on the spot.
+
+Three or four men, haggard from sleepless vigils, strike out into
+pathless forest through driving rain. Within five minutes the wet
+underbrush has drenched them to the skin. They climb, climb, climb.
+There is no trail for a long way; then they reach a faint one that
+winds, winds, climbs, climbs. Hour after hour the men climb. Then they
+begin to descend.
+
+They have crossed the divide, a mile above sea-level, and are in another
+State. Hour after hour they "climb down," as they would say. They visit
+farmers' homes at dead of night. Each man shoulders two bushels of
+shelled corn and starts back again over the highest mountain range in
+eastern America. It is twenty miles to the little mill. They carry the
+corn thither on their own backs. They sprout it, grind it, distill it.
+Two of them then carry the whiskey twenty miles in the opposite
+direction, and, at the risk of capture and imprisonment, or of death if
+they resist, peddle it out by dodging, secret methods.
+
+This is no fancy sketch; it is literal truth. It is no story of the
+olden time, but of our own day. Do you wonder that one of these men
+should say, with a sigh--should say this? "Blockadin' is the hardest
+work a man ever done. And hit's wearin' on a feller's narves. Fust
+chance I git, I'm a-goin' ter quit!"
+
+And it is a fact that nine out of ten of those who try the moonshining
+game do quit before long, of their own accord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day there came a ripple of excitement in our settlement. A blockader
+had shot at Jack Coburn, and a posse had arrested the would-be
+assassin--so flew the rumor, and it proved to be true.
+
+Coburn was a northern man who, years ago, opened a little store on the
+edge of the wilderness, bought timber land, and finally rose to
+affluence. With ready wit he adapted himself to the ways of the
+mountaineers and gained ascendancy among them. Once in a while an
+emergency would arise in which it was necessary either to fight or to
+back down, and in these contests a certain art that Jack had acquired in
+Michigan lumber camps proved the undoing of more than one mountain
+tough, at the same time winning the respect of the spectators. He was
+what a mountaineer described to me as "a practiced knocker." This
+phrase, far from meaning what it would on the Bowery, was interpreted to
+me as denoting "a master hand in a knock-fight." Pugilism, as
+distinguished from shooting or stabbing, was an unknown art in the
+mountains until Jack introduced it.
+
+Coburn had several tenants, among whom was a character whom we will call
+Edwards. In leasing a farm to Edwards, Jack had expressly stipulated
+that there was to be no moonshining on the premises. But, by and by,
+there was reason to suspect that Edwards was violating this part of the
+contract. Coburn did not send for a revenue officer; he merely set forth
+on a little still-hunt of his own. Before starting, he picked up a
+revolver and was about to stick it in his pocket, but, on second
+thought, he concluded that no red-headed man should be trusted with a
+loaded gun, even in such a case as this; so he thrust the weapon back
+into its drawer, and strode away, with nothing but his two big fists to
+enforce a seizure.
+
+Coburn searched long and diligently, but could find no sign of a still.
+Finally, when he was about to give it up, his curiosity was aroused by
+the particularly dense browse in the top of an enormous hemlock that had
+recently been felled. Pushing his way forward, he discovered a neat
+little copper still installed in the treetop itself. He picked up the
+contraband utensil, and marched away with it.
+
+Meantime, Edwards had not been asleep. When Jack came in sight of the
+farmhouse, humped under his bulky burden, the enraged moonshiner seized
+a shotgun and ran toward him, breathing death and destruction. Jack,
+however, trudged along about his business. Edwards, seeing that no bluff
+would work, fired; but the range was too great for his birdshot even to
+pepper holes through the copper still.
+
+Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot. It did not hurt Coburn's
+skin, but it ruffled his dignity. In this case it was out of the
+question to pommel the blackguard, for he had swiftly reloaded his gun.
+So Jack ran off with the still, carried it home, sought out our
+magistrate, Brooks, and forthwith swore out a warrant.
+
+Brooks did not fuss over any law books. Moonshining in itself may be
+only a peccadillo, a venial sin--let the Government skin its own
+skunks--but when a man has promised not to moonshine, and then goes and
+does it, why that, by Jeremy, is a breach of contract! Straightway the
+magistrate hastened to the post-office, and swore in, as a posse
+comitatus, the first four men that he met.
+
+Now, when four men are picked up at random in our township, it is safe
+to assume that at least three of them have been moonshiners themselves,
+and know how this sort of thing should be done. At any rate, the posse
+wasted no time in discussion. They went straight after that malefactor,
+got him, and, within an hour after the shot was fired, he was drummed
+out of the county for good and forever.
+
+But Edwards had a son who was a trifle brash. This son armed himself,
+and offered show of battle. He fired two or three shots with his
+Winchester (wisely over the posse's heads) and then took to the tall
+timber. Dodging from tree to tree he led the impromptu officers such a
+dance up the mountainside that by the time they had corralled him they
+were "plumb overhet."
+
+They set that impetuous young man on a sharp-spined little jackass,
+strapped his feet under the animal's belly, and their chief (my hunting
+partner, he was) drove him, that same night, twenty-five miles over a
+horrible mountain trail, and lodged him in the county jail, on a charge
+more serious than that of moonshining.
+
+In due time, a United States deputy arrived in our midst, bearing a
+funny-looking hatchet with a pick at one end, which he called a "devil."
+With the pick end of this instrument he punched numerous holes through
+the offending copper vessel, until the still looked somewhat like a
+gigantic horseradish-grater turned inside out. Then he straightened out
+the worm by ramming a long stick through it, and triumphantly carried
+away with him the copper-sheathed staff, as legal proof, trophy, and
+burgeon of office.
+
+The sorry old still itself reposes to this day in old Brooks's backyard,
+where it is regarded by passersby as an emblem, not so much of Federal
+omnipotence, as of local efficiency in administering the law with
+promptitude, and without a pennyworth of cost to anybody, save to the
+offender.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A LEAF FROM THE PAST
+
+
+In the United States, moonshining is seldom practiced outside the
+mountains and foothills of the southern Appalachians, and those parts of
+the southwest (namely, in southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas), into
+which the mountaineers have immigrated in considerable numbers.
+
+Here, then, is a conundrum: How does it happen that moonshining is
+distinctly a foible of the southern mountaineer?
+
+To get to the truth, we must hark back into that eighteenth century
+wherein, as I have already remarked, our mountain people are lingering
+to this day. We must leave the South; going, first, to Ireland of 150 or
+175 years ago, and then to western Pennsylvania shortly after the
+Revolution.
+
+The people of Great Britain, irrespective of race, have always been
+ardent haters of excise laws. As Blackstone has curtly said, "From its
+original to the present time, the very name of excise has been odious
+to the people of England." Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined
+excise as "A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by
+the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom
+excise is paid." In 1659, when the town of Edinburgh placed an
+additional impost on ale, the Convenanter Nicoll proclaimed it an act so
+impious that immediately "God frae the heavens declared his anger by
+sending thunder and unheard tempests and storms." And we still recall
+Burns' fiery invective:
+
+    Thae curst horse-leeches o' the Excise
+    Wha mak the whisky stills their prize!
+  Haud up thy han', Deil! ance, twice, thrice!
+      There, seize the blinkers! [wretches]
+  An bake them up in brunstane pies
+      For poor d--n'd drinkers.
+
+
+Perhaps the chief reason, in England, for this outspoken detestation of
+the exciseman lay in the fact that the law empowered him to enter
+private houses and to search at his own discretion. In Scotland and
+Ireland there was another objection, even more valid in the eyes of the
+common people; excise struck heaviest at their national drink.
+Englishmen, at the time of which we are speaking, were content with
+their ale, not yet having contracted the habit of drinking gin; but
+Scotchmen and Irishmen preferred distilled spirits, manufactured, as a
+rule, out of their own barley, in small pot-stills (_poteen_ means,
+literally, a little pot), the process being a common household art
+frequently practiced "every man for himself and his neighbor." A tax,
+then, upon whiskey was as odious as a tax upon bread baked on the
+domestic hearth--if not, indeed, more so.
+
+Now, there came a time when the taxes laid upon spirituous liquors had
+increased almost to the point of prohibition. This was done, not so much
+for the sake of revenue, as for the sake of the public health and
+morals. Englishmen had suddenly taken to drinking gin, and the immediate
+effect was similar to that of introducing firewater among a race of
+savages. There was hue and cry (apparently with good reason), that the
+gin habit, spreading like a plague, among a people unused to strong
+liquors, would soon exterminate the English race. Parliament, alarmed at
+the outlook, then passed an excise law of extreme severity. As always
+happens in such cases, the law promptly defeated its own purpose by
+breeding a spirit of defiance and resistance among the great body of the
+people.
+
+The heavier the tax, the more widespread became the custom of illicit
+distilling. The law was evaded in two different ways, the method
+depending somewhat upon the relative loyalty of the people toward the
+Crown, and somewhat upon the character of the country, as to whether it
+was thickly or thinly settled.
+
+In rich and populous districts, as around London and Edinburgh and
+Dublin, the common practice was to bribe government officials. A
+historian of that time declares that "Not infrequently the gauger could
+have laid his hands upon a dozen stills within as many hours; but he had
+cogent reasons for avoiding discoveries unless absolutely forced to make
+them. Where informations were laid, it was by no means uncommon for a
+trusty messenger to be dispatched from the residence of the gauger to
+give due notice, so that by daybreak next morning 'the boys,' with all
+their utensils, might disappear. Now and then they were required to
+leave an old and worn-out still in place of that which they were to
+remove, so that a report of actual seizure might be made. A good
+understanding was thus often kept up between the gaugers and the
+distillers; the former not infrequently received a 'duty' upon every
+still within his jurisdiction, and his cellars were never without 'a sup
+of the best.'... The commerce was carried on to a very great extent,
+and openly. Poteen was usually preferred, even by the gentry, to
+'Parliament' or 'King's' whiskey. It was known to be free from
+adulteration, and had a smoky flavor (arising from the peat fires) which
+many liked." Another writer says that "The amount of spirits produced by
+distillation avowedly illicit vastly exceeded that produced by the
+licensed distilleries. According to Wakefield, stills were erected even
+in the kitchens of baronets and in the stables of clergymen."
+
+However, this sort of thing was not moonshining. It was only the
+beginning of that system of wholesale collusion which, in later times,
+was perfected in our own country by the "Whiskey Ring."
+
+Moonshining proper was confined to the poorer class of people,
+especially in Ireland, who lived in wild and sparsely settled regions,
+who were governed by a clan feeling stronger than their loyalty to the
+central Government, and who either could not afford to share their
+profits with the gaugers, or disdained to do so. Such people hid their
+little pot-stills in inaccessible places, as in the savage mountains and
+glens of Connemara, where it was impossible, or at least hazardous, for
+the law to reach them. With arms in hand they defied the officers. "The
+hatred of the people toward the gauger was for a very long period
+intense. The very name invariably aroused the worst passions. To kill a
+gauger was considered anything but a crime; wherever it could be done
+with comparative safety, he was hunted to the death."
+
+Thus we see that the townsman's weapon against the government was graft,
+and the mountaineer's weapon was his gun--a hundred and fifty years ago,
+in Ireland, as they are in America to-day. Whether racial character had
+much to do with this is a debatable question. But, having spoken of
+race, a new factor, and a curious one, steps into our story. Let it be
+noted closely, for it bears directly on a problem that has puzzled many
+of our own people, namely: What was the origin of our southern
+mountaineers?
+
+The north of Ireland, at the time of which we have been speaking, was
+not settled by Irishmen, but by Scotchmen, who had been imported by
+James I. to take the place of native Hibernians whom he had dispossessed
+from the three northern counties. These immigrants came to be known as
+the Scotch-Irish. They learned how to make poteen in little stills,
+after the Irish fashion, and to defend their stills from intrusive
+foreigners, also after the Irish fashion. By and by these Scotch-Irish
+fell out with the British Government, and large bodies of them emigrated
+to America, settling, for the most part, in western Pennsylvania.
+
+They were a fighting race. Accustomed to plenty of hard knocks at home,
+they took to the rough fare and Indian wars of our border as naturally
+as ducks take to water. They brought with them, too, an undying hatred
+of excise laws, and a spirit of unhesitating resistance to any authority
+that sought to enforce such laws.
+
+It was these Scotchmen, in the main, assisted by a good sprinkling of
+native Irish, and by the wilder blades among the Pennsylvania-Dutch, who
+drove out the Indians from the Alleghany border, formed our rear-guard
+in the Revolution, won that rough mountain region for civilization, left
+it when the game became scarce and neighbors' houses too frequent,
+followed the mountains southward, settled western Virginia and Carolina,
+and formed the vanguard westward into Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and
+so onward till there was no longer a West to conquer. Some of their
+descendants remained behind in the fastnesses of the Alleghanies, the
+Blue Ridge, and the Unakas, and became, in turn, the progenitors of that
+singular race which, by an absurd pleonasm, is now commonly known as
+the "mountain whites," but properly southern highlanders.
+
+The first generation of Pennsylvania frontiersmen knew no laws but those
+of their own making. They were too far away, too scattered, and too
+poor, for the Crown to bother with them. Then came the Revolution. The
+backwoodsmen were loyal to the new American Government--loyal to a man.
+They not only fought off the Indians from the rear, but sent many of
+their incomparable riflemen to fight at the front as well.
+
+They were the first English-speaking people to use weapons of precision
+(the rifle, introduced by the Pennsylvania-Dutch about 1700, was used by
+our backwoodsmen exclusively throughout the war). They were the first to
+employ open-order formation in civilized warfare. They were the first
+outside colonists to assist their New England brethren at the siege of
+Boston. They were mustered in as the First Regiment of Foot of the
+Continental Army (being the first troops enrolled by our Congress, and
+the first to serve under a Federal banner). They carried the day at
+Saratoga, the Cowpens, and King's Mountain. From the beginning to the
+end of the war, they were Washington's favorite troops.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Tub Mill]
+
+
+And yet these same men were the first rebels against the authority of
+the United States Government! And it was their old commander-in-chief,
+Washington himself, who had the ungrateful task of bringing them to
+order by a show of Federal bayonets.
+
+It happened in this wise:
+
+Up to the year 1791 there had been no excise tax in the United Colonies
+or the United States. (One that had been tried in Pennsylvania was
+utterly abortive). Then the country fell upon hard times. A larger
+revenue had to be raised, and Hamilton suggested an excise. The measure
+was bitterly opposed by many public men, notably by Jefferson; but it
+passed. Immediately there was trouble in the tall timber.
+
+Western Pennsylvania, and the mountains southward, had been settled, as
+we have seen, by the Scotch-Irish; men who had brought with them a
+certain fondness for whiskey, a certain knack in making it, and an
+intense hatred of excise, on general as well as special principles.
+There were few roads across the mountains, and these few were
+execrable--so bad, indeed, that it was impossible for the backwoodsmen
+to bring their corn and rye to market, except in a concentrated form.
+The farmers of the seaboard had grown rich, from the high prices that
+prevailed during the French Revolution; but the mountain farmers had
+remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to
+difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gallatin said, in defending
+the western people, "We have no means of bringing the produce of our
+lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers
+through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value
+in the smallest size and weight. The inhabitants of the eastern side of
+the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of
+distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that
+labor upon it."
+
+Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in
+the mountains. Commerce was carried on by barter; but there had to be
+some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such
+necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who
+brought them by pack train across the Alleghanies. Consequently a still
+had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen
+gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight
+and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it
+had been transported across the mountains, could undersell even so
+cheap a beverage as New England rum--so long as no tax was laid upon it.
+
+But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually
+placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers' grain, and let the grain of
+the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge.
+Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border regarded such a law
+as aimed exclusively at themselves. They remonstrated, petitioned,
+stormed. "From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a
+marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland,
+Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legislatures of North
+Carolina, Virginia and Maryland passed resolutions against the law, and
+that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As
+early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region
+the people were ready for revolt." "To tax their stills seemed a blow at
+the only thing which obdurate nature had given them--a lot hard indeed,
+in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board."
+
+Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now)
+resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which reference
+has been made--only they were far wilder, far less populous, and
+inhabited by a people still prouder, more independent, more used to
+being a law unto themselves than were their ancestors in old Hibernia.
+When the Federal exciseman came among this border people and sought to
+levy tribute, they blackened or otherwise disguised themselves and
+treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, at the same time threatening
+to burn his house. He resigned. Indignation meetings were held,
+resolutions were passed calling on all good citizens to _disobey_ the
+law, and whenever anyone ventured to express a contrary opinion, or
+rented a house to a collector, he, too, was tarred and feathered. If a
+prudent or ultra-conscientious individual took out a license and sought
+to observe the law, he was visited by a gang of "Whiskey Boys" who
+smashed the still and inflicted corporal punishment upon its owner.
+
+Finally, warrants were issued against the lawbreakers. The attempt to
+serve these writs produced an uprising. On July 16, 1794, a company of
+mountain militia marched to the house of the inspector, General Neville,
+to force him to give up his commission. Neville fired upon them, and, in
+the skirmish that ensued, five of the attacking force were wounded and
+one was killed. The next day, a regiment of 500 mountaineers, led by
+one "Tom the Tinker," burned Neville's house, and forced him to flee for
+his life. His guard of eleven U. S. soldiers surrendered, after losing
+one killed and several wounded.
+
+A call was then issued for a meeting of the mountain militia at the
+historic Braddock's Field. On Aug. 1, a large body assembled, of whom
+2,000 were armed. They marched on Pittsburgh, then a village of 1,200
+souls. The townsmen, eager to conciliate and to ward off pillage,
+appointed a committee to meet the mob half way. The committee, finding
+that it could not induce the mountain men to go home, made a virtue of
+necessity by escorting 5,400 of them into Pittsburgh town. As Fisher
+says, "The town was warned by messengers, and every preparation was
+made, not for defense, but to extinguish the fire of the Whiskey Boys'
+thirst, which would prevent the necessity of having to extinguish the
+fire they might apply to houses.... Then the work began. Every citizen
+worked like a slave to carry provisions and buckets of whiskey to that
+camp." Judge Brackenridge tells us that it was an expensive as well as
+laborious day, and cost him personally four barrels of prime old
+whiskey. The day ended in a bloodless, but probably uproarious,
+jollification.
+
+On this same day (the Governor of Pennsylvania having declined to
+interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and
+called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrection. Meantime he had
+appointed commissioners to go into the disaffected region and try to
+persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should
+arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the
+disturbance should submit to arrest.
+
+While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen
+ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the "insurrection" faded away
+like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do.
+The insurgent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were
+convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this
+expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the
+Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon
+the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Government had
+demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws
+and maintain domestic tranquility. The result upon the mountain people
+themselves was dubious. Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison in December:
+"The information of our [Virginia's] militia, returned from the
+westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass
+quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that
+one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand
+places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was
+universal, and has now associated with it a detestation of the
+Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and
+problematical event, is now near and certain, and determined in the mind
+of every man."
+
+But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the
+excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as
+a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered
+by men whom we would not call very old.
+
+The moonshiners of our own day know nothing of the story that has here
+been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the
+mountains, and then the result was so unexpected, that I append the
+incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative.--
+
+I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his
+historical learning. He could not read, but one of his daughters read
+to him, and he had learned by heart nearly all that lay between the two
+lids of a "Universal History" such as book agents peddle about. Like one
+of John Fox's characters, he was fond of the expression "hist'ry says"
+so-and-so, and he considered it a clincher in all matters of debate.
+
+Our conversation drifted to the topic of moonshining.
+
+"Down to the time of the Civil War," declared the old settler, "nobody
+paid tax on the whiskey he made. Hit was thataway in my Pa's time, and
+in Gran'sir's, too. And so 'way back to the time of George Washington.
+Now, hist'ry says that Washington was the Father of his Country; and I
+reckon he was the _greatest_ man that ever lived--don't you?"
+
+I murmured a complaisant assent.
+
+"Waal, sir, if 't was right to make free whiskey in Washington's day,
+hit's right _now_!" and the old man brought his fist down on the table.
+
+"But that is where you make a mistake," I replied. "Washington did
+enforce a whiskey tax." Then I told about the Whiskey Insurrection of
+1794.
+
+This was news to Grandpa. He listened with deep attention, his brows
+lowering as the narrative proceeded. When it was finished he offered
+no comment, but brooded to himself in silence. My own thoughts wandered
+far afield, until recalled to the topic by a blunt demand:
+
+
+[Illustration: Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek in
+which the author lived alone for three years]
+
+
+"You say Washington done that?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"George Washington?"
+
+"Yes, sir: the Father of his Country."
+
+"Waal, I'm satisfied now that Washington was a leetle-grain cracked."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The law of 1791, although it imposed a tax on whiskey of only 9 to 11
+cents per proof gallon, came near bringing on a civil war, which was
+only averted by the leniency of the Federal Government in granting
+wholesale amnesty. The most stubborn malcontents in the mountains moved
+southward along the Alleghanies into western Virginia and the Carolinas,
+where no serious attempt was made to collect the excise; so they could
+practice moonshining to their heart's content, and there their
+descendants remain to-day.
+
+On the accession of Jefferson, in 1800, the tax on spirits was repealed.
+The war of 1812 compelled the Government to tax whiskey again, but as
+this was a war tax, shared by commodities generally, it aroused no
+opposition. In 1817 the excise was again repealed; and from that time
+until 1862 no specific tax was levied on liquors. During this period of
+thirty-five years the average market price of whiskey was 24 cents a
+gallon, sometimes dropping as low as 14 cents. Spirits were so cheap
+that a "burning fluid," consisting of one part spirits of turpentine to
+four or five parts alcohol was used in the lamps of nearly every
+household. Moonshining, of course, had ceased to exist.
+
+Then came the Civil War. In 1862 a tax of 20 cents a gallon was levied.
+Early in 1864 it rose to 60 cents. This cut off the industrial use of
+spirits, but did not affect its use as a beverage. In the latter part of
+1864 the tax leaped to $1.50 a gallon, and the next year it reached the
+prohibitive figure of $2. The result of such excessive taxation was just
+what it had been in the old times, in Great Britain. In and around the
+centers of population there was wholesale fraud and collusion. "Efforts
+made to repress and punish frauds were of absolutely no account
+whatever.... The current price at which distilled spirits were sold in
+the markets was everywhere recognized and commented on by the press as
+less than the amount of the tax, allowing nothing whatever for the cost
+of manufacture."
+
+Seeing that the outcome was disastrous from a fiscal point of view--the
+revenue from this source was falling to the vanishing point--Congress,
+in 1868, cut down the tax to 50 cents a gallon. "Illicit distillation
+practically ceased the very hour that the new law came into operation;
+... the Government collected during the second year of the continuance
+of the act $3 for every one that was obtained during the last year of
+the $2 rate."
+
+In 1869 there came a new administration, with frequent removals of
+revenue officials for political purposes. The revenue fell off. In 1872
+the rate was raised to 70 cents, and in 1875 to 90 cents. The result is
+thus summarized by David A. Wells:
+
+"Investigation carefully conducted showed that on the average the
+product of illicit distillation costs, through deficient yields, the
+necessary bribery of attendants, and the expenses of secret and unusual
+methods of transportation, from two to three times as much as the
+product of legitimate and legal distillation. So that, calling the
+average cost of spirits in the United States 20 cents per gallon, the
+product of the illicit distiller would cost 40 to 60 cents, leaving but
+10 cents per gallon as the maximum profit to be realized from fraud
+under the most favorable conditions--an amount not sufficient to offset
+the possibility of severe penalties of fine, imprisonment, and
+confiscation of property.... The rate of 70 cents ... constituted a
+moderate temptation to fraud. Its increase to 90 cents constituted a
+temptation altogether too great for human nature, as employed in
+manufacturing and selling whiskey, to resist.... During 1875-6,
+highwines sold openly in the Chicago and Cincinnati markets at prices
+less than the average cost of production plus the Government tax.
+Investigations showed that the persons mainly concerned in the work of
+fraud were the Government officials rather than the distillers; and that
+a so-called 'Whiskey Ring' ... extended to Washington, and embraced
+within its sphere of influence and participation, not merely local
+supervisors, collectors, inspectors, and storekeepers of the revenue,
+but even officers of the Internal Revenue Bureau, and probably, also,
+persons occupying confidential relations with the Executive of the
+Nation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such being the condition of affairs in the centers of civilization in
+the latter part of the nineteenth century, let us now turn to the
+mountains, and see how matters stood among those primitive people who
+were still tarrying in the eighteenth. Their situation at that time is
+thus briefly sketched by a southern historian[7]:
+
+"Before the war these simple folks made their apples and peaches into
+brandy, and their corn into whiskey, and these products, with a few
+cattle, some dried fruits, honey, beeswax, nuts, wool, hides, fur,
+herbs, ginseng and other roots, and woolen socks knitted by the women in
+their long winter evenings, formed the stock in trade which they
+bartered for their plain necessaries and few luxuries, their homespun
+and cotton cloths, sugar, coffee, snuff, and fiddles.... The raising of
+a crop of corn in summer, and the getting out of tan-bark and lumber in
+winter, were almost their only resources.... The burden of taxation
+rested lightly on them. For near two generations no excise duties had
+been levied.... The war came on. They were mostly loyal to the Union.
+They paid the first moderate tax without a murmur.
+
+"They were willing to pay any tax that they were able to pay. But
+suddenly the tax jumped to $1.50, and then to $2, a gallon. The people
+were goaded to open rebellion. Their corn at that time brought only from
+25 to 40 cents a bushel; apples and peaches, rarely more than 10 cents
+at the stills. These were the only crops that could be grown in their
+deep and narrow valleys. Transportation was so difficult, and markets so
+remote, that there was no way to utilize the surplus except to distill
+it. Their stills were too small to bear the cost of government
+supervision. The superior officers of the Revenue Department
+(collectors, marshals, and district-attorneys or commissioners) were
+paid only by commissions on collections and by fees. Their subordinate
+agents, whose income depended upon the number of stills they cut up and
+upon the arrests made, were, as a class, brutal and desperate
+characters. Guerrilla warfare was the natural sequence."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"BLOCKADERS" AND "THE REVENUE"
+
+
+Little or no attention seems to have been paid to the moonshining that
+was going on in the mountains until about 1876, owing, no doubt, to the
+larger game in registered distilleries. In his report for 1876-7, the
+new Commissioner of Internal Revenue called attention to the illicit
+manufacture of whiskey in the mountain counties of the South, and urged
+vigorous measures for its immediate suppression.
+
+"The extent of these frauds," said he, "would startle belief. I can
+safely say that during the past year not less than 3,000 illicit stills
+have been operated in the districts named. Those stills are of a
+producing capacity of 10 to 50 gallons a day. They are usually located
+at inaccessible points in the mountains, away from the ordinary lines of
+travel, and are generally owned by unlettered men of desperate
+character, armed and ready to resist the officers of the law. Where
+occasion requires, they come together in companies of from ten to fifty
+persons, gun in hand, to drive the officers out of the country. They
+resist as long as resistance is possible, and when their stills are
+seized, and they themselves are arrested, they plead ignorance and
+poverty, and at once crave the pardon of the Government.
+
+"These frauds had become so open and notorious ... that I became
+satisfied extraordinary measures would be required to break them up.
+Collectors were ... each authorized to employ from five to ten
+additional deputies.... Experienced revenue agents of perseverance and
+courage were assigned to duty to co-operate with the collectors. United
+States marshals were called upon to co-operate with the collectors and
+to arrest all persons known to have violated the laws, and
+district-attorneys were enjoined to prosecute all offenders.
+
+"In certain portions of the country many citizens not guilty of
+violating the law themselves were in strong sympathy with those who did
+violate, and the officers in many instances found themselves unsupported
+in the execution of the laws by a healthy state of public opinion. The
+distillers--ever ready to forcibly resist the officers--were, I have no
+doubt, at times treated with harshness. This occasioned much
+indignation on the part of those who sympathized with the
+lawbreakers...."
+
+The Commissioner recommended, in his report, the passage of a law
+"expressly providing that where a person is caught in the act of
+operating an illicit still, he may be arrested without warrant." In
+conclusion, he said: "At this time not only is the United States
+defrauded of its revenues, and its officers openly resisted, but when
+arrests are made it often occurs that prisoners are rescued by mob
+violence, and officers and witnesses are often at night dragged from
+their homes and cruelly beaten, or waylaid and assassinated."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day I asked a mountain man, "How about the revenue officers? What
+sort of men are they?"
+
+"Torn down scoundrels, every one."
+
+"Oh, come, now!"
+
+"Yes, they are; plumb onery--lock, stock, barrel and gun-stick."
+
+"Consider what they have to go through," I remarked. "Like other
+detectives, they cannot secure evidence without practicing deception.
+Their occupation is hard and dangerous. Here in the mountains, every
+man's hand is against them."
+
+"Why is it agin them? We ain't all blockaders; yet you can search these
+mountains through with a fine-tooth comb and you wunt find ary critter
+as has a good word to say for the revenue. The reason is 't we know them
+men from 'way back; we know whut they uster do afore they jined the
+sarvice, and why they did it. Most of them were blockaders their own
+selves, till they saw how they could make more money turncoatin'. They
+use their authority to abuse people who ain't never done nothin' nohow.
+Dangerous business? Shucks! There's Jim Cody, for a sample [I suppress
+the real name]; he was principally raised in this county, and I've
+knowed him from a boy. He's been eight years in the Government sarvice,
+and hain't never been shot at once. But he's killed a blockader--oh,
+yes! He arrested Tom Hayward, a chunk of a boy, that was scared most
+fitified and never resisted more'n a mouse. Cody, who was half drunk
+his-self, handcuffed Tom, quarreled with him, and shot the boy dead
+while the handcuffs was on him! Tom's relations sued Cody in the County
+Court, but he carried the case to the Federal Court, and they were too
+poor to follow it up. I tell you, though, thar's a settlement less 'n a
+thousand mile from the river whar Jim Cody ain't never showed his nose
+sence. He knows there'd be another revenue 'murdered.'"
+
+"It must be ticklish business for an officer to prowl about the
+headwaters of these mountain streams, looking for 'sign.'"
+
+"Hell's banjer! they don't go prodjectin' around looking for stills.
+They set at home on their hunkers till some feller comes and informs."
+
+"What class of people does the informing?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes hit's some pizen old bum who's been refused credit.
+Sometimes hit's the wife or mother of some feller who's drinkin' too
+much. Then, agin, hit may be some rival blockader who aims to cut off
+the other feller's trade, and, same time, divert suspicion from his own
+self. But ginerally hit's jest somebody who has a gredge agin the
+blockader fer family reasons, or business reasons, and turns informer to
+git even."
+
+It is only fair to present this side of the case, because there is much
+truth in it, and because it goes far to explain the bitter feeling
+against revenue agents personally that is almost universal in the
+mountains, and is shared even by the mountain preachers. It should be
+understood, too, in this connection, that the southern highlander has a
+long memory. Slights and injuries suffered by one generation have their
+scars transmitted to sons and grandsons. There is no denying that there
+have been officers in the revenue service who, stung by the contempt in
+which they were held as renegades from their own people, have used their
+authority in settling private scores, and have inflicted grievous wrongs
+upon innocent people. This is matter of official record. In his report
+for 1882, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue himself declared that
+"Instances have been brought to my attention where numerous prosecutions
+have been instituted for the most trivial violations of law, and the
+arrested parties taken long distances and subjected to great
+inconveniences and expense, not in the interest of the Government, but
+apparently for no other reason than to make costs."
+
+An ex-United States Commissioner told me that, in the darkest days of
+this struggle, when he himself was obliged to buckle on a revolver every
+time he put his head out of doors, he had more trouble with his own
+deputies than with the moonshiners. "As a rule, none but desperadoes
+could be hired for the service," he declared. "For example, one time my
+deputy in your county wanted some liquor for himself. He and two of his
+cronies crossed the line into South Carolina, raided a still, and got
+beastly drunk. The blockaders bushwhacked them, riddled a mule and its
+rider with buckshot, and shot my deputy through the brain with a
+squirrel rifle. We went over there and buried the victims a few days
+later, during a snow storm, working with our holster flaps unbuttoned. I
+had all that work and worry simply because that rascal was bent on
+getting drunk without paying for it. However, it cost him his life.
+
+"They were not all like that, though," continued the Judge. "Now and
+then there would turn up in the service a man who had entered it from
+honorable motives, and whose conduct, at all times, was chivalric and
+clean. There was Hersh Harkins, for example, now United States Collector
+at Asheville. I had many cases in which Harkins figured."
+
+"Tell me of one," I urged.
+
+"Well, one time there was a man named Jenks [that was not the real name,
+but it will serve], who was too rich to be suspected of blockading.
+Jenks had a license to make brandy, but not whiskey. One day Harkins was
+visiting his still-house, and he noticed something dubious. Thrusting
+his arm down through the peach pomace, he found mash underneath. It is a
+penitentiary offense to mix the two. Harkins procured more evidence
+from Jenk's distiller, and hauled the offender before me. The trial was
+conducted in a hotel room, full of people. We were not very formal in
+those days--kept our hats on. There was no thought of Jenks trying to
+run away, for he was well-to-do; so he was given the freedom of the
+room. He paced nervously back and forth between my desk and the door,
+growing more restless as the trial proceeded. A clerk sat near me,
+writing a bond, and Harkins stood behind him dictating its terms.
+Suddenly Jenks wheeled around, near the door, jerked out a navy
+revolver, fired and bolted. It is hard to say whom he shot at, for the
+bullet went through Harkins's coat, through the clerk's hat, and through
+my hat, too. I ducked under the desk to get my revolver, and Harkins,
+thinking that I was killed, sprang to pick me up; but I came up firing.
+It was wonderful how soon that room was emptied! Harkins took after the
+fugitive, and had a wild chase; but he got him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was my good fortune, a few evenings later, to have a long talk with
+Mr. Harkins himself. He was a fine giant of a man, standing six feet
+three, and symmetrically proportioned. No one looking into his kindly
+gray eyes would suspect that they belonged to one who had seen as hard
+and dangerous service in the Revenue Department as any man then living.
+In an easy, unassuming way he told me many stories of his own adventures
+among moonshiners and counterfeiters in the old days when these southern
+Appalachians fairly swarmed with desperate characters. One grim affair
+will suffice to give an impression of the man, and of the times in which
+his spurs were won.
+
+There was a man on South Mountain, South Carolina, whom, for the sake of
+relatives who may still be living, we will call Lafonte. There was
+information that Lafonte was running a blind tiger. He got his whiskey
+from four brothers who were blockading near his father's house, just
+within the North Carolina line. The Government had sent an officer named
+Merrill to capture Lafonte, but the latter drove Merrill away with a
+shotgun. Harkins then received orders to make the arrest. Taking Merrill
+with him as guide, Harkins rode to the father's house, and found Lafonte
+himself working near a high fence. As soon as the criminal saw the
+officers approaching, he ran for the house to get his gun. Harkins
+galloped along the other side of the fence, and, after a
+rough-and-tumble fight, captured his man. The officers then carried
+their prisoner to the house of a man whose name I have forgotten--call
+him White--who lived about two miles away. Meantime they had heard
+Lafonte's sister give three piercing screams as a signal to his
+confederates in the neighborhood, and they knew that trouble would
+quickly brew.
+
+Breakfast was ready in White's home when the mob arrived. Harkins sent
+Merrill in to breakfast, and himself went out on the porch, carbine in
+hand, to stand off the thoroughly angry gang. White also went out,
+beseeching the mob to disperse. Matters looked squally for a time, but
+it was finally agreed that Lafonte should give bond, whereupon he was
+promptly released.
+
+The two officers then finished their breakfast, and shortly set out for
+the Blue House, an abandoned schoolhouse about forty miles distant,
+where the trial was to be conducted. They were followed at a distance by
+Lafonte's half-drunken champions, who were by no means placated, owing
+to the fact that the Blue House was in a neighborhood friendly to the
+Government. Harkins and Merrill soon dodged to one side in the forest,
+until the rioters had passed them, and then proceeded leisurely in the
+rear. On their way to the Blue House they cut up four stills,
+destroyed a furnace, and made several arrests.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Mountain Home]
+
+
+The next day three United States commissioners opened court in the old
+schoolhouse. The room was crowded by curious spectators. The trial had
+not proceeded beyond preliminaries when shots and shouts from the
+pursuing mob were heard in the distance. Immediately the room was
+emptied of both crowd and commissioners, who fled in all directions,
+leaving Harkins and Merrill to fight their battle alone.
+
+There were thirteen men in the moonshiners' mob. They surrounded the
+house, and immediately began shooting in through the windows. The
+officers returned the fire, but a hard-pine ceiling in the room caused
+the bullets of the attacking party to ricochet in all directions and
+made the place untenable. Harkins and his comrade sprang out through the
+windows, but from opposite sides of the house. Merrill ran, but Harkins
+grappled with the men nearest to him, and in a moment the whole force of
+desperadoes was upon him like a swarm of bees. Unfortunately, the brave
+fellow had left his carbine at the house where he had spent the night.
+His only weapon was a revolver that had only three cartridges in the
+cylinder. Each of these shots dropped a man; but there were ten men
+left. Nothing but Harkins's gigantic strength saved him, that day, from
+immediate death. His long arms tackled three or four men at once, and
+all went down in a bunch. Others fell on top, as in a college cane-rush.
+There had been swift shooting, hitherto, but now it was mostly knife and
+pistol-butt. It is almost incredible, but it is true, that this
+extraordinary battle waged for three-quarters of an hour. At its end
+only one man faced the now thoroughly exhausted and badly wounded, but
+indomitable officer. At this fellow, Harkins hurled his pistol; it
+struck him in the forehead, and the battle was won.
+
+A thick overcoat that Mr. Harkins wore was pierced by twenty-one
+bullets, seven of which penetrated his body. He received, besides, three
+or four bad knife-wounds in his back, and he was literally dripping
+blood from head to foot.
+
+This tragedy had an almost comic sequel. After all danger had passed, a
+sheriff appeared on the scene, who placed, not the mob-leader, but the
+Federal officer under arrest. Harkins left a guard over the three men
+whom he had shot, and submitted to arrest, but demanded that he be taken
+to the farmhouse where he had left his horse. This the sheriff actually
+refused to permit, although Harkins was evidently past all possibility
+of continuing far afoot. Disgusted at such imbecility, the deputy
+stalked away from the sheriff, leaving the latter with his mouth open,
+and utterly obsessed.
+
+A short distance up the road, Harkins met a countryman mounted on a
+sorry old mule. "Loan me that mule for half an hour," he requested; "you
+see, I can walk no further." But the fellow, scared out of his wits by
+the spectacle of a man in such desperate plight, refused to accommodate
+him.
+
+"Get down off that mule, or I'll break your neck!"
+
+The mule changed riders.
+
+When the story was finished, I asked Mr. Harkins if it was true, as the
+reading public generally believes, that moonshiners prefer death to
+capture. "Do they shoot a revenue officer at sight?"
+
+The answer was terse:
+
+"They used to shoot; nowadays they run."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have come to the time when our Government began in dead earnest to
+fight the moonshiners and endeavor to suppress their traffic. It was in
+1877. To give a fair picture, from the official standpoint, of the state
+of affairs at that time, I will quote from the report of the
+Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the year 1877-78:
+
+"It is with extreme regret," he said, "I find it my duty to report the
+great difficulties that have been and still are encountered in many of
+the Southern States in the enforcement of the laws. In the mountain
+regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina,
+Georgia and Alabama, and in some portions of Missouri, Arkansas and
+Texas, the illicit manufacture of spirits has been carried on for a
+number of years, and I am satisfied that the annual loss to the
+Government from this source has been very nearly, if not quite, equal to
+the annual appropriation for the collection of the internal revenue tax
+throughout the whole country. In the regions of country named there are
+known to exist about 5,000 copper stills, many of which at certain times
+are lawfully used in the production of brandy from apples and peaches,
+but I am convinced that a large portion of these stills have been and
+are used in the illicit manufacture of spirits. Part of the spirits thus
+produced has been consumed in the immediate neighborhood; the balance
+has been distributed and sold throughout the adjacent districts.
+
+"This nefarious business has been carried on, as a rule, by a
+determined set of men, who in their various neighborhoods league
+together for defense against the officers of the law, and at a given
+signal are ready to come together with arms in their hands to drive the
+officers of internal revenue out of the country.
+
+"As illustrating the extraordinary resistance which the officers have
+had on some occasions to encounter, I refer to occurrences in Overton
+County, Tennessee, in August last, where a posse of eleven internal
+revenue officers, who had stopped at a farmer's house for the night,
+were attacked by a band of armed illicit distillers, who kept up a
+constant fusillade during the whole night, and whose force was augmented
+during the following day till it numbered nearly two hundred men. The
+officers took shelter in a log house, which served them as a fort,
+returning the fire as best they could, and were there besieged for
+forty-two hours, three of their party being shot--one through the body,
+one through the arm, and one in the face. I directed a strong force to
+go to their relief, but in the meantime, through the intervention of
+citizens, the besieged officers were permitted to retire, taking their
+wounded with them, and without surrendering their arms.
+
+"So formidable has been the resistance to the enforcement of the laws
+that in the districts of 5th Virginia, 6th North Carolina, South
+Carolina, 2d and 5th Tennessee, 2d West Virginia, Arkansas, and
+Kentucky, I have found it necessary to supply the collectors with
+breech-loading carbines. In these districts, and also in the States of
+Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, in the 4th district of North Carolina,
+and in the 2d and 5th districts of Missouri, I have authorized the
+organization of posses ranging from five to sixty in number, to aid in
+making seizures and arrests, the object being to have a force
+sufficiently strong to deter resistance if possible, and, if need be, to
+overcome it."
+
+The intention of the Revenue Department was certainly not to inflame the
+mountain people, but to treat them as considerately as possible. And
+yet, the policy of "be to their faults a little blind" had borne no
+other fruit than to strengthen the combinations of moonshiners and their
+sympathizers to such a degree that they could set the ordinary force of
+officers at defiance, and things had come to such a pass that men of
+wide experience in the revenue service had reached the conclusion that
+"the fraud of illicit distilling was an evil too firmly established to
+be uprooted, and that it must be endured."
+
+The real trouble was that public sentiment in the mountains was almost
+unanimously in the moonshiners' favor. Leading citizens were either
+directly interested in the traffic, or were in active sympathy with the
+distillers. "In some cases," said the Commissioner, "State officers,
+including judges on the bench, have sided with the illicit distillers
+and have encouraged the use of the State courts for the prosecution of
+the officers of the United States upon all sorts of charges, with the
+evident purpose of obstructing the enforcement of the laws of the United
+States.... I regret to have to record the fact that when the officers of
+the United States have been shot down from ambuscade, in cold blood, as
+a rule no efforts have been made on the part of the State officers to
+arrest the murderers; but in cases where the officers of the United
+States have been engaged in enforcement of the laws, and have
+unfortunately come in conflict with the violators of the law, and
+homicides have occurred, active steps have been at once taken for the
+arrest of such officers, and nothing would be left undone by the State
+authorities to bring them to trial and punishment."
+
+There is no question but that this statement of the Commissioner was a
+fair presentation of facts; but when he went on to expose the root of
+the evil, the underlying sentiment that made, and still makes, illicit
+distilling popular among our mountaineers, I think that he was
+singularly at fault. This was his explanation--the only one that I have
+found in all the reports of the Department from 1870 to 1904:
+
+"Much of the opposition to the enforcement of the internal revenue laws
+[he does not say _all_, but offers no other theory] is properly
+attributable to a latent feeling of hostility to the government and laws
+of the United States still prevailing in the breasts of a portion of the
+people of these districts, and in consequence of this condition of
+things the officers of the United States have often been treated very
+much as though they were emissaries from some foreign country quartered
+upon the people for the collection of tribute."
+
+This shows an out-and-out misunderstanding of the character of the
+mountain people, their history, their proclivities, and the
+circumstances of their lives. The southern mountaineers, as a class,
+have been remarkably loyal to the Union ever since it was formed. Far
+more of them fought for the Union than for the Confederacy in our Civil
+War. And, anyway, politics has never had anything to do with the
+moonshining question. The reason for illicit distilling is purely an
+economic one, as I have shown. If officers of the Federal Government
+have been treated as foreigners they have met the same reception that
+_all_ outsiders meet from the mountaineers. A native of the Carolina
+tidewater is a "furriner" in the Carolina mountains, and so is a native
+of the "bluegrass" when he enters the eastern hills of his own State.
+The highlander's word "furriner" means to him what +barbaros+ did
+to an ancient Greek. Ordinarily he is courteous to the unfortunate
+alien, though never deferential; in his heart of hearts he regards the
+queer fellow with lofty superiority. This trait is characteristic of all
+primitive peoples, of all isolated peoples. It is provincialism, pure
+and simple--a provincialism more crudely expressed in Appalachia than in
+Gotham or The Hub, but no cruder in essence for all that.
+
+The vigorous campaign of 1877 bore such fruit that, in the following
+year, the Commissioner was able to report: "We virtually have peaceable
+possession of the districts of 4th and 5th North Carolina, Georgia, West
+Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas, in many of which formidable
+resistance to the enforcement of the law has prevailed.... In the
+western portion of the 5th Virginia district, in part of West Virginia,
+in the 6th North Carolina district, in part of South Carolina, and in
+the 2d and 5th districts of Tennessee, I apprehend further serious
+difficulties.... It is very desirable, in order to prevent bloodshed,
+that the internal revenue forces sent into these infected regions to
+make seizures and arrests shall be so strong as to deter armed
+resistance."
+
+In January, 1880, a combined movement by armed bodies of internal
+revenue officers was made from West Virginia southwestward through the
+mountains and foothills infested with illicit distillers. "The effect of
+this movement was to convince violators of the law that it was the
+determination of the Government to put an end to frauds and resistance
+of authority, and since that time it has been manifest to all
+well-meaning men in those regions of the country that the day of the
+illicit distiller is past." In his report for 1881-82 the Commissioner
+declared that "The supremacy of the laws ... has been established in all
+parts of the country."
+
+As a matter of fact, the number of arrests per annum, which hitherto had
+ranged from 1,000 to 3,000, now dropped off considerably, and the
+casualties in the service became few and far between. But, in 1894,
+Congress increased the tax on spirits from the old 90 cents figure to
+$1.10 a gallon. The effect was almost instantaneous. We have no means
+of learning how many new moonshine stills were set up, but we do know
+that the number of seizures doubled and trebled, and that bloodshed
+proportionally increased. Again the complaint went out that "justice was
+frequently defeated," even in cases of conviction, by failure to visit
+adequate punishment upon the offenders. It is, to-day, a notorious fact
+that our blockaders dread their own State courts far more than they do
+the Federal courts, because the punishment for selling liquor in the
+mountain counties is surer to follow conviction than is the penalty for
+violating Federal law. The latter is severe enough, if it were enforced;
+for defrauding, or attempting to defraud, the United States of the tax
+on spirits, the law prescribes forfeiture of the distillery and
+apparatus, and of all spirits and raw materials, besides a fine of not
+less than $500 nor more than $5,000, _and_ imprisonment for not less
+than six months nor longer than three years. I am not able to say what
+percentage of arrests is followed by conviction, nor how many convicted
+persons suffer the full penalty of the law. I only know that public
+opinion in the mountains did not consider an arrest, or even a
+conviction, by the Federal authorities, as a very serious matter during
+the period from 1880 up to the past two or three years, and little
+resistance was offered by blockaders when captured.
+
+Recently, however, a new factor has entered the moonshining problem and
+profoundly altered it: the South has gone "dry."
+
+One might have expected that prohibition would be bitterly opposed in
+Appalachia, in view of the fact that here the old-fashioned principle
+still prevails, in practice, that moderate drinking is neither a sin nor
+a disgrace, and that a man has the same right to make his own whiskey as
+his own soup, if he chooses. Undoubtedly those who fight the liquor
+traffic on purely moral grounds are a small minority in the mountains.
+But the blockaders themselves are glad to see prohibitory laws enforced
+to the letter, so far as saloons and registered distilleries are
+concerned, and the drinking public prefer their native product from both
+patriotic and gustatory motives. Such a combination is irresistible.
+
+When pure "blockade" of normal strength sold as cheaply as it did before
+prohibition there was no great profit in it, all risks and expenses
+considered. But to-day, even with interstate shipments of liquors to
+consumers, a gallon of "blockade" will be watered to half-strength, then
+fortified with cologne spirits or other abominations, and peddled out
+by bootleggers, at $1.50 a quart, in villages and lumber camps where
+somebody always is thirsty and can find the coin to assuage it. Thus,
+amid a poverty-stricken class of mountaineers, the temptation to run a
+secret still, and adulterate the output, inflames and spreads.
+
+In any case, the fact is that blockading as a business conducted in
+armed defiance of the law is increasing by leaps and bounds since the
+mountain region went "dry." The profits to-day are much greater than
+before, because liquor is harder to get, in country districts, and
+consumers will pay higher prices without question.
+
+Correspondingly, the risks are greater than ever. Arrests have increased
+rapidly, and so have mortal combats between officers and outlaws.
+Blockading has returned to much the same status described (as previously
+quoted) by our Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1876. I have not seen
+recent revenue reports, but I do not need to; for the war between
+officers and moonshiners is so close to us that we almost live within
+gun-crack of it. If Mr. Harkins were alive to-day, he would say: "They
+used to shoot--and they have taken it up again."
+
+Observe, please, that this is no argument for or against prohibition.
+That is not my business. As a descriptive writer it is my duty to
+collect facts, whether pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of my own or
+anyone else's bias, and present them in orderly sequence. It is for the
+reader to deduce his own conclusions, and with them I have nothing at
+all to do.
+
+I have given in brief the history of illicit distilling because we must
+consider it before we can grasp firmly the basic fact that this is not
+so much a moral as an economic problem. Men do not make whiskey in
+secret, at the peril of imprisonment or death, because they are outlaws
+by nature nor from any other kind of depravity, but simply and solely
+because it looks like "easy money to poor folks."
+
+If I may voice my own opinion of a working remedy, it is this: Give the
+mountaineers a lawful chance to make decent livings where they are. This
+means, first of all, decent roads whereby to market their farm produce
+without losing all profit in cost of transportation. The first problem
+of Appalachia to-day is the very same problem as that of western
+Pennsylvania in 1784.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE
+
+
+Among the many letters that come to me from men who think of touring or
+camping in Highland Dixie there are few but ask, "How are strangers
+treated?"
+
+This question, natural and prudent though it be, never fails to make me
+smile, for I know so well the thoughts that lie back of it: "Suppose one
+should blunder innocently upon a moonshine still--what would happen? If
+a feud were raging in the land, how would a stranger fare? If one goes
+alone into the mountains, does he run any risk of being robbed?"
+
+Before I left the tame West and came into this wild East, I would have
+asked a few questions myself, if I had known anyone to answer them. As
+it was, I turned up rather abruptly in a backwoods settlement where the
+"furriner" was more than a nine-days wonder. I bore no credentials; and
+it was quite as well. If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or
+from the President of the United States it would have been--just what I
+was myself--a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and
+marvelous new bug.
+
+Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome
+to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as
+affable as common folks. I dwelt alone for a long time, first in open
+camp, afterwards in a secluded hut. Then I boarded with a native family.
+Often I left my belongings to look out for themselves whilst I went away
+on expeditions of days or weeks at a time. And nobody ever stole from me
+so much as a fish-hook or a brass cartridge. So, in the retrospect, I
+smile.
+
+Does this mean, then, that Poe's characterization of the mountaineers is
+out of date? Not at all. They are the same "fierce and uncouth race of
+men" to-day that they were in his time. Homicide is so prevalent in the
+districts that I personally am acquainted with that nearly every adult
+citizen has been directly interested in some murder case, either as
+principal, officer, witness, kinsman, or friend.
+
+This grewsome subject I shall treat elsewhere, in detail. It is
+introduced here only to emphasize a fact pertinent to the present topic,
+namely: that the private wars of the highlanders are limited to their
+own people. In our corner of North Carolina no traveler from the
+outside ever has been a victim, nor do I know of any such case in the
+whole Appalachian region.
+
+
+[Illustration: Many of the homes have but one window]
+
+
+And here is another significant fact: as regards personal property I do
+not know any race in the world that is more honest than our backwoodsmen
+of the southern mountains. As soon as you leave the railroad you enter a
+land where sneak-thieves are rare and burglars almost unheard of. In my
+own county and all those adjoining it there has been only one case of
+highway robbery and only one of murder for money, so far as I can learn,
+in the past _forty_ years.
+
+The mountain code of conduct is a curious mixture of savagery and
+civility. One man will kill another over a pig or a panel of fence (not
+for the property's sake, but because of hot words ensuing) and he will
+"come clear" in court because every fellow on the jury feels he would
+have done the same thing himself under similar provocation; yet these
+very men, vengeful and cruel though they are, regard hospitality as a
+sacred duty toward wayfarers of any degree, and the bare idea of
+stealing from a stranger would excite their instant loathing or
+white-hot scorn.
+
+Anyone of tact and common sense can go as he pleases through the darkest
+corner of Appalachia without being molested. Tact, however, implies the
+will and the insight to put yourself truly in the other man's place.
+Imagine yourself born, bred, circumstanced like him. It implies, also,
+the courtesy of doing as you would be done by if you were in that
+fellow's shoes. No arrogance, no condescension, but man to man on a
+footing of equal manliness.
+
+And there are "manners" in the rudest community: customs and rules of
+conduct that it is well to learn before one goes far afield. For
+example, when you stop at a mountain cabin, if no dogs sound an alarm,
+do not walk up to the door and knock. You are expected to call out
+_Hello!_ until someone comes to inspect you. None but the most intimate
+neighbors neglect this usage and there is mighty good reason back of it
+in a land where the path to one's door may be a warpath.
+
+If you are armed, as a hunter, do not fail to remove the cartridges from
+the gun, in your host's presence, before you set foot on his porch. Then
+give him the weapon or stand it in a corner or hang it up in plain view.
+Even our sheriff, when he stopped with us, would lay his revolver on the
+mantel-shelf and leave it there until he went his way. If you think a
+moment you can see the courtesy of such an act. It proves that the
+guest puts implicit trust in the honor of his host and in his ability to
+protect all within his house. There never has been a case in which such
+trust was violated.
+
+I knew a traveler who, spending the night in a one-room cabin, was fool
+enough (I can use no milder term) to thrust a loaded revolver under his
+pillow when he went to bed. In the morning his weapon was still there,
+but empty, and its cartridges lay conspicuously on a table across the
+room. Nobody said a word about the incident: the hint was left to soak
+in.
+
+The only real danger that one may encounter from the native people, so
+long as he behaves himself, is when he comes upon a man who is wild with
+liquor and cannot sidestep him. In such case, give him the glad word and
+move on at once. I have had a drunken "ball-hooter" (log-roller) from
+the lumber camps fire five shots around my head as a _feu-de-joie_, and
+then stand tantalizingly, with hammer cocked over the sixth cartridge,
+to see what I would do about it. As it chanced, I did not mind his
+fireworks, for my head was a-swim with the rising fever of erysipelas
+and I had come dragging my heels many an irk mile down from the
+mountains to find a doctor. So I merely smiled at the fellow and asked
+if he was having a good time. He grinned sheepishly and let me pass
+unharmed.
+
+The chief drawback to travel in this region, aside from the roads, is
+not the character of the people, but the quality of bed and board. Of
+course there are good hotels at most of the summer resorts, but these
+are few and scattering, at present, for a territory so immense. In most
+regions where there is noble scenery, unspoiled forest, and good
+fishing, the accommodations are extremely rude. Many of the village inns
+are dirty, and their tables a shock and a despair to the hungry pilgrim.
+There are blessed exceptions, to be sure, but on the other hand the
+traveler sometimes will encounter a cuisine that is neither edible nor
+speakable, and will be shown to a bed wherein it needs no Sherlock
+Holmes to detect that the previous biped retired with his boots on, or
+at least with much realty attached to his person. Such places often are
+like that unpronounceable town in Russia of which Paragot said: "The
+bugs are the most companionable creatures in it, and they are the
+cleanest."
+
+If one be of the same mind as the plain-spoken Dr. Samuel Johnson, that
+"the finest landscape in the world is not worth a damn without a cozy
+inn in the foreground," he should keep to the stock show-places of our
+highlands or seek other playgrounds.
+
+By far the most comfortable way to stay in the back country at present
+is in a camp of one's own where he can keep things tidy and have food to
+suit him. If you be, though, of stout stomach and wishful to get true
+insight into mountain ways and character you can find some sort of
+boarding-place almost anywhere. In such case go first to the sheriff of
+the county (in person, not by letter). This officer is a walking bureau
+of information and dispenses it freely to any stranger. He knows almost
+every man in the county, his character and his circumstances. He may be
+depended upon to direct you to the best stopping-places, will tell you
+how to get hunting and fishing privileges, and will recommend a good
+packer or teamster if such help is wanted.
+
+Along the railways and main county roads the farmers show a
+well-justified mistrust about admitting company for the night. But in
+the back districts the latch-string generally is out to all comers. "If
+you-uns can stand what we-uns has ter, w'y come right in and set you a
+cheer."
+
+If the man of the house has misgivings as to the state of the larder, he
+will say: "I'll ax the woman gin she can git ye a bite." Seldom does
+the wife demur, though sometimes her patience is sorely tried.
+
+A stranger whose calked boots betrayed his calling stopped at Uncle
+Mark's to inquire, "Can I git to stay all night?" Aunt Nance, peeping
+through a crack, warned her man in a whisper: "Them loggers jest louzes
+up folkses houses." Whereat Mark answered the lumberjack: "We don't
+ginerally foller takin' in strangers."
+
+Jack glanced significantly at the lowering clouds, and grunted:
+"Uh--looks like I could stand hitched all night!"
+
+This was too much for Mark. "Well!" he exclaimed, "mebbe we-uns can find
+ye a pallet--I'll try to enjoy ye somehow." Which, being interpreted,
+means, "I'll entertain you as best I can."
+
+The hospitality of the backwoods knows no bounds short of sickness in
+the family or downright destitution. Travelers often innocently impose
+on poor people, and even criticise the scanty fare, when they may be
+getting a lion's share of the last loaf in the house. And few of them
+realize the actual cost of entertaining company in a home that is long
+mountain miles from any market. Fancy yourself making a twenty-mile
+round trip over awful roads to carry back a sack of flour on your
+shoulder and a can of oil in your hand; then figure what the
+transportation is worth.
+
+Once when I was trying a short-cut through the forest by following vague
+directions I swerved to the wrong trail. Sunset found me on the summit
+of an unfamiliar mountain, with cold rain setting in, and below me lay
+the impenetrable laurel of Huggins's Hell. I turned back to the head of
+the nearest water course, not knowing whither it led, fought my way
+through thicket and darkness to the nearest house, and asked for
+lodging. The man was just coming in from work. He betrayed some anxiety
+but admitted me with grave politeness. Then he departed on an errand,
+leaving his wife to hear the story of my wanderings.
+
+I was eager for supper; but madame made no move toward the kitchen. An
+hour passed. A little child whimpered with hunger. The mother, flushing,
+soothed it on her breast.
+
+It was well on in the night when her husband returned, bearing a little
+"poke" of cornmeal. Then the woman flew to her post. Soon we had hot
+bread, three or four slices of pork, and black coffee unsweetened--all
+there was in the house.
+
+It developed that when I arrived there was barely enough meal for the
+family's supper and breakfast. My host had to shell some corn, go in
+almost pitch darkness, without a lantern, to a tub-mill far down the
+branch, wait while it ground out a few spoonfuls to the minute and bring
+the meal back.
+
+Next morning, when I offered pay for my entertainment, he waved it
+aside. "I ain't never tuk money from company," he said, "and this ain't
+no time to begin."
+
+Laughing, I slipped some silver into the hand of the eldest child. "This
+is not pay; it's a present." The girl was awed into speechlessness at
+sight of money of her own, and the parents did not know how to thank me
+for her, but bade me "Stay on, stranger; pore folks has a pore way, but
+you're welcome to what we got."
+
+This incident is a little out of the common, nowadays; but it is typical
+of what was customary until lumbering and other industrial works began
+to invade the solitudes. To-day it is the rule to charge twenty-five
+cents a meal and the same for lodging, regardless of what the fare and
+the bed may be. When you think of it, this is right, for "the porer
+folks is the harder it is to _git_ things."
+
+The mountaineers always are eager for news. In the drab monotony of
+their shut-in lives the coming of an unknown traveler is an event that
+will set the whole neighborhood gossiping. Every word and action of his
+will be discussed for weeks after he has gone his way. This, of course,
+is a trait of rural people everywhere; but imagine, if you can, how it
+may be intensified where there are no newspapers, few visitors, and
+where the average man gets maybe two or three letters a year!
+
+Riding up a branch road, you come upon a white-bearded patriarch who
+halts you with a wave of the hand.
+
+"Stranger--meanin' no harm--_whar_ are you gwine?"
+
+You tell him.
+
+"What did you say your name was?"
+
+You had not mentioned it; but you do so now.
+
+"What mought you-uns foller for a living?"
+
+It is wise to humor the old man, and tell him frankly what is your
+business "up this 'way-off branch."
+
+Half a mile farther you espy a girl coming toward you. She stops like a
+startled fawn, wide-eyed with amazement. Then, at a bound, she dodges
+into a thicket, doubles on her course and runs back as fast as her
+nimble bare legs can carry her to report that "Some-_body_ 's comin'!"
+
+At the next house, stopping for a drink of water, you chat a few
+moments. High up the opposite hill is a half-hidden cabin from which
+keen eyes scrutinize your every move, and a woman cries to her boy:
+"Run, Kit, down to Mederses, and ax who _is_ he!"
+
+As you approach a cross-roads store every idler pricks up to instant
+attention. Your presence is detected from every neighboring cabin and
+cornfield. Long John quits his plowing, Red John drops his axe, Sick
+John ("who's allers ailin', to hear _him_ tell") pops out of bed, and
+Lyin' John (whose "mouth ain't no praar-book, if it _does_ open and
+shet") grabs his hat, with "I jes' got ter know who that feller is!"
+Then all Johns descend their several paths, to congregate at the store
+and estimate the stranger as though he were so many board-feet of lumber
+in the tree or so many pounds of beef on the hoof.
+
+In every settlement there is somebody who makes a pleasure of gathering
+and spreading news. Such a one we had--a happy-go-lucky fellow from
+whom, they said, "you can hear the news jinglin' afore he comes within
+gunshot." It amused me to record the many ways he had of announcing his
+mission by indirection. Here is the list:
+
+"I'm jes' broguin' about."
+
+"Yes, I'm jest cooterin' around."
+
+"I'm santerin' about."
+
+"Oh, I'm jes' prodjectin' around."
+
+"Jist traffickin' about."
+
+"No, I ain't workin' none--jest spuddin' around."
+
+"Me? I'm jes' shacklin' around."
+
+"Yea, la! I'm jist loaferin' about."
+
+And yet one hears that our mountaineers have a limited vocabulary!
+
+Although this is no place to discuss the mountain dialect, I must
+explain that to "brogue" means to go about in brogues (brogans
+nowadays). A "cooter" is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a
+verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers. "Spuddin' around"
+means toddling or jolting along. To "shummick" (also "shammick") is to
+shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is
+nothing serious in view. And "shacklin' around" pictures a shackly,
+loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond.
+
+A stranger takes the mountaineers for simple characters that can be
+gauged at a glance. This illusion--for it is an illusion--comes from
+the childlike directness with which they ask him the most intimate
+questions about himself, from the genuine good-will with which they
+admit him to their homes, and from the stark openness of their domestic
+affairs in houses where no privacy can possibly exist.
+
+In so far as simplicity means only a shrewd regard for essentials, a
+rigid exclusion of whatever can be done without, perhaps no white race
+is nearer a state of nature than these highlanders of ours. Yet this
+relates only to the externals of life. Diogenes sat in a tub, but his
+thoughts were deep as the sea. And whoever estimates our mountaineers as
+a shallow-minded or open-minded people has much to learn.
+
+When Long John asks, "What you aimin' to do up hyur? How much money do
+you make? Whar's your old woman?" he does not really expect sincere
+answers. Certainly he will take them with more than a grain of salt.
+Conversation, with him, is a game. In quizzing you, the interests that
+he is actually curious about lie hidden in the back of his head, and he
+will proceed toward them by cunning circumventions, seeking to entrap
+you into telling the truth by accident. Being himself born to intrigue
+and skilled in dodging the leading question, he assumes that you have
+had equal advantages. When you discuss with him any business of serious
+concern, if you should go straight to the point, and open your mind
+frankly, he would be nonplussed.
+
+The fact is that our highlanders are a sly, suspicious, and secretive
+folk. That, too, is a state of nature. Primitive society is by no means
+a Utopia or a Garden of Eden. In wilderness life the feral arts of
+concealment, spying, false "leads," and doubling on trails, are the arts
+self-preservative. The native backwoodsman practices them as
+instinctively and with as little compunction upon his own species as
+upon the deer and the wolf from whom he learned them.
+
+As a friend, no one will spring quicker to your aid, reckless of
+consequences, and fight with you to the last ditch; but fear of betrayal
+lies at the very bottom of his nature. His sleepless suspicion of
+ulterior motives is no more, no less, than a feral trait, inherited from
+a long line of forebears whose isolated lives were preserved only by
+incessant vigilance against enemies that stalked by night and struck
+without warning.
+
+Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the
+mountaineers. I am not speaking of personal but of race character--type.
+No outsider can discern and measure those powerful but obscure motives,
+those rooted prejudices, that constitute their real difference from
+other men, until he has lived with the people a long time on terms of
+intimacy. Nor can anyone be trusted to portray them if he holds a brief
+either for or against this people. The fluttering tourist marks only the
+oddities he sees, without knowing the reason for them. On the other
+hand, a misguided champion flies to arms at first mention of an
+unpleasant fact, and either denies it, clamoring for legal proof, or
+tries to befog the whole subject and run it on the rocks of altercation.
+
+The mountaineers are high-strung and sensitive to criticism. No one has
+less use for "that worst scourge of avenging heaven, the candid friend."
+Of late years they are growing conscious of their own belatedness, and
+that touches a tender spot. "Hit don't take a big seed to hurt a sore
+tooth." Since they do not see how anyone can find beauty or historic
+interest in ways of life that the rest of the world has cast aside, so
+they resent every exposure of their peculiarities as if that were
+holding them up to ridicule or blame.
+
+Strange to say, it provokes them to be called mountaineers, that being a
+"furrin word" which they take as a term of reproach. They call
+themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously "mountain
+boomers," the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel
+which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains.
+Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among
+themselves the backwoods are called "the sticks." Hillsman and
+highlander are strange words to them--and anything that is strange is
+suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much
+about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong
+repetition of the same old terms.
+
+I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the
+mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity.
+It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or
+variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which
+it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I
+tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or
+will see is that--
+
+  A chiel 's amang ye, takin' notes,
+  And, faith, he'll prent 'em.
+
+
+Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes
+have not got off so easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who
+went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the
+railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame,
+for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane
+history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is
+posed as "cocking the _trigger_" of a gun, or shooting a "forty-four"
+bullet from a thirty-caliber "automatic _revolver_," who in Kentucky
+could be expected to stand it?
+
+The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that
+when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College
+"the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of
+the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox's stories were either true or false. If
+they were true, then he was 'no gentleman' for telling all the family
+affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were
+not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people.
+Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by
+the 'unco gude' a generation ago."
+
+
+[Illustration: The Schoolhouse]
+
+
+As for settlement workers, let them teach more by example than by
+precept. Bishop Wilson has given them some advice that cannot be
+bettered: "It must be said with emphasis that our problem is an
+exceedingly delicate one. The Highlanders are Scotch-Irish in their
+high-spiritedness and proud independence. Those who would help them must
+do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, showing always genuine
+interest in them but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As
+quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion
+of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs if he
+detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indication of an
+air of superiority."
+
+"The worker among the mountaineers," he continues, "must 'meet with them
+on the level and part on the square' and conquer their oftentimes
+unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has
+to say about the superiority of other sections or of the deficiencies of
+the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively
+few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard under the
+searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people."
+
+Allow me to add that this is no place for the "unco gude" to exercise
+their talents, but rather for those whose studies and travels have
+taught them both tolerance and hopefulness. Some well-meaning
+missionaries are shocked and scandalized at what seems to them incurable
+perversity and race degeneration. It is nothing of the sort. There are
+reasons, good reasons, for the worst that we find in any Hell-fer-Sartin
+or Loafer's Glory. All that is the inevitable result of isolation and
+lack of opportunity. It is no more hopeless than the same features of
+life were in the Scotch highlands two centuries ago.
+
+But it must be known that the future of this really fine race is, at
+bottom, an economic problem, which must be studied hand-in-hand with the
+educational one. Civilization only repels the mountaineer until you show
+him something to gain by it--he knows by instinct what he is bound to
+lose. There is no use in teaching cleanliness and thrift to serfs or
+outcasts. The _independence_ of the mountain farm must be preserved, or
+the fine spirit of the race will vanish and all that is manly in the
+Highlander will wither to the core.
+
+It is far from my own purpose to preach or advise. "Portray the
+struggle, and you need write no tract." Still farther is it from my
+thought to let characterization degenerate into caricature. Wherever I
+tell anything that is unusual or below the average of backwoods life, I
+give fair warning that it is admitted only for spice or contrast, and
+let it go at that. But even in writing with severe restraint it will be
+necessary at times to show conditions so rude and antiquated that
+professional apologists will growl, and many others may find my
+statements hard to credit as typical of anything at all in our modern
+America.
+
+So, let me remind the reader again that full three-fourths of our
+mountaineers still live in the eighteenth century, and that in their
+far-flung wilderness, away from large rivers and railways, the habits,
+customs, morals of the people have changed but little from those of our
+old colonial frontier; in essentials they are closely analogous to what
+we read of lower-class English and Scottish life in Covenanter and
+Jacobite times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS
+
+
+In delineating a strange race we are prone to disregard what is common
+in our own experience and observe sharply what is odd. The oddities we
+sketch and remember and tell about. But there is little danger of
+misrepresenting the physical features and mental traits of the hill
+people, because among them there is one definite type that greatly
+predominates. This is not to be wondered at when we remember that fully
+three-fourths of our highlanders are practically of the same descent,
+have lived the same kind of life for generations, and have intermarried
+to a degree unknown in other parts of America.
+
+Our average mountaineer is lean, inquisitive, shrewd. If that be what
+constitutes a Yankee, as is popularly supposed outside of New England,
+then this Yankee of the South is as true to type as the conventional
+Uncle Sam himself.
+
+A fat mountaineer is a curiosity. The hill folk even seem to affect a
+slender type of comeliness. In Alice MacGowan's _Judith of the
+Cumberlands_, old Jepthah Turrentine says of one of his sons: "I named
+that boy after the finest man that ever walked God's green earth--and
+then the fool had to go and git fat on me! Think of me with a _fat_ son!
+I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort
+p'intedly to be led out and killed!"
+
+Spartan diet does not put on flesh. Still, it should be noted that long
+legs, baggy clothing, and scantiness or lack of underwear make people
+seem thinner than they really are. Our highlanders are conspicuously a
+tall race. Out of seventy-six men that I have listed just as they
+occurred to me, but four are below average American height and only two
+are fat. About two-thirds of them are brawny or sinewy fellows of great
+endurance. The others generally are slab-sided, stoop-shouldered, but
+withey. The townsfolk and the valley farmers, being better nourished and
+more observant of the prime laws of wholesome living, are noticeably
+superior in appearance but not in stamina.
+
+Nearly all males of the back country have a grave and deliberate
+bearing. They travel with the long, sure-footed stride of the born
+woodsman, not graceful and lithe like a moccasined Indian (their coarse
+brogans forbid it), but shambling as if every joint had too much play.
+There is nothing about them to suggest the Swiss or Tyrolean
+mountaineers; rather they resemble the gillies of the Scotch Highlands.
+Generally they are lean-faced, sallow, level-browed, with rather high
+cheek-bones. Gray eyes predominate, sometimes vacuous, but oftener hard,
+searching, crafty--the feral eye of primitive man.
+
+From infancy these people have been schooled to dissimulate and hide
+emotion, and ordinarily their faces are as opaque as those of veteran
+poker players. Many wear habitually a sullen scowl, hateful and
+suspicious, which in men of combative age, and often in the old women,
+is sinister and vindictive. The smile of comfortable assurance, the
+frank eye of good-fellowship, are rare indeed. Nearly all of the young
+people and many of the adults plant themselves before a stranger and
+regard him with a fixed stare, peculiarly annoying until one realizes
+that they have no thought of impertinence.
+
+Many of the women are pretty in youth; but hard toil in house and field,
+early marriage, frequent child-bearing with shockingly poor attention,
+and ignorance or defiance of the plainest necessities of hygiene, soon
+warp and age them. At thirty or thirty-five a mountain woman is apt to
+have a worn and faded look, with form prematurely bent--and what wonder?
+Always bending over the hoe in the cornfield, or bending over the hearth
+as she cooks by an open fire, or bending over her baby, or bending to
+pick up, for the thousandth time, the wet duds that her lord flings on
+the floor as he enters from the woods--what wonder that she soon grows
+short-waisted and round-shouldered?
+
+The voices of the highland women, low toned by habit, often are
+singularly sweet, being pitched in a sad, musical, minor key. With
+strangers, the women are wont to be shy, but speculative rather than
+timid, as they glance betimes with "a slow, long look of mild inquiry,
+or of general listlessness, or of unconscious and unaccountable
+melancholy." Many, however, scrutinize a visitor calmly for minutes at a
+time or frankly measure him with the gipsy eye of Carmen.
+
+Outsiders, judging from the fruits of labor in more favored lands, have
+charged the mountaineers with indolence. It is the wrong word. Shiftless
+many of them are--afflicted with that malady which Barrie calls "acute
+disinclination to work"--but that is not so much in their physical
+nature as in their economic outlook. Rarely do we find mountaineers who
+loaf all day on the floor or the doorstep like so many of the poor
+whites of the lowlands. If not laboring, they at least must be doing
+something, be it no more than walking ten miles to shoot a squirrel or
+visit a crony.
+
+As a class, they have great and restless physical energy. Considering
+the quantity and quality of what they eat there is no people who can
+beat them in endurance of strain and privation. They are great walkers
+and carriers of burdens. Before there was a tub-mill in our settlement
+one of my neighbors used to go, every other week, thirteen miles to
+mill, carrying a two-bushel sack of corn (112 pounds) and returning with
+his meal on the following day. This was done without any pack-strap but
+simply shifting the load from one shoulder to the other, betimes.
+
+One of our women, known as "Long Goody" (I measured her; six feet three
+inches she stood) walked eighteen miles across the Smokies into
+Tennessee, crossing at an elevation of 5,000 feet, merely to shop more
+advantageously than she could at home. The next day she shouldered fifty
+pounds of flour and some other groceries, and bore them home before
+nightfall. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, in his seventy-second year came to
+join a party of us on a bear hunt. He walked twelve miles across the
+mountain, carrying his equipment and four days' rations for himself _and
+dogs_. Finding that we had gone on ahead of him he followed to our camp
+on Siler's Bald, twelve more miles, climbing another 3,000 feet, much of
+it by bad trail, finished the twenty-four-mile trip in seven hours--and
+then wanted to turn in and help cut the night-wood. Young mountaineers
+afoot easily outstrip a horse on a day's journey by road and trail.
+
+
+[Illustration: "At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a worn and
+faded look"]
+
+
+In a climate where it showers about two days out of three through spring
+and summer the women go about, like the men, unshielded from the wet. If
+you expostulate, one will laugh and reply: "I ain't sugar, nor salt, nor
+nobody's honey." Slickers are worn only on horseback--and two-thirds of
+our people had no horses. A man who was so eccentric as to carry an
+umbrella is known to this day as "Umbrell'" John Walker.
+
+In winter, one sometimes may see adults and children going barefoot in
+snow that is ankle deep. It used to be customary in our settlement to do
+the morning chores barefooted in the snow. "Then," said one, "our feet
+'d tingle and burn, so 't they wouldn't git a bit cold all day when we
+put our shoes on." I knew a family whose children had no shoes all one
+winter, and occasionally we had zero weather.
+
+It seems to have been common, in earlier times, to go barefooted all the
+year. Frederick Law Olmsted, a noted writer of the Civil War period, was
+told by a squire of the Tennessee hills that "a majority of the folks
+went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the time four or
+five inches deep; and the man said he didn't think most of the men about
+here had more than one coat, and they never wore one in winter except on
+holidays. 'That was the healthiest way,' he reckoned, 'just to toughen
+yourself and not wear no coat.' No matter how cold it was, he 'didn't
+wear no coat.'" One of my own neighbors in the Smokies never owned a
+coat until after his marriage, when a friend of mine gave him one.
+
+It is the usual thing for men and boys to wade cold trout streams all
+day, come in at sunset, disrobe to shirt and trousers, and then sit in
+the piercing drafts of an open cabin drying out before the fire, though
+the night be so cool that a stranger beside them shivers in his dry
+flannels. After supper, the women, if they have been wearing shoes, will
+remove them to ease their feet, no matter if it be freezing cold--and
+the cracks in the floor may be an inch wide.
+
+In bear hunting, our parties usually camped at about 5,000 feet above
+sea level. At this elevation, in the long nights before Christmas, the
+cold often was bitter and the wind might blow a gale. Sometimes the
+native hunters would lie out in the open all night without a sign of a
+blanket or an axe. They would say: "La! many's the night I've been out
+when the frost was spewed up so high [measuring three or four inches
+with the hand], and that right around the fire, too." Cattle hunters in
+the mountains never carry a blanket or a shelter-cloth, and they sleep
+out wherever night finds them, often in pouring rain or flying snow. On
+their arduous trips they find it burden enough to carry the salt for
+their cattle, with a frying-pan, cup, corn pone, coffee, and
+"sow-belly," all in a grain sack strapped to the man's back.
+
+Such nurture, from childhood, makes white men as indifferent to the
+elements as Fuegians. And it makes them anything but comfortable
+companions for one who has been differently reared. During "court week"
+when the hotels at the county-seat are overcrowded with countrymen, the
+luckless drummers who happen to be there have continuous exercise in
+closing doors. No mountaineer closes a door behind him. Winter or
+summer, doors are to be shut only when folks go to bed. That is what
+they are for. After close study of mountain speech I have failed to
+discern that the word draft is understood, except in parts of the
+Virginia and Kentucky mountains, where it means a brook. One is reminded
+of the colonial, who, visiting England, remarked of the British people:
+"It is a survival of the fittest--the fittest to exist in fog." Here, it
+is the fittest to survive cold, and wet, and drafts.
+
+Running barefooted in the snow is exceptional nowadays; but it is by no
+means the limit of hardiness or callosity that some of these people
+display. It is not so long ago that I passed an open lean-to of chestnut
+bark far back in the wilderness, wherein a family of Tennesseans was
+spending the year. There were three children, the eldest a lad of
+twelve. The entire worldly possessions of this family could easily be
+packed around on their backs. Poverty, however, does not account for
+such manner of living. There is none so poor in the mountains that he
+need rear his children in a bark shed. It is all a matter of taste.
+
+There is a wealthy man known to everyone around Waynesville, who, being
+asked where he resided, as a witness in court, answered: "Three, four
+miles up and down Jonathan Creek." The judge was about to fine him for
+contempt, when it developed that the witness spoke literal truth. He
+lives neither in house nor camp, but perambulates his large estate and
+when night comes lies down wherever he may happen to be. In winter he
+has been known to go where some of his pigs bedded in the woods, usurp
+the middle for himself, and borrow comfort from their bodily heat.
+
+This man is worth over a hundred thousand dollars. He visited the
+world's fairs at Chicago and St. Louis, wearing the old long coat that
+serves him also as blanket, and carrying his rations in a sack. Far from
+being demented, he is notoriously so shrewd on the stand and so learned
+in the law that he is formidable to every attorney who cross-questions
+him.
+
+I cite these last two instances not merely as eccentricities of
+character, but as really typical of the bodily stamina that most of the
+mountaineers can display if they want to. Their smiling endurance of
+cold and wet and privation would have endeared them to the first
+Napoleon, who declared that those soldiers were the best who bivouacked
+shelterless throughout the year.
+
+In spite of such apparent "toughness," the mountaineers are not a
+notably healthy people. The man who exposes himself wantonly year after
+year must pay the piper. Sooner or later he "adopts a rheumatiz," and
+the adoption lasts till he dies. So also in dietary matters. The
+backwoodsmen through ruthless weeding-out of the normally sensitive have
+acquired a wonderful tolerance of swimming grease, doughy bread and
+half-fried cabbage; but, even so, they are gnawed by dyspepsia. This
+accounts in great measure for the "glunch o' sour disdain" that mars so
+many countenances. A neighbor said to me of another: "He has a gredge
+agin all creation, and glories in human misery." So would anyone else
+who ate at the same table. Many a homicide in the mountains can be
+traced directly to bad food and the raw whiskey taken to appease a
+soured stomach.
+
+Every stranger in Appalachia is quick to note the high percentage of
+defectives among the people. However, we should bear in mind that in the
+mountains proper there are few, if any, public refuges for this class,
+and that home ties are so powerful that mountaineers never send their
+"fitified folks" or "half-wits," or other unfortunates, to any
+institution in the lowlands, so long as it is bearable to have them
+around. Such poor creatures as would be segregated in more advanced
+communities, far from the public eye, here go at large and reproduce
+their kind.
+
+Extremely early marriages are tolerated, as among all primitive people.
+I knew a hobbledehoy of sixteen who married a frail, tuberculous girl of
+twelve, and in the same small settlement another lad of sixteen who
+wedded a girl of thirteen. In both cases the result was wretched beyond
+description.
+
+The evil consequences of inbreeding of persons closely akin are well
+known to the mountaineers; but here knowledge is no deterrent, since
+whole districts are interrelated to start with. Owing to the isolation
+of the clans, and their extremely limited travels, there are abundant
+cases like those caustically mentioned in _King Spruce_: "All Skeets and
+Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till
+ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger
+relationship."
+
+The mountaineers are touchy on these topics and it is but natural that
+they should be so. Nevertheless it is the plain duty of society to study
+such conditions and apply the remedy. There was a time when the Scotch
+people (to cite only one instance out of many) were in still worse
+case, threatened with race degeneration; but improved economic
+conditions, followed by education, made them over into one of the most
+vigorous of modern peoples.
+
+When I lived up in the Smokies there was no doctor within sixteen miles
+(and then, none who ever had attended a medical school). It was
+inevitable that my first-aid kit and limited knowledge of medicine
+should be requisitioned until I became a sort of "doctor to the
+settle_ment_."[8] My services, being free, at once became popular, and
+there was no escape; for, if I treated the Smiths, let us say, and
+ignored a call from the Robinsons, the slight would be resented by all
+Robinson connections throughout the land. So my normal occupations often
+were interrupted by such calls as these:
+
+"John's Lize Ann she ain't much; cain't you-uns give her some
+easin'-powder for that hurtin' in her chist?"
+
+"Old Uncle Bobby Tuttle's got a pone come up on his side; looks like he
+mought drap off, him bein' weak and right narvish and sick with a
+head-swimmin'."
+
+"Ike Morgan Pringle's a-been horse-throwed down the clift, and he's in a
+manner stone dead."
+
+"Right sensibly atween the shoulders I've got a pain; somethin' 's gone
+wrong with my stummick; I don't 'pear to have no stren'th left; and
+sometimes I'm nigh sifflicated. Whut you reckon ails me?"
+
+"Come right over to Mis' Fullwiler's, quick; she's fell down and busted
+a rib inside o' her!"
+
+On these errands of mercy I soon picked up some rules of practice that
+are not laid down in the books. I learned to carry not only my own
+bandages but my own towels and utensils for washing and sterilizing. I
+kept my mouth shut about germ theories of disease, having no troops to
+enforce orders and finding that mere advice incited downright
+perversity. I administered potent drugs in person and left nothing to be
+taken according to direction except placebos.
+
+Once, in forgetfulness, I left a tablet of corrosive sublimate on the
+mantel after dressing a wound, and the man of the house told me next day
+that he had "'lowed to swaller it' and see if it wouldn't ease his
+headache!" A geologist and I, exploring the hills with a mountaineer,
+fell into discussion of filth diseases and germs, not realizing that we
+were overheard. Happening to pass an ant-hill, Frank remarked to me
+that formic acid was supposed to be antagonistic to the germ of
+laziness. Instantly we heard a growl from our woodsman: "By God, I was
+_expectin'_ to hear the like o' that!"
+
+Ordinarily wounds are stanched with dusty cobwebs and bound up in any
+old rag. If infection ensues, Providence has to take the blame. A woman
+gashed her foot badly with an axe; I asked her what she did for it;
+disdainfully she answered, "Tied it up in sut and a rag, and went to
+hoein' corn."
+
+An injured person gets scant sympathy, if any. So far as outward
+demeanor goes, and public comment, the witnesses are utterly callous.
+The same indifference is shown in the face of impending death. People
+crowd around with no other motive, seemingly, than morbid curiosity to
+see a person die. I asked our local preacher what the folks would do if
+a man broke his thigh so that the bone protruded. He merely elevated his
+eyebrows and replied: "We'd set around and sing until he died."
+
+The mountaineers' fortitude under severe pain is heroic, though often
+needless. For all minor operations and frequently for major ones they
+obstinately refuse to take an anesthetic, being perversely suspicious
+of everything that they do not understand. Their own minor surgery and
+obstetric practice is barbarous. A large proportion of the mountain
+doctors know less about human anatomy than a butcher does about a pig's.
+Sometimes this ignorance passes below ordinary common sense. There is a
+"doctor" still practicing who, after a case of confinement, sits beside
+the patient and presses hard upon the hips for half an hour, explaining
+that it is to "push the bones back into place; don't you know they
+allers comes uncoupled in the socket?" This, I suppose, is the limit;
+but there are very many practicing physicians in the back country who
+could not name or locate the arteries of either foot or hand to save
+their lives.
+
+It was here I first heard of "tooth-jumping." Let one of my old
+neighbors tell it in his own way:
+
+"You take a cut nail (not one o' those round wire nails) and place its
+squar p'int agin the ridge of the tooth, jest under the edge of the gum.
+Then jump the tooth out with a hammer. A man who knows how can jump a
+tooth without it hurtin' half as bad as pullin'. But old Uncle Neddy
+Cyarter went to jump one of his own teeth out, one time, and missed the
+nail and mashed his nose with the hammer. He had the weak trembles."
+
+"I have heard of tooth-jumping," said I, "and reported it to dentists
+back home, but they laughed at me."
+
+"Well, they needn't laugh; for it's so. Some men git to be as
+experienced at it as tooth-dentists are at pullin'. They cut around the
+gum, and then put the nail at jest sich an angle, slantin' downward for
+an upper tooth, or upwards for a lower one, and hit one lick."
+
+"Will the tooth come at the first lick?"
+
+"Ginerally. If it didn't, you might as well stick your head in a swarm
+o' bees and fergit who you are."
+
+"Are back teeth extracted in that way?"
+
+"Yes, sir; any kind of a tooth. I've burnt my holler teeth out with a
+red-hot wire."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"Hit's so. The wire'd sizzle like fryin'."
+
+"Kill the nerve?"
+
+"No; but it'd sear the mar so it wouldn't be so sensitive."
+
+"Didn't hurt, eh?"
+
+"Hurt like hell for a moment. I held the wire one time for Jim Bob
+Jimwright, who couldn't reach the spot for hisself. I _told_ him to hold
+his tongue back; but when I touched the holler he jumped and wropped
+his tongue agin the wire. The words that man used ain't fitty to tell."
+
+Some of the ailments common in the mountains were new to me. For
+instance, "dew pizen," presumably the poison of some weed, which,
+dissolved in dew, enters the blood through a scratch or abrasion. As a
+woman described it, "Dew pizen comes like a risin', and laws-a-marcy how
+it does hurt! I stove a brier in my heel wunst, and then had to hunt
+cows every morning in the dew. My leg swelled up black to clar above the
+knee, and Dr. Stinchcomb lanced the place seven times. I lay on a pallet
+on the floor for over a month. My leg like to killed me. I've seed
+persons jest a lot o' sores all over, as big as my hand, from dew
+pizen."
+
+A more mysterious disease is "milk-sick," which prevails in certain
+restricted districts, chiefly where the cattle graze in rich and deeply
+shaded coves. If not properly treated it is fatal both to the cow and to
+any human being who drinks her fresh milk or eats her butter. It is not
+transmitted by sour milk or by buttermilk. There is a characteristic
+fetor of the breath. It is said that milk from an infected cow will not
+foam and that silver is turned black by it. Mountaineers are divided in
+opinion as to whether this disease is of vegetable or of mineral origin;
+some think it is an efflorescence from gas that settles on plants. This
+much is certain: that it disappears from "milk-sick coves" when they are
+cleared of timber and the sunlight let in. The prevalent treatment is an
+emetic, followed by large doses of apple brandy and honey; then oil to
+open the bowels. Perhaps the extraordinary distaste for fresh milk and
+butter, or the universal suspicion of these foods that mountaineers
+evince in so many localities, may have sprung up from experience with
+"milk-sick" cows. I have not found this malady mentioned in any treatise
+on medicine; yet it has been known from our earliest frontier times.
+Abraham Lincoln's mother died of it.
+
+That the hill folk remain a rugged and hardy people in spite of
+unsanitary conditions so gross that I can barely hint at them, is due
+chiefly to their love of pure air and pure water. No mountain cabin
+needs a window to ventilate it: there are cracks and cat-holes
+everywhere, and, as I have said, the doors are always open except at
+night. "Tight houses," sheathed or plastered, are universally despised,
+partly from inherited shiftlessness, partly for less obvious reasons.
+
+One of Miss MacGowan's characters fairly insulted the neighborhood by
+building a modern house. "Why lordy! Lookee hyer, Creed," remonstrated
+Doss Provine over a question of matching boards and battening joints,
+"ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh
+air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open
+all the time like we-all do; but when you're a-holdin' co't and
+sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes--and then whar'll
+ye git breath to breathe?... All these here glass winders is blame
+foolishness to _me_. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes
+that ye don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the
+walls full o' holes an' set in glass winders, an' any feller that's got
+a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set
+by the fire of an evenin'."
+
+When mountain people move to the lowlands and go to living in
+tight-framed houses, they soon deteriorate like Indians. It is of no use
+to teach them to ventilate by lowering windows from the top. That is
+some more "blame foolishness"--their adherence to old ways is stubborn,
+sullen, and perverse to a degree that others cannot comprehend. Then,
+too, in the lowlands, they simply cannot stand the water. As Emma Miles
+says: "No other advantages will ever make up for the lack of good water.
+There is a strong prejudice against pumps; if a well must be dug, it is
+usually left open to the air, and the water is reached by means of a
+hooked pole which requires some skillful manipulation to prevent losing
+the bucket. Cisterns are considered filthy; water that has stood
+overnight is 'dead water,' hardly fit to wash one's face in. The
+mountaineer takes the same pride in his water supply as the rich man in
+his wine cellar, and is in this respect a connoisseur. None but the
+purest and coldest of freestone will satisfy him."
+
+Once when I was staying in a lumber camp on the Tennessee side, near the
+top of Smoky, my friend Bob and I tramped down to the nearest town, ten
+miles, for supplies. We did not start until after dinner and intended to
+spend the night at a hotel. It was a sultry day and we arrived very
+thirsty. Bob took some ice-water into his mouth, and instantly spat it
+out, exclaiming: "Be damned if I'll stay here; that ain't fit to drink;
+I'm goin' back." And back he would have gone, ten miles up a hard grade,
+at night, if someone had not shown us a spring.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+A misty veil of falling water]
+
+
+A little colony of our Hazel Creek people took a notion to try the
+Georgia cotton mills. They nearly died there from homesickness, tight
+houses, and "bad water." All but one family returned as soon as they
+possibly could. While trying to save enough money to get away one old
+man said; "I lied to my God when I left the mountains and kem to these
+devilish cotton mills. Ef only He'd turn me into a varmint I'd run back
+to-night! Boys, I dream I'm in torment; an' when I wake up I lay thar
+an' think o' the spring branch runnin' over the root o' that thar
+poplar; an' I say, could I git me one drink o' that water I'd be content
+to lay me down and die!"
+
+Poor old John! In his country there are a hundred spring branches
+running over poplar roots; but "_that thar_ poplar": we knew the very
+one he meant. It was by the roadside. The brooklet came from a disused
+still-house hidden in laurel and hemlock so dense that direct sunlight
+never penetrated the glen. Cold and sparkling and crystal clear, the
+gushing water enticed every wayfarer to bend and drink, whether he was
+thirsty or no. John is back in his own land now, and doubtless often
+goes to drink of that veritable fountain of youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT
+
+
+Homespun jeans and linsey used to be the universal garb of the mountain
+people. Nowadays you will seldom find them, except in far-back places.
+Shoddy "store clothes" are cheaper and easier to get. And this is a
+sorry change, for the old-time material was sound and enduring, the
+direct product of hard personal toil, and so it was prized and taken
+care of; whereas such stuff as a backwoodsman can buy in his crossroads
+store is flimsy, soon loses shape and breaks down his own pride of
+personal appearance. Our average hillsman now goes about in a dirty blue
+shirt, wapsy and ragged trousers toggled up with a nail or two, thick
+socks sagging untidily over rusty brogans, and a huge, black, floppy hat
+that desecrates the landscape. Presently his hatband disappears, to be
+replaced with a groundhog thong, woven in and out of knife slits, like a
+shoestring.
+
+When he comes home he "hangs his hat on the floor" until his wife picks
+it up. He never brushes it. In time that battered old headpiece becomes
+as pliant to its owner's whim, as expressive of his mood, as a clown's
+cap in the circus. Commonly it is a symbol of shiftlessness and
+unconcern. A touch, and it becomes a banner of defiance to law and
+order. To meet on some lonesome road at night a horseman enveloped to
+the heels in a black slicker and topped with one of those prodigious
+funnels that conceals his features like a cowl, is to face the Ku Klux
+or the Spanish Inquisition.
+
+When your young mountaineer is properly filled up on corn liquor and
+feels like challenging the world, the flesh, and the devil, he pins up
+the front of his hat with a thorn, sticks a sprig of balsam or cedar in
+the thong for an aigrette, and then gallops forth with bottle and pistol
+to tilt against whatsoever may dare oppose him. And on the gray dawn of
+the morning after you may find _that hat_ lying wilted in a corner, as
+crumpled, spiritless and forlorn as--its owner, upon whom we charitably
+drop the curtain.
+
+I doubt, though, if anywhere in this wide world mere personal appearance
+is more deceitful than among our mountaineers. The slovenly lout whom
+you shrink from approaching against the wind is one of the most
+independent and self-satisfied fellows on earth, as quick to resent alms
+as to return a blow. And it is wonderful what soap and clean clothes
+will do! About the worst specimen of tatter-demalion that I ever saw
+outside of trampdom used to come into town every week, always with a
+loaded Winchester on his shoulder. He may have washed his face now and
+then, but there was no sign that he ever combed his mane. I took him for
+one of those defectives alluded to in a previous chapter; but no, I was
+told he was "nobody's fool." The rifle, it was explained, never left his
+hand when he was abroad: they said that a feud was brewing "over on
+'Larky," and that this man was "in the bilin'." Well, it boiled over,
+and the person in question killed two men in front of his own door.
+
+When the prisoner was brought into court I could not recognize him. A
+bath, the barber, and a new store suit had transformed him into a right
+good-looking fellow--anything but a tramp, anything but a desperado. He
+bore himself throughout that grilling ordeal like the downright man he
+was, made out a clear case of self-defense, was set at liberty
+and--promptly reverted to a condition in which he is recognizable once
+more.
+
+The women of the back country usually go bareheaded around home and
+often barefooted, too, as did the daughters of Highland chiefs a century
+or two ago, and for the same reason: simply that they feel better so.
+When "visit-in" or expecting visitors their extremities are clad. They
+make their own dresses and the style seems never to change. When
+traveling horseback they use a man's saddle and ride astride in their
+ordinary skirts with an ingenuity of "tucking up" that is beyond my
+understanding (as no doubt it should be). Often one sees a man and a
+woman riding a-pillion, in which case the lady perches sidewise, of
+course.
+
+If I were disposed to startle the reader, after the manner of
+impressionistic writers who strive after effect at any cost, I could
+fill a book with oddities observed in the mountains, and that without
+exaggeration by commission or omission. Let one or two anecdotes
+suffice; and then we will get back to our averages again. I took down
+the following incident verbatim (save for proper names) from lips that I
+know to be truthful. It is introduced here as a specimen of vivid
+offhand description in few words:
+
+"There was a fam'ly on Pick-Yer-Flint that was named Higgins, and
+another named the McBees. They married through and through till the
+whole gineration nigh run out; though what helped was that they'd fly
+mad sometimes and kill one another like fools. They had great big heads
+and mottly faces--ears as big as sheepskins. Well, when they dressed up
+to come to church the men--grown men--'d have shirts made of this common
+domestic, with the letters _AAA_ on their backs; and them barefooted,
+and some without hats, but with three yards of red ribbon around their
+necks. The sleeves of their shirts looked like a whole web of cloth jest
+sewed up together; and them sleeves'd git full o' wind, and that red
+ribbon a-flyin'--O my la!
+
+"There was lots o' leetle boys of 'em that kem only in their
+shirt-tails. There was cracks between the logs that a dog could jump
+through, and them leetle fellers 'd git 'em a crack and grin in at us
+all through the sarmon. 'T ain't no manner o' use to ax me what the tex'
+was that day!"
+
+I may explain that it still is common in many districts of the mountain
+country for small boys to go about through the summer in a single
+abbreviated garment and that they are called "shirt-tail boys."
+
+Some of the expedients that mountain girls invent to make themselves
+attractive are bizarre in the extreme. Without invading the sanctities
+of toilet, I will cite one instance that is interesting from a
+scientific viewpoint. They told me that a certain blue-eyed girl thought
+that black eyes were "purtier" and that she actually changed her eyes to
+jet black whenever she went to "meetin'" or other public gathering.
+While I could see how the trick might be worked, it seemed utterly
+absurd that an unschooled maid of the wilderness could acquire either
+the knowledge or the means to accomplish such change. Well, one day I
+was called to treat a sick baby. While waiting for the medicine to react
+I chanced to mention this tale as it had been told me. The father, who
+had blue eyes, solemnly assured me that there was "no lie about it," and
+said he would convince me in a few minutes.
+
+He stepped to the garden and plucked a leaf of jimson weed. His wife
+crushed the leaf and instilled a drop of its juice into one of his eyes.
+I took out my watch. One side of the eyeball reddened slightly. The man
+said "hit smarts a leetle--not much." Within fifteen minutes the pupil
+had expanded like a cat's eye in the dark, leaving a rim of blue iris so
+thin as to be quite unnoticeable without close inspection. The eye
+consequently was jet black and its expression utterly changed. My host
+said it did not affect his vision materially, save that "things glimmer
+a bit." I met him again the next day and he still was an odd-looking
+creature indeed, with one eye a light blue and the other an absolute
+black. The thing puzzled me until I recalled that the Latin name of
+jimson weed is _Datura stramonium_; then, in a flash, it came to me that
+stramonium is a powerful mydriatic.
+
+If our man killer, hitherto mentioned, had had blue or gray eyes and had
+not chosen to stand trial, then, with a cake of soap and a new suit and
+a jimson leaf he might have made himself over so that his own mother
+would not have known him. These simple facts are offered gratis to
+writers of detective tales, whose stock of disguises nowadays is so
+threadbare and (pardon me) so absurd.
+
+The mountain home of to-day is the log cabin of the American
+pioneer--not such a lodge as well-to-do people affect in Adirondack
+"camps" (which cost more than framed structures of similar size), but a
+pen that can be erected by four "corner men" in one day and is finished
+by the owner at his leisure. The commonest type is a single large room,
+with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank door, a big stone
+chimney at one end, a single sash for a window at the other, and a seven
+or eight-foot lean-to at the rear for kitchen.
+
+
+[Illustration: An Average Mountain Cabin]
+
+
+Some of the early settlers, who had first choice of land, took pains in
+building their houses, squaring the logs like bridge timbers, joining
+them closely, smoothing their puncheons with an adze almost as truly as
+if they were planed, and using mortar instead of clay in laying chimney
+and hearth. But such houses nowadays are rare. If a man can afford so
+much effort as all that he will build a framed dwelling. If not, he will
+content himself with such a cabin as I have described. If he prospers he
+may add a duplicate of it alongside and cover the whole with one roof,
+leaving a ten or twelve-foot entry between.
+
+In Carolina they seldom build a house of round logs, but rather hew the
+inner and outer faces flat, out of a curious notion that this adds an
+appearance of finish to the structure. If only they would turn the logs
+over, so that the flat faces joined, leaving at least the outside in the
+natural round, the house would need hardly any chinking and the effect
+would be far more pleasing to good taste. As it is they merely notch the
+logs at the corners, leaving wide spaces to be filled up with splits,
+rocks, mud--anything to keep out the weather. As a matter of fact, few
+houses ever are thoroughly chinked and he who would take pains to make a
+workmanlike job of chinking would be ridiculed as "fussin' around like
+an old granny-woman." Nobody but a tenderfoot feels drafts, you know.
+
+It is hard to keep such a dwelling clean, even if the family be small.
+The whole structure being built of green timber throughout, soon
+shrinks, checks, warps and sags, so that there cannot be a square joint,
+a neat fit, a perpendicular face, or a level place anywhere about it.
+The roof droops in a season or two, the shingles curl and leaky places
+open. Flooring shrinks apart, leaving wide and irregular cracks through
+which the winter winds are sucked upward as through so many flues (no
+mountain home has a cellar under it). Everywhere there are crannies and
+rough surfaces to hold dust and soot, there being probably not a single
+planed board in the whole house.
+
+But, for all that, there is something very attractive and picturesque
+about the little old log cabin. In its setting of ancient forests and
+mighty hills it fits, it harmonizes, where the prim and precise product
+of modern carpentry would shock an artistic eye. The very roughness of
+the honest logs and the home-made furniture gives texture to the
+picture. Having no mathematically straight lines nor uniform curves, the
+cabin's outlines conform to its surroundings. Without artificial stain,
+or varnish, or veneer, it _is_ what it seems, a genuine thing, a jewel
+in the rough. And it is a home. When wind whistles through the cracks
+and snow sifts into the corners of the room one draws his stumpy little
+split-bottomed chair close to the wide hearth and really knows the
+comfort of fire leaping and sap singing from big birch logs.
+
+Every room except the kitchen (if there be a kitchen) has a couple of
+beds in it: enough all told for the family and, generally, one spare
+bed. If much company comes, some pallets are made on the floor for the
+women and children of the household. In a single-room cabin there
+usually is a cockloft, reached by a ladder, for storage, and maybe a
+bunk or two. Closets and pantries there are none, for they would only
+furnish good harborage for woods-rats and other vermin.
+
+Everything must be in sight and accessible to the housewife's little
+sedge broom. Linen and small articles of apparel are stored in a chest
+or a cheap little tin trunk or two. Most of the family wardrobe hangs
+from pegs in the walls or nails in the loft beams, along with strings
+of dried apples, peppers, bunches of herbs, twists of tobacco, gourds
+full of seeds, the hunter's pouch, and other odd bric-a-brac interesting
+to "furrin" eyes. The narrow mantel-shelf holds pipes and snuff and
+various other articles of frequent use, among them a twig or two of
+sweet birch that has been chewed to shreds at one end and is queerly
+discolored with something brown (this is what the mountain woman calls
+her "tooth brush"--a snuff stick, understand).
+
+For wall decorations there may be a few gaudy advertisements
+lithographed in colors, perhaps some halftones from magazines that
+travelers have left (a magazine is always called a "book" in this
+region, as, I think, throughout the South). Of late years the agents for
+photo-enlarging companies have invaded the mountains and have reaped a
+harvest; for if there be one curse of civilization that our hillsman
+craves, it is a huge _tinted_ "family group" in an abominable rococo
+frame.
+
+There is an almanac in the cabin, but no clock. "What does man need of a
+clock when he has a good-crowin' rooster?" Strange as it may seem, in
+this roughest of backwoods countries I have never seen candles, unless
+they were brought in by outsiders like myself. Beef, you must remember,
+is exported, not eaten, by our farmers, and hence there is no tallow to
+make candles with. Instead of these, every home is provided with a
+kerosene lamp of narrow wick, and seldom do you find a chimney for it.
+This is partly because lamp chimneys are hard to carry safely over the
+mountain roads and partly because "man can do without sich like,
+anyhow." But kerosene, also, is hard to transport, and so one sometimes
+will find pine knots used for illumination; but oftener the woman will
+pour hog's grease into a tin or saucer, twist up a bit of rag for the
+wick and so make a "slut" that, believe me, deserves the name. In fact,
+the supply of pine knots within convenient distance of home is soon
+exhausted, and anyway, as the mountaineer disdains to be forehanded, he
+would burn up the knots for kindling rather than save any for
+illumination.
+
+Very few cabins have carpet on the floor. It would hold too much mud
+from the feet of the men who would not use a scraper if there was one.
+Beds generally are bought, nowadays, at the stores, but some are
+home-made, with bedcords of bast rope. Tables and chairs mostly are made
+on the spot or obtained by barter from some handy neighbor. In many
+homes you will still find the ancient spinning-wheel, with a hand-loom
+on the porch and in the loft there will be a set of quilting frames for
+making "kivers."
+
+Out in the yard you see an ash hopper for running the lye to make soap,
+maybe a few bee gums sawed from hollow logs, and a crude but effective
+cider press. At the spring there is a box for cold storage in summer.
+Near by stands the great iron kettle for boiling clothes, making soap,
+scalding pigs, and a variety of other uses. Alongside of it is the
+"battlin' block" on which the family wash is hammered with a beetle
+("battlin' stick") if the woman has no washboard, which very often is
+the case.
+
+Naturally there can be no privacy and hence no delicacy, in such a home.
+I never will forget my embarrassment about getting to bed the first
+night I ever spent in a one-room cabin where there was a good-sized
+family. I did not know what was expected of me. When everybody looked
+sleepy I went outdoors and strolled around in the moonlight until the
+women had time to retire. On returning to the house I found them still
+bolt upright around the hearth. Then the hostess pointed to the bed I
+was to occupy and said it was ready whenever I was. Well, I "shucked off
+my clothes," tumbled in, turned my face to the wall, and immediately
+everybody else did the same. That is the way to do: just _go_ to bed! I
+lay there awake for a long time. Finally I had to roll over. A ruddy
+glow from the embers showed the family in all postures of deep, healthy
+slumber. It also showed something glittering on the nipple of the long,
+muzzle-loading rifle that hung over the father's bed. It was a bright,
+new percussion cap, where a greased rag had been when I went out for my
+moonlight stroll. There was no need of a curtain in that house. They
+could do without.
+
+I have been describing an average mountain home. In valleys and coves
+there are better ones, of course. Along the railroads, and on fertile
+plateaus between the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, are hundreds of fine
+farms, cultivated by machinery, and here dwell a class of farmers that
+are scarcely to be distinguished from people of similar station in the
+West. But a prosperous and educated few are not the people. When
+speaking of southern mountaineers I mean the mass, or the average, and
+the pictures here given are typical of that mass. It is not the
+well-to-do valley people, but the real mountaineers, who are especially
+interesting to the reading public; and they are interesting _chiefly_
+because they preserve traits and manners that have been transmitted
+almost unchanged from ancient times--because, as John Fox puts it, they
+are "a distinct remnant of an Anglo-Saxon past."
+
+Almost everywhere in the backwoods of Appalachia we have with us to-day,
+in flesh and blood, the Indian-fighter of our colonial border--aye, back
+of him, the half-wild clansman of elder Britain--adapted to other
+conditions, but still virtually the same in character, in ideas, in
+attitude toward the outer world. Here, in great part, is spoken to-day
+the language of Piers the Ploughman, a speech long dead elsewhere, save
+as fragments survive in some dialects of rural England.
+
+No picture of mountain life would be complete or just if it omitted a
+class lower than the average hillsman I have been describing. As this is
+not a pleasant topic, I shall be terse. Hundreds of backwoods families,
+large ones at that, exist in "blind" cabins that remind one somewhat of
+Irish hovels, Norwegian saeters, the "black houses" of the Hebrides, the
+windowless rock piles inhabited by Corsican shepherds and by Basques of
+the Pyrenees. Such a cabin has but one room for all purposes. In rainy
+or gusty weather, when the two doors must be closed, no light enters the
+room save through cracks in the wall and down the chimney. In the
+damp climate of western Carolina such an interior is fusty, or even wet.
+In many cases the chimney is no more than a semi-circular pile of rough
+rocks and rises no higher than a man's shoulder, hence the common
+saying, "You can set by the fire and spit out through the chimbly." When
+the wind blows "contrary" one's lungs choke and his eyes stream from the
+smoke.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Bee-Gum]
+
+
+In some of these places you will find a "pet pig" harbored in the house.
+I know of two cases where the pig was kept in a box directly under the
+table, so that scraps could be chucked to him without rising from
+dinner.
+
+Hastening from this extreme, we still shall find dire poverty the rule
+rather than the exception among the multitude of "branch-water people."
+One house will have only an earthen floor; another will be so small that
+"you cain't cuss a cat in it 'thout gittin' ha'r in yer teeth." Utensils
+are limited to a frying-pan, an iron pot, a coffee-pot, a bucket, and
+some gourds. There is not enough tableware to go around, and children
+eat out of their parents' plates, or all "soup-in together" around one
+bowl of stew or porridge.
+
+Even to families that are fairly well-to-do there will come periods of
+famine, such as Lincoln, speaking of his boyhood, called "pretty
+pinching times." Hickory ashes then are used as a substitute for soda in
+biscuits, and the empty salt-gourd will be soaked for brine to cook
+with. Once, when I was boarding with a good family, our stores ran out
+of everything, and none of our neighbors had the least to spare. We had
+no meat of any kind for two weeks (the game had migrated) and no lard or
+other grease for nearly a week. Then the meal and salt played out. One
+day we were reduced to potatoes "straight," which were parboiled in
+fresh water, and then burnt a little on the surface as substitute for
+salt. Another day we had not a bite but string beans boiled in unsalted
+water.
+
+It is not uncommon in the far backwoods for a traveler, asking for a
+match, to be told there is none in the house, nor even the pioneer's
+flint and steel. Should the embers on the hearth go out, someone must
+tramp to a neighbor's and fetch fire on a torch. Hence the saying: "Have
+you come to borry fire, that you're in sich a hurry you can't chat?"
+
+The shifts and expedients to which some of the mountain women are put,
+from lack of utensils and vessels, are simply pathetic. John Fox tells
+of a young preacher who stopped at a cabin in Georgia to pass the night.
+"His hostess, as a mark of unusual distinction, killed a chicken, and
+dressed it in a pan. She rinsed the pan and made up her dough in it. She
+rinsed it again and went out and used it for a milk-pail. She came in,
+rinsed it again, and went to the spring and brought it back full of
+water. She filled up the glasses on the table, and gave him the pan with
+the rest of the water in which to wash his hands. The woman was not a
+slattern; it was the only utensil she had."
+
+Such poverty is exceptional; yet it is an all but universal rule that
+anything that cannot be cooked in a pot or fried in a pan must go
+begging in the mountains. Once I helped my hostess to make kraut. We
+chopped up a hundred pounds of cabbage with no cutter but a tin
+coffee-can, holding this in the two hands and chopping downward with the
+edge. Many times I stopped to hammer the edge smooth on a round stick.
+Verily this is the land of make-it-yourself-or-do-without!
+
+Yet, however destitute the mountain people may be, they are never
+abject. The mordant misery of hunger is borne with a sardonic grin.
+After a course of such diet as described above, a woman laughingly said
+to me: "I'm gittin' the dropsy--the meat is all droppin' off my bones."
+During the campaign of 1904 a brother Democrat confided to me that "The
+people around hyur is so pore that if free silver war shipped in by the
+carload, we-uns couldn't pay the freight." So, when a settlement is
+dubbed Poverty, it is with no suggestion of whining lament, but with the
+stoical good-humor that shows in Needmore, Poor Fork, Long Hungry, No
+Pone, and No Fat--all of them real names.
+
+Occasionally, as at "hog-killin' time," the poorest live in abundance;
+occasionally, as at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking them
+the year through, the Highlanders are a notably abstemious race. When a
+family is reduced to dry corn bread and black coffee unsweetened--so
+much and no more--it will joke about the lack of meat and vegetables.
+And, when there is meat, two mountaineers engaged in hard outdoor work
+will consume less of it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed,
+the heartiness with which "furriners" stuff themselves is a wonder and a
+merriment to the people of the hills. When a friend came to visit me,
+the landlady giggled an aside to her husband: "Git the almanick and see
+when that feller 'll full!" (as though she were bidding him look to see
+when the moon would be full).
+
+In truth, it is not so bad to be poor where everyone else is in the same
+fix. One does not lose caste nor self-respect. He is not tempted by a
+display of good things all around him, nor is he embittered by the
+haughtiness and extravagance of the rich. And, socially, the mountaineer
+is a democrat by nature: equal to any man, as all men are equal before
+him. Even though hunger be eating like a slow acid into his vitals, he
+still will preserve a high spirit, a proud independence, that accepts no
+favor unless it be offered in a neighborly way, as man to man. I have
+never seen a mountain beggar; never heard of one.
+
+Charity, or anything that smells to him like charity, is declined with
+patrician dignity or open scorn. In the last house up Hazel Creek dwelt
+"old man" Stiles. He had a large family, and was on the verge of
+destitution. His eldest son, a veteran from the Philippines, had been
+invalided home, and died there. Jack Coburn, in the kindness of his
+heart, sent away and got a blank form of application to the Government
+for funeral expenses, to which the family was entitled by law. He filled
+it out, all but the signature, and rode away up to Stiles's to have the
+old man sign it. But Stiles peremptorily refused to accept from the
+nation what was due his dead son. "I ain't that hard pushed yit," was
+his first and last word on the subject. This might seem to be the very
+perversity of ignorance; but it was, in fact, renunciation on a point of
+honor, and native pride refused to see the matter in any other light.
+
+The mountaineer, born and bred to Spartan self-denial, has a scorn of
+luxury, regarding its effeminacies with the same contempt as does the
+nomadic Arab. And any assumption of superiority he will resent with blow
+or sarcasm. A ragged hobbledehoy stood on the Vanderbilt grounds at
+Biltmore, mouth open but silent, watching a gardener at work. The
+latter, annoyed by the boy's vacuous stare, spoke up sharply: "What do
+you want?" Like a flash the lad retorted: "Oh, dad sent me down hyur to
+look at the place--said if I liked it, he mought buy it for me."
+
+Once, as an experiment, I took a backwoodsman from the Smokies to
+Knoxville, and put him up at a good hotel. Was he self-conscious,
+bashful? Not a bit of it. When the waiter brought him a juicy
+tenderloin, he snapped: "I don't eat my meat raw!" It was hard to find
+anything on the long menu that he would eat. On the street he held his
+head proudly erect, and regarded the crowd with an expression of "Tetch
+me gin ye dar!" Although the surroundings were as strange to him as a
+city of Mars would be to us, he showed neither concern nor approval,
+but rather a fine disdain, like that of Diogenes at the country fair:
+"Lord, how many things there be in this world of which Diogenes hath no
+need!"
+
+The poverty of the mountain people is naked, but high-minded and
+unashamed. To comment on it, as I have done, is taken as an
+impertinence. This is a fine trait, in its way, though rather hard on a
+descriptive writer whose motives are ascribed to mere vulgarity and a
+taste for scandal-mongering. The people, of course, have no ghost of an
+idea that poverty may be more picturesque than luxury; and they are
+quite as far from conceiving that a plain and friendly statement of
+their actual condition, published to the world, is the surest way to
+awaken the nation to consciousness of its duties toward a region that it
+has so long and so singularly neglected.
+
+The worst enemies of the mountain people are those public men who,
+knowing the true state of things, yet conceal or deny the facts in order
+to salve a sore local pride, encourage the supine fatalism of "what must
+be will be," and so drug the highlanders back into their Rip Van Winkle
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE
+
+
+Despite the low standard of living that prevails in the backwoods, the
+average mountain home is a happy one, as homes go. There is little worry
+and less fret. Nobody's nerves are on edge. Our highlander views all
+exigencies of life with the calm fortitude and tolerant good-humor of
+Bret Harte's southwesterner, "to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods,
+pestilence and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if
+it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall."
+
+It is a patriarchal existence. The man of the house is lord. He takes no
+orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or
+roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody's affair but his own. About
+family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is
+law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural
+to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far he checks her with a
+curt "Shet up!" and the incident is closed.
+
+"The woman," as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house,
+and her man seldom meddles with its administration. Now and then he may
+grumble "A woman's allers findin' somethin' to do that a man can't see
+no sense in;" but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles--His
+ways are inscrutable--so why bother about it?
+
+The mountain farmer's wife is not only a household drudge, but a
+field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder,
+sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for
+a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her
+man leaves home on a journey he is not likely to have laid in wood for
+the stove or hearth: so she and the children must drag from the
+hillsides whatever dead timber they can find.
+
+Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. A swain would
+consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all,
+the dishes are passed first to the men; but generally the wife stands by
+and serves. There is no conscious discourtesy in such customs; but they
+betoken an indifference to woman's weakness, a disregard for her finer
+nature, a denial of her proper rank, that are real and deep-seated in
+the mountaineer. To him she is little more than a sort of superior
+domestic animal. The chivalric regard for women that characterized our
+pioneers of the Far West is altogether lacking in the habits of the
+backwoodsman of Appalachia.
+
+And yet it is seldom that a highland woman complains of her lot. She
+knows no other. From aboriginal times the men of her race have been
+warriors, hunters, herdsmen, clearers of forests, and their women have
+toiled in the fields. Indeed she would scarce respect her husband if he
+did not lord it over her and cast upon her the menial tasks. It is
+"manners" for a woman to drudge and obey. All respectable wives do that.
+And they stay at home where they belong, never visiting or going
+anywhere without first asking their husband's consent.
+
+I am satisfied that there is less bickering in mountain households than
+in the most advanced society of Christendom. Certainly there are fewer
+divorces in proportion to the marriages. This is not by grace of any
+uncommon regard for the seventh commandment, but rather from a more
+tolerant attitude of mind.
+
+Mountain women marry early, many of them at fourteen or fifteen, and
+nearly all before they are twenty. Large families are the rule, seven
+to ten children being considered normal, and fifteen is not an uncommon
+number; but the infant mortality is high.
+
+The children have few toys other than rag dolls, broken bits of crockery
+for "play-purties," and such "ridey-hosses" and so forth as they make
+for themselves. They play few games, but rather frisk about like young
+colts without aim or method. Every mountain child has at least one dog
+for a playfellow, and sometimes a pet pig is equally familiar. In many
+districts there is not enough level land for a ballground. A prime
+amusement of the small boys is "rocking" (throwing stones at marks or at
+each other), in which rather doubtful pastime they become singularly
+expert.
+
+To encourage a child to do chores about the house and stable, he may be
+promised a pig of his own the next time a sow litters. To know when to
+look for the pigs an expedient is practiced that I never heard of
+elsewhere: the child bores a small hole at the base of his thumbnail. I
+was assured by a mountain preacher that the hole "will grow out to the
+edge of the nail in three months and twenty-four days"--the period, he
+said, of a sow's gestation (in reality the average term is about three
+months).
+
+Most mountaineers are indulgent, super-indulgent parents. The oft-heard
+threat "I'll w'ar ye out with a hick'ry!" is seldom carried out. The
+boys, especially, grow up with little restraint beyond their own natural
+sense of filial duty. Little children are allowed to eat and drink
+anything they want--green fruit, adulterated candy, fresh cider, no
+matter what--to the limit of repletion; and fatal consequences are not
+rare. I have observed the very perversity of license allowed children,
+similar to what Julian Ralph tells of a man on Bullskin Creek, who,
+explaining why his child died, said that "No one couldn't make her take
+no medicine; she just wouldn't take it; she was a Baker through and
+through, and you never could make a Baker do nothin' he didn't want to!"
+
+The saddest spectacle in the mountains is the tiny burial-ground,
+without a headstone or headboard in it, all overgrown with weeds, and
+perhaps unfenced, with cattle grazing over the low mounds or sunken
+graves. The spot seems never to be visited between interments. I have
+remarked elsewhere that most mountaineers are singularly callous in the
+presence of serious injury or death. They show a no less remarkable lack
+of reverence for the dead. Nothing on earth can be more poignantly
+lonesome than one of these mountain burial-places, nothing so mutely
+evident of neglect.
+
+Funeral services are extremely simple. In the backwoods, where lumber is
+scarce, a coffin will be knocked together from rough planks taken from
+someone's loft, or out of puncheons hewn from the green trees. It is
+slung on poles and carried like a litter. The only exercises at the
+grave are singing and praying; and sometimes even those are omitted, as
+in case no preacher can be summoned in time.
+
+In all back settlements that I have visited, from Kentucky southward,
+there is a strange custom as to the funeral sermon, that seems to have
+no analogue elsewhere. It is not preached until long after the
+interment, maybe a year or several years. In some districts the practice
+is to hold joint services, at the same time and place, for all in the
+neighborhood who died within the year. The time chosen will be after the
+crops are gathered, so that everybody can attend. In other places a
+husband's funeral sermon is postponed until his wife dies, or _vice
+versa_, though the interval may be many years. These collective funeral
+services last two or three days, and are attended by hundreds of people,
+like a camp-meeting.
+
+Strange scenes sometimes are witnessed at the graveside, prompted
+perhaps by weird superstitions. At one of our burials, which was
+attended by more than the usual retinue of kinsfolk, there were present
+two mothers who bore each other the deadliest hate that women know. Each
+had a child at her breast. When the clods fell, they silently exchanged
+babies long enough for each to suckle her rival's child. Was it a
+reconciliation cemented by the very life of their blood? Or was it a
+charm to keep off evil spirits? No one could (or would) explain it to
+me.
+
+Weddings never are celebrated in church, but at the home of the bride,
+and are jolly occasions, of course. Often the young men, stimulated with
+more or less "moonshine," add the literally stunning compliment of a
+shivaree.
+
+The mountaineers have a native fondness for music and dancing, which,
+with the shouting-spells of their revivals, are the only outlets for
+those powerful emotions which otherwise they studiously conceal. The
+harmony of "part singing" is unknown in the back districts, where men
+and women both sing in a jerky treble. Most of their music is in the
+weird, plaintive minor key that seems spontaneous with primitive people
+throughout the world. Not only the tone, but the sentiment of their
+hymns and ballads is usually of a melancholy nature, expressing the
+wrath of God and the doom of sinners, or the luckless adventures of wild
+blades and of maidens all forlorn. A Highlander might well say, with the
+clown in _A Winter's Tale_, "I love a ballad but even too well; if it be
+doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and
+sung lamentably."
+
+But where banjo and fiddle enter, the vapors vanish. Up strike The Fox
+Chase, Shady Grove, Gamblin' man, Sourwood Mountain, and knees are
+limbered, and merry voices rise.--
+
+  Call up your dog, O call up your dog!
+    Call up your dog!
+    Call up your dog!
+  Let 's a-go huntin' to ketch a groundhog.
+    Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!
+
+
+Wherever the church has not put its ban on "twistifications" the country
+dance is the chief amusement of young and old. I have never succeeded in
+memorizing the queer "calls" at these dances, in proper order, and so
+take the liberty of quoting from Mr. Haney's _Mountain People of
+Kentucky_.--
+
+     "Eight hands up and go to the left; half and back; corners turn;
+     partners sash-i-ate. First four, forwards and back; forward again
+     and cross over; forward and back and home you go. Gents stand and
+     ladies swing in the center; own partners and half sash-i-ate.
+
+     "Eight hands and gone again; half and back; partners by the right
+     and opposite by the left--sash-i-ate. Right hands across and howdy
+     do? Left and back and how are you? Opposite partners, half
+     sash-i-ate and go to the next (and so on for each couple).
+
+     "All hands up and go to the left. Hit the floor. Corners turn and
+     sash-i-ate. First couple cage the bird with three arms around. Bird
+     hop out and hoot-owl in; three arms around and hootin' agin. Swing
+     and circle four, ladies change and gents the same; right and left;
+     the shoo-fly swing (and so on for each couple)."
+
+
+In homes where dancing is not permitted, and often in others,
+"play-parties" are held, at which social games are practiced with
+childlike abandon: Roll the Platter, Weavilly Wheat, Needle's Eye, We
+Fish Who Bite, Grin an' Go 'Foot, Swing the Cymblin, Skip t' m' Lou
+(pronounced "Skip-tum a-loo") and many others of a rollicking,
+half-dancing nature.
+
+  Round the house; skip t' m' Lou, my darlin'.
+  Steal my partner and I'll steal again; skip (etc.).
+  Take her and go with her--I don't care; skip (etc.).
+  I can get another as pretty as you; skip (etc.).
+  Pretty as a red-bird, and prettier too; skip (etc.).
+
+
+A substitute for the church fair is the "poke-supper," at which dainty
+pokes (bags) of cake and other home-made delicacies are auctioned off
+to the highest bidder. Whoever bids-in a poke is entitled to eat with
+the girl who prepared it, and escort her home. The rivalry excited among
+the mountain swains by such artful lures may be judged from the fact
+that, in a neighborhood where a man's work brings only a dollar a day, a
+pretty girl's poke may be bid up to ten, twenty, or even fifty dollars.
+
+
+[Illustration: Let the women do the work]
+
+
+As a rule, the only holidays observed in the mountains, outside the
+towns, are Christmas and New Year's. Christmas is celebrated after the
+southern fashion, which seems bizarre indeed to one witnessing it for
+the first time. The boys and men, having no firecrackers (which they
+would disdain, anyway), go about shooting revolvers and drinking to the
+limit of capacity or supply. Blank cartridges are never used in this
+uproarious jollification, and the courses of the bullets are left to
+chance, so that discreet people keep their noses indoors. Christmas is a
+day of license, of general indulgence, it being tacitly assumed that
+punishment is remitted for any ordinary sins of the flesh that may be
+committed on that day. There is no church festivity, nor are Christmas
+trees ever set up. Few mountain children hang up their stockings, and
+many have never heard of Santa Claus.
+
+New Year's Day is celebrated with whatever effervescence remains from
+Christmas, and in the same manner; but generally it is a feeble
+reminder, as the liquid stimulus has run short and there are many sore
+heads in the neighborhood.
+
+Most of the mountain preachers nowadays denounce dances and
+"play-parties" as sinful diversions, though their real objection seems
+to be that such gatherings are counter-attractions that thin out the
+religious ones. Be that as it may, they certainly have put a damper on
+frolics, so that in very many mountain settlements "goin' to meetin'" is
+recognized primarily as a social function and affords almost the only
+chance for recreation in which family can join family without restraint.
+
+Meetings are held in the log schoolhouse. The congregation ranges
+itself, men on one side, women on the other, on rude benches that
+sometimes have no backs. Everybody goes. If one judged from attendance
+he would rate our highlanders as the most religious people in America.
+This impression is strengthened, in a stranger, by the grave and
+astoundingly patient attention that is given an illiterate or nearly
+illiterate minister while he holds forth for two or three mortal hours
+on the beauties of predestination, free-will, foreordination,
+immersion, foot-washing, or on the delinquencies of "them acorn-fed
+critters that has gone New Light over in Cope's Cove."
+
+After an _al fresco_ lunch, everybody doggedly returns to hear another
+circuit-rider expound and denounce at the top of his voice until late
+afternoon--as long as "the spirit lasts" and he has "good wind." When he
+warms up, he throws in a gasping _ah_ or _uh_ at short intervals, which
+constitutes the "holy tone." Doctor MacClintock gives this example: "Oh,
+brethren, repent ye, and repent ye of your sins, ah; fer if ye don't ah,
+the Lord, ah, he will grab yer by the seat of yer pants, ah, and held
+yer over hell fire till ye holler like a coon!"
+
+During these services there is a good deal of running in and out by the
+men and boys, most of whom gradually congregate on the outside to
+whittle, gossip, drive bargains, and debate among themselves some point
+of dogma that is too good to keep still about.
+
+Nearly all of our highlanders, from youth upward, show an amazing
+fondness for theological dispute. This consists mainly in capping texts,
+instead of reasoning, with the single-minded purpose of confusing or
+downing an opponent. Into this battle of memories rather than of wits
+the most worthless scapegrace will enter with keen gusto and perfect
+seriousness. I have known two or three hundred mountain lumber-jacks,
+hard-swearing and hard-drinking tough-as-they-make-'ems, to be whetted
+to a fighting edge over the rocky problem "Was Saul damned?" (Can a
+suicide enter the kingdom of heaven?)
+
+The mountaineers are intensely, universally Protestant. You will seldom
+find a backwoodsman who knows what a Roman Catholic is. As John Fox
+says, "He is the only man in the world whom the Catholic Church has made
+little or no effort to proselyte. Dislike of Episcopalianism is still
+strong among people who do not know, or pretend not to know, what the
+word means. 'Any Episcopalians around here?' asked a clergyman at a
+mountain cabin. 'I don't know,' said the old woman. 'Jim's got the skins
+of a lot o' varmints up in the loft. Mebbe you can find one up thar.'"
+
+The first settlers of Appalachia mainly were Presbyterians, as became
+Scotch-Irishmen, but they fell away from that faith, partly because the
+wilderness was too poor to support a regular ministry, and partly
+because it was too democratic for Calvinism with its supreme authority
+of the clergy. This much of seventeenth century Calvinism the
+mountaineer retains: a passion for hair-splitting argument over points
+of doctrine, and the cocksure intolerance of John Knox; but the
+ancestral creed itself has been forgotten.
+
+The circuit-rider, whether Methodist or Baptist, found here a field ripe
+for his harvest. Being himself self-supporting and unassuming, he won
+easily the confidence of the people. He preached a highly emotional
+religion that worked his audience into the ecstasy that all primitive
+people love. And he introduced a mighty agent of evangelization among
+outdoor folk when he started the camp-meeting.
+
+The season for camp-meetings is from mid-August to October. The festival
+may last a week in one place. It is a jubilee-week to the work-worn and
+home-chained women, their only diversion from a year of unspeakably
+monotonous toil. And for the young folks, it is their theater, their
+circus, their county fair. (I say this with no disrespect: "big-meetin'
+time" is a gala week, if there be any such thing at all in the
+mountains--its attractiveness is full as much secular as spiritual to
+the great body of the people.)
+
+It is a camp by day only, or up to closing time. No mountaineer owns a
+tent. Preachers and exhorters are housed nearby, and visitors from all
+the country scatter about with their friends, or sleep in the open,
+cooking their meals by the wayside.
+
+In these backwoods revival meetings we can witness to-day the weird
+phenomena of ungovernable shouting, ecstasy, bodily contortions, trance,
+catalepsy, and other results of hypnotic suggestion and the contagious
+one-mindedness of an overwrought crowd. This is called "taking a big
+through," and is regarded as the madness of supernatural joy. It is a
+mild form of that extraordinary frenzy which swept the Kentucky
+settlements in 1800, when thousands of men and women at the
+camp-meetings fell victims to "the jerks," "barking exercises," erotic
+vagaries, physical wreckage, or insanity, to which the frenzy led.
+
+Many mountaineers are easily carried away by new doctrines extravagantly
+presented. Religious mania is taken for inspiration by the superstitious
+who are looking for "signs and wonders." At one time Mormon prophets
+lured women from the backwoods of western Carolina and eastern
+Tennessee. Later there was a similar exodus of people to the
+Castellites, a sect of whom it was commonly remarked that "everybody who
+joins the Castellites goes crazy." In our day the same may be said of
+the Holy Rollers and Holiness People.
+
+In a feud town of eastern Kentucky, not long ago, I saw two Holiness
+exhorters prancing before a solemnly attentive crowd in the court-house
+square, one of them shouting and exhibiting the "holy laugh," while the
+other pointed to the Cumberland River and cried, "I don't say _if_ I had
+the faith, I say I _have_ the faith, to walk over that river dry-shod!"
+I scanned the crowd, and saw nothing but belief, or willingness to
+believe, on any countenance. Of course, most mountaineers are more
+intelligent than that; but few of them are free from superstitions of
+one kind or other. There are to-day many believers in witchcraft among
+them (though none own it to any but their intimates) and nearly
+everybody in the hills has faith in portents.
+
+The mountain clergy, as a general rule, are hostile to "book larnin',"
+for "there ain't no Holy Ghost in it." One of them who had spent three
+months at a theological school told President Frost, "Yes, the seminary
+is a good place ter go and git rested up, but 'tain't worth while fer me
+ter go thar no more 's long as I've got good wind."
+
+It used to amuse me to explain how I knew that the earth was a sphere;
+but one day, when I was busy, a tiresome old preacher put the
+everlasting question to me: "Do you believe the yearth is round?" An
+impish perversity seized me and I answered, "No--all blamed humbug!"
+"Amen!" cried my delighted catechist, "I knowed in reason you had more
+sense."
+
+In general the religion of the mountaineers has little influence on
+every-day behavior, little to do with the moral law. Salvation is by
+faith alone, and not by works. Sometimes a man is "churched" for
+breaking the Sabbath, "cussin'," "tale-bearin'"; but sins of the flesh
+are rarely punished, being regarded as amiable frailties of mankind. It
+should be understood that the mountaineer's morals are "all tail-first,"
+like those of Alan Breck in Stevenson's _Kidnapped_.
+
+One of our old-timers nonchalantly admitted in court that he and a
+preacher had marked a false corner-tree which figured in an important
+land suit. On cross-examination he was asked:
+
+"You admit that you and Preacher X---- forged that corner-tree? Didn't
+you give Preacher X---- a good character, in your testimony? Do you
+consider it consistent with his profession as a minister of the Gospel
+to forge corner-trees?"
+
+"Aw," replied the witness, "religion ain't got nothin' to do with
+corner-trees!"
+
+John Fox relates that, "A feud leader who had about exterminated the
+opposing faction, and had made a good fortune for a mountaineer while
+doing it, for he kept his men busy getting out timber when they weren't
+fighting, said to me in all seriousness:
+
+"'I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time agin. The Lord's on my
+side, and I gits a better and better Christian ever' year.'
+
+"A preacher, riding down a ravine, came upon an old mountaineer hiding
+in the bushes with his rifle.
+
+"'What are you doing there, my friend?'
+
+"'Ride on, stranger,' was the easy answer. 'I'm a-waitin' fer Jim
+Johnson, and with the help of the Lawd I'm goin' to blow his damn head
+off.'"
+
+But let us never lose sight of the fact that these people,
+intellectually, are not living in our age. To judge them fairly we must
+go back and get a medieval point of view, which, by the way, persisted
+in Europe and America until well into the Georgian period. If history be
+too dry, read Stevenson's _Kidnapped_, and especially its sequel _David
+Balfour_, to learn what that viewpoint was. The parallel is so
+close--eighteenth century Britain and twentieth century
+Appalachia--that here we walk the same paths with Alan and David, the
+Edinboro' law-sharks, Katriona and Lady Allardyce. The only difference
+of moment is that we have no aristocracy.
+
+As for the morals of our highlanders, they are precisely what any
+well-read person would expect after taking their belatedness into
+consideration. In speech and conduct, when at ease among themselves,
+they are frank, old-fashioned Englishmen and Scots, such as Fielding and
+Smollet and Pepys and Burns have shown us to the life. Their manners are
+boorish, of course, judged by a feminized modern standard, and their
+home conversation is as coarse as the mixed-company speeches in
+Shakespeare's comedies or the offhand pleasantries of Good Queen Bess.
+
+But what is refinement? What is morality?
+
+"I don't mind," said the Belov�d Vagabond, "I don't mind the frank
+dungheap outside a German peasant's kitchen window; but what I loathe
+and abominate is the dungheap hidden beneath Hedwige's draper papa's
+parlor floor." And we do well to consider that fine remark by Sir Oliver
+Lodge: "Vice is reversion to a lower type _after perception of a
+higher_."
+
+I have seen the worst as well as the best of Appalachia. There _are_
+"places on Sand Mountain"--scores of them--where unspeakable orgies
+prevail at times. But I know that between these two extremes the great
+mass of the mountain people are very like persons of similar station
+elsewhere, just human, with human frailties, only a little more honest,
+I think, in owning them. And even in the tenebra of far-back coves,
+where conditions exist as gross as anything to be found in the wynds and
+closes of our great cities, there is this blessed difference: that these
+half-wild creatures have not been hopelessly submerged, have not been
+driven into desperate war against society. The worst of them still have
+good traits, strong characters, something responsive to decent
+treatment. They are kind-hearted, loyal to their friends, quick to help
+anyone in distress. They know nothing of civilization. They are simply
+_the unstarted_--and their thews are sound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MOUNTAIN DIALECT
+
+
+One day I handed a volume of John Fox's stories to a neighbor and asked
+him to read it, being curious to learn how those vivid pictures of
+mountain life would impress one who was born and bred in the same
+atmosphere. He scanned a few lines of the dialogue, then suddenly stared
+at me in amazement.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" I asked, wondering what he could have found
+to startle him at the very beginning of a story.
+
+"Why, that feller _don't know how to spell_!"
+
+Gravely I explained that dialect must be spelled as it is pronounced, so
+far as possible, or the life and savor of it would be lost. But it was
+of no use. My friend was outraged. "That tale-teller then is jest makin'
+fun of the mountain people by misspellin' our talk. You educated folks
+don't spell your own words the way you say them."
+
+A most palpable hit; and it gave me a new point of view.
+
+To the mountaineers themselves their speech is natural and proper, of
+course, and when they see it bared to the spotlight, all eyes drawn
+toward it by an orthography that is as odd to them as it is to us, they
+are stirred to wrath, just as we would be if our conversation were
+reported by some Josh Billings or Artemas Ward.
+
+The curse of dialect writing is elision. Still, no one can write it
+without using the apostrophe more than he likes to; for our highland
+speech is excessively clipped. "I'm comin' d'reck'ly" has a quaintness
+that should not be lost. We cannot visualize the shambling but eager
+mountaineer with a sample of ore in his hand unless the writer reports
+him faithfully: "Wisht you'd 'zamine this rock fer me--I heern tell you
+was one o' them 'sperts."
+
+Although the hillsmen save some breath in this way, they waste a good
+deal by inserting sounds where they do not belong. Sometimes it is only
+an added consonant: gyarden, acrost, corkus (caucus); sometimes a
+syllable: loaferer, musicianer, suddenty. Occasionally a word is both
+added to and clipped from, as cyarn (carrion). They are fond of grace
+syllables: "I gotta me a deck o' cyards." "There ain't nary bitty sense
+in it."
+
+More interesting are substitutions of one sound for another. In mountain
+dialect all vowels may be interchanged with others. Various sounds of
+_a_ are confused with _e_, as hed (had), kem (came), keerful; or with
+_i_, grit (grate), rifle (raffle); with _o_, pomper, toper (taper),
+wrop; or with _u_, fur, ruther. So any other vowel may serve in place of
+_e_: sarve, chist, upsot, tumble. Any other may displace _i_: arn
+(iron), eetch, hender, whope or whup. The _o_ sounds are more stable,
+but we have crap (crop), yan, clus, and many similar variants. Any other
+vowel may do for _u_: braysh or bresh (brush), shet, sich, shore (sure).
+
+Mountaineers have peculiar difficulty with diphthongs: haar (hair),
+cheer (chair), brile, and a host of others. The word coil is variously
+pronounced quile, querl or quorl.
+
+Substitution of consonants is not so common as of vowels, but most
+hillsmen say nabel (navel), ballet (ballad), Babtis', rench or rinch,
+brickie (brittle), and many say atter or arter, jue (due), tejus,
+vascinator (fascinator--a woman's scarf). They never drop _h_, nor
+substitute anything for it.
+
+The word woman has suffered some strange sea-changes. Most mountaineers
+pronounce it correctly, but some drop the _w_ ('oman), others add an
+_r_ (womern and wimmern), while in Michell County, North Carolina, we
+hear the extraordinary forms ummern and dummern ("La, look at all the
+dummerunses a-comin'!")
+
+On the other hand, some words that most Americans mispronounce are
+always sounded correctly in the southern highlands, as dew and new
+(never doo, noo). Creek is always given its true _ee_ sound, never
+crick. Nare (as we spell it in dialect stories) is simply the right
+pronunciation of ne'er, and nary is ne'er a, with the _a_ turned into a
+short _i_ sound.
+
+It should be understood that the dialect varies a good deal from place
+to place, and, even in the same neighborhood, we rarely hear all
+families speaking it alike. Outlanders who essay to write it are prone
+to err by making their characters speak it too consistently. It is only
+in the backwoods, or among old people and the penned-at-home women, that
+the dialect is used with any integrity. In railroad towns we hear little
+of it, and farmers who trade in those towns adapt their speech somewhat
+to the company they may be in. The same man, at different times, may say
+can't and cain't, set and sot, jest and jes' and jist, atter and arter
+or after, seed and seen, here and hyur and hyar, heerd and heern or
+heard, sich and sech, took and tuk--there is no uniformity about it. An
+unconscious sense of euphony seems to govern the choice of hit or it,
+there or thar.
+
+Since the Appalachian people have a marked Scotch-Irish strain, we would
+expect their speech to show a strong Scotch influence. So far as
+vocabulary is concerned, there is really little of it. A few words,
+caigy (cadgy), coggled, fernent, gin for if, needcessity, trollop,
+almost exhaust the list of distinct Scotticisms. The Scotch-Irish, as we
+call them, were mainly Ulstermen, and the Ulster dialect of to-day bears
+little analogy to that of Appalachia.
+
+Scotch influence does appear, however, in one vital characteristic of
+the pronunciation: with few exceptions our highlanders sound _r_
+distinctly wherever it occurs, though they never trill it. In the
+British Isles this constant sounding of _r_ in all positions is
+peculiar, I think, to Scotland, Ireland, and a few small districts in
+the northern border counties of England. With us it is general practice
+outside of New England and those parts of the southern lowlands that had
+no flood of Celtic immigration in the eighteenth century. I have never
+heard a Carolina mountaineer say niggah or No'th Ca'lina, though in the
+last word the syllable _ro_ is often elided.
+
+In some mountain districts we hear do' (door), flo', mo', yo', co'te,
+sca'ce (long _a_), pusson; but such skipping of the _r_ is common only
+where lowland influence has crept in. Much oftener the _r_ is dropped
+from dare, first, girl, horse, nurse, parcel, worth (dast, fust, gal,
+hoss, nuss, passel, wuth). By way of compensation the hillsmen sometimes
+insert a euphonic _r_ where it has no business; just as many New
+Englanders say, "The idear of it!"
+
+Throughout Appalachia such words as last, past, advantage, are
+pronounced with the same vowel sound as is heard in man. This helps to
+delimit the people, classifying them with Pennsylvanians and Westerners:
+a linguistic grouping that will prove significant when we come to study
+the origin and history of this isolated race.
+
+An editor who had made one or two short trips into the mountains once
+wrote me that he thought the average mountaineer's vocabulary did not
+exceed three hundred words. This may be a natural inference if one
+spends but a few weeks among these people and sees them only under the
+prosaic conditions of workaday life. But gain their intimacy and you
+shall find that even the illiterates among them have a range of
+expression that is truly remarkable. I have myself taken down from the
+lips of Carolina mountaineers some eight hundred dialectical or
+obsolete words, to say nothing of the much greater number of standard
+English terms that they command.
+
+Seldom is a "hill-billy" at a loss for a word. Lacking other means of
+expression, there will come "spang" from his mouth a coinage of his own.
+Instantly he will create (always from English roots, of course) new
+words by combination, or by turning nouns into verbs or otherwise
+interchanging the parts of speech.
+
+Crudity or deficiency of the verb characterizes the speech of all
+primitive peoples. In mountain vernacular many words that serve as verbs
+are only nouns of action, or adjectives, or even adverbs. "That bear 'll
+meat me a month." "They churched Pitt for tale-bearin'." "Granny kept
+faultin' us all day." "Are ye fixin' to go squirrelin'?" "Sis blouses
+her waist a-purpose to carry a pistol." "My boy Jesse book-kept for the
+camp." "I disgust bad liquor." "This poke salat eats good." "I ain't
+goin' to bed it no longer" (lie abed). "We can muscle this log up." "I
+wouldn't pleasure them enough to say it." "Josh ain't much on
+sweet-heartin'." "I don't confidence them dogs much." "The creek away up
+thar turkey-tails out into numerous leetle forks."
+
+A verb will be coined from an adverb: "We better git some wood, bettern
+we?" Or from an adjective: "Much that dog and see won't he come along"
+(pet him, make much of him). "I didn't do nary thing to contrary her."
+"Baby, that onion 'll strong ye!" "Little Jimmy fell down and benastied
+himself to beat the devil."
+
+Conversely, nouns are created from verbs. "Hit don't make no differ." "I
+didn't hear no give-out at meetin'" (announcement). "You can git ye one
+more gittin' o' wood up thar." "That Nantahala is a master shut-in, jest
+a plumb gorge." Or from an adjective: "Them bugs--the little old
+hatefuls!" "If anybody wanted a history of this county for fifty years
+he'd git a lavish of it by reading that mine-suit testimony." Or from an
+adverb: "Nance tuk the biggest through at meetin'!" (shouting spell). An
+old lady quoted to me in a plaintive quaver:
+
+  "It matters not, so I've been told,
+  Where the body goes when the heart grows cold;
+
+"But," she added, "a person has a rather about where he'd be put."
+
+In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in
+begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum.
+Holp is used both as preterite and as infinitive: the _o_ is long, and
+the _l_ distinctly sounded by most of the people, but elided by such as
+drop it from almost, already, self (the _l_ is elided from help by many
+who use that form of the verb).
+
+Examples of a strong preterite with dialectical change of the vowel are
+bruk, brung, drap or drapped, drug, friz, roke or ruck (raked), saunt
+(sent), shet, shuck (shook), whoped (long _o_). The variant whupped is a
+Scotticism. Whope is sometimes used in the present tense, but whup is
+more common. By some the vowel of whup is sounded like _oo_ in book (Mr.
+Fox writes "whoop," which, I presume, he intends for that sound).
+
+In many cases a weak preterite supplants the proper strong one: div,
+driv, fit, gi'n or give, rid, riv, riz, writ, done, run, seen or seed,
+blowed, crowed, drawed, growed, knowed, throwed.
+
+There are many corrupt forms of the verb, such as gwine for gone or
+going, mought (mowt) for might, dim, het, ort or orter, wed (weeded),
+war (was or were--the _a_ as in far), shun (shone), cotch (in all
+tenses) or cotched, fotch or fotched, borned, hurted, dremp.
+
+Peculiar adjectives are formed from verbs. "Chair-bottoming is easy
+settin'-down work." "When my youngest was a leetle set-along child"
+(interpreted as "settin' along the floor"). "That Thunderhead is the
+torndowndest place!" "Them's the travellinest hosses ever I seed."
+"She's the workinest woman!" "Jim is the disablest one o' the fam'ly."
+"Damn this fotch-on kraut that comes in tin cans!"
+
+A verb may serve as an adverb: "If I'd a-been thoughted enough." An
+adverb may be used as an adjective: "I hope the folks with you is gaily"
+(well). An adjective can serve as an adverb: "He laughed master."
+Sometimes a conjunction is employed as a preposition: "We have oblige to
+take care on him."
+
+These are not mere blunders of individual illiterates, but usages common
+throughout the mountains, and hence real dialect.
+
+The ancient syllabic plural is preserved in beasties (horses), nesties,
+posties, trousies (these are not diminutives), and in that strange word
+dummerunses that I cited before.
+
+Pleonasms are abundant. "I done done it" (have done it or did do it).
+"Durin' the while." "In this day and time." "I thought it would surely,
+undoubtedly turn cold." "A small, little bitty hole." "Jane's a
+tol'able big, large, fleshy woman." "I ginerally, usually take a dram
+mornin's." "These ridges is might' nigh straight up and down, and, as
+the feller said, perpendic'lar."
+
+Everywhere in the mountains we hear of biscuit-bread, ham-meat,
+rifle-gun, rock-clift, ridin'-critter, cow-brute, man-person,
+women-folks, preacher-man, granny-woman and neighbor-people. In this
+category belong the famous double-barreled pronouns: we-all and you-all
+in Kentucky, we-uns and you-uns in Carolina and Tennessee. (I have even
+heard such locution as this: "Let's we-uns all go over to youerunses
+house.") Such usages are regarded generally as mere barbarisms, and so
+they are in English, but Miss Murfree cites correlatives in the Romance
+languages: French _nous autres_, Italian _noi altri_, Spanish
+_nosotros_.
+
+The mountaineers have some queer ways of intensifying expression. "I'd
+_tell_ a man," with the stress as here indicated, is simply a strong
+affirmative. "We had one more _time_" means a rousing good time.
+"P'int-blank" is a superlative or an epithet: "We jist p'int-blank got
+it to do." "Well, p'int-blank, if they ever come back again, I'll move!"
+
+A double negative is so common that it may be crowded into a single
+word: "I did it the unthoughtless of anything I ever done in my life."
+Triple negatives are easy: "I ain't got nary none." A mountaineer can
+accomplish the quadruple: "That boy ain't never done nothin' nohow."
+Yea, even the quintuple: "I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do
+no washin'."
+
+On the other hand, the veriest illiterates often startle a stranger by
+glib use of some word that most of us picked up in school or seldom use
+informally. "I can make a hunderd pound o' pork outen that hog--tutor it
+jist right." "Them clouds denote rain." "She's so dilitary!" "They stood
+thar and caviled about it." "That exceeds the measure." "Old Tom is
+blind, but he can discern when the sun is shinin'." "Jerry proffered to
+fix the gun for me." I had supposed that the words cuckold and moon-calf
+had none but literary usage in America, but we often hear them in the
+mountains, cuckold being employed both as verb and as noun, and
+moon-calf in its baldly literal sense that would make Prospero's taunt
+to Caliban a superlative insult.
+
+Our highlander often speaks in Elizabethan or Chaucerian or even
+pre-Chaucerian terms. His pronoun hit antedates English itself, being
+the Anglo-Saxon neuter of he. Ey God, a favorite expletive, is the
+original of egad, and goes back of Chaucer. Ax for ask and kag for keg
+were the primitive and legitimate forms, which we trace as far as the
+time of Layamon. When the mountain boy challenges his mate: "I dar ye--I
+ain't afeared!" his verb and participle are of the same ancient and
+sterling rank. Afore, atwixt, awar, heap o' folks, peart, up and done
+it, usen for used, all these everyday expressions of the backwoods were
+contemporary with the _Canterbury Tales_.
+
+A man said to me of three of our acquaintances: "There's been a fray on
+the river--I don't know how the fraction begun, but Os feathered into
+Dan and Phil, feedin' them lead." He meant fray in its original sense of
+deadly combat, as was fitting where two men were killed. Fraction for
+rupture is an archaic word, rare in literature, though we find it in
+_Troilus and Cressida_. "Feathered into them!" Where else can we hear
+to-day a phrase that passed out of standard English when "villainous
+saltpetre" supplanted the long-bow? It means to bury an arrow up to the
+feather, as when the old chronicler Harrison says, "An other arrow
+should haue beene fethered in his bowels."
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+"Till the skyline blends with the sky itself."--Great Smokies. N. C.
+from Mt. Collins.]
+
+
+Our schoolmaster, composing a form of oath for the new mail-carrier,
+remarked: "Let me study this thing over; then I can edzact it"--a verb
+so rare and obsolete that we find it in no American dictionary, but only
+in Murray.
+
+A remarkable word, common in the Smokies, is dauncy, defined for me as
+"mincy about eating," which is to say fastidious, over-nice. Dauncy
+probably is a variant of daunch, of which the _Oxford New English
+Dictionary_ cites but one example, from the _Townley Mysteries_ of
+_circa_ 1460.
+
+A queer term used by Carolina mountaineers, without the faintest notion
+of its origin, is doney (long _o_) or doney-gal, meaning a sweetheart.
+Its history is unique. British sailors of the olden time brought it to
+England from Spanish or Italian ports. Doney is simply _do�a_ or _donna_
+a trifle anglicized in pronunciation. Odd, though, that it should be
+preserved in America by none but backwoodsmen whose ancestors for two
+centuries never saw the tides!
+
+In the vocabulary of the mountaineers I have detected only three words
+of directly foreign origin. Doney is one. Another is kraut, which is the
+sole contribution to highland speech of those numerous Germans (mostly
+Pennsylvania Dutch) who joined the first settlers in this region, and
+whose descendants, under wondrously anglicized names, form to-day a
+considerable element of the highland population. The third is sashiate
+(French _chass�_), used in calling figures at the country dances.
+
+There is something intrinsically, stubbornly English in the nature of
+the mountaineer: he will assimilate nothing foreign. In the Smokies the
+Eastern Band of Cherokees still holds its ancient capital on the Okona
+Lufty River, and the whites mingle freely with these redskins, bearing
+them no such despite as they do negroes, but eating at the same table
+and admitting Indians to the white compartment of a Jim Crow car. Yet
+the mountain dialect contains not one word of Cherokee origin, albeit
+many of the whites can speak a little Cherokee.
+
+In our county some Indians always appear at each term of court, and an
+interpreter must be engaged. He never goes by that name, but by the
+obsolete title linkister or link'ster, by some lin-gis-ter.
+
+Many other old-fashioned terms are preserved in Appalachia that sound
+delightfully quaint to strangers who never met them outside of books. A
+married woman is not addressed as Missis by the mountaineers, but as
+Mistress when they speak formally, and as Mis' or Miz' for a
+contraction. We will hear an aged man referred to as "old Grandsir'"
+So-and-So. "Back this letter for me" is a phrase unchanged from the days
+before envelopes, when an address had to be written on the back of the
+letter itself. "Can I borry a race of ginger?" means the unground
+root--you will find the word in _A Winter's Tale_. "Them sorry fellers"
+denotes scabby knaves, good-for-nothings. Sorry has no etymological
+connection with sorrow, but literally means sore-y, covered with sores,
+and the highlander sticks to its original import.
+
+We have in the mountains many home-born words to fit the circumstances
+of backwoods life. When maize has passed from the soft and milky stage
+of roasting-ears, but is not yet hard enough for grinding, the ears are
+grated into a soft meal and baked into delectable pones called
+gritted-bread.
+
+In some places to-day we still find the ancient quern or hand-mill,
+jocularly called an armstrong-machine. Someone who irked from turning it
+invented the extraordinary improvement that goes by the name of
+pounding-mill. This consists of a pole pivoted horizontally on top of a
+post and free to move up and down like the walking-beam of an
+old-fashioned engine. To one end of this pole is attached a heavy
+pestle that works in a mortar underneath. At the other end is a box
+from which water flows from an elevated spout. When the box fills it
+will go down, lifting the pestle; then the water spills out and the
+pestle's weight lifts the box back again.
+
+Who knows what a toddick or taddle is? I did not until my friend Dargan
+reported it from the Nantahala. "Ben didn't git a full turn o' meal, but
+jest a toddick." When a farmer goes to one of our little tub-mills,
+mentioned in previous chapters, he leaves a portion of the meal as toll.
+This he measures out in a toll-dish or toddick or taddle (the name
+varies with the locality) which the mill-owner left for that purpose.
+Toddick, then, is a small measure. A turn of meal is so called because
+"each man's corn is ground in turn--he waits his turn."
+
+When one dines in a cabin back in the hills he will taste some strange
+dishes that go by still stranger names. Beans dried in the pod, then
+boiled "hull and all," are called leather-breeches (this is not slang,
+but the regular name). Green beans in the pod are called snaps; when
+shelled they are shuck-beans. The old Germans taught their Scotch and
+English neighbors the merits of scrapple, but here it is known as
+poor-do. Lath-open bread is made from biscuit dough, with soda and
+buttermilk, in the usual way, except that the shortening is worked in
+last. It is then baked in flat cakes, and has the peculiar property of
+parting readily into thin flakes when broken edgewise. I suppose that
+poor-do was originally poor-doin's, and lath-open bread denotes that it
+opens into lath-like strips. But etymology cannot be pushed recklessly
+in the mountains, and I offer these clews as a mere surmise.
+
+Your hostess, proffering apple sauce, will ask, "Do you love sass?" I
+had to kick my chum Andy's shins the first time he faced this question.
+It is well for a traveler to be forewarned that the word love is
+commonly used here in the sense of like or relish.
+
+If one is especially fond of a certain dish he declares that he is a
+fool about it. "I'm a plumb fool about pickle-beans." Conversely, "I
+ain't much of a fool about liver" is rather more than a hint of
+distaste. "I et me a bait" literally means a mere snack, but jocosely it
+may admit a hearty meal. If the provender be scant the hostess may say,
+"That's right at a smidgen," meaning little more than a mite; but if
+plenteous, then there are rimptions.
+
+To "grabble 'taters" is to pick from a hill of new potatoes a few of
+the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature
+ones.
+
+If the house be in disorder it is said to be all gormed or gaumed up, or
+things are just in a mommick.
+
+When a man is tired he likely will call it worried; if in a hurry, he is
+in a swivvet; if nervous, he has the all-overs; if declining in health,
+he is on the down-go. If he and his neighbor dislike each other, there
+is a hardness between them; if they quarrel, it is a ruction, a rippit,
+a jower, or an upscuddle--so be it there are no fatalities which would
+amount to a real fray.
+
+A choleric or fretful person is tetchious. Survigrous (ser-_vi_-grus) is
+a superlative of vigorous (here pronounced _vi_-grus, with long _i_): as
+"a survigrous baby," "a most survigrous cusser." Bodaciously means
+bodily or entirely: "I'm bodaciously ruint" (seriously injured). "Sim
+greened him out bodaciously" (to green out or sap is to outwit in
+trade). To disfurnish or discon_fit_ means to incommode: "I hope it has
+not disconfit you very bad."
+
+To shamp means to shingle or trim one's hair. A bastard is a woods-colt
+or an outsider. Slaunchways denotes slanting, and si-godlin or
+si-antigodlin is out of plumb or out of square (factitious words, of
+course--mere nonsense terms, like catawampus).
+
+Critter and beast are usually restricted to horse and mule, and brute to
+a bovine. A bull or boar is not to be mentioned as such in mixed
+company, but male-brute and male-hog are used as euphemisms.[9]
+
+A female shoat is called a gilt. A spotted animal is said to be pieded
+(pied), and a striped one is listed. In the Smokies a toad is called a
+frog or a toad-frog, and a toadstool is a frog-stool. The woodpecker is
+turned around into a peckerwood, except that the giant woodpecker (here
+still a common bird) is known as a woodcock or woodhen.
+
+What the mountaineers call hemlock is the shrub leucothoe. The hemlock
+tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is
+she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel. In some places
+pine needles are called twinkles, and the locust insect is known as a
+ferro (Pharaoh?). A treetop left on the ground after logging is called
+the lap. Sobby wood means soggy or sodden, and the verb is to sob.
+
+Evening, in the mountains, begins at noon instead of at sunset. Spell is
+used in the sense of while ("a good spell atterward") and soon for early
+("a soon start in the morning"). The hillsmen say "a year come June,"
+"Thursday 'twas a week ago," and "the year nineteen and eight."
+
+Many common English words are used in peculiar senses by the mountain
+folk, as call for name or mention or occasion, clever for obliging,
+mimic or mock for resemble, a power or a sight for much, risin' for
+exceeding (also for inflammation), ruin for injure, scout for elude,
+stove for jabbed, surround for go around, word for phrase, take off for
+help yourself. Tale always means an idle or malicious report.
+
+Some highland usages that sound odd to us are really no more than the
+original and literal meanings, as budget for bag or parcel, hampered for
+shackled or jailed. When a mountain swain "carries his gal to meetin'"
+he is not performing so great an athletic feat as was reported by
+Benjamin Franklin, who said, "My father carried his wife with three
+children to New England" (from Pennsylvania).
+
+A mountaineer does not throw a stone; he "flings a rock." He sharpens
+tools on a grindin'-rock or whet-rock. Tomato, cabbage, molasses and
+baking powder are used always as plural nouns. "Pass me them molasses."
+"I'll have a few more of them cabbage." "How many bakin'-powders has you
+got?"
+
+Many other peculiar words and phrases are explained in their proper
+place elsewhere in this volume.
+
+The speech of the southern highlanders is alive with quaint idioms. "I
+swapped hosses, and I'll tell you fer why." "Your name ain't much
+common." "Who got to beat?" "You think me of it in the mornin'." "I 'low
+to go to town to-morrow." "The woman's aimin' to go to meetin'." "I had
+in head to plow to-day, but hit's come on to rain." "I've laid off and
+laid off to fix that fence." "Reckon Pete was knowin' to the
+sarcumstance?" "I'll name it to Newt, if so be he's thar." "I knowed in
+reason she'd have the mullygrubs over them doin's." "You cain't handily
+blame her."
+
+"Air ye plumb bereft?" "How come it was this: he done me dirt." "I ain't
+carin' which nor whether about it." "Sam went to Andrews or to Murphy,
+one." "I tuk my fut in my hand and lit out." "He lit a rag fer home."
+"Don't much believe the wagon 'll come to-day." "Tain't powerful long
+to dinner, I don't reckon." "Phil's Ann give it out to each and every
+that Walt and Layunie 'd orter wed."
+
+"Howdy, Tom: light and hitch."
+
+"Reckon I'd better git on."
+
+"Come in and set."
+
+"Cain't stop long."
+
+"Oh, set down and eat you some supper!"
+
+"I've been."
+
+"Won't ye stay the night? Looks like to me we'll have a rainin', windin'
+spell."
+
+"No: I'll haffter go down."
+
+"Well, come agin, and fix to stay a week."
+
+"You-uns come down with me."
+
+"Won't go now, I guess, Tom."
+
+"Giddep! I'll be back by in the mornin'."
+
+"Farwell!"
+
+Rather laconic. Yet, on occasion, when the mountaineer is drawn out of
+his natural reserve and allows his emotions free rein, there are few
+educated people who can match his picturesque and pungent diction. His
+trick of apt phrasing is intuitive. Like an artist striking off a
+portrait or a caricature with a few swift strokes his characterization
+is quick and vivid. Whether he use quaint obsolete English or equally
+delightful perversions, what he says will go straight to the mark with
+epigrammatic force.
+
+I cannot quit this topic without reference to the bizarre and original
+place-names that sprinkle the map of Appalachia.
+
+Many readers of John Fox's novels take for granted that the author
+coined such piquant titles as Lonesome, Troublesome, Hell fer Sartin,
+and Kingdom Come. But all of these are real names in the Kentucky
+mountains. They denote rough country, and the country _is_ rough, so
+that to a traveler it is plain enough why travel and travail were used
+interchangeably in old editions of Shakespeare. There is nothing like
+first-hand knowledge of mountain roads to revive sixteenth-century
+habits of thought and speech. The most scrupulous visitor will fain
+admit the aptness of mountain nomenclature.
+
+Kentucky has no monopoly of grotesque and whimsical local names. The
+whole Appalachian region, from the Virginias to Alabama, is peppered
+with them. Whatever else the southern mountaineer may be, he is
+original. Elsewhere throughout America we have place-names imported from
+the Old World as thick as weeds; but the pioneers of the southern hills
+either forgot that there was an Old World or they disdained to borrow
+from it.
+
+Personal names applied to localities are common enough, but they are
+those of actual settlers, not of notables honored from afar (Mitchell,
+LeConte, Guyot, were not the highlanders' names for those peaks). Often
+a surname is put to such use, as Jake's Creek, Old Nell Knob, and Big
+Jonathan Run. We even have Granny's Branch, and Daddy and Mammy creeks.
+
+In the main it is characteristic of our Appalachian place-names that
+they are descriptive or commemorate some incident. The Shut-in is a
+gorge; the Suck is a whirlpool; Pinch-gut is a narrow passage between
+the cliffs. Calf-killer Run is "whar a meat-eatin' bear was usin'," and
+Barren She Mountain was the death-ground of a she-bear that had no cubs.
+Kemmer's Old Stand was a certain hunter's favorite ambush on a runway.
+Meat-scaffold Branch is where venison was hung up for "jerking."
+Graining-block Creek was a trappers' rendezvous, and Honey Camp Run is
+where the bee hunters stayed. Lick-log denotes a notched log used for
+salting cattle. Still-house Branch was a moonshiners' retreat. Skin-linn
+Fork is where the bast was peeled from young lindens. Big Butt is what
+Westerners call a butte. Ball-play Bottom was a lacrosse field of the
+Indians. Pizen Gulch was infested with poison ivy or sumach. Keerless
+Knob is "a joyful place for wild salat" (_amaranthus_). A "hell" or
+"slick" or "woolly-head" or "yaller patch" is a thicket of laurel or
+rhododendron, impassable save where the bears have bored out trails.
+
+The qualities of the raw backwoodsmen are printed from untouched
+negatives in the names he has left upon the map. His literalness shows
+in Black Rock, Standing Stone, Sharp Top, Twenty Mile, Naked Place, The
+Pocket, Tumbling Creek, and in the endless designations taken from
+trees, plants, minerals, or animals noted on the spot. Incidents of his
+lonely life are signalized in Dusk Camp Run, Mad Sheep Mountain, Dog
+Slaughter Creek, Drowning Creek, Burnt Cabin Branch, Broken Leg, Raw
+Dough, Burnt Pone, Sandy Mush, and a hundred others. His contentious
+spirit blazes forth in Fighting Creek, Shooting Creek, Gouge-eye,
+Vengeance, Four Killer, and Disputanta.
+
+Sometimes even his superstitions are commemorated. In Owesley County,
+Kentucky, is a range of hills bearing the singular name of Whoop fer
+Larrie. A party of hunters, so the legend goes, had encamped for the
+night in the shelter of a bluff. They were startled from sleep by a
+loud rumble, as of some wagon hurrying along the pathless ridge, and
+they heard a voice shouting "Whoop fer Larrie! Whoop fer Larrie!" The
+hills would return no echo, for the cry came from a riotous "ha'nt."
+
+A sardonic humor, sometimes smudged with "that touch of grossness in our
+English race," characterizes many of the backwoods place-names. In the
+mountains of Old Virginia we have Dry Tripe settlement and Jerk 'em
+Tight. In West Virginia are Take In Creek, Get In Run, Seldom Seen
+Hollow, Odd, Buster Knob, Shabby Room, and Stretch Yer Neck. North
+Carolina has its Shoo Bird Mountain, Big Bugaboo Creek, Weary Hut, Frog
+Level, Shake a Rag, and the Chunky Gal. In eastern Tennessee are No Time
+settlement and No Business Knob, with creeks known as Big Soak, Suee, Go
+Forth, and How Come You. Georgia has produced Scataway, Too Nigh, Long
+Nose, Dug Down, Silly Cook, Turkey Trot, Broke Jug Creek, and Tear
+Breeches Ridge.
+
+Allowing some license for the mountaineer's irreverence, his whimsical
+fancies, and his scorn of sentimentalism, it must be said that his
+descriptive terms are usually apposite and sometimes felicitous. Often
+he is poetically imaginative, occasionally romantic, and generally
+picturesque. Roan Mountain, Grandfather, the Lone Bald, Craggy Dome,
+the Black Brothers, Hairy Bear, the Balsam Cone, Sunset Mountain, the
+Little Snowbird, are names that linger lovingly in one's memory.
+
+The writer recalls with pleasure not only the features but the mere
+titles of that superb landscape that he shared with the wild creatures
+and a few woodsmen when living far up on the divide of the Great Smoky
+Mountains. Immediately below his cabin were the Defeat and Desolation
+branches of Bone Valley, with Hazel Creek meandering to the Little
+Tennessee. Cheoah, Tululah, Santeetlah, the Tuckaseegee, and the
+Nantahala (Valley of the Noonday Sun) flowed through gorges overlooked
+by the Wauchecha, the Yalaka and the Cowee ranges, Tellico, Wahyah, the
+Standing Indian and the Tusquitee.[10] Sonorous names, these, which our
+pioneers had the good sense to adopt from the aborigines.
+
+To the east were Cold Spring Knob, the Miry Ridge, Siler's Bald,
+Clingman's Dome, and the great peaks at the head of Okona Lufty. On the
+west rose Brier Knob, Laurel Top, Thunderhead, Blockhouse, the
+Fodder-stack, and various "balds" of the Unakas guarding Hiwassee. To
+the northward were Cade's Cove and the vale of Tuckaleechee, with
+Chilhowee in the near distance, and the Appalachian Valley stretching
+beyond our ramparts to where the far Cumberlands marked an ever-blue
+horizon.
+
+What matter that the plenteous roughs about us were branded with rude or
+opprobrious names? Rip Shin Thicket, Dog-hobble Ridge, the Rough Arm,
+Bear-wallow, Woolly Ridge, Roaring Fork, Huggins's Hell, the Devil's
+Racepath, his Den, his Courthouse, and other playgrounds of Old
+Nick--they, too, were well and fitly named.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+It is only a town-dreamed allegory that represents Nature as a fond
+mother suckling her young upon her breast. Those who have lived
+literally close to wild Nature know her for a tyrant, void of pity and
+of mercy, from whom nothing can be wrung without toil and the risk of
+death.
+
+To all pioneer men--to their women and children, too--life has been one
+long, hard, cruel war against elemental powers. Nothing else than
+warlike arts, nothing short of warlike hazards, could have subdued the
+beasts and savages, felled the forests and made our land habitable for
+those teeming millions who can exist only in a state of mutual
+dependence and cultivation. The first lesson of pioneering was
+self-reliance. "Provide with thine own arm," said the Wilderness,
+"against frost and famine and skulking foes, or thou shalt surely die!"
+
+But there were compensations. As the school of the woods was harsh and
+stern, so it brought up sons and daughters of lion heart. And its
+reward to those who endured was the most outright independence to be had
+on earth. No king was so irresponsible as the pioneer, no czar so
+absolute as he. It needed no martyr spirit in him to sing:
+
+  "I am the master of my fate,
+  I am the captain of my soul."
+
+
+We have seen that the Appalachian region was peculiar in this: that good
+bottom lands were few and far between. So our mountain farmers were cut
+off more from the world and from each other, were thrown still more upon
+their individual resources, than other pioneers. By compulsion their
+self-reliance was more complete; hence their independence grew more
+haughty, their individualism more intense. And these traits, exaggerated
+as they were by force of environment, remain unweakened among their
+descendants to the present day.
+
+Here, then, is a key to much that is puzzling in highland character. In
+the beginning isolation was forced upon the mountaineers; they accepted
+it as inevitable and bore it with stoical fortitude until in time they
+came to love solitude for its own sake and to find compensations in it
+for lack of society.
+
+Says a native writer, Miss Emma Miles, in a clever and illuminating book
+on _The Spirit of the Mountains_: "We who live so far apart that we
+rarely see more of one another than the blue smoke of each other's
+chimneys are never at ease without the feel of the forest on every
+side--room to breathe, to expand, to develop, as well as to hunt and to
+wander at will. The nature of the mountaineer demands that he have
+solitude for the unhampered growth of his personality, wing-room for his
+eagle heart."
+
+Such feeling, such longing, most of us have experienced in passing
+moods; but in the highlander it is a permanent state of mind, sustaining
+him from the cradle to the grave. To enjoy freedom and air and
+elbow-room he cheerfully puts aside all that society can offer, and
+stints himself and bears adversity with a calm and steadfast soul. To be
+free, unbeholden, lord of himself and his surroundings--that is the wine
+of life to a mountaineer.
+
+Such a man cannot stand it to be bossed around. If he works for another,
+it must be on a footing of equality. Poverty may oblige him to take a
+turn on some "public works" (by which he means any job where many men
+work together, such as lumbering or railroad building), but he must be
+handled with more respect than is shown common laborers elsewhere. At a
+sharp order or a curse from the foreman he will flare back: "That's
+enough out o' you!" and immediately he will drop his tools. Generally he
+will stay on a job just long enough to earn money for immediate needs;
+then back to the farm he goes.
+
+Bear in mind that in the mountains every person is accorded the
+consideration that his own qualities entitle him to, and no whit more.
+It has always been so. Our Highlanders have neither memory nor tradition
+of ever having been herded together, lorded over, persecuted or denied
+the privileges of free-men. So, even within their clans, there is no
+servility nor any headship by right of birth. Leaders arise, when
+needed, only by virtue of acknowledged ability and efficiency. In this
+respect there is no analogy whatever to the clan system of ancient
+Scotland, to which the loose social structure of our own highlanders has
+been compared.
+
+We might expect such fiery individualism to cool gradually as population
+grew denser; but, oddly enough, crowding only intensifies it in the shy
+backwoodsman. Neighborliness has not grown in the mountains--it is on
+the wane. There are to-day fewer log-rollings and house-raisings, fewer
+husking bees and quilting parties than in former times; _and no new
+social gatherings have taken their place_. Our mountain farmer, seeing
+all arable land taken up, and the free range ever narrowing, has grown
+jealous and distrustful, resenting the encroachment of too many sharers
+in what once he felt was his own unfenced domain. And so it has come
+about that the very quality that is his strength and charm as a man--his
+staunch individualism--is proving his weakness and reproach as a
+neighbor and citizen. The virtue of a time out-worn has become the vice
+of an age new-born.
+
+The mountaineers are non-social. As they stand to-day, each man
+"fighting for his own hand, with his back against the wall," they
+recognize no social compact. Each one is suspicious of the other. Except
+as kinsmen or partisans they cannot pull together. Speak to them of
+community of interests, try to show them the advantages of co-operation,
+and you might as well be proffering advice to the North Star. They will
+not work together zealously even to improve their neighborhood roads,
+each mistrusting that the other may gain some trifling advantage over
+himself or turn fewer shovelfuls of earth. Labor chiefs fail to organize
+unions or granges among them because they simply will not stick
+together.
+
+Miss Miles says of her people (the italics are my own): "There is no
+such thing as a community of mountaineers. They are knit together, man
+to man, as friends, but not as a body of men.... Our men are almost
+incapable of concerted action unless they are needed by the
+Government.... Between blood-relationship and the Federal Government no
+relations of master and servant, rich and poor, learned and ignorant,
+employer and employee, are interposed to bind society into a whole....
+_The mountaineers must awake to a consciousness of themselves as a
+people._ For although throughout the highlands of Kentucky, Tennessee
+and the Carolinas our nature is one, our hopes, our loves, our daily
+life the same, we are yet a people asleep, _a race without knowledge of
+its own existence_. This condition is due ... to the isolation that
+separates the mountaineer from all the world but his own blood and kin,
+and to the consequent utter simplicity of social relations. When they
+shall have established a unity of thought corresponding to their
+homogeneity of character, then their love of country will assume a
+practical form, and then, indeed, America, with all her peoples, can
+boast no stronger sons than these same mountaineers."
+
+To the Highlanders of four States here mentioned should be added all
+those of Old Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, making an
+aggregate to-day of close on four million souls. Together they
+constitute a distinct people. Not only are they all closely akin in
+blood, in speech, in ideas, in manners, in ways of living; but their
+needs, their problems are identical throughout this vast domain. There
+is no other ethnic group in America so unmixed as these mountaineers and
+so segregated from all others.
+
+And the strange thing is that they do not know it. Their isolation is so
+complete that they have no race consciousness at all. In this respect I
+can think of no other people on the face of the earth to which they may
+be likened.
+
+As compensation for the peculiar weakness of their social structure, the
+Highlanders display an undying devotion to family and kindred.
+Mountaineers everywhere are passionately attached to their homes. Tear
+away from his native rock your Switzer, your Tyrolean, your Basque, your
+Montenegrin, and all alike are stricken with homesickness beyond speech
+or cure. At the first chance they will return, and thenceforth will
+cling to their patrimonies, however poor these be.
+
+So, too, our man of the Appalachians.--"I went down into the valley,
+wunst, and I declar I nigh sultered! 'Pears like there ain't breath
+enough to go round, with all them people. And the water don't do a body
+no good; an' you cain't eat hearty, nor sleep good o' nights. Course
+they pay big money down thar; but I'd a heap-sight ruther ketch me a big
+old 'coon fer his hide. Boys, I did hone fer my dog Fiddler, an' the
+times we'd have a-huntin', and the trout-fishin', an' the smell o' the
+woods, and nobody bossin' and jowerin' at all. I'm a hill-billy, all
+right, and they needn't to glory their old flat lands to me!"
+
+Domestic affection is seldom expressed by the mountaineers--not even by
+motherly or sisterly kisses--but it is very deep and real for all that.
+In fact, the ties of kinship are stronger with them, and extend to
+remoter degrees of consanguinity, than with any other Americans that I
+know. Here again we see working the old feudal idea, an anachronism, but
+often a beautiful one, in this bustling commercial age. Our hived and
+promiscuous life in cities is breaking down the old fealty of kith and
+kin. "God gives us our relatives," sighs the modern, "but, thank God, we
+can choose our friends!" Such words would strike a mountaineer deep
+with horror. Rather would he go the limit of Stevenson's Saint Ives:
+"If it is a question of going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman, with
+your ancestors!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+Whitewater Falls]
+
+
+When the wilderness came to be settled by white men, courts were feeble
+to puerility, and every man was a law unto himself. Many hard characters
+came in with the pioneers--bad neighbors, arrogant, thievish, bold. As
+society was not organized for mutual protection, it was inevitable that
+cousin should look to cousin for help in time of trouble. So arose the
+clan, the family league, and, as things change very slowly in the
+mountains, we still have clan loyalty outside of and superior to the
+law. "My family _right or wrong_!" is a slogan to which every highlander
+will rise, with money or arms in hand, and for it he will lay down his
+last dollar, the last drop of his blood. There is scarce any limit to
+which this fealty will not go. Your brother or cousin may have committed
+a crime that shocks you as it does all other decent citizens; but will
+you give him up to the officers and testify against him? Not if you are
+a mountaineer. You will hide him out in the laurel, carry him food, keep
+him posted, help him to break jail, perjure yourself for him in
+court--anything, everything, to get him clear.
+
+We see here a survival, very real and widespread, in this
+twentieth-century Appalachia, of a condition that was general throughout
+the Scotch Highlands in the far past. "The great virtue of the
+Highlander," says Lecky, "was his fidelity to his chief and to his clan.
+It took the place of patriotism and of loyalty to his sovereign.... In
+the reign of James V., an insurrection of Clan Chattan having been
+suppressed by Murray, two hundred of the insurgents were condemned to
+death. Each one as he was led to the gallows was offered a pardon if he
+would reveal the hiding-place of his chief, but they all answered that,
+were they acquainted with it, no sort of punishment could induce them to
+be guilty of treachery to their leader.... In 1745 the house of
+Macpherson of Cluny was burnt to the ground by the King's troops. A
+reward of �1,000 was offered for his apprehension. A large body of
+soldiers was stationed in the district and a step of promotion was
+promised to any officer who should secure him. Yet for nine years the
+chief was able to live concealed on his own property in a cave which his
+clansmen dug for him during the night, and, though upwards of one
+hundred persons knew of his place of retreat, no bribe or menace could
+extort the secret."
+
+The same chivalrous, self-sacrificing fidelity to family and to clan
+leader is still shown by our own highlanders, as scores of feuds and
+hundreds of criminal trials attest. All this is openly and unblushingly
+"above the law"; but let us remember that the law itself, in many of
+these localities, is but a feeble, dilatory thing that offers
+practically no protection to those who would obey its letter. So, in an
+imperfectly organized society, it is good to have blood-ties that are
+faithful unto death. And none knows it better than he who has missed
+it--he who has lived strange and alone in some wild, lawless region
+where everyone else had a clan to back him.
+
+So far as primitive society is concerned, we may admit with the Scotch
+historian Henderson that "the clan system of government was in its way
+an ideally perfect one--probably the only perfect one that has ever
+existed.... The clansman was not the subject--a term implying some sort
+of conquest--but the kinsman of his chief.... Obedience became rather a
+privilege than a task, and no possible bribery or menace could shake his
+fidelity. Towards the Sassenach or the members of clans at feud with him
+he might act meanly, treacherously, and cruelly without check and
+without compunction, for there he recognized no moral obligations
+whatever. But as a clansman to his clan he was courteous, truthful,
+virtuous, benevolent, with notions of honor as punctilious as those of
+the ancient knight."
+
+The trouble with clan government was, as this same writer has pointed
+out, that "it was the very thoroughness of its adaptation to early needs
+that made it so hard to adjust to new necessities. In its principles and
+motives it was essentially opposed to the bent of modern influences. Its
+appeal was to sentiment rather than to law or even reason: it was a
+system not of the letter but of the spirit.... The clan system was
+efficient only within a narrow area; it gave rise to interminable feuds;
+and it was inapplicable to the circumstances created by the rise of
+modern industry and trade."
+
+Everywhere throughout Highland Dixie to-day we can observe how clan
+loyalty interferes with the administration of justice. When a case
+involving some strong family comes up in the courts, immediately a cloud
+of false witnesses arises, men who should testify on the other side are
+bribed or run out of the country before subpoenas can be served, and
+every juror knows that his peace and prosperity in future depend largely
+upon which side he espouses.
+
+To what lengths the hostility of a clan may go in defying justice was
+shown recently in the massacre of almost a whole court by the Allen clan
+at Hillsville, Virginia. The news of that atrocity swept like wildfire
+throughout all Appalachia, its history is being reviewed to-day in
+thousands of mountain cabins, and it is deeply significant that, away
+out here in western Carolina, where no Allen blood relationship
+prejudices men's minds, the prevailing judgment of our backwoodsmen is
+that the State of Virginia did wrong in executing any of the offenders.
+"There was something back of it--you mark my words," say the country
+folk. And the drummers, cattle-buyers, and others who pass this way from
+southwestern Virginia tell us, "Everybody up our way sympathizes with
+the Allens."
+
+In some measure this morbid sentiment is due to the spectacular features
+of the Hillsville tragedy. If there be one human quality that the
+mountaineer admires above all others, it is "nerve." And what greater
+display of nerve has been made in this generation than for a few
+clansmen to shoot down a judge at the bench, the public prosecutor, the
+sheriff, the clerk of the court, and two jurymen, then take to the
+mountain laurel like Corsicans to the _maquis_, and defy the armed
+power of the country? The cause does not matter, to a mountaineer. Our
+Highlanders are anything but robbers, for instance, and yet the only
+outsider who has ballads sung in his memory throughout Appalachia is
+Jesse James!--unless Jack Donohue was one--I do not know.--
+
+  Come all ye bold undaunted men
+    And outlaws of the day,
+  Who'd rather wear the ball and chain
+    Than work in slavery!
+
+     *       *       *       *
+
+  Said Donohue to his comrades,
+    "If you'll prove true to me,
+  This day I'll fight with all my might,
+    I'll fight for liberty;
+  Be of good courage, be bold and strong,
+    Be galliant and be true;
+  This day I'll fight with all my might,"
+    Says bold Jack Donohue.
+
+     *       *       *       *
+
+  Six policemen he shot down
+    Before the fatal ball
+  Pierced the heart of Donohue
+    And 'casioned him to fall;
+  And then he closed his struggling eyes,
+  And bid this world adieu.
+    Come all ye boys that fear no noise,
+    And pray for Donohue!
+
+
+No doubt the mountain minstrels are already composing ballads in honor
+of the Allens; for it is a fact we cannot blink at that the outlaw is
+the popular hero of Appalachia to-day, as Rob Roy and Robin Hood were in
+the Britain of long ago. This is not due to any ingrained hostility to
+law and order as such, but simply to admiration for any men who fight
+desperately against overwhelming odds. There is a glamour about bold and
+lawless adventure that fascinates mature men and women who have never
+outgrown youthful habits of mind. Whoever has the reputation of being a
+dangerous man to cross--the "marked" man, who carries his life upon his
+sleeve, but bears himself as a smiling cavalier--he is the only true
+aristocrat among a valorous but primitive people.
+
+But this is only half an explanation. The statement that our highlanders
+are not hostile to law and order must be qualified to this extent: they
+have a profound distrust of the courts. The mountaineer is not only a
+born fighter but he is also litigious by nature and tradition. A
+stranger will be surprised to find how deeply the average backwoodsman
+is versed in the petty subtleties of legal practice. It comes from
+experience. "Court-week" draws bigger crowds than a circus. The
+mountaineer who has never served as juror, witness, or principal in a
+lawsuit is a curiosity. And this familiarity has bred secret contempt. I
+violate no confidence in saying that many a mountaineer would hold up
+one hand to testify his respect for the law while the other hand hovered
+over his pistol.
+
+Why so?
+
+Just because his experience has taught him (rightly or wrongly--but he
+firmly believes it) that courts are swayed by sinister influences when
+important matters are at stake. Those influences are clan money and clan
+votes. Hence, if he or a kinsman be involved in "lawin'" with a member
+of some rival tribe, he does not look for impartial treatment, but
+prepares to fight cunning with cunning, local influence with local
+influence. There are no moral obligations here. "All's fair in love and
+war"--and this is one form of war.
+
+If the reader will take down his _David Balfour_ and read the intrigues,
+plots, and counterplots of David's attorneys and those of the Crown, he
+will grasp our own highlanders' viewpoint.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+The road follows the Creek.--There may be a dozen fords in a mile.]
+
+
+That mountain courts are often impotent is due in part to the
+limitations under which their officers are obliged to serve. For
+example, in the judicial district where I reside, the solicitor
+(State's attorney) receives nothing but fees, and then only _in case
+of conviction_. It might seem that this would stir him to extra zeal,
+and perhaps it does; but he has a large circuit, there are no local
+officials specially interested in securing evidence for him while the
+case is white-hot, everything spurs the defendant to get rid of
+dangerous witnesses before the solicitor can get at them, public opinion
+is extremely lenient toward homicides, and man-slayers so often get off
+scot-free after the most faithful and laborious efforts of the
+solicitor, that he becomes discouraged.
+
+The sheriff, too, serves without salary, getting only fees and a
+percentage of tax collections. How this works, in securing witnesses,
+may be shown by an anecdote.--
+
+I looked up from my work, one day, to see a neighbor striding swiftly
+along the trail that passed my cabin.
+
+"You seem in a hurry, John. Woods afire?"
+
+"No: I'm dodgin' the sheriff."
+
+"Whose pig was it?"
+
+"Aw! He wants me as witness in a concealed weepon case."
+
+"One of your boys?"
+
+"Huk-uh: nobody as I'm keerin' fer."
+
+"Then why don't you go?"
+
+"I cain't afford to. I'd haffter walk nineteen miles out to the
+railroad, pay seventy cents the round-trip to the county-site, pay my
+board thar fer mebbe a week, and then a witness don't git no fee at all
+onless they convict."
+
+"What does the sheriff get for coming away up here?"
+
+"Thirty cents for each witness he cotches. He won't git me, Mister Man;
+not if I know these woods since yistiddy."
+
+Verily the law of Swain is hard on the solicitor, hard on the sheriff,
+and hard on the witness, too!
+
+Mountaineers place a low valuation on human life. I need not go outside
+my own habitat for illustrations. In our judicial district, which
+comprises the westernmost seven counties of North Carolina, the present
+yearly toll of homicides varies, according to counties, from about one
+in 1,000 to one in 2,500 of the population. And ours is not a feud
+district, nor are there any negroes to speak of. Compare these figures
+with the rate of homicide in the United States at large, about one to
+8,300 population; of Italy, one to 66,000; Great Britain, one to
+111,000; Germany, one to 200,000.
+
+And the worst of it is that no Black Hand conspirators or ward gun-men
+or other professional criminals figure in these killings. Practically
+all of them are committed by representative citizens, mostly farmers.
+Take that fact home, and think what it means. Remember, too, that most
+of these murderers either escape with light penal sentences or none at
+all. The only capital sentence imposed in our district within the past
+ten years was upon an Indian who had assaulted and murdered a white girl
+(there was no red tape or procrastination about _that_ trial, the
+court-house being filled with men who were ready to lynch him under the
+judge's nose if the sentence were not satisfactory).
+
+I said at the very outset of this book that "Our mountain folk still
+live in the eighteenth century. The progress of mankind from that age to
+this is no heritage of theirs.... And so, in order to be fair and just
+with these our backward kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize
+ourselves to the extent of _going back_ and getting an eighteenth
+century point of view."
+
+As regards the valuation of human life, what was that point of view?
+
+The late Professor Shaler of Harvard, himself a Southerner, one time
+explained the prevalence of manslaughter among southern gentlemen. His
+remarks apply with equal truth to our mountaineers, for they, however
+poor they may be in worldly goods, are by no means "poor white trash,"
+but rather patricians, like the ragged but lofty chiefs and clansmen of
+old Scotland.--
+
+     "Nothing so surprises the northern people as the fact that southern
+     men of good estate will, for what seems to the distant onlooker
+     trifling matters of dispute, proceed to slay each other. Nothing so
+     gravely offends the characteristic southern man as the incapacity
+     of his brethren of northern societies to perceive that such action
+     is natural and consistent with the rules of gentlemanly behavior.
+     The only way to understand these differences of opinion is by a
+     proper consideration of the history of the moral growth of these
+     diverse peoples.
+
+     "The Southerner has retained and fostered--in a certain way
+     reinstated--the medieval estimate as to the value of life. In the
+     opinion of those ages it was but lightly esteemed; it was not a
+     supreme good for which almost all else was to be sacrificed, but
+     something to be taken in hand and put in risk in the pursuit of
+     manly ideals.
+
+     "Modernism has worked to intensify the passion for existence until
+     those who are the most under its dominion cannot well conceive how
+     a man, except for some supreme duty to which he is pledged by
+     altruistic motives, can give up his own life or take that of his
+     neighbor. If these people of to-day will but perceive that the
+     characteristic Southerner has preserved the motives of two
+     centuries ago, if they will but inform themselves as to the state
+     of mind on this subject which prevailed in the epoch when those
+     motives were shaped in men, they will see that their judgment is
+     harsh and unreasonable. It is much as if they judged the actions of
+     Englishmen of the seventeenth century by the changed standards of
+     to-day.
+
+     "Nor will it be altogether reasonable to condemn the lack of regard
+     of life which we find in the southern gentleman as compared with
+     his northern contemporary. We must, of course, reprobate in every
+     way the evil consequences of this state of mind; but the question
+     as to the propriety of that extreme devotion to continued mundane
+     existence which is so manifest in our modern civilization is
+     certainly open to debate. Irrational and brutal as are the ways in
+     which the old-fashioned gentleman of the South shows that his
+     regard for his own honor or that of his household outweighs his
+     love of life, it must be remembered that the same condition existed
+     in the richest ages of our race--those which gave proportionally
+     the largest share of ability and nobility to its history.
+
+     "As long as men are more keenly sensitive to the opinions of their
+     fellows than they are to the other goods which existence brings
+     them, as long as this opinion makes personal valor and truthfulness
+     the jewels of their lives, we must expect now and then to have
+     degradation of the essentially noble motives. It is, undoubtedly, a
+     dangerous state of mind, but not one that is degraded."--(_North
+     American Review_, October, 1890.)
+
+
+"The motives of two centuries ago" are the motives of present-day
+Appalachia. Here the right of private war is not questioned, outside of
+a judge's charge from the bench, which everybody takes as a mere
+formality, a convention that is not to be taken seriously. The argument
+is this: that when Society, as represented by the State, cannot protect
+a man or secure him his dues, then he is not only justified but in duty
+bound to defend himself or seize what is his own. And in the mountains
+Society with the big _S_ is often powerless against the Clan with a
+bigger _C_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE BLOOD-FEUD
+
+
+In Corsica, when a man is wronged by another, public sentiment requires
+that he redress his own grievance, and that his family and friends shall
+share the consequences.
+
+"Before the law made us citizens, great Nature made us men."
+
+"When one has an enemy, one must choose between the three
+S's--_schiopetto, stiletto, strada_: the rifle, the dagger, or
+flight."
+
+"There are two presents to be made to an enemy--_palla calda o ferro
+freddo_: hot shot or cold steel."
+
+The Corsican code of honor does not require that vengeance be taken in
+fair fight. Rather should there be a sudden thrust of the knife, or a
+pistol fired point-blank into the enemy's breast, or a rifle-shot from
+some ambush picked in advance.
+
+The assassin is not conscious of any cowardice in such act. If the
+trouble between him and his foe had been strictly a personal matter, to
+be settled forever by one man's fall, then he might have welcomed a
+duel with all the punctilios. But his blood is not his alone--it belongs
+to his clan. Whenever a Corsican is slain his family takes up the feud.
+A vendetta ensues--a war of extermination by clan against clan.
+
+Now, the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is to inflict
+the greatest loss upon the enemy with the least loss to one's own side.
+Hence we have hostilities without declaration of war; we have the
+ambush, the night attack, masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus
+we murder hundreds asleep or unshriven. This is war.
+
+Moreover, while a soldier must be brave in any extremity, it is no less
+his duty to save himself unharmed as long as he can, so that he may help
+his own side and kill more and more of the enemy. Therefore it is proper
+and military for him to "snipe" his foes by deliberate sharpshooting
+from behind any lurking-place that he can find. This is war.
+
+And the vendetta, says our Corsican, is nothing else than war.
+
+When Matteo has been slain by an enemy, his friends carry his body home
+and swear vengeance over the corpse, while his wife soaks her
+handkerchief in his wounds to keep as a token whereby she will incite
+her children, as they grow up, to war against all kinsmen of their
+father's murderer.
+
+Then a son or brother of Matteo slips forth into the night, full-armed
+to slay like a dog any member of the rival faction whom he may find at a
+disadvantage. The deed done, he flies to the _maquis_, the mountain
+thicket, and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off his
+enemies--an outlaw with a price upon his head, but pitied or admired by
+all Corsicans outside the feud, and succored by his clan.
+
+It is a far cry from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia: so why
+this prelude? Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica. Not a drop of
+South European blood flows in their veins. Few of them ever heard one
+word of a foreign tongue. True. And yet we shall mark some strange
+analogies between Corsican vendettas and Appalachian feuds, Corsican
+clannishness and Appalachian clannishness, Corsican women and our
+mountain women--before this chapter ends.
+
+Long, long ago, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, Dr. Abner Baker
+married a Miss White. Daniel Bates married Baker's sister, but separated
+from her in 1844. Baker charged Bates with undue intimacy with his wife,
+and killed him. The Whites, defending their kinswoman, prosecuted the
+Doctor, but he was acquitted, and moved to Cuba.
+
+Afterwards Baker returned. In flat violation of the Constitution of the
+United States, he was tried a second time for the murder of Bates, was
+convicted, and was hanged. Thenceforth there was "bad blood" between the
+Bakers and the Whites, involving the Garrards on one side and the
+Howards on the other, as allies to the respective clans.
+
+In 1898, Tom Baker, reputed to be the best shot in the Kentucky
+mountains, bought a note given by A. B. Howard, for whom he was cutting
+timber. Howard became furious, a fight ensued, one of the Howard boys
+and Burt Stores were killed from ambush, and the elder Howard was
+wounded.
+
+Thereupon Jim Howard, son of the clan chief, sought out Tom Baker's
+father, who was county attorney, compelled the unarmed old man to fall
+upon his knees, shot him twenty-five times with careful aim to avoid a
+vital spot, and so killed him by inches. Howard was tried and convicted
+of murder, but it is said that a pardon was offered him if he would go
+to the State Capitol at Frankfort and assassinate Governor Goebel, which
+he is charged with having done.
+
+In Clay County, where this feud waged, the judge, clerk, sheriff, and
+jailer were of the White clan. Tom Baker killed a brother of the sheriff
+and took to the hills rather than give himself up to a court ruled by
+his foemen. Then Albert Garrard was fired upon from ambush while riding
+with his wife to a religious meeting. He removed to Pineville, in
+another county, under guard of two armed men, both of whom were shot
+dead "from the bresh."
+
+Governor Bradley sent State troops into Clay County, and Tom Baker
+surrendered to them. Baker was tried in the Knox Circuit Court, on a
+change of venue, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. On
+appeal his attorneys secured a reversal of the verdict, and Baker was
+released on bail. The new trial was set for June, 1899. Governor Bradley
+again sent a company of State militia, with a Gatling gun, to Manchester
+where the trial was to be held. Baker was put in a guard-tent surrounded
+by a squad of soldiers. A hundred yards or so from this tent stood the
+unoccupied residence of the sheriff, at the foot of a wooded mountain.
+An assassin hidden in this house spied upon the guard-tent, and, when
+Baker appeared, shot him dead with a rifle, then took to the woods and
+escaped.
+
+I quote now from a history of this feud published in _Munsey's Magazine_
+of November, 1903.--
+
+     "Captain John Bryan, of the 2d Kentucky, said to the widow of the
+     murdered Tom Baker, after they returned from the funeral:
+
+     "'Mrs. Baker, why don't you leave this miserable country and escape
+     from these terrible feuds? Move away, and teach your children to
+     forget.'
+
+     "'Captain Bryan,' said the widow, and she spoke evenly and quietly,
+     'I have twelve sons. It will be the chief aim of my life to bring
+     them up to avenge their father's death. Each day I shall show my
+     boys _the handkerchief stained with his blood_, and tell them who
+     murdered him.'"
+
+
+Corsican vendetta or Kentucky feud--what are language and race against
+age-long isolation and an environment that keeps humanity feral to the
+core?
+
+Shortly after Baker's death, four Griffins, of the White-Howard faction,
+ambushed Big John Philpotts and his cousin, wounding the former severely
+and the latter mortally. Big John fought them from behind a log and
+killed all four.
+
+On July 17, 1899, four of the Philpotts were attacked by four Morrises,
+of the Howard side. Three men were killed, three mortally wounded, and
+the other two were severely injured. No arrests were made.
+
+Finally, in 1901, the two clans fought a pitched battle in front of the
+court-house in Manchester. At its conclusion they formally signed a
+truce.
+
+This is a mere scenario of a feud in the wealthiest and best-schooled
+county of eastern Kentucky. Two of the families involved were of
+distinguished lineage, counting in their ranks a governor, three
+generals, a member of Congress, and a prohibition candidate for the
+Presidency.
+
+In reviewing this feud, Governor Bradley stated:
+
+     "The whole fault in Clay County is a vitiated public sentiment and
+     a failure of the civil authorities to do their duty. The laws are
+     insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy. Such feuds have
+     been in progress more or less for years, and no Governor of the
+     State has ever been able to quell them. They have terminated only
+     when their force was spent by one side or the other being killed or
+     moving out of the country."
+
+
+"The laws are insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy." One
+naturally asks, "How so?" The answer is that the Governor cannot send
+troops into a county except upon request of the civil authorities, and
+they must go as a posse to civil officers. In most feuds these officers
+are partisans (in fact, it is a favorite ruse for one clan to win or
+usurp the county offices before making war). Hence the State troops
+would only serve as a reinforcement to one of the contending factions.
+To show how this works out, we will sketch briefly the course of another
+feud.--
+
+In Rowan County, Kentucky, in 1884, there was an election quarrel
+between two members of the Martin and Toliver families. The Logans sided
+with the Martins and the Youngs with the Tolivers. The Logan-Martin
+faction elected their candidate for sheriff by a margin of twelve votes.
+Then there was an affray in which one Logan was killed and three were
+wounded.
+
+As usual, in feuds, no immediate redress was attempted, but the injured
+clan plotted its vengeance with deadly deliberation. After five months,
+Dick Martin killed Floyd Toliver. His own people worked the trick of
+arresting him themselves and sent him to Winchester for safe-keeping.
+The Tolivers succeeded in having him brought back on a forged order and
+killed him when he was bound and helpless.
+
+The leader of the Young-Toliver faction was a notorious bravo named
+Craig Toliver. To strengthen his power he became candidate for town
+marshal of Morehead, and he won the office by intimidation at the polls.
+Then, for two years, a bushwhacking war went on. Three times the
+Governor sent troops into Rowan County, but each time they found nothing
+but creeks and thickets to fight. Then he prevailed upon the clans to
+sign a truce and expatriate their chiefs for one year in distant States.
+Craig Toliver obeyed the order by going to Missouri, but returned
+several months before the expiration of his term, _resumed office_, and
+renewed his atrocities. In the warfare that ensued all the county
+officers were involved, from the judge down.
+
+In 1887, Proctor Knott, Governor of Kentucky, said in his message, of
+the Logan-Toliver feud:
+
+     "Though composed of only a small portion of the community, these
+     factions have succeeded by their violence in overawing and
+     silencing the voice of the peaceful element, and in intimidating
+     the officers of the law. Having their origin partly in party
+     rancor, they have ceased to have any political significance, and
+     have become contests of personal ambition and revenge; each party
+     seeking apparently to possess itself of the machinery of justice in
+     order that it may, under the forms of law, seek the gratification
+     of personal animosities.
+
+     "During the present year the local leader of one of these factions
+     came in possession of the office of police judge of the town of
+     Morehead. Under color of the authority of that office, and
+     sustained by an armed band of adherents, he exercised despotic sway
+     over the town and its vicinage. He banished citizens who were
+     obnoxious to him; and, in one instance, after arresting two
+     citizens who seem to have been guilty of no offense, he and his
+     party, attended by a deputy sheriff of the county, murdered them in
+     cold blood.
+
+     "This act of atrocity fully aroused the community. A posse acting
+     under the authority of a warrant from the county judge attacked the
+     police judge and his adherents on the 22d of June last, killed
+     several of their number, and put the rest to flight, and
+     temporarily restored something like tranquility to the community.
+
+     "The proceedings of the Circuit Court, which was held in August,
+     were not calculated to inspire the citizens with confidence in
+     securing justice. The report of the Adjutant General on this
+     subject shows, from information derived 'from representative men
+     without reference to party affiliations,' that the judge of the
+     Circuit Court seems so far under the influence of the reputed
+     leader of one of the factions as to permit such an organization of
+     the grand juries as will effectually prevent the indictment of
+     members of that faction for the most flagrant crimes."
+
+
+The posse here mentioned was organized by Daniel Boone Logan, a cousin
+of the two young men who had been murdered, a college graduate, and a
+lawyer of good standing. With the assent of the Governor, he gathered
+fifty to seventy-five picked men and armed them with the best modern
+rifles and revolvers. Some of the men were of his own clan; others he
+hired. His plan was to end the war by exterminating the Tolivers.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"Dense forest luxuriant undergrowth."--Mixed hardwoods, Jackson Co., N. C.]
+
+
+The posse, led by Logan and the sheriff, suddenly surrounded the town of
+Morehead. Everybody gave in except Craig Toliver, Jay Toliver, Bud
+Toliver, and Hiram Cook, who barricaded themselves in the railroad
+station, where all of them were shot dead by the posse.
+
+Boone Logan was indicted for murder. At the trial he admitted the
+killings; but he showed that the feud had cost the lives of not less
+than twenty-three men, that not one person had been legally punished for
+these murders, and that he had acted for the good of the public in
+ending this infamous struggle. The court accepted this view of the case,
+the community sustained it, and the "war" was closed.
+
+A feud, in the restricted sense here used, is an armed conflict between
+families, each endeavoring to exterminate or drive out the other. It
+spreads swiftly not only to blood-kin and relatives by marriage, but to
+friends and retainers as well. It may lie dormant for a time, perhaps
+for a generation, and then burst forth with recruited strength long
+after its original cause has ceased to interest anyone, or maybe after
+it has been forgotten.
+
+Such feuds are by no means prevalent throughout the length and breadth
+of Appalachia, but are restricted mostly to certain well defined
+districts, of which the chief, in extent of territory as well as in the
+number and ferocity of its "wars," is the country round the upper waters
+of the Kentucky, Licking, Big Sandy, Tug, and Cumberland rivers,
+embracing many of the mountain counties of eastern Kentucky and
+adjoining parts of West Virginia, Old Virginia, and Tennessee. In this
+thinly settled region probably five hundred men have been slain in feuds
+since our centennial year, and only three of the murderers, so far as I
+know, have been executed by law.
+
+The active feudists, as a rule, include only a small part of the
+community; but public sentiment, in feud districts, approves or at least
+tolerates the vendetta, just as it does in Corsica or the Balkans. Those
+citizens who are not directly implicated take pains to hear little and
+see less. They keep their mouths shut. They can neither be persuaded,
+bribed, nor coerced into informing or testifying against either side,
+but, on the contrary, will throw dust in the eyes of an investigator or
+try to stare him down. A jury composed of such men will not convict
+anybody.
+
+When a feud is raging, nobody outside the warring clans is in any danger
+at all. A stranger is safer in the heart of Feuddom than he would be in
+Chicago or New York, so long as he attends strictly to his own business,
+asks no questions, and tells no "tales." If, on the contrary, he should
+express horror or curiosity, he is regarded as a busybody or suspected
+as a spy, and is likely to be run out of the country or even "laywayed"
+and silenced forever.
+
+What causes feuds?
+
+Some of them start in mere drunken rows or in a dispute over a game of
+cards; others in quarrels over land boundaries or other property. The
+Hatfield-McCoy feud started because Randolph McCoy penned up two wild
+hogs that were claimed by Floyd Hatfield. The spite over these hogs
+broke out two years later, and one partisan was killed from ambush. The
+feud itself began in 1882 over a debt of $1.75, with the hogs and the
+bushwhacking brought up in recrimination. Love of women is the primary
+cause, or the secondary aggravation, of many a feud. Some of the most
+widespread and deadliest vendettas have originated in political strifes.
+
+It should be understood that national and state politics cut little or
+no figure in these "wars." Local politics in most of the mountain
+counties is merely a factional fight, in which family matters and
+business interests are involved, and the contest becomes bitterly
+personal on that account. This explains most of the collusion or
+partisanship of county officers and their remissness in enforcing the
+law in murder cases. Family ties or political alliances override even
+the oath of office.
+
+Within the past year I have heard a deputy sheriff admit nonchalantly,
+on the stand, that when a homicide was committed near him, and he was
+the only officer in the vicinity, he advised the slayer to take to the
+mountains and "hide out." The judge questioned him sharply on this
+point, was reassured by the witness that it was so, and then--offered no
+comment at all. Within the same period, in another but not distant
+court, a desperado from the Shelton Laurel, on trial for murder,
+admitted that he had shot six men since he moved over from Tennessee to
+North Carolina, and swore that while he was being held in jail pending
+trial for this last offense the sheriff permitted him to "keep a gun in
+his cell, drink whiskey in the jail, and eat at table with the family of
+the sheriff."
+
+Feuds spread not only through clan fealty but also because they offer
+excellent chances to pay off old scores. The mountaineer has a long
+memory. The average highlander is fiery and combative by nature, but at
+the same time cunning and vindictive. If publicly insulted he will
+strike at once, but if he feels wronged by some act that does not demand
+instant retaliation he will brood over it and plot patiently to get his
+enemy at a disadvantage. Some mountaineers always fight fair; but many
+of them prefer to wait and watch quietly until the foe gets drunk and
+unwary, or until he is engaged in some illegal or scandalous act, or
+until he is known to be carrying a concealed weapon, whereupon he can be
+shot down unexpectedly and his assailant can "prove" by friendly
+witnesses that he acted in self-defense. So, if a man be involved in
+feud, he may be assassinated from ambush by someone who is not concerned
+in the clan trouble, but who has hated him for years on another account,
+and who knows that his death now will be charged up to the opposing
+faction.
+
+From the earliest times it has been customary for our highlanders to go
+armed most of the time. This was a necessity in the old Indian-fighting
+days, and throughout the kukluxing and white-capping era following the
+Civil War. Such a habit, once formed, is hard to eradicate. Even to-day,
+in all parts of Appalachia that I am familiar with, most of the young
+men, I judge, and many of the older ones, carry concealed weapons.
+
+Among them I have never seen a stand-up and knock-down fight according
+to the rules of the ring. They have many rough-and-tumble brawls, in
+which they slug, wrestle, kick, bite, strangle, until one gets the other
+down, whereat the one on top continues to maul his victim until he cries
+"Enough!" Oftener a club or stone will be used in mad endeavor to knock
+the opponent senseless at a blow. There is no compunction about striking
+foul and very little about "double-teaming." Let us pause long enough to
+admit that this was the British and American way of man-handling,
+universal among the common people, until well into the nineteenth
+century--and the mountaineers are still ignorant of any other, except
+fighting with weapons.
+
+Many of the young men carry home-made billies or "brass knucks." Every
+man and boy has at least a pocket-knife with serviceable blade. Fights
+with such crude weapons are frequent. There are few spectacles more
+sickening than two powerful but awkward men slashing each other with
+common jack-knives, though the fatalities are much less frequent than in
+gun-fighting. I have known two old mountain preachers to draw knives on
+each other at the close of a sermon.
+
+The typical highland bravo always carries a revolver or an automatic
+pistol. This is likely to be a weapon of large bore and good
+stopping-power that is worn in a shoulder-holster concealed under the
+coat or vest or shirt. Most mountaineers are good shots with such arms,
+though not so deadly quick as the frontiersmen of our old-time West--in
+fact, they cannot be so quick without wearing the weapon exposed. When a
+highlander has time, he prefers to hold his pistol in both hands (left
+clasped over right) and aims it as he would a rifle. To a Westerner such
+gun practice looks absurd; but it is accurate, beyond question. Few
+mountain gun-fights fail to score at least one victim.
+
+The average mountain woman is as combative in spirit as her menfolk. She
+would despise any man who took insult or injury without showing fight.
+In fact, the woman, in many cases, deliberately stirs up trouble out of
+vanity, or for the sheer excitement of it. Some of the older women
+display the ferocity of she-wolves. The mother of a large family said in
+my presence, with the calm earnestness of one fully experienced: "If a
+feller 'd treated me the way ------ did ------ I'd git me a
+forty-some-odd and shoot enough meat off o' his bones to feed a
+hound-dog a week." Three of this woman's brothers had been shot dead in
+frays. One of them killed the first husband of her sister, who married
+again, and whose second husband was killed by a man with whom she then
+tried a third matrimonial venture. Such matters may not be interesting
+in themselves, but they give one pause when he learns, in addition, that
+these people are received as friends and on a footing of equality by
+everybody in their community.
+
+That the mountaineers are fierce and relentless in their feuds is beyond
+denial. A warfare of bushwhacking and assassination knows no
+refinements. Quarter is neither given nor expected. Property, however,
+is not violated, and women are not often injured. There have been some
+atrocious exceptions. In the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Cap Hatfield and Tom
+Wallace attacked the latter's wife and her mother at night, dragged both
+women from bed, and Cap beat the old woman with a cow's tail that he had
+clipped off "jes' to see 'er jump." He broke two of the woman's ribs,
+leaving her injured for life, while Tom beat his wife. Later, on New
+Year's night, 1888, a gang of the Hatfields surrounded the home of
+Randolph McCoy, killed the eldest daughter, Allaphare, broke her
+mother's ribs and knocked her senseless with their guns, and killed a
+son, Calvin. In several instances women who fought in defense of their
+homes have been killed, as in the case of Mrs. Charles Daniels and her
+16-year-old daughter, in Pike County, Kentucky, in November, 1909.
+
+The mountain women do not shrink from feuds, but on the contrary excite
+and cheer their men to desperate deeds, and sometimes fight by their
+side. In the French-Eversole feud, a woman, learning that her unarmed
+husband was besieged by his foes, seized his rifle, filled her apron
+with cartridges, rushed past the firing-line, and stood by her "old man"
+until he beat his assailants off. When men are "hiding out" in the
+laurel, it is the women's part, which they never shirk, to carry them
+food and information.
+
+In every feud each clan has a leader, a man of prominence either on
+account of his wealth or his political influence or his shrewdness or
+his physical prowess. This leader's orders are obeyed, while hostilities
+last, with the same unquestioning loyalty that the old Scotch retainer
+showed to his chieftain. Either the leader or someone acting for him
+supplies the men with food, with weapons if they need them, with
+ammunition, and with money. Sometimes mercenaries are hired. Mr. Fox
+says that "In one local war, I remember, four dollars per day were the
+wages of the fighting man, and the leader on one occasion, while
+besieging his enemies--in the county court-house--tried to purchase a
+cannon, and from no other place than the State arsenal, and from no
+other personage than the Governor himself." In some of the feuds
+professional bravos have been employed who would assassinate, for a few
+dollars, anybody who was pointed out to them, provided he was alien to
+their own clans.
+
+The character of the highland bravo is precisely that of the western
+"bad man" as pictured by Jed Parker in Stewart Edward White's _Arizona
+Nights_:
+
+     "'There's a good deal of romance been written about the "bad man,"
+     and there's about the same amount of nonsense. The bad man is just
+     a plain murderer, neither more nor less. He never does get into a
+     real, good, plain, stand-up gun-fight if he can possibly help it.
+     His killin's are done from behind a door, or when he's got his man
+     dead to rights. There's Sam Cook. You've all heard of him. He had
+     nerve, of course, and when he was backed into a corner he made
+     good; and he was sure sudden death with a gun. But when he went out
+     for a man deliberate, he didn't take no special chances....
+
+     "'The point is that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable
+     proposition, and plain, cold-blooded murderers, willin' to wait for
+     a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatever. The bad man
+     takes you unawares, when you're sleepin', or talkin', or drinkin',
+     or lookin' to see what for a day it's goin' to be, anyway. He don't
+     give you no show, and sooner or later he's goin' to get you in the
+     safest and easiest way for himself. There ain't no romance about
+     that.'"
+
+
+And there is no romance about a real mountain feud. It is marked by
+suave treachery, "double-teaming," "laywaying," "blind-shooting," and
+general heartlessness and brutality. If one side refuses to assassinate
+but seeks open, honorable combat, as has happened in several feuds, it
+is sure to be beaten. Whoever appeals to the law is sure to be beaten.
+In either case he is considered a fool or a coward by most of the
+countryside. Our highlander, untouched by the culture of the world about
+him, has never been taught the meaning of fair play. Magnanimity to a
+fallen foe he would regard as sure proof of an addled brain. The motive
+of one who forgives his enemy is utterly beyond his comprehension. As
+for bushwhacking, "Hit's as fa'r for one as 'tis for t'other. You can't
+fight a man fa'r and squar who'll shoot you in the back. A pore man
+can't fight money in the courts." In this he is simply his ancient
+Scotch or English ancestor born over again. Such was the code of
+Jacobite Scotland and Tudor England. And _back there_ is where our
+mountaineer belongs in the scale of human evolution.
+
+The feud, as Miss Miles puts it, is an outbreak of _perverted_ family
+affection. Its mainspring is an honorable clan loyalty. It is a direct
+consequence of the clan organization that our mountaineers preserve as
+it was handed down to them by their forefathers. The implacability of
+their vengeance, the treacheries they practice, the murders from ambush,
+are invariable features of clan warfare wherever and by whomsoever it is
+waged. They are not vices or crimes peculiar to the Kentuckian or the
+Corsican or the Sicilian or the Albanian or the Arab, but natural
+results of clan government, which in turn is a result of isolation, of
+physical environment, of geographical position unfavorable to free
+intercourse and commerce with the world at large.
+
+The most hideous feature of the feud is the shooting down of unarmed or
+unwarned men. Assassination, in our modern eyes, is the last and lowest
+infamy of a coward. Such it truly is, when committed in the civilized
+society of our day. But in studying primitive races, or in going back
+along the line of our own ancestry to the civilized society of two
+centuries ago, we must face and acknowledge the strange paradox of a
+valorous and honorable people (according to their lights) who, in
+certain cases, practiced assassination without compunction and, in fact,
+with pride. History is red with it in those very "richest ages of our
+race" that Professor Shaler cited. Until a century or two ago,
+throughout Christendom, the secret murder of enemies was committed
+unblushingly by nobles and kings and prelates, often with a pious "Thus
+sayeth the Lord!" It was practiced by men valiant in open battle, and by
+those wise in the counsels of the realm. Take Scotland, for example, as
+pictured by a native writer.--
+
+     "No tenet nor practice, no influence nor power nor principality in
+     the Scotland of the past has outvied assassination in ascendancy or
+     in moment. Not theoretically, indeed, but practically, it occupied
+     for centuries a distinct, almost a supreme, place in her political
+     constitution--was, in fact, the understood if not recognized
+     expedient always in reserve should other milder and more hallowed
+     methods fail of accomplishing the desired political or, it might
+     be, religious consummation....
+
+     "For centuries such justice as was exercised was haphazard and
+     rude, and practically there was no law but the will of the
+     stronger. Few, if any, of the great families but had their special
+     feud; and feuds once originated survived for ages; to forget them
+     would have been treason to the dead, and wild purposes of revenge
+     were handed down from generation to generation as a sacred legacy.
+
+     "To take an enemy at a disadvantage was not deemed mean and
+     contemptible, but--
+
+       'Of all the arts in which the wise excel
+       Nature's chief masterpiece.'
+
+     To do it boldly and adroitly was to win a peculiar halo of renown;
+     and thus assassination ceased to be the weapon of the avowed
+     desperado, and came to be wielded unblushingly not only by
+     so-called men of honor, but by the so-called religious as well. A
+     noble did not scruple to use it against his king, and the king
+     himself felt no dishonor in resorting to it against a dangerous
+     noble. James I. was hacked to death in the night by Sir Robert
+     Graham; and James I. rid himself of the imperious and intriguing
+     Douglas by suddenly stabbing him while within his own royal palace
+     under protection of a safe conduct.
+
+     "The leaders of the Reformation discerned in assassination (that of
+     their enemies) the special 'work and judgment of God.'... When the
+     assassination of Cardinal Beaton took place in 1546, all the savage
+     details of it were set down by Knox with unbridled gusto. 'These
+     things we wreat mearlie,' is his own ingenuous comment on his
+     performance.
+
+     "The burden of George Buchanan's _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_ is the
+     lawfulness or righteousness of the removal--by assassination or any
+     other fitting or convenient means--of incompetent kings, whether
+     heinously wicked and tyrannical or merely unwise and weak of
+     purpose; and he cites as a case in point and an 'example in time
+     coming,' the murder of James III., which, if it were only on
+     account of the assassin's hideous travesty of the last offices of
+     the Church, would deserve to be held in unique and everlasting
+     detestation."--(Henderson, _Old-world Scotland_, 182-186.)
+
+
+Yet the Scots have always been a notably warlike and fearless race. So,
+too, are our southern mountaineers: in the Civil War and the Spanish War
+they sent a larger proportion of their men into the service than almost
+any other section of our country.
+
+Let us not overlook the fact that it demands courage of a high order for
+one to stay in a feud-infested district, conscious of being marked for
+slaughter--stay there month in and month out, year in and year out, not
+knowing at what moment he may be beset by overpowering numbers, from
+what laurel thicket he may be shot, or at what hour of the night he may
+be called to his door and struck dead before his family. On the credit
+side of their valor, then, be it entered that few mountaineers will
+shrink from such ordeal when, even from no fault of their own, it is
+thrust upon them.
+
+The blood-feud is simply a horrible survival of medievalism. It is the
+highlander's misfortune to be stranded far out of the course of
+civilization. He is no worse than that bygone age that he really belongs
+to. In some ways he is better. He is far less cruel than his ancestors
+were--than our ancestors were. He does not torture with the tumbril,
+the stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding-irons, the
+ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue-branks that were in everyday
+use under the old criminal code. He does not tie a woman to the cart's
+tail and publicly lash her bare back until it streams with blood, nor
+does he hang a man for picking somebody's pocket of twelve pence and a
+farthing. He does not go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for the
+sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their chains in rage or
+horror. He does not turn executions of criminals into public festivals.
+He never has been known to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he
+hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails and burn them before
+his eyes, with a mob crowding about to jeer the poor devil's flinching
+or to compliment him on his "nerve." Yet all these pleasantries were
+proper and legal in Christian Britain two centuries ago.
+
+This isolated and belated people who still carry on the blood-feud are
+not half so much to blame for such a savage survival as the rich,
+powerful, educated, twentieth-century nation that abandons them as if
+they were hopelessly derelict or wrecked. It took but a few decades to
+civilize Scotland. How much swifter and surer and easier are our means
+of enlightenment to-day! Let us not forget that these highlanders are
+blood of our blood and bone of our bone; for they are old-time Americans
+to a man, proud of their nationality, and passionately loyal to the flag
+that they, more than any other of us, according to their strength, have
+fought and suffered for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHO ARE THE MOUNTAINEERS?
+
+
+The Southern Appalachian Mountains happen to be parceled out among eight
+different States, and for that reason they are seldom considered as a
+geographical unit. In the same way their inhabitants are thought of as
+Kentucky mountaineers or Carolina mountaineers, and so on, but not often
+as a body of Appalachian mountaineers. And yet these inhabitants are as
+distinct an ethnographic group as the mountains themselves are a
+geographic group.
+
+The mountaineers are homogeneous so far as speech and manners and
+experiences and ideals can make them. In the aggregate they are nearly
+twice as numerous and cover twice as much territory as any one of the
+States among which they have been distributed; but in each of these
+States they occupy only the backyard, and generally take back seats in
+the councils of the commonwealth. They have been fenced off from each
+other by political boundaries, and have no such coherence among
+themselves as would come from common leadership or a sense of common
+origin and mutual dependence.
+
+And they are a people without annals. Back of their grandfathers they
+have neither screed nor hearsay. "Borned in the kentry and ain't never
+been out o' hit" is all that most of them can say for themselves. Here
+and there one will assert, "My foreparents war principally Scotch," or
+"Us Bumgyarners [Baumgartners] was Dutch," but such traditions of a
+far-back foreign origin are uncommon.
+
+Who are these southern mountaineers? Whence came they? What is the
+secret of their belatedness and isolation?
+
+Before the Civil War they were seldom heard of in the outside world.
+Vaguely it was understood that the Appalachian highlands were occupied
+by a peculiar people called "mountain whites." This odd name was given
+them not to distinguish them from mountain negroes, for there were,
+practically, no mountain negroes; but to indicate their similarity, in
+social condition and economic status, to the "poor whites" of the
+southern lowlands. It was assumed, on no historical basis whatever, that
+the highlanders came from the more venturesome or desperate element of
+the "poor whites," and differed from these only to the extent that
+environment had shaped them.
+
+Since this theory still prevails throughout the South, and is accepted
+generally elsewhere on its face value, it deserves just enough
+consideration to refute it.
+
+The unfortunate class known as poor whites in the South is descended
+mainly from the convicts and indentured servants with which England
+supplied labor to the southern plantations before slavery days. The
+Cavaliers who founded and dominated southern society came from the
+conservative, the feudal element of England. Their character and
+training were essentially aristocratic and military. They were not
+town-dwellers, but masters of plantations. Their chief crop and article
+of export was tobacco. The culture of tobacco required an abundance of
+cheap and servile labor.
+
+On the plantations there was little demand for skilled labor, small room
+anywhere for a middle class of manufacturers and merchants, no
+inducement for independent farmers who would till with their own hands.
+Outside of the planters and a small professional class there was little
+employment offered save what was menial and degrading. Consequently the
+South was shunned, from the beginning, by British yeomanry and by the
+thrifty Teutons such as flocked into the northern provinces. The demand
+for menials on the plantations was met, then, by importing bond-servants
+from Great Britain. These were obtained in three ways.--
+
+1. Convicted criminals were deported to serve out their terms on the
+plantations. Some of these had been charged only with political
+offenses, and had the making of good citizens; but the greater number
+were rogues of the shiftless and petty delinquent order, such as were
+too lazy to work but not desperate enough to have incurred capital
+sentences.
+
+2. Boys and girls, chiefly from the slums of British seaports, were
+kidnapped and sold into temporary slavery on the plantations.
+
+3. Impoverished people who wished to emigrate, but could not pay for
+their passage, voluntarily sold their services for a term of years in
+return for transportation.
+
+Thus a considerable proportion of the white laborers of the South, in
+the seventeenth century, were criminals or ne'er-do-wells from the
+start. A large number of the others came from the dregs of society. As
+for the remainder, the companionships into which they were thrust, the
+brutalities to which they were subjected, their impotence before the
+law, the contempt in which they were held by the ruling caste, and the
+wretchedness of their prospect when released, were enough to undermine
+all but the strongest characters. Few ever succeeded in rising to
+respectable positions.
+
+Then came a vast social change. At a time when the laboring classes of
+Europe had achieved emancipation from serfdom, and feudalism was
+overthrown, African slavery in our own Southland laid the foundation for
+a new feudalism. Southern society reverted to a type that the rest of
+the civilized world had outgrown.
+
+The effect upon white labor was deplorable. The former bond-servants
+were now freedmen, it is true, but freedmen shorn of such opportunities
+as they were fitted to use. Sprung from a more or less degraded stock,
+still branded by caste, untrained to any career demanding skill and
+intelligence, devitalized by evil habits of life, densely ignorant of
+the world around them, these, the naturally shiftless, were now turned
+out into the backwoods to shift for themselves. It was inevitable that
+most of them should degenerate even below the level of their former
+estate, for they were no longer forced into steady industry.
+
+The white freedmen generally became squatters on such land as was unfit
+for tobacco, cotton, and other crops profitable to slave-owners. As the
+plantations expanded, these freedmen were pushed further and further
+back upon more and more sterile soil. They became "pine-landers" or
+"piney-woods-people," "sand-hillers," "knob-people," "corn-crackers" or
+"crackers," gaining a bare subsistence from corn planted and "tended"
+chiefly by the women and children, from hogs running wild in the forest,
+and from desultory hunting and fishing. As a class, such whites lapsed
+into sloth and apathy. Even the institution of slavery they regarded
+with cynical tolerance, doubtless realizing that if it were not for the
+blacks they would be slaves themselves.
+
+Now these poor whites had nothing to do with settling the mountains.
+There was then, and still is, plenty of wild land for them in their
+native lowlands. They had neither the initiative nor the courage to seek
+a promised land far away among the unexplored and savage peaks of the
+western country. They were a brave enough folk in facing familiar
+dangers, but they had a terror of the unknown, being densely ignorant
+and superstitious. The mountains, to those who ever heard of them,
+suggested nothing but laborious climbing amid mysterious and portentous
+perils. The poor whites were not highlanders by descent, nor had they a
+whit of the bold, self-reliant spirit of our western pioneers. They
+never entered Appalachia until after it had been won and settled by a
+far manlier race, and even then they went only in driblets. The theory
+that the southern mountains were peopled mainly by outcasts or refugees
+from old settlements in the lowlands rests on no other basis than
+imagination.
+
+How the mountains actually were settled is another and a very different
+story.--
+
+The first frontiersmen of the Appalachians were those Swiss and Palatine
+Germans who began flocking into Pennsylvania about 1682. They settled
+westward of the Quakers in the fertile limestone belts at the foot of
+the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Here they formed the Quakers' buffer
+against the Indians, and, for some time, theirs were the westernmost
+settlements of British subjects in America. These Germans were of the
+Reformed or Lutheran faith. They were strongly democratic in a social
+sense, and detested slavery. They were model farmers and many of them
+were skilled workmen at trades.
+
+Shortly after the tide of German immigration set into Pennsylvania,
+another and quite different class of foreigners began to arrive in this
+province, attracted hither by the same lodestones that drew the Germans,
+namely, democratic institutions and religious liberty. These newcomers
+were the Scotch-Irish, or Ulstermen of Ireland.
+
+When James I., in 1607, confiscated the estates of the native Irish in
+six counties of Ulster, he planted them with Scotch and English
+Presbyterians. These outsiders came to be known as Scotch-Irish, because
+they were chiefly of Scotch blood and had settled in Ireland. The native
+Irish, to whom they were alien both by blood and by religion, detested
+them as usurpers, and fought them many a bloody battle.
+
+In time, as their leases in Ulster began to expire, the Scotch-Irish
+themselves came in conflict with the Crown, by whom they were persecuted
+and evicted. Then the Ulstermen began immigrating in large numbers to
+Pennsylvania. As Froude says, "In the two years that followed the Antrim
+evictions, thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a land where
+there was no legal robbery, and where those who sowed the seed could
+reap the harvest."
+
+So it was that these people became, in their turn, our westernmost
+frontiersmen, taking up land just outside the German settlements.
+Immediately they began to clash with the Indians, and there followed a
+long series of border wars, waged with extreme ferocity, in which
+sometimes it is hard to say which side was most to blame. One thing,
+however, is certain: if any race was ordained to exterminate the Indians
+that race was the Scotch-Irish.
+
+They were a brave but hot-headed folk, as might be expected of a people
+who for a century had been planted amid hostile Hibernians. Justin
+Winsor describes them as having "all that excitable character which goes
+with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity,
+predestination, and election," and as seeing "no use in an Indian but to
+be a target for their bullets." They were quick-witted as well as
+quick-tempered, rather visionary, imperious, and aggressive.
+
+Being by tradition and habit a border people the Scotch-Irish pushed to
+the extreme western fringe of settlement amid the Alleghanies. They were
+not over-solicitous about the quality of soil. When Arthur Lee, of
+Virginia, was telling Doctor Samuel Johnson, in London, of a colony of
+Scotch who had settled upon a particularly sterile tract in western
+Virginia, and had expressed his wonder that they should do so, Johnson
+replied, "Why, sir, all barrenness is comparative: the Scotch will never
+know that it is barren."
+
+West of the Susquehanna, however, the land was so rocky and poor that
+even the Scotch shied at it, and so, when eastern Pennsylvania became
+crowded, the overflow of settlers passed not westward but southwestward,
+along the Cumberland Valley, into western Maryland, and then into the
+Shenandoah and those other long, narrow, parallel valleys of western
+Virginia that we noted in our first chapter. This western region still
+lay unoccupied and scarcely known by the Virginians themselves. Its
+fertile lands were discovered by Pennsylvania Dutchmen. The first house
+in western Virginia was erected by one of them, Joist Hite, and he
+established a colony of his people near the future site of Winchester. A
+majority of those who settled in the eastern part of the Shenandoah
+Valley were Pennsylvania Dutch, while the Scotch-Irish, following in
+their train, pushed a little to the west of them and occupied more
+exposed positions. There were representatives of other races along the
+border: English, Irish, French Huguenots, and so on; but everywhere the
+Scotch-Irish and Germans predominated.
+
+And the southwestward movement, once started, never stopped. So there
+went on a gradual but sure progress of northern peoples across the
+Potomac, up the Shenandoah, across the Staunton, the Dan, the Yadkin,
+until the western piedmont and foot-hill region of Carolina was
+similarly settled, chiefly by Pennsylvanians.
+
+The archivist of North Carolina, the late William L. Saunders, Secretary
+of State, said in one of his historical sketches that "to Lancaster and
+York counties, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her
+population than to any other known part of the world." He called
+attention to the interesting fact that when the North Carolina boys of
+Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent followed Lee into
+Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg campaign, they were returning to the
+homes of their ancestors, by precisely the same route that those
+ancestors had taken in going south.
+
+Among those who made the long trek from Pennsylvania southward in the
+eighteenth century, were Daniel Boone and the ancestors of David
+Crockett, Samuel Houston, John C. Calhoun, "Stonewall" Jackson, and
+Abraham Lincoln. Boone and the Lincolns, although English themselves,
+had been neighbors in Berks County, one of the most German parts of all
+eastern Pennsylvania.
+
+So the western piedmont and the mountains were settled neither by
+Cavaliers nor by poor whites, but by a radically distinct and even
+antagonistic people who are appropriately called the Roundheads of the
+South. These Roundheads had little or nothing to do with slavery,
+detested the state church, loathed tithes, and distrusted all authority
+save that of conspicuous merit and natural justice. The first
+characteristic that these pioneers developed was an intense
+individualism. The strong and even violent independence that made them
+forsake all the comforts of civilization and prefer the wild freedom of
+the border was fanned at times into turbulence and riot; but it blazed
+forth at a happy time for this country when our liberties were
+imperilled.
+
+Daniel Boone first appears in history when, from his new home on the
+Yadkin, he crossed the Blue Ridge and the Unakas into that part of
+western Carolina which is now eastern Tennessee. He was exploring the
+Watauga region as early as 1760. Both British and French Indian traders
+and soldiers had been in this region before him, but had left few marks
+of their wanderings. In 1761 a party of hunters from Pennsylvania and
+contiguous counties of Virginia, piloted by Boone, began to use this
+region as a hunting-ground, on account of the great abundance of game.
+From them, and especially from Boone, the fame of its attractions spread
+to the settlements on the eastern slope of the mountains, and in the
+winter of 1768-69 the first permanent occupation of eastern Tennessee
+was made by a few families from North Carolina.
+
+About this time there broke out in Carolina a struggle between the
+independent settlers of the piedmont and the rich trading and official
+class of the coast. The former rose in bodies under the name of
+Regulators and a battle followed in which they were defeated. To escape
+from the persecutions of the aristocracy, many of the Regulators and
+their friends crossed the Appalachian Mountains and built their cabins
+in the Watauga region. Here, in 1772, there was established by these
+"rebels" the first republic in America, based upon a written
+constitution "the first ever adopted by a community of American-born
+freemen." Of these pioneers in "The Winning of the West," Theodore
+Roosevelt says: "As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the
+most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western
+North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came
+mainly from Virginia, and indeed, in great part, from this same
+Pennsylvania stock."
+
+Boone first visited Kentucky, on a hunting trip, in 1769. Six years
+later he began to colonize it, in flat defiance of the British
+government, and in the face of a menacing proclamation from the royal
+governor of North Carolina. On the Kentucky River, three days after the
+battle of Lexington, the flag of the new colony of Transylvania was run
+up on his fort at Boonesborough. It was not until the following August
+that these "rebels of Kentuck" heard of the signing of the Declaration
+of Independence, and celebrated it with shrill warwhoops around a
+bonfire in the center of their stockade.
+
+Such was the stuff of which the Appalachian frontiersmen were made. They
+were the first Americans to cut loose entirely from the seaboard and
+fall back upon their own resources. They were the first to establish
+governments of their own, in defiance of king and aristocracy. Says John
+Fiske:
+
+     "Jefferson is often called the father of modern American democracy;
+     in a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian
+     regions may be called its cradle. In that rude frontier society,
+     life assumed many new aspects, old customs were forgotten, old
+     distinctions abolished, social equality acquired even more
+     importance than unchecked individualism. The notions, sometimes
+     crude and noxious, sometimes just and wholesome, which
+     characterized Jeffersonian democracy, flourished greatly on the
+     frontier and have thence been propagated eastward through the older
+     communities, affecting their legislation and their politics more or
+     less according to frequency of contact and intercourse.
+     Massachusetts, relatively remote and relatively ancient, has been
+     perhaps least affected by this group of ideas, but all parts of the
+     United States have felt its influence powerfully. This phase of
+     democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier life
+     retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its
+     beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian
+     region in the 18th century."
+
+
+During the Revolution, the Appalachian frontier was held by a double
+line of the men whom we have been considering: one line east of the
+mountains, and the other west of them. The mountain region itself
+remained almost uninhabited by whites, because the pioneers who crossed
+it were seeking better hunting grounds and farmsteads than the mountains
+afforded. It was not until the buffalo and elk and beaver had been
+driven out of Tennessee and Kentucky, and those rolling savannahs were
+being fenced and tilled, that much attention was given to the mountains
+proper. Then small companies of hunters and trappers from both east and
+west began to move into the highlands and settle there.
+
+These explorers, pushing outward from the cross-mountain trails in every
+direction, found many interesting things that had been overlooked in the
+scurry of migration westward. They discovered fair river valleys and
+rich coves, adapted to tillage, which soon attracted settlers of a
+better class; and so, gradually, the mountain solitudes began to echo
+with the ring of axes and the lowing of herds. By 1830 about a million
+permanent settlers occupied the southern Appalachians. Naturally, most
+of them came from adjoining regions--from the foot of the Blue Ridge on
+one side and from the foot of the Unakas or of the Cumberlands on the
+other, and hence they were chiefly of the same frontier stock that we
+have been describing. No colonies of farmers from a distance ever have
+been imported into the mountains, down to our own day.
+
+Deterioration of the mountain people began as soon as population began
+to press upon the limits of subsistence. At first, naturally, the best
+people among the mountaineers were attracted to the best lands. And
+there to-day, in the generous river valleys, we find a class of
+citizens superior to the average mountaineers that we have been
+considering in this book. But the number and extent of such valleys was
+narrowly limited. The United States topographers report that in
+Appalachia, as a whole, the mountain slopes occupy 90 per cent. of the
+total area, and that 85 per cent. of the land has a steeper slope than
+one foot in five. So, as the years passed, a larger and larger
+proportion of the highlanders was forced back along the creek branches
+and up along the steep hillsides to "scrabble" for a living.
+
+It will be asked, Why did not this overplus do as other crowded
+Americans did: move west?
+
+First, because they were so immured in the mountains, so utterly cut off
+from communication with the outer world, that they did not know anything
+about the opportunities offered new settlers in far-away lands. Moving
+"west" to them would have meant merely going a few days' wagon-travel
+down into the lowlands of Kentucky or Tennessee, which already were
+thickly settled by a people of very different social class. Here they
+could not hope to be anything but tenants or menials, ruled over by
+proprietors or bosses--and they would die rather than endure such
+treatment. As for the new lands of the farther West, there was scarce a
+peasant in Ireland or in Scandinavia but knew more about them than did
+the southern mountaineers.
+
+Second, because they were passionately attached to their homes and
+kindred, to their own old-fashioned ways. The mountaineer shrinks from
+lowland society as he does from the water and the climate of such
+regions. He is never at ease until back with his home-folks, foot-loose
+and free.
+
+Third, because there was nothing in his environment to arouse ambition.
+The hard, hopeless life of the mountain farm, sustained only by a meager
+and ill-cooked diet, begat laziness and shiftless unconcern.
+
+Finally, the poverty of the hillside farmers and branch-water people was
+so extreme that they could not gather funds to emigrate with. There were
+no industries to which a man might turn and earn ready money, no markets
+in which he could sell a surplus from the farm.
+
+So, while the transmontane settlers grew rapidly in wealth and culture,
+their kinsfolk back in the mountains either stood still or retrograded,
+and the contrast was due not nearly so much to any difference of
+capacity as to a law of Nature that dooms an isolated and impoverished
+people to deterioration.
+
+Beyond this, it is not to be overlooked that the mountains were cursed
+with a considerable incubus of naturally weak or depraved characters,
+not lowland "poor whites," but a miscellaneous flotsam from all
+quarters, which, after more or less circling round and round, was drawn
+into the stagnant eddy of highland society as derelicts drift into the
+Sargasso Sea. In the train of western immigration there were some feeble
+souls who never got across the mountains. These have been described
+tersely as the men who lost heart on account of a broken axle.
+
+The anemic element thus introduced is less noticeable in Kentucky than
+in Virginia and the States farther south--for the reason, no doubt, that
+it took at least two axles to reach Kentucky--but it exists in all parts
+of Appalachia. Moreover, the vast roughs of the mountain region offered
+harborage for outlaws, desperadoes of the border, and here many of them
+settled and propagated their kind. In the backwoods one cannot choose
+his neighbors. All are on equal footing. Hence the contagion of crime
+and shiftlessness spreads to decent families and tends to undermine
+them.
+
+We can understand, then, how it happened in many cases that highland
+families founded by well-informed and thrifty pioneers deteriorated
+into illiterate and idle triflers, all run down at heels. Lincoln's
+family is an apt illustration. His grandfather sold his Virginia farms
+for seventeen thousand dollars and bought large tracts of land in
+Kentucky. But Abraham Lincoln's father set up housekeeping in a shed,
+later built a log hut of one room without doors or windows (although he
+was a carpenter by trade), then moved to another cabin a little better,
+tired of it, moved over into Indiana, and made his family spend the
+winter in a half-faced camp, where they were saved from freezing by
+keeping up a great log fire in front of the lean-to through days and
+nights when the temperature was far below zero. The Lincolns were not
+mountaineers, but they were of the same stock, and were subjected to
+much the same vicissitudes.
+
+So the southern highlanders languished in isolation, sunk in a Rip Van
+Winkle sleep, until aroused by the thunder-crash of the Civil War. Let
+John Fox tell the extraordinary result of that awakening.--
+
+     "The American mountaineer was discovered, I say, at the beginning
+     of the war, when the Confederate leaders were counting on the
+     presumption that Mason and Dixon's Line was the dividing line
+     between the North and South, and formed, therefore, the plan of
+     marching an army from Wheeling, in West Virginia, to some point on
+     the Lakes, and thus dissevering the North at one blow.
+
+     "The plan seemed so feasible that it is said to have materially
+     aided the sale of Confederate bonds in England. But when Captain
+     Garnett, a West Point graduate, started to carry it out, he got no
+     farther than Harper's Ferry. When he struck the mountains, he
+     struck enemies who shot at his men from ambush, cut down bridges
+     before him, carried the news of his march to the Federals, and
+     Garnett himself fell with a bullet from a mountaineer's squirrel
+     rifle at Harper's Ferry.
+
+     "Then the South began to realize what a long, lean, powerful arm of
+     the Union it was that the southern mountaineer stretched through
+     its very vitals; for that arm helped hold Kentucky in the Union by
+     giving preponderance to the Union sympathizers in the Blue-grass;
+     it kept the east Tennesseans loyal to the man; it made West
+     Virginia, as the phrase goes, 'secede from secession'; it drew out
+     a horde of one hundred thousand volunteers, when Lincoln called for
+     troops, depleting Jackson County, Kentucky, for instance, of every
+     male under sixty years of age and over fifteen; and it raised a
+     hostile barrier between the armies of the coast and the armies of
+     the Mississippi. The North has never realized, perhaps, what it
+     owes for its victory to this non-slaveholding southern
+     mountaineer."
+
+
+President Frost, of Berea College, says:
+
+     "The loyalty of this region in the Civil War was a surprise to both
+     northern and southern statesmen. The mountain people owned land
+     but did not own slaves, and the national feeling of the
+     revolutionary period had not spent its force among them. Their
+     services in West Virginia and east Tennessee are perhaps generally
+     known. But very few know or remember that the whole mountain region
+     was loyal [except where conscripted]. General Carl Schurz had
+     soldiers enlisted in the mountains of Alabama, and the writer has
+     recently seen a letter written by the Confederate Governor of South
+     Carolina in which he relates to General Hardee the troubles caused
+     by Union sentiment in the mountain counties.
+
+     "It is pathetic to know how these mountain regiments disbanded with
+     no poet or historian or monument to perpetuate the memory of their
+     valor. The very flag that was first on Lookout Mountain and 'waved
+     above the clouds' was lost to fame in an obscure mountain home
+     until Berea discovered and rescued it from oblivion and
+     destruction."
+
+
+It may be added that no other part of our country suffered longer or
+more severely from the aftermath of war. Throughout that struggle the
+mountain region was a nest for bushwhackers and bandits that preyed upon
+the aged and defenseless who were left at home, and thus there was left
+an evil legacy of neighborhood wrongs and private grudges. Most of the
+mountain counties had incurred the bitter hostility of their own States
+by standing loyal to the Union. After Appomattox they were cast back
+into a worse isolation than they had ever known. Most unfortunately,
+too, the Federal Government, at this juncture, instead of interposing
+to restore law and order in the highlands, turned the loyalty of the
+mountaineers into outlawry, as in 1794, by imposing a prohibitive excise
+tax upon their chief merchantable commodity.
+
+Left, then, to their own devices, unchecked by any stronger arm,
+inflamed by a multitude of personal wrongs, habituated to the shedding
+of human blood, contemptuous of State laws that did not reach them,
+enraged by Federal acts that impugned, as they thought, an inalienable
+right of man, it was inevitable that this fiery and vindictive race
+should fall speedily into warring among themselves. Old scores were now
+to be wiped out in a reign of terror. The open combat of bannered war
+was turned into the secret ferocity of family feuds.
+
+But the mountaineers of to-day are face to face with a mighty change.
+The feud epoch has ceased throughout the greater part of Appalachia. A
+new era dawns. Everywhere the highways of civilization are pushing into
+remote mountain fastnesses. Vast enterprises are being installed. The
+timber and the minerals are being garnered. The mighty waterpower that
+has been running to waste since these mountains rose from the primal sea
+is now about to be harnessed in the service of man. Along with this
+economic revolution will come, inevitably, good schools, newspapers, a
+finer and more liberal social life. The highlander, at last, is to be
+caught up in the current of human progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES"
+
+
+The southern mountaineers are pre-eminently a rural folk. When the
+twentieth century opened, only four per cent. of them dwelt in cities of
+8,000 inhabitants and upwards. There were but seven such cities in all
+Appalachia--a region larger than England and Scotland combined--and
+these owed their development to outside influences. Only 77 out of 186
+mountain counties had towns of 1,000 and upwards.
+
+Our highlanders are the most homogeneous people in the United States. In
+1900, out of a total population of 3,039,835, there were only 18,617 of
+foreign birth. This includes the cities and industrial camps. Back in
+the mountains, a man using any other tongue than English, or speaking
+broken English, was regarded as a freak. Nine mountain counties of
+Virginia, four of West Virginia, fifteen of Kentucky, ten of Tennessee,
+nine of North Carolina, eight of Georgia, two of Alabama, and one of
+South Carolina had less than ten foreign-born residents each. Three of
+them had none at all.
+
+Compare the North Atlantic states. In this same census year, 57 per
+cent. of their people lived in cities of 8,000 and upwards. As for
+foreigners--the one city of Fall River, Mass., with 104,863 inhabitants,
+had 50,042 of foreign birth.
+
+The mountains proper are free not only from foreigners but from negroes
+as well. There are many blacks in the larger valleys and towns, but
+throughout most of Appalachia the population is almost exclusively
+white. In 1900, Jackson County, Ky. (the same that sent every one of its
+sons into the Union army who could bear arms), had only nineteen negroes
+among 10,542 whites; Johnson County, Ky., only one black resident among
+13,729 whites; Dickenson County, Va., not a single negro within its
+borders.
+
+In many mountain settlements negroes are not allowed to tarry. It has
+been assumed that this prejudice against colored folk had its origin far
+back in the time when "poor whites" found themselves thrust aside by
+competition with slave labor. This is an error. Our mountaineers never
+had to compete with slavery. Few of them knew anything about it except
+from hearsay. Their dislike of negroes is simply an instinctive racial
+antipathy, plus a contempt for anyone who submits to servile conditions.
+A neighbor in the Smokies said to me: "I b'lieve in treatin' niggers
+squar. The Bible says they're human--leastways some says it does--and so
+there'd orter be a place for them. But it's _some place else_--not
+around me!" That is the whole thing in a nutshell.
+
+Here, then, is Appalachia: one of the great land-locked areas of the
+globe, more English in speech than Britain itself, more American by
+blood than any other part of America, encompassed by a high-tensioned
+civilization, yet less affected to-day by modern ideas, less cognizant
+of modern progress, than any other part of the English-speaking world.
+
+Of course, such an anomaly cannot continue. Commercialism has discovered
+the mountains at last, and no sentiment, however honest, however
+hallowed, can keep it out. The transformation is swift. Suddenly the
+mountaineer is awakened from his eighteenth-century bed by the blare of
+steam whistles and the boom of dynamite. He sees his forests leveled and
+whisked away; his rivers dammed by concrete walls and shot into turbines
+that outpower all the horses in Appalachia. He is dazed by electric
+lights, nonplussed by speaking wires, awed by vast transfers of
+property, incensed by rude demands. Aroused, now, and wide-eyed, he
+realizes with sinking heart that here is a sudden end of that Old
+Dispensation under which he and his ancestors were born, the beginning
+of a New Order that heeds him and his neighbors not a whit.
+
+All this insults his conservatism. The old way was the established order
+of the universe: to change it is fairly impious. What is the good of all
+this fuss and fury? That fifty-story building they tell about, in their
+big city--what is it but another Tower of Babel? And these silly,
+stuck-up strangers who brag and brag about "modern improvements"--what
+are they, under their fine manners and fine clothes? Hirelings all.
+Shrewdly he observes them in their relations to each other.--
+
+  "Each man is some man's servant; every soul
+    Is by some other's presence quite discrowned."
+
+Proudly he contrasts his ragged self: he who never has acknowledged a
+superior, never has taken an order from living man, save as a patriot in
+time of war. And he turns upon his heel.
+
+Yet, before he can fairly credit it as a reality, the lands around his
+own home are bought up by corporations. All about him, slash, crash, go
+the devastating forces. His old neighbors vanish. New and unwelcome ones
+swarm in. He is crowded, but ignored. His hard-earned patrimony is
+robbed of all that made it precious: its home-like seclusion,
+independence, dignity. He sells out, and moves away to some uninvaded
+place where he "will not be bothered."
+
+"I don't like these improve_ments_," said an old mountaineer to me.
+"Some calls them 'progress,' and says they put money to circulatin'. So
+they do; but _who gits it_?"
+
+There is a class of highlanders more sanguine, more adaptable, that
+welcomes all outsiders who come with skill and capital to develop their
+country. Many of these are shrewd traders in merchandise or in real
+estate, or they are capable foremen who can handle native labor much
+better than any strangers could. Such men naturally profit by the
+change.
+
+Others, deluded by what seems easy money, sell their little homesteads
+for just enough cash to set them up as laborers in town or camp. Being
+untrained to any trade, they can get only the lowest wages, which are
+quickly dissipated in rent and in foods that formerly they raised for
+themselves. Unused to continuous labor, they irk under its discipline,
+drop out, and fall into desultory habits. Meantime false ambitions
+arise, especially among the womenfolk. Store credit soon runs such a
+family in debt.
+
+"When I was a young man," said one of my neighbors, "the traders never
+thought of bringin' meal in here. If a man run out of meal, why, he was
+_out_, and he had to live on 'taters or somethin' else. Nowadays we
+dress better, and live better, but some other feller allers has his
+hands in our pockets."
+
+Then it is "good-by" to the old independence that made such characters
+manly. Enmeshed in obligations that they cannot meet, they struggle
+vainly, brood hopelessly, and lose that dearest of all possessions,
+their self-respect. Servility is literal hell to a mountaineer, and when
+it is forced upon him he turns into a mean, underhanded, slinking
+fellow, easily tempted into crime.
+
+The curse of our invading civilization is that its vanguard is composed
+of men who care nothing for the welfare of the people they dispossess. A
+northern lumberman admitted to me, with frankness unusual in his class,
+that "All we want here is to get the most we can out of this country, as
+quick as we can, and then get out." This is all we can expect of those
+who exploit raw materials, or of manufactures that employ only cheap
+labor. Until we have industries that demand skilled workmen, and until
+manual training schools are established in the mountains, we may look
+for deterioration, rather than betterment, of those highlanders who
+leave their farms.
+
+All who know the mountaineers intimately have observed that the sudden
+inroad of commercialism has a bad effect upon them. As President Frost
+says, "Ruthless change is knocking at the door of every mountain cabin.
+The jackals of civilization have already abused the confidence of many a
+highland home. The lumber, coal, and mineral wealth of the mountains is
+to be possessed, and the unprincipled vanguard of commercialism can
+easily debauch a simple people. The question is whether the mountain
+people can be enlightened and guided so that they can have a part in the
+development of their own country, or whether they must give place to
+foreigners and melt away like so many Indians."
+
+It is easy to say that the fittest will survive. But the fittest for
+what? Miss Miles answers: "I have heard it said that civilization, when
+it touches the people of the backwoods, acts as a useful precipitant in
+thus sending the dregs to the bottom. As a matter of fact, it is only
+the shrewder and more determined, not the truly fit, that survive the
+struggle. Among these very submerged ones, reduced to dependence on an
+alien people, there are thousands who inherit the skill of their
+forefathers who fashioned their own locks, musical instruments, and
+guns. And these very women who are breaking their health and spirit over
+a thankless tub of suds ought surely to turn their talents to better
+account, ought to be designing and weaving coverlets and Roman-striped
+rugs, or 'piecing' the quilt patterns now so popular. Need these razors
+be used to cut grindstones? Must this free folk who are in many ways the
+truest Americans of America be brought under the yoke of caste division,
+to the degradation of all their finer qualities, merely for lack of the
+right work to do?"
+
+There are some who would have it so; who would calmly write for these
+our own kindred, as for the Indians, _fuerunt_--their day is past. In a
+History of Southern Literature, written not long ago by a professor in
+the University of Virginia, a sketch of Miss Murfree's work closes with
+these words: "There [at Beersheba Springs, Tenn.] it was that she first
+studied the curious type of humanity, the Tennessee mountaineer, a
+people so ignorant, so superstitious, so far behind the world of to-day
+as to excite wonder and even pity in all who see them.... [She] is
+telling the story of a people who, in these opening years of the 20th
+century, wander on through their limited range of life much as their
+ancestors for generations have wandered. They, too, will some time
+vanish--the sooner the better."
+
+One cannot read such a sentiment without wonder and even pity for the
+ignorance of history and of human nature that it discloses. Is the case
+of our mountaineers so much worse than that of the Scotch highlanders of
+two centuries ago? We know that those Scotchmen did not "vanish--the
+quicker the better." What were they before civilization reached them?
+Let us open the ready pages of Macaulay.--
+
+     "It is not easy for a modern Englishman ... to believe that, in the
+     time of his great-grandfathers, Saint James's Street had as little
+     connection with the Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In
+     the south of our island scarcely anything was known about the
+     Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling but
+     contempt and loathing....
+
+     "It is not strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes
+     called, should, in the 17th century, have been considered by the
+     Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely strange that, considered
+     as savages, they should not have been objects of interest and
+     curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the
+     manners of rude nations separated from our island by great
+     continents and oceans. Numerous books were printed describing the
+     laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the
+     marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and
+     Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to
+     the usages of the black men of Africa and the red men of America.
+     The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
+     information was the Highlander....
+
+     "While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigor, no account
+     of them was given by any observer qualified to judge of them
+     fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the
+     Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely
+     intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised
+     nation. He would have found that the people had no love for their
+     country or for their king, that they had no attachment to any
+     commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any magistrate superior to
+     the chief. He would have found that life was governed by a code of
+     morality and honor widely different from that which is established
+     in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have learned that a
+     stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of rock, were
+     approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have
+     heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wracked
+     on hereditary enemies in a neighboring valley such vengeance as
+     would have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder.
+
+     "He would have found that robbery was held to be a calling not
+     merely innocent but honorable. He would have seen, wherever he
+     turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposition to
+     throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labor, which
+     are characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the
+     spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun, angling for salmon,
+     or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant
+     wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the scanty harvest of
+     oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In their view it
+     was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the aristocratic
+     title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the eagle's
+     feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting,
+     hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in
+     connection with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult.
+     Agriculture was indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was
+     much more becomingly employed in plundering the land of others than
+     in tilling his own.
+
+     "The religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude
+     mixture of Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was
+     associated with heathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptised men
+     poured libations of ale on one D�mon, and set out drink offerings
+     of milk for another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides,
+     and awaited, in that vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal
+     the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists whose
+     hereditary vocation was to preserve the memory of past events, an
+     enquirer would have found very few who could read. In truth, he
+     might easily have journeyed from sea to sea without discovering a
+     page of Gaelic printed or written.
+
+     "The price which he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the
+     country would have been heavy. He would have had to endure
+     hardships as great as if he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or
+     the Samoyeds. Here and there, indeed, at the castle of some great
+     lord who had a seat in the Parliament and Privy Council, and who
+     was accustomed to pass a large part of his life in the cities of
+     the South, might have been found wigs and embroidered coats, plate
+     and fine linen, lace and jewels, French dishes and French wines.
+     But, in general, the traveler would have been forced to content
+     himself with very different quarters. In many dwellings the
+     furniture, the food, the clothing, nay, the very hair and skin of
+     his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His lodging
+     would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have
+     swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
+     peat smoke, and foul with a hundred exhalations. At supper grain
+     fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied
+     with a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company
+     with whom he would have feasted would have been covered with
+     cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar
+     like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as
+     the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half
+     poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half
+     mad with the itch.
+
+     "This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and
+     dispassionate observer would have found in the character and
+     manners of this rude people something which might well excite
+     admiration and a good hope. Their courage was what great exploits
+     achieved in all the four quarters of the globe have since proved it
+     to be. Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own
+     patriarch, though politically a great evil, partook of the nature
+     of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill regulated; but
+     still it was heroic. There must be some elevation of soul in a man
+     who loves the society of which he is a member and the leader whom
+     he follows with a love stronger than the love of life. It was true
+     that the Highlander had few scruples about shedding the blood of an
+     enemy; but it was not less true that he had high notions of the
+     duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality to guests. It was
+     true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to the
+     commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
+     resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities,
+     live by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland
+     farmers up the pass which led to his native glen, he no more
+     considered himself as a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes
+     considered themselves as thieves when they divided the cargoes of
+     Spanish galleons. He was a warrior seizing lawful prize of war, of
+     war never once intermitted during the thirty-five generations which
+     had passed away since the Teutonic invaders had driven the children
+     of the soil to the mountains....
+
+     "His inordinate pride of birth and his contempt for labor and trade
+     were indeed great weaknesses, and had done far more than the
+     inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil to keep his
+     country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some compensation.
+     It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician virtues were
+     not less widely diffused among the population of the Highlands than
+     the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the island where
+     men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves to such
+     a degree in the idle, sauntering habits of an aristocracy, so
+     there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
+     degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
+     manner, self-respect, and that noble sensibility which makes
+     dishonor more terrible than death. A gentleman of Skye or Lochaber,
+     whose clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years,
+     and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would often do
+     the honors of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the
+     splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little
+     book-learning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would
+     have been a great error to put him in the same intellectual rank
+     with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can
+     become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of
+     poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
+     may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in
+     which books are wholly or almost wholly unknown."
+
+
+So, too, in the rudest communities of Appalachia, among the most
+trifling and unmoral natives of this region, among the illiterate and
+hide-bound, there still is much to excite admiration and good hope. I
+have not shrunk from telling the truth about these people, even when it
+was far from pleasant; but I would have preserved strict silence had I
+not seen in the most backward of them certain sterling qualities of
+manliness that our nation can ill afford to waste. It is a truth as old
+as the human race that savageries may co-exist with admirable qualities
+of head and heart. The only people who can consistently despair of the
+future for even the lowest of our mountaineers are those who deny
+evolution and who believe, with Archbishop Usher, that man was created
+_perfect_ at 9 A. M. on the 21st of October, in the year B. C. 4004.
+
+Let us remember, Sir and Madam, that we ourselves are descended from
+white barbarians. From William the Conqueror, you? Very well; how many
+other ancestors of yours were walking about England and elsewhere at the
+time of William? Untold thousands of them were just such people as you
+can find to-day brawling in some mountain still-house (unless there has
+been a deal of incest somewhere along your line), and you have
+infinitely more of their blood in your veins than you have of the
+Conqueror's--who, by the way, could he be re-incarnated, would not be
+tolerated in your drawing-room for half an hour. I may have made the
+point too brutally plain; but if it sinks through the smug
+self-complacency of those who "do not belong to the masses," who act as
+though civilization and morals and good manners were entailed to them
+through a mere dozen or so of selected ancestors, I remain unrepentant
+and unashamed. Let us thank whatever gods there be that it is not
+merely thou and I, our few friends and next of kin, but all humanity,
+that scientific faith embraces and will sustain.
+
+"People who have been among the southern mountaineers testify," says Mr.
+Fox, "that, as a race, they are proud, sensitive, hospitable, kindly,
+obliging in an unreckoning way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal,
+in spite of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation; that they
+are naturally capable, eager to learn, easy to uplift. Americans to the
+core, they make the southern mountains a storehouse of patriotism; in
+themselves they are an important offset to the Old World outcasts whom
+we have welcomed to our shores; and they surely deserve as much
+consideration from the nation as the negroes, or as the heathen, to whom
+we give millions."
+
+President Frost, of Berea College, who has worked among these people for
+nearly a lifetime, and has helped to educate their young folks by
+thousands, says: "It does one's heart good to help a young Lincoln who
+comes walking in perhaps a three-days' journey on foot, with a few
+hard-earned dollars in his pocket and a great eagerness for the
+education he can so faintly comprehend. (Scores of our young people see
+their first railroad train at Berea.) And it is a joy to welcome the
+mountain girl who comes back after having taught her first school,
+bringing the money to pay her debts and buy her first comfortable
+outfit--including rubbers and suitable underclothing--and perhaps
+bringing with her a younger sister. Such a girl exerts a great influence
+in her school and mountain home. An enthusiastic mountaineer described
+an example in this wise: 'I tell yeou hit teks a moughty resol_ute_ gal
+ter do what that thar gal has done. She got, I reckon, about the
+toughest deestric' in the ceounty, which is sayin' a good deal. An' then
+fer boardin'-place--well, there warn't much choice. There was one house,
+with one room. But she kep right on, an' yeou would hev thought she was
+havin' the finest kind of a time, ter look at her. An' then the last
+day, when they was sayin' their pieces and sich, some sorry fellers come
+in thar full o' moonshine an' shot their revolvers. I'm a-tellin' ye hit
+takes a moughty resol_ute_ gal."
+
+The great need of our mountaineers to-day is trained leaders of their
+own. The future of Appalachia lies mostly in the hands of those resolute
+native boys and girls who win the education fitting them for such
+leadership. Here is where the nation at large is summoned by a solemn
+duty. And it should act quickly, because commercialism exploits and
+debauches quickly. But the schools needed here are not ordinary graded
+schools. They should be vocational schools that will turn out good
+farmers, good mechanics, good housewives. Meantime let a model farm be
+established in every mountain county showing how to get the most out of
+mountain land. Such object lessons would speedily work an economic
+revolution. It is an economic problem, fundamentally, that the
+mountaineer has to face.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[1] A friend of mine on the U. S. Geological Survey tested with his
+clinometer a mountain cornfield that sloped at an angle of fifty
+degrees.
+
+[2] Average annual rainfall of New York City, 44 inches; of Glencoe, in
+the Scotch Highlands, nearly 130 inches.
+
+[3] _Gant-lot_: a fenced enclosure into which cattle are driven after
+cutting them out from those of other owners. So called because the
+mountain cattle run wild, feeding only on grass and browse, and "they
+couldn't travel well to market when filled up on green stuff: so they're
+penned up to git _gant_ and nimble."
+
+[4] Pure bluff of mine, at that time; but it was good policy to assume
+perfect confidence.
+
+[5] This was in 1904. There are no dispensaries in North Carolina now.
+
+[6] It is a curious fact that most horses despise the stuff. A
+celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years he rode a
+horse which was in the habit of drinking a mouthful from every stream
+that he forded; but if there was the least taint of still-slop in the
+water, he would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer
+then had only to follow up the stream, and he would infallibly find a
+still.
+
+[7] Ellwood Wilson, Sr., in the _Sewanee Review_.
+
+[8] In mountain dialect such words as settlement, government, studyment
+(reverie) are accented on the last syllable, or drawled with equal
+stress throughout.
+
+[9] So also in the lowland South. An extraordinary affectation of
+propriety appeared in a dispatch to the _Atlanta Constitution_ of
+October 29, 1912, which reported that an exhibitor of cattle at the
+State fair had been seriously horned by a _male cow_.
+
+[10] Pronounced Chee-_o_-ah, Chil-_how_-ee, Cow-_ee_, Cul-lo-_whee_,
+High-_wah_-see, Nan-tah-_hay_-lah, O-_ko_-na, _Luf_-ty, San-_teet_-lah,
+_Tel_-li-co, Tuck-a-_lee_-chee, Tuck-a-_see_-gee, Tuh-_loo_-lah,
+Tus-_quit_-ee, Wah-_yah_ (explosively on last syllable), _Wau_-ke-chah,
+Yah-_lah_-kah (commonly Ah-lar-ka or _'Lar_-ky by the settlers),
+You-_nay_-kah.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
+letters have been replaced with +transliterations+.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprints have been corrected:
+  "Hiddden" corrected to "Hidden" (Table of Contents)
+  "sing" corrected to "sting" (page 70)
+  "hav-" corrected to "having" (page 134)
+  "and and" corrected to "and" (page 148)
+  "could could" corrected to "could" (page 172)
+  "haled" corrected to "hauled" (page 174)
+  "Some the expedients" corrected to "Some of the expedients" (page 238)
+  "hoplessly" corrected to "hopelessly" (page 275)
+  "civlization" corrected to "civilization" (page 384)
+
+Printer's inconsistencies in hyphenation usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+
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+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
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+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;}
+
+    .pagenum  {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;}
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+    .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+
+    .poem {margin-left:15%; margin-right:15%;}
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+    .right {text-align: right;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart
+
+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: Our Southern Highlanders
+
+Author: Horace Kephart
+
+Release Date: March 20, 2010 [EBook #31709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS</h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<a name="front" id="front"></a></p>
+
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 494px;"><img src="images/ill-002.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by U. S. Forest Service</p>
+<p class="caption">Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter,<br />who discovered the body of Prof. Elisha
+Mitchell<br />where he perished near the summit of the Peak<br />that afterward
+was named in his honor</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>OUR SOUTHERN<br />HIGHLANDERS</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>HORACE KEPHART</h2>
+<h4><span class="smcap">Author of &#8220;the Book of Camping and Woodcraft,&#8221;<br />&#8220;Camp Cookery,&#8221; &#8220;Sporting Firearms,&#8221; Etc.</span></h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4><i>Illustrated</i></h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title.png" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>NEW YORK<br />OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY<br />MCMXVI</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1913, by</span><br />OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY</h4>
+<h4>All rights reserved</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5>First Printing, November 1913<br />
+Second Printing, December 1913<br />
+Third Printing, January 1914<br />
+Fourth Printing, April 1914</h5>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td>CHAPTER</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Something <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'Hiddden'">Hidden</ins>; Go and Find It</span>&#8221;</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td>&#8220;<span class="smcap">The Back of Beyond</span>&#8221;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Great Smoky Mountains</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Bear Hunt in the Smokies</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Moonshine Land</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Ways That Are Dark</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Leaf from the Past</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">&#8220;Blockaders&#8221; and &#8220;The Revenue&#8221;</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Outlander and the Native</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The People of the Hills</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Land of Do Without</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Home Folks and Neighbor People</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Mountain Dialect</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Law of the Wilderness</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Blood-Feud</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Who Are the Mountaineers?</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td>&#8220;<span class="smcap">When the Sleeper Wakes</span>&#8221;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr><td>Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter</td><td align="right"><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">facing page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Map of Appalachia</td><td align="right"><a href="#map">8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>A family of pioneers in the twentieth century</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>At the Post-Office</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The author in camp in the Big Smokies</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_41">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;Bob&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;There are few jutting crags&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The bears&#8217; home&mdash;laurel and rhododendron</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The old copper mine</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_73">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;What soldiers these fellows would make under leadership of some backwoods Napoleon&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;By and by up they came, carrying the bear on the trimmed sapling&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_89">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Skinning a frozen bear</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;... Powerful steep and laurely....&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Mountain still-house hidden in the laurel</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Moonshine still, side view</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_121">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Moonshine still in full operation</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Corn mill and blacksmith forge</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_137">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>A tub-mill</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek in which the author lived alone for three years</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>A mountain home</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_177">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Many of the homes have but one window</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_193">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The schoolhouse</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a worn and faded look&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_217">216</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The misty veil of falling water</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>An average mountain cabin</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_241">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>A bee-gum</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_249">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Let the women do the work</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;Till the sky-line blends with the sky itself&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Whitewater Falls</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_313">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The road follows the creek&mdash;there may be a dozen fords in a mile</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&#8220;Dense forest and luxuriant undergrowth&#8221;</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_337">336</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="map" id="map"></a></p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 475px;"><img src="images/ill-009.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">APPALACHIA</p>
+<p class="caption">The wavy black line shows the outer boundaries of Southern Appalachian
+Region.<br />The shaded portion shows the chief areas covered by high
+mountains, 3,000 to 6,700 feet above sea-level.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS</h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<h1>OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>&#8220;SOMETHING HIDDEN; GO AND FIND IT&#8221;</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In</span> one of Poe&#8217;s minor tales, written in 1845, there is a vague allusion
+to wild mountains in western Virginia &#8220;tenanted by fierce and uncouth
+races of men.&#8221; This, so far as I know, was the first reference in
+literature to our Southern mountaineers, and it stood as their only
+characterization until Miss Murfree (&#8220;Charles Egbert Craddock&#8221;) began
+her stories of the Cumberland hills.</p>
+
+<p>Time and retouching have done little to soften our Highlander&#8217;s
+portrait. Among reading people generally, South as well as North, to
+name him is to conjure up a tall, slouching figure in homespun, who
+carries a rifle as habitually as he does his hat, and who may tilt its
+muzzle toward a stranger before addressing him, the form of salutation
+being:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>&#8220;Stop thar! Whut&#8217;s you-unses name? Whar&#8217;s you-uns a-goin&#8217; ter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Let us admit that there is just enough truth in this caricature to give
+it a point that will stick. Our typical mountaineer is lank, he is
+always unkempt, he is fond of toting a gun on his shoulder, and his
+curiosity about a stranger&#8217;s name and business is promptly, though
+politely, outspoken. For the rest, he is a man of mystery. The great
+world outside his mountains knows almost as little about him as he does
+of it; and that is little indeed. News in order to reach him must be of
+such widespread interest as fairly to fall from heaven; correspondingly,
+scarce any incidents of mountain life will leak out unless they be of
+sensational nature, such as the shooting of a revenue officer in
+Carolina, the massacre of a Virginia court, or the outbreak of another
+feud in &#8220;bloody Breathitt.&#8221; And so, from the grim sameness of such
+reports, the world infers that battle, murder, and sudden death are
+commonplaces in Appalachia.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, in Miss Murfree&#8217;s novels, as in those of John Fox, Jr., and
+of Alice MacGowan, we do meet characters more genial than feudists and
+illicit distillers; none the less, when we have closed the book, who is
+it that stands out clearest as type and pattern of the mountaineer? Is
+it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> not he of the long rifle and peremptory challenge? And whether this
+be because he gets most of the limelight, or because we have a furtive
+liking for that sort of thing (on paper), or whether the armed outlaw be
+indeed a genuine protagonist&mdash;in any case, the Appalachian people remain
+in public estimation to-day, as Poe judged them, an uncouth and fierce
+race of men, inhabiting a wild mountain region little known.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern highlands themselves are a mysterious realm. When I
+prepared, eight years ago, for my first sojourn in the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which form the master chain of the Appalachian system, I
+could find in no library a guide to that region. The most diligent
+research failed to discover so much as a magazine article, written
+within this generation, that described the land and its people. Nay,
+there was not even a novel or a story that showed intimate local
+knowledge. Had I been going to Teneriffe or Timbuctu, the libraries
+would have furnished information a-plenty; but about this housetop of
+eastern America they were strangely silent; it was <i>terra incognita</i>.</p>
+
+<p>On the map I could see that the Southern Appalachians cover an area much
+larger than New England, and that they are nearer the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> center of our
+population than any other mountains that deserve the name. Why, then, so
+little known? Quaintly there came to mind those lines familiar to my
+boyhood: &#8220;Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain;
+and see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein,
+whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that
+they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that
+they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strongholds; and what the land
+is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In that dustiest room of a great library where &#8220;pub. docs.&#8221; are stored,
+I unearthed a government report on forestry that gave, at last, a clear
+idea of the lay of the land. And here was news. We are wont to think of
+the South as a low country with sultry climate; yet its mountain chains
+stretch uninterruptedly southwestward from Virginia to Alabama, 650
+miles in an air line. They spread over parts of eight contiguous States,
+and cover an area somewhat larger than England and Scotland, or about
+the same as that of the Alps. In short, the greatest mountain system of
+eastern America is massed in our Southland. In its upper zone one sleeps
+under blankets the year round.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>In all the region north of Virginia and east of the Black Hills of
+Dakota there is but one summit (Mount Washington, in New Hampshire) that
+reaches 6,000 feet above sea level, and there are only a dozen others
+that exceed 5,000 feet. By contrast, south of the Potomac there are
+forty-six peaks, and forty-one miles of dividing ridges, that rise above
+6,000 feet, besides 288 mountains and some 300 miles of divide that
+stand more than 5,000 feet above the sea. In North Carolina alone the
+mountains cover 6,000 square miles, with an <i>average</i> elevation of 2,700
+feet, and with twenty-one peaks that overtop Mount Washington.</p>
+
+<p>I repeated to myself: &#8220;Why, then, so little known?&#8221; The Alps and the
+Rockies, the Pyrennees and the Harz are more familiar to the American
+people, in print and picture, if not by actual visit, than are the
+Black, the Balsam, and the Great Smoky Mountains. It is true that summer
+tourists flock to Asheville and Toxaway, Linville and Highlands, passing
+their time at modern hotels and motoring along a few macadamed roads,
+but what do they see of the billowy wilderness that conceals most of the
+native homes? Glimpses from afar. What do they learn of the real
+mountaineer? Hearsay. For, mark you, nine-tenths of the Appalachian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>population are a sequestered folk. The typical, the average mountain
+man prefers his native hills and his primitive ancient ways.</p>
+
+<p>We read more and talk more about the Filipinos, see more of the Chinese
+and the Syrians, than of these three million next-door Americans who are
+of colonial ancestry and mostly of British stock. New York, we say, is a
+cosmopolitan city; more Irish than in Dublin, more Germans than in
+Munich, more Italians than in Rome, more Jews than in nine Jerusalems;
+but how many New Yorkers ever saw a Southern mountaineer? I am sure that
+a party of hillsmen fresh from the back settlements of the Unakas, if
+dropped on the streets of any large city in the Union, and left to their
+own guidance, would stir up more comment (and probably more trouble)
+than would a similar body of whites from any other quarter of the earth;
+and yet this same odd people is more purely bred from old American stock
+than any other element of our population that occupies, by itself, so
+great a territory.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers of the South are marked apart from all other folks by
+dialect, by customs, by character, by self-conscious isolation. So true
+is this that they call all outsiders &#8220;furriners.&#8221; It matters not whether
+your descent <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>be from Puritan or Cavalier, whether you come from
+Boston or Chicago, Savannah or New Orleans, in the mountains you are a
+&#8220;furriner.&#8221; A traveler, puzzled and scandalized at this, asked a native
+of the Cumberlands what he would call a &#8220;Dutchman or a Dago.&#8221; The fellow
+studied a bit and then replied: &#8220;Them&#8217;s the outlandish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 403px;"><img src="images/ill-019.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">A Family of Pioneers in the Twentieth Century</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Foreigner, outlander, it is all one; we are &#8220;different,&#8221; we are &#8220;quar,&#8221;
+to the mountaineer. He knows he is an American; but his conception of
+the metes and bounds of America is vague to the vanishing point. As for
+countries over-sea&mdash;well, when a celebrated Nebraskan returned from his
+trip around the globe, one of my backwoods neighbors proudly informed
+me: &#8220;I see they give Bryan a lot of receptions when he kem back from the
+other world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>No one can understand the attitude of our highlanders toward the rest of
+the earth until he realizes their amazing isolation from all that lies
+beyond the blue, hazy skyline of their mountains. Conceive a shipload of
+emigrants cast away on some unknown island, far from the regular track
+of vessels, and left there for five or six generations, unaided and
+untroubled by the growth of civilization. Among the descendants of such
+a company we would expect to find<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> customs and ideas unaltered from the
+time of their forefathers. And that is just what we do find to-day among
+our castaways in the sea of mountains. Time has lingered in Appalachia.
+The mountain folk still live in the eighteenth century. The progress of
+mankind from that age to this is no heritage of theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Our backwoodsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, of their connecting
+chains, and of the outlying Cumberlands, are still thinking essentially
+the same thoughts, still living in much the same fashion, as did their
+ancestors in the days of Daniel Boone. Nor is this their fault. They are
+a people of keen intelligence and strong initiative when they can see
+anything to win. But, as President Frost says, they have been
+&#8220;beleaguered by nature.&#8221; They are belated&mdash;ghettoed in the midst of a
+civilization that is as aloof from them as if it existed only on another
+planet. And so, in order to be fair and just with these, our backward
+kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize ourselves to the extent of
+<i>going back</i> and getting an eighteenth century point of view.</p>
+
+<p>But, first, how comes it that the mountain folk have been so long
+detached from the life and movement of their times? Why are they so
+foreign to present-day Americanism that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> innocently call all the
+rest of us foreigners?</p>
+
+<p>The answer lies on the map. They are creatures of environment, enmeshed
+in a labyrinth that has deflected and repelled the march of our nation
+for three hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>In 1728, when Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, was running the
+boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, he finally was
+repulsed by parallel chains of savage, unpeopled mountains that rose
+tier beyond tier to the westward, everywhere densely forested, and
+matted into jungle by laurel and other undergrowth. In his <i>Journal</i>,
+writing in the quaint, old-fashioned way, he said: &#8220;Our country has now
+been inhabited more than 130 years by the English, and still we hardly
+know anything of the Appalachian Mountains, that are nowhere above 250
+miles from the sea. Whereas the French, who are later comers, have
+rang&#8217;d from Quebec Southward as far as the Mouth of Mississippi, in the
+bay of Mexico, and to the West almost as far as California, which is
+either way above 2,000 miles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A hundred and thirty years later, the same thing could have been said of
+these same mountains; for the &#8220;fierce and uncouth races of men&#8221; that Poe
+faintly heard of remained practically undiscovered until they startled
+the nation on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the scene of our Civil War, by sending 180,000 of their
+riflemen into the Union Army.</p>
+
+<p>If a corps of surveyors to-day should be engaged to run a line due west
+from eastern Virginia to the Blue Grass of Kentucky, they would have an
+arduous task. Let us suppose that they start from near Richmond and
+proceed along the line of 37&deg; 50&prime;. The Blue Ridge is not especially
+difficult: only eight transverse ridges to climb up and down in fourteen
+miles, and none of them more than 2,000 feet high from bottom to top.
+Then, thirteen miles across the lower end of The Valley, a curious
+formation begins.</p>
+
+<p>As a foretaste, in the three and a half miles crossing Little House and
+Big House mountains, one ascends 2,200 feet, descends 1,400, climbs
+again 1,600, and goes down 2,000 feet on the far side. Beyond lie steep
+and narrow ridges athwart the way, paralleling each other like waves at
+sea. Ten distinct mountain chains are scaled and descended in the next
+forty miles. There are few &#8220;leads&#8221; rising gradually to their crests.
+Each and every one of these ridges is a Chinese wall magnified to
+altitudes of from a thousand to two thousand feet, and covered with
+thicket. The hollows between them are merely deep troughs.</p>
+
+<p>In the next thirty miles we come upon novel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> topography. Instead of wave
+following wave in orderly procession, we find here a choppy sea of small
+mountains, with hollows running toward all points of the compass.
+Instead of Chinese walls, we now have Chinese puzzles. The innate
+perversity of such configuration grows more and more exasperating as we
+toil westward. In the two hundred miles from the Greenbrier to the
+Kentucky River, the ridges are all but unscalable, and the streams
+sprangle in every direction like branches of mountain laurel.</p>
+
+<p>The only roads follow the beds of tortuous and rock-strewn water
+courses, which may be nearly dry when you start out in the morning, but
+within an hour may be raging torrents. There are no bridges. One may
+ford a dozen times in a mile. A spring &#8220;tide&#8221; will stop all travel, even
+from neighbor to neighbor, for a day or two at a time. Buggies and
+carriages are unheard of. In many districts the only means of
+transportation is with saddlebags on horseback, or with a &#8220;tow sack&#8221;
+afoot. If the pedestrian tries a short-cut he will learn what the
+natives mean when they say: &#8220;Goin&#8217; up, you can might&#8217; nigh stand up
+straight and bite the ground; goin&#8217; down, a man wants hobnails in the
+seat of his pants.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>James Lane Allen was not writing fiction<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> when he said of the far-famed
+Wilderness Road into Kentucky: &#8220;Despite all that has been done to
+civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic
+thoroughfare remains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its
+sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and
+loose boulders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity....
+One such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for
+profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally. Many
+were infidels&mdash;there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is known
+that the more pious companies of them, as they traveled along, would now
+and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers
+before they could go further. Perhaps one of the provocations to
+homicide among the mountain people should be reckoned this road. I have
+seen two of the mildest of men, after riding over it for a few hours,
+lose their temper and begin to fight&mdash;fight their horses, fight the
+flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such difficulties of intercommunication are enough to explain the
+isolation of the mountaineers. In the more remote regions this
+loneliness reaches a degree almost unbelievable. Miss Ellen Semple, in a
+fine monograph published in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the <i>Geographical Journal</i>, of London, in
+1901, gave us some examples:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;These Kentucky mountaineers are not only cut off from the outside
+world, but they are separated from each other. Each is confined to
+his own locality, and finds his little world within a radius of a
+few miles from his cabin. There are many men in these mountains who
+have never seen a town, or even the poor village that constitutes
+their county-seat.... The women ... are almost as rooted as the
+trees. We met one woman who, during the twelve years of her married
+life, had lived only ten miles across the mountain from her own
+home, but had never in this time been back home to visit her father
+and mother. Another back in Perry county told me she had never been
+farther from home than Hazard, the county-seat, which is only six
+miles distant. Another had never been to the post-office, four
+miles away; and another had never seen the ford of the Rockcastle
+River, only two miles from her home, and marked, moreover, by the
+country store of the district.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>When I first went into the Smokies, I stopped one night in a single-room
+log cabin, and soon had the good people absorbed in my tales of travel
+beyond the seas. Finally the housewife said to me, with pathetic
+resignation: &#8220;Bushnell&#8217;s the furdest ever I&#8217;ve been.&#8221; Bushnell, at that
+time, was a hamlet of thirty people, only seven miles from where we sat.
+When I lived alone on &#8220;the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> Hazel Creek,&#8221;
+there were women in the neighborhood, young and old, who had never seen
+a railroad, and men who had never boarded a train, although the Murphy
+branch ran within sixteen miles of our post-office. The first time that
+a party of these people went to the railroad, they were uneasy and
+suspicious. Nearing the way-station, a girl in advance came upon the
+first negro she ever saw in her life, and ran screaming back: &#8220;My
+goddamighty, Mam, thar&#8217;s the boogerman&mdash;I done seed him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But before discussing the mountain people and their problems, let us
+take an imaginary balloon voyage over their vast domain. South of the
+Potomac the Blue Ridge is a narrow rampart rising abruptly from the
+east, one or two thousand feet above its base, and descending sharply to
+the Shenandoah Valley on the west. Across the Valley begin the
+Alleghanies. These mountains, from the Potomac through to the northern
+Tennessee border, consist of a multitude of narrow ridges with steep
+escarpment on both sides, running southwesterly in parallel chains, and
+each chain separated from its neighbors by deep, slender dales. Wherever
+one goes westward from the Valley he will encounter tier after tier of
+these ridges, as I have already described.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 424px;"><img src="images/ill-029.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by U. S. Forest Service</p>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs&#8221;&mdash;Linville River and
+Falls, N. C.<br />The walls of one gorge are from 500 to 2,000 feet high.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>As a rule, the links in each chain can be passed by following small
+gaps; but often one must make very wide detours. For example, Pine
+Mountain (every link has its own distinct name) is practically
+impassable for nearly 150 miles, except for two water gaps and five
+difficult crossings. Although it averages only a mile thick, the people
+on its north side, generally, know less about those on the south than a
+Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutchmen.</p>
+
+<p>The Alleghanies together have a width of from forty to sixty miles.
+Westward of them, for a couple of hundred miles, are the labyrinthine
+roughs of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.</p>
+
+<p>In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies coalesce,
+but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well
+as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in
+the north. The southeast front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarpment,
+rising abruptly from the Piedmont Plateau of Carolina. Not one river
+cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the
+westward are higher and much more massive. It is the watershed of this
+whole mountain region. The streams rising on its northwestern front flow
+down into central plateaus,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and thence cut their way through the Unakas
+in deep and precipitous gorges, draining finally into the Gulf of
+Mexico, through the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.</p>
+
+<p>The northwestern range, which corresponds to the Alleghanies of
+Virginia, now assumes a character entirely different from them. Instead
+of parallel chains of low ridges, we have here, on the border of North
+Carolina and Tennessee, a single chain that dwarfs all others in the
+Appalachian system. It is cut into segments by the rivers (Nolichucky,
+French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee) that drain the
+interior plateaus, and each segment has a distinct name of its own
+(Iron, Northern Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi
+mountains). The Carolina mountaineers still call this system
+collectively the Alleghanies, but the U. S. Geological Survey has given
+it a more distinctive name, the Unakas. While the Blue Ridge has only
+seven peaks that rise above 5,000 feet, the Unakas have 125 summits
+exceeding 5,000, and ten that are over 6,000 feet.</p>
+
+<p>Connecting the Unaka chain with the Blue Ridge are several transverse
+ranges, the Stone, Beech, Roan, Yellow, Black, Newfound, Pisgah, Balsam,
+Cowee, Nantahala, Tusquitee, and a few minor mountains, which as a whole
+are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> much higher than the Blue Ridge, 156 summits rising over 5,000
+feet, and thirty-six over 6,000 feet above sea-level.</p>
+
+<p>In northern Georgia the Unakas and the Blue Ridge gradually fade away
+into straggling ridges and foothills, which extend into small parts of
+South Carolina and Alabama.</p>
+
+<p>The Cumberland Plateau is not attached to either of these mountain
+systems, but is rather a prolongation of the roughs of eastern Kentucky.
+It is separated from the Unakas by the broad valley of the Tennessee
+River. The Plateau rises very abruptly from the surrounding plains. It
+consists mainly of tableland gashed by streams that have cut their way
+down in deep narrow gulches with precipitous sides.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the literature about our Southern mountaineers refers only to
+the inhabitants of the comparatively meagre hills of eastern Kentucky,
+or to the Cumberlands of Tennessee. Little has been written about the
+real mountaineers of southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, and
+the extreme north of Georgia. The great mountain masses still await
+their annalist, their artist, and, in some places, even their explorer.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>&#8220;THE BACK OF BEYOND&#8221;</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Of</span> certain remote parts of Erin, Jane Barlow says: &#8220;In Bogland, if you
+inquire the address of such or such person, you will hear not very
+infrequently that he or she lives &#8216;off away at the Back of Beyond.&#8217;... A
+Traveler to the Back of Beyond may consider himself rather exceptionally
+fortunate, should he find that he is able to arrive at his destination
+by any mode of conveyance other than &#8216;the two standin&#8217; feet of him.&#8217;
+Often enough the last stage of his journey proceeds down some boggy
+<i>boreen</i>, or up some craggy hill-track, inaccessible to any wheel or
+hoof that ever was shod.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So in Appalachia, one steps shortly from the railway into the primitive.
+Most of the river valleys are narrow. In their bottoms the soil is rich,
+the farms well kept and generous, the owners comfortable and urbane. But
+from the valleys directly spring the mountains, with slopes rising
+twenty to forty degrees or more. These<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> mountains cover nine-tenths of
+western North Carolina, and among them dwell a majority of the native
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The back country is rough. No boat nor canoe can stem its brawling
+waters. No bicycle nor automobile can enter it. No coach can endure its
+roads. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle-bags, and shackly
+little sleds that are dragged over the bare ground by harnessed steers.
+This is the country that ordinary tourists shun. And well for such that
+they do, since whoso cares more for bodily comfort than for freedom and
+air and elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pastures.
+To him the backwoods could be only what Burns called Argyleshire: &#8220;A
+country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly
+overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage
+inhabitants.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.
+This for more reasons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and
+romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm
+of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American history; and,
+in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the
+present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> pioneer
+ancestors of a century or two ago. Besides, I wanted to enjoy a free
+life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of
+the chase, and the man&#8217;s game of matching my woodcraft against the
+forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides.</p>
+
+<p>So, casting about for a biding place that would fill such needs, I
+picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of
+those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of
+this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there
+was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got
+permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins.</p>
+
+<p>A mountain settlement consists of all who get their mail at the same
+place. Ours was made up of forty-two households (about two hundred
+souls) scattered over an area eight miles long by two wide. These are
+air-line measurements. All roads and trails &#8220;wiggled and wingled around&#8221;
+so that some families were several miles from a neighbor. Fifteen homes
+had no wagon road, and could be reached by no vehicle other than a
+narrow sled. Quill Rose had not even a sledpath, but journeyed full five
+miles by trail to the nearest wagon road.</p>
+
+<p>Medlin itself comprised two little stores built<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> of rough planks and
+bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings. A mile and a half
+away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also
+as church. Scattered about the settlement were seven tiny tub-mills for
+grinding corn, some of them mere open sheds with a capacity of about a
+bushel a day. Most of the dwellings were built of logs. Two or three,
+only, were weatherboarded frame houses and attained the dignity of a
+story and a half.</p>
+
+<p>All about us was the forest primeval, where roamed some sparse herds of
+cattle, razorback hogs, and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were in all
+the streams. Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a
+common nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the vast woodland
+that encompassed it.</p>
+
+<p>The post-office occupied a space about five feet square, in a corner of
+one of the stores. There was a daily mail, by rider, serving four other
+communities along the way. The contractor for this service had to
+furnish two horses, working turnabout, pay the rider, and squeeze his
+own profit, out of $499 a year. In Star Route days the mail was carried
+afoot, two barefooted young men &#8220;toting the sacks on their own wethers&#8221;
+over this thirty-two-mile round<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> trip, for forty-eight cents a day; and
+they boarded themselves!</p>
+
+<p>In the group that gathered at mail time I often was solicited to &#8220;back&#8221;
+envelopes, give out the news, or decipher letters for men who could not
+read. Several times, in the postmaster&#8217;s absence, I registered letters
+for myself, or for someone else, the law of the nation being suspended
+by general consent.</p>
+
+<p>Our stores, as I have said, were small, yet many of their shelves were
+empty. Oftentimes there was no flour to be had, no meat, cereals, canned
+goods, coffee, sugar, or oil. It excited no comment at all when Old Pete
+would lean across his bare counter and lament that &#8220;Thar&#8217;s lots o&#8217; folks
+a-hurtin&#8217; around hyur for lard, and I ain&#8217;t got none.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I have seen the time when our neighborhood could get no salt nor tobacco
+without making a twenty-four-mile trip over the mountain and back, in
+the dead of winter. This was due, partly, to the state of the roads, and
+to the fact that there would be no wagon available for weeks at a time.
+Wagoning, by the way, was no sinecure. Often it meant to chop a fallen
+tree out of the road, and then, with handspikes, &#8220;man-power the log
+outen the way.&#8221; Sometimes an axle would break (far upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> mountain,
+of course); then a tree must be felled, and a new axle made on the spot
+from the green wood, with no tools but axe and jackknife.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 472px;"><img src="images/ill-039.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">At the Post-Office</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Trade was mostly by barter, in which &#8217;coon skins and ginseng had the
+same rank as in the days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Long credits
+were given on anticipated crops; but the risks were great and the market
+limited by local consumption, as it did not pay to haul bulky
+commodities to the railroad. Hence it was self-preservation for the
+storekeepers to carry only a slender stock of essentials and take pains
+to have little left through unproductive times.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, credit would not be asked so long as anything at all could be
+offered in trade. When Bill took the last quart of meal from the house,
+as rations for a bear hunt, his patient Marg walked five miles to the
+store with a skinny old chicken, last of the flock, and offered to
+barter it for &#8220;a dustin&#8217; o&#8217; salt.&#8221; There was not a bite in her house
+beyond potatoes, and &#8220;&#8217;taters don&#8217;t go good &#8217;thout salt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every
+man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler,
+miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as
+barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> died. One
+farmer was also the wagoner of the district, as well as storekeeper,
+magistrate, veterinarian, and accoucheur. He also owned the only
+&#8220;tooth-pullers&#8221; in the settlement: a pair of universal forceps that he
+designed, forged, filed out, and wielded with barbaric grit. His wife
+kept the only boarding-house for leagues around. Truly, an accomplished
+couple!</p>
+
+<p>About two-thirds of our householders owned their homes. Of the remainder
+about three-fifths were renters and two-fifths were squatters, in the
+sense that these last were permitted to occupy ground for the sake of
+reporting trespass and putting out fires&mdash;or, maybe, to prevent them
+doing both. Nearly all of the wild land belonged to Northern timber
+companies who had not yet begun operations (they have done so within the
+past three years).</p>
+
+<p>Titles were confused, owing to careless surveys, or guesswork, in the
+past. Many boundaries overlapped, and there were bits of no-man&#8217;s land
+here and there, covered by no deed and subject to entry by anyone who
+discovered them. Our old frontier always was notorious for
+happy-go-lucky surveys and neglect to make legal entry of claims. Thus
+Boone lost the fairest parts of the Kentucky he founded, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+ejected and sent adrift. In our own time, overlapping boundaries have
+led to bitter litigation and murderous feuds.</p>
+
+<p>As our territory was sparsely occupied, there were none of those
+&#8220;perpendicular farms&#8221; so noticeable in older settlements near the river
+valleys, where men plow fields as steep as their own house roofs and
+till with the hoe many an acre that is steeper still. John Fox tells of
+a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his own cornfield and broke his neck.
+I have seen fields in Carolina where this might occur, as where a
+forty-five degree slope is tilled to the brink of a precipice. A woman
+told me: &#8220;I&#8217;ve hoed corn many a time on my knees&mdash;yes, I have;&#8221; and
+another: &#8220;Many&#8217;s the hill o&#8217; corn I&#8217;ve propped up with a rock to keep it
+from fallin&#8217; down-hill.&#8221;<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small></p>
+
+<p>Even in our new region many of the fields suffered quickly from erosion.
+When a forest is cleared there is a spongy humus on the ground surface
+that is extremely rich, but this washes away in a single season. The
+soil beneath is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>good, but thin on the hillsides, and its soluble,
+fertile ingredients soon leach out and vanish. Without terracing, which
+I have never seen practiced in the mountains of the South, no field with
+a surface slope of more than ten degrees (about two feet in ten) will
+last more than a few years. As one of my neighbors put it: &#8220;Thar, I&#8217;ve
+cl&#8217;ared me a patch and grubbed hit out&mdash;now I can raise me two or three
+severe craps!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then what?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When corn won&#8217;t grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple o&#8217; years.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you&#8217;ll rotate, and grow corn again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn&#8217;t raise a cuss-fight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But then you must move, and begin all over again. This continual moving must be a great nuisance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He rolled his quid and placidly answered: &#8220;Huk-uh; when I move, all I haffter do is put out the fire and call the dog.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His apparent indifference was only philosophy expressed with sardonic
+humor; just as another neighbor would say, &#8220;This is good, strong land,
+or it wouldn&#8217;t hold up all the rocks there is around hyur.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Right here is the basis for much of what strangers call shiftlessness
+among the mountaineers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> But of that, more anon in other chapters.</p>
+
+<p>In clearing new ground, everyone followed the ancient custom of girdling
+the tree trunks and letting them stand in spectral ugliness until they
+rotted and fell. This is a quick and easy way to get rid of the shade
+that otherwise would stunt the crops, and it prevents such trees as
+chestnut, buckeye and basswood from sprouting from the stumps. In the
+fields stood scores of gigantic hemlocks, deadened, that never would be
+used even for fuel, save as their bark furnished the women with
+quick-burning stove-wood in wet weather. No one dreamt that hemlock ever
+would be marketable. And this was only five years ago!</p>
+
+<p>The tillage was as rude and destructive as anything we read of in
+pioneer history. The common plow was a &#8220;bull-tongue,&#8221; which has aptly
+been described as &#8220;hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim.&#8221;
+The harrows were of wood, throughout, with locust teeth (a friend and I
+made one from the green trees in half a day, and it lasted three seasons
+on rocky ground). Sometimes no harrow was used at all, the plowed ground
+being &#8220;drug&#8221; with a big evergreen bough. This needed only to be withed
+directly to a pony&#8217;s tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and
+the picture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> of prehistoric agriculture would have been complete. After
+the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the
+entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows
+while their mother toiled like a man.</p>
+
+<p>Corn was the staple crop&mdash;in fact, the only crop of most farmers. Some
+rye was raised along the creek, and a little oats, but our settlement
+grew no wheat&mdash;there was no mill that could grind it. Wheat is raised,
+to some extent, in the river bottoms, and on the plateaus of the
+interior. I have seen it flailed out on the bare ground, and winnowed by
+pouring the grain and chaff from basket to basket while the women
+fluttered aprons or bed-sheets. Corn is topped for the blade-fodder, the
+ears gathered from the stalk, and the main stalks afterwards used as
+&#8220;roughness&#8221; (roughage). The cribs generally are ramshackle pens, and
+there is much waste from mold and vermin.</p>
+
+<p>The Carolina mountains are, by nature, one of the best fruit regions in
+eastern America. Apples, grapes, and berries, especially, thrive
+exceeding well. But our mountaineer is no horticulturist. He lets his
+fruit trees take care of themselves, and so, everywhere except on select
+farms near the towns, we see old apple and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> peach trees that never were
+pruned, bristling with shoots, and often bearing wizened fruit, dry and
+bitter, or half rotted on the stem.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, the gardens are slighted. Late in the season our average garden
+is a miniature jungle, chiefly of weeds that stand high as one&#8217;s head.
+Cabbage and field beans survive and figure mightily in the diet of the
+mountaineer. Potatoes generally do well, but few farmers raise enough to
+see them through the winter. Generally some tobacco is grown for family
+consumption, the strong &#8220;twist&#8221; being smoked or chewed indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting crop in our neighborhood was ginseng, of which there were
+several patches in cultivation. This curious plant is native throughout
+the Appalachians, but has been exterminated in all but the wildest
+regions, on account of the high price that its dried root brings. It has
+long since passed out of our pharmacop&oelig;ia, and is marketed only in
+China, though our own people formerly esteemed it as a panacea for all
+ills of the flesh. Colonel Byrd, in his &#8220;History of the Dividing Line,&#8221;
+says of it:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Though Practice wilt soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able
+Footman, yet, as a help to bear Fatigue I us&#8217;d to chew a Root of
+Ginseng as I Walk&#8217;t along. This <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>kept up my Spirits, and made me
+trip away as nimbly in my half Jack-Boots as younger men cou&#8217;d in
+their Shoes. This Plant is in high Esteem in China, where it sells
+for its Weight in Silver.... Its vertues are, that it gives an
+uncommon Warmth and Vigour to the Blood, and frisks the Spirits,
+beyond any other Cordial. It chears the Heart, even of a Man that
+has a bad Wife, and makes him look down with great Composure on the
+crosses of the World. It promotes insensible Perspiration,
+dissolves all Phlegmatick and Viscous Humours, that are apt to
+obstruct the Narrow channels of the Nerves. It helps the Memory and
+would quicken even Helvetian dullness. &#8217;Tis friendly to the Lungs,
+much more than Scolding itself. It comforts the Stomach, and
+Strengthens the Bowels, preventing all Colicks and Fluxes. In one
+Word, it will make a Man live a great while, and very well while he
+does live. And what is more, it will even make Old Age amiable, by
+rendering it lively, chearful, and good-humour&#8217;d.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Alas that only Chinamen and eighteenth-century Cavaliers could absorb
+the virtues of this sovereign herb!</p>
+
+<p>A successful ginseng grower of our settlement told me that two acres of
+the plant will bring an income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year, planting
+100,000 to the acre. The roots take eight years to mature. They weigh
+from one and a half to four ounces each, when fresh, and one-third of
+this dried. Two acres produce 25,000 roots a year, by progression. The
+dried root, at that time, brought five dollars a pound. At present, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>I
+believe, it is higher. Another friend of mine, who is in this business
+extensively, tried exporting for himself, but got only $6.50 a pound in
+Amoy, when the U. S. consul at that port assured him that the real
+market price was from $12.60 to $24.40. The local trader, knowing
+American prices, pocketed the difference.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 454px;"><img src="images/ill-049.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">The Author in Camp in the Big Smokies</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In times of scarcity many of our people took to the woods and gathered
+commoner medicinal roots, such as bloodroot and wild ginger (there are
+scores of others growing wild in great profusion), but made only a
+pittance at it, as synthetic drugs have mostly taken the place of herbal
+simples in modern medicine. Women and children did better, in the days
+before Christmas, by gathering galax, &#8220;hemlock&#8221; (<i>leucothoe</i>), and
+mistletoe, selling to the dealers at the railroad, who ship them North
+for holiday decorations. One bright lad from town informed me, with
+evident pride of geography, that &#8220;Some of this goes to London, England.&#8221;
+Nearly everywhere in our woods the beautiful ruddy-bronze galax is
+abundant. Along the water-courses, <i>leucothoe</i>, which similarly turns
+bronze in autumn, and lasts throughout the winter, is so prolific as to
+be a nuisance to travelers, being hard to push through.</p>
+
+<p>Most of our farmers had neither horse nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> mule. For the rough work of
+cultivating the hillsides a single steer hitched to the &#8220;bull-tongue&#8221;
+was better adapted, and the same steer patiently dragged a little sled
+to the trading post. On steep declivities the sled is more practical
+than a cart or wagon, because it can go where wheels cannot, it does not
+require so wide a track, and it &#8220;brakes&#8221; automatically in going
+downhill. Nearly all the farmer&#8217;s hauling is downhill to his home, or
+down farther to the village. A sled can be made quite easily by one man,
+out of wood growing on the spot, and with few iron fittings, or none at
+all. The runners are usually made of natural sourwood crooks, this
+timber being chosen because it wears very smooth and does not fur up nor
+splinter.</p>
+
+<p>The hinterland is naturally adapted to grazing, rather than to
+agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the
+mountains, where there are &#8220;balds&#8221; covered with succulent wild grass
+that resembles Kentucky bluegrass. Clearing and sowing would extend such
+areas indefinitely. The cattle forage for themselves through eight or
+nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only
+attention given them is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark
+the calves. Nearly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other
+blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges,
+but the backwoodsman does not want &#8220;critters that haffter be gentled and
+hand-fed.&#8221; The result is that many families go without milk a great part
+of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse,
+with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through
+winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the
+quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have
+had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten
+would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export&mdash;let the buyer
+fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any provision for
+taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.</p>
+
+<p>On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel
+all over the neighborhood to dispose of it in small portions. The
+carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the
+cheap &#8220;bilin&#8217; pieces&#8221; were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or
+whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an
+axe and a jackknife.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a
+crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit
+it for boot-heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.</p>
+
+<p>Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool.
+The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep
+will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering
+hand of man and perish without his shepherding. Curiously enough, our
+mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat&mdash;an animal perfectly
+adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats
+would be more profitable to the small farmers of the wild mountains than
+cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which
+there is a vast superfluity in all the Southern mountains. Unlike the
+weak, timorous and stupid sheep, a flock of goats can fight their own
+battles against wild animals. They are hardy in any weather, and thrive
+from their own pickings where other foragers would starve.</p>
+
+<p>A good milch goat gives more and richer milk than the average mountain
+cow. And a kid yields excellent fresh meat in <i>manageable</i> quantity, at
+a time when no one would butcher a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> beef because it would spoil. I used
+to shut my eyes and imagine the transformation that would be wrought in
+these mountains by a colony of Swiss, who would turn the coves into
+gardens, the moderate slopes into orchards, the steeper ones into
+vineyards, by terracing, and who would export the finest of cheese made
+from the surplus milk of their goats. But our native mountaineers&mdash;well,
+a man who will not eat beef nor drink fresh cow&#8217;s milk, and who despises
+butter, cannot be interested in anything of the dairy order.</p>
+
+<p>The chickens ran wild and scratched for a living; hence were thin,
+tough, and poor layers. Eggs seldom were for sale. It was not of much
+use to try to raise many chickens where they were unprotected from
+hawks, minks, foxes, weasels and snakes.</p>
+
+<p>Honey often was procured by spotting wild bees to their hoard and
+chopping the tree, a mild form of sport in which most settlers are
+expert. Our local preacher had a hundred hives of tame bees, producing
+1,500 pounds of honey a year, for which he got ten cents a pound at the
+railroad.</p>
+
+<p>The mainstay of every farmer, aside from his cornfield, was his litter
+of razorback hogs. &#8220;Old cornbread and sowbelly&#8221; are a menu complete<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> for
+the mountaineer. The wild pig, roaming foot-loose and free over hill and
+dale, picks up his own living at all seasons and requires no attention
+at all. He is the cheapest possible source of meat and yields the
+quickest return: &#8220;no other food animal can increase his own weight a
+hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of his life.&#8221; And so he
+is regarded by his owner with the same affection that Connemara Paddy
+bestows upon &#8220;the gintleman that pays the rint.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In physique and mentality, the razorback differs even more from a
+domestic hog than a wild goose does from a tame one. Shaped in front
+like a thin wedge, he can go through laurel thickets like a bear.
+Armored with tough hide cushioned by bristles, he despises thorns,
+brambles, and rattlesnakes, alike. His extravagantly long snout can
+scent like a cat&#8217;s, and yet burrow, uproot, overturn, as if made of
+metal. The long legs, thin flanks, pliant hoofs, fit him to run like a
+deer and climb like a goat. In courage and sagacity he outranks all
+other beasts. A warrior born, he is also a strategist of the first
+order. Like man, he lives a communal life, and unites with others of his
+kind for purposes of defense.</p>
+
+<p>The pig is the only large mammal I know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> of, besides man, whose eyes
+will not shine by reflected light&mdash;they are too bold and crafty, I wit.
+The razorback has a mind of his own; not instinct, but <i>mind</i>&mdash;whatever
+psychologists may say. He thinks. Anybody can see that when he is not
+rooting or sleeping he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable
+understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an
+uncanny gift of reading men&#8217;s thoughts, whenever those thoughts are
+directed against the peace and dignity of pigship. He bears grudges,
+broods over indignities, and plans redresses for the morrow or the week
+after. If he cannot get even with you, he will lay for your unsuspecting
+friend. And at the last, when arrested in his crimes and lodged in the
+pen, he is liable to attacks of mania from sheer helpless rage.</p>
+
+<p>If you camp out in the mountains, nothing will molest you but razorback
+hogs. Bears will flee and wildcats sneak to their dens, but the moment
+incense of cooking arises from your camp every pig within two miles will
+scent it and hasten to call. You may throw your arm out of joint: they
+will laugh in your face. You may curse in five languages: it is music to
+their titillating ears.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout summer and autumn I cooked out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> of doors, on the woodsman&#8217;s
+range of forked stakes and a lug-pole spanning parallel beds of rock.
+When the pigs came, I fed them red-pepper pie. Then all said good-bye to
+my hospitality save one slab-sided, tusky old boar&mdash;and he planned a
+campaign. At the first smell of smoke he would start for my premises.
+Hiding securely in a nearby thicket, he would spy on the operations
+until my stew got to simmering gently and I would retire to the cabin
+and get my fists in the dough. Then, charging at speed, he would knock
+down a stake, trip the lug-pole, and send my dinner flying. Every day he
+would do this. It got so that I had to sit there facing the fire all
+through my cooking, or that beast of a hog would ruin me. With this I
+thought he was outgeneraled. Idle dream! He would slip off to my
+favorite neighbor&#8217;s, break through the garden fence, and raise Ned
+instanter&mdash;all because he hated <i>me</i>, for that peppery fraud, and knew
+that Bob and I were cronies.</p>
+
+<p>I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own
+notion by calling it Be-liar. &#8220;That Be-liar,&#8221; swore he, &#8220;would cross
+hell on a rotten rail to git into my &#8217;tater patch!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Finally I could stand it no longer, and took <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>down my rifle. It was a
+nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squirrels,
+was in good form. However, in the mountains it is more heinous to kill
+another man&#8217;s pig than to shoot the owner. So I took craft for my guide,
+and guile for my heart&#8217;s counsel. I stalked Belial as stealthily as ever
+hunter crept on an antelope against the wind. At last I had him dead
+right: broadside to me and motionless as if in a daydream. I knew that
+if I drilled his ear, or shot his tail clean off, it would only make him
+meaner than ever. He sported an uncommonly fine tail, and was proud to
+flaunt it. I drew down on that member, purposely a trifle scant, fired,
+and&mdash;away scuttled that boar, with a <i>broken</i> tail that would dangle and
+cling to him disgracefully through life.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 515px;"><img src="images/ill-059.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;Bob&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Exit Belial! It was equivalent to a broken heart. He emigrated, or
+committed suicide, I know not which, but the Smoky Mountains knew him no
+more.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">For</span> a long time my chief interest was not in human neighbors, but in the
+mountains themselves&mdash;in that mysterious beckoning hinterland which rose
+right back of my chimney and spread upward, outward, almost to three
+cardinal points of the compass, mile after mile, hour after hour of
+lusty climbing&mdash;an Eden still unpeopled and unspoiled.</p>
+
+<p>I loved of a morning to slip on my haversack, pick up my rifle, or maybe
+a mere staff, and stride forth alone over haphazard routes, to enjoy in
+my own untutored way the infinite variety of form and color and shade,
+of plant and tree and animal life, in that superb wilderness that
+towered there far above all homes of men. (And I love it still, albeit
+the charm of new discovery is gone from those heights and gulfs that are
+now so intimate and full of memories).</p>
+
+<p>The Carolina mountains have a character all their own. Rising abruptly
+from a low base,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> and then rounding more gradually upward for 2,000 to
+5,000 feet above their valleys, their apparent height is more impressive
+than that of many a loftier summit in the West which forms only a
+protuberance on an elevated plateau. Nearly all of them are clad to
+their tops in dense forest and thick undergrowth. Here and there is a
+grassy &#8220;bald&#8221;: a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a
+mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber-line, few
+jutting crags, no ribs and vertebr&aelig; of the earth exposed. Seldom does
+one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very cliffs are sheathed with
+trees and shrubs, so that one treading their edges has no fear of
+falling into an abyss.</p>
+
+<p>Pinnacles or serrated ridges are rare. There are few commanding peaks.
+From almost any summit in Carolina one looks out upon a sea of flowing
+curves and dome-shaped eminences undulating, with no great disparity of
+height, unto the horizon. Almost everywhere the contours are similar:
+steep sides gradually rounding to the tops, smooth-surfaced to the eye
+because of the endless verdure. Every ridge is separated from its
+sisters by deep and narrow ravines. Not one of the thousand water
+courses shows a glint of its dashing stream, save where some far-off<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+river may reveal, through a gap in the mountain, one single shimmering
+curve. In all this vast prospect, a keen eye, knowing where to look, may
+detect an occasional farmer&#8217;s clearing, but to the stranger there is
+only mountain and forest, mountain and forest, as far as the eye can
+reach.</p>
+
+<p>Characteristic, too, is the dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer
+intensified, that ever hovers over the mountains, unless they be swathed
+in cloud, or, for a few minutes, after a sharp rain-storm has cleared
+the atmosphere. Both the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains owe their
+names to this tenuous mist. It softens all outlines, and lends a
+mirage-like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles
+off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible until
+finally the sky-line blends with the sky itself.</p>
+
+<p>The foreground of such a landscape, in summer, is warm, soft, dreamy,
+caressing, habitable; beyond it are gentle and luring solitudes; the
+remote ranges are inexpressibly lonesome, isolated and mysterious; but
+everywhere the green forest mantle bespeaks a vital present; nowhere
+does cold, bare granite stand as the sepulchre of an immemorial past.</p>
+
+<p>And yet these very mountains of Carolina are among the ancients of the
+earth. They were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> old, very old, before the Alps and the Andes, the
+Rockies and the Himalayas were molded into their primal shapes. Upon
+them, in after ages, were born the first hardwoods of America&mdash;perhaps
+those of Europe, too&mdash;and upon them to-day the last great hardwood
+forests of our country stand in primeval majesty, mutely awaiting their
+imminent doom.</p>
+
+<p>The richness of the Great Smoky forest has been the wonder and the
+admiration of everyone who has traversed it. As one climbs from the
+river to one of the main peaks, he passes successively through the same
+floral zones he would encounter in traveling from mid-Georgia to
+southern Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Starting amid sycamores, elms, gums, willows, persimmons, chinquapins,
+he soon enters a region of beech, birch, basswood, magnolia, cucumber,
+butternut, holly, sourwood, box elder, ash, maple, buckeye, poplar,
+hemlock, and a great number of other growths along the creeks and
+branches. On the lower slopes are many species of oaks, with hickory,
+hemlock, pitch pine, locust, dogwood, chestnut. In this region nearly
+all trees attain their fullest development. On north fronts of hills the
+oaks reach a diameter of five to six feet. In cool, rich coves, chestnut
+trees grow from six to nine feet across the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> stump; and tulip poplars up
+to ten or eleven feet, their straight trunks towering like gigantic
+columns, with scarcely a noticeable taper, seventy or eighty feet to the
+nearest limb.</p>
+
+<p>Ascending above the zone of 3,000 feet, white oak is replaced by the no
+less valuable &#8220;mountain oak.&#8221; Beech, birch, buckeye, and chestnut
+persist to 5,000 feet. Then, where the beeches dwindle until adult trees
+are only knee-high, there begins a sub-arctic zone of black spruce,
+balsam, striped maple, aspen and the &#8220;Peruvian&#8221; or red cherry.</p>
+
+<p>I have named only a few of the prevailing growths. Nowhere else in the
+temperate zone is there such a variety of merchantable timber as in
+western Carolina and the Tennessee front of the Unaka system. About a
+hundred and twenty species of native trees grow in the Smoky Forest
+itself. When Asa Gray visited the North Carolina mountains he
+identified, in a thirty-mile trip, a greater variety of indigenous trees
+than could be observed in crossing Europe from England to Turkey, or in
+a trip from Boston to the Rocky Mountain plateau. As John Muir has said,
+our forests, &#8220;however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to
+God; for they were the best He ever planted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The undergrowth is of almost tropical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> luxuriance and variety. Botanists
+say that this is the richest collecting ground in the United States.
+Whether one be seeking ferns or fungi or orchids or almost anything else
+vegetal, each hour will bring him some new delight. In summer the upper
+mountains are one vast flower garden: the white and pink of
+rhododendron, the blaze of azalea, conspicuous above all else, in
+settings of every imaginable shade of green.</p>
+
+<p>It was the botanist who discovered this Eden for us. Far back in the
+eighteenth century, when this was still &#8220;Cherokee Country,&#8221; inhabited by
+no whites but a few Indian-traders, William Bartram of Philadelphia came
+plant-hunting into the mountains of western Carolina, and spread their
+fame to the world. One of his choicest finds was the fiery azalea, of
+which he recorded: &#8220;The epithet fiery I annex to this most celebrated
+species of azalea, as being expressive of the appearance of its flowers;
+which are in general of the color of the finest red-lead, orange, and
+bright gold, as well as yellow and cream-color. These various splendid
+colors are not only in separate plants, but frequently all the varieties
+and shades are seen in separate branches on the same plant; and the
+clusters of the blossoms cover the shrubs in such incredible profusion
+on the hillsides that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> suddenly opening to view from dark shades, we
+are alarmed with apprehension of the woods being set on fire. This is
+certainly the most gay and brilliant flowering shrub yet known.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And we of a later age, seeing the same wild gardens still unspoiled, can
+appreciate the almost religious fervor of those early botanists, as of
+Michaux, for example, who, in 1794, ascending the peak of Grandfather,
+broke out in song: &#8220;<i>Mont&eacute; au sommet de la plus haut montagne de tout
+l&#8217;Am&eacute;rique Septentrionale, chante avec mon compagnon-guide l&#8217;hymn de
+Marsellois, et cri&eacute;, &#8216;Vive la Libert&eacute; et la R&eacute;publique Fran&ccedil;aise!&#8217;</i>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of course Michaux was wildly mistaken in thinking Grandfather &#8220;the
+highest mountain in all North America.&#8221; It is far from being even the
+highest of the Appalachians. Yet we scarcely know to-day, to a downright
+certainty, which peak is supreme among our Southern highlands. The honor
+is conceded to Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains, northeast of
+Asheville. Still, the heights of the Carolina peaks have been taken
+(with but one exception, so far as I know) only by barometric
+measurements, and these, even when official, may vary as much as a
+hundred feet for the same mountain. Since the highest ten or a dozen of
+our <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>Carolina peaks differ in altitude only one or two hundred feet,
+their actual rank has not yet been determined.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 501px;"><img src="images/ill-069.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by U. S. Forest Service</p>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;There are few jutting crags&#8221;&mdash;Southeast profile of Whiteside Mountain, N. C.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>For a long time there was controversy as to whether Mount Mitchell or
+Clingman Dome was the crowning summit of eastern America. The Coast and
+Geodetic Survey gave the height of Mount Mitchell as 6,688 feet; but
+later figures of the U. S. Geological Survey are 6,711 and 6,712. In
+1859 Buckley claimed for Clingman Dome of the Smokies an altitude of
+6,941 feet. In recent government reports the Dome appears variously as
+6,619 and 6,660. In 1911 I was told by Mr. H. M. Ramseur that when he
+laid out the route of the railroad from Asheville to Murphy he ran a
+line of levels from a known datum on this road to the top of Clingman,
+and that the result was &#8220;four sixes&#8221; (6,666 feet above sea-level). It is
+probable that second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong
+either to Clingman Dome or Guyot or LeConte, of the Smokies, or to
+Balsam Cone of the Black Mountains.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, the Great Smoky mountains are the master chain of the
+Appalachian system, the greatest mass of highland east of the Rockies.
+This segment of the Unakas forms the boundary between North Carolina
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> Tennessee from the Big Pigeon River to the McDaniel Bald.</p>
+
+<p>Although some parts of the Smokies are very rugged, with sharp changes
+of elevation, yet the range as a whole has no one dominating peak. Mount
+Guyot (pronounced <i>Gee</i>-o, with <i>g</i> as in get), Mount LeConte, and
+Clingman Dome all are over 6,600 feet and under 6,700, according to the
+most trustworthy measurements. Many miles of the divide rise 6,000 feet
+above sea-level, with only small undulations like ocean swells.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The most rugged and difficult part of the Smokies (and of the United
+States east of Colorado) is in the sawtooth mountains between Collins
+and Guyot, at the headwaters of the Okona Lufty River. I know but few
+men who have ever followed this part of the divide, although during the
+present year trails have been cut from Clingman to Collins, or near it,
+and possibly others beyond to the northeastward.</p>
+
+<p>In August and September, 1900, Mr. James H. Ferriss and wife,
+naturalists from Joliet, Illinois, explored the Smokies to the Lufty Gap
+northeast of Clingman, collecting rare species of snails and ferns. No
+doubt Mrs. Ferriss is the only white woman who ever went beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+Clingman or even ascended the Dome itself. She stayed at the Lufty Gap
+while her husband and a Carolina mountaineer of my acquaintance
+struggled through to Guyot and returned. Of this trip Mr. Ferriss sent
+me the following account:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We bought another axe of a moonshiner, and, with a week&#8217;s provisions on
+our backs, one of the guides and I took the Consolidated American Black
+Bear and Ruffed Grouse Line for Mount Guyot, twenty miles farther by map
+measurement. The bears were in full possession of the property, and we
+could get no information in the settlements, as the settlers do not
+travel this line. They did not know the names of the peaks other than as
+tops of the Great Smokies&mdash;knew nothing of the character of the country
+except that it was rough. The Tennesseeans seem afraid of the mountains,
+and the Cherokees of the North Carolina side equally so; for, two miles
+from camp, all traces of man, except surveyors&#8217; marks, had disappeared.
+In the first two days we routed eight bears out of their nests and mud
+wallows, and they seemed to stay routed, for upon our return we found
+the blackberry crop unharvested and had a bag pudding&mdash;&#8216;duff&#8217;&mdash;or what
+you call it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A surveyor had run part of the line this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> year, which helped us
+greatly, and the bears had made well-beaten trails part of the way. In
+places they had mussed up the ground as much as a barnyard. We tried to
+follow the boundary line between the two States, which is exactly upon
+the top of the Smokies, but often missed it. The government [state]
+surveyor many years ago made two hacks upon the trees, but sometimes the
+linemen neglected to use their axes for half a mile or so. It took us
+three and one-half days to go, and two and one-half to return, and we
+arose with the morning star and worked hard all day. The last day and a
+half, going, there was nothing to guide us but the old hacks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Equipped with government maps, a good compass, and a little conceit, I
+thought I could follow the boundary-line. In fact, at one time we
+intended to go through without a guide. A trail that runs through
+blackberry bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then there
+was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists growing thickly upon the
+ground as tomato vines, curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like
+a field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one place we
+walked fully a quarter of a mile over the tops of laurel bushes and
+these were ten or twelve feet in height, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> blown over one way by the
+wind. Much of the trail was along rocky edges, sometimes but six inches
+or so wide, but almost straight down on both sides for hundreds of feet.
+One night, delayed by lack of water, we did not camp till dark, and,
+finding a smooth spot, lay down with a small log on each side to hold us
+from rolling out of bed. When daylight came we found that, had we rolled
+over the logs, my partner would have dropped 500 feet into Tennessee and
+I would have dropped as far into North Carolina, unless some friendly
+tree top had caught us. Sometimes the mountain forked, and these ridges,
+concealed by the balsams, would not be seen. Then there were round
+knobs&mdash;and who can tell where the highest ridge lies on a round mountain
+or a ball? My woolen shirt was torn off to the shoulders, and my
+partner, who had started out with corduroys, stayed in the brush until I
+got him a pair of overalls from camp.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Even to the west of Clingman a stranger is likely to find some
+desperately rough travel if he should stray from the trail that follows
+the divide. It is easy going for anyone in fair weather, but when cloud
+settles on the mountain, as it often does without warning, it may be so
+thick that one cannot see a tree ten feet away. Under such circumstances
+I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> myself floundered from daylight till dark through heart-breaking
+laurel thickets, and without a bite to eat, not knowing whither I was
+going except that it was toward the Little Tennessee River.</p>
+
+<p>In 1906 I spent the summer in a herders&#8217; hut on top of the divide, just
+west of the Locust Ridge (miscalled Chestnut Ridge on the map), about
+six miles east of Thunderhead. This time I had a partner, and we had a
+glorious three months of it, nearly a mile above sea-level, and only
+half a day&#8217;s climb from the nearest settlement. One day I was alone,
+Andy having gone down to Medlin for the mail. It had rained a good
+deal&mdash;in fact, there was a shower nearly every day throughout the
+summer, the only semblance of a dry season in the Smokies being the
+autumn and early winter. The nights were cold enough for fires and
+blankets, even in our well-chinked cabin.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I had finished my lonesome dinner, and was washing up, when I saw
+a man approaching. This was an event, for we seldom saw other men than
+our two selves. He was a lame man, wearing an iron extension on one
+foot, and he hobbled with a cane. He looked played-out and gaunt. I met
+him outside. He smiled as though I looked good to him, and asked with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+some eagerness, &#8220;Can I buy something to eat here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;you can&#8217;t buy anything here&#8221;&mdash;how his face
+fell!&mdash;&#8220;but I&#8217;ll give you the best we have, and you&#8217;re welcome.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then you should have seen that smile!</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have just enough strength left to drag himself into the
+hut. I asked no questions, though wondering what a cripple, evidently a
+gentleman, though in rather bad repair, was doing on top of the Smoky
+Mountains. It was plain that he had spent more than one night
+shelterless in the cold rain, and that he was quite famished. While I
+was baking the biscuit and cooking some meat, he told his story. This is
+the short of it:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am a Canadian, McGill University man, electrician. My company sent me
+to Cincinnati. I got a vacation of a couple of weeks, and thought I&#8217;d
+take a pedestrian tour. I can walk better than you&#8217;d think,&#8221; and he
+tapped the short leg.</p>
+
+<p>I liked his grit.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew no place to go,&#8221; he continued; &#8220;so I took a map and looked for
+what might be interesting country, not too far from Cincinnati. I picked
+out these mountains, got a couple of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> government topographical sheets,
+and, thinking they would serve like European ordnance maps, I had no
+fear of going astray. It was my plan to walk through to the Balsam
+Mountains, and so on to the Big Pigeon River. I went to Maryville,
+Tennessee, and there I was told that I would find a cabin every five or
+six miles along the summit from Thunderhead to the Balsams.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I broke in abruptly: &#8220;Whoever told you that was either an impostor or an
+ignoramus. There are only four of these shacks on the whole Smoky range.
+Two of them, the Russell cabin and the Spencer place, you have already
+passed without knowing it. This is called the Hall cabin. None of these
+three are occupied save for a week or so in the fall when the cattle are
+being rounded up, or by chance, as my partner and I happen to be here
+now. Beyond this there is just one shack, at Siler&#8217;s Meadow. It is down
+below the summit, hidden in timber, and you would never have seen it.
+Even if you had, you would have found it as bare as a last year&#8217;s mouse
+nest, for nobody ever goes there except a few bear-hunters. From there
+onward for forty miles is an uninhabited wilderness so rough that you
+could not make seven miles a day in it to save your life, even if you
+knew the course; and there is no trail at all. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>Those government maps
+are good and reliable to show the <i>approaches</i> to this wild country, but
+where you need them most they are good for nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 458px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-079.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">The Bears&#8217; Home&mdash;Laurel and Rhododendron</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then,&#8221; said he, &#8220;if I had missed your cabin I would have starved to
+death, for I depended on finding a house to the eastward, and would have
+followed the trail till I dropped. I have been out in the laurel
+thickets, now, three days and two nights; so nothing could have induced
+me to leave this trail, once I found it, or until I could see out to a
+house on one side or other of the mountain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would see no house on either side from here to beyond Guyot, about
+forty miles. Had you no rations at all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I traveled light, expecting to find entertainment among the natives.
+Here is what I have left.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He showed me a crumpled buckwheat flapjack, a pinch of tea, and a couple
+of ounces of brandy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was saving them for the last extremity; have had nothing to eat since
+yesterday morning. Drink the brandy, please; it came from Montreal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, my boy, that liquor goes down your own throat instanter. You&#8217;re the
+chap that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> needs it. This coffee will boil now in a minute. I won&#8217;t give
+you all the food you want, for it wouldn&#8217;t be prudent; but by and by you
+shall have a bellyful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then, as well as he could, he sketched the route he had followed. Where
+the trail from Tennessee crosses from Thunderhead to Haw Gap he had
+swerved off from the divide, and he discovered his error somewhere in
+the neighborhood of Blockhouse. There, instead of retracing his steps,
+he sought a short-cut by plunging down to the headwaters of Haw Creek,
+thus worming deeper and deeper into the devil&#8217;s nest. One more day would
+have finished him. When I told him that the trip from Clingman to Guyot
+would be hard work for a party of experienced mountaineers, and that it
+would probably take them a week, during which time they would have to
+pack all supplies on their own backs, he agreed that his best course
+would be down into Carolina and out to the railroad.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of animal life in the mountains I was most entertained by the raven.
+This extraordinary bird was the first creature Noah liberated from the
+ark&mdash;he must have known, even at that early period of nature study, that
+it was the most sagacious of all winged things. Or perhaps Noah<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> and the
+raven did not get on well together and he rid himself of the pest at
+first opportunity. Doubtless there could have been no peace aboard a
+craft that harbored so inquisitive and talkative a fowl. Anyway, the
+wild raven has been superlatively shy of man ever since the flood.</p>
+
+<p>Probably there is no place south of Labrador where our raven (<i>Corvus
+corax principalis</i>) is seen so often as in the Smokies; and yet, even
+here, a man may haunt the tops for weeks without sight or sound of the
+ebon mystery&mdash;then, for a few days, they will be common. On the
+southeast side of the Locust Ridge, opposite Huggins&#8217;s Hell, between
+Bone Valley and the main fork of Hazel Creek, there is a &#8220;Raven&#8217;s Cliff&#8221;
+where they winter and breed, using the same nests year after year.
+Occasionally one is trapped, with bloody groundhog for bait; but I have
+yet to meet a man who has succeeded in shooting one.</p>
+
+<p>If the raven&#8217;s body be elusive his tongue assuredly is not. No other
+animal save man has anything like his vocal range. The raven croaks,
+clucks, caws, chuckles, squalls, pleads, &#8220;pooh-poohs,&#8221; grunts, barks,
+mimics small birds, hectors, cajoles&mdash;yes, pulls a cork, whets a scythe,
+files a saw&mdash;with his throat. As is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> well known, ravens can be taught
+human speech, like parrots; and I am told they show the same preference
+for bad words&mdash;which, I think, is quite in character with their
+reputation as thieves and butchers. However, I may be prejudiced, seeing
+that the raven&#8217;s favorite dainties for his menu are the eyes of living
+fawns and lambs.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger in these mountains will be surprised at the apparent scarcity
+of game animals. It is not unusual for one to hunt all day in an
+absolute wilderness, where he sees never a fresh track of man, and not
+get a shot at anything fit to eat. The cover is so dense that one
+still-hunting (going without dogs) has poor chance of spying the game
+that lurks about him; and there really is little of it by comparison
+with such huntings fields as the Adirondacks, Maine, Canada, where game
+has been conserved for many years. It used to be the same up there. The
+late W. J. Stillman, writing in 1877 of the Maine woods, said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The most striking feature of the forest, after one has become
+habituated to the gloom, the pathlessness, and the apparent
+impenetrability of the screen it forms around him, is the absence
+of animal life. You may wander for hours without seeing a living
+creature.... One thinks of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>the woods and the wild beasts; yet in
+all the years of my wilderness living I can catalogue the wild
+creatures other than squirrels, grouse, and small birds (never
+plenty, generally very rare) which I have accidentally encountered
+and seen while wandering for hunting or mere pastime in the wild
+forest; one deer, one porcupine, one marten (commonly called
+sable), and maybe half a dozen hares. You may walk hours and not
+see a living creature larger than a fly, for days together and not
+see a grouse, a squirrel, or a bird larger than the Canada jay....
+Lands running with game are like those flowing with milk and honey;
+and when the sporting books tell you that game is abundant, don&#8217;t
+imagine that you are assured from starvation thereby. I have been
+reduced, in a country where deer were swarming, to live several
+days together on corn meal.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It is much the same to-day in our Appalachian wilderness, where no
+protection worthy the name has ever been afforded the game and fish
+since Indian times. There is a class of woods-loafers, very common here,
+that ranges the forest at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or
+&#8220;hog rifles,&#8221; killing bearing females as well as legitimate game,
+fishing at night, even using dynamite in the streams; and so, in spite
+of the fact that there is no better game harborage granted by Nature on
+our continent than the Carolina mountains, the deer are all but
+exterminated in most districts, turkeys and even squirrels are rather
+scarce, and good trout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> fishing is limited to stocked waters or streams
+flowing through virgin forest. The only game animal that still holds his
+own is the black bear, and he endures in few places other than the
+roughest districts, such as that southwest of the Sugarland Mountains,
+where laurel and cliffs daunt all but the hardiest of men.</p>
+
+<p>The only venomous snakes in the mountains are rattlers and copperheads,
+the former common, the latter rare. The chance of being bitten by one is
+about as remote as that of being struck by lightning&mdash;either accident
+<i>might</i> happen, of course. The mountaineers have an absurd notion that
+the little lizard so common in the hills is rank &#8220;pizen.&#8221; Oddly enough,
+they call it a &#8220;scorpion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From those two pests of the North Woods, black-flies and mosquitoes, the
+Smokies are mercifully exempt. At least there are no mosquitoes that
+bite or <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'sing'">sting</ins>, except down in the river valleys where they have been
+introduced by railroad trains&mdash;and even there they are but a feeble
+folk. The reason is that in the mountains there is almost no standing
+water where they can breed.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the common house-fly is extraordinarily numerous and
+persistent&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> daily curse, even on top of Smoky. I imagine this is due
+to the wet climate, as in Ireland. Minute gnats (the &#8220;punkies&#8221; or
+&#8220;no-see-ums&#8221; of the North) are also offensively present in trout-fishing
+time. And every cabin is alive with fleas. A hundred nights I have
+anointed myself with citronella from head to foot, and outsmelt a cheap
+barber-shop, to escape their plague. In a tent, and without dogs, one
+can be immune.</p>
+
+<p>In most years there are very few chiggers, except on pine ridges. They
+are worse along rivers than in the mountains. The ticks of this country
+are not numerous, and seldom fasten on man.</p>
+
+<p>The climate of the Carolina mountains is pleasantly cool in summer. Even
+at low altitudes (1,600 to 2,000 feet) the nights generally are
+refreshing. It may be hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. The
+air is drier (less relative humidity) than in the lowlands,
+notwithstanding that there is greater rainfall here than elsewhere in
+the United States outside of Florida and the Puget Sound country. The
+annual rainfall varies a great deal according to locality, being least
+at Asheville (42 inches) and greatest on the southeastern slope of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+Blue Ridge, where as much as 105 inches has been recorded in a year. The
+average rainfall of the whole region is 73 inches a year.<small><a name="f2.1" id="f2.1" href="#f2">[2]</a></small></p>
+
+<p>In general the mornings are apt to be lowery, with fogs hanging low
+until, say, 9 o&#8217;clock, so that one cannot predict weather for the day.
+Heavy dews remain on the bushes until about the same hour.</p>
+
+<p>The winters are short. What Northerners would call cold weather is not
+expected until Christmas, and generally it is gone by the end of
+February. Snow sometimes falls on the higher mountains by the first of
+October, and the last snow may linger there until April (exceptionally
+it falls in May). Tornadoes are unknown here, but sometimes a hurricane
+will sweep the upper ranges. On April 19, 1900, a blizzard from the
+northwest struck the Smokies. In twenty minutes everything was frozen.
+At Siler&#8217;s Meadow seventeen cattle climbed upon each other for warmth
+and froze to death in a solid hecatomb. A herdsman who was out at the
+time, and narrowly escaped a similar fate, assured me that &#8220;that was the
+beatenest snowstorm ever I seen.&#8221; In the valleys there may be a few days
+in January and February <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>when the mercury drops to zero or a few
+degrees lower. On the high peaks, of course, the winter cold often is
+intense, and on the sunless north side of Clingman there are overhangs
+or crevices where a little ice may be found the year around.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 451px;"><img src="images/ill-089.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">The old copper mine</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly there is vast mineral wealth hidden in the Carolina
+mountains. A greater variety of minerals has been found here than in any
+other State save Colorado. But, for the present, it is a hard country to
+prospect in, owing to the thick covering of the forest floor. Not only
+is the underbrush very dense, but beneath it there generally is a thick
+stratum of clay overlaying the rocks, even on steep slopes. Gold has
+been found in numberless places, but finely disseminated. I do not know
+a locality in the mountains proper where a working vein has been
+discovered. At my cabin I did just enough panning to get a notion that
+if I could stand working in icy water ten hours a day I might average a
+dollar in yellow dust by it. The adjacent copper mine carries
+considerable gold. Silver and lead are not common, so far as known, but
+there are many good copper and iron properties. Gems are mined
+profitably in several of the western counties. The corundum, mica, talc,
+and monazite are, I believe,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> unexcelled in the United States. Building
+stone is abundant, and there is fine marble in various places. Kaolin is
+shipped out in considerable quantities. The rocks chiefly are gneisses,
+granites, metamorphosed marbles, quartzites, and slates, all of them far
+too old to bear fossils or coal.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">&#8220;Git</span> up, pup! you&#8217;ve scrouged right in hyur in front of the fire. You
+Dred! what makes you so blamed contentious?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Little John shoved both dogs into a corner, and strove to scrape some
+coals from under a beech forestick that glowed almost hot enough to melt
+brass.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is the wust coggled-up fire I ever seed, to fry by. Bill, hand me
+some Old Ned from that suggin o&#8217; mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A bearded hunchback reached his long arm to a sack that hung under our
+rifles, drew out a chuck of salt pork, and began slicing it with his
+jackknife. On inquiry I learned that &#8220;Old Ned&#8221; is merely slang for fat
+pork, but that &#8220;suggin&#8221; or &#8220;sujjit&#8221; (the <i>u</i> pronounced like <i>oo</i> in
+look) is true mountain dialect for a pouch, valise, or carryall, its
+etymology being something to puzzle over.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>Four dogs growled at each other under a long bunk of poles and hay that
+spanned one side of our cabin. The fire glared out upon the middle of an
+unfloored and windowless room. Deep shadows clung to the walls and
+benches, charitably concealing much dirt and disorder left by previous
+occupants, much litter of our own contributing.</p>
+
+<p>At last we were on a saddle of the divide, a mile above sea-level, in a
+hut built years ago for temporary lodgment of cattle-men herding on the
+grassy &#8220;balds&#8221; of the Smokies. A sagging clapboard roof covered its two
+rooms and the open space between them that we called our &#8220;entry.&#8221; The
+State line between North Carolina and Tennessee ran through this
+uninclosed hallway. The Carolina room had a puncheon floor and a
+clapboard table, also better bunks than its mate; but there had risen a
+stiff southerly gale that made the chimney smoke so abominably that we
+were forced to take quarters in the neighbor State.</p>
+
+<p>Granville lifted the lid from a big Dutch oven and reported &#8220;Bread&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a flash in the frying-pan, a curse and a puff from Little
+John. The coffee-pot boiled over. We gathered about the hewn benches
+that served for tables, and sat <i>&agrave; la Turc</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> upon the ground. For some
+time there was no sound but the gale without and the munching of
+ravenous men.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If this wind &#8217;ll only cease afore mornin&#8217;, we&#8217;ll git us a bear
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A powerful gust struck the cabin, by way of answer; a great roaring
+surged up from the gulf of Defeat, from Desolation, and from the other
+forks of Bone Valley&mdash;clamor of ten thousand trees struggling with the
+blast.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit&#8217;s gittin&#8217; wusser.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Any danger of this roost being blown off the mountain?&#8221; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit&#8217;s stood hyur twenty year through all the storms; I reckon it can
+stand one more night of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A man couldn&#8217;t walk upright, outside the cabin,&#8221; I asserted, thinking
+of the St. Louis tornado, in which I had lain flat on my belly, clinging
+to an iron post.</p>
+
+<p>The hunchback turned to me with a grave face. &#8220;I&#8217;ve seed hit blow, here
+on top o&#8217; Smoky, till a hoss couldn&#8217;t stand up agin it. You&#8217;ll spy,
+to-morrow, whar several trees has been wind-throwed and busted to
+kindlin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I recalled that several, in the South, means many&mdash;&#8220;a good many,&#8221; as our
+own tongues phrase it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>&#8220;Oh, shucks! Bill Cope,&#8221; put in &#8220;Doc&#8221; Jones, &#8220;whut do you-uns know about
+windstorms? Now, <i>I&#8217;ve</i> hed some experiencin&#8217; up hyur that&#8217;ll do to tell
+about. You remember the big storm three year ago, come grass, when the
+cattle all huddled up a-top o&#8217; each other and friz in one pile, solid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bill grunted an affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wal, sir, I was a-herdin&#8217;, over at the Spencer Place, and was out on
+Thunderhead when the wind sprung up. Thar come one turrible vyg&#8217;rous
+blow that jest nacherally lifted the ground. I went up in the sky, my
+coat ripped off, and I went a-sailin&#8217; end-over-end.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. About half an hour later, I lit <i>spang</i> in the mud, way down
+yander in Tuckaleechee Cove&mdash;yes, sir: ten mile as the crow flies, and a
+mile deeper &#8217;n trout-fish swim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a moment. Then Little John spoke up: &#8220;I mind about
+that time, Doc; but I disremember which buryin&#8217;-ground they-all planted
+ye in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Planted! <i>Me?</i> Huh! But I had one tormentin&#8217; time findin&#8217; my hat!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The cabin shook under a heavier blast, to match Bill&#8217;s yarn.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Old Wind-maker&#8217;s blowin&#8217; liars out o&#8217;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> North Car&#8217;lina. Hang on to yer
+hat, Doc! Whoop! hear &#8217;em a-comin&#8217;!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Durn this blow, anyhow! No bear &#8217;ll cross the mountain sich a night as
+this.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t we hunt down on the Carolina side?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s whar we&#8217;re goin&#8217; to drive; but hit&#8217;s no use if the bear don&#8217;t
+come over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How is that? Do they sleep in one State and eat in the other?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes: you see, the Tennessee side of the mountain is powerful steep and
+laurely, so &#8217;t man nor dog cain&#8217;t git over it in lots o&#8217; places; that&#8217;s
+whar the bears den. But the mast, sich as acorns and beech and hickory
+nuts, is mostly on the Car&#8217;lina side; that&#8217;s whar they hafter come to
+feed. So, when it blows like this, they stay at home and suck their paws
+till the weather clars.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So we&#8217;ll have to do, at this rate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go see whut the el-e-ments looks like.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We arose from our squatting postures. John opened the little clapboard
+door, which swung violently backward as another gust boomed against the
+cabin. Dust and hot ashes scattered in every direction. The dogs sprang
+up, one encroached upon another, and they flew at each other&#8217;s throats.
+They were powerful beasts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> dangerous to man as well as to the brutes
+they were trained to fight; but John was their master, and he soon
+booted them into surly subjection.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The older dog don&#8217;t ginerally raise no ruction; hit&#8217;s the younger one
+that&#8217;s ill,&#8221; by which he meant vicious. &#8220;You, Coaly, you&#8217;ll git some o&#8217;
+that meanness shuck outen you if you tackle an old she-bear to-morrow!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has the young dog ever fought a bear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; he don&#8217;t know nothin&#8217;; but I reckon he&#8217;ll pick up some larnin&#8217; in
+the next two, three days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have these dogs got the Plott strain? I&#8217;ve been told that the Plott
+hounds are the best bear dogs in the country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tain&#8217;t so,&#8221; snorted John. &#8220;The Plott curs are the best: that is, half
+hound, half cur&mdash;though what we-uns calls the cur, in this case, raelly
+comes from a big furrin dog that I don&#8217;t rightly know the breed of.
+Fellers, you can talk as you please about a streak o&#8217; the cur spilin&#8217; a
+dog; but I know hit ain&#8217;t so&mdash;not for bear fightin&#8217; in these mountains,
+whar you cain&#8217;t foller up on hossback, but hafter do your own runnin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is the reason, John?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 545px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-099.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some Backwoods Napoleon!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal, hit&#8217;s like this: a plumb cur, of course, cain&#8217;t foller a cold
+track&mdash;he just runs by sight; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>and he won&#8217;t hang&mdash;he quits. But,
+t&#8217;other way, no hound &#8217;ll raelly fight a bear&mdash;hit takes a big severe
+dog to do that. Hounds has the best noses, and they&#8217;ll run a bear all
+day and night, and the next day, too; but they won&#8217;t never tree&mdash;they&#8217;re
+afeared to close in. Now, look at them dogs o&#8217; mine. A cur ain&#8217;t got no
+dew-claws&mdash;them dogs has. My dogs can foller ary trail, same&#8217;s a hound;
+but they&#8217;ll run right in on the varmint, snappin&#8217; and chawin&#8217; and
+worryin&#8217; him till he gits so mad you can hear his tushes pop half a
+mile. He cain&#8217;t run away&mdash;he haster stop every bit, and fight. Finally
+he gits so tired and het up that he trees to rest hisself. Then we-uns
+ketches up and finishes him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mebbe you-uns don&#8217;t know that a dew-clawed dog is snake-proof&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But somebody, thinking that dog-talk had gone far enough, produced a
+bottle of soothing-syrup that was too new to have paid tax. Then we
+discovered that there was musical talent, of a sort, in Little John. He
+cut a pigeon-wing, twirled around with an imaginary banjo, and sang in a
+quaint minor:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Did you <i>ever</i> see the devil,<br />
+With his <i>pitchfork</i> and ladle,<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>And his <i>old</i> iron shovel,<br />
+And his old gourd head?<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O, I <i>will</i> go to meetin&#8217;,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I <i>will</i> go to meetin&#8217;,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yes, I <i>will</i> go to meetin&#8217;,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In an old tin pan.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Other songs followed, with utter irrelevance&mdash;mere snatches from
+&#8220;ballets&#8221; composed, mainly, by the mountaineers themselves, though some
+dated back to a long-forgotten age when the British ancestors of these
+Carolina woodsmen were battling with lance and long-bow. It was one of
+modern and local origin that John was singing when there came a
+diversion from without&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">La-a-ay down, boys,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Le&#8217;s take a nap:</span><br />
+Thar&#8217;s goin&#8217; to be trouble<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the Cumberland Gap&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Our ears were stunned by one sudden thundering crash. The roof rose
+visibly, as though pushed upward from within. In an instant we were
+blinded by moss and dried mud&mdash;the chinking blown from between the logs
+of our shabby cabin. Dred and Coaly cowered as though whipped, while
+&#8220;Doc&#8217;s&#8221; little hound slunk away in the keen misery of fear. We men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+looked at each other with lowered eyelids and the grim smile that
+denotes readiness, though no special eagerness, for dissolution. Beyond
+the &#8220;gant-lot&#8221; we could hear trees and limbs popping like skirmishers in
+action.</p>
+
+<p>Then that tidal wave of air swept by. The roof settled again with only a
+few shingles missing. We went to &#8220;redding up.&#8221; Squalls broke against the
+mountainside, hither and yon, like the hammer of Thor testing the
+foundations of the earth. But they were below us. Here, on top, there
+was only the steady drive of a great surge of wind; and speech was
+possible once more.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fellers, you want to mark whut you dream about, to-night: hit&#8217;ll shore
+come true to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes: but you mustn&#8217;t tell whut yer dream was till the hunt&#8217;s over, or
+it&#8217;ll spile the charm.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There ensued a grave discussion of dream-lore, in which the illiterates
+of our party declared solemn faith. If one dreamt of blood, he would
+surely see blood the next day. Another lucky sign for a hunter was to
+dream of quarreling with a woman, for that meant a she-bear; it was
+favorable to dream of clear water, but muddy water meant trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The wind died away. When we went out for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> a last observation of the
+weather we found the air so clear that the lights of Knoxville were
+plainly visible, in the north-north west, thirty-two miles in an air
+line. Not another light was to be seen on earth, although in some
+directions we could scan for nearly a hundred miles. The moon shone
+brightly. Things looked rather favorable for the morrow, after all.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&#8220;Brek-k-k-<i>fust</i>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I awoke to a knowledge that somebody had built a roaring fire and was
+stirring about. Between the cabin logs one looked out upon a starry sky
+and an almost pitch-dark world. What did that pottering vagabond mean by
+arousing us in the middle of the night? But I was hungry. Everybody half
+arose on elbows and blinked about. Then we got up, each after his
+fashion, except one scamp who resumed snoring.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whar&#8217;s that brekfust you&#8217;re yellin&#8217; about?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit&#8217;s for you-uns to help <i>git</i>! I knowed I couldn&#8217;t roust ye no other
+way. Here, you, go down to the spring and fetch water. Rustle out, boys;
+we&#8217;ve got to git a soon start if you want bear brains an&#8217; liver for
+supper.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;soon start&#8221; tickled me into good humor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Our dogs were curled together under the long bunk, having popped indoors
+as soon as the way was opened. Somebody trod on Coaly&#8217;s tail. Coaly
+snapped Dred. Instantly there was action between the four. It is
+interesting to observe what two or three hundred pounds of dog can do to
+a ramshackle berth with a man on top of it. Poles and hay and ragged
+quilts flew in every direction. Sleepy Matt went down in the midst of
+the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, swearing valiantly. I went out and hammered ice out of the
+wash-basin while Granville and John quelled the riot. Presently our
+frying-pans sputtered and the huge coffee-pot began to get up steam.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal, who dreamt him a good dream?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did,&#8221; affirmed the writer. &#8220;I dreamt that I had an old colored woman
+by the throat and was choking dollars out of her mouth&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good la!&#8221; exclaimed four men in chorus; &#8220;you hadn&#8217;t orter a-told.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why? Wasn&#8217;t that a lovely dream?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit means a she-bear, shore as a cap-shootin&#8217; gun; but you&#8217;ve done
+spiled it all by tellin&#8217;. Mebbe somebody&#8217;ll git her to-day, but <i>you</i>
+won&#8217;t&mdash;your chanct is ruined.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So the reader will understand why, in this veracious narrative, I cannot
+relate any heroic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> exploits of my own in battling with Ursus Major. And
+so you, ambitious one, when you go into the Smokies after that long-lost
+bear, remember these two cardinal points of the Law:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>(1) Dream that you are fighting some poor old colored woman. (That
+is easy: the victuals you get will fix up your dream, all right.)
+And&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(2) Keep your mouth shut about it.</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>There was still no sign of rose-color in the eastern sky when we sallied
+forth. The ground, to use a mountaineer&#8217;s expression, was &#8220;all spewed up
+with frost.&#8221; Rime crackled underfoot and our mustaches soon stiffened in
+the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p>It was settled that Little John Cable and the hunchback Cope should take
+the dogs far down into Bone Valley and start the drive, leaving
+Granville, &#8220;Doc,&#8221; Matt, and myself to picket the mountain. I was given a
+stand about half a mile east of the cabin, and had but a vague notion of
+where the others went.</p>
+
+<p>By jinks, it was cold! I built a little fire between the buttressing
+roots of a big mountain oak, but still my toes and fingers were numb.
+This was the 25th of November, and we were at an altitude where
+sometimes frost forms in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> July. The other men were more thinly clad than
+I, and with not a stitch of wool beyond their stockings; but they seemed
+to revel in the keen air. I wasted some pity on Cope, who had no
+underwear worthy of the name; but afterwards I learned that he would not
+have worn more clothes if they had been given him. Many a night my
+companions had slept out on the mountain without blanket or shelter,
+when the ground froze and every twig in the forest was coated with rime
+from the winter fog.</p>
+
+<p>Away out yonder beyond the mighty bulk of Clingman Dome, which, black
+with spruce and balsam, looked like a vast bear rising to contemplate
+the northern world, there streaked the first faint, nebulous hint of
+dawn. Presently the big bear&#8217;s head was tipped with a golden crown
+flashing against the scarlet fires of the firmament, and the earth
+awoke.</p>
+
+<p>A rustling some hundred yards below me gave signal that the gray
+squirrels were on their way to water. Out of a tree overhead hopped a
+mountain &#8220;boomer&#8221; (red squirrel), and down he came, eyed me, and
+stopped. Cocking his head to one side he challenged peremptorily: &#8220;Who
+are you? Stump? Stump? Not a stump. What the deuce!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>I moved my hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lawk&mdash;the booger-man! Run, run, run!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere from the sky came a strange, half-human note, as of someone
+chiding: &#8220;<i>Wal</i>-lace, <i>Wal</i>-lace, <i>Wat</i>!&#8221; I could get no view for the
+trees. Then the voice flexibly changed to a deep-toned &#8220;Co-<i>logne</i>,
+Co-<i>logne</i>, Co-<i>logne</i>,&#8221; that rang like a bell through the forest
+aisles.</p>
+
+<p>Two names uttered distinctly from the air! Two scenes conjured in a
+breath, vivid but unrelated as in dreams: Wallace&mdash;an iron-bound
+Scottish coast; Cologne&mdash;tall spires, and cliffs along the Rhine! What
+magic had flashed such pictures upon a remote summit of the Smoky
+Mountains?</p>
+
+<p>The weird speaker sailed into view&mdash;a raven. Forward it swept with great
+speed of ebon wings, fairly within gunshot for one teasing moment. Then,
+as if to mock my gaping stupor, it hurtled like a hawk far into the safe
+distance, whence it flung back loud screams of defiance and chuckles of
+derision.</p>
+
+<p>As the morning drew on, I let the fire die to ashes and basked lazily in
+the sun. Not a sound had I heard from the dogs. My hoodoo was working
+malignly. Well, let it work. I was comfortable now, and that old bear
+could go to any other doom she preferred. It was pleasant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> enough to
+lie here alone in the forest and be free! Aye, it was good to be alive,
+and to be far, far away from the broken bottles and old tin cans of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 527px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-109.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;By and by up they came, carrying the Bear on a trimmed sapling&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>For many a league to the southward clouds covered all the valleys in
+billows of white, from which rose a hundred mountain tops, like islands
+in a tropic ocean. My fancy sailed among and beyond them, beyond the
+horizon&#8217;s rim, even unto those far seas that I had sailed in my youth,
+to the old times and the old friends that I should never see again.</p>
+
+<p>But a forenoon is long-drawn-out when one has breakfasted before dawn,
+and has nothing to do but sit motionless in the woods and watch and
+listen. I got to fingering my rifle trigger impatiently and wishing that
+a wild Thanksgiving gobbler might blunder into view. Squirrels made
+ceaseless chatter all around my stand. Large hawks shrilled by me within
+tempting range, whistling like spent bullets. A groundhog sat up on a
+log and whistled, too, after a manner of his own. He was so near that I
+could see his nose wiggle. A skunk waddled around for twenty minutes,
+and once came so close that I thought he would nibble my boot. I was
+among old mossy beeches, scaled with polyphori, and twisted into
+postures of torture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> by their battles with the storms. Below, among
+chestnuts and birches, I could hear the <i>t-wee, t-wee</i> of &#8220;joree-birds&#8221;
+(towhees), which winter in the valleys. Incessantly came the
+<i>chip-chip-cluck</i> of ground squirrels, the saucy bark of the grays, and
+great chirruping among the &#8220;boomers,&#8221; which had ceased swearing and were
+hard at work.</p>
+
+<p>Far off on my left a rifle cracked. I pricked up and listened intently,
+but there was never a yelp from a dog. Since it is a law of the chase to
+fire at nothing smaller than turkeys, lest big game be scared away, this
+shot might mean a gobbler. I knew that Matt Hyde could not, to save his
+soul, sit ten minutes on a stand without calling turkeys (and he <i>could</i>
+call them, with his unassisted mouth, better than anyone I ever heard
+perform with leaf or wing-bone or any other contrivance).</p>
+
+<p>Thus the slow hours dragged along. I yearned mightily to stretch my
+legs. Finally, being certain that no drive would approach my stand that
+day, I ambled back to the hut and did a turn at dinner-getting. Things
+were smoking, and smelt good, by the time four of our men turned up, all
+of them dog-tired and disappointed, but stoical.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That pup Coaly chased off atter a wildcat,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> blurted John. &#8220;We held the
+old dogs together and let him rip. Then Dred started a deer. It was that
+old buck that everybody&#8217;s shot at, and missed, this three year back. I&#8217;d
+believe he&#8217;s a hant if &#8217;t wasn&#8217;t for his tracks&mdash;they&#8217;re the biggest I
+ever seen. He must weigh two hunderd and fifty. But he&#8217;s a foxy cuss.
+Tuk right down the bed o&#8217; Desolation, up the left prong of Roaring Fork,
+right through the Devil&#8217;s Race-path (how a deer can git through thar I
+don&#8217;t see!), crossed at the Meadow Gap, went down Eagle Creek, and by
+now he&#8217;s in the Little Tennessee. That buck, shorely to God, has wings!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We were at table in the Carolina room when Matt Hyde appeared. Sure
+enough, he bore a turkey hen.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was callin&#8217; a gobbler when this fool thing showed up. I fired a shoot
+as she riz in the air, but only bruk her wing. She made off on her legs
+like the devil whoppin&#8217; out fire. I run, an&#8217; she run. Guess I run her
+half a mile through all-fired thickets. She piped &#8216;<i>Quit&mdash;quit</i>,&#8217; but I
+said, &#8216;I&#8217;ll see you in hell afore I quit!&#8217; and the chase resumed.
+Finally I knocked her over with a birch stob, and here we are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Matt ruefully surveyed his almost denuded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> legs, evidence of his chase.
+&#8220;Boys,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I&#8217;m nigh breechless!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>None but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another
+drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was
+fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But
+the stamina of these &#8220;withey&#8221; little men was even more remarkable than
+their endurance of cold. After a small slice of fried pork, a chunk of
+half-baked johnny-cake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh
+as ever.</p>
+
+<p>What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some
+backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together!&mdash;some man like Daniel
+Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!</p>
+
+<p>I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought
+from home. After his first deep draught, Little John exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hah! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.</p>
+
+<p>We took new stands; but the afternoon passed without incident to those
+of us on the mountain tops. I returned to camp about five o&#8217;clock, and
+was surprised to see three of our men lugging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> across the &#8220;gant-lot&#8221;<small><a name="f3.1" id="f3.1" href="#f3">[3]</a></small>
+toward the cabin a small female bear.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hyur&#8217;s yer old nigger woman,&#8221; shouted John.</p>
+
+<p>The hunters showed no elation&mdash;in fact, they looked sheepish&mdash;and I
+suspected a nigger in the woodpile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;s this? I didn&#8217;t hear any drive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There wa&#8217;n&#8217;t none.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then where did you get your bear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In one of Wit Hensley&#8217;s traps, dum him! Boys, I wish t&#8217; we <i>hed</i>
+roasted the temper outen them trap-springs, like we talked o&#8217; doin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was the bear alive?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Live as a hot coal. See the pup&#8217;s head!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I examined Coaly, who looked sick. The flesh was torn from his lower jaw
+and hung down a couple of inches. Two holes in the top of his head
+showed where the bear&#8217;s tusks had tried to crack his skull.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When the other dogs found her, he rushed right in. She hadn&#8217;t been
+trapped more&#8217;n a few <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>hours, and she larned Coaly somethin&#8217; about the
+bear business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t this spoil him for hunting hereafter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not if he has his daddy&#8217;s and mammy&#8217;s grit. We&#8217;ll know by to-morrow
+whether he&#8217;s a shore-enough bear dog; for I&#8217;ve larned now whar they&#8217;re
+crossin&#8217;&mdash;seed sign a-plenty and it&#8217;s spang fraish. Coaly, old boy!
+you-uns won&#8217;t be so feisty and brigaty after this, will ye!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;John, what do those two words mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Good</i> la! whar was you fotch up? Them&#8217;s common. They mean nigh about
+the same thing, only there&#8217;s a differ. When I say that Doc Jones thar is
+brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he&#8217;s stuck on hisself and
+wants to show off&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And John Cable&#8217;s sulkin&#8217; around with his nose out o&#8217; jint,&#8221; interjected
+&#8220;Doc.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Feisty,&#8221; proceeded the interpreter, &#8220;feisty means when a feller&#8217;s
+allers wigglin&#8217; about, wantin&#8217; ever&#8217;body to see him, like a kid when the
+preacher comes. You know a feist is one o&#8217; them little bitty dogs that
+ginerally runs on three legs and pretends a whole lot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All of us were indignant at the setter of the trap. It had been hidden
+in a trail, with no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> sign to warn a man from stepping into it. In
+Tennessee, I was told, it is a penitentiary offense to set out a bear
+trap. We agreed that a similar law ought to be passed as soon as
+possible in North Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s only two years ago,&#8221; said Granville to me, &#8220;that Jasper
+Millington, an old man living on the Tennessee side, started acrost the
+mountain to get work at the Everett mine, where you live. Not fur from
+where we are now, he stepped into a bear trap that was hid in the
+leaves, like this one. It broke his leg, and he starved to death in it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Despite our indignation meeting, it was decided to carry the trapped
+bear&#8217;s hide to Hensley, and for us to use only the meat as recompense
+for trouble, to say nothing of risk to life and limb. Such is the
+mountaineers&#8217; regard for property rights!</p>
+
+<p>The animal we had ingloriously won was undersized, weighing scant 175
+pounds. The average weight of Smoky Mountain bears is not great, but
+occasionally a very large beast is killed. Matt Hyde told us that he
+killed one on the Welch Divide in 1901, the meat of which, dressed,
+without the hide, weighed 434 pounds, and the hide &#8220;squared eight feet&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+when stretched for drying. &#8220;Doc&#8221; Jones killed a bear that was &#8220;kivered
+with fat, five inches thick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards I took pains to ask the most famous bear hunters of our
+region what were the largest bears they had personally killed. Uncle
+Jimmy Crawford, of the Balsam Mountains, estimated his largest at 500
+pounds gross, and the hide of another that he had killed weighed forty
+pounds after three days&#8217; drying. Quill Rose, of Eagle Creek, said that,
+after stripping the hide from one of his bears, he took the fresh skin
+by the ears and raised it as high as he could reach above his head, and
+that four inches of the butt end of the hide (not legs) trailed on the
+ground. &#8220;And,&#8221; he added severely, &#8220;thar&#8217;s no lie about it.&#8221; Quill is six
+feet one and one-half inches tall. Black Bill Walker, of the middle
+prong of Little River (Tennessee side), told me &#8220;The biggest one I ever
+saw killed had a hide that measured ten feet from nose to rump,
+stretched for drying. The biggest I ever killed myself measured nine and
+a half feet, same way, and weighed a good four hundred net, which,
+allowin&#8217; for hide, blood, and entrails, would run full five hunderd live
+weight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 468px;"><img src="images/ill-119.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Skinning a frozen bear</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Within the past two years two bears of about 500 pounds each have been
+killed in Swain and Graham counties, the Cables getting one of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>them.
+The veteran hunters that I have named have killed their hundreds of
+bears and are men superior to silly exaggeration. In the Smoky Mountains
+the black bear, like most of the trees, attains its fullest development,
+and that it occasionally reaches a weight of 500 pounds when &#8220;hog fat&#8221;
+is beyond reasonable doubt, though the average would not be more than
+half that weight.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We spent the evening in debate as to where the next drive should be
+made. Some favored moving six miles eastward, to the old mining shack at
+Siler&#8217;s Meadow, and trying the headwaters of Forney&#8217;s Creek, around Rip
+Shin Thicket and the Gunstick Laurel, driving towards Clingman Dome and
+over into the bleak gulf, southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, that I
+had named Godforsaken&mdash;a title that stuck. We knew there were bears in
+that region, though it was a desperately rough country to hunt in.</p>
+
+<p>But John and the hunchback had found &#8220;sign&#8221; in the opposite direction.
+Bears were crossing from Little River in the neighborhood of Thunderhead
+and Briar Knob, coming up just west of the Devil&#8217;s Court House and
+&#8220;using&#8221; around Block House, Woolly Ridge,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> Bear Pen, and thereabouts.
+The motion carried, and we adjourned to bed.</p>
+
+<p>We breakfasted on bear meat, the remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, and
+wheat bread shortened with bear&#8217;s grease until it was light as a
+feather; and I made tea. It was the first time that Little John ever saw
+&#8220;store tea.&#8221; He swallowed some of it as if it had been boneset, under
+the impression that it was some sort of &#8220;yerb&#8221; that would be good for
+his insides. Without praising its flavor, he asked what it had cost,
+and, when I told him &#8220;a dollar a pound,&#8221; reckoned that it was &#8220;rich
+man&#8217;s medicine&#8221;; said he preferred dittany or sassafras or goldenrod.
+&#8220;Doc&#8221; Jones opined that it &#8220;looked yaller,&#8221; and he even affirmed that it
+&#8220;tasted yaller.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal, people,&#8221; exclaimed Matt, &#8220;I &#8217;low I&#8217;ve done growed a bit, atter
+that mess o&#8217; meat. Le&#8217;s be movin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was a hard pull for me, climbing up the rocky approach to Briar Knob.
+This was my first trip to the main divide, and my heart was not yet used
+to mountain climbing.</p>
+
+<p>The boys were anxious for me to get a shot. I was paying them nothing;
+it was share-and-share alike; but their neighborly kindness moved them
+to do their best for the outlander.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>So they put me on what was probably the best stand for the day. It was
+above the Fire-scald, a brul&eacute; or burnt-over space on the steep southern
+side of the ridge between Briar Knob and Laurel Top, overlooking the
+grisly slope of Killpeter. Here I could both see and hear an uncommonly
+long distance, and if the bear went either east or west I would have
+timely warning.</p>
+
+<p>This Fire-scald, by the way, is a famous place for wildcats. Once in a
+blue moon a lynx is killed in the highest zone of the Smokies, up among
+the balsams and spruces, where both the flora and fauna, as well as the
+climate, resemble those of the Canadian woods. Our native hunters never
+heard the word lynx, but call the animal a &#8220;catamount.&#8221; Wolves and
+panthers used to be common here, but it is a long time since either has
+been killed in this region, albeit impressionable people see wolf tracks
+or hear a &#8220;pant&#8217;er&#8221; scream every now and then.</p>
+
+<p>I had shivered on the mountain top for a couple of hours, hearing only
+an occasional yelp from the dogs, which had been working in the thickets
+a mile or so below me, when suddenly there burst forth the devil of a
+racket.</p>
+
+<p>On came the chase, right in my direction. Presently I could distinguish
+the different<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> notes: the deep bellow of old Dred, the hound-like baying
+of Rock and Coaly, and little Towse&#8217;s feisty yelp.</p>
+
+<p>I thought that the bear might chance the comparatively open space of the
+Fire-scald, because there were still some ashes on the ground that would
+dust the dogs&#8217; nostrils and throw them off the scent. And such, I
+believe, was his intention. But the dogs caught up with him. They nipped
+him fore and aft. Time after time he shook them off; but they were true
+bear dogs, and, like Matt Hyde after the turkey, they knew no such word
+as quit.</p>
+
+<p>I took a last squint at my rifle sights, made sure there was a cartridge
+in the chamber, and then felt my ears grow as I listened. Suddenly the
+chase swerved at a right angle and took straight up the side of
+Saddle-back. Either the bear would tree, or he would try to smash on
+through to the low rhododendron of the Devil&#8217;s Court House, where dogs
+who followed might break their legs. I girded myself and ran, &#8220;wiggling
+and wingling&#8221; along the main divide, and then came the steep pull up
+Briar Knob. As I was grading around the summit with all the lope that
+was left in me, I heard a rifle crack, half a mile down Saddle-back. Old
+&#8220;Doc&#8221; was somewhere in that vicinity. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> halted to listen. Creation,
+what a rumpus! Then another shot. Then the warwhoop of the South, that
+we read about.</p>
+
+<p>By and by, up they came, John and Cope and &#8220;Doc,&#8221; two at a time,
+carrying the bear on a trimmed sapling. Presently Hyde joined us, then
+came Granville, and we filed back to camp, where &#8220;Doc&#8221; told his story:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Boys, them dogs&#8217; eyes shined like new money. Coaly fit agin, all right,
+and got his tail bit. The bear div down into a sink-hole with the dogs
+a-top o&#8217; him. Soon&#8217;s I could shoot without hittin&#8217; a dog, I let him have
+it. Thought I&#8217;d shot him through the head, but he fit on. Then I jumped
+down into the sink and kicked him loose from the dogs, or he&#8217;d a-killed
+Coaly. Waal, sir, he wa&#8217;n&#8217;t hurt a bit&mdash;the ball jest glanced off his
+head. He riz an&#8217; knocked me down with his left paw, an&#8217; walked right
+over me, an&#8217; lit up the ridge. The dogs treed him in a minute. I went to
+shoot up at him, but my new hulls [cartridges] fit loose in this old
+chamber and this one drap [dropped] out, so the gun stuck. Had to git my
+knife out and fix hit. Then the dad-burned gun wouldn&#8217;t stand roostered
+[cocked]; the feather-spring had jumped out o&#8217; place. But I held back
+with my thumb, and killed him anyhow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>&#8220;Fellers,&#8221; he added feelingly, &#8220;I wish t&#8217; my legs growed
+hind-side-fust.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>What</i> fer?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So &#8217;s &#8217;t I wouldn&#8217;t bark my shins!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bears,&#8221; remarked John, &#8220;is all left-handed. Ever note that? Hit&#8217;s the
+left paw you wanter look out fer. He&#8217;d a-knocked somethin&#8217; out o&#8217; yer
+head if there&#8217;d been much in it, Doc.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Funny thing, but hit&#8217;s true,&#8221; declared Bill, &#8220;that a bear allers dies
+flat on his back, onless he&#8217;s trapped.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So do men,&#8221; said &#8220;Doc&#8221; grimly; &#8220;men who&#8217;ve been shot in battle. You go
+along a battlefield, right atter the action, and you&#8217;ll find most o&#8217; the
+dead faces pintin&#8217; to the sky.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bears is almost human, anyhow. A skinned bear looks like a great
+big-bodied man with long arms and stumpy legs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I did not relish this turn of the conversation, for we had two bears to
+skin immediately. The one that had been hung up over night was frozen
+solid, so I photographed her standing on her legs, as in life. When it
+came to skinning this beast the job was a mean one; a fellow had to drop
+out now and then to warm his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers have an odd way of sharing the spoils of the chase.
+They call it &#8220;stoking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> the meat,&#8221; a use of the word <i>stoke</i> that I have
+never heard elsewhere. The hide is sold, and the proceeds divided
+equally among the hunters, but the meat is cut up into as many pieces as
+there are partners in the chase; then one man goes indoors or behind a
+tree, and somebody at the carcass, laying his hand on a portion, calls
+out: &#8220;Whose piece is this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Granville Calhoun&#8217;s,&#8221; cries the hidden man, who cannot see it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whose is this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bill Cope&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so on down the line. Everybody gets what chance determines for him,
+and there can be no charges of unfairness.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde
+protesting to the hunchback:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Durn you, Bill Cope, you&#8217;re so cussed crooked a man cain&#8217;t lay cluss
+enough to you to keep warm!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like
+rifle-shots from the intense frost.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Night afore last,&#8221; he said, &#8220;Bill dremp that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> he seed a lot o&#8217; fat meat
+layin&#8217; on the table; an&#8217; it done come true. Last night I dremp me one
+that never was knowed to fail yet. Now you see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured
+much&mdash;standers as well as drivers&mdash;but not a rifle had spoken up to the
+time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.</p>
+
+<p>Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those
+cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a
+steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling
+the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling
+into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 468px;"><img src="images/ill-129.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;....Powerful steep and Laurely....&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All this,&#8221; I apostrophized, &#8220;shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast
+and fish. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth
+the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and
+disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to
+toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases;
+the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+&#8220;&#8216;... Get me to some far-off land<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where higher mountains under heaven stand ...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where other thunders roll amid the hills,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills</span><br />
+With other strains through other-shapen boughs.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but &#8220;Doc.&#8221; The old
+man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday&#8217;s scrimmage, but
+complained only of &#8220;a touch o&#8217; rheumatiz.&#8221; Just how this disease had
+left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of
+sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet
+afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.</p>
+
+<p>About nine o&#8217;clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired
+signals, but there was no answer. The last we had known of the drivers
+was that they had been beyond Thunderhead, six miles of hard travel to
+the westward. There was fog on the mountain. We did some uneasy
+speculating. Then Granville and Matt took the lantern and set out for
+Briar Knob. &#8220;Doc&#8221; was too stiff for travel, and I, being at that time a
+stranger in the Smokies,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> would be of no use hunting amid clouds and
+darkness. &#8220;Doc&#8221; and I passed a dreary three hours. Finally, at midnight,
+my shots were answered, and soon the dogs came limping in. Dred had been
+severely bitten in the shoulders and Rock in the head. Coaly was bloody
+about the mouth, where his first day&#8217;s wound had reopened. Then came the
+four men, empty-handed, it seemed, until John slapped a bear&#8217;s &#8220;melt&#8221;
+(spleen) upon the table. He limped from a bruised hip.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That bear outsharped us and went around all o&#8217; you-uns. We follered him
+clar over to the Spencer Place, and then he doubled and come back on the
+fur side o&#8217; the ridge. He crossed through the laurel on the Devil&#8217;s
+Court House and tuk down an almighty steep place. It was plumb night by
+that time. I fell over a rock clift twenty feet down, and if &#8217;t hadn&#8217;t
+been for the laurel I&#8217;d a-bruk some bones. I landed right in the middle
+of them, bear and dogs, fightin&#8217; like gamecocks. The bear clim a tree.
+Bill sung out &#8216;Is it fur down thar?&#8217; and I said &#8216;Purty fur.&#8217; &#8216;Waal, I&#8217;m
+a-comin&#8217;,&#8217; says he; and with that he grabbed a laurel to swing hisself
+down by, but the stem bruk, and down he come suddent, to jine the music.
+Hit was so dark I couldn&#8217;t see my gun barrel, and we wuz<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> all tangled up
+in greenbriers as thick as ploughlines. I had to fire twiste afore he
+tumbled. Then Matt an&#8217; Granville come. The four of us tuk turn-about
+crawlin&#8217; up out o&#8217; thar with the bear on our back. Only one man could
+handle him at a time&mdash;and he&#8217;ll go a good two hunderd, that bear. We
+gutted him, and left him near the top, to fotch in the mornin&#8217;. Fellers,
+I&#8217;m bodaciously tired out. This is the time I&#8217;d give half what I&#8217;m worth
+for a gallon o&#8217; liquor&mdash;and I&#8217;d promise the rest!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d orter see what Coaly did to that varmint,&#8221; said Bill. &#8220;He bit a
+hole under the fore leg, through hide and ha&#8217;r, clar into the holler, so
+t&#8217; you can stick your hand in and seize the bear&#8217;s heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;John, what was that dream of yours?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I dremp I stole a feller&#8217;s overcoat. Now d&#8217;ye see? That means a bear&#8217;s hide.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Coaly, three days ago, had been an inconsequential pup; but now he
+looked up into my eyes with the calm dignity that no fool or braggart
+can assume. He had been knighted. As he licked his wounds he was proud
+of them. &#8220;Scars of battle, sir. You may have your swagger ribbons and
+prize collars in the New York dog show, but <i>this</i> for me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Poor Coaly! after two more years of valiant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> service, he was to meet an
+evil fortune. In connection with it I will relate a queer coincidence:</p>
+
+<p>Two years after this hunt, a friend and I spent three summer months in
+this same old cabin on top of Smoky. When Andy had to return North he
+left with me, for sale, a .30-30 carbine, as he had more guns than he
+needed. I showed this carbine to Quill Rose, and the old hunter said: &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t like them power-guns; you could shoot clar through a bear and kill
+your dog on the other side.&#8221; The next day I sold the weapon to Granville
+Calhoun. Within a short time, word came from Granville&#8217;s father that
+&#8220;Old Reelfoot&#8221; was despoiling his orchard. This Reelfoot was a large
+bear whose cunning had defied our best hunters for five or six years. He
+got his name from the fact that he &#8220;reeled&#8221; or twisted his hind feet in
+walking, as some horses do, leaving a peculiar track. This seems rather
+common among old bears, for I have known of several &#8220;reelfoots&#8221; in
+other, and widely separated, regions.</p>
+
+<p>Cable and his dogs were sent for. A drive was made, and the bear was
+actually caught within a few rods of old Mr. Calhoun&#8217;s stable. His teeth
+were worn to the gums, and, as he could no longer kill hogs, he had come
+down to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> an apple diet. He was large-framed, but very poor. The only
+hunters on the spot were Granville, with the .30-30, and a northern
+lumberman named Hastings, with a Luger carbine. After two or three shots
+had wounded the bear, he rose on his hind feet and made for Granville. A
+.30-30 bullet went clear through the beast at the very instant that
+Coaly, who was unseen, jumped up on the log behind it, and the missile
+gave both animals their death wound.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>MOONSHINE LAND</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">I was</span> hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new
+to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek
+valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron &#8220;slick,&#8221;
+and, to some extent, lost my bearings.</p>
+
+<p>After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a
+little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep
+cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the
+Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log
+huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or
+loft, and without a sawed board showing in its construction. A thin curl
+of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a
+mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut
+through the log wall. The stones of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> fireplace were not even
+plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise
+the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent
+risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite
+each other. These, helped by wide crevices between the unchinked logs,
+served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw November
+air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had
+hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep
+in muck that reached to the doorsill, two pigs scampered out through the
+opposite door.</p>
+
+<p>Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as
+big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was
+toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor
+some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.</p>
+
+<p>I shivered as I looked at this midget, comparing her only garment, a
+torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter&#8217;s garb that seemed none too
+warm for such a day as this.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl,
+I chose the quickest way to reassure her by saluting in the vernacular:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>&#8220;Howdy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Howdy?&#8221; she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who lives here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tom Kirby.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Kirby? Oh! yes, I know him&mdash;we&#8217;ve been hunting together. Is your father at home?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, he&#8217;s out somewheres.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is your mother?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s in the field, up yan, gittin&#8217; roughness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. &#8220;Roughness,&#8221; in
+mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How far is it to the next house?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know; maw, she knows.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right; I&#8217;ll find her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was
+walking away from me, and I conjectured that &#8220;maw&#8217;s&#8221; feet were under it;
+so I hailed:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a
+bare-headed, bare-footed woman, coarse featured but of superb
+physique&mdash;one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of
+shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two
+without letting it down.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 486px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-139.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Moonshine Still-House Hidden in the Laurel</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>She flushed, then paled, staring at me round-eyed&mdash;frightened, I
+thought, by this apparition of a stranger whose approach she had not
+detected. To these people of the far backwoods everyone from outside
+their mountains is a doubtful character at best.</p>
+
+<p>However, Mistress Kirby quickly recovered her aplomb. Her mouth
+straightened to a thin slit. She planted herself squarely across my
+path, now regarding me with contracted lids and a hard glint, till I
+felt fairly bayoneted by those steel-gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-morning. Is Mr. Kirby about?&#8221; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. Instead, the thin slit opened and let out a yell of
+almost yodel quality, penetrating as a warwhoop&mdash;a yell that would carry
+near half a mile. I wondered what she meant by this; but she did not
+enlighten me by so much as a single word. It was puzzling, not to say
+disconcerting; but, charging it to the custom of a country that still
+was new to me, I found my tongue again, and started to give credentials.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My name is Kephart. I am staying at the Everett Mine on Sugar Fork&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Another yell that set the wild echoes flying.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am acquainted with your husband; we&#8217;ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> hunted together. Perhaps he
+has told you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Yell number three, same pitch and vigor as before.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I was quite nonplussed. I waited for her to speak; but
+never a word did the woman deign. So there we stood and stared at each
+other in silence&mdash;I leaning on my rifle, she with red arms akimbo&mdash;till
+I grew embarrassed, half wondering, too, if the creature were demented.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a light flashed upon my groping wits. This amazon was on
+picket. Her three shrieks had been a signal to someone up the branch.
+Her attitude showed that there was no thoroughfare in that direction at
+present. Circumstances, whatever they were, forbade explanation.
+Clearly, the woman thought that I could not help seeing how matters
+stood. Not for a moment did she suspect but that her yells, her
+belligerent attitude, and her refusal to speak, were the conventional
+way, this world over, of intimating that there was a <i>contretemps</i>. She
+considered that if I was what I claimed to be, an acquaintance of her
+husband and on friendly footing, I would be gentleman enough to retire.
+If I was something else&mdash;an officer, a spy&mdash;well, she was there to stop
+me until the captain of the guard arrived.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>For one silly moment I was tempted to advance and see what this martial
+spouse would do if I tried to pass her on the trail. But a hunter&#8217;s
+instinct made me glance forward to the upper corner of the field. There
+was thick cover beyond the fence, with a clear range of a hundred and
+fifty yards between it and me&mdash;too far for Tom to recognize me, I
+thought, but deadly range for his Winchester, I knew. One forward step
+of mine would put me in the status of an armed intruder. So I concluded
+that common sense would better become me at this juncture than a bit of
+fooling that surely would be misinterpreted, and that might end
+ingloriously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, well!&#8221; I remarked, &#8220;when your husband gets back, tell him, please,
+that I was sorry to miss him; though I did not call on any special
+business&mdash;just wanted to say &#8216;Howdy?&#8217; you know. Good day!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I turned and went down the valley.</p>
+
+<p>All the way home I speculated on this queer adventure. What was going on &#8220;up yan&#8221;?</p>
+
+<p>A month before, when I had started for this wildest nook of the Smokies,
+a friend had intimated that I was venturing into a dubious
+district&mdash;Moonshine Land. It is but frank to confess that this prospect
+was not unpleasant. My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> only fear had been that I might not find any
+moonshiners, or that, having found them, I might not succeed in winning
+their confidence to the extent of learning their own side of an
+interesting story. As to how I could do this without getting tarred with
+the same stick, I was by no means clear; but I hoped that good luck
+might find a way. And now it seemed as if luck had indeed favored me
+with an excuse for broaching the topic to some friendly mountaineer, so
+I could at least see how he would take it.</p>
+
+<p>And it chanced (or was it chance?) that I had no more than finished
+supper, that evening, when a man called at my lonely cabin. He was the
+one that I knew best among my scattered neighbors. I gave him a rather
+humorous account of my reception by Madame Kirby, and asked him what he
+thought she was yelling about.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answering smile on my visitor&#8217;s face. He pondered in
+silence, weighing many contingencies, it seemed, and ventured no more
+than a helpless &#8220;Waal, now I wonder!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It did not suit me to let the matter go at that; so, on a sudden
+impulse, I fired the question point-blank at him: &#8220;Do you suppose that
+Tom is running a still up there at the head of that little cove?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>The man&#8217;s face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I
+had noticed in Mistress Kirby&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jedgmatically, I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Excuse me! I don&#8217;t want to know, either. But let me explain just what I
+am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as
+well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these
+mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger
+traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from
+almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may
+be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;<small><a name="f4.1" id="f4.1" href="#f4">[4]</a></small> but there
+is one thing that I&#8217;m as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all.
+You know my habits; I like to explore&mdash;I never take a guide&mdash;and when I
+come to a place that&#8217;s particularly wild and primitive, that&#8217;s just the
+place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that,
+one of these days when I&#8217;m out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I
+should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation&mdash;what would
+happen? What would they do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>&#8220;Waal, sir, I&#8217;ll tell you whut they&#8217;d do. They&#8217;d fust-place ask you some
+questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin&#8217; in that thar neck
+o&#8217; the woods. Then they&#8217;d git you to do some triflin&#8217; work about the
+still&mdash;feed the furnace, or stir the mash&mdash;jest so &#8217;s &#8217;t they could
+prove that you took a hand in it your own self.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What good would that do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit would make you one o&#8217; them in the eyes of the law.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see. But, really, doesn&#8217;t that seem rather childish? I could easily
+convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that&#8217;s what it
+would amount to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to
+convince. The judge &#8217;d right up and want to know why you let grass go to
+seed afore you came and informed on them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: &#8220;I
+reckon you wouldn&#8217;t be in no great hurry to do <i>that</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would
+be likely to mistreat me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin&#8217; you? At the wust,
+s&#8217;posin&#8217; they was convicted by your own evidence, they&#8217;d only git<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> a
+month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for
+it? Hit&#8217;s all &#8217;tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense
+about this moonshining business. I&#8217;d like to learn the plain truth about
+it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about
+personal affairs, and don&#8217;t want to learn incriminating details; but I
+would like to know how the business is conducted, and especially how it
+is regarded from the mountain people&#8217;s own point of view. I have already
+learned that a stranger&#8217;s life and property are safer here than they
+would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your
+country good to have that known. But I can&#8217;t say that there is no
+moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it.
+Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don&#8217;t seem ashamed of
+it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man&#8217;s face turned an angry red.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mister, we-uns hain&#8217;t no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary
+thing we do. We&#8217;re poor; but we don&#8217;t ax no favors. We stay &#8217;way up hyar
+in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along,
+he&#8217;s welcome to the best we&#8217;ve got, such as &#8217;tis; but if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> he imposes on
+us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit is, under some sarcumstances.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My guest stretched his legs, and &#8220;jedgmatically&#8221; proceeded to enlighten me.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thar&#8217;s plenty o&#8217; men and women grown, in these mountains, who don&#8217;t
+know that the Government is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt
+who commands two-three judges and a gang o&#8217; revenue officers. They know
+thar&#8217;s a president, because the men folks&#8217;s voted for him, and the women
+folks&#8217;s seed his pictur. They&#8217;ve heered tell about the judges; and
+they&#8217;ve seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They believe in
+supportin&#8217; the Government, because hit&#8217;s the law. Nobody refuses to pay
+his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar&#8217;. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on
+the dollar; and that&#8217;s all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten
+cents on twenty cents&#8217; worth o&#8217; liquor; and that&#8217;s robbin&#8217; the people
+with a gun to their faces.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course, I ain&#8217;t so ignorant as all that&mdash;I&#8217;ve traveled about the
+country, been to Asheville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o&#8217;
+times&mdash;and I know the theory. Theory says &#8217;t revenue is a tax on luxury.
+Waal, that&#8217;s all right<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>&mdash;anything in reason. The big fellers that
+makes lots of money out o&#8217; stillin&#8217;, and lives in luxury, ought to pay
+handsome for it. But who ever seen luxury cavortin&#8217; around in these
+Smoky Mountains?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 357px;"><img src="images/ill-149.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MOONSHINE MILL&mdash;SIDE VIEW</p>
+<p class="caption">The trails that lead hither are blind and rough.<br />Behind the mill rises
+an almost precipitous mountain-side.<br />Much of the corn is brought in on men&#8217;s backs at the dead of night.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He paused for a reply. Even then, with my limited experience in the
+mountains, I could not help wincing at the idea. Often, in later times,
+this man&#8217;s question came back to me with peculiar force. Luxury! in a
+land where the little stores were often out of coffee, sugar, kerosene,
+and even salt; where, in dead of winter, there was no meal, much less
+flour, to be had for love or money. Luxury! where I had to live on
+bear-meat (tough old sow bear) for six weeks, because the only side of
+pork that I could find for sale was full of maggots.</p>
+
+<p>My friend continued: &#8220;Whiskey means more to us mountain folks than hit
+does to folks in town, whar thar&#8217;s drug-stores and doctors. Let ary
+thing go wrong in the fam&#8217;ly&mdash;fever, or snake bite, or somethin&#8217;&mdash;and we
+can&#8217;t git a doctor up hyar less&#8217;n three days; and it costs scand&#8217;lous.
+The only medicines we-uns has is yerbs, which customarily ain&#8217;t no good
+&#8217;thout a leetle grain o&#8217; whiskey. Now, th&#8217;r ain&#8217;t no saloons allowed in
+all these western counties. The nighest State dispensary, even, is sixty
+miles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> away.<small><a name="f5.1" id="f5.1" href="#f5">[5]</a></small> The
+law wunt let us have liquor shipped to us from
+anywhars in the State. If we git it sent to us from outside the State it
+has to come by express&mdash;and reg-lar old pop-skull it is, too. So, to be
+good law-abiding citizens, we-uns must travel back and forth at a heap
+of expense, or pay express rates on pizened liquor&mdash;and we are too
+durned poor to do ary one or t&#8217;other.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, yan&#8217;s my field o&#8217; corn. I gather the corn, and shuck hit and grind
+hit my own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o&#8217; bread to eat&mdash;and
+I don&#8217;t pay no tax, do I? Then why can&#8217;t I make some o&#8217; my corn into
+pure whiskey to drink, without payin&#8217; tax? I tell you, <i>&#8217;taint fair</i>,
+this way the Government does! But, when all&#8217;s said and done, the main
+reason for this &#8216;moonshining,&#8217; as you-uns calls it, is bad roads.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bad roads?&#8221; I exclaimed. &#8220;What the&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jest thisaway: From hyar to the railroad is seventeen miles, with two
+mountains to cross; and you&#8217;ve seed that road! I recollect you-uns said
+every one o&#8217; them miles was a thousand rods long. Nobody&#8217;s ever measured
+them, except by mountain man&#8217;s foot-rule&mdash;big feet, and a long stride
+between &#8217;em. Seven hundred <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>pounds is all the load a good team can haul
+over that road, when the weather&#8217;s good. Hit takes three days to make
+the round trip, less&#8217;n you break an axle, and then hit takes four. When
+you do git to the railroad, th&#8217;r ain&#8217;t no town of a thousand people
+within fifty mile. Now us folks ain&#8217;t even got wagons. Thar&#8217;s only one
+sarviceable wagon in this whole settlement, and you can&#8217;t hire it
+without team and driver, which is two dollars and a half a day. Whar one
+o&#8217; our leetle sleds can&#8217;t go, we haffter pack on mule-back or tussle it
+on our own wethers. Look, then! The only farm produce we-uns can sell is
+corn. You see for yourself that corn can&#8217;t be shipped outen hyar. We can
+trade hit for store credit&mdash;that&#8217;s all. Corn <i>juice</i> is about all we can
+tote around over the country and git cash money for. Why, man, that&#8217;s
+the only way some folks has o&#8217; payin&#8217; their taxes!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, aside from the work and the worry,&#8221; I remarked, &#8220;there is the
+danger of being shot, in this business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we-uns don&#8217;t lay <i>that</i> up agin the Government! Hit&#8217;s as fair for
+one as &#8217;tis for t&#8217;other. When a revenuer comes sneakin&#8217; around, why,
+whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that&#8217;s a &#8216;fortune of war,&#8217; as the old
+sayin&#8217; is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>There is no telegraph, wired or wireless, in the mountains, but there is
+an efficient substitute. It seemed as though, in one night, the news
+traveled from valley to cove, and from cove to nook, that I was
+investigating the moonshining business, and that I was apparently
+&#8220;safe.&#8221; Each individual interpreted that word to suit himself. Some
+regarded me askance, others were so confiding that their very frankness
+threatened at times to become embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter I had many talks and adventures with men who, at one time or
+other, had been engaged in the moonshining industry. Some of these men
+had known the inside of the penitentiary; some were not without
+blood-guilt. I doubt not that more than one of them could, even now,
+find his way through night and fog and laurel thicket to some &#8220;beautiful
+piece of copper&#8221; that has not yet been punched full of holes. They knew
+that I was on friendly terms with revenue agents. What was worse, they
+knew that I was a scribbler. More than once I took notes in their
+presence while interviewing them, and we had the frankest understanding
+as to what would become of those notes.</p>
+
+<p>My immunity was not due to any promises made or hostages given, for
+there were none. I did not even pose as an apologist, but merely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+volunteered to give a fair report of what I heard and saw. They took me
+at my word. Had I used such representations as a mask and secretly
+played the spy or informer&mdash;well, I would have deserved whatever might
+have befallen me. As it was, I never met with any but respectful
+treatment from these gentry, nor, to the best of my belief, did they
+ever tell me a lie.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>WAYS THAT ARE DARK</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Our</span> terms moonshiner and moonshining are not used in the mountains. Here
+an illicit distiller is called a blockader, his business is blockading,
+and the product is blockade liquor. Just as the smugglers of old Britain
+called themselves free-traders, thereby proclaiming that they risked and
+fought for a principle, so the moonshiner considers himself simply a
+blockade-runner dealing in contraband. His offense is only <i>malum
+prohibitum</i>, not <i>malum in se</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of blockaders, big and little. The big blockader
+makes unlicensed whiskey on a fairly large scale. He may have several
+stills, operating alternately in different places, so as to avert
+suspicion. In any case, the still is large and the output is quite
+profitable. The owner himself may not actively engage in the work, but
+may furnish the capital and hire confederates to do the distilling for
+him, so that personally he shuns the appearance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> of evil. These big
+fellows are rare. They are the ones who seek collusion with the
+small-fry of Government officialdom, or, failing in that, instruct their
+minions to &#8220;kill on sight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The little moonshiner is a more interesting character, if for no other
+reason than that he fights fair, according to his code, and
+single-handed against tremendous odds. He is innocent of graft. There is
+nothing between him and the whole power of the Federal Government,
+except his own wits and a well-worn Winchester or muzzleloader. He is
+very poor; he is very ignorant; he has no friends at court; his
+apparatus is crude in the extreme, and his output is miserably small.
+This man is usually a good enough citizen in other ways, of decent
+standing in his own community, and a right good fellow toward all the
+world, save revenue officers. Although a criminal in the eyes of the
+law, he is soundly convinced that the law is unjust, and that he is only
+exercising his natural rights. Such a man, as President Frost has
+pointed out, suffers none of the moral degradation that comes from
+violating his conscience; his self-respect is whole.</p>
+
+<p>In describing the process of making whiskey in the mountain stills, I
+shall confine myself to the operations of the little moonshiner,
+because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our backwoodsmen.
+Every man in the big woods is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in
+extemporizing utensils, and even crude machines, out of the trees that
+grow around him, is of no mean order. As good cider as ever I drank was
+made in a hollowed log fitted with a press-block and operated by a
+handspike. It took but half a day&#8217;s work to make this cider press, and
+the only tools used in its construction were an ax, a mattock in lieu of
+adze, an auger, and a jackknife.</p>
+
+<p>It takes two or three men to run a still. It is possible for one man to
+do the work, on so small a scale as is usually practiced, but it would
+be a hard task for him; then, too, there are few mountaineers who could
+individually furnish the capital, small though it be. So three men, let
+us say, will &#8220;chip in&#8221; five or ten dollars apiece, and purchase a
+second-hand still, if such is procurable, otherwise a new one, and that
+is all the apparatus they have to pay money for. If they should be too
+poor even to go to this expense, they will make a retort by inverting a
+half-barrel or an old wooden churn over a soap-kettle, and then all they
+have to buy is a piece of copper tubing for the worm.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 501px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-159.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Moonshine Still in Full Operation</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In choosing a location for their clandestine <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>work, the first
+essential is running water. This can be found in almost any gulch; yet,
+out of a hundred known spring-branches, only one or two may be suitable
+for the business, most of them being too public. In a country where
+cattle and hogs run wild, and where a good part of every farmer&#8217;s time
+is taken in keeping track of his stock, there is no place so secret but
+that it is liable to be visited at any time, even though it be in the
+depths of the great forest, several miles from any human habitation.
+Moreover, cattle, and especially hogs, are passionately fond of
+still-slop, and can scent it a great distance, so that no still can long
+remain unknown to them.<small><a name="f6.1" id="f6.1" href="#f6">[6]</a></small> Consequently the still must be placed several
+miles away from the residence of anyone who might be liable to turn
+informer. Although nearly all the mountain people are indulgent in the
+matter of blockading, yet personal rivalries and family jealousies are
+rife among them, and it is not uncommon for them <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>to inform against
+their enemies in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it would not do to set up a still near a common trail&mdash;at
+least in the far-back settlements. Our mountaineers habitually notice
+every track they pass, whether of beast or man, and &#8220;read the sign&#8221; with
+Indian-like facility. Often one of my companions would stop, as though
+shot, and point with his toe to the fresh imprint of a human foot in the
+dust or mud of a public road, exclaiming: &#8220;Now, I wonder who <i>that</i>
+feller was! &#8217;Twa&#8217;n&#8217;t (so-and-so), for he hain&#8217;t got no squar&#8217;-headed
+bob-nails; &#8217;twa&#8217;n&#8217;t (such-a-one), &#8217;cause he wouldn&#8217;t be hyar at this
+time o&#8217; day&#8221;; and so he would go on, figuring by a process of
+elimination that is extremely cunning, until some such conclusion as
+this was reached, &#8220;That&#8217;s some stranger goin&#8217; over to Little River
+[across the line in Tennessee], and he&#8217;s footin&#8217; hit as if the devil was
+atter him&mdash;I&#8217;ll bet he&#8217;s stobbed somebody and is runnin&#8217; from the
+sheriff!&#8221; Nor is the incident closed with that; our mountaineer will
+inquire of neighbors and passersby until he gets a description of the
+wayfarer, and then he will pass the word along.</p>
+
+<p>Some little side-branch is chosen that runs through a gully so choked
+with laurel and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> briers and rhododendron as to be quite impassable, save
+by such worming and crawling as must make a great noise. Doubtless a
+faint cattle-trail follows the backbone of the ridge above it, and this
+is the workers&#8217; ordinary highway in going to and fro; but the descent
+from ridge to gully is seldom made twice over the same course, lest a
+trail be printed direct to the still-house.</p>
+
+<p>This house is sometimes inclosed with logs, but oftener it is no more
+than a shed, built low, so as to be well screened by the undergrowth. A
+great hemlock tree may be felled in such position as to help the
+masking, so long as its top stays green, which will be about a year.
+Back far enough from the still-house to remain in dark shadow when the
+furnace is going, there is built a sort of nest for the workmen, barely
+high enough to sit up in, roofed with bark and thatched all over with
+browse. Here many a dismal hour of night is passed when there is nothing
+to do but to wait on the &#8220;cooking.&#8221; Now and then a man crawls on all
+fours to the furnace and pitches in a few billets of wood, keeping low
+at the time, so as to offer as small a target as possible in the flare
+of the fire. Such precaution is especially needed when the number of
+confederates is too small for efficient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> picketing. Around the little
+plot where the still-shed and lair are hidden, laurel may be cut in such
+way as to make a <i>cheval-de-frise</i>, sharp stubs being entangled with
+branches, so that a quick charge through them would be out of the
+question. Two or three days&#8217; work, at most, will build the still-house
+and equip it ready for business, without so much as a shingle being
+brought from outside.</p>
+
+<p>After the blockaders have established their still, the next thing is to
+make arrangements with some miller who will jeopardize himself by
+grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that corn which has been
+forced to sprout is a prime essential in the making of moonshine
+whiskey, and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn is an offense
+against the law of the United States no less than its distillation. Now,
+to any one living in a well-settled country, where there is, perhaps,
+only one mill to every hundred farms, and it is visited daily by men
+from all over the township, the finding of an accessory in the person of
+a miller would seem a most hopeless project. But when you travel in our
+southern mountains, one of the first things that will strike you is that
+about every fourth or fifth farmer has a tiny tub-mill of his own. Tiny
+is indeed the word, for there are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> few of these mills that can grind
+more than a bushel or two of corn in a day; some have a capacity of only
+half a bushel in ten hours of steady grinding. Red grains of corn being
+harder than white ones, it is a humorous saying in the mountains that &#8220;a
+red grain in the gryste [grist] will stop the mill.&#8221; The appurtenances
+of such a mill, even to the very buhr-stones themselves, are fashioned
+on the spot. How primitive such a meal-grinder may be is shown by the
+fact that a neighbor of mine recently offered a new mill, complete, for
+sale at six dollars. A few nails, and a country-made iron rynd and
+spindle, were the only things in it that he had not made himself, from
+the raw materials.</p>
+
+<p>In making spirits from corn, the first step is to convert the starch of
+the grain into sugar. Regular distillers do this in a few hours by using
+malt, but at the little blockade still a slower process is used, for
+malt is hard to get. The unground corn is placed in a vessel that has a
+small hole in the bottom, warm water is poured over the corn and a hot
+cloth is placed over the top. As water percolates out through the hole,
+the vessel is replenished with more of the warm fluid. This is continued
+for two or three days and nights until the corn has put forth sprouts a
+couple of inches long. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> diastase in the germinating seeds has the
+same chemical effect as malt&mdash;the starch is changed to sugar.</p>
+
+<p>The sprouted corn is then dried and ground into meal. This sweet meal is
+then made into a mush with boiling water, and is let stand two or three
+days. The &#8220;sweet mash&#8221; thus made is then broken up, and a little rye
+malt, similarly prepared in the meantime, is added to it, if rye is
+procurable. Fermentation begins at once. In large distilleries, yeast is
+added to hasten fermentation, and the mash can then be used in three or
+four days; the blockader, however, <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'hav-'">having</ins> no yeast, must let his mash stand
+for eight or ten days, keeping it all that time at a proper temperature
+for fermentation. This requires not only constant attention, but some
+skill as well, for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer in our
+mountain still-house. When done, the sugar of what is now &#8220;sour mash&#8221;
+has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The resulting liquid
+is technically called the &#8220;wash,&#8221; but blockaders call it &#8220;beer.&#8221; It is
+intoxicating, of course, but &#8220;sour enough to make a pig squeal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel with a closed head,
+connected with a spiral tube, the worm. The latter is surrounded by a
+closed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> jacket through which cold water is constantly passing. A wood
+fire is built in the rude furnace under the still; the spirit rises in
+vapor, along with more or less steam; these vapors are condensed in the
+cold worm and trickle down into the receiver. The product of this first
+distillation (the &#8220;low wines&#8221; of the trade, the &#8220;singlings&#8221; of the
+blockader) is a weak and impure liquid, which must be redistilled at a
+lower temperature to rid it of water and rank oils.</p>
+
+<p>In moonshiners&#8217; parlance, the liquor of second distillation is called
+the &#8220;doublings.&#8221; It is in watching and testing the doublings that an
+accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if distillation be not
+carried far enough, the resulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and
+if carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will result. Regular
+distillers are assisted at this stage by scientific instruments by which
+the &#8220;proof&#8221; is tested; but the maker of &#8220;mountain dew&#8221; has no other
+instrument than a small vial, and his testing is done entirely by the
+&#8220;bead&#8221; of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that rise when the
+vial is tilted. When a mountain man is shown any brand of whiskey,
+whether a regular distillery product or not, he invariably tilts the
+bottle and levels it again, before tasting; if the bead rises and is
+persistent, well and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the liquor
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by
+running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a
+&#8220;thumpin&#8217;-chist.&#8221; The advantage claimed is that &#8220;Hit allows you to make
+your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter,
+to rid it of most of its fusel oil. This having been done, we have
+moonshine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and ready for <i>immediate
+consumption</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the words here italicised; but
+I am stating facts.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite impracticable for a blockader to age his whiskey. In the
+first place, he is too poor to wait; in the second place, his product is
+very small, and the local demand is urgent; in the third place, he has
+enough trouble to conceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to say
+nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheerfully he might &#8220;waive the
+quantum o&#8217; the sin,&#8221; but he is quite alive to &#8220;the hazard o&#8217;
+concealin&#8217;.&#8221; So, while the stuff is yet warm from the still, it is taken
+by confederates and quickly disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the
+answer a moonshiner once made to me when I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>asked him how old the best
+blockade liquor ever got to be: &#8220;If it &#8217;d git to be a month old, it &#8217;d
+fool me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 524px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-169.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by F. B. Laney</p>
+<p class="caption">Cornmill and Blacksmith Forge</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of mine, the redoubtable Quill
+Rose, which, to those who know him, sounds like one of his own: &#8220;A
+slick-faced dude from Knoxville,&#8221; said Quill, &#8220;told me once that all
+good red-liquor was aged, and that if I&#8217;d age my blockade it would bring
+a fancy price. Well, sir, I tried it; I kept some for three months&mdash;and,
+by godlings, <i>it aint so</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As for purity, all of the moonshine whiskey used to be pure, and much of
+it still is; but every blockader knows how to adulterate, and when one
+of them does stoop to such tricks he will stop at no halfway measures.
+Some add washing lye, both to increase the yield and to give the liquor
+an artificial bead, then prime this abominable fluid with pepper,
+ginger, tobacco, or anything else that will make it sting. Even
+buckeyes, which are poisonous themselves, are sometimes used to give the
+drink a soapy bead. Such decoctions are known in the mountains by the
+expressive terms &#8220;pop-skull,&#8221; &#8220;bust head,&#8221; &#8220;bumblings&#8221; (&#8220;they make a
+bumbly noise in a feller&#8217;s head&#8221;). Some of them are so toxic that their
+continued use might be fatal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> to the drinker. A few drams may turn a
+normally good-hearted fellow into a raging fiend who will shoot or stab
+without provocation.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the mountain people have no compunctions about drinking,
+their ideas on this, as on other matters of conduct, being those current
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. Men, women and children drink
+whiskey in family concert. I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a
+spoonful at a time, by a babe that was still at the breast, and she
+never batted an eye (when I protested that raw whiskey would ruin the
+infant&#8217;s stomach, the mother replied, with widened eyes: &#8220;Why, if
+there&#8217;s liquor about, and she don&#8217;t git none, <i>she jist raars</i>!&#8221;). In
+spite of this, taking the mountain people by and large, they are an
+abstemious race. In drinking, as in everything else, this is the Land of
+Do Without. Comparatively few highlanders see liquor oftener than once
+or twice a month. The lumberjacks and townspeople get most of the
+output; for they can pay the price.</p>
+
+<p>Blockade whiskey, until recently, sold to the consumer at from $2.50 to
+$3.00 a gallon. The average yield is only two gallons to the bushel of
+corn. Two and a half gallons is all that can be got out of a bushel by
+blockaders&#8217; methods, even with the aid of a &#8220;thumpin&#8217;-chist,&#8221; unless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+lye be added. With corn selling at seventy-five cents to a dollar a
+bushel, as it did in our settlement, and taking into account that the
+average sales of a little moonshiner&#8217;s still probably did not exceed a
+gallon a day, and that a bootlegger must be rewarded liberally for
+marketing the stuff, it will be seen that there was no fortune in this
+mysterious trade, before prohibition raised the price. Let me give you a
+picture in a few words.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here in the laurel-thicketed forest, miles from any wagon road, is a
+little still, without so much as a roof over it. Hard by is a little
+mill. There is not a sawed board in that mill&mdash;even the hopper is made
+of clapboards riven on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four men, haggard from sleepless vigils, strike out into
+pathless forest through driving rain. Within five minutes the wet
+underbrush has drenched them to the skin. They climb, climb, climb.
+There is no trail for a long way; then they reach a faint one that
+winds, winds, climbs, climbs. Hour after hour the men climb. Then they
+begin to descend.</p>
+
+<p>They have crossed the divide, a mile above sea-level, and are in another
+State. Hour after hour they &#8220;climb down,&#8221; as they would say. They visit
+farmers&#8217; homes at dead of night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> Each man shoulders two bushels of
+shelled corn and starts back again over the highest mountain range in
+eastern America. It is twenty miles to the little mill. They carry the
+corn thither on their own backs. They sprout it, grind it, distill it.
+Two of them then carry the whiskey twenty miles in the opposite
+direction, and, at the risk of capture and imprisonment, or of death if
+they resist, peddle it out by dodging, secret methods.</p>
+
+<p>This is no fancy sketch; it is literal truth. It is no story of the
+olden time, but of our own day. Do you wonder that one of these men
+should say, with a sigh&mdash;should say this? &#8220;Blockadin&#8217; is the hardest
+work a man ever done. And hit&#8217;s wearin&#8217; on a feller&#8217;s narves. Fust
+chance I git, I&#8217;m a-goin&#8217; ter quit!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And it is a fact that nine out of ten of those who try the moonshining
+game do quit before long, of their own accord.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One day there came a ripple of excitement in our settlement. A blockader
+had shot at Jack Coburn, and a posse had arrested the would-be
+assassin&mdash;so flew the rumor, and it proved to be true.</p>
+
+<p>Coburn was a northern man who, years ago, opened a little store on the
+edge of the wilderness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> bought timber land, and finally rose to
+affluence. With ready wit he adapted himself to the ways of the
+mountaineers and gained ascendancy among them. Once in a while an
+emergency would arise in which it was necessary either to fight or to
+back down, and in these contests a certain art that Jack had acquired in
+Michigan lumber camps proved the undoing of more than one mountain
+tough, at the same time winning the respect of the spectators. He was
+what a mountaineer described to me as &#8220;a practiced knocker.&#8221; This
+phrase, far from meaning what it would on the Bowery, was interpreted to
+me as denoting &#8220;a master hand in a knock-fight.&#8221; Pugilism, as
+distinguished from shooting or stabbing, was an unknown art in the
+mountains until Jack introduced it.</p>
+
+<p>Coburn had several tenants, among whom was a character whom we will call
+Edwards. In leasing a farm to Edwards, Jack had expressly stipulated
+that there was to be no moonshining on the premises. But, by and by,
+there was reason to suspect that Edwards was violating this part of the
+contract. Coburn did not send for a revenue officer; he merely set forth
+on a little still-hunt of his own. Before starting, he picked up a
+revolver and was about to stick it in his pocket, but, on second
+thought, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> concluded that no red-headed man should be trusted with a
+loaded gun, even in such a case as this; so he thrust the weapon back
+into its drawer, and strode away, with nothing but his two big fists to
+enforce a seizure.</p>
+
+<p>Coburn searched long and diligently, but could find no sign of a still.
+Finally, when he was about to give it up, his curiosity was aroused by
+the particularly dense browse in the top of an enormous hemlock that had
+recently been felled. Pushing his way forward, he discovered a neat
+little copper still installed in the treetop itself. He picked up the
+contraband utensil, and marched away with it.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime, Edwards had not been asleep. When Jack came in sight of the
+farmhouse, humped under his bulky burden, the enraged moonshiner seized
+a shotgun and ran toward him, breathing death and destruction. Jack,
+however, trudged along about his business. Edwards, seeing that no bluff
+would work, fired; but the range was too great for his birdshot even to
+pepper holes through the copper still.</p>
+
+<p>Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot. It did not hurt Coburn&#8217;s
+skin, but it ruffled his dignity. In this case it was out of the
+question to pommel the blackguard, for he had swiftly reloaded his gun.
+So Jack ran off with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> the still, carried it home, sought out our
+magistrate, Brooks, and forthwith swore out a warrant.</p>
+
+<p>Brooks did not fuss over any law books. Moonshining in itself may be
+only a peccadillo, a venial sin&mdash;let the Government skin its own
+skunks&mdash;but when a man has promised not to moonshine, and then goes and
+does it, why that, by Jeremy, is a breach of contract! Straightway the
+magistrate hastened to the post-office, and swore in, as a posse
+comitatus, the first four men that he met.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when four men are picked up at random in our township, it is safe
+to assume that at least three of them have been moonshiners themselves,
+and know how this sort of thing should be done. At any rate, the posse
+wasted no time in discussion. They went straight after that malefactor,
+got him, and, within an hour after the shot was fired, he was drummed
+out of the county for good and forever.</p>
+
+<p>But Edwards had a son who was a trifle brash. This son armed himself,
+and offered show of battle. He fired two or three shots with his
+Winchester (wisely over the posse&#8217;s heads) and then took to the tall
+timber. Dodging from tree to tree he led the impromptu officers such a
+dance up the mountainside that by the time they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> had corralled him they
+were &#8220;plumb overhet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They set that impetuous young man on a sharp-spined little jackass,
+strapped his feet under the animal&#8217;s belly, and their chief (my hunting
+partner, he was) drove him, that same night, twenty-five miles over a
+horrible mountain trail, and lodged him in the county jail, on a charge
+more serious than that of moonshining.</p>
+
+<p>In due time, a United States deputy arrived in our midst, bearing a
+funny-looking hatchet with a pick at one end, which he called a &#8220;devil.&#8221;
+With the pick end of this instrument he punched numerous holes through
+the offending copper vessel, until the still looked somewhat like a
+gigantic horseradish-grater turned inside out. Then he straightened out
+the worm by ramming a long stick through it, and triumphantly carried
+away with him the copper-sheathed staff, as legal proof, trophy, and
+burgeon of office.</p>
+
+<p>The sorry old still itself reposes to this day in old Brooks&#8217;s backyard,
+where it is regarded by passersby as an emblem, not so much of Federal
+omnipotence, as of local efficiency in administering the law with
+promptitude, and without a pennyworth of cost to anybody, save to the
+offender.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>A LEAF FROM THE PAST</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In</span> the United States, moonshining is seldom practiced outside the
+mountains and foothills of the southern Appalachians, and those parts of
+the southwest (namely, in southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas), into
+which the mountaineers have immigrated in considerable numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a conundrum: How does it happen that moonshining is
+distinctly a foible of the southern mountaineer?</p>
+
+<p>To get to the truth, we must hark back into that eighteenth century
+wherein, as I have already remarked, our mountain people are lingering
+to this day. We must leave the South; going, first, to Ireland of 150 or
+175 years ago, and then to western Pennsylvania shortly after the
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The people of Great Britain, irrespective of race, have always been
+ardent haters of excise laws. As Blackstone has curtly said, &#8220;From its
+original to the present time, the very name of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> excise has been odious
+to the people of England.&#8221; Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined
+excise as &#8220;A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by
+the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom
+excise is paid.&#8221; In 1659, when the town of Edinburgh placed an
+additional impost on ale, the Convenanter Nicoll proclaimed it an act so
+impious that immediately &#8220;God frae the heavens declared his anger by
+sending thunder and unheard tempests and storms.&#8221; And we still recall
+Burns&#8217; fiery invective:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thae curst horse-leeches o&#8217; the Excise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wha mak the whisky stills their prize!</span><br />
+Haud up thy han&#8217;, Deil! ance, twice, thrice!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There, seize the blinkers! [wretches]</span><br />
+An bake them up in brunstane pies<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For poor d&mdash;n&#8217;d drinkers.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Perhaps the chief reason, in England, for this outspoken detestation of
+the exciseman lay in the fact that the law empowered him to enter
+private houses and to search at his own discretion. In Scotland and
+Ireland there was another objection, even more valid in the eyes of the
+common people; excise struck heaviest at their national drink.
+Englishmen, at the time of which we are speaking, were content with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+their ale, not yet having contracted the habit of drinking gin; but
+Scotchmen and Irishmen preferred distilled spirits, manufactured, as a
+rule, out of their own barley, in small pot-stills (<i>poteen</i> means,
+literally, a little pot), the process being a common household art
+frequently practiced &#8220;every man for himself and his neighbor.&#8221; A tax,
+then, upon whiskey was as odious as a tax upon bread baked on the
+domestic hearth&mdash;if not, indeed, more so.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there came a time when the taxes laid upon spirituous liquors had
+increased almost to the point of prohibition. This was done, not so much
+for the sake of revenue, as for the sake of the public health and
+morals. Englishmen had suddenly taken to drinking gin, and the immediate
+effect was similar to that of introducing firewater among a race of
+savages. There was hue and cry (apparently with good reason), that the
+gin habit, spreading like a plague, among a people unused to strong
+liquors, would soon exterminate the English race. Parliament, alarmed at
+the outlook, then passed an excise law of extreme severity. As always
+happens in such cases, the law promptly defeated its own purpose by
+breeding a spirit of defiance and resistance among the great body of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The heavier the tax, the more widespread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> became the custom of illicit
+distilling. The law was evaded in two different ways, the method
+depending somewhat upon the relative loyalty of the people toward the
+Crown, and somewhat upon the character of the country, as to whether it
+was thickly or thinly settled.</p>
+
+<p>In rich and populous districts, as around London and Edinburgh and
+Dublin, the common practice was to bribe government officials. A
+historian of that time declares that &#8220;Not infrequently the gauger could
+have laid his hands upon a dozen stills within as many hours; but he had
+cogent reasons for avoiding discoveries unless absolutely forced to make
+them. Where informations were laid, it was by no means uncommon for a
+trusty messenger to be dispatched from the residence of the gauger to
+give due notice, so that by daybreak next morning &#8216;the boys,&#8217; with all
+their utensils, might disappear. Now and then they were required to
+leave an old and worn-out still in place of that which they were to
+remove, so that a report of actual seizure might be made. A good
+understanding was thus often kept up between the gaugers <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'and and'">and</ins> the
+distillers; the former not infrequently received a &#8216;duty&#8217; upon every
+still within his jurisdiction, and his cellars were never without &#8216;a sup
+of the best.&#8217;... The commerce was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> carried on to a very great extent,
+and openly. Poteen was usually preferred, even by the gentry, to
+&#8216;Parliament&#8217; or &#8216;King&#8217;s&#8217; whiskey. It was known to be free from
+adulteration, and had a smoky flavor (arising from the peat fires) which
+many liked.&#8221; Another writer says that &#8220;The amount of spirits produced by
+distillation avowedly illicit vastly exceeded that produced by the
+licensed distilleries. According to Wakefield, stills were erected even
+in the kitchens of baronets and in the stables of clergymen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>However, this sort of thing was not moonshining. It was only the
+beginning of that system of wholesale collusion which, in later times,
+was perfected in our own country by the &#8220;Whiskey Ring.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Moonshining proper was confined to the poorer class of people,
+especially in Ireland, who lived in wild and sparsely settled regions,
+who were governed by a clan feeling stronger than their loyalty to the
+central Government, and who either could not afford to share their
+profits with the gaugers, or disdained to do so. Such people hid their
+little pot-stills in inaccessible places, as in the savage mountains and
+glens of Connemara, where it was impossible, or at least hazardous, for
+the law to reach them. With arms in hand they defied the officers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> &#8220;The
+hatred of the people toward the gauger was for a very long period
+intense. The very name invariably aroused the worst passions. To kill a
+gauger was considered anything but a crime; wherever it could be done
+with comparative safety, he was hunted to the death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus we see that the townsman&#8217;s weapon against the government was graft,
+and the mountaineer&#8217;s weapon was his gun&mdash;a hundred and fifty years ago,
+in Ireland, as they are in America to-day. Whether racial character had
+much to do with this is a debatable question. But, having spoken of
+race, a new factor, and a curious one, steps into our story. Let it be
+noted closely, for it bears directly on a problem that has puzzled many
+of our own people, namely: What was the origin of our southern
+mountaineers?</p>
+
+<p>The north of Ireland, at the time of which we have been speaking, was
+not settled by Irishmen, but by Scotchmen, who had been imported by
+James I. to take the place of native Hibernians whom he had dispossessed
+from the three northern counties. These immigrants came to be known as
+the Scotch-Irish. They learned how to make poteen in little stills,
+after the Irish fashion, and to defend their stills from intrusive
+foreigners, also after the Irish fashion. By and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> by these Scotch-Irish
+fell out with the British Government, and large bodies of them emigrated
+to America, settling, for the most part, in western Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+<p>They were a fighting race. Accustomed to plenty of hard knocks at home,
+they took to the rough fare and Indian wars of our border as naturally
+as ducks take to water. They brought with them, too, an undying hatred
+of excise laws, and a spirit of unhesitating resistance to any authority
+that sought to enforce such laws.</p>
+
+<p>It was these Scotchmen, in the main, assisted by a good sprinkling of
+native Irish, and by the wilder blades among the Pennsylvania-Dutch, who
+drove out the Indians from the Alleghany border, formed our rear-guard
+in the Revolution, won that rough mountain region for civilization, left
+it when the game became scarce and neighbors&#8217; houses too frequent,
+followed the mountains southward, settled western Virginia and Carolina,
+and formed the vanguard westward into Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and
+so onward till there was no longer a West to conquer. Some of their
+descendants remained behind in the fastnesses of the Alleghanies, the
+Blue Ridge, and the Unakas, and became, in turn, the progenitors of that
+singular race which, by an absurd pleonasm, is now commonly known<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> as
+the &#8220;mountain whites,&#8221; but properly southern highlanders.</p>
+
+<p>The first generation of Pennsylvania frontiersmen knew no laws but those
+of their own making. They were too far away, too scattered, and too
+poor, for the Crown to bother with them. Then came the Revolution. The
+backwoodsmen were loyal to the new American Government&mdash;loyal to a man.
+They not only fought off the Indians from the rear, but sent many of
+their incomparable riflemen to fight at the front as well.</p>
+
+<p>They were the first English-speaking people to use weapons of precision
+(the rifle, introduced by the Pennsylvania-Dutch about 1700, was used by
+our backwoodsmen exclusively throughout the war). They were the first to
+employ open-order formation in civilized warfare. They were the first
+outside colonists to assist their New England brethren at the siege of
+Boston. They were mustered in as the First Regiment of Foot of the
+Continental Army (being the first troops enrolled by our Congress, and
+the first to serve under a Federal banner). They carried the day at
+Saratoga, the Cowpens, and King&#8217;s Mountain. From the beginning to the
+end of the war, they were Washington&#8217;s favorite troops.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 491px;"><img src="images/ill-187.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">A Tub Mill</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>And yet these same men were the first rebels against the authority of
+the United States Government! And it was their old commander-in-chief,
+Washington himself, who had the ungrateful task of bringing them to
+order by a show of Federal bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>It happened in this wise:</p>
+
+<p>Up to the year 1791 there had been no excise tax in the United Colonies
+or the United States. (One that had been tried in Pennsylvania was
+utterly abortive). Then the country fell upon hard times. A larger
+revenue had to be raised, and Hamilton suggested an excise. The measure
+was bitterly opposed by many public men, notably by Jefferson; but it
+passed. Immediately there was trouble in the tall timber.</p>
+
+<p>Western Pennsylvania, and the mountains southward, had been settled, as
+we have seen, by the Scotch-Irish; men who had brought with them a
+certain fondness for whiskey, a certain knack in making it, and an
+intense hatred of excise, on general as well as special principles.
+There were few roads across the mountains, and these few were
+execrable&mdash;so bad, indeed, that it was impossible for the backwoodsmen
+to bring their corn and rye to market, except in a concentrated form.
+The farmers of the seaboard had grown rich, from the high prices that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>prevailed during the French Revolution; but the mountain farmers had
+remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to
+difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gallatin said, in defending
+the western people, &#8220;We have no means of bringing the produce of our
+lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers
+through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value
+in the smallest size and weight. The inhabitants of the eastern side of
+the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of
+distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that
+labor upon it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in
+the mountains. Commerce was carried on by barter; but there had to be
+some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such
+necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who
+brought them by pack train across the Alleghanies. Consequently a still
+had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen
+gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight
+and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it
+had been transported<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> across the mountains, could undersell even so
+cheap a beverage as New England rum&mdash;so long as no tax was laid upon it.</p>
+
+<p>But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually
+placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers&#8217; grain, and let the grain of
+the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge.
+Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border regarded such a law
+as aimed exclusively at themselves. They remonstrated, petitioned,
+stormed. &#8220;From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a
+marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland,
+Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legislatures of North
+Carolina, Virginia and Maryland passed resolutions against the law, and
+that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As
+early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region
+the people were ready for revolt.&#8221; &#8220;To tax their stills seemed a blow at
+the only thing which obdurate nature had given them&mdash;a lot hard indeed,
+in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now)
+resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> reference
+has been made&mdash;only they were far wilder, far less populous, and
+inhabited by a people still prouder, more independent, more used to
+being a law unto themselves than were their ancestors in old Hibernia.
+When the Federal exciseman came among this border people and sought to
+levy tribute, they blackened or otherwise disguised themselves and
+treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, at the same time threatening
+to burn his house. He resigned. Indignation meetings were held,
+resolutions were passed calling on all good citizens to <i>disobey</i> the
+law, and whenever anyone ventured to express a contrary opinion, or
+rented a house to a collector, he, too, was tarred and feathered. If a
+prudent or ultra-conscientious individual took out a license and sought
+to observe the law, he was visited by a gang of &#8220;Whiskey Boys&#8221; who
+smashed the still and inflicted corporal punishment upon its owner.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, warrants were issued against the lawbreakers. The attempt to
+serve these writs produced an uprising. On July 16, 1794, a company of
+mountain militia marched to the house of the inspector, General Neville,
+to force him to give up his commission. Neville fired upon them, and, in
+the skirmish that ensued, five of the attacking force were wounded and
+one was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> killed. The next day, a regiment of 500 mountaineers, led by
+one &#8220;Tom the Tinker,&#8221; burned Neville&#8217;s house, and forced him to flee for
+his life. His guard of eleven U. S. soldiers surrendered, after losing
+one killed and several wounded.</p>
+
+<p>A call was then issued for a meeting of the mountain militia at the
+historic Braddock&#8217;s Field. On Aug. 1, a large body assembled, of whom
+2,000 were armed. They marched on Pittsburgh, then a village of 1,200
+souls. The townsmen, eager to conciliate and to ward off pillage,
+appointed a committee to meet the mob half way. The committee, finding
+that it could not induce the mountain men to go home, made a virtue of
+necessity by escorting 5,400 of them into Pittsburgh town. As Fisher
+says, &#8220;The town was warned by messengers, and every preparation was
+made, not for defense, but to extinguish the fire of the Whiskey Boys&#8217;
+thirst, which would prevent the necessity of having to extinguish the
+fire they might apply to houses.... Then the work began. Every citizen
+worked like a slave to carry provisions and buckets of whiskey to that
+camp.&#8221; Judge Brackenridge tells us that it was an expensive as well as
+laborious day, and cost him personally four barrels of prime old
+whiskey. The day ended<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> in a bloodless, but probably uproarious,
+jollification.</p>
+
+<p>On this same day (the Governor of Pennsylvania having declined to
+interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and
+called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrection. Meantime he had
+appointed commissioners to go into the disaffected region and try to
+persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should
+arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the
+disturbance should submit to arrest.</p>
+
+<p>While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen
+ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the &#8220;insurrection&#8221; faded away
+like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do.
+The insurgent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were
+convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this
+expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the
+Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon
+the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Government had
+demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws
+and maintain domestic tranquility. The result upon the mountain people
+themselves was dubious. Thomas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> Jefferson wrote to Madison in December:
+&#8220;The information of our [Virginia&#8217;s] militia, returned from the
+westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass
+quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that
+one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand
+places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was
+universal, and has now associated with it a detestation of the
+Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and
+problematical event, is now near and certain, and determined in the mind
+of every man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the
+excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as
+a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered
+by men whom we would not call very old.</p>
+
+<p>The moonshiners of our own day know nothing of the story that has here
+been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the
+mountains, and then the result was so unexpected, that I append the
+incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his
+historical learning. He could not read, but one of his daughters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> read
+to him, and he had learned by heart nearly all that lay between the two
+lids of a &#8220;Universal History&#8221; such as book agents peddle about. Like one
+of John Fox&#8217;s characters, he was fond of the expression &#8220;hist&#8217;ry says&#8221;
+so-and-so, and he considered it a clincher in all matters of debate.</p>
+
+<p>Our conversation drifted to the topic of moonshining.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Down to the time of the Civil War,&#8221; declared the old settler, &#8220;nobody
+paid tax on the whiskey he made. Hit was thataway in my Pa&#8217;s time, and
+in Gran&#8217;sir&#8217;s, too. And so &#8217;way back to the time of George Washington.
+Now, hist&#8217;ry says that Washington was the Father of his Country; and I
+reckon he was the <i>greatest</i> man that ever lived&mdash;don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I murmured a complaisant assent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal, sir, if &#8217;t was right to make free whiskey in Washington&#8217;s day,
+hit&#8217;s right <i>now</i>!&#8221; and the old man brought his fist down on the table.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that is where you make a mistake,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;Washington did
+enforce a whiskey tax.&#8221; Then I told about the Whiskey Insurrection of
+1794.</p>
+
+<p>This was news to Grandpa. He listened with deep attention, his brows
+lowering as the narrative proceeded. When it was finished he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>offered
+no comment, but brooded to himself in silence. My own thoughts wandered
+far afield, until recalled to the topic by a blunt demand:</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 502px;"><img src="images/ill-197.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek<br />in which the author lived alone for three years</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You say Washington done that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;George Washington?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir: the Father of his Country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Waal, I&#8217;m satisfied now that Washington was a leetle-grain cracked.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The law of 1791, although it imposed a tax on whiskey of only 9 to 11
+cents per proof gallon, came near bringing on a civil war, which was
+only averted by the leniency of the Federal Government in granting
+wholesale amnesty. The most stubborn malcontents in the mountains moved
+southward along the Alleghanies into western Virginia and the Carolinas,
+where no serious attempt was made to collect the excise; so they could
+practice moonshining to their heart&#8217;s content, and there their
+descendants remain to-day.</p>
+
+<p>On the accession of Jefferson, in 1800, the tax on spirits was repealed.
+The war of 1812 compelled the Government to tax whiskey again, but as
+this was a war tax, shared by commodities generally, it aroused no
+opposition. In 1817<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the excise was again repealed; and from that time
+until 1862 no specific tax was levied on liquors. During this period of
+thirty-five years the average market price of whiskey was 24 cents a
+gallon, sometimes dropping as low as 14 cents. Spirits were so cheap
+that a &#8220;burning fluid,&#8221; consisting of one part spirits of turpentine to
+four or five parts alcohol was used in the lamps of nearly every
+household. Moonshining, of course, had ceased to exist.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the Civil War. In 1862 a tax of 20 cents a gallon was levied.
+Early in 1864 it rose to 60 cents. This cut off the industrial use of
+spirits, but did not affect its use as a beverage. In the latter part of
+1864 the tax leaped to $1.50 a gallon, and the next year it reached the
+prohibitive figure of $2. The result of such excessive taxation was just
+what it had been in the old times, in Great Britain. In and around the
+centers of population there was wholesale fraud and collusion. &#8220;Efforts
+made to repress and punish frauds were of absolutely no account
+whatever.... The current price at which distilled spirits were sold in
+the markets was everywhere recognized and commented on by the press as
+less than the amount of the tax, allowing nothing whatever for the cost
+of manufacture.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>Seeing that the outcome was disastrous from a fiscal point of view&mdash;the
+revenue from this source was falling to the vanishing point&mdash;Congress,
+in 1868, cut down the tax to 50 cents a gallon. &#8220;Illicit distillation
+practically ceased the very hour that the new law came into operation;
+... the Government collected during the second year of the continuance
+of the act $3 for every one that was obtained during the last year of
+the $2 rate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In 1869 there came a new administration, with frequent removals of
+revenue officials for political purposes. The revenue fell off. In 1872
+the rate was raised to 70 cents, and in 1875 to 90 cents. The result is
+thus summarized by David A. Wells:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Investigation carefully conducted showed that on the average the
+product of illicit distillation costs, through deficient yields, the
+necessary bribery of attendants, and the expenses of secret and unusual
+methods of transportation, from two to three times as much as the
+product of legitimate and legal distillation. So that, calling the
+average cost of spirits in the United States 20 cents per gallon, the
+product of the illicit distiller would cost 40 to 60 cents, leaving but
+10 cents per gallon as the maximum profit to be realized from fraud
+under the most favorable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> conditions&mdash;an amount not sufficient to offset
+the possibility of severe penalties of fine, imprisonment, and
+confiscation of property.... The rate of 70 cents ... constituted a
+moderate temptation to fraud. Its increase to 90 cents constituted a
+temptation altogether too great for human nature, as employed in
+manufacturing and selling whiskey, to resist.... During 1875-6,
+highwines sold openly in the Chicago and Cincinnati markets at prices
+less than the average cost of production plus the Government tax.
+Investigations showed that the persons mainly concerned in the work of
+fraud were the Government officials rather than the distillers; and that
+a so-called &#8216;Whiskey Ring&#8217; ... extended to Washington, and embraced
+within its sphere of influence and participation, not merely local
+supervisors, collectors, inspectors, and storekeepers of the revenue,
+but even officers of the Internal Revenue Bureau, and probably, also,
+persons occupying confidential relations with the Executive of the
+Nation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Such being the condition of affairs in the centers of civilization in
+the latter part of the nineteenth century, let us now turn to the
+mountains, and see how matters stood among those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> primitive people who
+were still tarrying in the eighteenth. Their situation at that time is
+thus briefly sketched by a southern historian<small><a name="f7.1" id="f7.1" href="#f7">[7]</a></small>:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before the war these simple folks made their apples and peaches into
+brandy, and their corn into whiskey, and these products, with a few
+cattle, some dried fruits, honey, beeswax, nuts, wool, hides, fur,
+herbs, ginseng and other roots, and woolen socks knitted by the women in
+their long winter evenings, formed the stock in trade which they
+bartered for their plain necessaries and few luxuries, their homespun
+and cotton cloths, sugar, coffee, snuff, and fiddles.... The raising of
+a crop of corn in summer, and the getting out of tan-bark and lumber in
+winter, were almost their only resources.... The burden of taxation
+rested lightly on them. For near two generations no excise duties had
+been levied.... The war came on. They were mostly loyal to the Union.
+They paid the first moderate tax without a murmur.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They were willing to pay any tax that they were able to pay. But
+suddenly the tax jumped to $1.50, and then to $2, a gallon. The people
+were goaded to open rebellion. Their corn at that time brought only from
+25 to 40 cents a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>bushel; apples and peaches, rarely more than 10 cents
+at the stills. These were the only crops that could be grown in their
+deep and narrow valleys. Transportation was so difficult, and markets so
+remote, that there was no way to utilize the surplus except to distill
+it. Their stills were too small to bear the cost of government
+supervision. The superior officers of the Revenue Department
+(collectors, marshals, and district-attorneys or commissioners) were
+paid only by commissions on collections and by fees. Their subordinate
+agents, whose income depended upon the number of stills they cut up and
+upon the arrests made, were, as a class, brutal and desperate
+characters. Guerrilla warfare was the natural sequence.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>&#8220;BLOCKADERS&#8221; AND &#8220;THE REVENUE&#8221;</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Little</span> or no attention seems to have been paid to the moonshining that
+was going on in the mountains until about 1876, owing, no doubt, to the
+larger game in registered distilleries. In his report for 1876-7, the
+new Commissioner of Internal Revenue called attention to the illicit
+manufacture of whiskey in the mountain counties of the South, and urged
+vigorous measures for its immediate suppression.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The extent of these frauds,&#8221; said he, &#8220;would startle belief. I can
+safely say that during the past year not less than 3,000 illicit stills
+have been operated in the districts named. Those stills are of a
+producing capacity of 10 to 50 gallons a day. They are usually located
+at inaccessible points in the mountains, away from the ordinary lines of
+travel, and are generally owned by unlettered men of desperate
+character, armed and ready to resist the officers of the law. Where
+occasion requires, they come together in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> companies of from ten to fifty
+persons, gun in hand, to drive the officers out of the country. They
+resist as long as resistance is possible, and when their stills are
+seized, and they themselves are arrested, they plead ignorance and
+poverty, and at once crave the pardon of the Government.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;These frauds had become so open and notorious ... that I became
+satisfied extraordinary measures would be required to break them up.
+Collectors were ... each authorized to employ from five to ten
+additional deputies.... Experienced revenue agents of perseverance and
+courage were assigned to duty to co-operate with the collectors. United
+States marshals were called upon to co-operate with the collectors and
+to arrest all persons known to have violated the laws, and
+district-attorneys were enjoined to prosecute all offenders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In certain portions of the country many citizens not guilty of
+violating the law themselves were in strong sympathy with those who did
+violate, and the officers in many instances found themselves unsupported
+in the execution of the laws by a healthy state of public opinion. The
+distillers&mdash;ever ready to forcibly resist the officers&mdash;were, I have no
+doubt, at times treated with harshness. This occasioned much
+indignation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> on the part of those who sympathized with the
+lawbreakers....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Commissioner recommended, in his report, the passage of a law
+&#8220;expressly providing that where a person is caught in the act of
+operating an illicit still, he may be arrested without warrant.&#8221; In
+conclusion, he said: &#8220;At this time not only is the United States
+defrauded of its revenues, and its officers openly resisted, but when
+arrests are made it often occurs that prisoners are rescued by mob
+violence, and officers and witnesses are often at night dragged from
+their homes and cruelly beaten, or waylaid and assassinated.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One day I asked a mountain man, &#8220;How about the revenue officers? What
+sort of men are they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Torn down scoundrels, every one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, come, now!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, they are; plumb onery&mdash;lock, stock, barrel and gun-stick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Consider what they have to go through,&#8221; I remarked. &#8220;Like other
+detectives, they cannot secure evidence without practicing deception.
+Their occupation is hard and dangerous. Here in the mountains, every
+man&#8217;s hand is against them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>&#8220;Why is it agin them? We ain&#8217;t all blockaders; yet you can search these
+mountains through with a fine-tooth comb and you wunt find ary critter
+as has a good word to say for the revenue. The reason is &#8217;t we know them
+men from &#8217;way back; we know whut they uster do afore they jined the
+sarvice, and why they did it. Most of them were blockaders their own
+selves, till they saw how they could make more money turncoatin&#8217;. They
+use their authority to abuse people who ain&#8217;t never done nothin&#8217; nohow.
+Dangerous business? Shucks! There&#8217;s Jim Cody, for a sample [I suppress
+the real name]; he was principally raised in this county, and I&#8217;ve
+knowed him from a boy. He&#8217;s been eight years in the Government sarvice,
+and hain&#8217;t never been shot at once. But he&#8217;s killed a blockader&mdash;oh,
+yes! He arrested Tom Hayward, a chunk of a boy, that was scared most
+fitified and never resisted more&#8217;n a mouse. Cody, who was half drunk
+his-self, handcuffed Tom, quarreled with him, and shot the boy dead
+while the handcuffs was on him! Tom&#8217;s relations sued Cody in the County
+Court, but he carried the case to the Federal Court, and they were too
+poor to follow it up. I tell you, though, thar&#8217;s a settlement less &#8217;n a
+thousand mile from the river whar Jim Cody ain&#8217;t never showed his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> nose
+sence. He knows there&#8217;d be another revenue &#8216;murdered.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It must be ticklish business for an officer to prowl about the
+headwaters of these mountain streams, looking for &#8216;sign.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hell&#8217;s banjer! they don&#8217;t go prodjectin&#8217; around looking for stills.
+They set at home on their hunkers till some feller comes and informs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What class of people does the informing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, sometimes hit&#8217;s some pizen old bum who&#8217;s been refused credit.
+Sometimes hit&#8217;s the wife or mother of some feller who&#8217;s drinkin&#8217; too
+much. Then, agin, hit may be some rival blockader who aims to cut off
+the other feller&#8217;s trade, and, same time, divert suspicion from his own
+self. But ginerally hit&#8217;s jest somebody who has a gredge agin the
+blockader fer family reasons, or business reasons, and turns informer to
+git even.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is only fair to present this side of the case, because there is much
+truth in it, and because it goes far to explain the bitter feeling
+against revenue agents personally that is almost universal in the
+mountains, and is shared even by the mountain preachers. It should be
+understood, too, in this connection, that the southern highlander has a
+long memory. Slights and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> injuries suffered by one generation have their
+scars transmitted to sons and grandsons. There is no denying that there
+have been officers in the revenue service who, stung by the contempt in
+which they were held as renegades from their own people, have used their
+authority in settling private scores, and have inflicted grievous wrongs
+upon innocent people. This is matter of official record. In his report
+for 1882, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue himself declared that
+&#8220;Instances have been brought to my attention where numerous prosecutions
+have been instituted for the most trivial violations of law, and the
+arrested parties taken long distances and subjected to great
+inconveniences and expense, not in the interest of the Government, but
+apparently for no other reason than to make costs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An ex-United States Commissioner told me that, in the darkest days of
+this struggle, when he himself was obliged to buckle on a revolver every
+time he put his head out of doors, he had more trouble with his own
+deputies than with the moonshiners. &#8220;As a rule, none but desperadoes
+<ins class="correction" title="original reads 'could could'">could</ins> be hired for the service,&#8221; he declared. &#8220;For example, one time my
+deputy in your county wanted some liquor for himself. He and two of his
+cronies crossed the line into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> South Carolina, raided a still, and got
+beastly drunk. The blockaders bushwhacked them, riddled a mule and its
+rider with buckshot, and shot my deputy through the brain with a
+squirrel rifle. We went over there and buried the victims a few days
+later, during a snow storm, working with our holster flaps unbuttoned. I
+had all that work and worry simply because that rascal was bent on
+getting drunk without paying for it. However, it cost him his life.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They were not all like that, though,&#8221; continued the Judge. &#8220;Now and
+then there would turn up in the service a man who had entered it from
+honorable motives, and whose conduct, at all times, was chivalric and
+clean. There was Hersh Harkins, for example, now United States Collector
+at Asheville. I had many cases in which Harkins figured.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me of one,&#8221; I urged.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, one time there was a man named Jenks [that was not the real name,
+but it will serve], who was too rich to be suspected of blockading.
+Jenks had a license to make brandy, but not whiskey. One day Harkins was
+visiting his still-house, and he noticed something dubious. Thrusting
+his arm down through the peach pomace, he found mash underneath. It is a
+penitentiary offense to mix the two.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Harkins procured more evidence
+from Jenk&#8217;s distiller, and <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'haled'">hauled</ins> the offender before me. The trial was
+conducted in a hotel room, full of people. We were not very formal in
+those days&mdash;kept our hats on. There was no thought of Jenks trying to
+run away, for he was well-to-do; so he was given the freedom of the
+room. He paced nervously back and forth between my desk and the door,
+growing more restless as the trial proceeded. A clerk sat near me,
+writing a bond, and Harkins stood behind him dictating its terms.
+Suddenly Jenks wheeled around, near the door, jerked out a navy
+revolver, fired and bolted. It is hard to say whom he shot at, for the
+bullet went through Harkins&#8217;s coat, through the clerk&#8217;s hat, and through
+my hat, too. I ducked under the desk to get my revolver, and Harkins,
+thinking that I was killed, sprang to pick me up; but I came up firing.
+It was wonderful how soon that room was emptied! Harkins took after the
+fugitive, and had a wild chase; but he got him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was my good fortune, a few evenings later, to have a long talk with
+Mr. Harkins himself. He was a fine giant of a man, standing six feet
+three, and symmetrically proportioned. No one looking into his kindly
+gray eyes would suspect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> that they belonged to one who had seen as hard
+and dangerous service in the Revenue Department as any man then living.
+In an easy, unassuming way he told me many stories of his own adventures
+among moonshiners and counterfeiters in the old days when these southern
+Appalachians fairly swarmed with desperate characters. One grim affair
+will suffice to give an impression of the man, and of the times in which
+his spurs were won.</p>
+
+<p>There was a man on South Mountain, South Carolina, whom, for the sake of
+relatives who may still be living, we will call Lafonte. There was
+information that Lafonte was running a blind tiger. He got his whiskey
+from four brothers who were blockading near his father&#8217;s house, just
+within the North Carolina line. The Government had sent an officer named
+Merrill to capture Lafonte, but the latter drove Merrill away with a
+shotgun. Harkins then received orders to make the arrest. Taking Merrill
+with him as guide, Harkins rode to the father&#8217;s house, and found Lafonte
+himself working near a high fence. As soon as the criminal saw the
+officers approaching, he ran for the house to get his gun. Harkins
+galloped along the other side of the fence, and, after a
+rough-and-tumble fight, captured his man. The officers then carried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+their prisoner to the house of a man whose name I have forgotten&mdash;call
+him White&mdash;who lived about two miles away. Meantime they had heard
+Lafonte&#8217;s sister give three piercing screams as a signal to his
+confederates in the neighborhood, and they knew that trouble would
+quickly brew.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was ready in White&#8217;s home when the mob arrived. Harkins sent
+Merrill in to breakfast, and himself went out on the porch, carbine in
+hand, to stand off the thoroughly angry gang. White also went out,
+beseeching the mob to disperse. Matters looked squally for a time, but
+it was finally agreed that Lafonte should give bond, whereupon he was
+promptly released.</p>
+
+<p>The two officers then finished their breakfast, and shortly set out for
+the Blue House, an abandoned schoolhouse about forty miles distant,
+where the trial was to be conducted. They were followed at a distance by
+Lafonte&#8217;s half-drunken champions, who were by no means placated, owing
+to the fact that the Blue House was in a neighborhood friendly to the
+Government. Harkins and Merrill soon dodged to one side in the forest,
+until the rioters had passed them, and then proceeded leisurely in the
+rear. On their way to the Blue House they cut up <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>four stills,
+destroyed a furnace, and made several arrests.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 588px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-215.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">A Mountain Home</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The next day three United States commissioners opened court in the old
+schoolhouse. The room was crowded by curious spectators. The trial had
+not proceeded beyond preliminaries when shots and shouts from the
+pursuing mob were heard in the distance. Immediately the room was
+emptied of both crowd and commissioners, who fled in all directions,
+leaving Harkins and Merrill to fight their battle alone.</p>
+
+<p>There were thirteen men in the moonshiners&#8217; mob. They surrounded the
+house, and immediately began shooting in through the windows. The
+officers returned the fire, but a hard-pine ceiling in the room caused
+the bullets of the attacking party to ricochet in all directions and
+made the place untenable. Harkins and his comrade sprang out through the
+windows, but from opposite sides of the house. Merrill ran, but Harkins
+grappled with the men nearest to him, and in a moment the whole force of
+desperadoes was upon him like a swarm of bees. Unfortunately, the brave
+fellow had left his carbine at the house where he had spent the night.
+His only weapon was a revolver that had only three cartridges in the
+cylinder. Each of these shots dropped a man; but there were ten men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+left. Nothing but Harkins&#8217;s gigantic strength saved him, that day, from
+immediate death. His long arms tackled three or four men at once, and
+all went down in a bunch. Others fell on top, as in a college cane-rush.
+There had been swift shooting, hitherto, but now it was mostly knife and
+pistol-butt. It is almost incredible, but it is true, that this
+extraordinary battle waged for three-quarters of an hour. At its end
+only one man faced the now thoroughly exhausted and badly wounded, but
+indomitable officer. At this fellow, Harkins hurled his pistol; it
+struck him in the forehead, and the battle was won.</p>
+
+<p>A thick overcoat that Mr. Harkins wore was pierced by twenty-one
+bullets, seven of which penetrated his body. He received, besides, three
+or four bad knife-wounds in his back, and he was literally dripping
+blood from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>This tragedy had an almost comic sequel. After all danger had passed, a
+sheriff appeared on the scene, who placed, not the mob-leader, but the
+Federal officer under arrest. Harkins left a guard over the three men
+whom he had shot, and submitted to arrest, but demanded that he be taken
+to the farmhouse where he had left his horse. This the sheriff actually
+refused to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> permit, although Harkins was evidently past all possibility
+of continuing far afoot. Disgusted at such imbecility, the deputy
+stalked away from the sheriff, leaving the latter with his mouth open,
+and utterly obsessed.</p>
+
+<p>A short distance up the road, Harkins met a countryman mounted on a
+sorry old mule. &#8220;Loan me that mule for half an hour,&#8221; he requested; &#8220;you
+see, I can walk no further.&#8221; But the fellow, scared out of his wits by
+the spectacle of a man in such desperate plight, refused to accommodate
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Get down off that mule, or I&#8217;ll break your neck!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mule changed riders.</p>
+
+<p>When the story was finished, I asked Mr. Harkins if it was true, as the
+reading public generally believes, that moonshiners prefer death to
+capture. &#8220;Do they shoot a revenue officer at sight?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The answer was terse:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They used to shoot; nowadays they run.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>We have come to the time when our Government began in dead earnest to
+fight the moonshiners and endeavor to suppress their traffic. It was in
+1877. To give a fair picture, from the official standpoint, of the state
+of affairs at that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> time, I will quote from the report of the
+Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the year 1877-78:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is with extreme regret,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I find it my duty to report the
+great difficulties that have been and still are encountered in many of
+the Southern States in the enforcement of the laws. In the mountain
+regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina,
+Georgia and Alabama, and in some portions of Missouri, Arkansas and
+Texas, the illicit manufacture of spirits has been carried on for a
+number of years, and I am satisfied that the annual loss to the
+Government from this source has been very nearly, if not quite, equal to
+the annual appropriation for the collection of the internal revenue tax
+throughout the whole country. In the regions of country named there are
+known to exist about 5,000 copper stills, many of which at certain times
+are lawfully used in the production of brandy from apples and peaches,
+but I am convinced that a large portion of these stills have been and
+are used in the illicit manufacture of spirits. Part of the spirits thus
+produced has been consumed in the immediate neighborhood; the balance
+has been distributed and sold throughout the adjacent districts.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This nefarious business has been carried on,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> as a rule, by a
+determined set of men, who in their various neighborhoods league
+together for defense against the officers of the law, and at a given
+signal are ready to come together with arms in their hands to drive the
+officers of internal revenue out of the country.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As illustrating the extraordinary resistance which the officers have
+had on some occasions to encounter, I refer to occurrences in Overton
+County, Tennessee, in August last, where a posse of eleven internal
+revenue officers, who had stopped at a farmer&#8217;s house for the night,
+were attacked by a band of armed illicit distillers, who kept up a
+constant fusillade during the whole night, and whose force was augmented
+during the following day till it numbered nearly two hundred men. The
+officers took shelter in a log house, which served them as a fort,
+returning the fire as best they could, and were there besieged for
+forty-two hours, three of their party being shot&mdash;one through the body,
+one through the arm, and one in the face. I directed a strong force to
+go to their relief, but in the meantime, through the intervention of
+citizens, the besieged officers were permitted to retire, taking their
+wounded with them, and without surrendering their arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So formidable has been the resistance to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> enforcement of the laws
+that in the districts of 5th Virginia, 6th North Carolina, South
+Carolina, 2d and 5th Tennessee, 2d West Virginia, Arkansas, and
+Kentucky, I have found it necessary to supply the collectors with
+breech-loading carbines. In these districts, and also in the States of
+Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, in the 4th district of North Carolina,
+and in the 2d and 5th districts of Missouri, I have authorized the
+organization of posses ranging from five to sixty in number, to aid in
+making seizures and arrests, the object being to have a force
+sufficiently strong to deter resistance if possible, and, if need be, to
+overcome it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The intention of the Revenue Department was certainly not to inflame the
+mountain people, but to treat them as considerately as possible. And
+yet, the policy of &#8220;be to their faults a little blind&#8221; had borne no
+other fruit than to strengthen the combinations of moonshiners and their
+sympathizers to such a degree that they could set the ordinary force of
+officers at defiance, and things had come to such a pass that men of
+wide experience in the revenue service had reached the conclusion that
+&#8220;the fraud of illicit distilling was an evil too firmly established to
+be uprooted, and that it must be endured.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>The real trouble was that public sentiment in the mountains was almost
+unanimously in the moonshiners&#8217; favor. Leading citizens were either
+directly interested in the traffic, or were in active sympathy with the
+distillers. &#8220;In some cases,&#8221; said the Commissioner, &#8220;State officers,
+including judges on the bench, have sided with the illicit distillers
+and have encouraged the use of the State courts for the prosecution of
+the officers of the United States upon all sorts of charges, with the
+evident purpose of obstructing the enforcement of the laws of the United
+States.... I regret to have to record the fact that when the officers of
+the United States have been shot down from ambuscade, in cold blood, as
+a rule no efforts have been made on the part of the State officers to
+arrest the murderers; but in cases where the officers of the United
+States have been engaged in enforcement of the laws, and have
+unfortunately come in conflict with the violators of the law, and
+homicides have occurred, active steps have been at once taken for the
+arrest of such officers, and nothing would be left undone by the State
+authorities to bring them to trial and punishment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is no question but that this statement of the Commissioner was a
+fair presentation of facts; but when he went on to expose the root<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> of
+the evil, the underlying sentiment that made, and still makes, illicit
+distilling popular among our mountaineers, I think that he was
+singularly at fault. This was his explanation&mdash;the only one that I have
+found in all the reports of the Department from 1870 to 1904:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Much of the opposition to the enforcement of the internal revenue laws
+[he does not say <i>all</i>, but offers no other theory] is properly
+attributable to a latent feeling of hostility to the government and laws
+of the United States still prevailing in the breasts of a portion of the
+people of these districts, and in consequence of this condition of
+things the officers of the United States have often been treated very
+much as though they were emissaries from some foreign country quartered
+upon the people for the collection of tribute.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This shows an out-and-out misunderstanding of the character of the
+mountain people, their history, their proclivities, and the
+circumstances of their lives. The southern mountaineers, as a class,
+have been remarkably loyal to the Union ever since it was formed. Far
+more of them fought for the Union than for the Confederacy in our Civil
+War. And, anyway, politics has never had anything to do with the
+moonshining question. The reason for illicit distilling is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> purely an
+economic one, as I have shown. If officers of the Federal Government
+have been treated as foreigners they have met the same reception that
+<i>all</i> outsiders meet from the mountaineers. A native of the Carolina
+tidewater is a &#8220;furriner&#8221; in the Carolina mountains, and so is a native
+of the &#8220;bluegrass&#8221; when he enters the eastern hills of his own State.
+The highlander&#8217;s word &#8220;furriner&#8221; means to him what <ins class="correction" title="barbaros">&#946;&#940;&#961;&#946;&#945;&#961;&#959;&#962;</ins> did
+to an ancient Greek. Ordinarily he is courteous to the unfortunate
+alien, though never deferential; in his heart of hearts he regards the
+queer fellow with lofty superiority. This trait is characteristic of all
+primitive peoples, of all isolated peoples. It is provincialism, pure
+and simple&mdash;a provincialism more crudely expressed in Appalachia than in
+Gotham or The Hub, but no cruder in essence for all that.</p>
+
+<p>The vigorous campaign of 1877 bore such fruit that, in the following
+year, the Commissioner was able to report: &#8220;We virtually have peaceable
+possession of the districts of 4th and 5th North Carolina, Georgia, West
+Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas, in many of which formidable
+resistance to the enforcement of the law has prevailed.... In the
+western portion of the 5th Virginia district, in part of West Virginia,
+in the 6th North Carolina<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> district, in part of South Carolina, and in
+the 2d and 5th districts of Tennessee, I apprehend further serious
+difficulties.... It is very desirable, in order to prevent bloodshed,
+that the internal revenue forces sent into these infected regions to
+make seizures and arrests shall be so strong as to deter armed
+resistance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In January, 1880, a combined movement by armed bodies of internal
+revenue officers was made from West Virginia southwestward through the
+mountains and foothills infested with illicit distillers. &#8220;The effect of
+this movement was to convince violators of the law that it was the
+determination of the Government to put an end to frauds and resistance
+of authority, and since that time it has been manifest to all
+well-meaning men in those regions of the country that the day of the
+illicit distiller is past.&#8221; In his report for 1881-82 the Commissioner
+declared that &#8220;The supremacy of the laws ... has been established in all
+parts of the country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the number of arrests per annum, which hitherto had
+ranged from 1,000 to 3,000, now dropped off considerably, and the
+casualties in the service became few and far between. But, in 1894,
+Congress increased the tax on spirits from the old 90 cents figure to
+$1.10 a gallon. The effect was almost instantaneous.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> We have no means
+of learning how many new moonshine stills were set up, but we do know
+that the number of seizures doubled and trebled, and that bloodshed
+proportionally increased. Again the complaint went out that &#8220;justice was
+frequently defeated,&#8221; even in cases of conviction, by failure to visit
+adequate punishment upon the offenders. It is, to-day, a notorious fact
+that our blockaders dread their own State courts far more than they do
+the Federal courts, because the punishment for selling liquor in the
+mountain counties is surer to follow conviction than is the penalty for
+violating Federal law. The latter is severe enough, if it were enforced;
+for defrauding, or attempting to defraud, the United States of the tax
+on spirits, the law prescribes forfeiture of the distillery and
+apparatus, and of all spirits and raw materials, besides a fine of not
+less than $500 nor more than $5,000, <i>and</i> imprisonment for not less
+than six months nor longer than three years. I am not able to say what
+percentage of arrests is followed by conviction, nor how many convicted
+persons suffer the full penalty of the law. I only know that public
+opinion in the mountains did not consider an arrest, or even a
+conviction, by the Federal authorities, as a very serious matter during
+the period from 1880 up to the past two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> or three years, and little
+resistance was offered by blockaders when captured.</p>
+
+<p>Recently, however, a new factor has entered the moonshining problem and
+profoundly altered it: the South has gone &#8220;dry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One might have expected that prohibition would be bitterly opposed in
+Appalachia, in view of the fact that here the old-fashioned principle
+still prevails, in practice, that moderate drinking is neither a sin nor
+a disgrace, and that a man has the same right to make his own whiskey as
+his own soup, if he chooses. Undoubtedly those who fight the liquor
+traffic on purely moral grounds are a small minority in the mountains.
+But the blockaders themselves are glad to see prohibitory laws enforced
+to the letter, so far as saloons and registered distilleries are
+concerned, and the drinking public prefer their native product from both
+patriotic and gustatory motives. Such a combination is irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>When pure &#8220;blockade&#8221; of normal strength sold as cheaply as it did before
+prohibition there was no great profit in it, all risks and expenses
+considered. But to-day, even with interstate shipments of liquors to
+consumers, a gallon of &#8220;blockade&#8221; will be watered to half-strength, then
+fortified with cologne spirits or other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> abominations, and peddled out
+by bootleggers, at $1.50 a quart, in villages and lumber camps where
+somebody always is thirsty and can find the coin to assuage it. Thus,
+amid a poverty-stricken class of mountaineers, the temptation to run a
+secret still, and adulterate the output, inflames and spreads.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, the fact is that blockading as a business conducted in
+armed defiance of the law is increasing by leaps and bounds since the
+mountain region went &#8220;dry.&#8221; The profits to-day are much greater than
+before, because liquor is harder to get, in country districts, and
+consumers will pay higher prices without question.</p>
+
+<p>Correspondingly, the risks are greater than ever. Arrests have increased
+rapidly, and so have mortal combats between officers and outlaws.
+Blockading has returned to much the same status described (as previously
+quoted) by our Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1876. I have not seen
+recent revenue reports, but I do not need to; for the war between
+officers and moonshiners is so close to us that we almost live within
+gun-crack of it. If Mr. Harkins were alive to-day, he would say: &#8220;They
+used to shoot&mdash;and they have taken it up again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Observe, please, that this is no argument for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> or against prohibition.
+That is not my business. As a descriptive writer it is my duty to
+collect facts, whether pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of my own or
+anyone else&#8217;s bias, and present them in orderly sequence. It is for the
+reader to deduce his own conclusions, and with them I have nothing at
+all to do.</p>
+
+<p>I have given in brief the history of illicit distilling because we must
+consider it before we can grasp firmly the basic fact that this is not
+so much a moral as an economic problem. Men do not make whiskey in
+secret, at the peril of imprisonment or death, because they are outlaws
+by nature nor from any other kind of depravity, but simply and solely
+because it looks like &#8220;easy money to poor folks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If I may voice my own opinion of a working remedy, it is this: Give the
+mountaineers a lawful chance to make decent livings where they are. This
+means, first of all, decent roads whereby to market their farm produce
+without losing all profit in cost of transportation. The first problem
+of Appalachia to-day is the very same problem as that of western
+Pennsylvania in 1784.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Among</span> the many letters that come to me from men who think of touring or
+camping in Highland Dixie there are few but ask, &#8220;How are strangers
+treated?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This question, natural and prudent though it be, never fails to make me
+smile, for I know so well the thoughts that lie back of it: &#8220;Suppose one
+should blunder innocently upon a moonshine still&mdash;what would happen? If
+a feud were raging in the land, how would a stranger fare? If one goes
+alone into the mountains, does he run any risk of being robbed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Before I left the tame West and came into this wild East, I would have
+asked a few questions myself, if I had known anyone to answer them. As
+it was, I turned up rather abruptly in a backwoods settlement where the
+&#8220;furriner&#8221; was more than a nine-days wonder. I bore no credentials; and
+it was quite as well. If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or
+from the President of the United States it would have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> been&mdash;just what I
+was myself&mdash;a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and
+marvelous new bug.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome
+to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as
+affable as common folks. I dwelt alone for a long time, first in open
+camp, afterwards in a secluded hut. Then I boarded with a native family.
+Often I left my belongings to look out for themselves whilst I went away
+on expeditions of days or weeks at a time. And nobody ever stole from me
+so much as a fish-hook or a brass cartridge. So, in the retrospect, I
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>Does this mean, then, that Poe&#8217;s characterization of the mountaineers is
+out of date? Not at all. They are the same &#8220;fierce and uncouth race of
+men&#8221; to-day that they were in his time. Homicide is so prevalent in the
+districts that I personally am acquainted with that nearly every adult
+citizen has been directly interested in some murder case, either as
+principal, officer, witness, kinsman, or friend.</p>
+
+<p>This grewsome subject I shall treat elsewhere, in detail. It is
+introduced here only to emphasize a fact pertinent to the present topic,
+namely: that the private wars of the highlanders are limited to their
+own people. In our corner of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>North Carolina no traveler from the
+outside ever has been a victim, nor do I know of any such case in the
+whole Appalachian region.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 484px;"><img src="images/ill-233.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Many of the homes have but one window</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>And here is another significant fact: as regards personal property I do
+not know any race in the world that is more honest than our backwoodsmen
+of the southern mountains. As soon as you leave the railroad you enter a
+land where sneak-thieves are rare and burglars almost unheard of. In my
+own county and all those adjoining it there has been only one case of
+highway robbery and only one of murder for money, so far as I can learn,
+in the past <i>forty</i> years.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain code of conduct is a curious mixture of savagery and
+civility. One man will kill another over a pig or a panel of fence (not
+for the property&#8217;s sake, but because of hot words ensuing) and he will
+&#8220;come clear&#8221; in court because every fellow on the jury feels he would
+have done the same thing himself under similar provocation; yet these
+very men, vengeful and cruel though they are, regard hospitality as a
+sacred duty toward wayfarers of any degree, and the bare idea of
+stealing from a stranger would excite their instant loathing or
+white-hot scorn.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone of tact and common sense can go as he pleases through the darkest
+corner of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> Appalachia without being molested. Tact, however, implies the
+will and the insight to put yourself truly in the other man&#8217;s place.
+Imagine yourself born, bred, circumstanced like him. It implies, also,
+the courtesy of doing as you would be done by if you were in that
+fellow&#8217;s shoes. No arrogance, no condescension, but man to man on a
+footing of equal manliness.</p>
+
+<p>And there are &#8220;manners&#8221; in the rudest community: customs and rules of
+conduct that it is well to learn before one goes far afield. For
+example, when you stop at a mountain cabin, if no dogs sound an alarm,
+do not walk up to the door and knock. You are expected to call out
+<i>Hello!</i> until someone comes to inspect you. None but the most intimate
+neighbors neglect this usage and there is mighty good reason back of it
+in a land where the path to one&#8217;s door may be a warpath.</p>
+
+<p>If you are armed, as a hunter, do not fail to remove the cartridges from
+the gun, in your host&#8217;s presence, before you set foot on his porch. Then
+give him the weapon or stand it in a corner or hang it up in plain view.
+Even our sheriff, when he stopped with us, would lay his revolver on the
+mantel-shelf and leave it there until he went his way. If you think a
+moment you can see the courtesy of such an act. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> proves that the
+guest puts implicit trust in the honor of his host and in his ability to
+protect all within his house. There never has been a case in which such
+trust was violated.</p>
+
+<p>I knew a traveler who, spending the night in a one-room cabin, was fool
+enough (I can use no milder term) to thrust a loaded revolver under his
+pillow when he went to bed. In the morning his weapon was still there,
+but empty, and its cartridges lay conspicuously on a table across the
+room. Nobody said a word about the incident: the hint was left to soak
+in.</p>
+
+<p>The only real danger that one may encounter from the native people, so
+long as he behaves himself, is when he comes upon a man who is wild with
+liquor and cannot sidestep him. In such case, give him the glad word and
+move on at once. I have had a drunken &#8220;ball-hooter&#8221; (log-roller) from
+the lumber camps fire five shots around my head as a <i>feu-de-joie</i>, and
+then stand tantalizingly, with hammer cocked over the sixth cartridge,
+to see what I would do about it. As it chanced, I did not mind his
+fireworks, for my head was a-swim with the rising fever of erysipelas
+and I had come dragging my heels many an irk mile down from the
+mountains to find a doctor. So I merely smiled at the fellow and asked
+if he was having a good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> time. He grinned sheepishly and let me pass
+unharmed.</p>
+
+<p>The chief drawback to travel in this region, aside from the roads, is
+not the character of the people, but the quality of bed and board. Of
+course there are good hotels at most of the summer resorts, but these
+are few and scattering, at present, for a territory so immense. In most
+regions where there is noble scenery, unspoiled forest, and good
+fishing, the accommodations are extremely rude. Many of the village inns
+are dirty, and their tables a shock and a despair to the hungry pilgrim.
+There are blessed exceptions, to be sure, but on the other hand the
+traveler sometimes will encounter a cuisine that is neither edible nor
+speakable, and will be shown to a bed wherein it needs no Sherlock
+Holmes to detect that the previous biped retired with his boots on, or
+at least with much realty attached to his person. Such places often are
+like that unpronounceable town in Russia of which Paragot said: &#8220;The
+bugs are the most companionable creatures in it, and they are the
+cleanest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If one be of the same mind as the plain-spoken Dr. Samuel Johnson, that
+&#8220;the finest landscape in the world is not worth a damn without a cozy
+inn in the foreground,&#8221; he should keep to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> the stock show-places of our
+highlands or seek other playgrounds.</p>
+
+<p>By far the most comfortable way to stay in the back country at present
+is in a camp of one&#8217;s own where he can keep things tidy and have food to
+suit him. If you be, though, of stout stomach and wishful to get true
+insight into mountain ways and character you can find some sort of
+boarding-place almost anywhere. In such case go first to the sheriff of
+the county (in person, not by letter). This officer is a walking bureau
+of information and dispenses it freely to any stranger. He knows almost
+every man in the county, his character and his circumstances. He may be
+depended upon to direct you to the best stopping-places, will tell you
+how to get hunting and fishing privileges, and will recommend a good
+packer or teamster if such help is wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Along the railways and main county roads the farmers show a
+well-justified mistrust about admitting company for the night. But in
+the back districts the latch-string generally is out to all comers. &#8220;If
+you-uns can stand what we-uns has ter, w&#8217;y come right in and set you a
+cheer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If the man of the house has misgivings as to the state of the larder, he
+will say: &#8220;I&#8217;ll ax<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> the woman gin she can git ye a bite.&#8221; Seldom does
+the wife demur, though sometimes her patience is sorely tried.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger whose calked boots betrayed his calling stopped at Uncle
+Mark&#8217;s to inquire, &#8220;Can I git to stay all night?&#8221; Aunt Nance, peeping
+through a crack, warned her man in a whisper: &#8220;Them loggers jest louzes
+up folkses houses.&#8221; Whereat Mark answered the lumberjack: &#8220;We don&#8217;t
+ginerally foller takin&#8217; in strangers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack glanced significantly at the lowering clouds, and grunted:
+&#8220;Uh&mdash;looks like I could stand hitched all night!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was too much for Mark. &#8220;Well!&#8221; he exclaimed, &#8220;mebbe we-uns can find
+ye a pallet&mdash;I&#8217;ll try to enjoy ye somehow.&#8221; Which, being interpreted,
+means, &#8220;I&#8217;ll entertain you as best I can.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The hospitality of the backwoods knows no bounds short of sickness in
+the family or downright destitution. Travelers often innocently impose
+on poor people, and even criticise the scanty fare, when they may be
+getting a lion&#8217;s share of the last loaf in the house. And few of them
+realize the actual cost of entertaining company in a home that is long
+mountain miles from any market. Fancy yourself making a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> twenty-mile
+round trip over awful roads to carry back a sack of flour on your
+shoulder and a can of oil in your hand; then figure what the
+transportation is worth.</p>
+
+<p>Once when I was trying a short-cut through the forest by following vague
+directions I swerved to the wrong trail. Sunset found me on the summit
+of an unfamiliar mountain, with cold rain setting in, and below me lay
+the impenetrable laurel of Huggins&#8217;s Hell. I turned back to the head of
+the nearest water course, not knowing whither it led, fought my way
+through thicket and darkness to the nearest house, and asked for
+lodging. The man was just coming in from work. He betrayed some anxiety
+but admitted me with grave politeness. Then he departed on an errand,
+leaving his wife to hear the story of my wanderings.</p>
+
+<p>I was eager for supper; but madame made no move toward the kitchen. An
+hour passed. A little child whimpered with hunger. The mother, flushing,
+soothed it on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>It was well on in the night when her husband returned, bearing a little
+&#8220;poke&#8221; of cornmeal. Then the woman flew to her post. Soon we had hot
+bread, three or four slices of pork, and black coffee unsweetened&mdash;all
+there was in the house.</p>
+
+<p>It developed that when I arrived there was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> barely enough meal for the
+family&#8217;s supper and breakfast. My host had to shell some corn, go in
+almost pitch darkness, without a lantern, to a tub-mill far down the
+branch, wait while it ground out a few spoonfuls to the minute and bring
+the meal back.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, when I offered pay for my entertainment, he waved it
+aside. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t never tuk money from company,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and this ain&#8217;t
+no time to begin.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Laughing, I slipped some silver into the hand of the eldest child. &#8220;This
+is not pay; it&#8217;s a present.&#8221; The girl was awed into speechlessness at
+sight of money of her own, and the parents did not know how to thank me
+for her, but bade me &#8220;Stay on, stranger; pore folks has a pore way, but
+you&#8217;re welcome to what we got.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This incident is a little out of the common, nowadays; but it is typical
+of what was customary until lumbering and other industrial works began
+to invade the solitudes. To-day it is the rule to charge twenty-five
+cents a meal and the same for lodging, regardless of what the fare and
+the bed may be. When you think of it, this is right, for &#8220;the porer
+folks is the harder it is to <i>git</i> things.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers always are eager for news.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> In the drab monotony of
+their shut-in lives the coming of an unknown traveler is an event that
+will set the whole neighborhood gossiping. Every word and action of his
+will be discussed for weeks after he has gone his way. This, of course,
+is a trait of rural people everywhere; but imagine, if you can, how it
+may be intensified where there are no newspapers, few visitors, and
+where the average man gets maybe two or three letters a year!</p>
+
+<p>Riding up a branch road, you come upon a white-bearded patriarch who
+halts you with a wave of the hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stranger&mdash;meanin&#8217; no harm&mdash;<i>whar</i> are you gwine?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>You tell him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you say your name was?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>You had not mentioned it; but you do so now.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What mought you-uns foller for a living?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is wise to humor the old man, and tell him frankly what is your
+business &#8220;up this &#8217;way-off branch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Half a mile farther you espy a girl coming toward you. She stops like a
+startled fawn, wide-eyed with amazement. Then, at a bound, she dodges
+into a thicket, doubles on her course and runs back as fast as her
+nimble bare legs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> can carry her to report that &#8220;Some-<i>body</i> &#8217;s comin&#8217;!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the next house, stopping for a drink of water, you chat a few
+moments. High up the opposite hill is a half-hidden cabin from which
+keen eyes scrutinize your every move, and a woman cries to her boy:
+&#8220;Run, Kit, down to Mederses, and ax who <i>is</i> he!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As you approach a cross-roads store every idler pricks up to instant
+attention. Your presence is detected from every neighboring cabin and
+cornfield. Long John quits his plowing, Red John drops his axe, Sick
+John (&#8220;who&#8217;s allers ailin&#8217;, to hear <i>him</i> tell&#8221;) pops out of bed, and
+Lyin&#8217; John (whose &#8220;mouth ain&#8217;t no praar-book, if it <i>does</i> open and
+shet&#8221;) grabs his hat, with &#8220;I jes&#8217; got ter know who that feller is!&#8221;
+Then all Johns descend their several paths, to congregate at the store
+and estimate the stranger as though he were so many board-feet of lumber
+in the tree or so many pounds of beef on the hoof.</p>
+
+<p>In every settlement there is somebody who makes a pleasure of gathering
+and spreading news. Such a one we had&mdash;a happy-go-lucky fellow from
+whom, they said, &#8220;you can hear the news jinglin&#8217; afore he comes within
+gunshot.&#8221; It amused me to record the many ways<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> he had of announcing his
+mission by indirection. Here is the list:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m jes&#8217; broguin&#8217; about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;m jest cooterin&#8217; around.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m santerin&#8217; about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m jes&#8217; prodjectin&#8217; around.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jist traffickin&#8217; about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I ain&#8217;t workin&#8217; none&mdash;jest spuddin&#8217; around.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Me? I&#8217;m jes&#8217; shacklin&#8217; around.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yea, la! I&#8217;m jist loaferin&#8217; about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And yet one hears that our mountaineers have a limited vocabulary!</p>
+
+<p>Although this is no place to discuss the mountain dialect, I must
+explain that to &#8220;brogue&#8221; means to go about in brogues (brogans
+nowadays). A &#8220;cooter&#8221; is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a
+verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers. &#8220;Spuddin&#8217; around&#8221;
+means toddling or jolting along. To &#8220;shummick&#8221; (also &#8220;shammick&#8221;) is to
+shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is
+nothing serious in view. And &#8220;shacklin&#8217; around&#8221; pictures a shackly,
+loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger takes the mountaineers for simple characters that can be
+gauged at a glance. This illusion&mdash;for it is an illusion&mdash;comes from
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> childlike directness with which they ask him the most intimate
+questions about himself, from the genuine good-will with which they
+admit him to their homes, and from the stark openness of their domestic
+affairs in houses where no privacy can possibly exist.</p>
+
+<p>In so far as simplicity means only a shrewd regard for essentials, a
+rigid exclusion of whatever can be done without, perhaps no white race
+is nearer a state of nature than these highlanders of ours. Yet this
+relates only to the externals of life. Diogenes sat in a tub, but his
+thoughts were deep as the sea. And whoever estimates our mountaineers as
+a shallow-minded or open-minded people has much to learn.</p>
+
+<p>When Long John asks, &#8220;What you aimin&#8217; to do up hyur? How much money do
+you make? Whar&#8217;s your old woman?&#8221; he does not really expect sincere
+answers. Certainly he will take them with more than a grain of salt.
+Conversation, with him, is a game. In quizzing you, the interests that
+he is actually curious about lie hidden in the back of his head, and he
+will proceed toward them by cunning circumventions, seeking to entrap
+you into telling the truth by accident. Being himself born to intrigue
+and skilled in dodging the leading question, he assumes that you have
+had equal advantages.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> When you discuss with him any business of serious
+concern, if you should go straight to the point, and open your mind
+frankly, he would be nonplussed.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is that our highlanders are a sly, suspicious, and secretive
+folk. That, too, is a state of nature. Primitive society is by no means
+a Utopia or a Garden of Eden. In wilderness life the feral arts of
+concealment, spying, false &#8220;leads,&#8221; and doubling on trails, are the arts
+self-preservative. The native backwoodsman practices them as
+instinctively and with as little compunction upon his own species as
+upon the deer and the wolf from whom he learned them.</p>
+
+<p>As a friend, no one will spring quicker to your aid, reckless of
+consequences, and fight with you to the last ditch; but fear of betrayal
+lies at the very bottom of his nature. His sleepless suspicion of
+ulterior motives is no more, no less, than a feral trait, inherited from
+a long line of forebears whose isolated lives were preserved only by
+incessant vigilance against enemies that stalked by night and struck
+without warning.</p>
+
+<p>Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the
+mountaineers. I am not speaking of personal but of race character&mdash;type.
+No outsider can discern and measure those powerful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> but obscure motives,
+those rooted prejudices, that constitute their real difference from
+other men, until he has lived with the people a long time on terms of
+intimacy. Nor can anyone be trusted to portray them if he holds a brief
+either for or against this people. The fluttering tourist marks only the
+oddities he sees, without knowing the reason for them. On the other
+hand, a misguided champion flies to arms at first mention of an
+unpleasant fact, and either denies it, clamoring for legal proof, or
+tries to befog the whole subject and run it on the rocks of altercation.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers are high-strung and sensitive to criticism. No one has
+less use for &#8220;that worst scourge of avenging heaven, the candid friend.&#8221;
+Of late years they are growing conscious of their own belatedness, and
+that touches a tender spot. &#8220;Hit don&#8217;t take a big seed to hurt a sore
+tooth.&#8221; Since they do not see how anyone can find beauty or historic
+interest in ways of life that the rest of the world has cast aside, so
+they resent every exposure of their peculiarities as if that were
+holding them up to ridicule or blame.</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say, it provokes them to be called mountaineers, that being a
+&#8220;furrin word&#8221; which they take as a term of reproach. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> call
+themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously &#8220;mountain
+boomers,&#8221; the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel
+which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains.
+Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among
+themselves the backwoods are called &#8220;the sticks.&#8221; Hillsman and
+highlander are strange words to them&mdash;and anything that is strange is
+suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much
+about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong
+repetition of the same old terms.</p>
+
+<p>I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the
+mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity.
+It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or
+variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which
+it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I
+tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or
+will see is that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">A chiel &#8217;s amang ye, takin&#8217; notes,<br />
+And, faith, he&#8217;ll prent &#8217;em.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes
+have not got off so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who
+went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the
+railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame,
+for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane
+history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is
+posed as &#8220;cocking the <i>trigger</i>&#8221; of a gun, or shooting a &#8220;forty-four&#8221;
+bullet from a thirty-caliber &#8220;automatic <i>revolver</i>,&#8221; who in Kentucky
+could be expected to stand it?</p>
+
+<p>The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that
+when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College
+&#8220;the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of
+the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox&#8217;s stories were either true or false. If
+they were true, then he was &#8216;no gentleman&#8217; for telling all the family
+affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were
+not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people.
+Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by
+the &#8216;unco gude&#8217; a generation ago.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 535px; height: 350px;"><img src="images/ill-251.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">The Schoolhouse</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>As for settlement workers, let them teach more by example than by
+precept. Bishop Wilson has given them some advice that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> cannot be
+bettered: &#8220;It must be said with emphasis that our problem is an
+exceedingly delicate one. The Highlanders are Scotch-Irish in their
+high-spiritedness and proud independence. Those who would help them must
+do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, showing always genuine
+interest in them but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As
+quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion
+of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs if he
+detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indication of an
+air of superiority.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The worker among the mountaineers,&#8221; he continues, &#8220;must &#8216;meet with them
+on the level and part on the square&#8217; and conquer their oftentimes
+unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has
+to say about the superiority of other sections or of the deficiencies of
+the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively
+few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard under the
+searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Allow me to add that this is no place for the &#8220;unco gude&#8221; to exercise
+their talents, but rather for those whose studies and travels have
+taught them both tolerance and hopefulness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> Some well-meaning
+missionaries are shocked and scandalized at what seems to them incurable
+perversity and race degeneration. It is nothing of the sort. There are
+reasons, good reasons, for the worst that we find in any Hell-fer-Sartin
+or Loafer&#8217;s Glory. All that is the inevitable result of isolation and
+lack of opportunity. It is no more hopeless than the same features of
+life were in the Scotch highlands two centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>But it must be known that the future of this really fine race is, at
+bottom, an economic problem, which must be studied hand-in-hand with the
+educational one. Civilization only repels the mountaineer until you show
+him something to gain by it&mdash;he knows by instinct what he is bound to
+lose. There is no use in teaching cleanliness and thrift to serfs or
+outcasts. The <i>independence</i> of the mountain farm must be preserved, or
+the fine spirit of the race will vanish and all that is manly in the
+Highlander will wither to the core.</p>
+
+<p>It is far from my own purpose to preach or advise. &#8220;Portray the
+struggle, and you need write no tract.&#8221; Still farther is it from my
+thought to let characterization degenerate into caricature. Wherever I
+tell anything that is unusual or below the average of backwoods life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> I
+give fair warning that it is admitted only for spice or contrast, and
+let it go at that. But even in writing with severe restraint it will be
+necessary at times to show conditions so rude and antiquated that
+professional apologists will growl, and many others may find my
+statements hard to credit as typical of anything at all in our modern
+America.</p>
+
+<p>So, let me remind the reader again that full three-fourths of our
+mountaineers still live in the eighteenth century, and that in their
+far-flung wilderness, away from large rivers and railways, the habits,
+customs, morals of the people have changed but little from those of our
+old colonial frontier; in essentials they are closely analogous to what
+we read of lower-class English and Scottish life in Covenanter and
+Jacobite times.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In</span> delineating a strange race we are prone to disregard what is common
+in our own experience and observe sharply what is odd. The oddities we
+sketch and remember and tell about. But there is little danger of
+misrepresenting the physical features and mental traits of the hill
+people, because among them there is one definite type that greatly
+predominates. This is not to be wondered at when we remember that fully
+three-fourths of our highlanders are practically of the same descent,
+have lived the same kind of life for generations, and have intermarried
+to a degree unknown in other parts of America.</p>
+
+<p>Our average mountaineer is lean, inquisitive, shrewd. If that be what
+constitutes a Yankee, as is popularly supposed outside of New England,
+then this Yankee of the South is as true to type as the conventional
+Uncle Sam himself.</p>
+
+<p>A fat mountaineer is a curiosity. The hill folk even seem to affect a
+slender type of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> comeliness. In Alice MacGowan&#8217;s <i>Judith of the
+Cumberlands</i>, old Jepthah Turrentine says of one of his sons: &#8220;I named
+that boy after the finest man that ever walked God&#8217;s green earth&mdash;and
+then the fool had to go and git fat on me! Think of me with a <i>fat</i> son!
+I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort
+p&#8217;intedly to be led out and killed!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Spartan diet does not put on flesh. Still, it should be noted that long
+legs, baggy clothing, and scantiness or lack of underwear make people
+seem thinner than they really are. Our highlanders are conspicuously a
+tall race. Out of seventy-six men that I have listed just as they
+occurred to me, but four are below average American height and only two
+are fat. About two-thirds of them are brawny or sinewy fellows of great
+endurance. The others generally are slab-sided, stoop-shouldered, but
+withey. The townsfolk and the valley farmers, being better nourished and
+more observant of the prime laws of wholesome living, are noticeably
+superior in appearance but not in stamina.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all males of the back country have a grave and deliberate
+bearing. They travel with the long, sure-footed stride of the born
+woodsman, not graceful and lithe like a moccasined Indian (their coarse
+brogans forbid it), but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> shambling as if every joint had too much play.
+There is nothing about them to suggest the Swiss or Tyrolean
+mountaineers; rather they resemble the gillies of the Scotch Highlands.
+Generally they are lean-faced, sallow, level-browed, with rather high
+cheek-bones. Gray eyes predominate, sometimes vacuous, but oftener hard,
+searching, crafty&mdash;the feral eye of primitive man.</p>
+
+<p>From infancy these people have been schooled to dissimulate and hide
+emotion, and ordinarily their faces are as opaque as those of veteran
+poker players. Many wear habitually a sullen scowl, hateful and
+suspicious, which in men of combative age, and often in the old women,
+is sinister and vindictive. The smile of comfortable assurance, the
+frank eye of good-fellowship, are rare indeed. Nearly all of the young
+people and many of the adults plant themselves before a stranger and
+regard him with a fixed stare, peculiarly annoying until one realizes
+that they have no thought of impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the women are pretty in youth; but hard toil in house and field,
+early marriage, frequent child-bearing with shockingly poor attention,
+and ignorance or defiance of the plainest necessities of hygiene, soon
+warp and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> age them. At thirty or thirty-five a mountain woman is apt to
+have a worn and faded look, with form prematurely bent&mdash;and what wonder?
+Always bending over the hoe in the cornfield, or bending over the hearth
+as she cooks by an open fire, or bending over her baby, or bending to
+pick up, for the thousandth time, the wet duds that her lord flings on
+the floor as he enters from the woods&mdash;what wonder that she soon grows
+short-waisted and round-shouldered?</p>
+
+<p>The voices of the highland women, low toned by habit, often are
+singularly sweet, being pitched in a sad, musical, minor key. With
+strangers, the women are wont to be shy, but speculative rather than
+timid, as they glance betimes with &#8220;a slow, long look of mild inquiry,
+or of general listlessness, or of unconscious and unaccountable
+melancholy.&#8221; Many, however, scrutinize a visitor calmly for minutes at a
+time or frankly measure him with the gipsy eye of Carmen.</p>
+
+<p>Outsiders, judging from the fruits of labor in more favored lands, have
+charged the mountaineers with indolence. It is the wrong word. Shiftless
+many of them are&mdash;afflicted with that malady which Barrie calls &#8220;acute
+disinclination to work&#8221;&mdash;but that is not so much in their physical
+nature as in their economic outlook.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> Rarely do we find mountaineers who
+loaf all day on the floor or the doorstep like so many of the poor
+whites of the lowlands. If not laboring, they at least must be doing
+something, be it no more than walking ten miles to shoot a squirrel or
+visit a crony.</p>
+
+<p>As a class, they have great and restless physical energy. Considering
+the quantity and quality of what they eat there is no people who can
+beat them in endurance of strain and privation. They are great walkers
+and carriers of burdens. Before there was a tub-mill in our settlement
+one of my neighbors used to go, every other week, thirteen miles to
+mill, carrying a two-bushel sack of corn (112 pounds) and returning with
+his meal on the following day. This was done without any pack-strap but
+simply shifting the load from one shoulder to the other, betimes.</p>
+
+<p>One of our women, known as &#8220;Long Goody&#8221; (I measured her; six feet three
+inches she stood) walked eighteen miles across the Smokies into
+Tennessee, crossing at an elevation of 5,000 feet, merely to shop more
+advantageously than she could at home. The next day she shouldered fifty
+pounds of flour and some other groceries, and bore them home before
+nightfall. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, in his seventy-second year <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>came to
+join a party of us on a bear hunt. He walked twelve miles across the
+mountain, carrying his equipment and four days&#8217; rations for himself <i>and
+dogs</i>. Finding that we had gone on ahead of him he followed to our camp
+on Siler&#8217;s Bald, twelve more miles, climbing another 3,000 feet, much of
+it by bad trail, finished the twenty-four-mile trip in seven hours&mdash;and
+then wanted to turn in and help cut the night-wood. Young mountaineers
+afoot easily outstrip a horse on a day&#8217;s journey by road and trail.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 464px;"><img src="images/ill-261.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a worn and faded look&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In a climate where it showers about two days out of three through spring
+and summer the women go about, like the men, unshielded from the wet. If
+you expostulate, one will laugh and reply: &#8220;I ain&#8217;t sugar, nor salt, nor
+nobody&#8217;s honey.&#8221; Slickers are worn only on horseback&mdash;and two-thirds of
+our people had no horses. A man who was so eccentric as to carry an
+umbrella is known to this day as &#8220;Umbrell&#8217;&#8221; John Walker.</p>
+
+<p>In winter, one sometimes may see adults and children going barefoot in
+snow that is ankle deep. It used to be customary in our settlement to do
+the morning chores barefooted in the snow. &#8220;Then,&#8221; said one, &#8220;our feet
+&#8217;d tingle and burn, so &#8217;t they wouldn&#8217;t git a bit cold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> all day when we
+put our shoes on.&#8221; I knew a family whose children had no shoes all one
+winter, and occasionally we had zero weather.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to have been common, in earlier times, to go barefooted all the
+year. Frederick Law Olmsted, a noted writer of the Civil War period, was
+told by a squire of the Tennessee hills that &#8220;a majority of the folks
+went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the time four or
+five inches deep; and the man said he didn&#8217;t think most of the men about
+here had more than one coat, and they never wore one in winter except on
+holidays. &#8216;That was the healthiest way,&#8217; he reckoned, &#8216;just to toughen
+yourself and not wear no coat.&#8217; No matter how cold it was, he &#8216;didn&#8217;t
+wear no coat.&#8217;&#8221; One of my own neighbors in the Smokies never owned a
+coat until after his marriage, when a friend of mine gave him one.</p>
+
+<p>It is the usual thing for men and boys to wade cold trout streams all
+day, come in at sunset, disrobe to shirt and trousers, and then sit in
+the piercing drafts of an open cabin drying out before the fire, though
+the night be so cool that a stranger beside them shivers in his dry
+flannels. After supper, the women, if they have been wearing shoes, will
+remove them to ease their feet, no matter if it be freezing cold&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+the cracks in the floor may be an inch wide.</p>
+
+<p>In bear hunting, our parties usually camped at about 5,000 feet above
+sea level. At this elevation, in the long nights before Christmas, the
+cold often was bitter and the wind might blow a gale. Sometimes the
+native hunters would lie out in the open all night without a sign of a
+blanket or an axe. They would say: &#8220;La! many&#8217;s the night I&#8217;ve been out
+when the frost was spewed up so high [measuring three or four inches
+with the hand], and that right around the fire, too.&#8221; Cattle hunters in
+the mountains never carry a blanket or a shelter-cloth, and they sleep
+out wherever night finds them, often in pouring rain or flying snow. On
+their arduous trips they find it burden enough to carry the salt for
+their cattle, with a frying-pan, cup, corn pone, coffee, and
+&#8220;sow-belly,&#8221; all in a grain sack strapped to the man&#8217;s back.</p>
+
+<p>Such nurture, from childhood, makes white men as indifferent to the
+elements as Fuegians. And it makes them anything but comfortable
+companions for one who has been differently reared. During &#8220;court week&#8221;
+when the hotels at the county-seat are overcrowded with countrymen, the
+luckless drummers who happen to be there have continuous exercise in
+closing doors. No mountaineer closes a door behind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> him. Winter or
+summer, doors are to be shut only when folks go to bed. That is what
+they are for. After close study of mountain speech I have failed to
+discern that the word draft is understood, except in parts of the
+Virginia and Kentucky mountains, where it means a brook. One is reminded
+of the colonial, who, visiting England, remarked of the British people:
+&#8220;It is a survival of the fittest&mdash;the fittest to exist in fog.&#8221; Here, it
+is the fittest to survive cold, and wet, and drafts.</p>
+
+<p>Running barefooted in the snow is exceptional nowadays; but it is by no
+means the limit of hardiness or callosity that some of these people
+display. It is not so long ago that I passed an open lean-to of chestnut
+bark far back in the wilderness, wherein a family of Tennesseans was
+spending the year. There were three children, the eldest a lad of
+twelve. The entire worldly possessions of this family could easily be
+packed around on their backs. Poverty, however, does not account for
+such manner of living. There is none so poor in the mountains that he
+need rear his children in a bark shed. It is all a matter of taste.</p>
+
+<p>There is a wealthy man known to everyone around Waynesville, who, being
+asked where he resided, as a witness in court, answered:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> &#8220;Three, four
+miles up and down Jonathan Creek.&#8221; The judge was about to fine him for
+contempt, when it developed that the witness spoke literal truth. He
+lives neither in house nor camp, but perambulates his large estate and
+when night comes lies down wherever he may happen to be. In winter he
+has been known to go where some of his pigs bedded in the woods, usurp
+the middle for himself, and borrow comfort from their bodily heat.</p>
+
+<p>This man is worth over a hundred thousand dollars. He visited the
+world&#8217;s fairs at Chicago and St. Louis, wearing the old long coat that
+serves him also as blanket, and carrying his rations in a sack. Far from
+being demented, he is notoriously so shrewd on the stand and so learned
+in the law that he is formidable to every attorney who cross-questions
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I cite these last two instances not merely as eccentricities of
+character, but as really typical of the bodily stamina that most of the
+mountaineers can display if they want to. Their smiling endurance of
+cold and wet and privation would have endeared them to the first
+Napoleon, who declared that those soldiers were the best who bivouacked
+shelterless throughout the year.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of such apparent &#8220;toughness,&#8221; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> mountaineers are not a
+notably healthy people. The man who exposes himself wantonly year after
+year must pay the piper. Sooner or later he &#8220;adopts a rheumatiz,&#8221; and
+the adoption lasts till he dies. So also in dietary matters. The
+backwoodsmen through ruthless weeding-out of the normally sensitive have
+acquired a wonderful tolerance of swimming grease, doughy bread and
+half-fried cabbage; but, even so, they are gnawed by dyspepsia. This
+accounts in great measure for the &#8220;glunch o&#8217; sour disdain&#8221; that mars so
+many countenances. A neighbor said to me of another: &#8220;He has a gredge
+agin all creation, and glories in human misery.&#8221; So would anyone else
+who ate at the same table. Many a homicide in the mountains can be
+traced directly to bad food and the raw whiskey taken to appease a
+soured stomach.</p>
+
+<p>Every stranger in Appalachia is quick to note the high percentage of
+defectives among the people. However, we should bear in mind that in the
+mountains proper there are few, if any, public refuges for this class,
+and that home ties are so powerful that mountaineers never send their
+&#8220;fitified folks&#8221; or &#8220;half-wits,&#8221; or other unfortunates, to any
+institution in the lowlands, so long as it is bearable to have them
+around. Such poor creatures as would be segregated in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> more advanced
+communities, far from the public eye, here go at large and reproduce
+their kind.</p>
+
+<p>Extremely early marriages are tolerated, as among all primitive people.
+I knew a hobbledehoy of sixteen who married a frail, tuberculous girl of
+twelve, and in the same small settlement another lad of sixteen who
+wedded a girl of thirteen. In both cases the result was wretched beyond
+description.</p>
+
+<p>The evil consequences of inbreeding of persons closely akin are well
+known to the mountaineers; but here knowledge is no deterrent, since
+whole districts are interrelated to start with. Owing to the isolation
+of the clans, and their extremely limited travels, there are abundant
+cases like those caustically mentioned in <i>King Spruce</i>: &#8220;All Skeets and
+Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till
+ev&#8217;ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger
+relationship.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers are touchy on these topics and it is but natural that
+they should be so. Nevertheless it is the plain duty of society to study
+such conditions and apply the remedy. There was a time when the Scotch
+people (to cite only one instance out of many) were in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> still worse
+case, threatened with race degeneration; but improved economic
+conditions, followed by education, made them over into one of the most
+vigorous of modern peoples.</p>
+
+<p>When I lived up in the Smokies there was no doctor within sixteen miles
+(and then, none who ever had attended a medical school). It was
+inevitable that my first-aid kit and limited knowledge of medicine
+should be requisitioned until I became a sort of &#8220;doctor to the
+settle<i>ment</i>.&#8221;<small><a name="f8.1" id="f8.1" href="#f8">[8]</a></small> My services, being free, at once became popular, and
+there was no escape; for, if I treated the Smiths, let us say, and
+ignored a call from the Robinsons, the slight would be resented by all
+Robinson connections throughout the land. So my normal occupations often
+were interrupted by such calls as these:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;John&#8217;s Lize Ann she ain&#8217;t much; cain&#8217;t you-uns give her some
+easin&#8217;-powder for that hurtin&#8217; in her chist?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Old Uncle Bobby Tuttle&#8217;s got a pone come up on his side; looks like he
+mought drap off, him bein&#8217; weak and right narvish and sick with a
+head-swimmin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>&#8220;Ike Morgan Pringle&#8217;s a-been horse-throwed down the clift, and he&#8217;s in a
+manner stone dead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right sensibly atween the shoulders I&#8217;ve got a pain; somethin&#8217; &#8217;s gone
+wrong with my stummick; I don&#8217;t &#8217;pear to have no stren&#8217;th left; and
+sometimes I&#8217;m nigh sifflicated. Whut you reckon ails me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come right over to Mis&#8217; Fullwiler&#8217;s, quick; she&#8217;s fell down and busted
+a rib inside o&#8217; her!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On these errands of mercy I soon picked up some rules of practice that
+are not laid down in the books. I learned to carry not only my own
+bandages but my own towels and utensils for washing and sterilizing. I
+kept my mouth shut about germ theories of disease, having no troops to
+enforce orders and finding that mere advice incited downright
+perversity. I administered potent drugs in person and left nothing to be
+taken according to direction except placebos.</p>
+
+<p>Once, in forgetfulness, I left a tablet of corrosive sublimate on the
+mantel after dressing a wound, and the man of the house told me next day
+that he had &#8220;&#8217;lowed to swaller it&#8217; and see if it wouldn&#8217;t ease his
+headache!&#8221; A geologist and I, exploring the hills with a mountaineer,
+fell into discussion of filth diseases and germs, not realizing that we
+were overheard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> Happening to pass an ant-hill, Frank remarked to me
+that formic acid was supposed to be antagonistic to the germ of
+laziness. Instantly we heard a growl from our woodsman: &#8220;By God, I was
+<i>expectin&#8217;</i> to hear the like o&#8217; that!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily wounds are stanched with dusty cobwebs and bound up in any
+old rag. If infection ensues, Providence has to take the blame. A woman
+gashed her foot badly with an axe; I asked her what she did for it;
+disdainfully she answered, &#8220;Tied it up in sut and a rag, and went to
+hoein&#8217; corn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An injured person gets scant sympathy, if any. So far as outward
+demeanor goes, and public comment, the witnesses are utterly callous.
+The same indifference is shown in the face of impending death. People
+crowd around with no other motive, seemingly, than morbid curiosity to
+see a person die. I asked our local preacher what the folks would do if
+a man broke his thigh so that the bone protruded. He merely elevated his
+eyebrows and replied: &#8220;We&#8217;d set around and sing until he died.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers&#8217; fortitude under severe pain is heroic, though often
+needless. For all minor operations and frequently for major ones they
+obstinately refuse to take an anesthetic,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> being perversely suspicious
+of everything that they do not understand. Their own minor surgery and
+obstetric practice is barbarous. A large proportion of the mountain
+doctors know less about human anatomy than a butcher does about a pig&#8217;s.
+Sometimes this ignorance passes below ordinary common sense. There is a
+&#8220;doctor&#8221; still practicing who, after a case of confinement, sits beside
+the patient and presses hard upon the hips for half an hour, explaining
+that it is to &#8220;push the bones back into place; don&#8217;t you know they
+allers comes uncoupled in the socket?&#8221; This, I suppose, is the limit;
+but there are very many practicing physicians in the back country who
+could not name or locate the arteries of either foot or hand to save
+their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was here I first heard of &#8220;tooth-jumping.&#8221; Let one of my old
+neighbors tell it in his own way:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You take a cut nail (not one o&#8217; those round wire nails) and place its
+squar p&#8217;int agin the ridge of the tooth, jest under the edge of the gum.
+Then jump the tooth out with a hammer. A man who knows how can jump a
+tooth without it hurtin&#8217; half as bad as pullin&#8217;. But old Uncle Neddy
+Cyarter went to jump one of his own teeth out, one time, and missed the
+nail<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> and mashed his nose with the hammer. He had the weak trembles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have heard of tooth-jumping,&#8221; said I, &#8220;and reported it to dentists
+back home, but they laughed at me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, they needn&#8217;t laugh; for it&#8217;s so. Some men git to be as
+experienced at it as tooth-dentists are at pullin&#8217;. They cut around the
+gum, and then put the nail at jest sich an angle, slantin&#8217; downward for
+an upper tooth, or upwards for a lower one, and hit one lick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will the tooth come at the first lick?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ginerally. If it didn&#8217;t, you might as well stick your head in a swarm
+o&#8217; bees and fergit who you are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are back teeth extracted in that way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, sir; any kind of a tooth. I&#8217;ve burnt my holler teeth out with a
+red-hot wire.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good God!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hit&#8217;s so. The wire&#8217;d sizzle like fryin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Kill the nerve?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; but it&#8217;d sear the mar so it wouldn&#8217;t be so sensitive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t hurt, eh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hurt like hell for a moment. I held the wire one time for Jim Bob
+Jimwright, who couldn&#8217;t reach the spot for hisself. I <i>told</i> him to hold
+his tongue back; but when I touched<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> the holler he jumped and wropped
+his tongue agin the wire. The words that man used ain&#8217;t fitty to tell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Some of the ailments common in the mountains were new to me. For
+instance, &#8220;dew pizen,&#8221; presumably the poison of some weed, which,
+dissolved in dew, enters the blood through a scratch or abrasion. As a
+woman described it, &#8220;Dew pizen comes like a risin&#8217;, and laws-a-marcy how
+it does hurt! I stove a brier in my heel wunst, and then had to hunt
+cows every morning in the dew. My leg swelled up black to clar above the
+knee, and Dr. Stinchcomb lanced the place seven times. I lay on a pallet
+on the floor for over a month. My leg like to killed me. I&#8217;ve seed
+persons jest a lot o&#8217; sores all over, as big as my hand, from dew
+pizen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A more mysterious disease is &#8220;milk-sick,&#8221; which prevails in certain
+restricted districts, chiefly where the cattle graze in rich and deeply
+shaded coves. If not properly treated it is fatal both to the cow and to
+any human being who drinks her fresh milk or eats her butter. It is not
+transmitted by sour milk or by buttermilk. There is a characteristic
+fetor of the breath. It is said that milk from an infected cow will not
+foam and that silver is turned black by it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Mountaineers are divided in
+opinion as to whether this disease is of vegetable or of mineral origin;
+some think it is an efflorescence from gas that settles on plants. This
+much is certain: that it disappears from &#8220;milk-sick coves&#8221; when they are
+cleared of timber and the sunlight let in. The prevalent treatment is an
+emetic, followed by large doses of apple brandy and honey; then oil to
+open the bowels. Perhaps the extraordinary distaste for fresh milk and
+butter, or the universal suspicion of these foods that mountaineers
+evince in so many localities, may have sprung up from experience with
+&#8220;milk-sick&#8221; cows. I have not found this malady mentioned in any treatise
+on medicine; yet it has been known from our earliest frontier times.
+Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s mother died of it.</p>
+
+<p>That the hill folk remain a rugged and hardy people in spite of
+unsanitary conditions so gross that I can barely hint at them, is due
+chiefly to their love of pure air and pure water. No mountain cabin
+needs a window to ventilate it: there are cracks and cat-holes
+everywhere, and, as I have said, the doors are always open except at
+night. &#8220;Tight houses,&#8221; sheathed or plastered, are universally despised,
+partly from inherited shiftlessness, partly for less obvious reasons.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>One of Miss MacGowan&#8217;s characters fairly insulted the neighborhood by
+building a modern house. &#8220;Why lordy! Lookee hyer, Creed,&#8221; remonstrated
+Doss Provine over a question of matching boards and battening joints,
+&#8220;ef you git yo&#8217; pen so almighty tight as that you won&#8217;t git no fresh
+air. Man&#8217;s bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do&#8217; open
+all the time like we-all do; but when you&#8217;re a-holdin&#8217; co&#8217;t and
+sech-like maybe you&#8217;ll want to shet the do&#8217; sometimes&mdash;and then whar&#8217;ll
+ye git breath to breathe?... All these here glass winders is blame
+foolishness to <i>me</i>. Ef ye need light, open the do&#8217;. Ef somebody comes
+that ye don&#8217;t want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the
+walls full o&#8217; holes an&#8217; set in glass winders, an&#8217; any feller that&#8217;s got
+a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set
+by the fire of an evenin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When mountain people move to the lowlands and go to living in
+tight-framed houses, they soon deteriorate like Indians. It is of no use
+to teach them to ventilate by lowering windows from the top. That is
+some more &#8220;blame foolishness&#8221;&mdash;their adherence to old ways is stubborn,
+sullen, and perverse to a degree that others cannot comprehend. Then,
+too, in the lowlands, they simply cannot stand the water.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> As Emma Miles
+says: &#8220;No other advantages will ever make up for the lack of good water.
+There is a strong prejudice against pumps; if a well must be dug, it is
+usually left open to the air, and the water is reached by means of a
+hooked pole which requires some skillful manipulation to prevent losing
+the bucket. Cisterns are considered filthy; water that has stood
+overnight is &#8216;dead water,&#8217; hardly fit to wash one&#8217;s face in. The
+mountaineer takes the same pride in his water supply as the rich man in
+his wine cellar, and is in this respect a connoisseur. None but the
+purest and coldest of freestone will satisfy him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once when I was staying in a lumber camp on the Tennessee side, near the
+top of Smoky, my friend Bob and I tramped down to the nearest town, ten
+miles, for supplies. We did not start until after dinner and intended to
+spend the night at a hotel. It was a sultry day and we arrived very
+thirsty. Bob took some ice-water into his mouth, and instantly spat it
+out, exclaiming: &#8220;Be damned if I&#8217;ll stay here; that ain&#8217;t fit to drink;
+I&#8217;m goin&#8217; back.&#8221; And back he would have gone, ten miles up a hard grade,
+at night, if someone had not shown us a spring.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 483px;"><img src="images/ill-279.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by Arthur Keith</p>
+<p class="caption">A misty veil of falling water</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>A little colony of our Hazel Creek people took a notion to try the
+Georgia cotton mills. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>They nearly died there from homesickness, tight
+houses, and &#8220;bad water.&#8221; All but one family returned as soon as they
+possibly could. While trying to save enough money to get away one old
+man said; &#8220;I lied to my God when I left the mountains and kem to these
+devilish cotton mills. Ef only He&#8217;d turn me into a varmint I&#8217;d run back
+to-night! Boys, I dream I&#8217;m in torment; an&#8217; when I wake up I lay thar
+an&#8217; think o&#8217; the spring branch runnin&#8217; over the root o&#8217; that thar
+poplar; an&#8217; I say, could I git me one drink o&#8217; that water I&#8217;d be content
+to lay me down and die!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Poor old John! In his country there are a hundred spring branches
+running over poplar roots; but &#8220;<i>that thar</i> poplar&#8221;: we knew the very
+one he meant. It was by the roadside. The brooklet came from a disused
+still-house hidden in laurel and hemlock so dense that direct sunlight
+never penetrated the glen. Cold and sparkling and crystal clear, the
+gushing water enticed every wayfarer to bend and drink, whether he was
+thirsty or no. John is back in his own land now, and doubtless often
+goes to drink of that veritable fountain of youth.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Homespun</span>ss jeans and linsey used to be the universal garb of the mountain
+people. Nowadays you will seldom find them, except in far-back places.
+Shoddy &#8220;store clothes&#8221; are cheaper and easier to get. And this is a
+sorry change, for the old-time material was sound and enduring, the
+direct product of hard personal toil, and so it was prized and taken
+care of; whereas such stuff as a backwoodsman can buy in his crossroads
+store is flimsy, soon loses shape and breaks down his own pride of
+personal appearance. Our average hillsman now goes about in a dirty blue
+shirt, wapsy and ragged trousers toggled up with a nail or two, thick
+socks sagging untidily over rusty brogans, and a huge, black, floppy hat
+that desecrates the landscape. Presently his hatband disappears, to be
+replaced with a groundhog thong, woven in and out of knife slits, like a
+shoestring.</p>
+
+<p>When he comes home he &#8220;hangs his hat on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> the floor&#8221; until his wife picks
+it up. He never brushes it. In time that battered old headpiece becomes
+as pliant to its owner&#8217;s whim, as expressive of his mood, as a clown&#8217;s
+cap in the circus. Commonly it is a symbol of shiftlessness and
+unconcern. A touch, and it becomes a banner of defiance to law and
+order. To meet on some lonesome road at night a horseman enveloped to
+the heels in a black slicker and topped with one of those prodigious
+funnels that conceals his features like a cowl, is to face the Ku Klux
+or the Spanish Inquisition.</p>
+
+<p>When your young mountaineer is properly filled up on corn liquor and
+feels like challenging the world, the flesh, and the devil, he pins up
+the front of his hat with a thorn, sticks a sprig of balsam or cedar in
+the thong for an aigrette, and then gallops forth with bottle and pistol
+to tilt against whatsoever may dare oppose him. And on the gray dawn of
+the morning after you may find <i>that hat</i> lying wilted in a corner, as
+crumpled, spiritless and forlorn as&mdash;its owner, upon whom we charitably
+drop the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt, though, if anywhere in this wide world mere personal appearance
+is more deceitful than among our mountaineers. The slovenly lout whom
+you shrink from approaching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> against the wind is one of the most
+independent and self-satisfied fellows on earth, as quick to resent alms
+as to return a blow. And it is wonderful what soap and clean clothes
+will do! About the worst specimen of tatter-demalion that I ever saw
+outside of trampdom used to come into town every week, always with a
+loaded Winchester on his shoulder. He may have washed his face now and
+then, but there was no sign that he ever combed his mane. I took him for
+one of those defectives alluded to in a previous chapter; but no, I was
+told he was &#8220;nobody&#8217;s fool.&#8221; The rifle, it was explained, never left his
+hand when he was abroad: they said that a feud was brewing &#8220;over on
+&#8217;Larky,&#8221; and that this man was &#8220;in the bilin&#8217;.&#8221; Well, it boiled over,
+and the person in question killed two men in front of his own door.</p>
+
+<p>When the prisoner was brought into court I could not recognize him. A
+bath, the barber, and a new store suit had transformed him into a right
+good-looking fellow&mdash;anything but a tramp, anything but a desperado. He
+bore himself throughout that grilling ordeal like the downright man he
+was, made out a clear case of self-defense, was set at liberty
+and&mdash;promptly reverted to a condition in which he is recognizable once
+more.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>The women of the back country usually go bareheaded around home and
+often barefooted, too, as did the daughters of Highland chiefs a century
+or two ago, and for the same reason: simply that they feel better so.
+When &#8220;visit-in&#8221; or expecting visitors their extremities are clad. They
+make their own dresses and the style seems never to change. When
+traveling horseback they use a man&#8217;s saddle and ride astride in their
+ordinary skirts with an ingenuity of &#8220;tucking up&#8221; that is beyond my
+understanding (as no doubt it should be). Often one sees a man and a
+woman riding a-pillion, in which case the lady perches sidewise, of
+course.</p>
+
+<p>If I were disposed to startle the reader, after the manner of
+impressionistic writers who strive after effect at any cost, I could
+fill a book with oddities observed in the mountains, and that without
+exaggeration by commission or omission. Let one or two anecdotes
+suffice; and then we will get back to our averages again. I took down
+the following incident verbatim (save for proper names) from lips that I
+know to be truthful. It is introduced here as a specimen of vivid
+offhand description in few words:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There was a fam&#8217;ly on Pick-Yer-Flint that was named Higgins, and
+another named the McBees. They married through and through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> till the
+whole gineration nigh run out; though what helped was that they&#8217;d fly
+mad sometimes and kill one another like fools. They had great big heads
+and mottly faces&mdash;ears as big as sheepskins. Well, when they dressed up
+to come to church the men&mdash;grown men&mdash;&#8217;d have shirts made of this common
+domestic, with the letters <i>AAA</i> on their backs; and them barefooted,
+and some without hats, but with three yards of red ribbon around their
+necks. The sleeves of their shirts looked like a whole web of cloth jest
+sewed up together; and them sleeves&#8217;d git full o&#8217; wind, and that red
+ribbon a-flyin&#8217;&mdash;O my la!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There was lots o&#8217; leetle boys of &#8217;em that kem only in their
+shirt-tails. There was cracks between the logs that a dog could jump
+through, and them leetle fellers &#8217;d git &#8217;em a crack and grin in at us
+all through the sarmon. &#8217;T ain&#8217;t no manner o&#8217; use to ax me what the tex&#8217;
+was that day!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I may explain that it still is common in many districts of the mountain
+country for small boys to go about through the summer in a single
+abbreviated garment and that they are called &#8220;shirt-tail boys.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Some <ins class="correction" title="Not in the original.">of</ins> the expedients that mountain girls invent to make themselves
+attractive are bizarre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> in the extreme. Without invading the sanctities
+of toilet, I will cite one instance that is interesting from a
+scientific viewpoint. They told me that a certain blue-eyed girl thought
+that black eyes were &#8220;purtier&#8221; and that she actually changed her eyes to
+jet black whenever she went to &#8220;meetin&#8217;&#8221; or other public gathering.
+While I could see how the trick might be worked, it seemed utterly
+absurd that an unschooled maid of the wilderness could acquire either
+the knowledge or the means to accomplish such change. Well, one day I
+was called to treat a sick baby. While waiting for the medicine to react
+I chanced to mention this tale as it had been told me. The father, who
+had blue eyes, solemnly assured me that there was &#8220;no lie about it,&#8221; and
+said he would convince me in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped to the garden and plucked a leaf of jimson weed. His wife
+crushed the leaf and instilled a drop of its juice into one of his eyes.
+I took out my watch. One side of the eyeball reddened slightly. The man
+said &#8220;hit smarts a leetle&mdash;not much.&#8221; Within fifteen minutes the pupil
+had expanded like a cat&#8217;s eye in the dark, leaving a rim of blue iris so
+thin as to be quite unnoticeable without close inspection. The eye
+consequently was jet black and its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> expression utterly changed. My host
+said it did not affect his vision materially, save that &#8220;things glimmer
+a bit.&#8221; I met him again the next day and he still was an odd-looking
+creature indeed, with one eye a light blue and the other an absolute
+black. The thing puzzled me until I recalled that the Latin name of
+jimson weed is <i>Datura stramonium</i>; then, in a flash, it came to me that
+stramonium is a powerful mydriatic.</p>
+
+<p>If our man killer, hitherto mentioned, had had blue or gray eyes and had
+not chosen to stand trial, then, with a cake of soap and a new suit and
+a jimson leaf he might have made himself over so that his own mother
+would not have known him. These simple facts are offered gratis to
+writers of detective tales, whose stock of disguises nowadays is so
+threadbare and (pardon me) so absurd.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain home of to-day is the log cabin of the American
+pioneer&mdash;not such a lodge as well-to-do people affect in Adirondack
+&#8220;camps&#8221; (which cost more than framed structures of similar size), but a
+pen that can be erected by four &#8220;corner men&#8221; in one day and is finished
+by the owner at his leisure. The commonest type is a single large room,
+with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>door, a big stone
+chimney at one end, a single sash for a window at the other, and a seven
+or eight-foot lean-to at the rear for kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 447px;"><img src="images/ill-289.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">An Average Mountain Cabin</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Some of the early settlers, who had first choice of land, took pains in
+building their houses, squaring the logs like bridge timbers, joining
+them closely, smoothing their puncheons with an adze almost as truly as
+if they were planed, and using mortar instead of clay in laying chimney
+and hearth. But such houses nowadays are rare. If a man can afford so
+much effort as all that he will build a framed dwelling. If not, he will
+content himself with such a cabin as I have described. If he prospers he
+may add a duplicate of it alongside and cover the whole with one roof,
+leaving a ten or twelve-foot entry between.</p>
+
+<p>In Carolina they seldom build a house of round logs, but rather hew the
+inner and outer faces flat, out of a curious notion that this adds an
+appearance of finish to the structure. If only they would turn the logs
+over, so that the flat faces joined, leaving at least the outside in the
+natural round, the house would need hardly any chinking and the effect
+would be far more pleasing to good taste. As it is they merely notch the
+logs at the corners, leaving wide spaces to be filled up with splits,
+rocks, mud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>&mdash;anything to keep out the weather. As a matter of fact, few
+houses ever are thoroughly chinked and he who would take pains to make a
+workmanlike job of chinking would be ridiculed as &#8220;fussin&#8217; around like
+an old granny-woman.&#8221; Nobody but a tenderfoot feels drafts, you know.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard to keep such a dwelling clean, even if the family be small.
+The whole structure being built of green timber throughout, soon
+shrinks, checks, warps and sags, so that there cannot be a square joint,
+a neat fit, a perpendicular face, or a level place anywhere about it.
+The roof droops in a season or two, the shingles curl and leaky places
+open. Flooring shrinks apart, leaving wide and irregular cracks through
+which the winter winds are sucked upward as through so many flues (no
+mountain home has a cellar under it). Everywhere there are crannies and
+rough surfaces to hold dust and soot, there being probably not a single
+planed board in the whole house.</p>
+
+<p>But, for all that, there is something very attractive and picturesque
+about the little old log cabin. In its setting of ancient forests and
+mighty hills it fits, it harmonizes, where the prim and precise product
+of modern carpentry would shock an artistic eye. The very roughness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> of
+the honest logs and the home-made furniture gives texture to the
+picture. Having no mathematically straight lines nor uniform curves, the
+cabin&#8217;s outlines conform to its surroundings. Without artificial stain,
+or varnish, or veneer, it <i>is</i> what it seems, a genuine thing, a jewel
+in the rough. And it is a home. When wind whistles through the cracks
+and snow sifts into the corners of the room one draws his stumpy little
+split-bottomed chair close to the wide hearth and really knows the
+comfort of fire leaping and sap singing from big birch logs.</p>
+
+<p>Every room except the kitchen (if there be a kitchen) has a couple of
+beds in it: enough all told for the family and, generally, one spare
+bed. If much company comes, some pallets are made on the floor for the
+women and children of the household. In a single-room cabin there
+usually is a cockloft, reached by a ladder, for storage, and maybe a
+bunk or two. Closets and pantries there are none, for they would only
+furnish good harborage for woods-rats and other vermin.</p>
+
+<p>Everything must be in sight and accessible to the housewife&#8217;s little
+sedge broom. Linen and small articles of apparel are stored in a chest
+or a cheap little tin trunk or two. Most of the family wardrobe hangs
+from pegs in the walls<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> or nails in the loft beams, along with strings
+of dried apples, peppers, bunches of herbs, twists of tobacco, gourds
+full of seeds, the hunter&#8217;s pouch, and other odd bric-a-brac interesting
+to &#8220;furrin&#8221; eyes. The narrow mantel-shelf holds pipes and snuff and
+various other articles of frequent use, among them a twig or two of
+sweet birch that has been chewed to shreds at one end and is queerly
+discolored with something brown (this is what the mountain woman calls
+her &#8220;tooth brush&#8221;&mdash;a snuff stick, understand).</p>
+
+<p>For wall decorations there may be a few gaudy advertisements
+lithographed in colors, perhaps some halftones from magazines that
+travelers have left (a magazine is always called a &#8220;book&#8221; in this
+region, as, I think, throughout the South). Of late years the agents for
+photo-enlarging companies have invaded the mountains and have reaped a
+harvest; for if there be one curse of civilization that our hillsman
+craves, it is a huge <i>tinted</i> &#8220;family group&#8221; in an abominable rococo
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>There is an almanac in the cabin, but no clock. &#8220;What does man need of a
+clock when he has a good-crowin&#8217; rooster?&#8221; Strange as it may seem, in
+this roughest of backwoods countries I have never seen candles, unless
+they were brought in by outsiders like myself. Beef, you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> must remember,
+is exported, not eaten, by our farmers, and hence there is no tallow to
+make candles with. Instead of these, every home is provided with a
+kerosene lamp of narrow wick, and seldom do you find a chimney for it.
+This is partly because lamp chimneys are hard to carry safely over the
+mountain roads and partly because &#8220;man can do without sich like,
+anyhow.&#8221; But kerosene, also, is hard to transport, and so one sometimes
+will find pine knots used for illumination; but oftener the woman will
+pour hog&#8217;s grease into a tin or saucer, twist up a bit of rag for the
+wick and so make a &#8220;slut&#8221; that, believe me, deserves the name. In fact,
+the supply of pine knots within convenient distance of home is soon
+exhausted, and anyway, as the mountaineer disdains to be forehanded, he
+would burn up the knots for kindling rather than save any for
+illumination.</p>
+
+<p>Very few cabins have carpet on the floor. It would hold too much mud
+from the feet of the men who would not use a scraper if there was one.
+Beds generally are bought, nowadays, at the stores, but some are
+home-made, with bedcords of bast rope. Tables and chairs mostly are made
+on the spot or obtained by barter from some handy neighbor. In many
+homes you will still find the ancient spinning-wheel, with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> hand-loom
+on the porch and in the loft there will be a set of quilting frames for
+making &#8220;kivers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Out in the yard you see an ash hopper for running the lye to make soap,
+maybe a few bee gums sawed from hollow logs, and a crude but effective
+cider press. At the spring there is a box for cold storage in summer.
+Near by stands the great iron kettle for boiling clothes, making soap,
+scalding pigs, and a variety of other uses. Alongside of it is the
+&#8220;battlin&#8217; block&#8221; on which the family wash is hammered with a beetle
+(&#8220;battlin&#8217; stick&#8221;) if the woman has no washboard, which very often is
+the case.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally there can be no privacy and hence no delicacy, in such a home.
+I never will forget my embarrassment about getting to bed the first
+night I ever spent in a one-room cabin where there was a good-sized
+family. I did not know what was expected of me. When everybody looked
+sleepy I went outdoors and strolled around in the moonlight until the
+women had time to retire. On returning to the house I found them still
+bolt upright around the hearth. Then the hostess pointed to the bed I
+was to occupy and said it was ready whenever I was. Well, I &#8220;shucked off
+my clothes,&#8221; tumbled in, turned my face to the wall, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> immediately
+everybody else did the same. That is the way to do: just <i>go</i> to bed! I
+lay there awake for a long time. Finally I had to roll over. A ruddy
+glow from the embers showed the family in all postures of deep, healthy
+slumber. It also showed something glittering on the nipple of the long,
+muzzle-loading rifle that hung over the father&#8217;s bed. It was a bright,
+new percussion cap, where a greased rag had been when I went out for my
+moonlight stroll. There was no need of a curtain in that house. They
+could do without.</p>
+
+<p>I have been describing an average mountain home. In valleys and coves
+there are better ones, of course. Along the railroads, and on fertile
+plateaus between the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, are hundreds of fine
+farms, cultivated by machinery, and here dwell a class of farmers that
+are scarcely to be distinguished from people of similar station in the
+West. But a prosperous and educated few are not the people. When
+speaking of southern mountaineers I mean the mass, or the average, and
+the pictures here given are typical of that mass. It is not the
+well-to-do valley people, but the real mountaineers, who are especially
+interesting to the reading public; and they are interesting <i>chiefly</i>
+because they preserve traits and manners<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> that have been transmitted
+almost unchanged from ancient times&mdash;because, as John Fox puts it, they
+are &#8220;a distinct remnant of an Anglo-Saxon past.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Almost everywhere in the backwoods of Appalachia we have with us to-day,
+in flesh and blood, the Indian-fighter of our colonial border&mdash;aye, back
+of him, the half-wild clansman of elder Britain&mdash;adapted to other
+conditions, but still virtually the same in character, in ideas, in
+attitude toward the outer world. Here, in great part, is spoken to-day
+the language of Piers the Ploughman, a speech long dead elsewhere, save
+as fragments survive in some dialects of rural England.</p>
+
+<p>No picture of mountain life would be complete or just if it omitted a
+class lower than the average hillsman I have been describing. As this is
+not a pleasant topic, I shall be terse. Hundreds of backwoods families,
+large ones at that, exist in &#8220;blind&#8221; cabins that remind one somewhat of
+Irish hovels, Norwegian saeters, the &#8220;black houses&#8221; of the Hebrides, the
+windowless rock piles inhabited by Corsican shepherds and by Basques of
+the Pyrenees. Such a cabin has but one room for all purposes. In rainy
+or gusty weather, when the two doors must be closed, no light enters the
+room save through <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>cracks in the wall and down the chimney. In the
+damp climate of western Carolina such an interior is fusty, or even wet.
+In many cases the chimney is no more than a semi-circular pile of rough
+rocks and rises no higher than a man&#8217;s shoulder, hence the common
+saying, &#8220;You can set by the fire and spit out through the chimbly.&#8221; When
+the wind blows &#8220;contrary&#8221; one&#8217;s lungs choke and his eyes stream from the
+smoke.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/ill-299.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">A Bee-Gum</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In some of these places you will find a &#8220;pet pig&#8221; harbored in the house.
+I know of two cases where the pig was kept in a box directly under the
+table, so that scraps could be chucked to him without rising from
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Hastening from this extreme, we still shall find dire poverty the rule
+rather than the exception among the multitude of &#8220;branch-water people.&#8221;
+One house will have only an earthen floor; another will be so small that
+&#8220;you cain&#8217;t cuss a cat in it &#8217;thout gittin&#8217; ha&#8217;r in yer teeth.&#8221; Utensils
+are limited to a frying-pan, an iron pot, a coffee-pot, a bucket, and
+some gourds. There is not enough tableware to go around, and children
+eat out of their parents&#8217; plates, or all &#8220;soup-in together&#8221; around one
+bowl of stew or porridge.</p>
+
+<p>Even to families that are fairly well-to-do there will come periods of
+famine, such as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> Lincoln, speaking of his boyhood, called &#8220;pretty
+pinching times.&#8221; Hickory ashes then are used as a substitute for soda in
+biscuits, and the empty salt-gourd will be soaked for brine to cook
+with. Once, when I was boarding with a good family, our stores ran out
+of everything, and none of our neighbors had the least to spare. We had
+no meat of any kind for two weeks (the game had migrated) and no lard or
+other grease for nearly a week. Then the meal and salt played out. One
+day we were reduced to potatoes &#8220;straight,&#8221; which were parboiled in
+fresh water, and then burnt a little on the surface as substitute for
+salt. Another day we had not a bite but string beans boiled in unsalted
+water.</p>
+
+<p>It is not uncommon in the far backwoods for a traveler, asking for a
+match, to be told there is none in the house, nor even the pioneer&#8217;s
+flint and steel. Should the embers on the hearth go out, someone must
+tramp to a neighbor&#8217;s and fetch fire on a torch. Hence the saying: &#8220;Have
+you come to borry fire, that you&#8217;re in sich a hurry you can&#8217;t chat?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The shifts and expedients to which some of the mountain women are put,
+from lack of utensils and vessels, are simply pathetic. John Fox tells
+of a young preacher who stopped at a cabin in Georgia to pass the night.
+&#8220;His hostess, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> a mark of unusual distinction, killed a chicken, and
+dressed it in a pan. She rinsed the pan and made up her dough in it. She
+rinsed it again and went out and used it for a milk-pail. She came in,
+rinsed it again, and went to the spring and brought it back full of
+water. She filled up the glasses on the table, and gave him the pan with
+the rest of the water in which to wash his hands. The woman was not a
+slattern; it was the only utensil she had.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such poverty is exceptional; yet it is an all but universal rule that
+anything that cannot be cooked in a pot or fried in a pan must go
+begging in the mountains. Once I helped my hostess to make kraut. We
+chopped up a hundred pounds of cabbage with no cutter but a tin
+coffee-can, holding this in the two hands and chopping downward with the
+edge. Many times I stopped to hammer the edge smooth on a round stick.
+Verily this is the land of make-it-yourself-or-do-without!</p>
+
+<p>Yet, however destitute the mountain people may be, they are never
+abject. The mordant misery of hunger is borne with a sardonic grin.
+After a course of such diet as described above, a woman laughingly said
+to me: &#8220;I&#8217;m gittin&#8217; the dropsy&mdash;the meat is all droppin&#8217; off my bones.&#8221;
+During the campaign of 1904 a brother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> Democrat confided to me that &#8220;The
+people around hyur is so pore that if free silver war shipped in by the
+carload, we-uns couldn&#8217;t pay the freight.&#8221; So, when a settlement is
+dubbed Poverty, it is with no suggestion of whining lament, but with the
+stoical good-humor that shows in Needmore, Poor Fork, Long Hungry, No
+Pone, and No Fat&mdash;all of them real names.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, as at &#8220;hog-killin&#8217; time,&#8221; the poorest live in abundance;
+occasionally, as at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking them
+the year through, the Highlanders are a notably abstemious race. When a
+family is reduced to dry corn bread and black coffee unsweetened&mdash;so
+much and no more&mdash;it will joke about the lack of meat and vegetables.
+And, when there is meat, two mountaineers engaged in hard outdoor work
+will consume less of it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed,
+the heartiness with which &#8220;furriners&#8221; stuff themselves is a wonder and a
+merriment to the people of the hills. When a friend came to visit me,
+the landlady giggled an aside to her husband: &#8220;Git the almanick and see
+when that feller &#8217;ll full!&#8221; (as though she were bidding him look to see
+when the moon would be full).</p>
+
+<p>In truth, it is not so bad to be poor where everyone else is in the same
+fix. One does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> lose caste nor self-respect. He is not tempted by a
+display of good things all around him, nor is he embittered by the
+haughtiness and extravagance of the rich. And, socially, the mountaineer
+is a democrat by nature: equal to any man, as all men are equal before
+him. Even though hunger be eating like a slow acid into his vitals, he
+still will preserve a high spirit, a proud independence, that accepts no
+favor unless it be offered in a neighborly way, as man to man. I have
+never seen a mountain beggar; never heard of one.</p>
+
+<p>Charity, or anything that smells to him like charity, is declined with
+patrician dignity or open scorn. In the last house up Hazel Creek dwelt
+&#8220;old man&#8221; Stiles. He had a large family, and was on the verge of
+destitution. His eldest son, a veteran from the Philippines, had been
+invalided home, and died there. Jack Coburn, in the kindness of his
+heart, sent away and got a blank form of application to the Government
+for funeral expenses, to which the family was entitled by law. He filled
+it out, all but the signature, and rode away up to Stiles&#8217;s to have the
+old man sign it. But Stiles peremptorily refused to accept from the
+nation what was due his dead son. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t that hard pushed yit,&#8221; was
+his first and last word on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> subject. This might seem to be the very
+perversity of ignorance; but it was, in fact, renunciation on a point of
+honor, and native pride refused to see the matter in any other light.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineer, born and bred to Spartan self-denial, has a scorn of
+luxury, regarding its effeminacies with the same contempt as does the
+nomadic Arab. And any assumption of superiority he will resent with blow
+or sarcasm. A ragged hobbledehoy stood on the Vanderbilt grounds at
+Biltmore, mouth open but silent, watching a gardener at work. The
+latter, annoyed by the boy&#8217;s vacuous stare, spoke up sharply: &#8220;What do
+you want?&#8221; Like a flash the lad retorted: &#8220;Oh, dad sent me down hyur to
+look at the place&mdash;said if I liked it, he mought buy it for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Once, as an experiment, I took a backwoodsman from the Smokies to
+Knoxville, and put him up at a good hotel. Was he self-conscious,
+bashful? Not a bit of it. When the waiter brought him a juicy
+tenderloin, he snapped: &#8220;I don&#8217;t eat my meat raw!&#8221; It was hard to find
+anything on the long menu that he would eat. On the street he held his
+head proudly erect, and regarded the crowd with an expression of &#8220;Tetch
+me gin ye dar!&#8221; Although the surroundings were as strange to him as a
+city of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> Mars would be to us, he showed neither concern nor approval,
+but rather a fine disdain, like that of Diogenes at the country fair:
+&#8220;Lord, how many things there be in this world of which Diogenes hath no
+need!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The poverty of the mountain people is naked, but high-minded and
+unashamed. To comment on it, as I have done, is taken as an
+impertinence. This is a fine trait, in its way, though rather hard on a
+descriptive writer whose motives are ascribed to mere vulgarity and a
+taste for scandal-mongering. The people, of course, have no ghost of an
+idea that poverty may be more picturesque than luxury; and they are
+quite as far from conceiving that a plain and friendly statement of
+their actual condition, published to the world, is the surest way to
+awaken the nation to consciousness of its duties toward a region that it
+has so long and so singularly neglected.</p>
+
+<p>The worst enemies of the mountain people are those public men who,
+knowing the true state of things, yet conceal or deny the facts in order
+to salve a sore local pride, encourage the supine fatalism of &#8220;what must
+be will be,&#8221; and so drug the highlanders back into their Rip Van Winkle
+sleep.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Despite</span> the low standard of living that prevails in the backwoods, the
+average mountain home is a happy one, as homes go. There is little worry
+and less fret. Nobody&#8217;s nerves are on edge. Our highlander views all
+exigencies of life with the calm fortitude and tolerant good-humor of
+Bret Harte&#8217;s southwesterner, &#8220;to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods,
+pestilence and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if
+it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is a patriarchal existence. The man of the house is lord. He takes no
+orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or
+roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody&#8217;s affair but his own. About
+family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is
+law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural
+to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> he checks her with a
+curt &#8220;Shet up!&#8221; and the incident is closed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The woman,&#8221; as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house,
+and her man seldom meddles with its administration. Now and then he may
+grumble &#8220;A woman&#8217;s allers findin&#8217; somethin&#8217; to do that a man can&#8217;t see
+no sense in;&#8221; but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles&mdash;His
+ways are inscrutable&mdash;so why bother about it?</p>
+
+<p>The mountain farmer&#8217;s wife is not only a household drudge, but a
+field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder,
+sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for
+a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her
+man leaves home on a journey he is not likely to have laid in wood for
+the stove or hearth: so she and the children must drag from the
+hillsides whatever dead timber they can find.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. A swain would
+consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all,
+the dishes are passed first to the men; but generally the wife stands by
+and serves. There is no conscious discourtesy in such customs; but they
+betoken an indifference to woman&#8217;s weakness, a disregard for her finer
+nature, a denial of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> proper rank, that are real and deep-seated in
+the mountaineer. To him she is little more than a sort of superior
+domestic animal. The chivalric regard for women that characterized our
+pioneers of the Far West is altogether lacking in the habits of the
+backwoodsman of Appalachia.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is seldom that a highland woman complains of her lot. She
+knows no other. From aboriginal times the men of her race have been
+warriors, hunters, herdsmen, clearers of forests, and their women have
+toiled in the fields. Indeed she would scarce respect her husband if he
+did not lord it over her and cast upon her the menial tasks. It is
+&#8220;manners&#8221; for a woman to drudge and obey. All respectable wives do that.
+And they stay at home where they belong, never visiting or going
+anywhere without first asking their husband&#8217;s consent.</p>
+
+<p>I am satisfied that there is less bickering in mountain households than
+in the most advanced society of Christendom. Certainly there are fewer
+divorces in proportion to the marriages. This is not by grace of any
+uncommon regard for the seventh commandment, but rather from a more
+tolerant attitude of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Mountain women marry early, many of them at fourteen or fifteen, and
+nearly all before they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> are twenty. Large families are the rule, seven
+to ten children being considered normal, and fifteen is not an uncommon
+number; but the infant mortality is high.</p>
+
+<p>The children have few toys other than rag dolls, broken bits of crockery
+for &#8220;play-purties,&#8221; and such &#8220;ridey-hosses&#8221; and so forth as they make
+for themselves. They play few games, but rather frisk about like young
+colts without aim or method. Every mountain child has at least one dog
+for a playfellow, and sometimes a pet pig is equally familiar. In many
+districts there is not enough level land for a ballground. A prime
+amusement of the small boys is &#8220;rocking&#8221; (throwing stones at marks or at
+each other), in which rather doubtful pastime they become singularly
+expert.</p>
+
+<p>To encourage a child to do chores about the house and stable, he may be
+promised a pig of his own the next time a sow litters. To know when to
+look for the pigs an expedient is practiced that I never heard of
+elsewhere: the child bores a small hole at the base of his thumbnail. I
+was assured by a mountain preacher that the hole &#8220;will grow out to the
+edge of the nail in three months and twenty-four days&#8221;&mdash;the period, he
+said, of a sow&#8217;s gestation (in reality the average term is about three
+months).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>Most mountaineers are indulgent, super-indulgent parents. The oft-heard
+threat &#8220;I&#8217;ll w&#8217;ar ye out with a hick&#8217;ry!&#8221; is seldom carried out. The
+boys, especially, grow up with little restraint beyond their own natural
+sense of filial duty. Little children are allowed to eat and drink
+anything they want&mdash;green fruit, adulterated candy, fresh cider, no
+matter what&mdash;to the limit of repletion; and fatal consequences are not
+rare. I have observed the very perversity of license allowed children,
+similar to what Julian Ralph tells of a man on Bullskin Creek, who,
+explaining why his child died, said that &#8220;No one couldn&#8217;t make her take
+no medicine; she just wouldn&#8217;t take it; she was a Baker through and
+through, and you never could make a Baker do nothin&#8217; he didn&#8217;t want to!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The saddest spectacle in the mountains is the tiny burial-ground,
+without a headstone or headboard in it, all overgrown with weeds, and
+perhaps unfenced, with cattle grazing over the low mounds or sunken
+graves. The spot seems never to be visited between interments. I have
+remarked elsewhere that most mountaineers are singularly callous in the
+presence of serious injury or death. They show a no less remarkable lack
+of reverence for the dead. Nothing on earth can be more poignantly
+lonesome than one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> of these mountain burial-places, nothing so mutely
+evident of neglect.</p>
+
+<p>Funeral services are extremely simple. In the backwoods, where lumber is
+scarce, a coffin will be knocked together from rough planks taken from
+someone&#8217;s loft, or out of puncheons hewn from the green trees. It is
+slung on poles and carried like a litter. The only exercises at the
+grave are singing and praying; and sometimes even those are omitted, as
+in case no preacher can be summoned in time.</p>
+
+<p>In all back settlements that I have visited, from Kentucky southward,
+there is a strange custom as to the funeral sermon, that seems to have
+no analogue elsewhere. It is not preached until long after the
+interment, maybe a year or several years. In some districts the practice
+is to hold joint services, at the same time and place, for all in the
+neighborhood who died within the year. The time chosen will be after the
+crops are gathered, so that everybody can attend. In other places a
+husband&#8217;s funeral sermon is postponed until his wife dies, or <i>vice
+versa</i>, though the interval may be many years. These collective funeral
+services last two or three days, and are attended by hundreds of people,
+like a camp-meeting.</p>
+
+<p>Strange scenes sometimes are witnessed at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> graveside, prompted
+perhaps by weird superstitions. At one of our burials, which was
+attended by more than the usual retinue of kinsfolk, there were present
+two mothers who bore each other the deadliest hate that women know. Each
+had a child at her breast. When the clods fell, they silently exchanged
+babies long enough for each to suckle her rival&#8217;s child. Was it a
+reconciliation cemented by the very life of their blood? Or was it a
+charm to keep off evil spirits? No one could (or would) explain it to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>Weddings never are celebrated in church, but at the home of the bride,
+and are jolly occasions, of course. Often the young men, stimulated with
+more or less &#8220;moonshine,&#8221; add the literally stunning compliment of a
+shivaree.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers have a native fondness for music and dancing, which,
+with the shouting-spells of their revivals, are the only outlets for
+those powerful emotions which otherwise they studiously conceal. The
+harmony of &#8220;part singing&#8221; is unknown in the back districts, where men
+and women both sing in a jerky treble. Most of their music is in the
+weird, plaintive minor key that seems spontaneous with primitive people
+throughout the world. Not only the tone, but the sentiment of their
+hymns and ballads is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> usually of a melancholy nature, expressing the
+wrath of God and the doom of sinners, or the luckless adventures of wild
+blades and of maidens all forlorn. A Highlander might well say, with the
+clown in <i>A Winter&#8217;s Tale</i>, &#8220;I love a ballad but even too well; if it be
+doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and
+sung lamentably.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But where banjo and fiddle enter, the vapors vanish. Up strike The Fox
+Chase, Shady Grove, Gamblin&#8217; man, Sourwood Mountain, and knees are
+limbered, and merry voices rise.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Call up your dog, O call up your dog!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Call up your dog!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Call up your dog!</span><br />
+Let &#8217;s a-go huntin&#8217; to ketch a groundhog.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Wherever the church has not put its ban on &#8220;twistifications&#8221; the country
+dance is the chief amusement of young and old. I have never succeeded in
+memorizing the queer &#8220;calls&#8221; at these dances, in proper order, and so
+take the liberty of quoting from Mr. Haney&#8217;s <i>Mountain People of
+Kentucky</i>.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Eight hands up and go to the left; half and back; corners turn;
+partners sash-i-ate. First four, forwards and back; forward again
+and cross over; forward and back and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>home you go. Gents stand and
+ladies swing in the center; own partners and half sash-i-ate.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Eight hands and gone again; half and back; partners by the right
+and opposite by the left&mdash;sash-i-ate. Right hands across and howdy
+do? Left and back and how are you? Opposite partners, half
+sash-i-ate and go to the next (and so on for each couple).</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All hands up and go to the left. Hit the floor. Corners turn and
+sash-i-ate. First couple cage the bird with three arms around. Bird
+hop out and hoot-owl in; three arms around and hootin&#8217; agin. Swing
+and circle four, ladies change and gents the same; right and left;
+the shoo-fly swing (and so on for each couple).&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In homes where dancing is not permitted, and often in others,
+&#8220;play-parties&#8221; are held, at which social games are practiced with
+childlike abandon: Roll the Platter, Weavilly Wheat, Needle&#8217;s Eye, We
+Fish Who Bite, Grin an&#8217; Go &#8217;Foot, Swing the Cymblin, Skip t&#8217; m&#8217; Lou
+(pronounced &#8220;Skip-tum a-loo&#8221;) and many others of a rollicking,
+half-dancing nature.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Round the house; skip t&#8217; m&#8217; Lou, my darlin&#8217;.<br />
+Steal my partner and I&#8217;ll steal again; skip (etc.).<br />
+Take her and go with her&mdash;I don&#8217;t care; skip (etc.).<br />
+I can get another as pretty as you; skip (etc.).<br />
+Pretty as a red-bird, and prettier too; skip (etc.).</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A substitute for the church fair is the &#8220;poke-supper,&#8221; at which dainty
+pokes (bags) of cake <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>and other home-made delicacies are auctioned off
+to the highest bidder. Whoever bids-in a poke is entitled to eat with
+the girl who prepared it, and escort her home. The rivalry excited among
+the mountain swains by such artful lures may be judged from the fact
+that, in a neighborhood where a man&#8217;s work brings only a dollar a day, a
+pretty girl&#8217;s poke may be bid up to ten, twenty, or even fifty dollars.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 516px;"><img src="images/ill-317.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">Let the women do the work</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the only holidays observed in the mountains, outside the
+towns, are Christmas and New Year&#8217;s. Christmas is celebrated after the
+southern fashion, which seems bizarre indeed to one witnessing it for
+the first time. The boys and men, having no firecrackers (which they
+would disdain, anyway), go about shooting revolvers and drinking to the
+limit of capacity or supply. Blank cartridges are never used in this
+uproarious jollification, and the courses of the bullets are left to
+chance, so that discreet people keep their noses indoors. Christmas is a
+day of license, of general indulgence, it being tacitly assumed that
+punishment is remitted for any ordinary sins of the flesh that may be
+committed on that day. There is no church festivity, nor are Christmas
+trees ever set up. Few mountain children hang up their stockings, and
+many have never heard of Santa Claus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>New Year&#8217;s Day is celebrated with whatever effervescence remains from
+Christmas, and in the same manner; but generally it is a feeble
+reminder, as the liquid stimulus has run short and there are many sore
+heads in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the mountain preachers nowadays denounce dances and
+&#8220;play-parties&#8221; as sinful diversions, though their real objection seems
+to be that such gatherings are counter-attractions that thin out the
+religious ones. Be that as it may, they certainly have put a damper on
+frolics, so that in very many mountain settlements &#8220;goin&#8217; to meetin&#8217;&#8221; is
+recognized primarily as a social function and affords almost the only
+chance for recreation in which family can join family without restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Meetings are held in the log schoolhouse. The congregation ranges
+itself, men on one side, women on the other, on rude benches that
+sometimes have no backs. Everybody goes. If one judged from attendance
+he would rate our highlanders as the most religious people in America.
+This impression is strengthened, in a stranger, by the grave and
+astoundingly patient attention that is given an illiterate or nearly
+illiterate minister while he holds forth for two or three mortal hours
+on the beauties of predestination,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> free-will, foreordination,
+immersion, foot-washing, or on the delinquencies of &#8220;them acorn-fed
+critters that has gone New Light over in Cope&#8217;s Cove.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After an <i>al fresco</i> lunch, everybody doggedly returns to hear another
+circuit-rider expound and denounce at the top of his voice until late
+afternoon&mdash;as long as &#8220;the spirit lasts&#8221; and he has &#8220;good wind.&#8221; When he
+warms up, he throws in a gasping <i>ah</i> or <i>uh</i> at short intervals, which
+constitutes the &#8220;holy tone.&#8221; Doctor MacClintock gives this example: &#8220;Oh,
+brethren, repent ye, and repent ye of your sins, ah; fer if ye don&#8217;t ah,
+the Lord, ah, he will grab yer by the seat of yer pants, ah, and held
+yer over hell fire till ye holler like a coon!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>During these services there is a good deal of running in and out by the
+men and boys, most of whom gradually congregate on the outside to
+whittle, gossip, drive bargains, and debate among themselves some point
+of dogma that is too good to keep still about.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all of our highlanders, from youth upward, show an amazing
+fondness for theological dispute. This consists mainly in capping texts,
+instead of reasoning, with the single-minded purpose of confusing or
+downing an opponent. Into this battle of memories rather<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> than of wits
+the most worthless scapegrace will enter with keen gusto and perfect
+seriousness. I have known two or three hundred mountain lumber-jacks,
+hard-swearing and hard-drinking tough-as-they-make-&#8217;ems, to be whetted
+to a fighting edge over the rocky problem &#8220;Was Saul damned?&#8221; (Can a
+suicide enter the kingdom of heaven?)</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers are intensely, universally Protestant. You will seldom
+find a backwoodsman who knows what a Roman Catholic is. As John Fox
+says, &#8220;He is the only man in the world whom the Catholic Church has made
+little or no effort to proselyte. Dislike of Episcopalianism is still
+strong among people who do not know, or pretend not to know, what the
+word means. &#8216;Any Episcopalians around here?&#8217; asked a clergyman at a
+mountain cabin. &#8216;I don&#8217;t know,&#8217; said the old woman. &#8216;Jim&#8217;s got the skins
+of a lot o&#8217; varmints up in the loft. Mebbe you can find one up thar.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The first settlers of Appalachia mainly were Presbyterians, as became
+Scotch-Irishmen, but they fell away from that faith, partly because the
+wilderness was too poor to support a regular ministry, and partly
+because it was too democratic for Calvinism with its supreme authority
+of the clergy. This much of seventeenth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> century Calvinism the
+mountaineer retains: a passion for hair-splitting argument over points
+of doctrine, and the cocksure intolerance of John Knox; but the
+ancestral creed itself has been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The circuit-rider, whether Methodist or Baptist, found here a field ripe
+for his harvest. Being himself self-supporting and unassuming, he won
+easily the confidence of the people. He preached a highly emotional
+religion that worked his audience into the ecstasy that all primitive
+people love. And he introduced a mighty agent of evangelization among
+outdoor folk when he started the camp-meeting.</p>
+
+<p>The season for camp-meetings is from mid-August to October. The festival
+may last a week in one place. It is a jubilee-week to the work-worn and
+home-chained women, their only diversion from a year of unspeakably
+monotonous toil. And for the young folks, it is their theater, their
+circus, their county fair. (I say this with no disrespect: &#8220;big-meetin&#8217;
+time&#8221; is a gala week, if there be any such thing at all in the
+mountains&mdash;its attractiveness is full as much secular as spiritual to
+the great body of the people.)</p>
+
+<p>It is a camp by day only, or up to closing time. No mountaineer owns a
+tent. Preachers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> and exhorters are housed nearby, and visitors from all
+the country scatter about with their friends, or sleep in the open,
+cooking their meals by the wayside.</p>
+
+<p>In these backwoods revival meetings we can witness to-day the weird
+phenomena of ungovernable shouting, ecstasy, bodily contortions, trance,
+catalepsy, and other results of hypnotic suggestion and the contagious
+one-mindedness of an overwrought crowd. This is called &#8220;taking a big
+through,&#8221; and is regarded as the madness of supernatural joy. It is a
+mild form of that extraordinary frenzy which swept the Kentucky
+settlements in 1800, when thousands of men and women at the
+camp-meetings fell victims to &#8220;the jerks,&#8221; &#8220;barking exercises,&#8221; erotic
+vagaries, physical wreckage, or insanity, to which the frenzy led.</p>
+
+<p>Many mountaineers are easily carried away by new doctrines extravagantly
+presented. Religious mania is taken for inspiration by the superstitious
+who are looking for &#8220;signs and wonders.&#8221; At one time Mormon prophets
+lured women from the backwoods of western Carolina and eastern
+Tennessee. Later there was a similar exodus of people to the
+Castellites, a sect of whom it was commonly remarked that &#8220;everybody who
+joins the Castellites goes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> crazy.&#8221; In our day the same may be said of
+the Holy Rollers and Holiness People.</p>
+
+<p>In a feud town of eastern Kentucky, not long ago, I saw two Holiness
+exhorters prancing before a solemnly attentive crowd in the court-house
+square, one of them shouting and exhibiting the &#8220;holy laugh,&#8221; while the
+other pointed to the Cumberland River and cried, &#8220;I don&#8217;t say <i>if</i> I had
+the faith, I say I <i>have</i> the faith, to walk over that river dry-shod!&#8221;
+I scanned the crowd, and saw nothing but belief, or willingness to
+believe, on any countenance. Of course, most mountaineers are more
+intelligent than that; but few of them are free from superstitions of
+one kind or other. There are to-day many believers in witchcraft among
+them (though none own it to any but their intimates) and nearly
+everybody in the hills has faith in portents.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain clergy, as a general rule, are hostile to &#8220;book larnin&#8217;,&#8221;
+for &#8220;there ain&#8217;t no Holy Ghost in it.&#8221; One of them who had spent three
+months at a theological school told President Frost, &#8220;Yes, the seminary
+is a good place ter go and git rested up, but &#8217;tain&#8217;t worth while fer me
+ter go thar no more &#8217;s long as I&#8217;ve got good wind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It used to amuse me to explain how I knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> that the earth was a sphere;
+but one day, when I was busy, a tiresome old preacher put the
+everlasting question to me: &#8220;Do you believe the yearth is round?&#8221; An
+impish perversity seized me and I answered, &#8220;No&mdash;all blamed humbug!&#8221;
+&#8220;Amen!&#8221; cried my delighted catechist, &#8220;I knowed in reason you had more
+sense.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In general the religion of the mountaineers has little influence on
+every-day behavior, little to do with the moral law. Salvation is by
+faith alone, and not by works. Sometimes a man is &#8220;churched&#8221; for
+breaking the Sabbath, &#8220;cussin&#8217;,&#8221; &#8220;tale-bearin&#8217;&#8221;; but sins of the flesh
+are rarely punished, being regarded as amiable frailties of mankind. It
+should be understood that the mountaineer&#8217;s morals are &#8220;all tail-first,&#8221;
+like those of Alan Breck in Stevenson&#8217;s <i>Kidnapped</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One of our old-timers nonchalantly admitted in court that he and a
+preacher had marked a false corner-tree which figured in an important
+land suit. On cross-examination he was asked:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You admit that you and Preacher X&mdash;&mdash; forged that corner-tree? Didn&#8217;t
+you give Preacher X&mdash;&mdash; a good character, in your testimony? Do you
+consider it consistent with his profession as a minister of the Gospel
+to forge corner-trees?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>&#8220;Aw,&#8221; replied the
+witness, &#8220;religion ain&#8217;t got nothin&#8217; to do with corner-trees!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>John Fox relates that, &#8220;A feud leader who had about exterminated the
+opposing faction, and had made a good fortune for a mountaineer while
+doing it, for he kept his men busy getting out timber when they weren&#8217;t
+fighting, said to me in all seriousness:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time agin. The Lord&#8217;s on my
+side, and I gits a better and better Christian ever&#8217; year.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A preacher, riding down a ravine, came upon an old mountaineer hiding
+in the bushes with his rifle.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;What are you doing there, my friend?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Ride on, stranger,&#8217; was the easy answer. &#8216;I&#8217;m a-waitin&#8217; fer Jim
+Johnson, and with the help of the Lawd I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to blow his damn head
+off.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But let us never lose sight of the fact that these people,
+intellectually, are not living in our age. To judge them fairly we must
+go back and get a medieval point of view, which, by the way, persisted
+in Europe and America until well into the Georgian period. If history be
+too dry, read Stevenson&#8217;s <i>Kidnapped</i>, and especially its sequel <i>David
+Balfour</i>, to learn what that viewpoint was. The parallel is so
+close<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>&mdash;eighteenth century Britain and twentieth century
+Appalachia&mdash;that here we walk the same paths with Alan and David, the
+Edinboro&#8217; law-sharks, Katriona and Lady Allardyce. The only difference
+of moment is that we have no aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>As for the morals of our highlanders, they are precisely what any
+well-read person would expect after taking their belatedness into
+consideration. In speech and conduct, when at ease among themselves,
+they are frank, old-fashioned Englishmen and Scots, such as Fielding and
+Smollet and Pepys and Burns have shown us to the life. Their manners are
+boorish, of course, judged by a feminized modern standard, and their
+home conversation is as coarse as the mixed-company speeches in
+Shakespeare&#8217;s comedies or the offhand pleasantries of Good Queen Bess.</p>
+
+<p>But what is refinement? What is morality?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mind,&#8221; said the Belov&eacute;d Vagabond, &#8220;I don&#8217;t mind the frank
+dungheap outside a German peasant&#8217;s kitchen window; but what I loathe
+and abominate is the dungheap hidden beneath Hedwige&#8217;s draper papa&#8217;s
+parlor floor.&#8221; And we do well to consider that fine remark by Sir Oliver
+Lodge: &#8220;Vice is reversion to a lower type <i>after perception of a
+higher</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>I have seen the worst as well as the best of Appalachia. There <i>are</i>
+&#8220;places on Sand Mountain&#8221;&mdash;scores of them&mdash;where unspeakable orgies
+prevail at times. But I know that between these two extremes the great
+mass of the mountain people are very like persons of similar station
+elsewhere, just human, with human frailties, only a little more honest,
+I think, in owning them. And even in the tenebra of far-back coves,
+where conditions exist as gross as anything to be found in the wynds and
+closes of our great cities, there is this blessed difference: that these
+half-wild creatures have not been <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'hoplessly'">hopelessly</ins> submerged, have not been
+driven into desperate war against society. The worst of them still have
+good traits, strong characters, something responsive to decent
+treatment. They are kind-hearted, loyal to their friends, quick to help
+anyone in distress. They know nothing of civilization. They are simply
+<i>the unstarted</i>&mdash;and their thews are sound.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>THE MOUNTAIN DIALECT</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">One</span> day I handed a volume of John Fox&#8217;s stories to a neighbor and asked
+him to read it, being curious to learn how those vivid pictures of
+mountain life would impress one who was born and bred in the same
+atmosphere. He scanned a few lines of the dialogue, then suddenly stared
+at me in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter with it?&#8221; I asked, wondering what he could have found
+to startle him at the very beginning of a story.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, that feller <i>don&#8217;t know how to spell</i>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Gravely I explained that dialect must be spelled as it is pronounced, so
+far as possible, or the life and savor of it would be lost. But it was
+of no use. My friend was outraged. &#8220;That tale-teller then is jest makin&#8217;
+fun of the mountain people by misspellin&#8217; our talk. You educated folks
+don&#8217;t spell your own words the way you say them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A most palpable hit; and it gave me a new point of view.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>To the mountaineers themselves their speech is natural and proper, of
+course, and when they see it bared to the spotlight, all eyes drawn
+toward it by an orthography that is as odd to them as it is to us, they
+are stirred to wrath, just as we would be if our conversation were
+reported by some Josh Billings or Artemas Ward.</p>
+
+<p>The curse of dialect writing is elision. Still, no one can write it
+without using the apostrophe more than he likes to; for our highland
+speech is excessively clipped. &#8220;I&#8217;m comin&#8217; d&#8217;reck&#8217;ly&#8221; has a quaintness
+that should not be lost. We cannot visualize the shambling but eager
+mountaineer with a sample of ore in his hand unless the writer reports
+him faithfully: &#8220;Wisht you&#8217;d &#8217;zamine this rock fer me&mdash;I heern tell you
+was one o&#8217; them &#8217;sperts.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Although the hillsmen save some breath in this way, they waste a good
+deal by inserting sounds where they do not belong. Sometimes it is only
+an added consonant: gyarden, acrost, corkus (caucus); sometimes a
+syllable: loaferer, musicianer, suddenty. Occasionally a word is both
+added to and clipped from, as cyarn (carrion). They are fond of grace
+syllables: &#8220;I gotta me a deck o&#8217; cyards.&#8221; &#8220;There ain&#8217;t nary bitty sense
+in it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>More interesting are substitutions of one sound for another. In mountain
+dialect all vowels may be interchanged with others. Various sounds of
+<i>a</i> are confused with <i>e</i>, as hed (had), kem (came), keerful; or with
+<i>i</i>, grit (grate), rifle (raffle); with <i>o</i>, pomper, toper (taper),
+wrop; or with <i>u</i>, fur, ruther. So any other vowel may serve in place of
+<i>e</i>: sarve, chist, upsot, tumble. Any other may displace <i>i</i>: arn
+(iron), eetch, hender, whope or whup. The <i>o</i> sounds are more stable,
+but we have crap (crop), yan, clus, and many similar variants. Any other
+vowel may do for <i>u</i>: braysh or bresh (brush), shet, sich, shore (sure).</p>
+
+<p>Mountaineers have peculiar difficulty with diphthongs: haar (hair),
+cheer (chair), brile, and a host of others. The word coil is variously
+pronounced quile, querl or quorl.</p>
+
+<p>Substitution of consonants is not so common as of vowels, but most
+hillsmen say nabel (navel), ballet (ballad), Babtis&#8217;, rench or rinch,
+brickie (brittle), and many say atter or arter, jue (due), tejus,
+vascinator (fascinator&mdash;a woman&#8217;s scarf). They never drop <i>h</i>, nor
+substitute anything for it.</p>
+
+<p>The word woman has suffered some strange sea-changes. Most mountaineers
+pronounce it correctly, but some drop the <i>w</i> (&#8217;oman), others<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> add an
+<i>r</i> (womern and wimmern), while in Michell County, North Carolina, we
+hear the extraordinary forms ummern and dummern (&#8220;La, look at all the
+dummerunses a-comin&#8217;!&#8221;)</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, some words that most Americans mispronounce are
+always sounded correctly in the southern highlands, as dew and new
+(never doo, noo). Creek is always given its true <i>ee</i> sound, never
+crick. Nare (as we spell it in dialect stories) is simply the right
+pronunciation of ne&#8217;er, and nary is ne&#8217;er a, with the <i>a</i> turned into a
+short <i>i</i> sound.</p>
+
+<p>It should be understood that the dialect varies a good deal from place
+to place, and, even in the same neighborhood, we rarely hear all
+families speaking it alike. Outlanders who essay to write it are prone
+to err by making their characters speak it too consistently. It is only
+in the backwoods, or among old people and the penned-at-home women, that
+the dialect is used with any integrity. In railroad towns we hear little
+of it, and farmers who trade in those towns adapt their speech somewhat
+to the company they may be in. The same man, at different times, may say
+can&#8217;t and cain&#8217;t, set and sot, jest and jes&#8217; and jist, atter and arter
+or after, seed and seen, here and hyur and hyar, heerd and heern or
+heard, sich and sech, took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> and tuk&mdash;there is no uniformity about it. An
+unconscious sense of euphony seems to govern the choice of hit or it,
+there or thar.</p>
+
+<p>Since the Appalachian people have a marked Scotch-Irish strain, we would
+expect their speech to show a strong Scotch influence. So far as
+vocabulary is concerned, there is really little of it. A few words,
+caigy (cadgy), coggled, fernent, gin for if, needcessity, trollop,
+almost exhaust the list of distinct Scotticisms. The Scotch-Irish, as we
+call them, were mainly Ulstermen, and the Ulster dialect of to-day bears
+little analogy to that of Appalachia.</p>
+
+<p>Scotch influence does appear, however, in one vital characteristic of
+the pronunciation: with few exceptions our highlanders sound <i>r</i>
+distinctly wherever it occurs, though they never trill it. In the
+British Isles this constant sounding of <i>r</i> in all positions is
+peculiar, I think, to Scotland, Ireland, and a few small districts in
+the northern border counties of England. With us it is general practice
+outside of New England and those parts of the southern lowlands that had
+no flood of Celtic immigration in the eighteenth century. I have never
+heard a Carolina mountaineer say niggah or No&#8217;th Ca&#8217;lina, though in the
+last word the syllable <i>ro</i> is often elided.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>In some mountain districts we
+hear do&#8217; (door), flo&#8217;, mo&#8217;, yo&#8217;, co&#8217;te,
+sca&#8217;ce (long <i>a</i>), pusson; but such skipping of the <i>r</i> is common only
+where lowland influence has crept in. Much oftener the <i>r</i> is dropped
+from dare, first, girl, horse, nurse, parcel, worth (dast, fust, gal,
+hoss, nuss, passel, wuth). By way of compensation the hillsmen sometimes
+insert a euphonic <i>r</i> where it has no business; just as many New
+Englanders say, &#8220;The idear of it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Throughout Appalachia such words as last, past, advantage, are
+pronounced with the same vowel sound as is heard in man. This helps to
+delimit the people, classifying them with Pennsylvanians and Westerners:
+a linguistic grouping that will prove significant when we come to study
+the origin and history of this isolated race.</p>
+
+<p>An editor who had made one or two short trips into the mountains once
+wrote me that he thought the average mountaineer&#8217;s vocabulary did not
+exceed three hundred words. This may be a natural inference if one
+spends but a few weeks among these people and sees them only under the
+prosaic conditions of workaday life. But gain their intimacy and you
+shall find that even the illiterates among them have a range of
+expression that is truly remarkable. I have myself taken down from the
+lips of Carolina<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> mountaineers some eight hundred dialectical or
+obsolete words, to say nothing of the much greater number of standard
+English terms that they command.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom is a &#8220;hill-billy&#8221; at a loss for a word. Lacking other means of
+expression, there will come &#8220;spang&#8221; from his mouth a coinage of his own.
+Instantly he will create (always from English roots, of course) new
+words by combination, or by turning nouns into verbs or otherwise
+interchanging the parts of speech.</p>
+
+<p>Crudity or deficiency of the verb characterizes the speech of all
+primitive peoples. In mountain vernacular many words that serve as verbs
+are only nouns of action, or adjectives, or even adverbs. &#8220;That bear &#8217;ll
+meat me a month.&#8221; &#8220;They churched Pitt for tale-bearin&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;Granny kept
+faultin&#8217; us all day.&#8221; &#8220;Are ye fixin&#8217; to go squirrelin&#8217;?&#8221; &#8220;Sis blouses
+her waist a-purpose to carry a pistol.&#8221; &#8220;My boy Jesse book-kept for the
+camp.&#8221; &#8220;I disgust bad liquor.&#8221; &#8220;This poke salat eats good.&#8221; &#8220;I ain&#8217;t
+goin&#8217; to bed it no longer&#8221; (lie abed). &#8220;We can muscle this log up.&#8221; &#8220;I
+wouldn&#8217;t pleasure them enough to say it.&#8221; &#8220;Josh ain&#8217;t much on
+sweet-heartin&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t confidence them dogs much.&#8221; &#8220;The creek away up
+thar turkey-tails out into numerous leetle forks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>A verb will be coined from an adverb: &#8220;We better git some wood, bettern
+we?&#8221; Or from an adjective: &#8220;Much that dog and see won&#8217;t he come along&#8221;
+(pet him, make much of him). &#8220;I didn&#8217;t do nary thing to contrary her.&#8221;
+&#8220;Baby, that onion &#8217;ll strong ye!&#8221; &#8220;Little Jimmy fell down and benastied
+himself to beat the devil.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Conversely, nouns are created from verbs. &#8220;Hit don&#8217;t make no differ.&#8221; &#8220;I
+didn&#8217;t hear no give-out at meetin&#8217;&#8221; (announcement). &#8220;You can git ye one
+more gittin&#8217; o&#8217; wood up thar.&#8221; &#8220;That Nantahala is a master shut-in, jest
+a plumb gorge.&#8221; Or from an adjective: &#8220;Them bugs&mdash;the little old
+hatefuls!&#8221; &#8220;If anybody wanted a history of this county for fifty years
+he&#8217;d git a lavish of it by reading that mine-suit testimony.&#8221; Or from an
+adverb: &#8220;Nance tuk the biggest through at meetin&#8217;!&#8221; (shouting spell). An
+old lady quoted to me in a plaintive quaver:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;It matters not, so I&#8217;ve been told,<br />
+Where the body goes when the heart grows cold;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; she added, &#8220;a person has a rather about where he&#8217;d be put.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in
+begun, drunk,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum.
+Holp is used both as preterite and as infinitive: the <i>o</i> is long, and
+the <i>l</i> distinctly sounded by most of the people, but elided by such as
+drop it from almost, already, self (the <i>l</i> is elided from help by many
+who use that form of the verb).</p>
+
+<p>Examples of a strong preterite with dialectical change of the vowel are
+bruk, brung, drap or drapped, drug, friz, roke or ruck (raked), saunt
+(sent), shet, shuck (shook), whoped (long <i>o</i>). The variant whupped is a
+Scotticism. Whope is sometimes used in the present tense, but whup is
+more common. By some the vowel of whup is sounded like <i>oo</i> in book (Mr.
+Fox writes &#8220;whoop,&#8221; which, I presume, he intends for that sound).</p>
+
+<p>In many cases a weak preterite supplants the proper strong one: div,
+driv, fit, gi&#8217;n or give, rid, riv, riz, writ, done, run, seen or seed,
+blowed, crowed, drawed, growed, knowed, throwed.</p>
+
+<p>There are many corrupt forms of the verb, such as gwine for gone or
+going, mought (mowt) for might, dim, het, ort or orter, wed (weeded),
+war (was or were&mdash;the <i>a</i> as in far), shun (shone), cotch (in all
+tenses) or cotched, fotch or fotched, borned, hurted, dremp.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>Peculiar adjectives are formed from verbs. &#8220;Chair-bottoming is easy
+settin&#8217;-down work.&#8221; &#8220;When my youngest was a leetle set-along child&#8221;
+(interpreted as &#8220;settin&#8217; along the floor&#8221;). &#8220;That Thunderhead is the
+torndowndest place!&#8221; &#8220;Them&#8217;s the travellinest hosses ever I seed.&#8221;
+&#8220;She&#8217;s the workinest woman!&#8221; &#8220;Jim is the disablest one o&#8217; the fam&#8217;ly.&#8221;
+&#8220;Damn this fotch-on kraut that comes in tin cans!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A verb may serve as an adverb: &#8220;If I&#8217;d a-been thoughted enough.&#8221; An
+adverb may be used as an adjective: &#8220;I hope the folks with you is gaily&#8221;
+(well). An adjective can serve as an adverb: &#8220;He laughed master.&#8221;
+Sometimes a conjunction is employed as a preposition: &#8220;We have oblige to
+take care on him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These are not mere blunders of individual illiterates, but usages common
+throughout the mountains, and hence real dialect.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient syllabic plural is preserved in beasties (horses), nesties,
+posties, trousies (these are not diminutives), and in that strange word
+dummerunses that I cited before.</p>
+
+<p>Pleonasms are abundant. &#8220;I done done it&#8221; (have done it or did do it).
+&#8220;Durin&#8217; the while.&#8221; &#8220;In this day and time.&#8221; &#8220;I thought it would surely,
+undoubtedly turn cold.&#8221; &#8220;A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> small, little bitty hole.&#8221; &#8220;Jane&#8217;s a
+tol&#8217;able big, large, fleshy woman.&#8221; &#8220;I ginerally, usually take a dram
+mornin&#8217;s.&#8221; &#8220;These ridges is might&#8217; nigh straight up and down, and, as
+the feller said, perpendic&#8217;lar.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere in the mountains we hear of biscuit-bread, ham-meat,
+rifle-gun, rock-clift, ridin&#8217;-critter, cow-brute, man-person,
+women-folks, preacher-man, granny-woman and neighbor-people. In this
+category belong the famous double-barreled pronouns: we-all and you-all
+in Kentucky, we-uns and you-uns in Carolina and Tennessee. (I have even
+heard such locution as this: &#8220;Let&#8217;s we-uns all go over to youerunses
+house.&#8221;) Such usages are regarded generally as mere barbarisms, and so
+they are in English, but Miss Murfree cites correlatives in the Romance
+languages: French <i>nous autres</i>, Italian <i>noi altri</i>, Spanish
+<i>nosotros</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers have some queer ways of intensifying expression. &#8220;I&#8217;d
+<i>tell</i> a man,&#8221; with the stress as here indicated, is simply a strong
+affirmative. &#8220;We had one more <i>time</i>&#8221; means a rousing good time.
+&#8220;P&#8217;int-blank&#8221; is a superlative or an epithet: &#8220;We jist p&#8217;int-blank got
+it to do.&#8221; &#8220;Well, p&#8217;int-blank, if they ever come back again, I&#8217;ll move!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A double negative is so common that it may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> be crowded into a single
+word: &#8220;I did it the unthoughtless of anything I ever done in my life.&#8221;
+Triple negatives are easy: &#8220;I ain&#8217;t got nary none.&#8221; A mountaineer can
+accomplish the quadruple: &#8220;That boy ain&#8217;t never done nothin&#8217; nohow.&#8221;
+Yea, even the quintuple: &#8220;I ain&#8217;t never seen no men-folks of no kind do
+no washin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the veriest illiterates often startle a stranger by
+glib use of some word that most of us picked up in school or seldom use
+informally. &#8220;I can make a hunderd pound o&#8217; pork outen that hog&mdash;tutor it
+jist right.&#8221; &#8220;Them clouds denote rain.&#8221; &#8220;She&#8217;s so dilitary!&#8221; &#8220;They stood
+thar and caviled about it.&#8221; &#8220;That exceeds the measure.&#8221; &#8220;Old Tom is
+blind, but he can discern when the sun is shinin&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;Jerry proffered to
+fix the gun for me.&#8221; I had supposed that the words cuckold and moon-calf
+had none but literary usage in America, but we often hear them in the
+mountains, cuckold being employed both as verb and as noun, and
+moon-calf in its baldly literal sense that would make Prospero&#8217;s taunt
+to Caliban a superlative insult.</p>
+
+<p>Our highlander often speaks in Elizabethan or Chaucerian or even
+pre-Chaucerian terms. His pronoun hit antedates English itself, being
+the Anglo-Saxon neuter of he. Ey God, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> favorite expletive, is the
+original of egad, and goes back of Chaucer. Ax for ask and kag for keg
+were the primitive and legitimate forms, which we trace as far as the
+time of Layamon. When the mountain boy challenges his mate: &#8220;I dar ye&mdash;I
+ain&#8217;t afeared!&#8221; his verb and participle are of the same ancient and
+sterling rank. Afore, atwixt, awar, heap o&#8217; folks, peart, up and done
+it, usen for used, all these everyday expressions of the backwoods were
+contemporary with the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A man said to me of three of our acquaintances: &#8220;There&#8217;s been a fray on
+the river&mdash;I don&#8217;t know how the fraction begun, but Os feathered into
+Dan and Phil, feedin&#8217; them lead.&#8221; He meant fray in its original sense of
+deadly combat, as was fitting where two men were killed. Fraction for
+rupture is an archaic word, rare in literature, though we find it in
+<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. &#8220;Feathered into them!&#8221; Where else can we hear
+to-day a phrase that passed out of standard English when &#8220;villainous
+saltpetre&#8221; supplanted the long-bow? It means to bury an arrow up to the
+feather, as when the old chronicler Harrison says, &#8220;An other arrow
+should haue beene fethered in his bowels.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 480px;"><img src="images/ill-343.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by Arthur Keith</p>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;Till the skyline blends with the sky itself.&#8221;&mdash;Great Smokies. N. C. from Mt. Collins.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Our schoolmaster, composing a form of oath <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>for the new mail-carrier,
+remarked: &#8220;Let me study this thing over; then I can edzact it&#8221;&mdash;a verb
+so rare and obsolete that we find it in no American dictionary, but only
+in Murray.</p>
+
+<p>A remarkable word, common in the Smokies, is dauncy, defined for me as
+&#8220;mincy about eating,&#8221; which is to say fastidious, over-nice. Dauncy
+probably is a variant of daunch, of which the <i>Oxford New English
+Dictionary</i> cites but one example, from the <i>Townley Mysteries</i> of
+<i>circa</i> 1460.</p>
+
+<p>A queer term used by Carolina mountaineers, without the faintest notion
+of its origin, is doney (long <i>o</i>) or doney-gal, meaning a sweetheart.
+Its history is unique. British sailors of the olden time brought it to
+England from Spanish or Italian ports. Doney is simply <i>do&ntilde;a</i> or <i>donna</i>
+a trifle anglicized in pronunciation. Odd, though, that it should be
+preserved in America by none but backwoodsmen whose ancestors for two
+centuries never saw the tides!</p>
+
+<p>In the vocabulary of the mountaineers I have detected only three words
+of directly foreign origin. Doney is one. Another is kraut, which is the
+sole contribution to highland speech of those numerous Germans (mostly
+Pennsylvania Dutch) who joined the first settlers in this region, and
+whose descendants, under wondrously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> anglicized names, form to-day a
+considerable element of the highland population. The third is sashiate
+(French <i>chass&eacute;</i>), used in calling figures at the country dances.</p>
+
+<p>There is something intrinsically, stubbornly English in the nature of
+the mountaineer: he will assimilate nothing foreign. In the Smokies the
+Eastern Band of Cherokees still holds its ancient capital on the Okona
+Lufty River, and the whites mingle freely with these redskins, bearing
+them no such despite as they do negroes, but eating at the same table
+and admitting Indians to the white compartment of a Jim Crow car. Yet
+the mountain dialect contains not one word of Cherokee origin, albeit
+many of the whites can speak a little Cherokee.</p>
+
+<p>In our county some Indians always appear at each term of court, and an
+interpreter must be engaged. He never goes by that name, but by the
+obsolete title linkister or link&#8217;ster, by some lin-gis-ter.</p>
+
+<p>Many other old-fashioned terms are preserved in Appalachia that sound
+delightfully quaint to strangers who never met them outside of books. A
+married woman is not addressed as Missis by the mountaineers, but as
+Mistress when they speak formally, and as Mis&#8217; or Miz&#8217; for a
+contraction. We will hear an aged man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> referred to as &#8220;old Grandsir&#8217;&#8221;
+So-and-So. &#8220;Back this letter for me&#8221; is a phrase unchanged from the days
+before envelopes, when an address had to be written on the back of the
+letter itself. &#8220;Can I borry a race of ginger?&#8221; means the unground
+root&mdash;you will find the word in <i>A Winter&#8217;s Tale</i>. &#8220;Them sorry fellers&#8221;
+denotes scabby knaves, good-for-nothings. Sorry has no etymological
+connection with sorrow, but literally means sore-y, covered with sores,
+and the highlander sticks to its original import.</p>
+
+<p>We have in the mountains many home-born words to fit the circumstances
+of backwoods life. When maize has passed from the soft and milky stage
+of roasting-ears, but is not yet hard enough for grinding, the ears are
+grated into a soft meal and baked into delectable pones called
+gritted-bread.</p>
+
+<p>In some places to-day we still find the ancient quern or hand-mill,
+jocularly called an armstrong-machine. Someone who irked from turning it
+invented the extraordinary improvement that goes by the name of
+pounding-mill. This consists of a pole pivoted horizontally on top of a
+post and free to move up and down like the walking-beam of an
+old-fashioned engine. To one end of this pole is attached a heavy
+pestle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> that works in a mortar underneath. At the other end is a box
+from which water flows from an elevated spout. When the box fills it
+will go down, lifting the pestle; then the water spills out and the
+pestle&#8217;s weight lifts the box back again.</p>
+
+<p>Who knows what a toddick or taddle is? I did not until my friend Dargan
+reported it from the Nantahala. &#8220;Ben didn&#8217;t git a full turn o&#8217; meal, but
+jest a toddick.&#8221; When a farmer goes to one of our little tub-mills,
+mentioned in previous chapters, he leaves a portion of the meal as toll.
+This he measures out in a toll-dish or toddick or taddle (the name
+varies with the locality) which the mill-owner left for that purpose.
+Toddick, then, is a small measure. A turn of meal is so called because
+&#8220;each man&#8217;s corn is ground in turn&mdash;he waits his turn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When one dines in a cabin back in the hills he will taste some strange
+dishes that go by still stranger names. Beans dried in the pod, then
+boiled &#8220;hull and all,&#8221; are called leather-breeches (this is not slang,
+but the regular name). Green beans in the pod are called snaps; when
+shelled they are shuck-beans. The old Germans taught their Scotch and
+English neighbors the merits of scrapple, but here it is known as
+poor-do.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> Lath-open bread is made from biscuit dough, with soda and
+buttermilk, in the usual way, except that the shortening is worked in
+last. It is then baked in flat cakes, and has the peculiar property of
+parting readily into thin flakes when broken edgewise. I suppose that
+poor-do was originally poor-doin&#8217;s, and lath-open bread denotes that it
+opens into lath-like strips. But etymology cannot be pushed recklessly
+in the mountains, and I offer these clews as a mere surmise.</p>
+
+<p>Your hostess, proffering apple sauce, will ask, &#8220;Do you love sass?&#8221; I
+had to kick my chum Andy&#8217;s shins the first time he faced this question.
+It is well for a traveler to be forewarned that the word love is
+commonly used here in the sense of like or relish.</p>
+
+<p>If one is especially fond of a certain dish he declares that he is a
+fool about it. &#8220;I&#8217;m a plumb fool about pickle-beans.&#8221; Conversely, &#8220;I
+ain&#8217;t much of a fool about liver&#8221; is rather more than a hint of
+distaste. &#8220;I et me a bait&#8221; literally means a mere snack, but jocosely it
+may admit a hearty meal. If the provender be scant the hostess may say,
+&#8220;That&#8217;s right at a smidgen,&#8221; meaning little more than a mite; but if
+plenteous, then there are rimptions.</p>
+
+<p>To &#8220;grabble &#8217;taters&#8221; is to pick from a hill<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of new potatoes a few of
+the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature ones.</p>
+
+<p>If the house be in disorder it is said to be all gormed or gaumed up, or
+things are just in a mommick.</p>
+
+<p>When a man is tired he likely will call it worried; if in a hurry, he is
+in a swivvet; if nervous, he has the all-overs; if declining in health,
+he is on the down-go. If he and his neighbor dislike each other, there
+is a hardness between them; if they quarrel, it is a ruction, a rippit,
+a jower, or an upscuddle&mdash;so be it there are no fatalities which would
+amount to a real fray.</p>
+
+<p>A choleric or fretful person is tetchious. Survigrous (ser-<i>vi</i>-grus) is
+a superlative of vigorous (here pronounced <i>vi</i>-grus, with long <i>i</i>): as
+&#8220;a survigrous baby,&#8221; &#8220;a most survigrous cusser.&#8221; Bodaciously means
+bodily or entirely: &#8220;I&#8217;m bodaciously ruint&#8221; (seriously injured). &#8220;Sim
+greened him out bodaciously&#8221; (to green out or sap is to outwit in
+trade). To disfurnish or discon<i>fit</i> means to incommode: &#8220;I hope it has
+not disconfit you very bad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To shamp means to shingle or trim one&#8217;s hair. A bastard is a woods-colt
+or an outsider. Slaunchways denotes slanting, and si-godlin or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+si-antigodlin is out of plumb or out of square (factitious words, of
+course&mdash;mere nonsense terms, like catawampus).</p>
+
+<p>Critter and beast are usually restricted to horse and mule, and brute to
+a bovine. A bull or boar is not to be mentioned as such in mixed
+company, but male-brute and male-hog are used as euphemisms.<small><a name="f9.1" id="f9.1" href="#f9">[9]</a></small></p>
+
+<p>A female shoat is called a gilt. A spotted animal is said to be pieded
+(pied), and a striped one is listed. In the Smokies a toad is called a
+frog or a toad-frog, and a toadstool is a frog-stool. The woodpecker is
+turned around into a peckerwood, except that the giant woodpecker (here
+still a common bird) is known as a woodcock or woodhen.</p>
+
+<p>What the mountaineers call hemlock is the shrub leucothoe. The hemlock
+tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is
+she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel. In some places
+pine needles are called twinkles, and the locust insect is known as a
+ferro (Pharaoh?). A treetop left on the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>ground after logging is called
+the lap. Sobby wood means soggy or sodden, and the verb is to sob.</p>
+
+<p>Evening, in the mountains, begins at noon instead of at sunset. Spell is
+used in the sense of while (&#8220;a good spell atterward&#8221;) and soon for early
+(&#8220;a soon start in the morning&#8221;). The hillsmen say &#8220;a year come June,&#8221;
+&#8220;Thursday &#8217;twas a week ago,&#8221; and &#8220;the year nineteen and eight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Many common English words are used in peculiar senses by the mountain
+folk, as call for name or mention or occasion, clever for obliging,
+mimic or mock for resemble, a power or a sight for much, risin&#8217; for
+exceeding (also for inflammation), ruin for injure, scout for elude,
+stove for jabbed, surround for go around, word for phrase, take off for
+help yourself. Tale always means an idle or malicious report.</p>
+
+<p>Some highland usages that sound odd to us are really no more than the
+original and literal meanings, as budget for bag or parcel, hampered for
+shackled or jailed. When a mountain swain &#8220;carries his gal to meetin&#8217;&#8221;
+he is not performing so great an athletic feat as was reported by
+Benjamin Franklin, who said, &#8220;My father carried his wife with three
+children to New England&#8221; (from Pennsylvania).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>A mountaineer does not throw a stone; he &#8220;flings a rock.&#8221; He sharpens
+tools on a grindin&#8217;-rock or whet-rock. Tomato, cabbage, molasses and
+baking powder are used always as plural nouns. &#8220;Pass me them molasses.&#8221;
+&#8220;I&#8217;ll have a few more of them cabbage.&#8221; &#8220;How many bakin&#8217;-powders has you
+got?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Many other peculiar words and phrases are explained in their proper
+place elsewhere in this volume.</p>
+
+<p>The speech of the southern highlanders is alive with quaint idioms. &#8220;I
+swapped hosses, and I&#8217;ll tell you fer why.&#8221; &#8220;Your name ain&#8217;t much
+common.&#8221; &#8220;Who got to beat?&#8221; &#8220;You think me of it in the mornin&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;I &#8217;low
+to go to town to-morrow.&#8221; &#8220;The woman&#8217;s aimin&#8217; to go to meetin&#8217;.&#8221; &#8220;I had
+in head to plow to-day, but hit&#8217;s come on to rain.&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;ve laid off and
+laid off to fix that fence.&#8221; &#8220;Reckon Pete was knowin&#8217; to the
+sarcumstance?&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;ll name it to Newt, if so be he&#8217;s thar.&#8221; &#8220;I knowed in
+reason she&#8217;d have the mullygrubs over them doin&#8217;s.&#8221; &#8220;You cain&#8217;t handily
+blame her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Air ye plumb bereft?&#8221; &#8220;How come it was this: he done me dirt.&#8221; &#8220;I ain&#8217;t
+carin&#8217; which nor whether about it.&#8221; &#8220;Sam went to Andrews or to Murphy,
+one.&#8221; &#8220;I tuk my fut in my hand and lit out.&#8221; &#8220;He lit a rag fer home.&#8221;
+&#8220;Don&#8217;t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> much believe the wagon &#8217;ll come to-day.&#8221; &#8220;Tain&#8217;t powerful long
+to dinner, I don&#8217;t reckon.&#8221; &#8220;Phil&#8217;s Ann give it out to each and every
+that Walt and Layunie &#8217;d orter wed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Howdy, Tom: light and hitch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Reckon I&#8217;d better git on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come in and set.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cain&#8217;t stop long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, set down and eat you some supper!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t ye stay the night? Looks like to me we&#8217;ll have a rainin&#8217;, windin&#8217; spell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No: I&#8217;ll haffter go down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, come agin, and fix to stay a week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You-uns come down with me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t go now, I guess, Tom.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Giddep! I&#8217;ll be back by in the mornin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Farwell!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rather laconic. Yet, on occasion, when the mountaineer is drawn out of
+his natural reserve and allows his emotions free rein, there are few
+educated people who can match his picturesque and pungent diction. His
+trick of apt phrasing is intuitive. Like an artist striking off a
+portrait or a caricature with a few swift strokes his characterization
+is quick and vivid. Whether he use quaint obsolete English or equally
+delightful perversions, what he says<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> will go straight to the mark with
+epigrammatic force.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot quit this topic without reference to the bizarre and original
+place-names that sprinkle the map of Appalachia.</p>
+
+<p>Many readers of John Fox&#8217;s novels take for granted that the author
+coined such piquant titles as Lonesome, Troublesome, Hell fer Sartin,
+and Kingdom Come. But all of these are real names in the Kentucky
+mountains. They denote rough country, and the country <i>is</i> rough, so
+that to a traveler it is plain enough why travel and travail were used
+interchangeably in old editions of Shakespeare. There is nothing like
+first-hand knowledge of mountain roads to revive sixteenth-century
+habits of thought and speech. The most scrupulous visitor will fain
+admit the aptness of mountain nomenclature.</p>
+
+<p>Kentucky has no monopoly of grotesque and whimsical local names. The
+whole Appalachian region, from the Virginias to Alabama, is peppered
+with them. Whatever else the southern mountaineer may be, he is
+original. Elsewhere throughout America we have place-names imported from
+the Old World as thick as weeds; but the pioneers of the southern hills
+either forgot that there was an Old World or they disdained to borrow
+from it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>Personal names applied to localities are common enough, but they are
+those of actual settlers, not of notables honored from afar (Mitchell,
+LeConte, Guyot, were not the highlanders&#8217; names for those peaks). Often
+a surname is put to such use, as Jake&#8217;s Creek, Old Nell Knob, and Big
+Jonathan Run. We even have Granny&#8217;s Branch, and Daddy and Mammy creeks.</p>
+
+<p>In the main it is characteristic of our Appalachian place-names that
+they are descriptive or commemorate some incident. The Shut-in is a
+gorge; the Suck is a whirlpool; Pinch-gut is a narrow passage between
+the cliffs. Calf-killer Run is &#8220;whar a meat-eatin&#8217; bear was usin&#8217;,&#8221; and
+Barren She Mountain was the death-ground of a she-bear that had no cubs.
+Kemmer&#8217;s Old Stand was a certain hunter&#8217;s favorite ambush on a runway.
+Meat-scaffold Branch is where venison was hung up for &#8220;jerking.&#8221;
+Graining-block Creek was a trappers&#8217; rendezvous, and Honey Camp Run is
+where the bee hunters stayed. Lick-log denotes a notched log used for
+salting cattle. Still-house Branch was a moonshiners&#8217; retreat. Skin-linn
+Fork is where the bast was peeled from young lindens. Big Butt is what
+Westerners call a butte. Ball-play Bottom was a lacrosse field of the
+Indians.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Pizen Gulch was infested with poison ivy or sumach. Keerless
+Knob is &#8220;a joyful place for wild salat&#8221; (<i>amaranthus</i>). A &#8220;hell&#8221; or
+&#8220;slick&#8221; or &#8220;woolly-head&#8221; or &#8220;yaller patch&#8221; is a thicket of laurel or
+rhododendron, impassable save where the bears have bored out trails.</p>
+
+<p>The qualities of the raw backwoodsmen are printed from untouched
+negatives in the names he has left upon the map. His literalness shows
+in Black Rock, Standing Stone, Sharp Top, Twenty Mile, Naked Place, The
+Pocket, Tumbling Creek, and in the endless designations taken from
+trees, plants, minerals, or animals noted on the spot. Incidents of his
+lonely life are signalized in Dusk Camp Run, Mad Sheep Mountain, Dog
+Slaughter Creek, Drowning Creek, Burnt Cabin Branch, Broken Leg, Raw
+Dough, Burnt Pone, Sandy Mush, and a hundred others. His contentious
+spirit blazes forth in Fighting Creek, Shooting Creek, Gouge-eye,
+Vengeance, Four Killer, and Disputanta.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes even his superstitions are commemorated. In Owesley County,
+Kentucky, is a range of hills bearing the singular name of Whoop fer
+Larrie. A party of hunters, so the legend goes, had encamped for the
+night in the shelter of a bluff. They were startled from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> sleep by a
+loud rumble, as of some wagon hurrying along the pathless ridge, and
+they heard a voice shouting &#8220;Whoop fer Larrie! Whoop fer Larrie!&#8221; The
+hills would return no echo, for the cry came from a riotous &#8220;ha&#8217;nt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A sardonic humor, sometimes smudged with &#8220;that touch of grossness in our
+English race,&#8221; characterizes many of the backwoods place-names. In the
+mountains of Old Virginia we have Dry Tripe settlement and Jerk &#8217;em
+Tight. In West Virginia are Take In Creek, Get In Run, Seldom Seen
+Hollow, Odd, Buster Knob, Shabby Room, and Stretch Yer Neck. North
+Carolina has its Shoo Bird Mountain, Big Bugaboo Creek, Weary Hut, Frog
+Level, Shake a Rag, and the Chunky Gal. In eastern Tennessee are No Time
+settlement and No Business Knob, with creeks known as Big Soak, Suee, Go
+Forth, and How Come You. Georgia has produced Scataway, Too Nigh, Long
+Nose, Dug Down, Silly Cook, Turkey Trot, Broke Jug Creek, and Tear
+Breeches Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Allowing some license for the mountaineer&#8217;s irreverence, his whimsical
+fancies, and his scorn of sentimentalism, it must be said that his
+descriptive terms are usually apposite and sometimes felicitous. Often
+he is poetically imaginative, occasionally romantic, and generally
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>picturesque. Roan Mountain, Grandfather, the Lone Bald, Craggy Dome,
+the Black Brothers, Hairy Bear, the Balsam Cone, Sunset Mountain, the
+Little Snowbird, are names that linger lovingly in one&#8217;s memory.</p>
+
+<p>The writer recalls with pleasure not only the features but the mere
+titles of that superb landscape that he shared with the wild creatures
+and a few woodsmen when living far up on the divide of the Great Smoky
+Mountains. Immediately below his cabin were the Defeat and Desolation
+branches of Bone Valley, with Hazel Creek meandering to the Little
+Tennessee. Cheoah, Tululah, Santeetlah, the Tuckaseegee, and the
+Nantahala (Valley of the Noonday Sun) flowed through gorges overlooked
+by the Wauchecha, the Yalaka and the Cowee ranges, Tellico, Wahyah, the
+Standing Indian and the Tusquitee.<small><a name="f10.1" id="f10.1" href="#f10">[10]</a></small> Sonorous names, these, which our
+pioneers had the good sense to adopt from the aborigines.</p>
+
+<p>To the east were Cold Spring Knob, the Miry <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>Ridge, Siler&#8217;s Bald,
+Clingman&#8217;s Dome, and the great peaks at the head of Okona Lufty. On the
+west rose Brier Knob, Laurel Top, Thunderhead, Blockhouse, the
+Fodder-stack, and various &#8220;balds&#8221; of the Unakas guarding Hiwassee. To
+the northward were Cade&#8217;s Cove and the vale of Tuckaleechee, with
+Chilhowee in the near distance, and the Appalachian Valley stretching
+beyond our ramparts to where the far Cumberlands marked an ever-blue
+horizon.</p>
+
+<p>What matter that the plenteous roughs about us were branded with rude or
+opprobrious names? Rip Shin Thicket, Dog-hobble Ridge, the Rough Arm,
+Bear-wallow, Woolly Ridge, Roaring Fork, Huggins&#8217;s Hell, the Devil&#8217;s
+Racepath, his Den, his Courthouse, and other playgrounds of Old
+Nick&mdash;they, too, were well and fitly named.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">It</span> is only a town-dreamed allegory that represents Nature as a fond
+mother suckling her young upon her breast. Those who have lived
+literally close to wild Nature know her for a tyrant, void of pity and
+of mercy, from whom nothing can be wrung without toil and the risk of
+death.</p>
+
+<p>To all pioneer men&mdash;to their women and children, too&mdash;life has been one
+long, hard, cruel war against elemental powers. Nothing else than
+warlike arts, nothing short of warlike hazards, could have subdued the
+beasts and savages, felled the forests and made our land habitable for
+those teeming millions who can exist only in a state of mutual
+dependence and cultivation. The first lesson of pioneering was
+self-reliance. &#8220;Provide with thine own arm,&#8221; said the Wilderness,
+&#8220;against frost and famine and skulking foes, or thou shalt surely die!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But there were compensations. As the school of the woods was harsh and
+stern, so it brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> up sons and daughters of lion heart. And its
+reward to those who endured was the most outright independence to be had
+on earth. No king was so irresponsible as the pioneer, no czar so
+absolute as he. It needed no martyr spirit in him to sing:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;I am the master of my fate,<br />
+I am the captain of my soul.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>We have seen that the Appalachian region was peculiar in this: that good
+bottom lands were few and far between. So our mountain farmers were cut
+off more from the world and from each other, were thrown still more upon
+their individual resources, than other pioneers. By compulsion their
+self-reliance was more complete; hence their independence grew more
+haughty, their individualism more intense. And these traits, exaggerated
+as they were by force of environment, remain unweakened among their
+descendants to the present day.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a key to much that is puzzling in highland character. In
+the beginning isolation was forced upon the mountaineers; they accepted
+it as inevitable and bore it with stoical fortitude until in time they
+came to love solitude for its own sake and to find compensations in it
+for lack of society.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>Says a native writer, Miss Emma Miles, in a clever and illuminating book
+on <i>The Spirit of the Mountains</i>: &#8220;We who live so far apart that we
+rarely see more of one another than the blue smoke of each other&#8217;s
+chimneys are never at ease without the feel of the forest on every
+side&mdash;room to breathe, to expand, to develop, as well as to hunt and to
+wander at will. The nature of the mountaineer demands that he have
+solitude for the unhampered growth of his personality, wing-room for his
+eagle heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such feeling, such longing, most of us have experienced in passing
+moods; but in the highlander it is a permanent state of mind, sustaining
+him from the cradle to the grave. To enjoy freedom and air and
+elbow-room he cheerfully puts aside all that society can offer, and
+stints himself and bears adversity with a calm and steadfast soul. To be
+free, unbeholden, lord of himself and his surroundings&mdash;that is the wine
+of life to a mountaineer.</p>
+
+<p>Such a man cannot stand it to be bossed around. If he works for another,
+it must be on a footing of equality. Poverty may oblige him to take a
+turn on some &#8220;public works&#8221; (by which he means any job where many men
+work together, such as lumbering or railroad building), but he must be
+handled with more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> respect than is shown common laborers elsewhere. At a
+sharp order or a curse from the foreman he will flare back: &#8220;That&#8217;s
+enough out o&#8217; you!&#8221; and immediately he will drop his tools. Generally he
+will stay on a job just long enough to earn money for immediate needs;
+then back to the farm he goes.</p>
+
+<p>Bear in mind that in the mountains every person is accorded the
+consideration that his own qualities entitle him to, and no whit more.
+It has always been so. Our Highlanders have neither memory nor tradition
+of ever having been herded together, lorded over, persecuted or denied
+the privileges of free-men. So, even within their clans, there is no
+servility nor any headship by right of birth. Leaders arise, when
+needed, only by virtue of acknowledged ability and efficiency. In this
+respect there is no analogy whatever to the clan system of ancient
+Scotland, to which the loose social structure of our own highlanders has
+been compared.</p>
+
+<p>We might expect such fiery individualism to cool gradually as population
+grew denser; but, oddly enough, crowding only intensifies it in the shy
+backwoodsman. Neighborliness has not grown in the mountains&mdash;it is on
+the wane. There are to-day fewer log-rollings and house-raisings, fewer
+husking bees and quilting parties<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> than in former times; <i>and no new
+social gatherings have taken their place</i>. Our mountain farmer, seeing
+all arable land taken up, and the free range ever narrowing, has grown
+jealous and distrustful, resenting the encroachment of too many sharers
+in what once he felt was his own unfenced domain. And so it has come
+about that the very quality that is his strength and charm as a man&mdash;his
+staunch individualism&mdash;is proving his weakness and reproach as a
+neighbor and citizen. The virtue of a time out-worn has become the vice
+of an age new-born.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers are non-social. As they stand to-day, each man
+&#8220;fighting for his own hand, with his back against the wall,&#8221; they
+recognize no social compact. Each one is suspicious of the other. Except
+as kinsmen or partisans they cannot pull together. Speak to them of
+community of interests, try to show them the advantages of co-operation,
+and you might as well be proffering advice to the North Star. They will
+not work together zealously even to improve their neighborhood roads,
+each mistrusting that the other may gain some trifling advantage over
+himself or turn fewer shovelfuls of earth. Labor chiefs fail to organize
+unions or granges among them because they simply will not stick
+together.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>Miss Miles says of her people (the italics are my own): &#8220;There is no
+such thing as a community of mountaineers. They are knit together, man
+to man, as friends, but not as a body of men.... Our men are almost
+incapable of concerted action unless they are needed by the
+Government.... Between blood-relationship and the Federal Government no
+relations of master and servant, rich and poor, learned and ignorant,
+employer and employee, are interposed to bind society into a whole....
+<i>The mountaineers must awake to a consciousness of themselves as a
+people.</i> For although throughout the highlands of Kentucky, Tennessee
+and the Carolinas our nature is one, our hopes, our loves, our daily
+life the same, we are yet a people asleep, <i>a race without knowledge of
+its own existence</i>. This condition is due ... to the isolation that
+separates the mountaineer from all the world but his own blood and kin,
+and to the consequent utter simplicity of social relations. When they
+shall have established a unity of thought corresponding to their
+homogeneity of character, then their love of country will assume a
+practical form, and then, indeed, America, with all her peoples, can
+boast no stronger sons than these same mountaineers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>To the Highlanders of four States here mentioned should be added all
+those of Old Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, making an
+aggregate to-day of close on four million souls. Together they
+constitute a distinct people. Not only are they all closely akin in
+blood, in speech, in ideas, in manners, in ways of living; but their
+needs, their problems are identical throughout this vast domain. There
+is no other ethnic group in America so unmixed as these mountaineers and
+so segregated from all others.</p>
+
+<p>And the strange thing is that they do not know it. Their isolation is so
+complete that they have no race consciousness at all. In this respect I
+can think of no other people on the face of the earth to which they may
+be likened.</p>
+
+<p>As compensation for the peculiar weakness of their social structure, the
+Highlanders display an undying devotion to family and kindred.
+Mountaineers everywhere are passionately attached to their homes. Tear
+away from his native rock your Switzer, your Tyrolean, your Basque, your
+Montenegrin, and all alike are stricken with homesickness beyond speech
+or cure. At the first chance they will return, and thenceforth will
+cling to their patrimonies, however poor these be.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>So, too, our man of the Appalachians.&mdash;&#8220;I went down into the valley,
+wunst, and I declar I nigh sultered! &#8217;Pears like there ain&#8217;t breath
+enough to go round, with all them people. And the water don&#8217;t do a body
+no good; an&#8217; you cain&#8217;t eat hearty, nor sleep good o&#8217; nights. Course
+they pay big money down thar; but I&#8217;d a heap-sight ruther ketch me a big
+old &#8217;coon fer his hide. Boys, I did hone fer my dog Fiddler, an&#8217; the
+times we&#8217;d have a-huntin&#8217;, and the trout-fishin&#8217;, an&#8217; the smell o&#8217; the
+woods, and nobody bossin&#8217; and jowerin&#8217; at all. I&#8217;m a hill-billy, all
+right, and they needn&#8217;t to glory their old flat lands to me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Domestic affection is seldom expressed by the mountaineers&mdash;not even by
+motherly or sisterly kisses&mdash;but it is very deep and real for all that.
+In fact, the ties of kinship are stronger with them, and extend to
+remoter degrees of consanguinity, than with any other Americans that I
+know. Here again we see working the old feudal idea, an anachronism, but
+often a beautiful one, in this bustling commercial age. Our hived and
+promiscuous life in cities is breaking down the old fealty of kith and
+kin. &#8220;God gives us our relatives,&#8221; sighs the modern, &#8220;but, thank God, we
+can choose our friends!&#8221; Such words would strike a mountaineer deep
+with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>horror. Rather would he go the limit of Stevenson&#8217;s Saint Ives:
+&#8220;If it is a question of going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman, with
+your ancestors!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 492px;"><img src="images/ill-369.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by U. S. Forest Service</p>
+<p class="caption">Whitewater Falls</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When the wilderness came to be settled by white men, courts were feeble
+to puerility, and every man was a law unto himself. Many hard characters
+came in with the pioneers&mdash;bad neighbors, arrogant, thievish, bold. As
+society was not organized for mutual protection, it was inevitable that
+cousin should look to cousin for help in time of trouble. So arose the
+clan, the family league, and, as things change very slowly in the
+mountains, we still have clan loyalty outside of and superior to the
+law. &#8220;My family <i>right or wrong</i>!&#8221; is a slogan to which every highlander
+will rise, with money or arms in hand, and for it he will lay down his
+last dollar, the last drop of his blood. There is scarce any limit to
+which this fealty will not go. Your brother or cousin may have committed
+a crime that shocks you as it does all other decent citizens; but will
+you give him up to the officers and testify against him? Not if you are
+a mountaineer. You will hide him out in the laurel, carry him food, keep
+him posted, help him to break jail, perjure yourself for him in
+court&mdash;anything, everything, to get him clear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>We see here a survival, very real and widespread, in this
+twentieth-century Appalachia, of a condition that was general throughout
+the Scotch Highlands in the far past. &#8220;The great virtue of the
+Highlander,&#8221; says Lecky, &#8220;was his fidelity to his chief and to his clan.
+It took the place of patriotism and of loyalty to his sovereign.... In
+the reign of James V., an insurrection of Clan Chattan having been
+suppressed by Murray, two hundred of the insurgents were condemned to
+death. Each one as he was led to the gallows was offered a pardon if he
+would reveal the hiding-place of his chief, but they all answered that,
+were they acquainted with it, no sort of punishment could induce them to
+be guilty of treachery to their leader.... In 1745 the house of
+Macpherson of Cluny was burnt to the ground by the King&#8217;s troops. A
+reward of &pound;1,000 was offered for his apprehension. A large body of
+soldiers was stationed in the district and a step of promotion was
+promised to any officer who should secure him. Yet for nine years the
+chief was able to live concealed on his own property in a cave which his
+clansmen dug for him during the night, and, though upwards of one
+hundred persons knew of his place of retreat, no bribe or menace could
+extort the secret.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>The same chivalrous, self-sacrificing fidelity to family and to clan
+leader is still shown by our own highlanders, as scores of feuds and
+hundreds of criminal trials attest. All this is openly and unblushingly
+&#8220;above the law&#8221;; but let us remember that the law itself, in many of
+these localities, is but a feeble, dilatory thing that offers
+practically no protection to those who would obey its letter. So, in an
+imperfectly organized society, it is good to have blood-ties that are
+faithful unto death. And none knows it better than he who has missed
+it&mdash;he who has lived strange and alone in some wild, lawless region
+where everyone else had a clan to back him.</p>
+
+<p>So far as primitive society is concerned, we may admit with the Scotch
+historian Henderson that &#8220;the clan system of government was in its way
+an ideally perfect one&mdash;probably the only perfect one that has ever
+existed.... The clansman was not the subject&mdash;a term implying some sort
+of conquest&mdash;but the kinsman of his chief.... Obedience became rather a
+privilege than a task, and no possible bribery or menace could shake his
+fidelity. Towards the Sassenach or the members of clans at feud with him
+he might act meanly, treacherously, and cruelly without check and
+without compunction,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> for there he recognized no moral obligations
+whatever. But as a clansman to his clan he was courteous, truthful,
+virtuous, benevolent, with notions of honor as punctilious as those of
+the ancient knight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The trouble with clan government was, as this same writer has pointed
+out, that &#8220;it was the very thoroughness of its adaptation to early needs
+that made it so hard to adjust to new necessities. In its principles and
+motives it was essentially opposed to the bent of modern influences. Its
+appeal was to sentiment rather than to law or even reason: it was a
+system not of the letter but of the spirit.... The clan system was
+efficient only within a narrow area; it gave rise to interminable feuds;
+and it was inapplicable to the circumstances created by the rise of
+modern industry and trade.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere throughout Highland Dixie to-day we can observe how clan
+loyalty interferes with the administration of justice. When a case
+involving some strong family comes up in the courts, immediately a cloud
+of false witnesses arises, men who should testify on the other side are
+bribed or run out of the country before subpoenas can be served, and
+every juror knows that his peace and prosperity in future depend largely
+upon which side he espouses.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>To what lengths the hostility of a clan may go in defying justice was
+shown recently in the massacre of almost a whole court by the Allen clan
+at Hillsville, Virginia. The news of that atrocity swept like wildfire
+throughout all Appalachia, its history is being reviewed to-day in
+thousands of mountain cabins, and it is deeply significant that, away
+out here in western Carolina, where no Allen blood relationship
+prejudices men&#8217;s minds, the prevailing judgment of our backwoodsmen is
+that the State of Virginia did wrong in executing any of the offenders.
+&#8220;There was something back of it&mdash;you mark my words,&#8221; say the country
+folk. And the drummers, cattle-buyers, and others who pass this way from
+southwestern Virginia tell us, &#8220;Everybody up our way sympathizes with
+the Allens.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In some measure this morbid sentiment is due to the spectacular features
+of the Hillsville tragedy. If there be one human quality that the
+mountaineer admires above all others, it is &#8220;nerve.&#8221; And what greater
+display of nerve has been made in this generation than for a few
+clansmen to shoot down a judge at the bench, the public prosecutor, the
+sheriff, the clerk of the court, and two jurymen, then take to the
+mountain laurel like Corsicans to the <i>maquis</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> and defy the armed
+power of the country? The cause does not matter, to a mountaineer. Our
+Highlanders are anything but robbers, for instance, and yet the only
+outsider who has ballads sung in his memory throughout Appalachia is
+Jesse James!&mdash;unless Jack Donohue was one&mdash;I do not know.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">Come all ye bold undaunted men<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And outlaws of the day,</span><br />
+Who&#8217;d rather wear the ball and chain<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Than work in slavery!</span><br />
+<span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><br />
+Said Donohue to his comrades,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;If you&#8217;ll prove true to me,</span><br />
+This day I&#8217;ll fight with all my might,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I&#8217;ll fight for liberty;</span><br />
+Be of good courage, be bold and strong,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be galliant and be true;</span><br />
+This day I&#8217;ll fight with all my might,&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Says bold Jack Donohue.</span><br />
+<span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><br />
+Six policemen he shot down<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before the fatal ball</span><br />
+Pierced the heart of Donohue<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And &#8217;casioned him to fall;</span><br />
+And then he closed his struggling eyes,<br />
+And bid this world adieu.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Come all ye boys that fear no noise,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pray for Donohue!</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>No doubt the mountain minstrels are already composing ballads in honor
+of the Allens; for it is a fact we cannot blink at that the outlaw is
+the popular hero of Appalachia to-day, as Rob Roy and Robin Hood were in
+the Britain of long ago. This is not due to any ingrained hostility to
+law and order as such, but simply to admiration for any men who fight
+desperately against overwhelming odds. There is a glamour about bold and
+lawless adventure that fascinates mature men and women who have never
+outgrown youthful habits of mind. Whoever has the reputation of being a
+dangerous man to cross&mdash;the &#8220;marked&#8221; man, who carries his life upon his
+sleeve, but bears himself as a smiling cavalier&mdash;he is the only true
+aristocrat among a valorous but primitive people.</p>
+
+<p>But this is only half an explanation. The statement that our highlanders
+are not hostile to law and order must be qualified to this extent: they
+have a profound distrust of the courts. The mountaineer is not only a
+born fighter but he is also litigious by nature and tradition. A
+stranger will be surprised to find how deeply the average backwoodsman
+is versed in the petty subtleties of legal practice. It comes from
+experience. &#8220;Court-week&#8221; draws bigger crowds than a circus. The
+mountaineer who has never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> served as juror, witness, or principal in a
+lawsuit is a curiosity. And this familiarity has bred secret contempt. I
+violate no confidence in saying that many a mountaineer would hold up
+one hand to testify his respect for the law while the other hand hovered
+over his pistol.</p>
+
+<p>Why so?</p>
+
+<p>Just because his experience has taught him (rightly or wrongly&mdash;but he
+firmly believes it) that courts are swayed by sinister influences when
+important matters are at stake. Those influences are clan money and clan
+votes. Hence, if he or a kinsman be involved in &#8220;lawin&#8217;&#8221; with a member
+of some rival tribe, he does not look for impartial treatment, but
+prepares to fight cunning with cunning, local influence with local
+influence. There are no moral obligations here. &#8220;All&#8217;s fair in love and
+war&#8221;&mdash;and this is one form of war.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader will take down his <i>David Balfour</i> and read the intrigues,
+plots, and counterplots of David&#8217;s attorneys and those of the Crown, he
+will grasp our own highlanders&#8217; viewpoint.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 454px;"><img src="images/ill-379.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by Arthur Keith</p>
+<p class="caption">The road follows the Creek.&mdash;There may be a dozen fords in a mile.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>That mountain courts are often impotent is due in part to the
+limitations under which their officers are obliged to serve. For
+example, in the judicial district where I reside, the solicitor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>(State&#8217;s attorney) receives nothing but fees, and then only <i>in case
+of conviction</i>. It might seem that this would stir him to extra zeal,
+and perhaps it does; but he has a large circuit, there are no local
+officials specially interested in securing evidence for him while the
+case is white-hot, everything spurs the defendant to get rid of
+dangerous witnesses before the solicitor can get at them, public opinion
+is extremely lenient toward homicides, and man-slayers so often get off
+scot-free after the most faithful and laborious efforts of the
+solicitor, that he becomes discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff, too, serves without salary, getting only fees and a
+percentage of tax collections. How this works, in securing witnesses,
+may be shown by an anecdote.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I looked up from my work, one day, to see a neighbor striding swiftly
+along the trail that passed my cabin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You seem in a hurry, John. Woods afire?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No: I&#8217;m dodgin&#8217; the sheriff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whose pig was it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aw! He wants me as witness in a concealed weepon case.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One of your boys?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Huk-uh: nobody as I&#8217;m keerin&#8217; fer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then why don&#8217;t you go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>&#8220;I cain&#8217;t afford to. I&#8217;d haffter walk nineteen miles out to the
+railroad, pay seventy cents the round-trip to the county-site, pay my
+board thar fer mebbe a week, and then a witness don&#8217;t git no fee at all
+onless they convict.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does the sheriff get for coming away up here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thirty cents for each witness he cotches. He won&#8217;t git me, Mister Man;
+not if I know these woods since yistiddy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Verily the law of Swain is hard on the solicitor, hard on the sheriff,
+and hard on the witness, too!</p>
+
+<p>Mountaineers place a low valuation on human life. I need not go outside
+my own habitat for illustrations. In our judicial district, which
+comprises the westernmost seven counties of North Carolina, the present
+yearly toll of homicides varies, according to counties, from about one
+in 1,000 to one in 2,500 of the population. And ours is not a feud
+district, nor are there any negroes to speak of. Compare these figures
+with the rate of homicide in the United States at large, about one to
+8,300 population; of Italy, one to 66,000; Great Britain, one to
+111,000; Germany, one to 200,000.</p>
+
+<p>And the worst of it is that no Black Hand conspirators or ward gun-men
+or other professional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> criminals figure in these killings. Practically
+all of them are committed by representative citizens, mostly farmers.
+Take that fact home, and think what it means. Remember, too, that most
+of these murderers either escape with light penal sentences or none at
+all. The only capital sentence imposed in our district within the past
+ten years was upon an Indian who had assaulted and murdered a white girl
+(there was no red tape or procrastination about <i>that</i> trial, the
+court-house being filled with men who were ready to lynch him under the
+judge&#8217;s nose if the sentence were not satisfactory).</p>
+
+<p>I said at the very outset of this book that &#8220;Our mountain folk still
+live in the eighteenth century. The progress of mankind from that age to
+this is no heritage of theirs.... And so, in order to be fair and just
+with these our backward kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize
+ourselves to the extent of <i>going back</i> and getting an eighteenth
+century point of view.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As regards the valuation of human life, what was that point of view?</p>
+
+<p>The late Professor Shaler of Harvard, himself a Southerner, one time
+explained the prevalence of manslaughter among southern gentlemen. His
+remarks apply with equal truth to our mountaineers, for they, however
+poor they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> may be in worldly goods, are by no means &#8220;poor white trash,&#8221;
+but rather patricians, like the ragged but lofty chiefs and clansmen of
+old Scotland.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Nothing so surprises the northern people as the fact that southern
+men of good estate will, for what seems to the distant onlooker
+trifling matters of dispute, proceed to slay each other. Nothing so
+gravely offends the characteristic southern man as the incapacity
+of his brethren of northern societies to perceive that such action
+is natural and consistent with the rules of gentlemanly behavior.
+The only way to understand these differences of opinion is by a
+proper consideration of the history of the moral growth of these
+diverse peoples.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Southerner has retained and fostered&mdash;in a certain way
+reinstated&mdash;the medieval estimate as to the value of life. In the
+opinion of those ages it was but lightly esteemed; it was not a
+supreme good for which almost all else was to be sacrificed, but
+something to be taken in hand and put in risk in the pursuit of
+manly ideals.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Modernism has worked to intensify the passion for existence until
+those who are the most under its dominion cannot well conceive how
+a man, except for some supreme duty to which he is pledged by
+altruistic motives, can give up his own life or take that of his
+neighbor. If these people of to-day will but perceive that the
+characteristic Southerner has preserved the motives of two
+centuries ago, if they will but inform themselves as to the state
+of mind on this subject which prevailed in the epoch when those
+motives were shaped in men, they will see that their judgment is
+harsh and unreasonable. It is much as if they judged the actions of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>Englishmen of the seventeenth century by the changed standards of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nor will it be altogether reasonable to condemn the lack of regard
+of life which we find in the southern gentleman as compared with
+his northern contemporary. We must, of course, reprobate in every
+way the evil consequences of this state of mind; but the question
+as to the propriety of that extreme devotion to continued mundane
+existence which is so manifest in our modern civilization is
+certainly open to debate. Irrational and brutal as are the ways in
+which the old-fashioned gentleman of the South shows that his
+regard for his own honor or that of his household outweighs his
+love of life, it must be remembered that the same condition existed
+in the richest ages of our race&mdash;those which gave proportionally
+the largest share of ability and nobility to its history.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As long as men are more keenly sensitive to the opinions of their
+fellows than they are to the other goods which existence brings
+them, as long as this opinion makes personal valor and truthfulness
+the jewels of their lives, we must expect now and then to have
+degradation of the essentially noble motives. It is, undoubtedly, a
+dangerous state of mind, but not one that is degraded.&#8221;&mdash;(<i>North
+American Review</i>, October, 1890.)</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The motives of two centuries ago&#8221; are the motives of present-day
+Appalachia. Here the right of private war is not questioned, outside of
+a judge&#8217;s charge from the bench, which everybody takes as a mere
+formality, a convention that is not to be taken seriously. The argument
+is this: that when Society, as represented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> by the State, cannot protect
+a man or secure him his dues, then he is not only justified but in duty
+bound to defend himself or seize what is his own. And in the mountains
+Society with the big <i>S</i> is often powerless against the Clan with a
+bigger <i>C</i>.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>THE BLOOD-FEUD</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">In</span> Corsica, when a man is wronged by another, public sentiment requires
+that he redress his own grievance, and that his family and friends shall
+share the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before the law made us citizens, great Nature made us men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When one has an enemy, one must choose between the three
+S&#8217;s&mdash;<i>schiopetto, stiletto, strada</i>: the rifle, the dagger, or
+flight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are two presents to be made to an enemy&mdash;<i>palla calda o ferro
+freddo</i>: hot shot or cold steel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Corsican code of honor does not require that vengeance be taken in
+fair fight. Rather should there be a sudden thrust of the knife, or a
+pistol fired point-blank into the enemy&#8217;s breast, or a rifle-shot from
+some ambush picked in advance.</p>
+
+<p>The assassin is not conscious of any cowardice in such act. If the
+trouble between him and his foe had been strictly a personal matter, to
+be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> settled forever by one man&#8217;s fall, then he might have welcomed a
+duel with all the punctilios. But his blood is not his alone&mdash;it belongs
+to his clan. Whenever a Corsican is slain his family takes up the feud.
+A vendetta ensues&mdash;a war of extermination by clan against clan.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is to inflict
+the greatest loss upon the enemy with the least loss to one&#8217;s own side.
+Hence we have hostilities without declaration of war; we have the
+ambush, the night attack, masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus
+we murder hundreds asleep or unshriven. This is war.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, while a soldier must be brave in any extremity, it is no less
+his duty to save himself unharmed as long as he can, so that he may help
+his own side and kill more and more of the enemy. Therefore it is proper
+and military for him to &#8220;snipe&#8221; his foes by deliberate sharpshooting
+from behind any lurking-place that he can find. This is war.</p>
+
+<p>And the vendetta, says our Corsican, is nothing else than war.</p>
+
+<p>When Matteo has been slain by an enemy, his friends carry his body home
+and swear vengeance over the corpse, while his wife soaks her
+handkerchief in his wounds to keep as a token<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> whereby she will incite
+her children, as they grow up, to war against all kinsmen of their
+father&#8217;s murderer.</p>
+
+<p>Then a son or brother of Matteo slips forth into the night, full-armed
+to slay like a dog any member of the rival faction whom he may find at a
+disadvantage. The deed done, he flies to the <i>maquis</i>, the mountain
+thicket, and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off his
+enemies&mdash;an outlaw with a price upon his head, but pitied or admired by
+all Corsicans outside the feud, and succored by his clan.</p>
+
+<p>It is a far cry from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia: so why
+this prelude? Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica. Not a drop of
+South European blood flows in their veins. Few of them ever heard one
+word of a foreign tongue. True. And yet we shall mark some strange
+analogies between Corsican vendettas and Appalachian feuds, Corsican
+clannishness and Appalachian clannishness, Corsican women and our
+mountain women&mdash;before this chapter ends.</p>
+
+<p>Long, long ago, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, Dr. Abner Baker
+married a Miss White. Daniel Bates married Baker&#8217;s sister, but separated
+from her in 1844. Baker charged Bates with undue intimacy with his wife,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> killed him. The Whites, defending their kinswoman, prosecuted the
+Doctor, but he was acquitted, and moved to Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards Baker returned. In flat violation of the Constitution of the
+United States, he was tried a second time for the murder of Bates, was
+convicted, and was hanged. Thenceforth there was &#8220;bad blood&#8221; between the
+Bakers and the Whites, involving the Garrards on one side and the
+Howards on the other, as allies to the respective clans.</p>
+
+<p>In 1898, Tom Baker, reputed to be the best shot in the Kentucky
+mountains, bought a note given by A. B. Howard, for whom he was cutting
+timber. Howard became furious, a fight ensued, one of the Howard boys
+and Burt Stores were killed from ambush, and the elder Howard was
+wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Jim Howard, son of the clan chief, sought out Tom Baker&#8217;s
+father, who was county attorney, compelled the unarmed old man to fall
+upon his knees, shot him twenty-five times with careful aim to avoid a
+vital spot, and so killed him by inches. Howard was tried and convicted
+of murder, but it is said that a pardon was offered him if he would go
+to the State Capitol at Frankfort and assassinate Governor Goebel, which
+he is charged with having done.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>In Clay County, where this feud waged, the judge, clerk, sheriff, and
+jailer were of the White clan. Tom Baker killed a brother of the sheriff
+and took to the hills rather than give himself up to a court ruled by
+his foemen. Then Albert Garrard was fired upon from ambush while riding
+with his wife to a religious meeting. He removed to Pineville, in
+another county, under guard of two armed men, both of whom were shot
+dead &#8220;from the bresh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Governor Bradley sent State troops into Clay County, and Tom Baker
+surrendered to them. Baker was tried in the Knox Circuit Court, on a
+change of venue, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. On
+appeal his attorneys secured a reversal of the verdict, and Baker was
+released on bail. The new trial was set for June, 1899. Governor Bradley
+again sent a company of State militia, with a Gatling gun, to Manchester
+where the trial was to be held. Baker was put in a guard-tent surrounded
+by a squad of soldiers. A hundred yards or so from this tent stood the
+unoccupied residence of the sheriff, at the foot of a wooded mountain.
+An assassin hidden in this house spied upon the guard-tent, and, when
+Baker appeared, shot him dead with a rifle, then took to the woods and
+escaped.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>I quote now from a history of this feud published in <i>Munsey&#8217;s Magazine</i>
+of November, 1903.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Captain John Bryan, of the 2d Kentucky, said to the widow of the
+murdered Tom Baker, after they returned from the funeral:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Mrs. Baker, why don&#8217;t you leave this miserable country and escape
+from these terrible feuds? Move away, and teach your children to
+forget.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Captain Bryan,&#8217; said the widow, and she spoke evenly and quietly,
+&#8216;I have twelve sons. It will be the chief aim of my life to bring
+them up to avenge their father&#8217;s death. Each day I shall show my
+boys <i>the handkerchief stained with his blood</i>, and tell them who
+murdered him.&#8217;&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Corsican vendetta or Kentucky feud&mdash;what are language and race against
+age-long isolation and an environment that keeps humanity feral to the
+core?</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after Baker&#8217;s death, four Griffins, of the White-Howard faction,
+ambushed Big John Philpotts and his cousin, wounding the former severely
+and the latter mortally. Big John fought them from behind a log and
+killed all four.</p>
+
+<p>On July 17, 1899, four of the Philpotts were attacked by four Morrises,
+of the Howard side. Three men were killed, three mortally wounded, and
+the other two were severely injured. No arrests were made.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>Finally, in 1901, the two clans fought a pitched battle in front of the
+court-house in Manchester. At its conclusion they formally signed a
+truce.</p>
+
+<p>This is a mere scenario of a feud in the wealthiest and best-schooled
+county of eastern Kentucky. Two of the families involved were of
+distinguished lineage, counting in their ranks a governor, three
+generals, a member of Congress, and a prohibition candidate for the
+Presidency.</p>
+
+<p>In reviewing this feud, Governor Bradley stated:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The whole fault in Clay County is a vitiated public sentiment and
+a failure of the civil authorities to do their duty. The laws are
+insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy. Such feuds have
+been in progress more or less for years, and no Governor of the
+State has ever been able to quell them. They have terminated only
+when their force was spent by one side or the other being killed or
+moving out of the country.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The laws are insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy.&#8221; One
+naturally asks, &#8220;How so?&#8221; The answer is that the Governor cannot send
+troops into a county except upon request of the civil authorities, and
+they must go as a posse to civil officers. In most feuds these officers
+are partisans (in fact, it is a favorite ruse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> for one clan to win or
+usurp the county offices before making war). Hence the State troops
+would only serve as a reinforcement to one of the contending factions.
+To show how this works out, we will sketch briefly the course of another
+feud.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>In Rowan County, Kentucky, in 1884, there was an election quarrel
+between two members of the Martin and Toliver families. The Logans sided
+with the Martins and the Youngs with the Tolivers. The Logan-Martin
+faction elected their candidate for sheriff by a margin of twelve votes.
+Then there was an affray in which one Logan was killed and three were
+wounded.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, in feuds, no immediate redress was attempted, but the injured
+clan plotted its vengeance with deadly deliberation. After five months,
+Dick Martin killed Floyd Toliver. His own people worked the trick of
+arresting him themselves and sent him to Winchester for safe-keeping.
+The Tolivers succeeded in having him brought back on a forged order and
+killed him when he was bound and helpless.</p>
+
+<p>The leader of the Young-Toliver faction was a notorious bravo named
+Craig Toliver. To strengthen his power he became candidate for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> town
+marshal of Morehead, and he won the office by intimidation at the polls.
+Then, for two years, a bushwhacking war went on. Three times the
+Governor sent troops into Rowan County, but each time they found nothing
+but creeks and thickets to fight. Then he prevailed upon the clans to
+sign a truce and expatriate their chiefs for one year in distant States.
+Craig Toliver obeyed the order by going to Missouri, but returned
+several months before the expiration of his term, <i>resumed office</i>, and
+renewed his atrocities. In the warfare that ensued all the county
+officers were involved, from the judge down.</p>
+
+<p>In 1887, Proctor Knott, Governor of Kentucky, said in his message, of
+the Logan-Toliver feud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Though composed of only a small portion of the community, these
+factions have succeeded by their violence in overawing and
+silencing the voice of the peaceful element, and in intimidating
+the officers of the law. Having their origin partly in party
+rancor, they have ceased to have any political significance, and
+have become contests of personal ambition and revenge; each party
+seeking apparently to possess itself of the machinery of justice in
+order that it may, under the forms of law, seek the gratification
+of personal animosities.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;During the present year the local leader of one of these <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>factions
+came in possession of the office of police judge of the town of
+Morehead. Under color of the authority of that office, and
+sustained by an armed band of adherents, he exercised despotic sway
+over the town and its vicinage. He banished citizens who were
+obnoxious to him; and, in one instance, after arresting two
+citizens who seem to have been guilty of no offense, he and his
+party, attended by a deputy sheriff of the county, murdered them in
+cold blood.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This act of atrocity fully aroused the community. A posse acting
+under the authority of a warrant from the county judge attacked the
+police judge and his adherents on the 22d of June last, killed
+several of their number, and put the rest to flight, and
+temporarily restored something like tranquility to the community.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The proceedings of the Circuit Court, which was held in August,
+were not calculated to inspire the citizens with confidence in
+securing justice. The report of the Adjutant General on this
+subject shows, from information derived &#8216;from representative men
+without reference to party affiliations,&#8217; that the judge of the
+Circuit Court seems so far under the influence of the reputed
+leader of one of the factions as to permit such an organization of
+the grand juries as will effectually prevent the indictment of
+members of that faction for the most flagrant crimes.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The posse here mentioned was organized by Daniel Boone Logan, a cousin
+of the two young men who had been murdered, a college graduate, and a
+lawyer of good standing. With the assent of the Governor, he gathered
+fifty to seventy-five picked men and armed them with the best modern
+rifles and revolvers. Some of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>the men were of his own clan; others he
+hired. His plan was to end the war by exterminating the Tolivers.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 447px;"><img src="images/ill-397.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">Photo by U. S. Forest Service</p>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;Dense forest luxuriant undergrowth.&#8221;&mdash;Mixed hardwoods, Jackson Co., N. C.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The posse, led by Logan and the sheriff, suddenly surrounded the town of
+Morehead. Everybody gave in except Craig Toliver, Jay Toliver, Bud
+Toliver, and Hiram Cook, who barricaded themselves in the railroad
+station, where all of them were shot dead by the posse.</p>
+
+<p>Boone Logan was indicted for murder. At the trial he admitted the
+killings; but he showed that the feud had cost the lives of not less
+than twenty-three men, that not one person had been legally punished for
+these murders, and that he had acted for the good of the public in
+ending this infamous struggle. The court accepted this view of the case,
+the community sustained it, and the &#8220;war&#8221; was closed.</p>
+
+<p>A feud, in the restricted sense here used, is an armed conflict between
+families, each endeavoring to exterminate or drive out the other. It
+spreads swiftly not only to blood-kin and relatives by marriage, but to
+friends and retainers as well. It may lie dormant for a time, perhaps
+for a generation, and then burst forth with recruited strength long
+after its original cause has ceased to interest anyone, or maybe after
+it has been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>Such feuds are by no means prevalent throughout the length and breadth
+of Appalachia, but are restricted mostly to certain well defined
+districts, of which the chief, in extent of territory as well as in the
+number and ferocity of its &#8220;wars,&#8221; is the country round the upper waters
+of the Kentucky, Licking, Big Sandy, Tug, and Cumberland rivers,
+embracing many of the mountain counties of eastern Kentucky and
+adjoining parts of West Virginia, Old Virginia, and Tennessee. In this
+thinly settled region probably five hundred men have been slain in feuds
+since our centennial year, and only three of the murderers, so far as I
+know, have been executed by law.</p>
+
+<p>The active feudists, as a rule, include only a small part of the
+community; but public sentiment, in feud districts, approves or at least
+tolerates the vendetta, just as it does in Corsica or the Balkans. Those
+citizens who are not directly implicated take pains to hear little and
+see less. They keep their mouths shut. They can neither be persuaded,
+bribed, nor coerced into informing or testifying against either side,
+but, on the contrary, will throw dust in the eyes of an investigator or
+try to stare him down. A jury composed of such men will not convict
+anybody.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>When a feud is raging, nobody outside the warring clans is in any danger
+at all. A stranger is safer in the heart of Feuddom than he would be in
+Chicago or New York, so long as he attends strictly to his own business,
+asks no questions, and tells no &#8220;tales.&#8221; If, on the contrary, he should
+express horror or curiosity, he is regarded as a busybody or suspected
+as a spy, and is likely to be run out of the country or even &#8220;laywayed&#8221;
+and silenced forever.</p>
+
+<p>What causes feuds?</p>
+
+<p>Some of them start in mere drunken rows or in a dispute over a game of
+cards; others in quarrels over land boundaries or other property. The
+Hatfield-McCoy feud started because Randolph McCoy penned up two wild
+hogs that were claimed by Floyd Hatfield. The spite over these hogs
+broke out two years later, and one partisan was killed from ambush. The
+feud itself began in 1882 over a debt of $1.75, with the hogs and the
+bushwhacking brought up in recrimination. Love of women is the primary
+cause, or the secondary aggravation, of many a feud. Some of the most
+widespread and deadliest vendettas have originated in political strifes.</p>
+
+<p>It should be understood that national and state politics cut little or
+no figure in these &#8220;wars.&#8221; Local politics in most of the mountain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+counties is merely a factional fight, in which family matters and
+business interests are involved, and the contest becomes bitterly
+personal on that account. This explains most of the collusion or
+partisanship of county officers and their remissness in enforcing the
+law in murder cases. Family ties or political alliances override even
+the oath of office.</p>
+
+<p>Within the past year I have heard a deputy sheriff admit nonchalantly,
+on the stand, that when a homicide was committed near him, and he was
+the only officer in the vicinity, he advised the slayer to take to the
+mountains and &#8220;hide out.&#8221; The judge questioned him sharply on this
+point, was reassured by the witness that it was so, and then&mdash;offered no
+comment at all. Within the same period, in another but not distant
+court, a desperado from the Shelton Laurel, on trial for murder,
+admitted that he had shot six men since he moved over from Tennessee to
+North Carolina, and swore that while he was being held in jail pending
+trial for this last offense the sheriff permitted him to &#8220;keep a gun in
+his cell, drink whiskey in the jail, and eat at table with the family of
+the sheriff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Feuds spread not only through clan fealty but also because they offer
+excellent chances to pay off old scores. The mountaineer has a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+memory. The average highlander is fiery and combative by nature, but at
+the same time cunning and vindictive. If publicly insulted he will
+strike at once, but if he feels wronged by some act that does not demand
+instant retaliation he will brood over it and plot patiently to get his
+enemy at a disadvantage. Some mountaineers always fight fair; but many
+of them prefer to wait and watch quietly until the foe gets drunk and
+unwary, or until he is engaged in some illegal or scandalous act, or
+until he is known to be carrying a concealed weapon, whereupon he can be
+shot down unexpectedly and his assailant can &#8220;prove&#8221; by friendly
+witnesses that he acted in self-defense. So, if a man be involved in
+feud, he may be assassinated from ambush by someone who is not concerned
+in the clan trouble, but who has hated him for years on another account,
+and who knows that his death now will be charged up to the opposing
+faction.</p>
+
+<p>From the earliest times it has been customary for our highlanders to go
+armed most of the time. This was a necessity in the old Indian-fighting
+days, and throughout the kukluxing and white-capping era following the
+Civil War. Such a habit, once formed, is hard to eradicate. Even to-day,
+in all parts of Appalachia that I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> am familiar with, most of the young
+men, I judge, and many of the older ones, carry concealed weapons.</p>
+
+<p>Among them I have never seen a stand-up and knock-down fight according
+to the rules of the ring. They have many rough-and-tumble brawls, in
+which they slug, wrestle, kick, bite, strangle, until one gets the other
+down, whereat the one on top continues to maul his victim until he cries
+&#8220;Enough!&#8221; Oftener a club or stone will be used in mad endeavor to knock
+the opponent senseless at a blow. There is no compunction about striking
+foul and very little about &#8220;double-teaming.&#8221; Let us pause long enough to
+admit that this was the British and American way of man-handling,
+universal among the common people, until well into the nineteenth
+century&mdash;and the mountaineers are still ignorant of any other, except
+fighting with weapons.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the young men carry home-made billies or &#8220;brass knucks.&#8221; Every
+man and boy has at least a pocket-knife with serviceable blade. Fights
+with such crude weapons are frequent. There are few spectacles more
+sickening than two powerful but awkward men slashing each other with
+common jack-knives, though the fatalities are much less frequent than in
+gun-fighting. I have known two old mountain preachers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> to draw knives on
+each other at the close of a sermon.</p>
+
+<p>The typical highland bravo always carries a revolver or an automatic
+pistol. This is likely to be a weapon of large bore and good
+stopping-power that is worn in a shoulder-holster concealed under the
+coat or vest or shirt. Most mountaineers are good shots with such arms,
+though not so deadly quick as the frontiersmen of our old-time West&mdash;in
+fact, they cannot be so quick without wearing the weapon exposed. When a
+highlander has time, he prefers to hold his pistol in both hands (left
+clasped over right) and aims it as he would a rifle. To a Westerner such
+gun practice looks absurd; but it is accurate, beyond question. Few
+mountain gun-fights fail to score at least one victim.</p>
+
+<p>The average mountain woman is as combative in spirit as her menfolk. She
+would despise any man who took insult or injury without showing fight.
+In fact, the woman, in many cases, deliberately stirs up trouble out of
+vanity, or for the sheer excitement of it. Some of the older women
+display the ferocity of she-wolves. The mother of a large family said in
+my presence, with the calm earnestness of one fully experienced: &#8220;If a
+feller &#8217;d treated me the way &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; did &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; I&#8217;d git me a
+forty-some-odd and shoot enough<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> meat off o&#8217; his bones to feed a
+hound-dog a week.&#8221; Three of this woman&#8217;s brothers had been shot dead in
+frays. One of them killed the first husband of her sister, who married
+again, and whose second husband was killed by a man with whom she then
+tried a third matrimonial venture. Such matters may not be interesting
+in themselves, but they give one pause when he learns, in addition, that
+these people are received as friends and on a footing of equality by
+everybody in their community.</p>
+
+<p>That the mountaineers are fierce and relentless in their feuds is beyond
+denial. A warfare of bushwhacking and assassination knows no
+refinements. Quarter is neither given nor expected. Property, however,
+is not violated, and women are not often injured. There have been some
+atrocious exceptions. In the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Cap Hatfield and Tom
+Wallace attacked the latter&#8217;s wife and her mother at night, dragged both
+women from bed, and Cap beat the old woman with a cow&#8217;s tail that he had
+clipped off &#8220;jes&#8217; to see &#8217;er jump.&#8221; He broke two of the woman&#8217;s ribs,
+leaving her injured for life, while Tom beat his wife. Later, on New
+Year&#8217;s night, 1888, a gang of the Hatfields surrounded the home of
+Randolph McCoy, killed the eldest daughter, Allaphare, broke her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>mother&#8217;s ribs and knocked her senseless with their guns, and killed a
+son, Calvin. In several instances women who fought in defense of their
+homes have been killed, as in the case of Mrs. Charles Daniels and her
+16-year-old daughter, in Pike County, Kentucky, in November, 1909.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain women do not shrink from feuds, but on the contrary excite
+and cheer their men to desperate deeds, and sometimes fight by their
+side. In the French-Eversole feud, a woman, learning that her unarmed
+husband was besieged by his foes, seized his rifle, filled her apron
+with cartridges, rushed past the firing-line, and stood by her &#8220;old man&#8221;
+until he beat his assailants off. When men are &#8220;hiding out&#8221; in the
+laurel, it is the women&#8217;s part, which they never shirk, to carry them
+food and information.</p>
+
+<p>In every feud each clan has a leader, a man of prominence either on
+account of his wealth or his political influence or his shrewdness or
+his physical prowess. This leader&#8217;s orders are obeyed, while hostilities
+last, with the same unquestioning loyalty that the old Scotch retainer
+showed to his chieftain. Either the leader or someone acting for him
+supplies the men with food, with weapons if they need them, with
+ammunition, and with money. Sometimes mercenaries are hired. Mr. Fox
+says that &#8220;In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> one local war, I remember, four dollars per day were the
+wages of the fighting man, and the leader on one occasion, while
+besieging his enemies&mdash;in the county court-house&mdash;tried to purchase a
+cannon, and from no other place than the State arsenal, and from no
+other personage than the Governor himself.&#8221; In some of the feuds
+professional bravos have been employed who would assassinate, for a few
+dollars, anybody who was pointed out to them, provided he was alien to
+their own clans.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the highland bravo is precisely that of the western
+&#8220;bad man&#8221; as pictured by Jed Parker in Stewart Edward White&#8217;s <i>Arizona
+Nights</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;&#8216;There&#8217;s a good deal of romance been written about the &#8220;bad man,&#8221;
+and there&#8217;s about the same amount of nonsense. The bad man is just
+a plain murderer, neither more nor less. He never does get into a
+real, good, plain, stand-up gun-fight if he can possibly help it.
+His killin&#8217;s are done from behind a door, or when he&#8217;s got his man
+dead to rights. There&#8217;s Sam Cook. You&#8217;ve all heard of him. He had
+nerve, of course, and when he was backed into a corner he made
+good; and he was sure sudden death with a gun. But when he went out
+for a man deliberate, he didn&#8217;t take no special chances....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;The point is that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable
+proposition, and plain, cold-blooded murderers, willin&#8217; to wait for
+a sure thing, and without no compunctions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> whatever. The bad man
+takes you unawares, when you&#8217;re sleepin&#8217;, or talkin&#8217;, or drinkin&#8217;,
+or lookin&#8217; to see what for a day it&#8217;s goin&#8217; to be, anyway. He don&#8217;t
+give you no show, and sooner or later he&#8217;s goin&#8217; to get you in the
+safest and easiest way for himself. There ain&#8217;t no romance about
+that.&#8217;&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>And there is no romance about a real mountain feud. It is marked by
+suave treachery, &#8220;double-teaming,&#8221; &#8220;laywaying,&#8221; &#8220;blind-shooting,&#8221; and
+general heartlessness and brutality. If one side refuses to assassinate
+but seeks open, honorable combat, as has happened in several feuds, it
+is sure to be beaten. Whoever appeals to the law is sure to be beaten.
+In either case he is considered a fool or a coward by most of the
+countryside. Our highlander, untouched by the culture of the world about
+him, has never been taught the meaning of fair play. Magnanimity to a
+fallen foe he would regard as sure proof of an addled brain. The motive
+of one who forgives his enemy is utterly beyond his comprehension. As
+for bushwhacking, &#8220;Hit&#8217;s as fa&#8217;r for one as &#8217;tis for t&#8217;other. You can&#8217;t
+fight a man fa&#8217;r and squar who&#8217;ll shoot you in the back. A pore man
+can&#8217;t fight money in the courts.&#8221; In this he is simply his ancient
+Scotch or English ancestor born over again. Such was the code of
+Jacobite Scotland and Tudor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> England. And <i>back there</i> is where our
+mountaineer belongs in the scale of human evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The feud, as Miss Miles puts it, is an outbreak of <i>perverted</i> family
+affection. Its mainspring is an honorable clan loyalty. It is a direct
+consequence of the clan organization that our mountaineers preserve as
+it was handed down to them by their forefathers. The implacability of
+their vengeance, the treacheries they practice, the murders from ambush,
+are invariable features of clan warfare wherever and by whomsoever it is
+waged. They are not vices or crimes peculiar to the Kentuckian or the
+Corsican or the Sicilian or the Albanian or the Arab, but natural
+results of clan government, which in turn is a result of isolation, of
+physical environment, of geographical position unfavorable to free
+intercourse and commerce with the world at large.</p>
+
+<p>The most hideous feature of the feud is the shooting down of unarmed or
+unwarned men. Assassination, in our modern eyes, is the last and lowest
+infamy of a coward. Such it truly is, when committed in the civilized
+society of our day. But in studying primitive races, or in going back
+along the line of our own ancestry to the civilized society of two
+centuries ago, we must face and acknowledge the strange paradox<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> of a
+valorous and honorable people (according to their lights) who, in
+certain cases, practiced assassination without compunction and, in fact,
+with pride. History is red with it in those very &#8220;richest ages of our
+race&#8221; that Professor Shaler cited. Until a century or two ago,
+throughout Christendom, the secret murder of enemies was committed
+unblushingly by nobles and kings and prelates, often with a pious &#8220;Thus
+sayeth the Lord!&#8221; It was practiced by men valiant in open battle, and by
+those wise in the counsels of the realm. Take Scotland, for example, as
+pictured by a native writer.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;No tenet nor practice, no influence nor power nor principality in
+the Scotland of the past has outvied assassination in ascendancy or
+in moment. Not theoretically, indeed, but practically, it occupied
+for centuries a distinct, almost a supreme, place in her political
+constitution&mdash;was, in fact, the understood if not recognized
+expedient always in reserve should other milder and more hallowed
+methods fail of accomplishing the desired political or, it might
+be, religious consummation....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For centuries such justice as was exercised was haphazard and
+rude, and practically there was no law but the will of the
+stronger. Few, if any, of the great families but had their special
+feud; and feuds once originated survived for ages; to forget them
+would have been treason to the dead, and wild purposes of revenge
+were handed down from generation to generation as a sacred legacy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>&#8220;To take an enemy at a disadvantage was not deemed mean and
+contemptible, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8216;Of all the arts in which the wise excel<br />
+Nature&#8217;s chief masterpiece.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>To do it boldly and adroitly was to win a peculiar halo of renown;
+and thus assassination ceased to be the weapon of the avowed
+desperado, and came to be wielded unblushingly not only by
+so-called men of honor, but by the so-called religious as well. A
+noble did not scruple to use it against his king, and the king
+himself felt no dishonor in resorting to it against a dangerous
+noble. James I. was hacked to death in the night by Sir Robert
+Graham; and James I. rid himself of the imperious and intriguing
+Douglas by suddenly stabbing him while within his own royal palace
+under protection of a safe conduct.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The leaders of the Reformation discerned in assassination (that of
+their enemies) the special &#8216;work and judgment of God.&#8217;... When the
+assassination of Cardinal Beaton took place in 1546, all the savage
+details of it were set down by Knox with unbridled gusto. &#8216;These
+things we wreat mearlie,&#8217; is his own ingenuous comment on his
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The burden of George Buchanan&#8217;s <i>De Jure Regni apud Scotos</i> is the
+lawfulness or righteousness of the removal&mdash;by assassination or any
+other fitting or convenient means&mdash;of incompetent kings, whether
+heinously wicked and tyrannical or merely unwise and weak of
+purpose; and he cites as a case in point and an &#8216;example in time
+coming,&#8217; the murder of James III., which, if it were only on
+account of the assassin&#8217;s hideous travesty of the last offices of
+the Church, would deserve to be held in unique and everlasting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+detestation.&#8221;&mdash;(Henderson, <i>Old-world Scotland</i>, 182-186.)</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Yet the Scots have always been a notably warlike and fearless race. So,
+too, are our southern mountaineers: in the Civil War and the Spanish War
+they sent a larger proportion of their men into the service than almost
+any other section of our country.</p>
+
+<p>Let us not overlook the fact that it demands courage of a high order for
+one to stay in a feud-infested district, conscious of being marked for
+slaughter&mdash;stay there month in and month out, year in and year out, not
+knowing at what moment he may be beset by overpowering numbers, from
+what laurel thicket he may be shot, or at what hour of the night he may
+be called to his door and struck dead before his family. On the credit
+side of their valor, then, be it entered that few mountaineers will
+shrink from such ordeal when, even from no fault of their own, it is
+thrust upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The blood-feud is simply a horrible survival of medievalism. It is the
+highlander&#8217;s misfortune to be stranded far out of the course of
+civilization. He is no worse than that bygone age that he really belongs
+to. In some ways he is better. He is far less cruel than his ancestors
+were&mdash;than our ancestors were. He does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> torture with the tumbril,
+the stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding-irons, the
+ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue-branks that were in everyday
+use under the old criminal code. He does not tie a woman to the cart&#8217;s
+tail and publicly lash her bare back until it streams with blood, nor
+does he hang a man for picking somebody&#8217;s pocket of twelve pence and a
+farthing. He does not go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for the
+sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their chains in rage or
+horror. He does not turn executions of criminals into public festivals.
+He never has been known to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he
+hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails and burn them before
+his eyes, with a mob crowding about to jeer the poor devil&#8217;s flinching
+or to compliment him on his &#8220;nerve.&#8221; Yet all these pleasantries were
+proper and legal in Christian Britain two centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>This isolated and belated people who still carry on the blood-feud are
+not half so much to blame for such a savage survival as the rich,
+powerful, educated, twentieth-century nation that abandons them as if
+they were hopelessly derelict or wrecked. It took but a few decades to
+civilize Scotland. How much swifter and surer and easier are our means
+of enlightenment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> to-day! Let us not forget that these highlanders are
+blood of our blood and bone of our bone; for they are old-time Americans
+to a man, proud of their nationality, and passionately loyal to the flag
+that they, more than any other of us, according to their strength, have
+fought and suffered for.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>WHO ARE THE MOUNTAINEERS?</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> Southern Appalachian Mountains happen to be parceled out among eight
+different States, and for that reason they are seldom considered as a
+geographical unit. In the same way their inhabitants are thought of as
+Kentucky mountaineers or Carolina mountaineers, and so on, but not often
+as a body of Appalachian mountaineers. And yet these inhabitants are as
+distinct an ethnographic group as the mountains themselves are a
+geographic group.</p>
+
+<p>The mountaineers are homogeneous so far as speech and manners and
+
+experiences and ideals can make them. In the aggregate they are nearly
+twice as numerous and cover twice as much territory as any one of the
+States among which they have been distributed; but in each of these
+States they occupy only the backyard, and generally take back seats in
+the councils of the commonwealth. They have been fenced off from each
+other by political boundaries, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> have no such coherence among
+themselves as would come from common leadership or a sense of common
+origin and mutual dependence.</p>
+
+<p>And they are a people without annals. Back of their grandfathers they
+have neither screed nor hearsay. &#8220;Borned in the kentry and ain&#8217;t never
+been out o&#8217; hit&#8221; is all that most of them can say for themselves. Here
+and there one will assert, &#8220;My foreparents war principally Scotch,&#8221; or
+&#8220;Us Bumgyarners [Baumgartners] was Dutch,&#8221; but such traditions of a
+far-back foreign origin are uncommon.</p>
+
+<p>Who are these southern mountaineers? Whence came they? What is the
+secret of their belatedness and isolation?</p>
+
+<p>Before the Civil War they were seldom heard of in the outside world.
+Vaguely it was understood that the Appalachian highlands were occupied
+by a peculiar people called &#8220;mountain whites.&#8221; This odd name was given
+them not to distinguish them from mountain negroes, for there were,
+practically, no mountain negroes; but to indicate their similarity, in
+social condition and economic status, to the &#8220;poor whites&#8221; of the
+southern lowlands. It was assumed, on no historical basis whatever, that
+the highlanders came from the more venturesome or desperate element of
+the &#8220;poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> whites,&#8221; and differed from these only to the extent that
+environment had shaped them.</p>
+
+<p>Since this theory still prevails throughout the South, and is accepted
+generally elsewhere on its face value, it deserves just enough
+consideration to refute it.</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate class known as poor whites in the South is descended
+mainly from the convicts and indentured servants with which England
+supplied labor to the southern plantations before slavery days. The
+Cavaliers who founded and dominated southern society came from the
+conservative, the feudal element of England. Their character and
+training were essentially aristocratic and military. They were not
+town-dwellers, but masters of plantations. Their chief crop and article
+of export was tobacco. The culture of tobacco required an abundance of
+cheap and servile labor.</p>
+
+<p>On the plantations there was little demand for skilled labor, small room
+anywhere for a middle class of manufacturers and merchants, no
+inducement for independent farmers who would till with their own hands.
+Outside of the planters and a small professional class there was little
+employment offered save what was menial and degrading. Consequently the
+South was shunned, from the beginning, by British<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> yeomanry and by the
+thrifty Teutons such as flocked into the northern provinces. The demand
+for menials on the plantations was met, then, by importing bond-servants
+from Great Britain. These were obtained in three ways.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. Convicted criminals were deported to serve out their terms on the
+plantations. Some of these had been charged only with political
+offenses, and had the making of good citizens; but the greater number
+were rogues of the shiftless and petty delinquent order, such as were
+too lazy to work but not desperate enough to have incurred capital
+sentences.</p>
+
+<p>2. Boys and girls, chiefly from the slums of British seaports, were
+kidnapped and sold into temporary slavery on the plantations.</p>
+
+<p>3. Impoverished people who wished to emigrate, but could not pay for
+their passage, voluntarily sold their services for a term of years in
+return for transportation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a considerable proportion of the white laborers of the South, in
+the seventeenth century, were criminals or ne&#8217;er-do-wells from the
+start. A large number of the others came from the dregs of society. As
+for the remainder, the companionships into which they were thrust, the
+brutalities to which they were subjected, their impotence before the
+law, the contempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> in which they were held by the ruling caste, and the
+wretchedness of their prospect when released, were enough to undermine
+all but the strongest characters. Few ever succeeded in rising to
+respectable positions.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a vast social change. At a time when the laboring classes of
+Europe had achieved emancipation from serfdom, and feudalism was
+overthrown, African slavery in our own Southland laid the foundation for
+a new feudalism. Southern society reverted to a type that the rest of
+the civilized world had outgrown.</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon white labor was deplorable. The former bond-servants
+were now freedmen, it is true, but freedmen shorn of such opportunities
+as they were fitted to use. Sprung from a more or less degraded stock,
+still branded by caste, untrained to any career demanding skill and
+intelligence, devitalized by evil habits of life, densely ignorant of
+the world around them, these, the naturally shiftless, were now turned
+out into the backwoods to shift for themselves. It was inevitable that
+most of them should degenerate even below the level of their former
+estate, for they were no longer forced into steady industry.</p>
+
+<p>The white freedmen generally became squatters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> on such land as was unfit
+for tobacco, cotton, and other crops profitable to slave-owners. As the
+plantations expanded, these freedmen were pushed further and further
+back upon more and more sterile soil. They became &#8220;pine-landers&#8221; or
+&#8220;piney-woods-people,&#8221; &#8220;sand-hillers,&#8221; &#8220;knob-people,&#8221; &#8220;corn-crackers&#8221; or
+&#8220;crackers,&#8221; gaining a bare subsistence from corn planted and &#8220;tended&#8221;
+chiefly by the women and children, from hogs running wild in the forest,
+and from desultory hunting and fishing. As a class, such whites lapsed
+into sloth and apathy. Even the institution of slavery they regarded
+with cynical tolerance, doubtless realizing that if it were not for the
+blacks they would be slaves themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Now these poor whites had nothing to do with settling the mountains.
+There was then, and still is, plenty of wild land for them in their
+native lowlands. They had neither the initiative nor the courage to seek
+a promised land far away among the unexplored and savage peaks of the
+western country. They were a brave enough folk in facing familiar
+dangers, but they had a terror of the unknown, being densely ignorant
+and superstitious. The mountains, to those who ever heard of them,
+suggested nothing but laborious climbing amid mysterious and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> portentous
+perils. The poor whites were not highlanders by descent, nor had they a
+whit of the bold, self-reliant spirit of our western pioneers. They
+never entered Appalachia until after it had been won and settled by a
+far manlier race, and even then they went only in driblets. The theory
+that the southern mountains were peopled mainly by outcasts or refugees
+from old settlements in the lowlands rests on no other basis than
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>How the mountains actually were settled is another and a very different
+story.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The first frontiersmen of the Appalachians were those Swiss and Palatine
+Germans who began flocking into Pennsylvania about 1682. They settled
+westward of the Quakers in the fertile limestone belts at the foot of
+the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Here they formed the Quakers&#8217; buffer
+against the Indians, and, for some time, theirs were the westernmost
+settlements of British subjects in America. These Germans were of the
+Reformed or Lutheran faith. They were strongly democratic in a social
+sense, and detested slavery. They were model farmers and many of them
+were skilled workmen at trades.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the tide of German immigration set into Pennsylvania,
+another and quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> different class of foreigners began to arrive in this
+province, attracted hither by the same lodestones that drew the Germans,
+namely, democratic institutions and religious liberty. These newcomers
+were the Scotch-Irish, or Ulstermen of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>When James I., in 1607, confiscated the estates of the native Irish in
+six counties of Ulster, he planted them with Scotch and English
+Presbyterians. These outsiders came to be known as Scotch-Irish, because
+they were chiefly of Scotch blood and had settled in Ireland. The native
+Irish, to whom they were alien both by blood and by religion, detested
+them as usurpers, and fought them many a bloody battle.</p>
+
+<p>In time, as their leases in Ulster began to expire, the Scotch-Irish
+themselves came in conflict with the Crown, by whom they were persecuted
+and evicted. Then the Ulstermen began immigrating in large numbers to
+Pennsylvania. As Froude says, &#8220;In the two years that followed the Antrim
+evictions, thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a land where
+there was no legal robbery, and where those who sowed the seed could
+reap the harvest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So it was that these people became, in their turn, our westernmost
+frontiersmen, taking up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> land just outside the German settlements.
+Immediately they began to clash with the Indians, and there followed a
+long series of border wars, waged with extreme ferocity, in which
+sometimes it is hard to say which side was most to blame. One thing,
+however, is certain: if any race was ordained to exterminate the Indians
+that race was the Scotch-Irish.</p>
+
+<p>They were a brave but hot-headed folk, as might be expected of a people
+who for a century had been planted amid hostile Hibernians. Justin
+Winsor describes them as having &#8220;all that excitable character which goes
+with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity,
+predestination, and election,&#8221; and as seeing &#8220;no use in an Indian but to
+be a target for their bullets.&#8221; They were quick-witted as well as
+quick-tempered, rather visionary, imperious, and aggressive.</p>
+
+<p>Being by tradition and habit a border people the Scotch-Irish pushed to
+the extreme western fringe of settlement amid the Alleghanies. They were
+not over-solicitous about the quality of soil. When Arthur Lee, of
+Virginia, was telling Doctor Samuel Johnson, in London, of a colony of
+Scotch who had settled upon a particularly sterile tract in western
+Virginia, and had expressed his wonder that they should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> do so, Johnson
+replied, &#8220;Why, sir, all barrenness is comparative: the Scotch will never
+know that it is barren.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>West of the Susquehanna, however, the land was so rocky and poor that
+even the Scotch shied at it, and so, when eastern Pennsylvania became
+crowded, the overflow of settlers passed not westward but southwestward,
+along the Cumberland Valley, into western Maryland, and then into the
+Shenandoah and those other long, narrow, parallel valleys of western
+Virginia that we noted in our first chapter. This western region still
+lay unoccupied and scarcely known by the Virginians themselves. Its
+fertile lands were discovered by Pennsylvania Dutchmen. The first house
+in western Virginia was erected by one of them, Joist Hite, and he
+established a colony of his people near the future site of Winchester. A
+majority of those who settled in the eastern part of the Shenandoah
+Valley were Pennsylvania Dutch, while the Scotch-Irish, following in
+their train, pushed a little to the west of them and occupied more
+exposed positions. There were representatives of other races along the
+border: English, Irish, French Huguenots, and so on; but everywhere the
+Scotch-Irish and Germans predominated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>And the southwestward movement, once started, never stopped. So there
+went on a gradual but sure progress of northern peoples across the
+Potomac, up the Shenandoah, across the Staunton, the Dan, the Yadkin,
+until the western piedmont and foot-hill region of Carolina was
+similarly settled, chiefly by Pennsylvanians.</p>
+
+<p>The archivist of North Carolina, the late William L. Saunders, Secretary
+of State, said in one of his historical sketches that &#8220;to Lancaster and
+York counties, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her
+population than to any other known part of the world.&#8221; He called
+attention to the interesting fact that when the North Carolina boys of
+Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent followed Lee into
+Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg campaign, they were returning to the
+homes of their ancestors, by precisely the same route that those
+ancestors had taken in going south.</p>
+
+<p>Among those who made the long trek from Pennsylvania southward in the
+eighteenth century, were Daniel Boone and the ancestors of David
+Crockett, Samuel Houston, John C. Calhoun, &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson, and
+Abraham Lincoln. Boone and the Lincolns, although English themselves,
+had been neighbors in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> Berks County, one of the most German parts of all
+eastern Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+<p>So the western piedmont and the mountains were settled neither by
+Cavaliers nor by poor whites, but by a radically distinct and even
+antagonistic people who are appropriately called the Roundheads of the
+South. These Roundheads had little or nothing to do with slavery,
+detested the state church, loathed tithes, and distrusted all authority
+save that of conspicuous merit and natural justice. The first
+characteristic that these pioneers developed was an intense
+individualism. The strong and even violent independence that made them
+forsake all the comforts of civilization and prefer the wild freedom of
+the border was fanned at times into turbulence and riot; but it blazed
+forth at a happy time for this country when our liberties were
+imperilled.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Boone first appears in history when, from his new home on the
+Yadkin, he crossed the Blue Ridge and the Unakas into that part of
+western Carolina which is now eastern Tennessee. He was exploring the
+Watauga region as early as 1760. Both British and French Indian traders
+and soldiers had been in this region before him, but had left few marks
+of their wanderings. In 1761 a party of hunters from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> Pennsylvania and
+contiguous counties of Virginia, piloted by Boone, began to use this
+region as a hunting-ground, on account of the great abundance of game.
+From them, and especially from Boone, the fame of its attractions spread
+to the settlements on the eastern slope of the mountains, and in the
+winter of 1768-69 the first permanent occupation of eastern Tennessee
+was made by a few families from North Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>About this time there broke out in Carolina a struggle between the
+independent settlers of the piedmont and the rich trading and official
+class of the coast. The former rose in bodies under the name of
+Regulators and a battle followed in which they were defeated. To escape
+from the persecutions of the aristocracy, many of the Regulators and
+their friends crossed the Appalachian Mountains and built their cabins
+in the Watauga region. Here, in 1772, there was established by these
+&#8220;rebels&#8221; the first republic in America, based upon a written
+constitution &#8220;the first ever adopted by a community of American-born
+freemen.&#8221; Of these pioneers in &#8220;The Winning of the West,&#8221; Theodore
+Roosevelt says: &#8220;As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the
+most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came
+mainly from Virginia, and indeed, in great part, from this same
+Pennsylvania stock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Boone first visited Kentucky, on a hunting trip, in 1769. Six years
+later he began to colonize it, in flat defiance of the British
+government, and in the face of a menacing proclamation from the royal
+governor of North Carolina. On the Kentucky River, three days after the
+battle of Lexington, the flag of the new colony of Transylvania was run
+up on his fort at Boonesborough. It was not until the following August
+that these &#8220;rebels of Kentuck&#8221; heard of the signing of the Declaration
+of Independence, and celebrated it with shrill warwhoops around a
+bonfire in the center of their stockade.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the stuff of which the Appalachian frontiersmen were made. They
+were the first Americans to cut loose entirely from the seaboard and
+fall back upon their own resources. They were the first to establish
+governments of their own, in defiance of king and aristocracy. Says John
+Fiske:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;Jefferson is often called the father of modern American democracy;
+in a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian
+regions may be called its cradle. In that rude frontier society,
+life assumed many new aspects, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>old customs were forgotten, old
+distinctions abolished, social equality acquired even more
+importance than unchecked individualism. The notions, sometimes
+crude and noxious, sometimes just and wholesome, which
+characterized Jeffersonian democracy, flourished greatly on the
+frontier and have thence been propagated eastward through the older
+communities, affecting their legislation and their politics more or
+less according to frequency of contact and intercourse.
+Massachusetts, relatively remote and relatively ancient, has been
+perhaps least affected by this group of ideas, but all parts of the
+United States have felt its influence powerfully. This phase of
+democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier life
+retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its
+beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian
+region in the 18th century.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>During the Revolution, the Appalachian frontier was held by a double
+line of the men whom we have been considering: one line east of the
+mountains, and the other west of them. The mountain region itself
+remained almost uninhabited by whites, because the pioneers who crossed
+it were seeking better hunting grounds and farmsteads than the mountains
+afforded. It was not until the buffalo and elk and beaver had been
+driven out of Tennessee and Kentucky, and those rolling savannahs were
+being fenced and tilled, that much attention was given to the mountains
+proper. Then small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> companies of hunters and trappers from both east and
+west began to move into the highlands and settle there.</p>
+
+<p>These explorers, pushing outward from the cross-mountain trails in every
+direction, found many interesting things that had been overlooked in the
+scurry of migration westward. They discovered fair river valleys and
+rich coves, adapted to tillage, which soon attracted settlers of a
+better class; and so, gradually, the mountain solitudes began to echo
+with the ring of axes and the lowing of herds. By 1830 about a million
+permanent settlers occupied the southern Appalachians. Naturally, most
+of them came from adjoining regions&mdash;from the foot of the Blue Ridge on
+one side and from the foot of the Unakas or of the Cumberlands on the
+other, and hence they were chiefly of the same frontier stock that we
+have been describing. No colonies of farmers from a distance ever have
+been imported into the mountains, down to our own day.</p>
+
+<p>Deterioration of the mountain people began as soon as population began
+to press upon the limits of subsistence. At first, naturally, the best
+people among the mountaineers were attracted to the best lands. And
+there to-day, in the generous river valleys, we find a class of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+citizens superior to the average mountaineers that we have been
+considering in this book. But the number and extent of such valleys was
+narrowly limited. The United States topographers report that in
+Appalachia, as a whole, the mountain slopes occupy 90 per cent. of the
+total area, and that 85 per cent. of the land has a steeper slope than
+one foot in five. So, as the years passed, a larger and larger
+proportion of the highlanders was forced back along the creek branches
+and up along the steep hillsides to &#8220;scrabble&#8221; for a living.</p>
+
+<p>It will be asked, Why did not this overplus do as other crowded
+Americans did: move west?</p>
+
+<p>First, because they were so immured in the mountains, so utterly cut off
+from communication with the outer world, that they did not know anything
+about the opportunities offered new settlers in far-away lands. Moving
+&#8220;west&#8221; to them would have meant merely going a few days&#8217; wagon-travel
+down into the lowlands of Kentucky or Tennessee, which already were
+thickly settled by a people of very different social class. Here they
+could not hope to be anything but tenants or menials, ruled over by
+proprietors or bosses&mdash;and they would die rather than endure such
+treatment. As for the new lands of the farther West, there was scarce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> a
+peasant in Ireland or in Scandinavia but knew more about them than did
+the southern mountaineers.</p>
+
+<p>Second, because they were passionately attached to their homes and
+kindred, to their own old-fashioned ways. The mountaineer shrinks from
+lowland society as he does from the water and the climate of such
+regions. He is never at ease until back with his home-folks, foot-loose
+and free.</p>
+
+<p>Third, because there was nothing in his environment to arouse ambition.
+The hard, hopeless life of the mountain farm, sustained only by a meager
+and ill-cooked diet, begat laziness and shiftless unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the poverty of the hillside farmers and branch-water people was
+so extreme that they could not gather funds to emigrate with. There were
+no industries to which a man might turn and earn ready money, no markets
+in which he could sell a surplus from the farm.</p>
+
+<p>So, while the transmontane settlers grew rapidly in wealth and culture,
+their kinsfolk back in the mountains either stood still or retrograded,
+and the contrast was due not nearly so much to any difference of
+capacity as to a law of Nature that dooms an isolated and impoverished
+people to deterioration.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>Beyond this, it is not to be overlooked that the mountains were cursed
+with a considerable incubus of naturally weak or depraved characters,
+not lowland &#8220;poor whites,&#8221; but a miscellaneous flotsam from all
+quarters, which, after more or less circling round and round, was drawn
+into the stagnant eddy of highland society as derelicts drift into the
+Sargasso Sea. In the train of western immigration there were some feeble
+souls who never got across the mountains. These have been described
+tersely as the men who lost heart on account of a broken axle.</p>
+
+<p>The anemic element thus introduced is less noticeable in Kentucky than
+in Virginia and the States farther south&mdash;for the reason, no doubt, that
+it took at least two axles to reach Kentucky&mdash;but it exists in all parts
+of Appalachia. Moreover, the vast roughs of the mountain region offered
+harborage for outlaws, desperadoes of the border, and here many of them
+settled and propagated their kind. In the backwoods one cannot choose
+his neighbors. All are on equal footing. Hence the contagion of crime
+and shiftlessness spreads to decent families and tends to undermine
+them.</p>
+
+<p>We can understand, then, how it happened in many cases that highland
+families founded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> by well-informed and thrifty pioneers deteriorated
+into illiterate and idle triflers, all run down at heels. Lincoln&#8217;s
+family is an apt illustration. His grandfather sold his Virginia farms
+for seventeen thousand dollars and bought large tracts of land in
+Kentucky. But Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s father set up housekeeping in a shed,
+later built a log hut of one room without doors or windows (although he
+was a carpenter by trade), then moved to another cabin a little better,
+tired of it, moved over into Indiana, and made his family spend the
+winter in a half-faced camp, where they were saved from freezing by
+keeping up a great log fire in front of the lean-to through days and
+nights when the temperature was far below zero. The Lincolns were not
+mountaineers, but they were of the same stock, and were subjected to
+much the same vicissitudes.</p>
+
+<p>So the southern highlanders languished in isolation, sunk in a Rip Van
+Winkle sleep, until aroused by the thunder-crash of the Civil War. Let
+John Fox tell the extraordinary result of that awakening.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The American mountaineer was discovered, I say, at the beginning
+of the war, when the Confederate leaders were counting on the
+presumption that Mason and Dixon&#8217;s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>Line was the dividing line
+between the North and South, and formed, therefore, the plan of
+marching an army from Wheeling, in West Virginia, to some point on
+the Lakes, and thus dissevering the North at one blow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The plan seemed so feasible that it is said to have materially
+aided the sale of Confederate bonds in England. But when Captain
+Garnett, a West Point graduate, started to carry it out, he got no
+farther than Harper&#8217;s Ferry. When he struck the mountains, he
+struck enemies who shot at his men from ambush, cut down bridges
+before him, carried the news of his march to the Federals, and
+Garnett himself fell with a bullet from a mountaineer&#8217;s squirrel
+rifle at Harper&#8217;s Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then the South began to realize what a long, lean, powerful arm of
+the Union it was that the southern mountaineer stretched through
+its very vitals; for that arm helped hold Kentucky in the Union by
+giving preponderance to the Union sympathizers in the Blue-grass;
+it kept the east Tennesseans loyal to the man; it made West
+Virginia, as the phrase goes, &#8216;secede from secession&#8217;; it drew out
+a horde of one hundred thousand volunteers, when Lincoln called for
+troops, depleting Jackson County, Kentucky, for instance, of every
+male under sixty years of age and over fifteen; and it raised a
+hostile barrier between the armies of the coast and the armies of
+the Mississippi. The North has never realized, perhaps, what it
+owes for its victory to this non-slaveholding southern
+mountaineer.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>President Frost, of Berea College, says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;The loyalty of this region in the Civil War was a surprise to both
+northern and southern statesmen. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> mountain people owned land
+but did not own slaves, and the national feeling of the
+revolutionary period had not spent its force among them. Their
+services in West Virginia and east Tennessee are perhaps generally
+known. But very few know or remember that the whole mountain region
+was loyal [except where conscripted]. General Carl Schurz had
+soldiers enlisted in the mountains of Alabama, and the writer has
+recently seen a letter written by the Confederate Governor of South
+Carolina in which he relates to General Hardee the troubles caused
+by Union sentiment in the mountain counties.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is pathetic to know how these mountain regiments disbanded with
+no poet or historian or monument to perpetuate the memory of their
+valor. The very flag that was first on Lookout Mountain and &#8216;waved
+above the clouds&#8217; was lost to fame in an obscure mountain home
+until Berea discovered and rescued it from oblivion and
+destruction.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>It may be added that no other part of our country suffered longer or
+more severely from the aftermath of war. Throughout that struggle the
+mountain region was a nest for bushwhackers and bandits that preyed upon
+the aged and defenseless who were left at home, and thus there was left
+an evil legacy of neighborhood wrongs and private grudges. Most of the
+mountain counties had incurred the bitter hostility of their own States
+by standing loyal to the Union. After Appomattox they were cast back
+into a worse isolation than they had ever known. Most unfortunately,
+too, the Federal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> Government, at this juncture, instead of interposing
+to restore law and order in the highlands, turned the loyalty of the
+mountaineers into outlawry, as in 1794, by imposing a prohibitive excise
+tax upon their chief merchantable commodity.</p>
+
+<p>Left, then, to their own devices, unchecked by any stronger arm,
+inflamed by a multitude of personal wrongs, habituated to the shedding
+of human blood, contemptuous of State laws that did not reach them,
+enraged by Federal acts that impugned, as they thought, an inalienable
+right of man, it was inevitable that this fiery and vindictive race
+should fall speedily into warring among themselves. Old scores were now
+to be wiped out in a reign of terror. The open combat of bannered war
+was turned into the secret ferocity of family feuds.</p>
+
+<p>But the mountaineers of to-day are face to face with a mighty change.
+The feud epoch has ceased throughout the greater part of Appalachia. A
+new era dawns. Everywhere the highways of civilization are pushing into
+remote mountain fastnesses. Vast enterprises are being installed. The
+timber and the minerals are being garnered. The mighty waterpower that
+has been running to waste since these mountains rose from the primal sea
+is now about to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> be harnessed in the service of man. Along with this
+economic revolution will come, inevitably, good schools, newspapers, a
+finer and more liberal social life. The highlander, at last, is to be
+caught up in the current of human progress.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>&#8220;WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES&#8221;</h3>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> southern mountaineers are pre-eminently a rural folk. When the
+twentieth century opened, only four per cent. of them dwelt in cities of
+8,000 inhabitants and upwards. There were but seven such cities in all
+Appalachia&mdash;a region larger than England and Scotland combined&mdash;and
+these owed their development to outside influences. Only 77 out of 186
+mountain counties had towns of 1,000 and upwards.</p>
+
+<p>Our highlanders are the most homogeneous people in the United States. In
+1900, out of a total population of 3,039,835, there were only 18,617 of
+foreign birth. This includes the cities and industrial camps. Back in
+the mountains, a man using any other tongue than English, or speaking
+broken English, was regarded as a freak. Nine mountain counties of
+Virginia, four of West Virginia, fifteen of Kentucky, ten of Tennessee,
+nine of North Carolina, eight of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> Georgia, two of Alabama, and one of
+South Carolina had less than ten foreign-born residents each. Three of
+them had none at all.</p>
+
+<p>Compare the North Atlantic states. In this same census year, 57 per
+cent. of their people lived in cities of 8,000 and upwards. As for
+foreigners&mdash;the one city of Fall River, Mass., with 104,863 inhabitants,
+had 50,042 of foreign birth.</p>
+
+<p>The mountains proper are free not only from foreigners but from negroes
+as well. There are many blacks in the larger valleys and towns, but
+throughout most of Appalachia the population is almost exclusively
+white. In 1900, Jackson County, Ky. (the same that sent every one of its
+sons into the Union army who could bear arms), had only nineteen negroes
+among 10,542 whites; Johnson County, Ky., only one black resident among
+13,729 whites; Dickenson County, Va., not a single negro within its
+borders.</p>
+
+<p>In many mountain settlements negroes are not allowed to tarry. It has
+been assumed that this prejudice against colored folk had its origin far
+back in the time when &#8220;poor whites&#8221; found themselves thrust aside by
+competition with slave labor. This is an error. Our mountaineers never
+had to compete with slavery. Few of them knew anything about it except
+from hearsay.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> Their dislike of negroes is simply an instinctive racial
+antipathy, plus a contempt for anyone who submits to servile conditions.
+A neighbor in the Smokies said to me: &#8220;I b&#8217;lieve in treatin&#8217; niggers
+squar. The Bible says they&#8217;re human&mdash;leastways some says it does&mdash;and so
+there&#8217;d orter be a place for them. But it&#8217;s <i>some place else</i>&mdash;not
+around me!&#8221; That is the whole thing in a nutshell.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is Appalachia: one of the great land-locked areas of the
+globe, more English in speech than Britain itself, more American by
+blood than any other part of America, encompassed by a high-tensioned
+civilization, yet less affected to-day by modern ideas, less cognizant
+of modern progress, than any other part of the English-speaking world.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, such an anomaly cannot continue. Commercialism has discovered
+the mountains at last, and no sentiment, however honest, however
+hallowed, can keep it out. The transformation is swift. Suddenly the
+mountaineer is awakened from his eighteenth-century bed by the blare of
+steam whistles and the boom of dynamite. He sees his forests leveled and
+whisked away; his rivers dammed by concrete walls and shot into turbines
+that outpower all the horses in Appalachia. He is dazed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> electric
+lights, nonplussed by speaking wires, awed by vast transfers of
+property, incensed by rude demands. Aroused, now, and wide-eyed, he
+realizes with sinking heart that here is a sudden end of that Old
+Dispensation under which he and his ancestors were born, the beginning
+of a New Order that heeds him and his neighbors not a whit.</p>
+
+<p>All this insults his conservatism. The old way was the established order
+of the universe: to change it is fairly impious. What is the good of all
+this fuss and fury? That fifty-story building they tell about, in their
+big city&mdash;what is it but another Tower of Babel? And these silly,
+stuck-up strangers who brag and brag about &#8220;modern improvements&#8221;&mdash;what
+are they, under their fine manners and fine clothes? Hirelings all.
+Shrewdly he observes them in their relations to each other.&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Each man is some man&#8217;s servant; every soul<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is by some other&#8217;s presence quite discrowned.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Proudly he contrasts his ragged self: he who never has acknowledged a
+superior, never has taken an order from living man, save as a patriot in
+time of war. And he turns upon his heel.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, before he can fairly credit it as a reality,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> the lands around his
+own home are bought up by corporations. All about him, slash, crash, go
+the devastating forces. His old neighbors vanish. New and unwelcome ones
+swarm in. He is crowded, but ignored. His hard-earned patrimony is
+robbed of all that made it precious: its home-like seclusion,
+independence, dignity. He sells out, and moves away to some uninvaded
+place where he &#8220;will not be bothered.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like these improve<i>ments</i>,&#8221; said an old mountaineer to me.
+&#8220;Some calls them &#8216;progress,&#8217; and says they put money to circulatin&#8217;. So
+they do; but <i>who gits it</i>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is a class of highlanders more sanguine, more adaptable, that
+welcomes all outsiders who come with skill and capital to develop their
+country. Many of these are shrewd traders in merchandise or in real
+estate, or they are capable foremen who can handle native labor much
+better than any strangers could. Such men naturally profit by the
+change.</p>
+
+<p>Others, deluded by what seems easy money, sell their little homesteads
+for just enough cash to set them up as laborers in town or camp. Being
+untrained to any trade, they can get only the lowest wages, which are
+quickly dissipated in rent and in foods that formerly they raised for
+themselves. Unused to continuous labor,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> they irk under its discipline,
+drop out, and fall into desultory habits. Meantime false ambitions
+arise, especially among the womenfolk. Store credit soon runs such a
+family in debt.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I was a young man,&#8221; said one of my neighbors, &#8220;the traders never
+thought of bringin&#8217; meal in here. If a man run out of meal, why, he was
+<i>out</i>, and he had to live on &#8217;taters or somethin&#8217; else. Nowadays we
+dress better, and live better, but some other feller allers has his
+hands in our pockets.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then it is &#8220;good-by&#8221; to the old independence that made such characters
+manly. Enmeshed in obligations that they cannot meet, they struggle
+vainly, brood hopelessly, and lose that dearest of all possessions,
+their self-respect. Servility is literal hell to a mountaineer, and when
+it is forced upon him he turns into a mean, underhanded, slinking
+fellow, easily tempted into crime.</p>
+
+<p>The curse of our invading civilization is that its vanguard is composed
+of men who care nothing for the welfare of the people they dispossess. A
+northern lumberman admitted to me, with frankness unusual in his class,
+that &#8220;All we want here is to get the most we can out of this country, as
+quick as we can, and then get out.&#8221; This is all we can expect of those
+who exploit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> raw materials, or of manufactures that employ only cheap
+labor. Until we have industries that demand skilled workmen, and until
+manual training schools are established in the mountains, we may look
+for deterioration, rather than betterment, of those highlanders who
+leave their farms.</p>
+
+<p>All who know the mountaineers intimately have observed that the sudden
+inroad of commercialism has a bad effect upon them. As President Frost
+says, &#8220;Ruthless change is knocking at the door of every mountain cabin.
+The jackals of <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'civlization'">civilization</ins> have already abused the confidence of many a
+highland home. The lumber, coal, and mineral wealth of the mountains is
+to be possessed, and the unprincipled vanguard of commercialism can
+easily debauch a simple people. The question is whether the mountain
+people can be enlightened and guided so that they can have a part in the
+development of their own country, or whether they must give place to
+foreigners and melt away like so many Indians.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to say that the fittest will survive. But the fittest for
+what? Miss Miles answers: &#8220;I have heard it said that civilization, when
+it touches the people of the backwoods, acts as a useful precipitant in
+thus sending the dregs to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> the bottom. As a matter of fact, it is only
+the shrewder and more determined, not the truly fit, that survive the
+struggle. Among these very submerged ones, reduced to dependence on an
+alien people, there are thousands who inherit the skill of their
+forefathers who fashioned their own locks, musical instruments, and
+guns. And these very women who are breaking their health and spirit over
+a thankless tub of suds ought surely to turn their talents to better
+account, ought to be designing and weaving coverlets and Roman-striped
+rugs, or &#8216;piecing&#8217; the quilt patterns now so popular. Need these razors
+be used to cut grindstones? Must this free folk who are in many ways the
+truest Americans of America be brought under the yoke of caste division,
+to the degradation of all their finer qualities, merely for lack of the
+right work to do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There are some who would have it so; who would calmly write for these
+our own kindred, as for the Indians, <i>fuerunt</i>&mdash;their day is past. In a
+History of Southern Literature, written not long ago by a professor in
+the University of Virginia, a sketch of Miss Murfree&#8217;s work closes with
+these words: &#8220;There [at Beersheba Springs, Tenn.] it was that she first
+studied the curious type of humanity, the Tennessee<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> mountaineer, a
+people so ignorant, so superstitious, so far behind the world of to-day
+as to excite wonder and even pity in all who see them.... [She] is
+telling the story of a people who, in these opening years of the 20th
+century, wander on through their limited range of life much as their
+ancestors for generations have wandered. They, too, will some time
+vanish&mdash;the sooner the better.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One cannot read such a sentiment without wonder and even pity for the
+ignorance of history and of human nature that it discloses. Is the case
+of our mountaineers so much worse than that of the Scotch highlanders of
+two centuries ago? We know that those Scotchmen did not &#8220;vanish&mdash;the
+quicker the better.&#8221; What were they before civilization reached them?
+Let us open the ready pages of Macaulay.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;It is not easy for a modern Englishman ... to believe that, in the
+time of his great-grandfathers, Saint James&#8217;s Street had as little
+connection with the Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In
+the south of our island scarcely anything was known about the
+Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling but
+contempt and loathing....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes
+called, should, in the 17th century, have been considered by the
+Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>strange that, considered
+as savages, they should not have been objects of interest and
+curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the
+manners of rude nations separated from our island by great
+continents and oceans. Numerous books were printed describing the
+laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the
+marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and
+Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to
+the usages of the black men of Africa and the red men of America.
+The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
+information was the Highlander....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigor, no account
+of them was given by any observer qualified to judge of them
+fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the
+Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely
+intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised
+nation. He would have found that the people had no love for their
+country or for their king, that they had no attachment to any
+commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any magistrate superior to
+the chief. He would have found that life was governed by a code of
+morality and honor widely different from that which is established
+in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have learned that a
+stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of rock, were
+approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have
+heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wracked
+on hereditary enemies in a neighboring valley such vengeance as
+would have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years&#8217; War shudder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He would have found that robbery was held to be a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>calling not
+merely innocent but honorable. He would have seen, wherever he
+turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposition to
+throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labor, which
+are characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the
+spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun, angling for salmon,
+or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant
+wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the scanty harvest of
+oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In their view it
+was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the aristocratic
+title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the eagle&#8217;s
+feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting,
+hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in
+connection with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult.
+Agriculture was indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was
+much more becomingly employed in plundering the land of others than
+in tilling his own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude
+mixture of Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was
+associated with heathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptised men
+poured libations of ale on one D&aelig;mon, and set out drink offerings
+of milk for another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls&#8217; hides,
+and awaited, in that vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal
+the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists whose
+hereditary vocation was to preserve the memory of past events, an
+enquirer would have found very few who could read. In truth, he
+might easily have journeyed from sea to sea without discovering a
+page of Gaelic printed or written.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The price which he would have had to pay for his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>knowledge of the
+country would have been heavy. He would have had to endure
+hardships as great as if he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or
+the Samoyeds. Here and there, indeed, at the castle of some great
+lord who had a seat in the Parliament and Privy Council, and who
+was accustomed to pass a large part of his life in the cities of
+the South, might have been found wigs and embroidered coats, plate
+and fine linen, lace and jewels, French dishes and French wines.
+But, in general, the traveler would have been forced to content
+himself with very different quarters. In many dwellings the
+furniture, the food, the clothing, nay, the very hair and skin of
+his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His lodging
+would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have
+swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
+peat smoke, and foul with a hundred exhalations. At supper grain
+fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied
+with a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company
+with whom he would have feasted would have been covered with
+cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar
+like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as
+the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half
+poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half
+mad with the itch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and
+dispassionate observer would have found in the character and
+manners of this rude people something which might well excite
+admiration and a good hope. Their courage was what great exploits
+achieved in all the four quarters of the globe have since proved it
+to be. Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>patriarch, though politically a great evil, partook of the nature
+of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill regulated; but
+still it was heroic. There must be some elevation of soul in a man
+who loves the society of which he is a member and the leader whom
+he follows with a love stronger than the love of life. It was true
+that the Highlander had few scruples about shedding the blood of an
+enemy; but it was not less true that he had high notions of the
+duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality to guests. It was
+true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to the
+commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
+resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities,
+live by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland
+farmers up the pass which led to his native glen, he no more
+considered himself as a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes
+considered themselves as thieves when they divided the cargoes of
+Spanish galleons. He was a warrior seizing lawful prize of war, of
+war never once intermitted during the thirty-five generations which
+had passed away since the Teutonic invaders had driven the children
+of the soil to the mountains....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;His inordinate pride of birth and his contempt for labor and trade
+were indeed great weaknesses, and had done far more than the
+inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil to keep his
+country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some compensation.
+It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician virtues were
+not less widely diffused among the population of the Highlands than
+the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the island where
+men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves to such
+a degree in the idle, sauntering habits of an <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>aristocracy, so
+there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
+degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
+manner, self-respect, and that noble sensibility which makes
+dishonor more terrible than death. A gentleman of Skye or Lochaber,
+whose clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years,
+and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would often do
+the honors of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the
+splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little
+book-learning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would
+have been a great error to put him in the same intellectual rank
+with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can
+become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of
+poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
+may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in
+which books are wholly or almost wholly unknown.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>So, too, in the rudest communities of Appalachia, among the most
+trifling and unmoral natives of this region, among the illiterate and
+hide-bound, there still is much to excite admiration and good hope. I
+have not shrunk from telling the truth about these people, even when it
+was far from pleasant; but I would have preserved strict silence had I
+not seen in the most backward of them certain sterling qualities of
+manliness that our nation can ill afford to waste. It is a truth as old
+as the human race that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> savageries may co-exist with admirable qualities
+of head and heart. The only people who can consistently despair of the
+future for even the lowest of our mountaineers are those who deny
+evolution and who believe, with Archbishop Usher, that man was created
+<i>perfect</i> at 9 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span> on the 21st of October, in the year B. C. 4004.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remember, Sir and Madam, that we ourselves are descended from
+white barbarians. From William the Conqueror, you? Very well; how many
+other ancestors of yours were walking about England and elsewhere at the
+time of William? Untold thousands of them were just such people as you
+can find to-day brawling in some mountain still-house (unless there has
+been a deal of incest somewhere along your line), and you have
+infinitely more of their blood in your veins than you have of the
+Conqueror&#8217;s&mdash;who, by the way, could he be re-incarnated, would not be
+tolerated in your drawing-room for half an hour. I may have made the
+point too brutally plain; but if it sinks through the smug
+self-complacency of those who &#8220;do not belong to the masses,&#8221; who act as
+though civilization and morals and good manners were entailed to them
+through a mere dozen or so of selected ancestors, I remain unrepentant
+and unashamed. Let us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> thank whatever gods there be that it is not
+merely thou and I, our few friends and next of kin, but all humanity,
+that scientific faith embraces and will sustain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;People who have been among the southern mountaineers testify,&#8221; says Mr.
+Fox, &#8220;that, as a race, they are proud, sensitive, hospitable, kindly,
+obliging in an unreckoning way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal,
+in spite of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation; that they
+are naturally capable, eager to learn, easy to uplift. Americans to the
+core, they make the southern mountains a storehouse of patriotism; in
+themselves they are an important offset to the Old World outcasts whom
+we have welcomed to our shores; and they surely deserve as much
+consideration from the nation as the negroes, or as the heathen, to whom
+we give millions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>President Frost, of Berea College, who has worked among these people for
+nearly a lifetime, and has helped to educate their young folks by
+thousands, says: &#8220;It does one&#8217;s heart good to help a young Lincoln who
+comes walking in perhaps a three-days&#8217; journey on foot, with a few
+hard-earned dollars in his pocket and a great eagerness for the
+education he can so faintly comprehend. (Scores of our young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> people see
+their first railroad train at Berea.) And it is a joy to welcome the
+mountain girl who comes back after having taught her first school,
+bringing the money to pay her debts and buy her first comfortable
+outfit&mdash;including rubbers and suitable underclothing&mdash;and perhaps
+bringing with her a younger sister. Such a girl exerts a great influence
+in her school and mountain home. An enthusiastic mountaineer described
+an example in this wise: &#8216;I tell yeou hit teks a moughty resol<i>ute</i> gal
+ter do what that thar gal has done. She got, I reckon, about the
+toughest deestric&#8217; in the ceounty, which is sayin&#8217; a good deal. An&#8217; then
+fer boardin&#8217;-place&mdash;well, there warn&#8217;t much choice. There was one house,
+with one room. But she kep right on, an&#8217; yeou would hev thought she was
+havin&#8217; the finest kind of a time, ter look at her. An&#8217; then the last
+day, when they was sayin&#8217; their pieces and sich, some sorry fellers come
+in thar full o&#8217; moonshine an&#8217; shot their revolvers. I&#8217;m a-tellin&#8217; ye hit
+takes a moughty resol<i>ute</i> gal.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The great need of our mountaineers to-day is trained leaders of their
+own. The future of Appalachia lies mostly in the hands of those resolute
+native boys and girls who win the education fitting them for such
+leadership. Here is where the nation at large is summoned by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> solemn
+duty. And it should act quickly, because commercialism exploits and
+debauches quickly. But the schools needed here are not ordinary graded
+schools. They should be vocational schools that will turn out good
+farmers, good mechanics, good housewives. Meantime let a model farm be
+established in every mountain county showing how to get the most out of
+mountain land. Such object lessons would speedily work an economic
+revolution. It is an economic problem, fundamentally, that the
+mountaineer has to face.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><b><a name="Footnotes" id="Footnotes"></a>Footnotes:</b></p>
+
+<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> A friend of mine on the U. S. Geological Survey tested with his
+clinometer a mountain cornfield that sloped at an angle of fifty
+degrees.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f2" id="f2" href="#f2.1">[2]</a> Average annual rainfall of New York City, 44 inches; of Glencoe, in
+the Scotch Highlands, nearly 130 inches.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f3" id="f3" href="#f3.1">[3]</a> <i>Gant-lot</i>: a fenced enclosure into which cattle are driven after
+cutting them out from those of other owners. So called because the
+mountain cattle run wild, feeding only on grass and browse, and &#8220;they
+couldn&#8217;t travel well to market when filled up on green stuff: so they&#8217;re
+penned up to git <i>gant</i> and nimble.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name="f4" id="f4" href="#f4.1">[4]</a> Pure bluff of mine, at that time; but it was good policy to assume
+perfect confidence.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f5" id="f5" href="#f5.1">[5]</a> This was in 1904. There are no dispensaries in North Carolina now.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f6" id="f6" href="#f6.1">[6]</a> It is a curious fact that most horses despise the stuff. A
+celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years he rode a
+horse which was in the habit of drinking a mouthful from every stream
+that he forded; but if there was the least taint of still-slop in the
+water, he would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer
+then had only to follow up the stream, and he would infallibly find a
+still.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f7" id="f7" href="#f7.1">[7]</a> Ellwood Wilson, Sr., in the <i>Sewanee Review</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f8" id="f8" href="#f8.1">[8]</a> In mountain dialect such words as settlement, government, studyment
+(reverie) are accented on the last syllable, or drawled with equal
+stress throughout.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f9" id="f9" href="#f9.1">[9]</a> So also in the lowland South. An extraordinary affectation of
+propriety appeared in a dispatch to the <i>Atlanta Constitution</i> of
+October 29, 1912, which reported that an exhibitor of cattle at the
+State fair had been seriously horned by a <i>male cow</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="f10" id="f10" href="#f10.1">[10]</a> Pronounced Chee-<i>o</i>-ah, Chil-<i>how</i>-ee, Cow-<i>ee</i>, Cul-lo-<i>whee</i>,
+High-<i>wah</i>-see, Nan-tah-<i>hay</i>-lah, O-<i>ko</i>-na, <i>Luf</i>-ty, San-<i>teet</i>-lah,
+<i>Tel</i>-li-co, Tuck-a-<i>lee</i>-chee, Tuck-a-<i>see</i>-gee, Tuh-<i>loo</i>-lah,
+Tus-<i>quit</i>-ee, Wah-<i>yah</i> (explosively on last syllable), <i>Wau</i>-ke-chah,
+Yah-<i>lah</i>-kah (commonly Ah-lar-ka or <i>&#8217;Lar</i>-ky by the settlers),
+You-<i>nay</i>-kah.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><b>Transcriber&#8217;s Notes:</b></p>
+
+<p>Images have been moved to the closest paragraph break. The text in the list of illustrations
+matches the original; each hyperlink in the illustration list links to the page number closest to the
+image&#8217;s placement.</p>
+
+<p>Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.</p>
+
+<p>Printer&#8217;s inconsistencies in hyphenation usage have been retained.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart
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+</body>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart
+
+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: Our Southern Highlanders
+
+Author: Horace Kephart
+
+Release Date: March 20, 2010 [EBook #31709]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter, who discovered the body of Prof. Elisha
+Mitchell where he perished near the summit of the Peak that afterward
+was named in his honor]
+
+
+
+
+  OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+  BY
+
+  HORACE KEPHART
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK OF CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT," "CAMP
+  COOKERY," "SPORTING FIREARMS," ETC.
+
+
+  _Illustrated_
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  MCMXVI
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
+
+  OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+
+  All rights reserved
+
+
+  First Printing, November 1913
+  Second Printing, December 1913
+  Third Printing, January 1914
+  Fourth Printing, April 1914
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+   I. "SOMETHING HIDDEN; GO AND FIND IT"       11
+
+  II. "THE BACK OF BEYOND"                     28
+
+ III. THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS                50
+
+  IV. A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES               75
+
+   V. MOONSHINE LAND                          110
+
+  VI. WAYS THAT ARE DARK                      126
+
+ VII. A LEAF FROM THE PAST                    145
+
+VIII. "BLOCKADERS" AND "THE REVENUE"          167
+
+  IX. THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE            191
+
+   X. THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS                 212
+
+  XI. THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT                  234
+
+ XII. HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE          256
+
+XIII. THE MOUNTAIN DIALECT                    276
+
+ XIV. THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS               305
+
+  XV. THE BLOOD-FEUD                          327
+
+ XVI. WHO ARE THE MOUNTAINEERS?               354
+
+XVII. "WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES"                378
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Big Tom Wilson, the bear hunter              _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                FACING PAGE
+
+Map of Appalachia                                         8
+
+A family of pioneers in the twentieth century            16
+
+"The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs"     24
+
+At the Post-Office                                       32
+
+The author in camp in the Big Smokies                    40
+
+"Bob"                                                    48
+
+"There are few jutting crags"                            56
+
+The bears' home--laurel and rhododendron                 64
+
+The old copper mine                                      72
+
+"What soldiers these fellows would make under
+leadership of some backwoods Napoleon"                   80
+
+"By and by up they came, carrying the bear on
+the trimmed sapling"                                     88
+
+Skinning a frozen bear                                   96
+
+"... Powerful steep and laurely...."                    104
+
+Mountain still-house hidden in the laurel               112
+
+Moonshine still, side view                              120
+
+Moonshine still in full operation                       128
+
+Corn mill and blacksmith forge                          136
+
+A tub-mill                                              152
+
+Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel
+Creek in which the author lived alone for three years   160
+
+A mountain home                                         176
+
+Many of the homes have but one window                   192
+
+The schoolhouse                                         208
+
+"At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a
+worn and faded look"                                    216
+
+The misty veil of falling water                         232
+
+An average mountain cabin                               240
+
+A bee-gum                                               248
+
+Let the women do the work                               264
+
+"Till the sky-line blends with the sky itself"          288
+
+Whitewater Falls                                        312
+
+The road follows the creek--there may be a dozen
+fords in a mile                                         320
+
+"Dense forest and luxuriant undergrowth"                336
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: APPALACHIA
+
+The wavy black line shows the outer boundaries of Southern Appalachian
+Region. The shaded portion shows the chief areas covered by high
+mountains, 3,000 to 6,700 feet above sea-level.]
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"SOMETHING HIDDEN; GO AND FIND IT"
+
+
+In one of Poe's minor tales, written in 1845, there is a vague allusion
+to wild mountains in western Virginia "tenanted by fierce and uncouth
+races of men." This, so far as I know, was the first reference in
+literature to our Southern mountaineers, and it stood as their only
+characterization until Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") began
+her stories of the Cumberland hills.
+
+Time and retouching have done little to soften our Highlander's
+portrait. Among reading people generally, South as well as North, to
+name him is to conjure up a tall, slouching figure in homespun, who
+carries a rifle as habitually as he does his hat, and who may tilt its
+muzzle toward a stranger before addressing him, the form of salutation
+being:
+
+"Stop thar! Whut's you-unses name? Whar's you-uns a-goin' ter?"
+
+Let us admit that there is just enough truth in this caricature to give
+it a point that will stick. Our typical mountaineer is lank, he is
+always unkempt, he is fond of toting a gun on his shoulder, and his
+curiosity about a stranger's name and business is promptly, though
+politely, outspoken. For the rest, he is a man of mystery. The great
+world outside his mountains knows almost as little about him as he does
+of it; and that is little indeed. News in order to reach him must be of
+such widespread interest as fairly to fall from heaven; correspondingly,
+scarce any incidents of mountain life will leak out unless they be of
+sensational nature, such as the shooting of a revenue officer in
+Carolina, the massacre of a Virginia court, or the outbreak of another
+feud in "bloody Breathitt." And so, from the grim sameness of such
+reports, the world infers that battle, murder, and sudden death are
+commonplaces in Appalachia.
+
+To be sure, in Miss Murfree's novels, as in those of John Fox, Jr., and
+of Alice MacGowan, we do meet characters more genial than feudists and
+illicit distillers; none the less, when we have closed the book, who is
+it that stands out clearest as type and pattern of the mountaineer? Is
+it not he of the long rifle and peremptory challenge? And whether this
+be because he gets most of the limelight, or because we have a furtive
+liking for that sort of thing (on paper), or whether the armed outlaw be
+indeed a genuine protagonist--in any case, the Appalachian people remain
+in public estimation to-day, as Poe judged them, an uncouth and fierce
+race of men, inhabiting a wild mountain region little known.
+
+The Southern highlands themselves are a mysterious realm. When I
+prepared, eight years ago, for my first sojourn in the Great Smoky
+Mountains, which form the master chain of the Appalachian system, I
+could find in no library a guide to that region. The most diligent
+research failed to discover so much as a magazine article, written
+within this generation, that described the land and its people. Nay,
+there was not even a novel or a story that showed intimate local
+knowledge. Had I been going to Teneriffe or Timbuctu, the libraries
+would have furnished information a-plenty; but about this housetop of
+eastern America they were strangely silent; it was _terra incognita_.
+
+On the map I could see that the Southern Appalachians cover an area much
+larger than New England, and that they are nearer the center of our
+population than any other mountains that deserve the name. Why, then, so
+little known? Quaintly there came to mind those lines familiar to my
+boyhood: "Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain;
+and see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein,
+whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that
+they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that
+they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strongholds; and what the land
+is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not."
+
+In that dustiest room of a great library where "pub. docs." are stored,
+I unearthed a government report on forestry that gave, at last, a clear
+idea of the lay of the land. And here was news. We are wont to think of
+the South as a low country with sultry climate; yet its mountain chains
+stretch uninterruptedly southwestward from Virginia to Alabama, 650
+miles in an air line. They spread over parts of eight contiguous States,
+and cover an area somewhat larger than England and Scotland, or about
+the same as that of the Alps. In short, the greatest mountain system of
+eastern America is massed in our Southland. In its upper zone one sleeps
+under blankets the year round.
+
+In all the region north of Virginia and east of the Black Hills of
+Dakota there is but one summit (Mount Washington, in New Hampshire) that
+reaches 6,000 feet above sea level, and there are only a dozen others
+that exceed 5,000 feet. By contrast, south of the Potomac there are
+forty-six peaks, and forty-one miles of dividing ridges, that rise above
+6,000 feet, besides 288 mountains and some 300 miles of divide that
+stand more than 5,000 feet above the sea. In North Carolina alone the
+mountains cover 6,000 square miles, with an _average_ elevation of 2,700
+feet, and with twenty-one peaks that overtop Mount Washington.
+
+I repeated to myself: "Why, then, so little known?" The Alps and the
+Rockies, the Pyrennees and the Harz are more familiar to the American
+people, in print and picture, if not by actual visit, than are the
+Black, the Balsam, and the Great Smoky Mountains. It is true that summer
+tourists flock to Asheville and Toxaway, Linville and Highlands, passing
+their time at modern hotels and motoring along a few macadamed roads,
+but what do they see of the billowy wilderness that conceals most of the
+native homes? Glimpses from afar. What do they learn of the real
+mountaineer? Hearsay. For, mark you, nine-tenths of the Appalachian
+population are a sequestered folk. The typical, the average mountain
+man prefers his native hills and his primitive ancient ways.
+
+We read more and talk more about the Filipinos, see more of the Chinese
+and the Syrians, than of these three million next-door Americans who are
+of colonial ancestry and mostly of British stock. New York, we say, is a
+cosmopolitan city; more Irish than in Dublin, more Germans than in
+Munich, more Italians than in Rome, more Jews than in nine Jerusalems;
+but how many New Yorkers ever saw a Southern mountaineer? I am sure that
+a party of hillsmen fresh from the back settlements of the Unakas, if
+dropped on the streets of any large city in the Union, and left to their
+own guidance, would stir up more comment (and probably more trouble)
+than would a similar body of whites from any other quarter of the earth;
+and yet this same odd people is more purely bred from old American stock
+than any other element of our population that occupies, by itself, so
+great a territory.
+
+The mountaineers of the South are marked apart from all other folks by
+dialect, by customs, by character, by self-conscious isolation. So true
+is this that they call all outsiders "furriners." It matters not whether
+your descent be from Puritan or Cavalier, whether you come from
+Boston or Chicago, Savannah or New Orleans, in the mountains you are a
+"furriner." A traveler, puzzled and scandalized at this, asked a native
+of the Cumberlands what he would call a "Dutchman or a Dago." The fellow
+studied a bit and then replied: "Them's the outlandish."
+
+
+[Illustration: A Family of Pioneers in the Twentieth Century]
+
+
+Foreigner, outlander, it is all one; we are "different," we are "quar,"
+to the mountaineer. He knows he is an American; but his conception of
+the metes and bounds of America is vague to the vanishing point. As for
+countries over-sea--well, when a celebrated Nebraskan returned from his
+trip around the globe, one of my backwoods neighbors proudly informed
+me: "I see they give Bryan a lot of receptions when he kem back from the
+other world."
+
+No one can understand the attitude of our highlanders toward the rest of
+the earth until he realizes their amazing isolation from all that lies
+beyond the blue, hazy skyline of their mountains. Conceive a shipload of
+emigrants cast away on some unknown island, far from the regular track
+of vessels, and left there for five or six generations, unaided and
+untroubled by the growth of civilization. Among the descendants of such
+a company we would expect to find customs and ideas unaltered from the
+time of their forefathers. And that is just what we do find to-day among
+our castaways in the sea of mountains. Time has lingered in Appalachia.
+The mountain folk still live in the eighteenth century. The progress of
+mankind from that age to this is no heritage of theirs.
+
+Our backwoodsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, of their connecting
+chains, and of the outlying Cumberlands, are still thinking essentially
+the same thoughts, still living in much the same fashion, as did their
+ancestors in the days of Daniel Boone. Nor is this their fault. They are
+a people of keen intelligence and strong initiative when they can see
+anything to win. But, as President Frost says, they have been
+"beleaguered by nature." They are belated--ghettoed in the midst of a
+civilization that is as aloof from them as if it existed only on another
+planet. And so, in order to be fair and just with these, our backward
+kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize ourselves to the extent of
+_going back_ and getting an eighteenth century point of view.
+
+But, first, how comes it that the mountain folk have been so long
+detached from the life and movement of their times? Why are they so
+foreign to present-day Americanism that they innocently call all the
+rest of us foreigners?
+
+The answer lies on the map. They are creatures of environment, enmeshed
+in a labyrinth that has deflected and repelled the march of our nation
+for three hundred years.
+
+In 1728, when Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, was running the
+boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, he finally was
+repulsed by parallel chains of savage, unpeopled mountains that rose
+tier beyond tier to the westward, everywhere densely forested, and
+matted into jungle by laurel and other undergrowth. In his _Journal_,
+writing in the quaint, old-fashioned way, he said: "Our country has now
+been inhabited more than 130 years by the English, and still we hardly
+know anything of the Appalachian Mountains, that are nowhere above 250
+miles from the sea. Whereas the French, who are later comers, have
+rang'd from Quebec Southward as far as the Mouth of Mississippi, in the
+bay of Mexico, and to the West almost as far as California, which is
+either way above 2,000 miles."
+
+A hundred and thirty years later, the same thing could have been said of
+these same mountains; for the "fierce and uncouth races of men" that Poe
+faintly heard of remained practically undiscovered until they startled
+the nation on the scene of our Civil War, by sending 180,000 of their
+riflemen into the Union Army.
+
+If a corps of surveyors to-day should be engaged to run a line due west
+from eastern Virginia to the Blue Grass of Kentucky, they would have an
+arduous task. Let us suppose that they start from near Richmond and
+proceed along the line of 37 deg. 50'. The Blue Ridge is not especially
+difficult: only eight transverse ridges to climb up and down in fourteen
+miles, and none of them more than 2,000 feet high from bottom to top.
+Then, thirteen miles across the lower end of The Valley, a curious
+formation begins.
+
+As a foretaste, in the three and a half miles crossing Little House and
+Big House mountains, one ascends 2,200 feet, descends 1,400, climbs
+again 1,600, and goes down 2,000 feet on the far side. Beyond lie steep
+and narrow ridges athwart the way, paralleling each other like waves at
+sea. Ten distinct mountain chains are scaled and descended in the next
+forty miles. There are few "leads" rising gradually to their crests.
+Each and every one of these ridges is a Chinese wall magnified to
+altitudes of from a thousand to two thousand feet, and covered with
+thicket. The hollows between them are merely deep troughs.
+
+In the next thirty miles we come upon novel topography. Instead of wave
+following wave in orderly procession, we find here a choppy sea of small
+mountains, with hollows running toward all points of the compass.
+Instead of Chinese walls, we now have Chinese puzzles. The innate
+perversity of such configuration grows more and more exasperating as we
+toil westward. In the two hundred miles from the Greenbrier to the
+Kentucky River, the ridges are all but unscalable, and the streams
+sprangle in every direction like branches of mountain laurel.
+
+The only roads follow the beds of tortuous and rock-strewn water
+courses, which may be nearly dry when you start out in the morning, but
+within an hour may be raging torrents. There are no bridges. One may
+ford a dozen times in a mile. A spring "tide" will stop all travel, even
+from neighbor to neighbor, for a day or two at a time. Buggies and
+carriages are unheard of. In many districts the only means of
+transportation is with saddlebags on horseback, or with a "tow sack"
+afoot. If the pedestrian tries a short-cut he will learn what the
+natives mean when they say: "Goin' up, you can might' nigh stand up
+straight and bite the ground; goin' down, a man wants hobnails in the
+seat of his pants."
+
+James Lane Allen was not writing fiction when he said of the far-famed
+Wilderness Road into Kentucky: "Despite all that has been done to
+civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic
+thoroughfare remains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its
+sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jutting ledges of rock and
+loose boulders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity....
+One such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for
+profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally. Many
+were infidels--there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is known
+that the more pious companies of them, as they traveled along, would now
+and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers
+before they could go further. Perhaps one of the provocations to
+homicide among the mountain people should be reckoned this road. I have
+seen two of the mildest of men, after riding over it for a few hours,
+lose their temper and begin to fight--fight their horses, fight the
+flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses."
+
+Such difficulties of intercommunication are enough to explain the
+isolation of the mountaineers. In the more remote regions this
+loneliness reaches a degree almost unbelievable. Miss Ellen Semple, in a
+fine monograph published in the _Geographical Journal_, of London, in
+1901, gave us some examples:
+
+     "These Kentucky mountaineers are not only cut off from the outside
+     world, but they are separated from each other. Each is confined to
+     his own locality, and finds his little world within a radius of a
+     few miles from his cabin. There are many men in these mountains who
+     have never seen a town, or even the poor village that constitutes
+     their county-seat.... The women ... are almost as rooted as the
+     trees. We met one woman who, during the twelve years of her married
+     life, had lived only ten miles across the mountain from her own
+     home, but had never in this time been back home to visit her father
+     and mother. Another back in Perry county told me she had never been
+     farther from home than Hazard, the county-seat, which is only six
+     miles distant. Another had never been to the post-office, four
+     miles away; and another had never seen the ford of the Rockcastle
+     River, only two miles from her home, and marked, moreover, by the
+     country store of the district."
+
+
+When I first went into the Smokies, I stopped one night in a single-room
+log cabin, and soon had the good people absorbed in my tales of travel
+beyond the seas. Finally the housewife said to me, with pathetic
+resignation: "Bushnell's the furdest ever I've been." Bushnell, at that
+time, was a hamlet of thirty people, only seven miles from where we sat.
+When I lived alone on "the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek,"
+there were women in the neighborhood, young and old, who had never seen
+a railroad, and men who had never boarded a train, although the Murphy
+branch ran within sixteen miles of our post-office. The first time that
+a party of these people went to the railroad, they were uneasy and
+suspicious. Nearing the way-station, a girl in advance came upon the
+first negro she ever saw in her life, and ran screaming back: "My
+goddamighty, Mam, thar's the boogerman--I done seed him!"
+
+But before discussing the mountain people and their problems, let us
+take an imaginary balloon voyage over their vast domain. South of the
+Potomac the Blue Ridge is a narrow rampart rising abruptly from the
+east, one or two thousand feet above its base, and descending sharply to
+the Shenandoah Valley on the west. Across the Valley begin the
+Alleghanies. These mountains, from the Potomac through to the northern
+Tennessee border, consist of a multitude of narrow ridges with steep
+escarpment on both sides, running southwesterly in parallel chains, and
+each chain separated from its neighbors by deep, slender dales. Wherever
+one goes westward from the Valley he will encounter tier after tier of
+these ridges, as I have already described.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs"--Linville River and
+Falls, N. C. The walls of one gorge are from 500 to 2,000 feet high.]
+
+
+As a rule, the links in each chain can be passed by following small
+gaps; but often one must make very wide detours. For example, Pine
+Mountain (every link has its own distinct name) is practically
+impassable for nearly 150 miles, except for two water gaps and five
+difficult crossings. Although it averages only a mile thick, the people
+on its north side, generally, know less about those on the south than a
+Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutchmen.
+
+The Alleghanies together have a width of from forty to sixty miles.
+Westward of them, for a couple of hundred miles, are the labyrinthine
+roughs of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
+
+In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies coalesce,
+but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well
+as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in
+the north. The southeast front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarpment,
+rising abruptly from the Piedmont Plateau of Carolina. Not one river
+cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the
+westward are higher and much more massive. It is the watershed of this
+whole mountain region. The streams rising on its northwestern front flow
+down into central plateaus, and thence cut their way through the Unakas
+in deep and precipitous gorges, draining finally into the Gulf of
+Mexico, through the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
+
+The northwestern range, which corresponds to the Alleghanies of
+Virginia, now assumes a character entirely different from them. Instead
+of parallel chains of low ridges, we have here, on the border of North
+Carolina and Tennessee, a single chain that dwarfs all others in the
+Appalachian system. It is cut into segments by the rivers (Nolichucky,
+French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee) that drain the
+interior plateaus, and each segment has a distinct name of its own
+(Iron, Northern Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi
+mountains). The Carolina mountaineers still call this system
+collectively the Alleghanies, but the U. S. Geological Survey has given
+it a more distinctive name, the Unakas. While the Blue Ridge has only
+seven peaks that rise above 5,000 feet, the Unakas have 125 summits
+exceeding 5,000, and ten that are over 6,000 feet.
+
+Connecting the Unaka chain with the Blue Ridge are several transverse
+ranges, the Stone, Beech, Roan, Yellow, Black, Newfound, Pisgah, Balsam,
+Cowee, Nantahala, Tusquitee, and a few minor mountains, which as a whole
+are much higher than the Blue Ridge, 156 summits rising over 5,000
+feet, and thirty-six over 6,000 feet above sea-level.
+
+In northern Georgia the Unakas and the Blue Ridge gradually fade away
+into straggling ridges and foothills, which extend into small parts of
+South Carolina and Alabama.
+
+The Cumberland Plateau is not attached to either of these mountain
+systems, but is rather a prolongation of the roughs of eastern Kentucky.
+It is separated from the Unakas by the broad valley of the Tennessee
+River. The Plateau rises very abruptly from the surrounding plains. It
+consists mainly of tableland gashed by streams that have cut their way
+down in deep narrow gulches with precipitous sides.
+
+Most of the literature about our Southern mountaineers refers only to
+the inhabitants of the comparatively meagre hills of eastern Kentucky,
+or to the Cumberlands of Tennessee. Little has been written about the
+real mountaineers of southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, and
+the extreme north of Georgia. The great mountain masses still await
+their annalist, their artist, and, in some places, even their explorer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"THE BACK OF BEYOND"
+
+
+Of certain remote parts of Erin, Jane Barlow says: "In Bogland, if you
+inquire the address of such or such person, you will hear not very
+infrequently that he or she lives 'off away at the Back of Beyond.'... A
+Traveler to the Back of Beyond may consider himself rather exceptionally
+fortunate, should he find that he is able to arrive at his destination
+by any mode of conveyance other than 'the two standin' feet of him.'
+Often enough the last stage of his journey proceeds down some boggy
+_boreen_, or up some craggy hill-track, inaccessible to any wheel or
+hoof that ever was shod."
+
+So in Appalachia, one steps shortly from the railway into the primitive.
+Most of the river valleys are narrow. In their bottoms the soil is rich,
+the farms well kept and generous, the owners comfortable and urbane. But
+from the valleys directly spring the mountains, with slopes rising
+twenty to forty degrees or more. These mountains cover nine-tenths of
+western North Carolina, and among them dwell a majority of the native
+people.
+
+The back country is rough. No boat nor canoe can stem its brawling
+waters. No bicycle nor automobile can enter it. No coach can endure its
+roads. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle-bags, and shackly
+little sleds that are dragged over the bare ground by harnessed steers.
+This is the country that ordinary tourists shun. And well for such that
+they do, since whoso cares more for bodily comfort than for freedom and
+air and elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pastures.
+To him the backwoods could be only what Burns called Argyleshire: "A
+country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly
+overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage
+inhabitants."
+
+When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.
+This for more reasons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and
+romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm
+of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American history; and,
+in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the
+present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my pioneer
+ancestors of a century or two ago. Besides, I wanted to enjoy a free
+life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of
+the chase, and the man's game of matching my woodcraft against the
+forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides.
+
+So, casting about for a biding place that would fill such needs, I
+picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of
+those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of
+this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there
+was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got
+permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins.
+
+A mountain settlement consists of all who get their mail at the same
+place. Ours was made up of forty-two households (about two hundred
+souls) scattered over an area eight miles long by two wide. These are
+air-line measurements. All roads and trails "wiggled and wingled around"
+so that some families were several miles from a neighbor. Fifteen homes
+had no wagon road, and could be reached by no vehicle other than a
+narrow sled. Quill Rose had not even a sledpath, but journeyed full five
+miles by trail to the nearest wagon road.
+
+Medlin itself comprised two little stores built of rough planks and
+bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings. A mile and a half
+away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also
+as church. Scattered about the settlement were seven tiny tub-mills for
+grinding corn, some of them mere open sheds with a capacity of about a
+bushel a day. Most of the dwellings were built of logs. Two or three,
+only, were weatherboarded frame houses and attained the dignity of a
+story and a half.
+
+All about us was the forest primeval, where roamed some sparse herds of
+cattle, razorback hogs, and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were in all
+the streams. Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a
+common nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the vast woodland
+that encompassed it.
+
+The post-office occupied a space about five feet square, in a corner of
+one of the stores. There was a daily mail, by rider, serving four other
+communities along the way. The contractor for this service had to
+furnish two horses, working turnabout, pay the rider, and squeeze his
+own profit, out of $499 a year. In Star Route days the mail was carried
+afoot, two barefooted young men "toting the sacks on their own wethers"
+over this thirty-two-mile round trip, for forty-eight cents a day; and
+they boarded themselves!
+
+In the group that gathered at mail time I often was solicited to "back"
+envelopes, give out the news, or decipher letters for men who could not
+read. Several times, in the postmaster's absence, I registered letters
+for myself, or for someone else, the law of the nation being suspended
+by general consent.
+
+Our stores, as I have said, were small, yet many of their shelves were
+empty. Oftentimes there was no flour to be had, no meat, cereals, canned
+goods, coffee, sugar, or oil. It excited no comment at all when Old Pete
+would lean across his bare counter and lament that "Thar's lots o' folks
+a-hurtin' around hyur for lard, and I ain't got none."
+
+I have seen the time when our neighborhood could get no salt nor tobacco
+without making a twenty-four-mile trip over the mountain and back, in
+the dead of winter. This was due, partly, to the state of the roads, and
+to the fact that there would be no wagon available for weeks at a time.
+Wagoning, by the way, was no sinecure. Often it meant to chop a fallen
+tree out of the road, and then, with handspikes, "man-power the log
+outen the way." Sometimes an axle would break (far upon the mountain,
+of course); then a tree must be felled, and a new axle made on the spot
+from the green wood, with no tools but axe and jackknife.
+
+
+[Illustration: At the Post-Office]
+
+
+Trade was mostly by barter, in which 'coon skins and ginseng had the
+same rank as in the days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Long credits
+were given on anticipated crops; but the risks were great and the market
+limited by local consumption, as it did not pay to haul bulky
+commodities to the railroad. Hence it was self-preservation for the
+storekeepers to carry only a slender stock of essentials and take pains
+to have little left through unproductive times.
+
+As a rule, credit would not be asked so long as anything at all could be
+offered in trade. When Bill took the last quart of meal from the house,
+as rations for a bear hunt, his patient Marg walked five miles to the
+store with a skinny old chicken, last of the flock, and offered to
+barter it for "a dustin' o' salt." There was not a bite in her house
+beyond potatoes, and "'taters don't go good 'thout salt."
+
+In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every
+man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler,
+miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as
+barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he died. One
+farmer was also the wagoner of the district, as well as storekeeper,
+magistrate, veterinarian, and accoucheur. He also owned the only
+"tooth-pullers" in the settlement: a pair of universal forceps that he
+designed, forged, filed out, and wielded with barbaric grit. His wife
+kept the only boarding-house for leagues around. Truly, an accomplished
+couple!
+
+About two-thirds of our householders owned their homes. Of the remainder
+about three-fifths were renters and two-fifths were squatters, in the
+sense that these last were permitted to occupy ground for the sake of
+reporting trespass and putting out fires--or, maybe, to prevent them
+doing both. Nearly all of the wild land belonged to Northern timber
+companies who had not yet begun operations (they have done so within the
+past three years).
+
+Titles were confused, owing to careless surveys, or guesswork, in the
+past. Many boundaries overlapped, and there were bits of no-man's land
+here and there, covered by no deed and subject to entry by anyone who
+discovered them. Our old frontier always was notorious for
+happy-go-lucky surveys and neglect to make legal entry of claims. Thus
+Boone lost the fairest parts of the Kentucky he founded, and was
+ejected and sent adrift. In our own time, overlapping boundaries have
+led to bitter litigation and murderous feuds.
+
+As our territory was sparsely occupied, there were none of those
+"perpendicular farms" so noticeable in older settlements near the river
+valleys, where men plow fields as steep as their own house roofs and
+till with the hoe many an acre that is steeper still. John Fox tells of
+a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his own cornfield and broke his neck.
+I have seen fields in Carolina where this might occur, as where a
+forty-five degree slope is tilled to the brink of a precipice. A woman
+told me: "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees--yes, I have;" and
+another: "Many's the hill o' corn I've propped up with a rock to keep it
+from fallin' down-hill."[1]
+
+Even in our new region many of the fields suffered quickly from erosion.
+When a forest is cleared there is a spongy humus on the ground surface
+that is extremely rich, but this washes away in a single season. The
+soil beneath is good, but thin on the hillsides, and its soluble,
+fertile ingredients soon leach out and vanish. Without terracing, which
+I have never seen practiced in the mountains of the South, no field with
+a surface slope of more than ten degrees (about two feet in ten) will
+last more than a few years. As one of my neighbors put it: "Thar, I've
+cl'ared me a patch and grubbed hit out--now I can raise me two or three
+severe craps!"
+
+"Then what?" I asked.
+
+"When corn won't grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple
+o' years."
+
+"Then you'll rotate, and grow corn again?"
+
+"La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn't raise a
+cuss-fight."
+
+"But then you must move, and begin all over again. This continual moving
+must be a great nuisance."
+
+He rolled his quid and placidly answered: "Huk-uh; when I move, all I
+haffter do is put out the fire and call the dog."
+
+His apparent indifference was only philosophy expressed with sardonic
+humor; just as another neighbor would say, "This is good, strong land,
+or it wouldn't hold up all the rocks there is around hyur."
+
+Right here is the basis for much of what strangers call shiftlessness
+among the mountaineers. But of that, more anon in other chapters.
+
+In clearing new ground, everyone followed the ancient custom of girdling
+the tree trunks and letting them stand in spectral ugliness until they
+rotted and fell. This is a quick and easy way to get rid of the shade
+that otherwise would stunt the crops, and it prevents such trees as
+chestnut, buckeye and basswood from sprouting from the stumps. In the
+fields stood scores of gigantic hemlocks, deadened, that never would be
+used even for fuel, save as their bark furnished the women with
+quick-burning stove-wood in wet weather. No one dreamt that hemlock ever
+would be marketable. And this was only five years ago!
+
+The tillage was as rude and destructive as anything we read of in
+pioneer history. The common plow was a "bull-tongue," which has aptly
+been described as "hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim."
+The harrows were of wood, throughout, with locust teeth (a friend and I
+made one from the green trees in half a day, and it lasted three seasons
+on rocky ground). Sometimes no harrow was used at all, the plowed ground
+being "drug" with a big evergreen bough. This needed only to be withed
+directly to a pony's tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and
+the picture of prehistoric agriculture would have been complete. After
+the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the
+entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows
+while their mother toiled like a man.
+
+Corn was the staple crop--in fact, the only crop of most farmers. Some
+rye was raised along the creek, and a little oats, but our settlement
+grew no wheat--there was no mill that could grind it. Wheat is raised,
+to some extent, in the river bottoms, and on the plateaus of the
+interior. I have seen it flailed out on the bare ground, and winnowed by
+pouring the grain and chaff from basket to basket while the women
+fluttered aprons or bed-sheets. Corn is topped for the blade-fodder, the
+ears gathered from the stalk, and the main stalks afterwards used as
+"roughness" (roughage). The cribs generally are ramshackle pens, and
+there is much waste from mold and vermin.
+
+The Carolina mountains are, by nature, one of the best fruit regions in
+eastern America. Apples, grapes, and berries, especially, thrive
+exceeding well. But our mountaineer is no horticulturist. He lets his
+fruit trees take care of themselves, and so, everywhere except on select
+farms near the towns, we see old apple and peach trees that never were
+pruned, bristling with shoots, and often bearing wizened fruit, dry and
+bitter, or half rotted on the stem.
+
+So, too, the gardens are slighted. Late in the season our average garden
+is a miniature jungle, chiefly of weeds that stand high as one's head.
+Cabbage and field beans survive and figure mightily in the diet of the
+mountaineer. Potatoes generally do well, but few farmers raise enough to
+see them through the winter. Generally some tobacco is grown for family
+consumption, the strong "twist" being smoked or chewed indifferently.
+
+An interesting crop in our neighborhood was ginseng, of which there were
+several patches in cultivation. This curious plant is native throughout
+the Appalachians, but has been exterminated in all but the wildest
+regions, on account of the high price that its dried root brings. It has
+long since passed out of our pharmacopoeia, and is marketed only in
+China, though our own people formerly esteemed it as a panacea for all
+ills of the flesh. Colonel Byrd, in his "History of the Dividing Line,"
+says of it:
+
+     "Though Practice wilt soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able
+     Footman, yet, as a help to bear Fatigue I us'd to chew a Root of
+     Ginseng as I Walk't along. This kept up my Spirits, and made me
+     trip away as nimbly in my half Jack-Boots as younger men cou'd in
+     their Shoes. This Plant is in high Esteem in China, where it sells
+     for its Weight in Silver.... Its vertues are, that it gives an
+     uncommon Warmth and Vigour to the Blood, and frisks the Spirits,
+     beyond any other Cordial. It chears the Heart, even of a Man that
+     has a bad Wife, and makes him look down with great Composure on the
+     crosses of the World. It promotes insensible Perspiration,
+     dissolves all Phlegmatick and Viscous Humours, that are apt to
+     obstruct the Narrow channels of the Nerves. It helps the Memory and
+     would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the Lungs,
+     much more than Scolding itself. It comforts the Stomach, and
+     Strengthens the Bowels, preventing all Colicks and Fluxes. In one
+     Word, it will make a Man live a great while, and very well while he
+     does live. And what is more, it will even make Old Age amiable, by
+     rendering it lively, chearful, and good-humour'd."
+
+
+Alas that only Chinamen and eighteenth-century Cavaliers could absorb
+the virtues of this sovereign herb!
+
+A successful ginseng grower of our settlement told me that two acres of
+the plant will bring an income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year, planting
+100,000 to the acre. The roots take eight years to mature. They weigh
+from one and a half to four ounces each, when fresh, and one-third of
+this dried. Two acres produce 25,000 roots a year, by progression. The
+dried root, at that time, brought five dollars a pound. At present, I
+believe, it is higher. Another friend of mine, who is in this business
+extensively, tried exporting for himself, but got only $6.50 a pound in
+Amoy, when the U. S. consul at that port assured him that the real
+market price was from $12.60 to $24.40. The local trader, knowing
+American prices, pocketed the difference.
+
+
+[Illustration: The Author in Camp in the Big Smokies]
+
+
+In times of scarcity many of our people took to the woods and gathered
+commoner medicinal roots, such as bloodroot and wild ginger (there are
+scores of others growing wild in great profusion), but made only a
+pittance at it, as synthetic drugs have mostly taken the place of herbal
+simples in modern medicine. Women and children did better, in the days
+before Christmas, by gathering galax, "hemlock" (_leucothoe_), and
+mistletoe, selling to the dealers at the railroad, who ship them North
+for holiday decorations. One bright lad from town informed me, with
+evident pride of geography, that "Some of this goes to London, England."
+Nearly everywhere in our woods the beautiful ruddy-bronze galax is
+abundant. Along the water-courses, _leucothoe_, which similarly turns
+bronze in autumn, and lasts throughout the winter, is so prolific as to
+be a nuisance to travelers, being hard to push through.
+
+Most of our farmers had neither horse nor mule. For the rough work of
+cultivating the hillsides a single steer hitched to the "bull-tongue"
+was better adapted, and the same steer patiently dragged a little sled
+to the trading post. On steep declivities the sled is more practical
+than a cart or wagon, because it can go where wheels cannot, it does not
+require so wide a track, and it "brakes" automatically in going
+downhill. Nearly all the farmer's hauling is downhill to his home, or
+down farther to the village. A sled can be made quite easily by one man,
+out of wood growing on the spot, and with few iron fittings, or none at
+all. The runners are usually made of natural sourwood crooks, this
+timber being chosen because it wears very smooth and does not fur up nor
+splinter.
+
+The hinterland is naturally adapted to grazing, rather than to
+agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the
+mountains, where there are "balds" covered with succulent wild grass
+that resembles Kentucky bluegrass. Clearing and sowing would extend such
+areas indefinitely. The cattle forage for themselves through eight or
+nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only
+attention given them is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark
+the calves. Nearly all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other
+blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges,
+but the backwoodsman does not want "critters that haffter be gentled and
+hand-fed." The result is that many families go without milk a great part
+of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.
+
+The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse,
+with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through
+winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the
+quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have
+had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten
+would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export--let the buyer
+fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any provision for
+taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.
+
+On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel
+all over the neighborhood to dispose of it in small portions. The
+carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the
+cheap "bilin' pieces" were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or
+whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an
+axe and a jackknife. The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a
+crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit
+it for boot-heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.
+
+Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool.
+The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep
+will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering
+hand of man and perish without his shepherding. Curiously enough, our
+mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat--an animal perfectly
+adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats
+would be more profitable to the small farmers of the wild mountains than
+cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which
+there is a vast superfluity in all the Southern mountains. Unlike the
+weak, timorous and stupid sheep, a flock of goats can fight their own
+battles against wild animals. They are hardy in any weather, and thrive
+from their own pickings where other foragers would starve.
+
+A good milch goat gives more and richer milk than the average mountain
+cow. And a kid yields excellent fresh meat in _manageable_ quantity, at
+a time when no one would butcher a beef because it would spoil. I used
+to shut my eyes and imagine the transformation that would be wrought in
+these mountains by a colony of Swiss, who would turn the coves into
+gardens, the moderate slopes into orchards, the steeper ones into
+vineyards, by terracing, and who would export the finest of cheese made
+from the surplus milk of their goats. But our native mountaineers--well,
+a man who will not eat beef nor drink fresh cow's milk, and who despises
+butter, cannot be interested in anything of the dairy order.
+
+The chickens ran wild and scratched for a living; hence were thin,
+tough, and poor layers. Eggs seldom were for sale. It was not of much
+use to try to raise many chickens where they were unprotected from
+hawks, minks, foxes, weasels and snakes.
+
+Honey often was procured by spotting wild bees to their hoard and
+chopping the tree, a mild form of sport in which most settlers are
+expert. Our local preacher had a hundred hives of tame bees, producing
+1,500 pounds of honey a year, for which he got ten cents a pound at the
+railroad.
+
+The mainstay of every farmer, aside from his cornfield, was his litter
+of razorback hogs. "Old cornbread and sowbelly" are a menu complete for
+the mountaineer. The wild pig, roaming foot-loose and free over hill and
+dale, picks up his own living at all seasons and requires no attention
+at all. He is the cheapest possible source of meat and yields the
+quickest return: "no other food animal can increase his own weight a
+hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of his life." And so he
+is regarded by his owner with the same affection that Connemara Paddy
+bestows upon "the gintleman that pays the rint."
+
+In physique and mentality, the razorback differs even more from a
+domestic hog than a wild goose does from a tame one. Shaped in front
+like a thin wedge, he can go through laurel thickets like a bear.
+Armored with tough hide cushioned by bristles, he despises thorns,
+brambles, and rattlesnakes, alike. His extravagantly long snout can
+scent like a cat's, and yet burrow, uproot, overturn, as if made of
+metal. The long legs, thin flanks, pliant hoofs, fit him to run like a
+deer and climb like a goat. In courage and sagacity he outranks all
+other beasts. A warrior born, he is also a strategist of the first
+order. Like man, he lives a communal life, and unites with others of his
+kind for purposes of defense.
+
+The pig is the only large mammal I know of, besides man, whose eyes
+will not shine by reflected light--they are too bold and crafty, I wit.
+The razorback has a mind of his own; not instinct, but _mind_--whatever
+psychologists may say. He thinks. Anybody can see that when he is not
+rooting or sleeping he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable
+understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an
+uncanny gift of reading men's thoughts, whenever those thoughts are
+directed against the peace and dignity of pigship. He bears grudges,
+broods over indignities, and plans redresses for the morrow or the week
+after. If he cannot get even with you, he will lay for your unsuspecting
+friend. And at the last, when arrested in his crimes and lodged in the
+pen, he is liable to attacks of mania from sheer helpless rage.
+
+If you camp out in the mountains, nothing will molest you but razorback
+hogs. Bears will flee and wildcats sneak to their dens, but the moment
+incense of cooking arises from your camp every pig within two miles will
+scent it and hasten to call. You may throw your arm out of joint: they
+will laugh in your face. You may curse in five languages: it is music to
+their titillating ears.
+
+Throughout summer and autumn I cooked out of doors, on the woodsman's
+range of forked stakes and a lug-pole spanning parallel beds of rock.
+When the pigs came, I fed them red-pepper pie. Then all said good-bye to
+my hospitality save one slab-sided, tusky old boar--and he planned a
+campaign. At the first smell of smoke he would start for my premises.
+Hiding securely in a nearby thicket, he would spy on the operations
+until my stew got to simmering gently and I would retire to the cabin
+and get my fists in the dough. Then, charging at speed, he would knock
+down a stake, trip the lug-pole, and send my dinner flying. Every day he
+would do this. It got so that I had to sit there facing the fire all
+through my cooking, or that beast of a hog would ruin me. With this I
+thought he was outgeneraled. Idle dream! He would slip off to my
+favorite neighbor's, break through the garden fence, and raise Ned
+instanter--all because he hated _me_, for that peppery fraud, and knew
+that Bob and I were cronies.
+
+I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own
+notion by calling it Be-liar. "That Be-liar," swore he, "would cross
+hell on a rotten rail to git into my 'tater patch!"
+
+Finally I could stand it no longer, and took down my rifle. It was a
+nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squirrels,
+was in good form. However, in the mountains it is more heinous to kill
+another man's pig than to shoot the owner. So I took craft for my guide,
+and guile for my heart's counsel. I stalked Belial as stealthily as ever
+hunter crept on an antelope against the wind. At last I had him dead
+right: broadside to me and motionless as if in a daydream. I knew that
+if I drilled his ear, or shot his tail clean off, it would only make him
+meaner than ever. He sported an uncommonly fine tail, and was proud to
+flaunt it. I drew down on that member, purposely a trifle scant, fired,
+and--away scuttled that boar, with a _broken_ tail that would dangle and
+cling to him disgracefully through life.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Bob"]
+
+
+Exit Belial! It was equivalent to a broken heart. He emigrated, or
+committed suicide, I know not which, but the Smoky Mountains knew him no
+more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS
+
+
+For a long time my chief interest was not in human neighbors, but in the
+mountains themselves--in that mysterious beckoning hinterland which rose
+right back of my chimney and spread upward, outward, almost to three
+cardinal points of the compass, mile after mile, hour after hour of
+lusty climbing--an Eden still unpeopled and unspoiled.
+
+I loved of a morning to slip on my haversack, pick up my rifle, or maybe
+a mere staff, and stride forth alone over haphazard routes, to enjoy in
+my own untutored way the infinite variety of form and color and shade,
+of plant and tree and animal life, in that superb wilderness that
+towered there far above all homes of men. (And I love it still, albeit
+the charm of new discovery is gone from those heights and gulfs that are
+now so intimate and full of memories).
+
+The Carolina mountains have a character all their own. Rising abruptly
+from a low base, and then rounding more gradually upward for 2,000 to
+5,000 feet above their valleys, their apparent height is more impressive
+than that of many a loftier summit in the West which forms only a
+protuberance on an elevated plateau. Nearly all of them are clad to
+their tops in dense forest and thick undergrowth. Here and there is a
+grassy "bald": a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a
+mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber-line, few
+jutting crags, no ribs and vertebrae of the earth exposed. Seldom does
+one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very cliffs are sheathed with
+trees and shrubs, so that one treading their edges has no fear of
+falling into an abyss.
+
+Pinnacles or serrated ridges are rare. There are few commanding peaks.
+From almost any summit in Carolina one looks out upon a sea of flowing
+curves and dome-shaped eminences undulating, with no great disparity of
+height, unto the horizon. Almost everywhere the contours are similar:
+steep sides gradually rounding to the tops, smooth-surfaced to the eye
+because of the endless verdure. Every ridge is separated from its
+sisters by deep and narrow ravines. Not one of the thousand water
+courses shows a glint of its dashing stream, save where some far-off
+river may reveal, through a gap in the mountain, one single shimmering
+curve. In all this vast prospect, a keen eye, knowing where to look, may
+detect an occasional farmer's clearing, but to the stranger there is
+only mountain and forest, mountain and forest, as far as the eye can
+reach.
+
+Characteristic, too, is the dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer
+intensified, that ever hovers over the mountains, unless they be swathed
+in cloud, or, for a few minutes, after a sharp rain-storm has cleared
+the atmosphere. Both the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains owe their
+names to this tenuous mist. It softens all outlines, and lends a
+mirage-like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles
+off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible until
+finally the sky-line blends with the sky itself.
+
+The foreground of such a landscape, in summer, is warm, soft, dreamy,
+caressing, habitable; beyond it are gentle and luring solitudes; the
+remote ranges are inexpressibly lonesome, isolated and mysterious; but
+everywhere the green forest mantle bespeaks a vital present; nowhere
+does cold, bare granite stand as the sepulchre of an immemorial past.
+
+And yet these very mountains of Carolina are among the ancients of the
+earth. They were old, very old, before the Alps and the Andes, the
+Rockies and the Himalayas were molded into their primal shapes. Upon
+them, in after ages, were born the first hardwoods of America--perhaps
+those of Europe, too--and upon them to-day the last great hardwood
+forests of our country stand in primeval majesty, mutely awaiting their
+imminent doom.
+
+The richness of the Great Smoky forest has been the wonder and the
+admiration of everyone who has traversed it. As one climbs from the
+river to one of the main peaks, he passes successively through the same
+floral zones he would encounter in traveling from mid-Georgia to
+southern Canada.
+
+Starting amid sycamores, elms, gums, willows, persimmons, chinquapins,
+he soon enters a region of beech, birch, basswood, magnolia, cucumber,
+butternut, holly, sourwood, box elder, ash, maple, buckeye, poplar,
+hemlock, and a great number of other growths along the creeks and
+branches. On the lower slopes are many species of oaks, with hickory,
+hemlock, pitch pine, locust, dogwood, chestnut. In this region nearly
+all trees attain their fullest development. On north fronts of hills the
+oaks reach a diameter of five to six feet. In cool, rich coves, chestnut
+trees grow from six to nine feet across the stump; and tulip poplars up
+to ten or eleven feet, their straight trunks towering like gigantic
+columns, with scarcely a noticeable taper, seventy or eighty feet to the
+nearest limb.
+
+Ascending above the zone of 3,000 feet, white oak is replaced by the no
+less valuable "mountain oak." Beech, birch, buckeye, and chestnut
+persist to 5,000 feet. Then, where the beeches dwindle until adult trees
+are only knee-high, there begins a sub-arctic zone of black spruce,
+balsam, striped maple, aspen and the "Peruvian" or red cherry.
+
+I have named only a few of the prevailing growths. Nowhere else in the
+temperate zone is there such a variety of merchantable timber as in
+western Carolina and the Tennessee front of the Unaka system. About a
+hundred and twenty species of native trees grow in the Smoky Forest
+itself. When Asa Gray visited the North Carolina mountains he
+identified, in a thirty-mile trip, a greater variety of indigenous trees
+than could be observed in crossing Europe from England to Turkey, or in
+a trip from Boston to the Rocky Mountain plateau. As John Muir has said,
+our forests, "however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to
+God; for they were the best He ever planted."
+
+The undergrowth is of almost tropical luxuriance and variety. Botanists
+say that this is the richest collecting ground in the United States.
+Whether one be seeking ferns or fungi or orchids or almost anything else
+vegetal, each hour will bring him some new delight. In summer the upper
+mountains are one vast flower garden: the white and pink of
+rhododendron, the blaze of azalea, conspicuous above all else, in
+settings of every imaginable shade of green.
+
+It was the botanist who discovered this Eden for us. Far back in the
+eighteenth century, when this was still "Cherokee Country," inhabited by
+no whites but a few Indian-traders, William Bartram of Philadelphia came
+plant-hunting into the mountains of western Carolina, and spread their
+fame to the world. One of his choicest finds was the fiery azalea, of
+which he recorded: "The epithet fiery I annex to this most celebrated
+species of azalea, as being expressive of the appearance of its flowers;
+which are in general of the color of the finest red-lead, orange, and
+bright gold, as well as yellow and cream-color. These various splendid
+colors are not only in separate plants, but frequently all the varieties
+and shades are seen in separate branches on the same plant; and the
+clusters of the blossoms cover the shrubs in such incredible profusion
+on the hillsides that, suddenly opening to view from dark shades, we
+are alarmed with apprehension of the woods being set on fire. This is
+certainly the most gay and brilliant flowering shrub yet known."
+
+And we of a later age, seeing the same wild gardens still unspoiled, can
+appreciate the almost religious fervor of those early botanists, as of
+Michaux, for example, who, in 1794, ascending the peak of Grandfather,
+broke out in song: "_Monte au sommet de la plus haut montagne de tout
+l'Amerique Septentrionale, chante avec mon compagnon-guide l'hymn de
+Marsellois, et crie, 'Vive la Liberte et la Republique Francaise!'_"
+
+Of course Michaux was wildly mistaken in thinking Grandfather "the
+highest mountain in all North America." It is far from being even the
+highest of the Appalachians. Yet we scarcely know to-day, to a downright
+certainty, which peak is supreme among our Southern highlands. The honor
+is conceded to Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains, northeast of
+Asheville. Still, the heights of the Carolina peaks have been taken
+(with but one exception, so far as I know) only by barometric
+measurements, and these, even when official, may vary as much as a
+hundred feet for the same mountain. Since the highest ten or a dozen of
+our Carolina peaks differ in altitude only one or two hundred feet,
+their actual rank has not yet been determined.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"There are few jutting crags"--Southeast profile of Whiteside Mountain,
+N. C.]
+
+
+For a long time there was controversy as to whether Mount Mitchell or
+Clingman Dome was the crowning summit of eastern America. The Coast and
+Geodetic Survey gave the height of Mount Mitchell as 6,688 feet; but
+later figures of the U. S. Geological Survey are 6,711 and 6,712. In
+1859 Buckley claimed for Clingman Dome of the Smokies an altitude of
+6,941 feet. In recent government reports the Dome appears variously as
+6,619 and 6,660. In 1911 I was told by Mr. H. M. Ramseur that when he
+laid out the route of the railroad from Asheville to Murphy he ran a
+line of levels from a known datum on this road to the top of Clingman,
+and that the result was "four sixes" (6,666 feet above sea-level). It is
+probable that second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong
+either to Clingman Dome or Guyot or LeConte, of the Smokies, or to
+Balsam Cone of the Black Mountains.
+
+In any case, the Great Smoky mountains are the master chain of the
+Appalachian system, the greatest mass of highland east of the Rockies.
+This segment of the Unakas forms the boundary between North Carolina
+and Tennessee from the Big Pigeon River to the McDaniel Bald.
+
+Although some parts of the Smokies are very rugged, with sharp changes
+of elevation, yet the range as a whole has no one dominating peak. Mount
+Guyot (pronounced _Gee_-o, with _g_ as in get), Mount LeConte, and
+Clingman Dome all are over 6,600 feet and under 6,700, according to the
+most trustworthy measurements. Many miles of the divide rise 6,000 feet
+above sea-level, with only small undulations like ocean swells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most rugged and difficult part of the Smokies (and of the United
+States east of Colorado) is in the sawtooth mountains between Collins
+and Guyot, at the headwaters of the Okona Lufty River. I know but few
+men who have ever followed this part of the divide, although during the
+present year trails have been cut from Clingman to Collins, or near it,
+and possibly others beyond to the northeastward.
+
+In August and September, 1900, Mr. James H. Ferriss and wife,
+naturalists from Joliet, Illinois, explored the Smokies to the Lufty Gap
+northeast of Clingman, collecting rare species of snails and ferns. No
+doubt Mrs. Ferriss is the only white woman who ever went beyond
+Clingman or even ascended the Dome itself. She stayed at the Lufty Gap
+while her husband and a Carolina mountaineer of my acquaintance
+struggled through to Guyot and returned. Of this trip Mr. Ferriss sent
+me the following account:
+
+"We bought another axe of a moonshiner, and, with a week's provisions on
+our backs, one of the guides and I took the Consolidated American Black
+Bear and Ruffed Grouse Line for Mount Guyot, twenty miles farther by map
+measurement. The bears were in full possession of the property, and we
+could get no information in the settlements, as the settlers do not
+travel this line. They did not know the names of the peaks other than as
+tops of the Great Smokies--knew nothing of the character of the country
+except that it was rough. The Tennesseeans seem afraid of the mountains,
+and the Cherokees of the North Carolina side equally so; for, two miles
+from camp, all traces of man, except surveyors' marks, had disappeared.
+In the first two days we routed eight bears out of their nests and mud
+wallows, and they seemed to stay routed, for upon our return we found
+the blackberry crop unharvested and had a bag pudding--'duff'--or what
+you call it.
+
+"A surveyor had run part of the line this year, which helped us
+greatly, and the bears had made well-beaten trails part of the way. In
+places they had mussed up the ground as much as a barnyard. We tried to
+follow the boundary line between the two States, which is exactly upon
+the top of the Smokies, but often missed it. The government [state]
+surveyor many years ago made two hacks upon the trees, but sometimes the
+linemen neglected to use their axes for half a mile or so. It took us
+three and one-half days to go, and two and one-half to return, and we
+arose with the morning star and worked hard all day. The last day and a
+half, going, there was nothing to guide us but the old hacks.
+
+"Equipped with government maps, a good compass, and a little conceit, I
+thought I could follow the boundary-line. In fact, at one time we
+intended to go through without a guide. A trail that runs through
+blackberry bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then there
+was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists growing thickly upon the
+ground as tomato vines, curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like
+a field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one place we
+walked fully a quarter of a mile over the tops of laurel bushes and
+these were ten or twelve feet in height, but blown over one way by the
+wind. Much of the trail was along rocky edges, sometimes but six inches
+or so wide, but almost straight down on both sides for hundreds of feet.
+One night, delayed by lack of water, we did not camp till dark, and,
+finding a smooth spot, lay down with a small log on each side to hold us
+from rolling out of bed. When daylight came we found that, had we rolled
+over the logs, my partner would have dropped 500 feet into Tennessee and
+I would have dropped as far into North Carolina, unless some friendly
+tree top had caught us. Sometimes the mountain forked, and these ridges,
+concealed by the balsams, would not be seen. Then there were round
+knobs--and who can tell where the highest ridge lies on a round mountain
+or a ball? My woolen shirt was torn off to the shoulders, and my
+partner, who had started out with corduroys, stayed in the brush until I
+got him a pair of overalls from camp."
+
+Even to the west of Clingman a stranger is likely to find some
+desperately rough travel if he should stray from the trail that follows
+the divide. It is easy going for anyone in fair weather, but when cloud
+settles on the mountain, as it often does without warning, it may be so
+thick that one cannot see a tree ten feet away. Under such circumstances
+I have myself floundered from daylight till dark through heart-breaking
+laurel thickets, and without a bite to eat, not knowing whither I was
+going except that it was toward the Little Tennessee River.
+
+In 1906 I spent the summer in a herders' hut on top of the divide, just
+west of the Locust Ridge (miscalled Chestnut Ridge on the map), about
+six miles east of Thunderhead. This time I had a partner, and we had a
+glorious three months of it, nearly a mile above sea-level, and only
+half a day's climb from the nearest settlement. One day I was alone,
+Andy having gone down to Medlin for the mail. It had rained a good
+deal--in fact, there was a shower nearly every day throughout the
+summer, the only semblance of a dry season in the Smokies being the
+autumn and early winter. The nights were cold enough for fires and
+blankets, even in our well-chinked cabin.
+
+Well, I had finished my lonesome dinner, and was washing up, when I saw
+a man approaching. This was an event, for we seldom saw other men than
+our two selves. He was a lame man, wearing an iron extension on one
+foot, and he hobbled with a cane. He looked played-out and gaunt. I met
+him outside. He smiled as though I looked good to him, and asked with
+some eagerness, "Can I buy something to eat here?"
+
+"No," I answered, "you can't buy anything here"--how his face
+fell!--"but I'll give you the best we have, and you're welcome."
+
+Then you should have seen that smile!
+
+He seemed to have just enough strength left to drag himself into the
+hut. I asked no questions, though wondering what a cripple, evidently a
+gentleman, though in rather bad repair, was doing on top of the Smoky
+Mountains. It was plain that he had spent more than one night
+shelterless in the cold rain, and that he was quite famished. While I
+was baking the biscuit and cooking some meat, he told his story. This is
+the short of it:
+
+"I am a Canadian, McGill University man, electrician. My company sent me
+to Cincinnati. I got a vacation of a couple of weeks, and thought I'd
+take a pedestrian tour. I can walk better than you'd think," and he
+tapped the short leg.
+
+I liked his grit.
+
+"I knew no place to go," he continued; "so I took a map and looked for
+what might be interesting country, not too far from Cincinnati. I picked
+out these mountains, got a couple of government topographical sheets,
+and, thinking they would serve like European ordnance maps, I had no
+fear of going astray. It was my plan to walk through to the Balsam
+Mountains, and so on to the Big Pigeon River. I went to Maryville,
+Tennessee, and there I was told that I would find a cabin every five or
+six miles along the summit from Thunderhead to the Balsams."
+
+I broke in abruptly: "Whoever told you that was either an impostor or an
+ignoramus. There are only four of these shacks on the whole Smoky range.
+Two of them, the Russell cabin and the Spencer place, you have already
+passed without knowing it. This is called the Hall cabin. None of these
+three are occupied save for a week or so in the fall when the cattle are
+being rounded up, or by chance, as my partner and I happen to be here
+now. Beyond this there is just one shack, at Siler's Meadow. It is down
+below the summit, hidden in timber, and you would never have seen it.
+Even if you had, you would have found it as bare as a last year's mouse
+nest, for nobody ever goes there except a few bear-hunters. From there
+onward for forty miles is an uninhabited wilderness so rough that you
+could not make seven miles a day in it to save your life, even if you
+knew the course; and there is no trail at all. Those government maps
+are good and reliable to show the _approaches_ to this wild country, but
+where you need them most they are good for nothing."
+
+
+[Illustration: The Bears' Home--Laurel and Rhododendron]
+
+
+"Then," said he, "if I had missed your cabin I would have starved to
+death, for I depended on finding a house to the eastward, and would have
+followed the trail till I dropped. I have been out in the laurel
+thickets, now, three days and two nights; so nothing could have induced
+me to leave this trail, once I found it, or until I could see out to a
+house on one side or other of the mountain."
+
+"You would see no house on either side from here to beyond Guyot, about
+forty miles. Had you no rations at all?"
+
+"I traveled light, expecting to find entertainment among the natives.
+Here is what I have left."
+
+He showed me a crumpled buckwheat flapjack, a pinch of tea, and a couple
+of ounces of brandy.
+
+"I was saving them for the last extremity; have had nothing to eat since
+yesterday morning. Drink the brandy, please; it came from Montreal."
+
+"No, my boy, that liquor goes down your own throat instanter. You're the
+chap that needs it. This coffee will boil now in a minute. I won't give
+you all the food you want, for it wouldn't be prudent; but by and by you
+shall have a bellyful."
+
+Then, as well as he could, he sketched the route he had followed. Where
+the trail from Tennessee crosses from Thunderhead to Haw Gap he had
+swerved off from the divide, and he discovered his error somewhere in
+the neighborhood of Blockhouse. There, instead of retracing his steps,
+he sought a short-cut by plunging down to the headwaters of Haw Creek,
+thus worming deeper and deeper into the devil's nest. One more day would
+have finished him. When I told him that the trip from Clingman to Guyot
+would be hard work for a party of experienced mountaineers, and that it
+would probably take them a week, during which time they would have to
+pack all supplies on their own backs, he agreed that his best course
+would be down into Carolina and out to the railroad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of animal life in the mountains I was most entertained by the raven.
+This extraordinary bird was the first creature Noah liberated from the
+ark--he must have known, even at that early period of nature study, that
+it was the most sagacious of all winged things. Or perhaps Noah and the
+raven did not get on well together and he rid himself of the pest at
+first opportunity. Doubtless there could have been no peace aboard a
+craft that harbored so inquisitive and talkative a fowl. Anyway, the
+wild raven has been superlatively shy of man ever since the flood.
+
+Probably there is no place south of Labrador where our raven (_Corvus
+corax principalis_) is seen so often as in the Smokies; and yet, even
+here, a man may haunt the tops for weeks without sight or sound of the
+ebon mystery--then, for a few days, they will be common. On the
+southeast side of the Locust Ridge, opposite Huggins's Hell, between
+Bone Valley and the main fork of Hazel Creek, there is a "Raven's Cliff"
+where they winter and breed, using the same nests year after year.
+Occasionally one is trapped, with bloody groundhog for bait; but I have
+yet to meet a man who has succeeded in shooting one.
+
+If the raven's body be elusive his tongue assuredly is not. No other
+animal save man has anything like his vocal range. The raven croaks,
+clucks, caws, chuckles, squalls, pleads, "pooh-poohs," grunts, barks,
+mimics small birds, hectors, cajoles--yes, pulls a cork, whets a scythe,
+files a saw--with his throat. As is well known, ravens can be taught
+human speech, like parrots; and I am told they show the same preference
+for bad words--which, I think, is quite in character with their
+reputation as thieves and butchers. However, I may be prejudiced, seeing
+that the raven's favorite dainties for his menu are the eyes of living
+fawns and lambs.
+
+A stranger in these mountains will be surprised at the apparent scarcity
+of game animals. It is not unusual for one to hunt all day in an
+absolute wilderness, where he sees never a fresh track of man, and not
+get a shot at anything fit to eat. The cover is so dense that one
+still-hunting (going without dogs) has poor chance of spying the game
+that lurks about him; and there really is little of it by comparison
+with such huntings fields as the Adirondacks, Maine, Canada, where game
+has been conserved for many years. It used to be the same up there. The
+late W. J. Stillman, writing in 1877 of the Maine woods, said:
+
+     "The most striking feature of the forest, after one has become
+     habituated to the gloom, the pathlessness, and the apparent
+     impenetrability of the screen it forms around him, is the absence
+     of animal life. You may wander for hours without seeing a living
+     creature.... One thinks of the woods and the wild beasts; yet in
+     all the years of my wilderness living I can catalogue the wild
+     creatures other than squirrels, grouse, and small birds (never
+     plenty, generally very rare) which I have accidentally encountered
+     and seen while wandering for hunting or mere pastime in the wild
+     forest; one deer, one porcupine, one marten (commonly called
+     sable), and maybe half a dozen hares. You may walk hours and not
+     see a living creature larger than a fly, for days together and not
+     see a grouse, a squirrel, or a bird larger than the Canada jay....
+     Lands running with game are like those flowing with milk and honey;
+     and when the sporting books tell you that game is abundant, don't
+     imagine that you are assured from starvation thereby. I have been
+     reduced, in a country where deer were swarming, to live several
+     days together on corn meal."
+
+
+It is much the same to-day in our Appalachian wilderness, where no
+protection worthy the name has ever been afforded the game and fish
+since Indian times. There is a class of woods-loafers, very common here,
+that ranges the forest at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or
+"hog rifles," killing bearing females as well as legitimate game,
+fishing at night, even using dynamite in the streams; and so, in spite
+of the fact that there is no better game harborage granted by Nature on
+our continent than the Carolina mountains, the deer are all but
+exterminated in most districts, turkeys and even squirrels are rather
+scarce, and good trout fishing is limited to stocked waters or streams
+flowing through virgin forest. The only game animal that still holds his
+own is the black bear, and he endures in few places other than the
+roughest districts, such as that southwest of the Sugarland Mountains,
+where laurel and cliffs daunt all but the hardiest of men.
+
+The only venomous snakes in the mountains are rattlers and copperheads,
+the former common, the latter rare. The chance of being bitten by one is
+about as remote as that of being struck by lightning--either accident
+_might_ happen, of course. The mountaineers have an absurd notion that
+the little lizard so common in the hills is rank "pizen." Oddly enough,
+they call it a "scorpion."
+
+From those two pests of the North Woods, black-flies and mosquitoes, the
+Smokies are mercifully exempt. At least there are no mosquitoes that
+bite or sting, except down in the river valleys where they have been
+introduced by railroad trains--and even there they are but a feeble
+folk. The reason is that in the mountains there is almost no standing
+water where they can breed.
+
+On the other hand, the common house-fly is extraordinarily numerous and
+persistent--a daily curse, even on top of Smoky. I imagine this is due
+to the wet climate, as in Ireland. Minute gnats (the "punkies" or
+"no-see-ums" of the North) are also offensively present in trout-fishing
+time. And every cabin is alive with fleas. A hundred nights I have
+anointed myself with citronella from head to foot, and outsmelt a cheap
+barber-shop, to escape their plague. In a tent, and without dogs, one
+can be immune.
+
+In most years there are very few chiggers, except on pine ridges. They
+are worse along rivers than in the mountains. The ticks of this country
+are not numerous, and seldom fasten on man.
+
+The climate of the Carolina mountains is pleasantly cool in summer. Even
+at low altitudes (1,600 to 2,000 feet) the nights generally are
+refreshing. It may be hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. The
+air is drier (less relative humidity) than in the lowlands,
+notwithstanding that there is greater rainfall here than elsewhere in
+the United States outside of Florida and the Puget Sound country. The
+annual rainfall varies a great deal according to locality, being least
+at Asheville (42 inches) and greatest on the southeastern slope of the
+Blue Ridge, where as much as 105 inches has been recorded in a year. The
+average rainfall of the whole region is 73 inches a year.[2]
+
+In general the mornings are apt to be lowery, with fogs hanging low
+until, say, 9 o'clock, so that one cannot predict weather for the day.
+Heavy dews remain on the bushes until about the same hour.
+
+The winters are short. What Northerners would call cold weather is not
+expected until Christmas, and generally it is gone by the end of
+February. Snow sometimes falls on the higher mountains by the first of
+October, and the last snow may linger there until April (exceptionally
+it falls in May). Tornadoes are unknown here, but sometimes a hurricane
+will sweep the upper ranges. On April 19, 1900, a blizzard from the
+northwest struck the Smokies. In twenty minutes everything was frozen.
+At Siler's Meadow seventeen cattle climbed upon each other for warmth
+and froze to death in a solid hecatomb. A herdsman who was out at the
+time, and narrowly escaped a similar fate, assured me that "that was the
+beatenest snowstorm ever I seen." In the valleys there may be a few days
+in January and February when the mercury drops to zero or a few
+degrees lower. On the high peaks, of course, the winter cold often is
+intense, and on the sunless north side of Clingman there are overhangs
+or crevices where a little ice may be found the year around.
+
+
+[Illustration: The old copper mine]
+
+
+Undoubtedly there is vast mineral wealth hidden in the Carolina
+mountains. A greater variety of minerals has been found here than in any
+other State save Colorado. But, for the present, it is a hard country to
+prospect in, owing to the thick covering of the forest floor. Not only
+is the underbrush very dense, but beneath it there generally is a thick
+stratum of clay overlaying the rocks, even on steep slopes. Gold has
+been found in numberless places, but finely disseminated. I do not know
+a locality in the mountains proper where a working vein has been
+discovered. At my cabin I did just enough panning to get a notion that
+if I could stand working in icy water ten hours a day I might average a
+dollar in yellow dust by it. The adjacent copper mine carries
+considerable gold. Silver and lead are not common, so far as known, but
+there are many good copper and iron properties. Gems are mined
+profitably in several of the western counties. The corundum, mica, talc,
+and monazite are, I believe, unexcelled in the United States. Building
+stone is abundant, and there is fine marble in various places. Kaolin is
+shipped out in considerable quantities. The rocks chiefly are gneisses,
+granites, metamorphosed marbles, quartzites, and slates, all of them far
+too old to bear fossils or coal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES
+
+
+"Git up, pup! you've scrouged right in hyur in front of the fire. You
+Dred! what makes you so blamed contentious?"
+
+Little John shoved both dogs into a corner, and strove to scrape some
+coals from under a beech forestick that glowed almost hot enough to melt
+brass.
+
+"This is the wust coggled-up fire I ever seed, to fry by. Bill, hand me
+some Old Ned from that suggin o' mine."
+
+A bearded hunchback reached his long arm to a sack that hung under our
+rifles, drew out a chuck of salt pork, and began slicing it with his
+jackknife. On inquiry I learned that "Old Ned" is merely slang for fat
+pork, but that "suggin" or "sujjit" (the _u_ pronounced like _oo_ in
+look) is true mountain dialect for a pouch, valise, or carryall, its
+etymology being something to puzzle over.
+
+Four dogs growled at each other under a long bunk of poles and hay that
+spanned one side of our cabin. The fire glared out upon the middle of an
+unfloored and windowless room. Deep shadows clung to the walls and
+benches, charitably concealing much dirt and disorder left by previous
+occupants, much litter of our own contributing.
+
+At last we were on a saddle of the divide, a mile above sea-level, in a
+hut built years ago for temporary lodgment of cattle-men herding on the
+grassy "balds" of the Smokies. A sagging clapboard roof covered its two
+rooms and the open space between them that we called our "entry." The
+State line between North Carolina and Tennessee ran through this
+uninclosed hallway. The Carolina room had a puncheon floor and a
+clapboard table, also better bunks than its mate; but there had risen a
+stiff southerly gale that made the chimney smoke so abominably that we
+were forced to take quarters in the neighbor State.
+
+Granville lifted the lid from a big Dutch oven and reported "Bread's
+done."
+
+There was a flash in the frying-pan, a curse and a puff from Little
+John. The coffee-pot boiled over. We gathered about the hewn benches
+that served for tables, and sat _a la Turc_ upon the ground. For some
+time there was no sound but the gale without and the munching of
+ravenous men.
+
+"If this wind 'll only cease afore mornin', we'll git us a bear
+to-morrow."
+
+A powerful gust struck the cabin, by way of answer; a great roaring
+surged up from the gulf of Defeat, from Desolation, and from the other
+forks of Bone Valley--clamor of ten thousand trees struggling with the
+blast.
+
+"Hit's gittin' wusser."
+
+"Any danger of this roost being blown off the mountain?" I inquired.
+
+"Hit's stood hyur twenty year through all the storms; I reckon it can
+stand one more night of it."
+
+"A man couldn't walk upright, outside the cabin," I asserted, thinking
+of the St. Louis tornado, in which I had lain flat on my belly, clinging
+to an iron post.
+
+The hunchback turned to me with a grave face. "I've seed hit blow, here
+on top o' Smoky, till a hoss couldn't stand up agin it. You'll spy,
+to-morrow, whar several trees has been wind-throwed and busted to
+kindlin'."
+
+I recalled that several, in the South, means many--"a good many," as our
+own tongues phrase it.
+
+"Oh, shucks! Bill Cope," put in "Doc" Jones, "whut do you-uns know about
+windstorms? Now, _I've_ hed some experiencin' up hyur that 'll do to tell
+about. You remember the big storm three year ago, come grass, when the
+cattle all huddled up a-top o' each other and friz in one pile, solid."
+
+Bill grunted an affirmative.
+
+"Wal, sir, I was a-herdin', over at the Spencer Place, and was out on
+Thunderhead when the wind sprung up. Thar come one turrible vyg'rous
+blow that jest nacherally lifted the ground. I went up in the sky, my
+coat ripped off, and I went a-sailin' end-over-end."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes. About half an hour later, I lit _spang_ in the mud, way down
+yander in Tuckaleechee Cove--yes, sir: ten mile as the crow flies, and a
+mile deeper 'n trout-fish swim."
+
+There was silence for a moment. Then Little John spoke up: "I mind about
+that time, Doc; but I disremember which buryin'-ground they-all planted
+ye in."
+
+"Planted! _Me?_ Huh! But I had one tormentin' time findin' my hat!"
+
+The cabin shook under a heavier blast, to match Bill's yarn.
+
+"Old Wind-maker's blowin' liars out o' North Car'lina. Hang on to yer
+hat, Doc! Whoop! hear 'em a-comin'!"
+
+"Durn this blow, anyhow! No bear 'll cross the mountain sich a night as
+this."
+
+"Can't we hunt down on the Carolina side?" I asked.
+
+"That's whar we're goin' to drive; but hit's no use if the bear don't
+come over."
+
+"How is that? Do they sleep in one State and eat in the other?"
+
+"Yes: you see, the Tennessee side of the mountain is powerful steep and
+laurely, so 't man nor dog cain't git over it in lots o' places; that's
+whar the bears den. But the mast, sich as acorns and beech and hickory
+nuts, is mostly on the Car'lina side; that's whar they hafter come to
+feed. So, when it blows like this, they stay at home and suck their paws
+till the weather clars."
+
+"So we'll have to do, at this rate."
+
+"I'll go see whut the el-e-ments looks like."
+
+We arose from our squatting postures. John opened the little clapboard
+door, which swung violently backward as another gust boomed against the
+cabin. Dust and hot ashes scattered in every direction. The dogs sprang
+up, one encroached upon another, and they flew at each other's throats.
+They were powerful beasts, dangerous to man as well as to the brutes
+they were trained to fight; but John was their master, and he soon
+booted them into surly subjection.
+
+"The older dog don't ginerally raise no ruction; hit's the younger one
+that's ill," by which he meant vicious. "You, Coaly, you'll git some o'
+that meanness shuck outen you if you tackle an old she-bear to-morrow!"
+
+"Has the young dog ever fought a bear?"
+
+"No; he don't know nothin'; but I reckon he'll pick up some larnin' in
+the next two, three days."
+
+"Have these dogs got the Plott strain? I've been told that the Plott
+hounds are the best bear dogs in the country."
+
+"'Tain't so," snorted John. "The Plott curs are the best: that is, half
+hound, half cur--though what we-uns calls the cur, in this case, raelly
+comes from a big furrin dog that I don't rightly know the breed of.
+Fellers, you can talk as you please about a streak o' the cur spilin' a
+dog; but I know hit ain't so--not for bear fightin' in these mountains,
+whar you cain't foller up on hossback, but hafter do your own runnin'."
+
+"What is the reason, John?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership
+of some Backwoods Napoleon!"]
+
+
+"Waal, hit's like this: a plumb cur, of course, cain't foller a cold
+track--he just runs by sight; and he won't hang--he quits. But,
+t'other way, no hound 'll raelly fight a bear--hit takes a big severe
+dog to do that. Hounds has the best noses, and they'll run a bear all
+day and night, and the next day, too; but they won't never tree--they're
+afeared to close in. Now, look at them dogs o' mine. A cur ain't got no
+dew-claws--them dogs has. My dogs can foller ary trail, same's a hound;
+but they'll run right in on the varmint, snappin' and chawin' and
+worryin' him till he gits so mad you can hear his tushes pop half a
+mile. He cain't run away--he haster stop every bit, and fight. Finally
+he gits so tired and het up that he trees to rest hisself. Then we-uns
+ketches up and finishes him."
+
+"Mebbe you-uns don't know that a dew-clawed dog is snake-proof----"
+
+But somebody, thinking that dog-talk had gone far enough, produced a
+bottle of soothing-syrup that was too new to have paid tax. Then we
+discovered that there was musical talent, of a sort, in Little John. He
+cut a pigeon-wing, twirled around with an imaginary banjo, and sang in a
+quaint minor:
+
+  Did you _ever_ see the devil,
+  With his _pitchfork_ and ladle,
+  And his _old_ iron shovel,
+  And his old gourd head?
+    O, I _will_ go to meetin',
+    And I _will_ go to meetin',
+    Yes, I _will_ go to meetin',
+    In an old tin pan.
+
+
+Other songs followed, with utter irrelevance--mere snatches from
+"ballets" composed, mainly, by the mountaineers themselves, though some
+dated back to a long-forgotten age when the British ancestors of these
+Carolina woodsmen were battling with lance and long-bow. It was one of
+modern and local origin that John was singing when there came a
+diversion from without--
+
+  La-a-ay down, boys,
+    Le's take a nap:
+  Thar's goin' to be trouble
+    In the Cumberland Gap--
+
+
+Our ears were stunned by one sudden thundering crash. The roof rose
+visibly, as though pushed upward from within. In an instant we were
+blinded by moss and dried mud--the chinking blown from between the logs
+of our shabby cabin. Dred and Coaly cowered as though whipped, while
+"Doc's" little hound slunk away in the keen misery of fear. We men
+looked at each other with lowered eyelids and the grim smile that
+denotes readiness, though no special eagerness, for dissolution. Beyond
+the "gant-lot" we could hear trees and limbs popping like skirmishers in
+action.
+
+Then that tidal wave of air swept by. The roof settled again with only a
+few shingles missing. We went to "redding up." Squalls broke against the
+mountainside, hither and yon, like the hammer of Thor testing the
+foundations of the earth. But they were below us. Here, on top, there
+was only the steady drive of a great surge of wind; and speech was
+possible once more.
+
+"Fellers, you want to mark whut you dream about, to-night: hit'll shore
+come true to-morrow."
+
+"Yes: but you mustn't tell whut yer dream was till the hunt's over, or
+it'll spile the charm."
+
+There ensued a grave discussion of dream-lore, in which the illiterates
+of our party declared solemn faith. If one dreamt of blood, he would
+surely see blood the next day. Another lucky sign for a hunter was to
+dream of quarreling with a woman, for that meant a she-bear; it was
+favorable to dream of clear water, but muddy water meant trouble.
+
+The wind died away. When we went out for a last observation of the
+weather we found the air so clear that the lights of Knoxville were
+plainly visible, in the north-north west, thirty-two miles in an air
+line. Not another light was to be seen on earth, although in some
+directions we could scan for nearly a hundred miles. The moon shone
+brightly. Things looked rather favorable for the morrow, after all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Brek-k-k-_fust_!"
+
+I awoke to a knowledge that somebody had built a roaring fire and was
+stirring about. Between the cabin logs one looked out upon a starry sky
+and an almost pitch-dark world. What did that pottering vagabond mean by
+arousing us in the middle of the night? But I was hungry. Everybody half
+arose on elbows and blinked about. Then we got up, each after his
+fashion, except one scamp who resumed snoring.
+
+"Whar's that brekfust you're yellin' about?"
+
+"Hit's for you-uns to help _git_! I knowed I couldn't roust ye no other
+way. Here, you, go down to the spring and fetch water. Rustle out, boys;
+we've got to git a soon start if you want bear brains an' liver for
+supper."
+
+The "soon start" tickled me into good humor.
+
+Our dogs were curled together under the long bunk, having popped indoors
+as soon as the way was opened. Somebody trod on Coaly's tail. Coaly
+snapped Dred. Instantly there was action between the four. It is
+interesting to observe what two or three hundred pounds of dog can do to
+a ramshackle berth with a man on top of it. Poles and hay and ragged
+quilts flew in every direction. Sleepy Matt went down in the midst of
+the melee, swearing valiantly. I went out and hammered ice out of the
+wash-basin while Granville and John quelled the riot. Presently our
+frying-pans sputtered and the huge coffee-pot began to get up steam.
+
+"Waal, who dreamt him a good dream?"
+
+"I did," affirmed the writer. "I dreamt that I had an old colored woman
+by the throat and was choking dollars out of her mouth----"
+
+"Good la!" exclaimed four men in chorus; "you hadn't orter a-told."
+
+"Why? Wasn't that a lovely dream?"
+
+"Hit means a she-bear, shore as a cap-shootin' gun; but you've done
+spiled it all by tellin'. Mebbe somebody'll git her to-day, but _you_
+won't--your chanct is ruined."
+
+So the reader will understand why, in this veracious narrative, I cannot
+relate any heroic exploits of my own in battling with Ursus Major. And
+so you, ambitious one, when you go into the Smokies after that long-lost
+bear, remember these two cardinal points of the Law:
+
+     (1) Dream that you are fighting some poor old colored woman. (That
+     is easy: the victuals you get will fix up your dream, all right.)
+     And--
+
+     (2) Keep your mouth shut about it.
+
+
+There was still no sign of rose-color in the eastern sky when we sallied
+forth. The ground, to use a mountaineer's expression, was "all spewed up
+with frost." Rime crackled underfoot and our mustaches soon stiffened in
+the icy wind.
+
+It was settled that Little John Cable and the hunchback Cope should take
+the dogs far down into Bone Valley and start the drive, leaving
+Granville, "Doc," Matt, and myself to picket the mountain. I was given a
+stand about half a mile east of the cabin, and had but a vague notion of
+where the others went.
+
+By jinks, it was cold! I built a little fire between the buttressing
+roots of a big mountain oak, but still my toes and fingers were numb.
+This was the 25th of November, and we were at an altitude where
+sometimes frost forms in July. The other men were more thinly clad than
+I, and with not a stitch of wool beyond their stockings; but they seemed
+to revel in the keen air. I wasted some pity on Cope, who had no
+underwear worthy of the name; but afterwards I learned that he would not
+have worn more clothes if they had been given him. Many a night my
+companions had slept out on the mountain without blanket or shelter,
+when the ground froze and every twig in the forest was coated with rime
+from the winter fog.
+
+Away out yonder beyond the mighty bulk of Clingman Dome, which, black
+with spruce and balsam, looked like a vast bear rising to contemplate
+the northern world, there streaked the first faint, nebulous hint of
+dawn. Presently the big bear's head was tipped with a golden crown
+flashing against the scarlet fires of the firmament, and the earth
+awoke.
+
+A rustling some hundred yards below me gave signal that the gray
+squirrels were on their way to water. Out of a tree overhead hopped a
+mountain "boomer" (red squirrel), and down he came, eyed me, and
+stopped. Cocking his head to one side he challenged peremptorily: "Who
+are you? Stump? Stump? Not a stump. What the deuce!"
+
+I moved my hand.
+
+"Lawk--the booger-man! Run, run, run!"
+
+Somewhere from the sky came a strange, half-human note, as of someone
+chiding: "_Wal_-lace, _Wal_-lace, _Wat_!" I could get no view for the
+trees. Then the voice flexibly changed to a deep-toned "Co-_logne_,
+Co-_logne_, Co-_logne_," that rang like a bell through the forest
+aisles.
+
+Two names uttered distinctly from the air! Two scenes conjured in a
+breath, vivid but unrelated as in dreams: Wallace--an iron-bound
+Scottish coast; Cologne--tall spires, and cliffs along the Rhine! What
+magic had flashed such pictures upon a remote summit of the Smoky
+Mountains?
+
+The weird speaker sailed into view--a raven. Forward it swept with great
+speed of ebon wings, fairly within gunshot for one teasing moment. Then,
+as if to mock my gaping stupor, it hurtled like a hawk far into the safe
+distance, whence it flung back loud screams of defiance and chuckles of
+derision.
+
+As the morning drew on, I let the fire die to ashes and basked lazily in
+the sun. Not a sound had I heard from the dogs. My hoodoo was working
+malignly. Well, let it work. I was comfortable now, and that old bear
+could go to any other doom she preferred. It was pleasant enough to
+lie here alone in the forest and be free! Aye, it was good to be alive,
+and to be far, far away from the broken bottles and old tin cans of
+civilization.
+
+
+[Illustration: "By and by up they came, carrying the Bear on a trimmed
+sapling"]
+
+
+For many a league to the southward clouds covered all the valleys in
+billows of white, from which rose a hundred mountain tops, like islands
+in a tropic ocean. My fancy sailed among and beyond them, beyond the
+horizon's rim, even unto those far seas that I had sailed in my youth,
+to the old times and the old friends that I should never see again.
+
+But a forenoon is long-drawn-out when one has breakfasted before dawn,
+and has nothing to do but sit motionless in the woods and watch and
+listen. I got to fingering my rifle trigger impatiently and wishing that
+a wild Thanksgiving gobbler might blunder into view. Squirrels made
+ceaseless chatter all around my stand. Large hawks shrilled by me within
+tempting range, whistling like spent bullets. A groundhog sat up on a
+log and whistled, too, after a manner of his own. He was so near that I
+could see his nose wiggle. A skunk waddled around for twenty minutes,
+and once came so close that I thought he would nibble my boot. I was
+among old mossy beeches, scaled with polyphori, and twisted into
+postures of torture by their battles with the storms. Below, among
+chestnuts and birches, I could hear the _t-wee, t-wee_ of "joree-birds"
+(towhees), which winter in the valleys. Incessantly came the
+_chip-chip-cluck_ of ground squirrels, the saucy bark of the grays, and
+great chirruping among the "boomers," which had ceased swearing and were
+hard at work.
+
+Far off on my left a rifle cracked. I pricked up and listened intently,
+but there was never a yelp from a dog. Since it is a law of the chase to
+fire at nothing smaller than turkeys, lest big game be scared away, this
+shot might mean a gobbler. I knew that Matt Hyde could not, to save his
+soul, sit ten minutes on a stand without calling turkeys (and he _could_
+call them, with his unassisted mouth, better than anyone I ever heard
+perform with leaf or wing-bone or any other contrivance).
+
+Thus the slow hours dragged along. I yearned mightily to stretch my
+legs. Finally, being certain that no drive would approach my stand that
+day, I ambled back to the hut and did a turn at dinner-getting. Things
+were smoking, and smelt good, by the time four of our men turned up, all
+of them dog-tired and disappointed, but stoical.
+
+"That pup Coaly chased off atter a wildcat," blurted John. "We held the
+old dogs together and let him rip. Then Dred started a deer. It was that
+old buck that everybody's shot at, and missed, this three year back. I'd
+believe he's a hant if 't wasn't for his tracks--they're the biggest I
+ever seen. He must weigh two hunderd and fifty. But he's a foxy cuss.
+Tuk right down the bed o' Desolation, up the left prong of Roaring Fork,
+right through the Devil's Race-path (how a deer can git through thar I
+don't see!), crossed at the Meadow Gap, went down Eagle Creek, and by
+now he's in the Little Tennessee. That buck, shorely to God, has wings!"
+
+We were at table in the Carolina room when Matt Hyde appeared. Sure
+enough, he bore a turkey hen.
+
+"I was callin' a gobbler when this fool thing showed up. I fired a shoot
+as she riz in the air, but only bruk her wing. She made off on her legs
+like the devil whoppin' out fire. I run, an' she run. Guess I run her
+half a mile through all-fired thickets. She piped '_Quit--quit_,' but I
+said, 'I'll see you in hell afore I quit!' and the chase resumed.
+Finally I knocked her over with a birch stob, and here we are."
+
+Matt ruefully surveyed his almost denuded legs, evidence of his chase.
+"Boys," said he, "I'm nigh breechless!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+None but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another
+drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was
+fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But
+the stamina of these "withey" little men was even more remarkable than
+their endurance of cold. After a small slice of fried pork, a chunk of
+half-baked johnny-cake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh
+as ever.
+
+What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some
+backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together!--some man like Daniel
+Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!
+
+I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought
+from home. After his first deep draught, Little John exclaimed:
+
+"Hah! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it!"
+
+I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.
+
+We took new stands; but the afternoon passed without incident to those
+of us on the mountain tops. I returned to camp about five o'clock, and
+was surprised to see three of our men lugging across the "gant-lot"[3]
+toward the cabin a small female bear.
+
+"Hyur's yer old nigger woman," shouted John.
+
+The hunters showed no elation--in fact, they looked sheepish--and I
+suspected a nigger in the woodpile.
+
+"How's this? I didn't hear any drive."
+
+"There wa'n't none."
+
+"Then where did you get your bear?"
+
+"In one of Wit Hensley's traps, dum him! Boys, I wish t' we _hed_
+roasted the temper outen them trap-springs, like we talked o' doin'."
+
+"Was the bear alive?"
+
+"Live as a hot coal. See the pup's head!"
+
+I examined Coaly, who looked sick. The flesh was torn from his lower jaw
+and hung down a couple of inches. Two holes in the top of his head
+showed where the bear's tusks had tried to crack his skull.
+
+"When the other dogs found her, he rushed right in. She hadn't been
+trapped more'n a few hours, and she larned Coaly somethin' about the
+bear business."
+
+"Won't this spoil him for hunting hereafter?"
+
+"Not if he has his daddy's and mammy's grit. We'll know by to-morrow
+whether he's a shore-enough bear dog; for I've larned now whar they're
+crossin'--seed sign a-plenty and it's spang fraish. Coaly, old boy!
+you-uns won't be so feisty and brigaty after this, will ye!"
+
+"John, what do those two words mean?"
+
+"_Good_ la! whar was you fotch up? Them's common. They mean nigh about
+the same thing, only there's a differ. When I say that Doc Jones thar is
+brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he's stuck on hisself and
+wants to show off----"
+
+"And John Cable's sulkin' around with his nose out o' jint," interjected
+"Doc."
+
+"Feisty," proceeded the interpreter, "feisty means when a feller's
+allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the
+preacher comes. You know a feist is one o' them little bitty dogs that
+ginerally runs on three legs and pretends a whole lot."
+
+All of us were indignant at the setter of the trap. It had been hidden
+in a trail, with no sign to warn a man from stepping into it. In
+Tennessee, I was told, it is a penitentiary offense to set out a bear
+trap. We agreed that a similar law ought to be passed as soon as
+possible in North Carolina.
+
+"It's only two years ago," said Granville to me, "that Jasper
+Millington, an old man living on the Tennessee side, started acrost the
+mountain to get work at the Everett mine, where you live. Not fur from
+where we are now, he stepped into a bear trap that was hid in the
+leaves, like this one. It broke his leg, and he starved to death in it."
+
+Despite our indignation meeting, it was decided to carry the trapped
+bear's hide to Hensley, and for us to use only the meat as recompense
+for trouble, to say nothing of risk to life and limb. Such is the
+mountaineers' regard for property rights!
+
+The animal we had ingloriously won was undersized, weighing scant 175
+pounds. The average weight of Smoky Mountain bears is not great, but
+occasionally a very large beast is killed. Matt Hyde told us that he
+killed one on the Welch Divide in 1901, the meat of which, dressed,
+without the hide, weighed 434 pounds, and the hide "squared eight feet"
+when stretched for drying. "Doc" Jones killed a bear that was "kivered
+with fat, five inches thick."
+
+Afterwards I took pains to ask the most famous bear hunters of our
+region what were the largest bears they had personally killed. Uncle
+Jimmy Crawford, of the Balsam Mountains, estimated his largest at 500
+pounds gross, and the hide of another that he had killed weighed forty
+pounds after three days' drying. Quill Rose, of Eagle Creek, said that,
+after stripping the hide from one of his bears, he took the fresh skin
+by the ears and raised it as high as he could reach above his head, and
+that four inches of the butt end of the hide (not legs) trailed on the
+ground. "And," he added severely, "thar's no lie about it." Quill is six
+feet one and one-half inches tall. Black Bill Walker, of the middle
+prong of Little River (Tennessee side), told me "The biggest one I ever
+saw killed had a hide that measured ten feet from nose to rump,
+stretched for drying. The biggest I ever killed myself measured nine and
+a half feet, same way, and weighed a good four hundred net, which,
+allowin' for hide, blood, and entrails, would run full five hunderd live
+weight."
+
+
+[Illustration: Skinning a frozen bear]
+
+
+Within the past two years two bears of about 500 pounds each have been
+killed in Swain and Graham counties, the Cables getting one of them.
+The veteran hunters that I have named have killed their hundreds of
+bears and are men superior to silly exaggeration. In the Smoky Mountains
+the black bear, like most of the trees, attains its fullest development,
+and that it occasionally reaches a weight of 500 pounds when "hog fat"
+is beyond reasonable doubt, though the average would not be more than
+half that weight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We spent the evening in debate as to where the next drive should be
+made. Some favored moving six miles eastward, to the old mining shack at
+Siler's Meadow, and trying the headwaters of Forney's Creek, around Rip
+Shin Thicket and the Gunstick Laurel, driving towards Clingman Dome and
+over into the bleak gulf, southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, that I
+had named Godforsaken--a title that stuck. We knew there were bears in
+that region, though it was a desperately rough country to hunt in.
+
+But John and the hunchback had found "sign" in the opposite direction.
+Bears were crossing from Little River in the neighborhood of Thunderhead
+and Briar Knob, coming up just west of the Devil's Court House and
+"using" around Block House, Woolly Ridge, Bear Pen, and thereabouts.
+The motion carried, and we adjourned to bed.
+
+We breakfasted on bear meat, the remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, and
+wheat bread shortened with bear's grease until it was light as a
+feather; and I made tea. It was the first time that Little John ever saw
+"store tea." He swallowed some of it as if it had been boneset, under
+the impression that it was some sort of "yerb" that would be good for
+his insides. Without praising its flavor, he asked what it had cost,
+and, when I told him "a dollar a pound," reckoned that it was "rich
+man's medicine"; said he preferred dittany or sassafras or goldenrod.
+"Doc" Jones opined that it "looked yaller," and he even affirmed that it
+"tasted yaller."
+
+"Waal, people," exclaimed Matt, "I 'low I've done growed a bit, atter
+that mess o' meat. Le's be movin'."
+
+It was a hard pull for me, climbing up the rocky approach to Briar Knob.
+This was my first trip to the main divide, and my heart was not yet used
+to mountain climbing.
+
+The boys were anxious for me to get a shot. I was paying them nothing;
+it was share-and-share alike; but their neighborly kindness moved them
+to do their best for the outlander.
+
+So they put me on what was probably the best stand for the day. It was
+above the Fire-scald, a brule or burnt-over space on the steep southern
+side of the ridge between Briar Knob and Laurel Top, overlooking the
+grisly slope of Killpeter. Here I could both see and hear an uncommonly
+long distance, and if the bear went either east or west I would have
+timely warning.
+
+This Fire-scald, by the way, is a famous place for wildcats. Once in a
+blue moon a lynx is killed in the highest zone of the Smokies, up among
+the balsams and spruces, where both the flora and fauna, as well as the
+climate, resemble those of the Canadian woods. Our native hunters never
+heard the word lynx, but call the animal a "catamount." Wolves and
+panthers used to be common here, but it is a long time since either has
+been killed in this region, albeit impressionable people see wolf tracks
+or hear a "pant'er" scream every now and then.
+
+I had shivered on the mountain top for a couple of hours, hearing only
+an occasional yelp from the dogs, which had been working in the thickets
+a mile or so below me, when suddenly there burst forth the devil of a
+racket.
+
+On came the chase, right in my direction. Presently I could distinguish
+the different notes: the deep bellow of old Dred, the hound-like baying
+of Rock and Coaly, and little Towse's feisty yelp.
+
+I thought that the bear might chance the comparatively open space of the
+Fire-scald, because there were still some ashes on the ground that would
+dust the dogs' nostrils and throw them off the scent. And such, I
+believe, was his intention. But the dogs caught up with him. They nipped
+him fore and aft. Time after time he shook them off; but they were true
+bear dogs, and, like Matt Hyde after the turkey, they knew no such word
+as quit.
+
+I took a last squint at my rifle sights, made sure there was a cartridge
+in the chamber, and then felt my ears grow as I listened. Suddenly the
+chase swerved at a right angle and took straight up the side of
+Saddle-back. Either the bear would tree, or he would try to smash on
+through to the low rhododendron of the Devil's Court House, where dogs
+who followed might break their legs. I girded myself and ran, "wiggling
+and wingling" along the main divide, and then came the steep pull up
+Briar Knob. As I was grading around the summit with all the lope that
+was left in me, I heard a rifle crack, half a mile down Saddle-back. Old
+"Doc" was somewhere in that vicinity. I halted to listen. Creation,
+what a rumpus! Then another shot. Then the warwhoop of the South, that
+we read about.
+
+By and by, up they came, John and Cope and "Doc," two at a time,
+carrying the bear on a trimmed sapling. Presently Hyde joined us, then
+came Granville, and we filed back to camp, where "Doc" told his story:
+
+"Boys, them dogs' eyes shined like new money. Coaly fit agin, all right,
+and got his tail bit. The bear div down into a sink-hole with the dogs
+a-top o' him. Soon's I could shoot without hittin' a dog, I let him have
+it. Thought I'd shot him through the head, but he fit on. Then I jumped
+down into the sink and kicked him loose from the dogs, or he'd a-killed
+Coaly. Waal, sir, he wa'n't hurt a bit--the ball jest glanced off his
+head. He riz an' knocked me down with his left paw, an' walked right
+over me, an' lit up the ridge. The dogs treed him in a minute. I went to
+shoot up at him, but my new hulls [cartridges] fit loose in this old
+chamber and this one drap [dropped] out, so the gun stuck. Had to git my
+knife out and fix hit. Then the dad-burned gun wouldn't stand roostered
+[cocked]; the feather-spring had jumped out o' place. But I held back
+with my thumb, and killed him anyhow.
+
+"Fellers," he added feelingly, "I wish t' my legs growed
+hind-side-fust."
+
+"_What_ fer?"
+
+"So 's 't I wouldn't bark my shins!"
+
+"Bears," remarked John, "is all left-handed. Ever note that? Hit's the
+left paw you wanter look out fer. He'd a-knocked somethin' out o' yer
+head if there'd been much in it, Doc."
+
+"Funny thing, but hit's true," declared Bill, "that a bear allers dies
+flat on his back, onless he's trapped."
+
+"So do men," said "Doc" grimly; "men who've been shot in battle. You go
+along a battlefield, right atter the action, and you'll find most o' the
+dead faces pintin' to the sky."
+
+"Bears is almost human, anyhow. A skinned bear looks like a great
+big-bodied man with long arms and stumpy legs."
+
+I did not relish this turn of the conversation, for we had two bears to
+skin immediately. The one that had been hung up over night was frozen
+solid, so I photographed her standing on her legs, as in life. When it
+came to skinning this beast the job was a mean one; a fellow had to drop
+out now and then to warm his fingers.
+
+The mountaineers have an odd way of sharing the spoils of the chase.
+They call it "stoking the meat," a use of the word _stoke_ that I have
+never heard elsewhere. The hide is sold, and the proceeds divided
+equally among the hunters, but the meat is cut up into as many pieces as
+there are partners in the chase; then one man goes indoors or behind a
+tree, and somebody at the carcass, laying his hand on a portion, calls
+out: "Whose piece is this?"
+
+"Granville Calhoun's," cries the hidden man, who cannot see it.
+
+"Whose is this?"
+
+"Bill Cope's."
+
+And so on down the line. Everybody gets what chance determines for him,
+and there can be no charges of unfairness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde
+protesting to the hunchback:
+
+"Durn you, Bill Cope, you're so cussed crooked a man cain't lay cluss
+enough to you to keep warm!"
+
+Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like
+rifle-shots from the intense frost.
+
+Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.
+
+"Night afore last," he said, "Bill dremp that he seed a lot o' fat meat
+layin' on the table; an' it done come true. Last night I dremp me one
+that never was knowed to fail yet. Now you see!"
+
+It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured
+much--standers as well as drivers--but not a rifle had spoken up to the
+time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.
+
+Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those
+cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a
+steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling
+the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling
+into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.
+
+
+[Illustration: "....Powerful steep and Laurely...."]
+
+
+"All this," I apostrophized, "shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast
+and fish. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth
+the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and
+disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to
+toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases;
+the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will
+
+  "'... Get me to some far-off land
+    Where higher mountains under heaven stand ...
+    Where other thunders roll amid the hills,
+    Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills
+  With other strains through other-shapen boughs.'"
+
+
+Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but "Doc." The old
+man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday's scrimmage, but
+complained only of "a touch o' rheumatiz." Just how this disease had
+left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.
+
+It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of
+sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet
+afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.
+
+About nine o'clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired
+signals, but there was no answer. The last we had known of the drivers
+was that they had been beyond Thunderhead, six miles of hard travel to
+the westward. There was fog on the mountain. We did some uneasy
+speculating. Then Granville and Matt took the lantern and set out for
+Briar Knob. "Doc" was too stiff for travel, and I, being at that time a
+stranger in the Smokies, would be of no use hunting amid clouds and
+darkness. "Doc" and I passed a dreary three hours. Finally, at midnight,
+my shots were answered, and soon the dogs came limping in. Dred had been
+severely bitten in the shoulders and Rock in the head. Coaly was bloody
+about the mouth, where his first day's wound had reopened. Then came the
+four men, empty-handed, it seemed, until John slapped a bear's "melt"
+(spleen) upon the table. He limped from a bruised hip.
+
+"That bear outsharped us and went around all o' you-uns. We follered him
+clar over to the Spencer Place, and then he doubled and come back on the
+fur side o' the ridge. He crossed through the laurel on the Devil's
+Court House and tuk down an almighty steep place. It was plumb night by
+that time. I fell over a rock clift twenty feet down, and if 't hadn't
+been for the laurel I'd a-bruk some bones. I landed right in the middle
+of them, bear and dogs, fightin' like gamecocks. The bear clim a tree.
+Bill sung out 'Is it fur down thar?' and I said 'Purty fur.' 'Waal, I'm
+a-comin',' says he; and with that he grabbed a laurel to swing hisself
+down by, but the stem bruk, and down he come suddent, to jine the music.
+Hit was so dark I couldn't see my gun barrel, and we wuz all tangled up
+in greenbriers as thick as ploughlines. I had to fire twiste afore he
+tumbled. Then Matt an' Granville come. The four of us tuk turn-about
+crawlin' up out o' thar with the bear on our back. Only one man could
+handle him at a time--and he'll go a good two hunderd, that bear. We
+gutted him, and left him near the top, to fotch in the mornin'. Fellers,
+I'm bodaciously tired out. This is the time I'd give half what I'm worth
+for a gallon o' liquor--and I'd promise the rest!"
+
+"You'd orter see what Coaly did to that varmint," said Bill. "He bit a
+hole under the fore leg, through hide and ha'r, clar into the holler, so
+t' you can stick your hand in and seize the bear's heart."
+
+"John, what was that dream of yours?"
+
+"I dremp I stole a feller's overcoat. Now d'ye see? That means a bear's
+hide."
+
+Coaly, three days ago, had been an inconsequential pup; but now he
+looked up into my eyes with the calm dignity that no fool or braggart
+can assume. He had been knighted. As he licked his wounds he was proud
+of them. "Scars of battle, sir. You may have your swagger ribbons and
+prize collars in the New York dog show, but _this_ for me!"
+
+Poor Coaly! after two more years of valiant service, he was to meet an
+evil fortune. In connection with it I will relate a queer coincidence:
+
+Two years after this hunt, a friend and I spent three summer months in
+this same old cabin on top of Smoky. When Andy had to return North he
+left with me, for sale, a .30-30 carbine, as he had more guns than he
+needed. I showed this carbine to Quill Rose, and the old hunter said: "I
+don't like them power-guns; you could shoot clar through a bear and kill
+your dog on the other side." The next day I sold the weapon to Granville
+Calhoun. Within a short time, word came from Granville's father that
+"Old Reelfoot" was despoiling his orchard. This Reelfoot was a large
+bear whose cunning had defied our best hunters for five or six years. He
+got his name from the fact that he "reeled" or twisted his hind feet in
+walking, as some horses do, leaving a peculiar track. This seems rather
+common among old bears, for I have known of several "reelfoots" in
+other, and widely separated, regions.
+
+Cable and his dogs were sent for. A drive was made, and the bear was
+actually caught within a few rods of old Mr. Calhoun's stable. His teeth
+were worn to the gums, and, as he could no longer kill hogs, he had come
+down to an apple diet. He was large-framed, but very poor. The only
+hunters on the spot were Granville, with the .30-30, and a northern
+lumberman named Hastings, with a Luger carbine. After two or three shots
+had wounded the bear, he rose on his hind feet and made for Granville. A
+.30-30 bullet went clear through the beast at the very instant that
+Coaly, who was unseen, jumped up on the log behind it, and the missile
+gave both animals their death wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MOONSHINE LAND
+
+
+I was hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new
+to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek
+valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron "slick,"
+and, to some extent, lost my bearings.
+
+After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a
+little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep
+cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the
+Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log
+huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or
+loft, and without a sawed board showing in its construction. A thin curl
+of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a
+mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut
+through the log wall. The stones of this fireplace were not even
+plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise
+the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent
+risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite
+each other. These, helped by wide crevices between the unchinked logs,
+served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw November
+air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had
+hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep
+in muck that reached to the doorsill, two pigs scampered out through the
+opposite door.
+
+Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as
+big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was
+toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor
+some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.
+
+I shivered as I looked at this midget, comparing her only garment, a
+torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter's garb that seemed none too
+warm for such a day as this.
+
+Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl,
+I chose the quickest way to reassure her by saluting in the vernacular:
+
+"Howdy?"
+
+"Howdy?" she gasped.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"Tom Kirby."
+
+"Kirby? Oh! yes, I know him--we've been hunting together. Is your father
+at home?"
+
+"No, he's out somewheres."
+
+"Where is your mother?"
+
+"She's in the field, up yan, gittin' roughness."
+
+I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. "Roughness," in
+mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.
+
+"How far is it to the next house?"
+
+"I don't know; maw, she knows."
+
+"All right; I'll find her."
+
+I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was
+walking away from me, and I conjectured that "maw's" feet were under it;
+so I hailed:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a
+bare-headed, bare-footed woman, coarse featured but of superb
+physique--one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of
+shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two
+without letting it down.
+
+
+[Illustration: Moonshine Still-House Hidden in the Laurel]
+
+
+She flushed, then paled, staring at me round-eyed--frightened, I
+thought, by this apparition of a stranger whose approach she had not
+detected. To these people of the far backwoods everyone from outside
+their mountains is a doubtful character at best.
+
+However, Mistress Kirby quickly recovered her aplomb. Her mouth
+straightened to a thin slit. She planted herself squarely across my
+path, now regarding me with contracted lids and a hard glint, till I
+felt fairly bayoneted by those steel-gray eyes.
+
+"Good-morning. Is Mr. Kirby about?" I inquired.
+
+There was no answer. Instead, the thin slit opened and let out a yell of
+almost yodel quality, penetrating as a warwhoop--a yell that would carry
+near half a mile. I wondered what she meant by this; but she did not
+enlighten me by so much as a single word. It was puzzling, not to say
+disconcerting; but, charging it to the custom of a country that still
+was new to me, I found my tongue again, and started to give credentials.
+
+"My name is Kephart. I am staying at the Everett Mine on Sugar Fork----"
+
+Another yell that set the wild echoes flying.
+
+"I am acquainted with your husband; we've hunted together. Perhaps he
+has told you----"
+
+Yell number three, same pitch and vigor as before.
+
+By this time I was quite nonplussed. I waited for her to speak; but
+never a word did the woman deign. So there we stood and stared at each
+other in silence--I leaning on my rifle, she with red arms akimbo--till
+I grew embarrassed, half wondering, too, if the creature were demented.
+
+Suddenly a light flashed upon my groping wits. This amazon was on
+picket. Her three shrieks had been a signal to someone up the branch.
+Her attitude showed that there was no thoroughfare in that direction at
+present. Circumstances, whatever they were, forbade explanation.
+Clearly, the woman thought that I could not help seeing how matters
+stood. Not for a moment did she suspect but that her yells, her
+belligerent attitude, and her refusal to speak, were the conventional
+way, this world over, of intimating that there was a _contretemps_. She
+considered that if I was what I claimed to be, an acquaintance of her
+husband and on friendly footing, I would be gentleman enough to retire.
+If I was something else--an officer, a spy--well, she was there to stop
+me until the captain of the guard arrived.
+
+For one silly moment I was tempted to advance and see what this martial
+spouse would do if I tried to pass her on the trail. But a hunter's
+instinct made me glance forward to the upper corner of the field. There
+was thick cover beyond the fence, with a clear range of a hundred and
+fifty yards between it and me--too far for Tom to recognize me, I
+thought, but deadly range for his Winchester, I knew. One forward step
+of mine would put me in the status of an armed intruder. So I concluded
+that common sense would better become me at this juncture than a bit of
+fooling that surely would be misinterpreted, and that might end
+ingloriously.
+
+"Ah, well!" I remarked, "when your husband gets back, tell him, please,
+that I was sorry to miss him; though I did not call on any special
+business--just wanted to say 'Howdy?' you know. Good day!"
+
+I turned and went down the valley.
+
+All the way home I speculated on this queer adventure. What was going on
+"up yan"?
+
+A month before, when I had started for this wildest nook of the Smokies,
+a friend had intimated that I was venturing into a dubious
+district--Moonshine Land. It is but frank to confess that this prospect
+was not unpleasant. My only fear had been that I might not find any
+moonshiners, or that, having found them, I might not succeed in winning
+their confidence to the extent of learning their own side of an
+interesting story. As to how I could do this without getting tarred with
+the same stick, I was by no means clear; but I hoped that good luck
+might find a way. And now it seemed as if luck had indeed favored me
+with an excuse for broaching the topic to some friendly mountaineer, so
+I could at least see how he would take it.
+
+And it chanced (or was it chance?) that I had no more than finished
+supper, that evening, when a man called at my lonely cabin. He was the
+one that I knew best among my scattered neighbors. I gave him a rather
+humorous account of my reception by Madame Kirby, and asked him what he
+thought she was yelling about.
+
+There was no answering smile on my visitor's face. He pondered in
+silence, weighing many contingencies, it seemed, and ventured no more
+than a helpless "Waal, now I wonder!"
+
+It did not suit me to let the matter go at that; so, on a sudden
+impulse, I fired the question point-blank at him: "Do you suppose that
+Tom is running a still up there at the head of that little cove?"
+
+The man's face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I
+had noticed in Mistress Kirby's.
+
+"Jedgmatically, I don't know."
+
+"Excuse me! I don't want to know, either. But let me explain just what I
+am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as
+well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these
+mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger
+traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from
+almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may
+be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;[4] but there
+is one thing that I'm as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all.
+You know my habits; I like to explore--I never take a guide--and when I
+come to a place that's particularly wild and primitive, that's just the
+place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that,
+one of these days when I'm out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I
+should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation--what would
+happen? What would they do?"
+
+"Waal, sir, I'll tell you whut they'd do. They'd fust-place ask you some
+questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin' in that thar neck
+o' the woods. Then they'd git you to do some triflin' work about the
+still--feed the furnace, or stir the mash--jest so 's 't they could
+prove that you took a hand in it your own self."
+
+"What good would that do?"
+
+"Hit would make you one o' them in the eyes of the law."
+
+"I see. But, really, doesn't that seem rather childish? I could easily
+convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that's what it
+would amount to."
+
+"I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to
+convince. The judge 'd right up and want to know why you let grass go to
+seed afore you came and informed on them."
+
+He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: "I
+reckon you wouldn't be in no great hurry to do _that_."
+
+"No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sampled their liquor, nobody would
+be likely to mistreat me?"
+
+"Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin' you? At the wust,
+s'posin' they was convicted by your own evidence, they'd only git a
+month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for
+it? Hit's all 'tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has!"
+
+"I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense
+about this moonshining business. I'd like to learn the plain truth about
+it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about
+personal affairs, and don't want to learn incriminating details; but I
+would like to know how the business is conducted, and especially how it
+is regarded from the mountain people's own point of view. I have already
+learned that a stranger's life and property are safer here than they
+would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your
+country good to have that known. But I can't say that there is no
+moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it.
+Now what is your excuse for defying the law? You don't seem ashamed of
+it."
+
+The man's face turned an angry red.
+
+"Mister, we-uns hain't no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary
+thing we do. We're poor; but we don't ax no favors. We stay 'way up hyar
+in these coves, and mind our own business. When a stranger comes along,
+he's welcome to the best we've got, such as 'tis; but if he imposes on
+us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick!"
+
+"And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition."
+
+"Hit is, under some sarcumstances."
+
+My guest stretched his legs, and "jedgmatically" proceeded to enlighten
+me.
+
+"Thar's plenty o' men and women grown, in these mountains, who don't
+know that the Government is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt
+who commands two-three judges and a gang o' revenue officers. They know
+thar's a president, because the men folks's voted for him, and the women
+folks's seed his pictur. They've heered tell about the judges; and
+they've seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They believe in
+supportin' the Government, because hit's the law. Nobody refuses to pay
+his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar'. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on
+the dollar; and that's all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten
+cents on twenty cents' worth o' liquor; and that's robbin' the people
+with a gun to their faces.
+
+"Of course, I ain't so ignorant as all that--I've traveled about the
+country, been to Asheville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o'
+times--and I know the theory. Theory says 't revenue is a tax on luxury.
+Waal, that's all right--anything in reason. The big fellers that
+makes lots of money out o' stillin', and lives in luxury, ought to pay
+handsome for it. But who ever seen luxury cavortin' around in these
+Smoky Mountains?"
+
+
+[Illustration: MOONSHINE MILL--SIDE VIEW
+
+The trails that lead hither are blind and rough. Behind the mill rises
+an almost precipitous mountain-side. Much of the corn is brought in on
+men's backs at the dead of night.]
+
+
+He paused for a reply. Even then, with my limited experience in the
+mountains, I could not help wincing at the idea. Often, in later times,
+this man's question came back to me with peculiar force. Luxury! in a
+land where the little stores were often out of coffee, sugar, kerosene,
+and even salt; where, in dead of winter, there was no meal, much less
+flour, to be had for love or money. Luxury! where I had to live on
+bear-meat (tough old sow bear) for six weeks, because the only side of
+pork that I could find for sale was full of maggots.
+
+My friend continued: "Whiskey means more to us mountain folks than hit
+does to folks in town, whar thar's drug-stores and doctors. Let ary
+thing go wrong in the fam'ly--fever, or snake bite, or somethin'--and we
+can't git a doctor up hyar less'n three days; and it costs scand'lous.
+The only medicines we-uns has is yerbs, which customarily ain't no good
+'thout a leetle grain o' whiskey. Now, th'r ain't no saloons allowed in
+all these western counties. The nighest State dispensary, even, is sixty
+miles away.[5] The law wunt let us have liquor shipped to us from
+anywhars in the State. If we git it sent to us from outside the State it
+has to come by express--and reg-lar old pop-skull it is, too. So, to be
+good law-abiding citizens, we-uns must travel back and forth at a heap
+of expense, or pay express rates on pizened liquor--and we are too
+durned poor to do ary one or t'other.
+
+"Now, yan's my field o' corn. I gather the corn, and shuck hit and grind
+hit my own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o' bread to eat--and
+I don't pay no tax, do I? Then why can't I make some o' my corn into
+pure whiskey to drink, without payin' tax? I tell you, _'taint fair_,
+this way the Government does! But, when all's said and done, the main
+reason for this 'moonshining,' as you-uns calls it, is bad roads."
+
+"Bad roads?" I exclaimed. "What the----"
+
+"Jest thisaway: From hyar to the railroad is seventeen miles, with two
+mountains to cross; and you've seed that road! I recollect you-uns said
+every one o' them miles was a thousand rods long. Nobody's ever measured
+them, except by mountain man's foot-rule--big feet, and a long stride
+between 'em. Seven hundred pounds is all the load a good team can haul
+over that road, when the weather's good. Hit takes three days to make
+the round trip, less'n you break an axle, and then hit takes four. When
+you do git to the railroad, th'r ain't no town of a thousand people
+within fifty mile. Now us folks ain't even got wagons. Thar's only one
+sarviceable wagon in this whole settlement, and you can't hire it
+without team and driver, which is two dollars and a half a day. Whar one
+o' our leetle sleds can't go, we haffter pack on mule-back or tussle it
+on our own wethers. Look, then! The only farm produce we-uns can sell is
+corn. You see for yourself that corn can't be shipped outen hyar. We can
+trade hit for store credit--that's all. Corn _juice_ is about all we can
+tote around over the country and git cash money for. Why, man, that's
+the only way some folks has o' payin' their taxes!"
+
+"But, aside from the work and the worry," I remarked, "there is the
+danger of being shot, in this business."
+
+"Oh, we-uns don't lay _that_ up agin the Government! Hit's as fair for
+one as 'tis for t'other. When a revenuer comes sneakin' around, why,
+whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that's a 'fortune of war,' as the old
+sayin' is."
+
+There is no telegraph, wired or wireless, in the mountains, but there is
+an efficient substitute. It seemed as though, in one night, the news
+traveled from valley to cove, and from cove to nook, that I was
+investigating the moonshining business, and that I was apparently
+"safe." Each individual interpreted that word to suit himself. Some
+regarded me askance, others were so confiding that their very frankness
+threatened at times to become embarrassing.
+
+Thereafter I had many talks and adventures with men who, at one time or
+other, had been engaged in the moonshining industry. Some of these men
+had known the inside of the penitentiary; some were not without
+blood-guilt. I doubt not that more than one of them could, even now,
+find his way through night and fog and laurel thicket to some "beautiful
+piece of copper" that has not yet been punched full of holes. They knew
+that I was on friendly terms with revenue agents. What was worse, they
+knew that I was a scribbler. More than once I took notes in their
+presence while interviewing them, and we had the frankest understanding
+as to what would become of those notes.
+
+My immunity was not due to any promises made or hostages given, for
+there were none. I did not even pose as an apologist, but merely
+volunteered to give a fair report of what I heard and saw. They took me
+at my word. Had I used such representations as a mask and secretly
+played the spy or informer--well, I would have deserved whatever might
+have befallen me. As it was, I never met with any but respectful
+treatment from these gentry, nor, to the best of my belief, did they
+ever tell me a lie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WAYS THAT ARE DARK
+
+
+Our terms moonshiner and moonshining are not used in the mountains. Here
+an illicit distiller is called a blockader, his business is blockading,
+and the product is blockade liquor. Just as the smugglers of old Britain
+called themselves free-traders, thereby proclaiming that they risked and
+fought for a principle, so the moonshiner considers himself simply a
+blockade-runner dealing in contraband. His offense is only _malum
+prohibitum_, not _malum in se_.
+
+There are two kinds of blockaders, big and little. The big blockader
+makes unlicensed whiskey on a fairly large scale. He may have several
+stills, operating alternately in different places, so as to avert
+suspicion. In any case, the still is large and the output is quite
+profitable. The owner himself may not actively engage in the work, but
+may furnish the capital and hire confederates to do the distilling for
+him, so that personally he shuns the appearance of evil. These big
+fellows are rare. They are the ones who seek collusion with the
+small-fry of Government officialdom, or, failing in that, instruct their
+minions to "kill on sight."
+
+The little moonshiner is a more interesting character, if for no other
+reason than that he fights fair, according to his code, and
+single-handed against tremendous odds. He is innocent of graft. There is
+nothing between him and the whole power of the Federal Government,
+except his own wits and a well-worn Winchester or muzzleloader. He is
+very poor; he is very ignorant; he has no friends at court; his
+apparatus is crude in the extreme, and his output is miserably small.
+This man is usually a good enough citizen in other ways, of decent
+standing in his own community, and a right good fellow toward all the
+world, save revenue officers. Although a criminal in the eyes of the
+law, he is soundly convinced that the law is unjust, and that he is only
+exercising his natural rights. Such a man, as President Frost has
+pointed out, suffers none of the moral degradation that comes from
+violating his conscience; his self-respect is whole.
+
+In describing the process of making whiskey in the mountain stills, I
+shall confine myself to the operations of the little moonshiner,
+because they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our backwoodsmen.
+Every man in the big woods is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in
+extemporizing utensils, and even crude machines, out of the trees that
+grow around him, is of no mean order. As good cider as ever I drank was
+made in a hollowed log fitted with a press-block and operated by a
+handspike. It took but half a day's work to make this cider press, and
+the only tools used in its construction were an ax, a mattock in lieu of
+adze, an auger, and a jackknife.
+
+It takes two or three men to run a still. It is possible for one man to
+do the work, on so small a scale as is usually practiced, but it would
+be a hard task for him; then, too, there are few mountaineers who could
+individually furnish the capital, small though it be. So three men, let
+us say, will "chip in" five or ten dollars apiece, and purchase a
+second-hand still, if such is procurable, otherwise a new one, and that
+is all the apparatus they have to pay money for. If they should be too
+poor even to go to this expense, they will make a retort by inverting a
+half-barrel or an old wooden churn over a soap-kettle, and then all they
+have to buy is a piece of copper tubing for the worm.
+
+
+[Illustration: Moonshine Still in Full Operation]
+
+
+In choosing a location for their clandestine work, the first
+essential is running water. This can be found in almost any gulch; yet,
+out of a hundred known spring-branches, only one or two may be suitable
+for the business, most of them being too public. In a country where
+cattle and hogs run wild, and where a good part of every farmer's time
+is taken in keeping track of his stock, there is no place so secret but
+that it is liable to be visited at any time, even though it be in the
+depths of the great forest, several miles from any human habitation.
+Moreover, cattle, and especially hogs, are passionately fond of
+still-slop, and can scent it a great distance, so that no still can long
+remain unknown to them.[6] Consequently the still must be placed several
+miles away from the residence of anyone who might be liable to turn
+informer. Although nearly all the mountain people are indulgent in the
+matter of blockading, yet personal rivalries and family jealousies are
+rife among them, and it is not uncommon for them to inform against
+their enemies in the neighborhood.
+
+Of course, it would not do to set up a still near a common trail--at
+least in the far-back settlements. Our mountaineers habitually notice
+every track they pass, whether of beast or man, and "read the sign" with
+Indian-like facility. Often one of my companions would stop, as though
+shot, and point with his toe to the fresh imprint of a human foot in the
+dust or mud of a public road, exclaiming: "Now, I wonder who _that_
+feller was! 'Twa'n't (so-and-so), for he hain't got no squar'-headed
+bob-nails; 'twa'n't (such-a-one), 'cause he wouldn't be hyar at this
+time o' day"; and so he would go on, figuring by a process of
+elimination that is extremely cunning, until some such conclusion as
+this was reached, "That's some stranger goin' over to Little River
+[across the line in Tennessee], and he's footin' hit as if the devil was
+atter him--I'll bet he's stobbed somebody and is runnin' from the
+sheriff!" Nor is the incident closed with that; our mountaineer will
+inquire of neighbors and passersby until he gets a description of the
+wayfarer, and then he will pass the word along.
+
+Some little side-branch is chosen that runs through a gully so choked
+with laurel and briers and rhododendron as to be quite impassable, save
+by such worming and crawling as must make a great noise. Doubtless a
+faint cattle-trail follows the backbone of the ridge above it, and this
+is the workers' ordinary highway in going to and fro; but the descent
+from ridge to gully is seldom made twice over the same course, lest a
+trail be printed direct to the still-house.
+
+This house is sometimes inclosed with logs, but oftener it is no more
+than a shed, built low, so as to be well screened by the undergrowth. A
+great hemlock tree may be felled in such position as to help the
+masking, so long as its top stays green, which will be about a year.
+Back far enough from the still-house to remain in dark shadow when the
+furnace is going, there is built a sort of nest for the workmen, barely
+high enough to sit up in, roofed with bark and thatched all over with
+browse. Here many a dismal hour of night is passed when there is nothing
+to do but to wait on the "cooking." Now and then a man crawls on all
+fours to the furnace and pitches in a few billets of wood, keeping low
+at the time, so as to offer as small a target as possible in the flare
+of the fire. Such precaution is especially needed when the number of
+confederates is too small for efficient picketing. Around the little
+plot where the still-shed and lair are hidden, laurel may be cut in such
+way as to make a _cheval-de-frise_, sharp stubs being entangled with
+branches, so that a quick charge through them would be out of the
+question. Two or three days' work, at most, will build the still-house
+and equip it ready for business, without so much as a shingle being
+brought from outside.
+
+After the blockaders have established their still, the next thing is to
+make arrangements with some miller who will jeopardize himself by
+grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that corn which has been
+forced to sprout is a prime essential in the making of moonshine
+whiskey, and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn is an offense
+against the law of the United States no less than its distillation. Now,
+to any one living in a well-settled country, where there is, perhaps,
+only one mill to every hundred farms, and it is visited daily by men
+from all over the township, the finding of an accessory in the person of
+a miller would seem a most hopeless project. But when you travel in our
+southern mountains, one of the first things that will strike you is that
+about every fourth or fifth farmer has a tiny tub-mill of his own. Tiny
+is indeed the word, for there are few of these mills that can grind
+more than a bushel or two of corn in a day; some have a capacity of only
+half a bushel in ten hours of steady grinding. Red grains of corn being
+harder than white ones, it is a humorous saying in the mountains that "a
+red grain in the gryste [grist] will stop the mill." The appurtenances
+of such a mill, even to the very buhr-stones themselves, are fashioned
+on the spot. How primitive such a meal-grinder may be is shown by the
+fact that a neighbor of mine recently offered a new mill, complete, for
+sale at six dollars. A few nails, and a country-made iron rynd and
+spindle, were the only things in it that he had not made himself, from
+the raw materials.
+
+In making spirits from corn, the first step is to convert the starch of
+the grain into sugar. Regular distillers do this in a few hours by using
+malt, but at the little blockade still a slower process is used, for
+malt is hard to get. The unground corn is placed in a vessel that has a
+small hole in the bottom, warm water is poured over the corn and a hot
+cloth is placed over the top. As water percolates out through the hole,
+the vessel is replenished with more of the warm fluid. This is continued
+for two or three days and nights until the corn has put forth sprouts a
+couple of inches long. The diastase in the germinating seeds has the
+same chemical effect as malt--the starch is changed to sugar.
+
+The sprouted corn is then dried and ground into meal. This sweet meal is
+then made into a mush with boiling water, and is let stand two or three
+days. The "sweet mash" thus made is then broken up, and a little rye
+malt, similarly prepared in the meantime, is added to it, if rye is
+procurable. Fermentation begins at once. In large distilleries, yeast is
+added to hasten fermentation, and the mash can then be used in three or
+four days; the blockader, however, having no yeast, must let his mash stand
+for eight or ten days, keeping it all that time at a proper temperature
+for fermentation. This requires not only constant attention, but some
+skill as well, for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer in our
+mountain still-house. When done, the sugar of what is now "sour mash"
+has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The resulting liquid
+is technically called the "wash," but blockaders call it "beer." It is
+intoxicating, of course, but "sour enough to make a pig squeal."
+
+This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel with a closed head,
+connected with a spiral tube, the worm. The latter is surrounded by a
+closed jacket through which cold water is constantly passing. A wood
+fire is built in the rude furnace under the still; the spirit rises in
+vapor, along with more or less steam; these vapors are condensed in the
+cold worm and trickle down into the receiver. The product of this first
+distillation (the "low wines" of the trade, the "singlings" of the
+blockader) is a weak and impure liquid, which must be redistilled at a
+lower temperature to rid it of water and rank oils.
+
+In moonshiners' parlance, the liquor of second distillation is called
+the "doublings." It is in watching and testing the doublings that an
+accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if distillation be not
+carried far enough, the resulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and
+if carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will result. Regular
+distillers are assisted at this stage by scientific instruments by which
+the "proof" is tested; but the maker of "mountain dew" has no other
+instrument than a small vial, and his testing is done entirely by the
+"bead" of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that rise when the
+vial is tilted. When a mountain man is shown any brand of whiskey,
+whether a regular distillery product or not, he invariably tilts the
+bottle and levels it again, before tasting; if the bead rises and is
+persistent, well and good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the liquor
+at once.
+
+It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by
+running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a
+"thumpin'-chist." The advantage claimed is that "Hit allows you to make
+your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that's all."
+
+The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter,
+to rid it of most of its fusel oil. This having been done, we have
+moonshine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and ready for _immediate
+consumption_.
+
+I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the words here italicised; but
+I am stating facts.
+
+It is quite impracticable for a blockader to age his whiskey. In the
+first place, he is too poor to wait; in the second place, his product is
+very small, and the local demand is urgent; in the third place, he has
+enough trouble to conceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to say
+nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheerfully he might "waive the
+quantum o' the sin," but he is quite alive to "the hazard o'
+concealin'." So, while the stuff is yet warm from the still, it is taken
+by confederates and quickly disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the
+answer a moonshiner once made to me when I asked him how old the best
+blockade liquor ever got to be: "If it 'd git to be a month old, it 'd
+fool me!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by F. B. Laney
+
+Cornmill and Blacksmith Forge]
+
+
+They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of mine, the redoubtable Quill
+Rose, which, to those who know him, sounds like one of his own: "A
+slick-faced dude from Knoxville," said Quill, "told me once that all
+good red-liquor was aged, and that if I'd age my blockade it would bring
+a fancy price. Well, sir, I tried it; I kept some for three months--and,
+by godlings, _it aint so_."
+
+As for purity, all of the moonshine whiskey used to be pure, and much of
+it still is; but every blockader knows how to adulterate, and when one
+of them does stoop to such tricks he will stop at no halfway measures.
+Some add washing lye, both to increase the yield and to give the liquor
+an artificial bead, then prime this abominable fluid with pepper,
+ginger, tobacco, or anything else that will make it sting. Even
+buckeyes, which are poisonous themselves, are sometimes used to give the
+drink a soapy bead. Such decoctions are known in the mountains by the
+expressive terms "pop-skull," "bust head," "bumblings" ("they make a
+bumbly noise in a feller's head"). Some of them are so toxic that their
+continued use might be fatal to the drinker. A few drams may turn a
+normally good-hearted fellow into a raging fiend who will shoot or stab
+without provocation.
+
+As a rule, the mountain people have no compunctions about drinking,
+their ideas on this, as on other matters of conduct, being those current
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. Men, women and children drink
+whiskey in family concert. I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a
+spoonful at a time, by a babe that was still at the breast, and she
+never batted an eye (when I protested that raw whiskey would ruin the
+infant's stomach, the mother replied, with widened eyes: "Why, if
+there's liquor about, and she don't git none, _she jist raars_!"). In
+spite of this, taking the mountain people by and large, they are an
+abstemious race. In drinking, as in everything else, this is the Land of
+Do Without. Comparatively few highlanders see liquor oftener than once
+or twice a month. The lumberjacks and townspeople get most of the
+output; for they can pay the price.
+
+Blockade whiskey, until recently, sold to the consumer at from $2.50 to
+$3.00 a gallon. The average yield is only two gallons to the bushel of
+corn. Two and a half gallons is all that can be got out of a bushel by
+blockaders' methods, even with the aid of a "thumpin'-chist," unless
+lye be added. With corn selling at seventy-five cents to a dollar a
+bushel, as it did in our settlement, and taking into account that the
+average sales of a little moonshiner's still probably did not exceed a
+gallon a day, and that a bootlegger must be rewarded liberally for
+marketing the stuff, it will be seen that there was no fortune in this
+mysterious trade, before prohibition raised the price. Let me give you a
+picture in a few words.--
+
+Here in the laurel-thicketed forest, miles from any wagon road, is a
+little still, without so much as a roof over it. Hard by is a little
+mill. There is not a sawed board in that mill--even the hopper is made
+of clapboards riven on the spot.
+
+Three or four men, haggard from sleepless vigils, strike out into
+pathless forest through driving rain. Within five minutes the wet
+underbrush has drenched them to the skin. They climb, climb, climb.
+There is no trail for a long way; then they reach a faint one that
+winds, winds, climbs, climbs. Hour after hour the men climb. Then they
+begin to descend.
+
+They have crossed the divide, a mile above sea-level, and are in another
+State. Hour after hour they "climb down," as they would say. They visit
+farmers' homes at dead of night. Each man shoulders two bushels of
+shelled corn and starts back again over the highest mountain range in
+eastern America. It is twenty miles to the little mill. They carry the
+corn thither on their own backs. They sprout it, grind it, distill it.
+Two of them then carry the whiskey twenty miles in the opposite
+direction, and, at the risk of capture and imprisonment, or of death if
+they resist, peddle it out by dodging, secret methods.
+
+This is no fancy sketch; it is literal truth. It is no story of the
+olden time, but of our own day. Do you wonder that one of these men
+should say, with a sigh--should say this? "Blockadin' is the hardest
+work a man ever done. And hit's wearin' on a feller's narves. Fust
+chance I git, I'm a-goin' ter quit!"
+
+And it is a fact that nine out of ten of those who try the moonshining
+game do quit before long, of their own accord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day there came a ripple of excitement in our settlement. A blockader
+had shot at Jack Coburn, and a posse had arrested the would-be
+assassin--so flew the rumor, and it proved to be true.
+
+Coburn was a northern man who, years ago, opened a little store on the
+edge of the wilderness, bought timber land, and finally rose to
+affluence. With ready wit he adapted himself to the ways of the
+mountaineers and gained ascendancy among them. Once in a while an
+emergency would arise in which it was necessary either to fight or to
+back down, and in these contests a certain art that Jack had acquired in
+Michigan lumber camps proved the undoing of more than one mountain
+tough, at the same time winning the respect of the spectators. He was
+what a mountaineer described to me as "a practiced knocker." This
+phrase, far from meaning what it would on the Bowery, was interpreted to
+me as denoting "a master hand in a knock-fight." Pugilism, as
+distinguished from shooting or stabbing, was an unknown art in the
+mountains until Jack introduced it.
+
+Coburn had several tenants, among whom was a character whom we will call
+Edwards. In leasing a farm to Edwards, Jack had expressly stipulated
+that there was to be no moonshining on the premises. But, by and by,
+there was reason to suspect that Edwards was violating this part of the
+contract. Coburn did not send for a revenue officer; he merely set forth
+on a little still-hunt of his own. Before starting, he picked up a
+revolver and was about to stick it in his pocket, but, on second
+thought, he concluded that no red-headed man should be trusted with a
+loaded gun, even in such a case as this; so he thrust the weapon back
+into its drawer, and strode away, with nothing but his two big fists to
+enforce a seizure.
+
+Coburn searched long and diligently, but could find no sign of a still.
+Finally, when he was about to give it up, his curiosity was aroused by
+the particularly dense browse in the top of an enormous hemlock that had
+recently been felled. Pushing his way forward, he discovered a neat
+little copper still installed in the treetop itself. He picked up the
+contraband utensil, and marched away with it.
+
+Meantime, Edwards had not been asleep. When Jack came in sight of the
+farmhouse, humped under his bulky burden, the enraged moonshiner seized
+a shotgun and ran toward him, breathing death and destruction. Jack,
+however, trudged along about his business. Edwards, seeing that no bluff
+would work, fired; but the range was too great for his birdshot even to
+pepper holes through the copper still.
+
+Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot. It did not hurt Coburn's
+skin, but it ruffled his dignity. In this case it was out of the
+question to pommel the blackguard, for he had swiftly reloaded his gun.
+So Jack ran off with the still, carried it home, sought out our
+magistrate, Brooks, and forthwith swore out a warrant.
+
+Brooks did not fuss over any law books. Moonshining in itself may be
+only a peccadillo, a venial sin--let the Government skin its own
+skunks--but when a man has promised not to moonshine, and then goes and
+does it, why that, by Jeremy, is a breach of contract! Straightway the
+magistrate hastened to the post-office, and swore in, as a posse
+comitatus, the first four men that he met.
+
+Now, when four men are picked up at random in our township, it is safe
+to assume that at least three of them have been moonshiners themselves,
+and know how this sort of thing should be done. At any rate, the posse
+wasted no time in discussion. They went straight after that malefactor,
+got him, and, within an hour after the shot was fired, he was drummed
+out of the county for good and forever.
+
+But Edwards had a son who was a trifle brash. This son armed himself,
+and offered show of battle. He fired two or three shots with his
+Winchester (wisely over the posse's heads) and then took to the tall
+timber. Dodging from tree to tree he led the impromptu officers such a
+dance up the mountainside that by the time they had corralled him they
+were "plumb overhet."
+
+They set that impetuous young man on a sharp-spined little jackass,
+strapped his feet under the animal's belly, and their chief (my hunting
+partner, he was) drove him, that same night, twenty-five miles over a
+horrible mountain trail, and lodged him in the county jail, on a charge
+more serious than that of moonshining.
+
+In due time, a United States deputy arrived in our midst, bearing a
+funny-looking hatchet with a pick at one end, which he called a "devil."
+With the pick end of this instrument he punched numerous holes through
+the offending copper vessel, until the still looked somewhat like a
+gigantic horseradish-grater turned inside out. Then he straightened out
+the worm by ramming a long stick through it, and triumphantly carried
+away with him the copper-sheathed staff, as legal proof, trophy, and
+burgeon of office.
+
+The sorry old still itself reposes to this day in old Brooks's backyard,
+where it is regarded by passersby as an emblem, not so much of Federal
+omnipotence, as of local efficiency in administering the law with
+promptitude, and without a pennyworth of cost to anybody, save to the
+offender.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A LEAF FROM THE PAST
+
+
+In the United States, moonshining is seldom practiced outside the
+mountains and foothills of the southern Appalachians, and those parts of
+the southwest (namely, in southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas), into
+which the mountaineers have immigrated in considerable numbers.
+
+Here, then, is a conundrum: How does it happen that moonshining is
+distinctly a foible of the southern mountaineer?
+
+To get to the truth, we must hark back into that eighteenth century
+wherein, as I have already remarked, our mountain people are lingering
+to this day. We must leave the South; going, first, to Ireland of 150 or
+175 years ago, and then to western Pennsylvania shortly after the
+Revolution.
+
+The people of Great Britain, irrespective of race, have always been
+ardent haters of excise laws. As Blackstone has curtly said, "From its
+original to the present time, the very name of excise has been odious
+to the people of England." Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined
+excise as "A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by
+the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom
+excise is paid." In 1659, when the town of Edinburgh placed an
+additional impost on ale, the Convenanter Nicoll proclaimed it an act so
+impious that immediately "God frae the heavens declared his anger by
+sending thunder and unheard tempests and storms." And we still recall
+Burns' fiery invective:
+
+    Thae curst horse-leeches o' the Excise
+    Wha mak the whisky stills their prize!
+  Haud up thy han', Deil! ance, twice, thrice!
+      There, seize the blinkers! [wretches]
+  An bake them up in brunstane pies
+      For poor d--n'd drinkers.
+
+
+Perhaps the chief reason, in England, for this outspoken detestation of
+the exciseman lay in the fact that the law empowered him to enter
+private houses and to search at his own discretion. In Scotland and
+Ireland there was another objection, even more valid in the eyes of the
+common people; excise struck heaviest at their national drink.
+Englishmen, at the time of which we are speaking, were content with
+their ale, not yet having contracted the habit of drinking gin; but
+Scotchmen and Irishmen preferred distilled spirits, manufactured, as a
+rule, out of their own barley, in small pot-stills (_poteen_ means,
+literally, a little pot), the process being a common household art
+frequently practiced "every man for himself and his neighbor." A tax,
+then, upon whiskey was as odious as a tax upon bread baked on the
+domestic hearth--if not, indeed, more so.
+
+Now, there came a time when the taxes laid upon spirituous liquors had
+increased almost to the point of prohibition. This was done, not so much
+for the sake of revenue, as for the sake of the public health and
+morals. Englishmen had suddenly taken to drinking gin, and the immediate
+effect was similar to that of introducing firewater among a race of
+savages. There was hue and cry (apparently with good reason), that the
+gin habit, spreading like a plague, among a people unused to strong
+liquors, would soon exterminate the English race. Parliament, alarmed at
+the outlook, then passed an excise law of extreme severity. As always
+happens in such cases, the law promptly defeated its own purpose by
+breeding a spirit of defiance and resistance among the great body of the
+people.
+
+The heavier the tax, the more widespread became the custom of illicit
+distilling. The law was evaded in two different ways, the method
+depending somewhat upon the relative loyalty of the people toward the
+Crown, and somewhat upon the character of the country, as to whether it
+was thickly or thinly settled.
+
+In rich and populous districts, as around London and Edinburgh and
+Dublin, the common practice was to bribe government officials. A
+historian of that time declares that "Not infrequently the gauger could
+have laid his hands upon a dozen stills within as many hours; but he had
+cogent reasons for avoiding discoveries unless absolutely forced to make
+them. Where informations were laid, it was by no means uncommon for a
+trusty messenger to be dispatched from the residence of the gauger to
+give due notice, so that by daybreak next morning 'the boys,' with all
+their utensils, might disappear. Now and then they were required to
+leave an old and worn-out still in place of that which they were to
+remove, so that a report of actual seizure might be made. A good
+understanding was thus often kept up between the gaugers and the
+distillers; the former not infrequently received a 'duty' upon every
+still within his jurisdiction, and his cellars were never without 'a sup
+of the best.'... The commerce was carried on to a very great extent,
+and openly. Poteen was usually preferred, even by the gentry, to
+'Parliament' or 'King's' whiskey. It was known to be free from
+adulteration, and had a smoky flavor (arising from the peat fires) which
+many liked." Another writer says that "The amount of spirits produced by
+distillation avowedly illicit vastly exceeded that produced by the
+licensed distilleries. According to Wakefield, stills were erected even
+in the kitchens of baronets and in the stables of clergymen."
+
+However, this sort of thing was not moonshining. It was only the
+beginning of that system of wholesale collusion which, in later times,
+was perfected in our own country by the "Whiskey Ring."
+
+Moonshining proper was confined to the poorer class of people,
+especially in Ireland, who lived in wild and sparsely settled regions,
+who were governed by a clan feeling stronger than their loyalty to the
+central Government, and who either could not afford to share their
+profits with the gaugers, or disdained to do so. Such people hid their
+little pot-stills in inaccessible places, as in the savage mountains and
+glens of Connemara, where it was impossible, or at least hazardous, for
+the law to reach them. With arms in hand they defied the officers. "The
+hatred of the people toward the gauger was for a very long period
+intense. The very name invariably aroused the worst passions. To kill a
+gauger was considered anything but a crime; wherever it could be done
+with comparative safety, he was hunted to the death."
+
+Thus we see that the townsman's weapon against the government was graft,
+and the mountaineer's weapon was his gun--a hundred and fifty years ago,
+in Ireland, as they are in America to-day. Whether racial character had
+much to do with this is a debatable question. But, having spoken of
+race, a new factor, and a curious one, steps into our story. Let it be
+noted closely, for it bears directly on a problem that has puzzled many
+of our own people, namely: What was the origin of our southern
+mountaineers?
+
+The north of Ireland, at the time of which we have been speaking, was
+not settled by Irishmen, but by Scotchmen, who had been imported by
+James I. to take the place of native Hibernians whom he had dispossessed
+from the three northern counties. These immigrants came to be known as
+the Scotch-Irish. They learned how to make poteen in little stills,
+after the Irish fashion, and to defend their stills from intrusive
+foreigners, also after the Irish fashion. By and by these Scotch-Irish
+fell out with the British Government, and large bodies of them emigrated
+to America, settling, for the most part, in western Pennsylvania.
+
+They were a fighting race. Accustomed to plenty of hard knocks at home,
+they took to the rough fare and Indian wars of our border as naturally
+as ducks take to water. They brought with them, too, an undying hatred
+of excise laws, and a spirit of unhesitating resistance to any authority
+that sought to enforce such laws.
+
+It was these Scotchmen, in the main, assisted by a good sprinkling of
+native Irish, and by the wilder blades among the Pennsylvania-Dutch, who
+drove out the Indians from the Alleghany border, formed our rear-guard
+in the Revolution, won that rough mountain region for civilization, left
+it when the game became scarce and neighbors' houses too frequent,
+followed the mountains southward, settled western Virginia and Carolina,
+and formed the vanguard westward into Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and
+so onward till there was no longer a West to conquer. Some of their
+descendants remained behind in the fastnesses of the Alleghanies, the
+Blue Ridge, and the Unakas, and became, in turn, the progenitors of that
+singular race which, by an absurd pleonasm, is now commonly known as
+the "mountain whites," but properly southern highlanders.
+
+The first generation of Pennsylvania frontiersmen knew no laws but those
+of their own making. They were too far away, too scattered, and too
+poor, for the Crown to bother with them. Then came the Revolution. The
+backwoodsmen were loyal to the new American Government--loyal to a man.
+They not only fought off the Indians from the rear, but sent many of
+their incomparable riflemen to fight at the front as well.
+
+They were the first English-speaking people to use weapons of precision
+(the rifle, introduced by the Pennsylvania-Dutch about 1700, was used by
+our backwoodsmen exclusively throughout the war). They were the first to
+employ open-order formation in civilized warfare. They were the first
+outside colonists to assist their New England brethren at the siege of
+Boston. They were mustered in as the First Regiment of Foot of the
+Continental Army (being the first troops enrolled by our Congress, and
+the first to serve under a Federal banner). They carried the day at
+Saratoga, the Cowpens, and King's Mountain. From the beginning to the
+end of the war, they were Washington's favorite troops.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Tub Mill]
+
+
+And yet these same men were the first rebels against the authority of
+the United States Government! And it was their old commander-in-chief,
+Washington himself, who had the ungrateful task of bringing them to
+order by a show of Federal bayonets.
+
+It happened in this wise:
+
+Up to the year 1791 there had been no excise tax in the United Colonies
+or the United States. (One that had been tried in Pennsylvania was
+utterly abortive). Then the country fell upon hard times. A larger
+revenue had to be raised, and Hamilton suggested an excise. The measure
+was bitterly opposed by many public men, notably by Jefferson; but it
+passed. Immediately there was trouble in the tall timber.
+
+Western Pennsylvania, and the mountains southward, had been settled, as
+we have seen, by the Scotch-Irish; men who had brought with them a
+certain fondness for whiskey, a certain knack in making it, and an
+intense hatred of excise, on general as well as special principles.
+There were few roads across the mountains, and these few were
+execrable--so bad, indeed, that it was impossible for the backwoodsmen
+to bring their corn and rye to market, except in a concentrated form.
+The farmers of the seaboard had grown rich, from the high prices that
+prevailed during the French Revolution; but the mountain farmers had
+remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to
+difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gallatin said, in defending
+the western people, "We have no means of bringing the produce of our
+lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers
+through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value
+in the smallest size and weight. The inhabitants of the eastern side of
+the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of
+distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that
+labor upon it."
+
+Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in
+the mountains. Commerce was carried on by barter; but there had to be
+some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such
+necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who
+brought them by pack train across the Alleghanies. Consequently a still
+had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen
+gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight
+and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it
+had been transported across the mountains, could undersell even so
+cheap a beverage as New England rum--so long as no tax was laid upon it.
+
+But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually
+placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers' grain, and let the grain of
+the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge.
+Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border regarded such a law
+as aimed exclusively at themselves. They remonstrated, petitioned,
+stormed. "From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a
+marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland,
+Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legislatures of North
+Carolina, Virginia and Maryland passed resolutions against the law, and
+that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As
+early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region
+the people were ready for revolt." "To tax their stills seemed a blow at
+the only thing which obdurate nature had given them--a lot hard indeed,
+in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board."
+
+Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now)
+resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which reference
+has been made--only they were far wilder, far less populous, and
+inhabited by a people still prouder, more independent, more used to
+being a law unto themselves than were their ancestors in old Hibernia.
+When the Federal exciseman came among this border people and sought to
+levy tribute, they blackened or otherwise disguised themselves and
+treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, at the same time threatening
+to burn his house. He resigned. Indignation meetings were held,
+resolutions were passed calling on all good citizens to _disobey_ the
+law, and whenever anyone ventured to express a contrary opinion, or
+rented a house to a collector, he, too, was tarred and feathered. If a
+prudent or ultra-conscientious individual took out a license and sought
+to observe the law, he was visited by a gang of "Whiskey Boys" who
+smashed the still and inflicted corporal punishment upon its owner.
+
+Finally, warrants were issued against the lawbreakers. The attempt to
+serve these writs produced an uprising. On July 16, 1794, a company of
+mountain militia marched to the house of the inspector, General Neville,
+to force him to give up his commission. Neville fired upon them, and, in
+the skirmish that ensued, five of the attacking force were wounded and
+one was killed. The next day, a regiment of 500 mountaineers, led by
+one "Tom the Tinker," burned Neville's house, and forced him to flee for
+his life. His guard of eleven U. S. soldiers surrendered, after losing
+one killed and several wounded.
+
+A call was then issued for a meeting of the mountain militia at the
+historic Braddock's Field. On Aug. 1, a large body assembled, of whom
+2,000 were armed. They marched on Pittsburgh, then a village of 1,200
+souls. The townsmen, eager to conciliate and to ward off pillage,
+appointed a committee to meet the mob half way. The committee, finding
+that it could not induce the mountain men to go home, made a virtue of
+necessity by escorting 5,400 of them into Pittsburgh town. As Fisher
+says, "The town was warned by messengers, and every preparation was
+made, not for defense, but to extinguish the fire of the Whiskey Boys'
+thirst, which would prevent the necessity of having to extinguish the
+fire they might apply to houses.... Then the work began. Every citizen
+worked like a slave to carry provisions and buckets of whiskey to that
+camp." Judge Brackenridge tells us that it was an expensive as well as
+laborious day, and cost him personally four barrels of prime old
+whiskey. The day ended in a bloodless, but probably uproarious,
+jollification.
+
+On this same day (the Governor of Pennsylvania having declined to
+interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and
+called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrection. Meantime he had
+appointed commissioners to go into the disaffected region and try to
+persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should
+arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the
+disturbance should submit to arrest.
+
+While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen
+ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the "insurrection" faded away
+like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do.
+The insurgent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were
+convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this
+expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the
+Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon
+the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Government had
+demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws
+and maintain domestic tranquility. The result upon the mountain people
+themselves was dubious. Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison in December:
+"The information of our [Virginia's] militia, returned from the
+westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass
+quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that
+one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand
+places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was
+universal, and has now associated with it a detestation of the
+Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and
+problematical event, is now near and certain, and determined in the mind
+of every man."
+
+But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the
+excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as
+a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered
+by men whom we would not call very old.
+
+The moonshiners of our own day know nothing of the story that has here
+been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the
+mountains, and then the result was so unexpected, that I append the
+incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative.--
+
+I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his
+historical learning. He could not read, but one of his daughters read
+to him, and he had learned by heart nearly all that lay between the two
+lids of a "Universal History" such as book agents peddle about. Like one
+of John Fox's characters, he was fond of the expression "hist'ry says"
+so-and-so, and he considered it a clincher in all matters of debate.
+
+Our conversation drifted to the topic of moonshining.
+
+"Down to the time of the Civil War," declared the old settler, "nobody
+paid tax on the whiskey he made. Hit was thataway in my Pa's time, and
+in Gran'sir's, too. And so 'way back to the time of George Washington.
+Now, hist'ry says that Washington was the Father of his Country; and I
+reckon he was the _greatest_ man that ever lived--don't you?"
+
+I murmured a complaisant assent.
+
+"Waal, sir, if 't was right to make free whiskey in Washington's day,
+hit's right _now_!" and the old man brought his fist down on the table.
+
+"But that is where you make a mistake," I replied. "Washington did
+enforce a whiskey tax." Then I told about the Whiskey Insurrection of
+1794.
+
+This was news to Grandpa. He listened with deep attention, his brows
+lowering as the narrative proceeded. When it was finished he offered
+no comment, but brooded to himself in silence. My own thoughts wandered
+far afield, until recalled to the topic by a blunt demand:
+
+
+[Illustration: Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek in
+which the author lived alone for three years]
+
+
+"You say Washington done that?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"George Washington?"
+
+"Yes, sir: the Father of his Country."
+
+"Waal, I'm satisfied now that Washington was a leetle-grain cracked."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The law of 1791, although it imposed a tax on whiskey of only 9 to 11
+cents per proof gallon, came near bringing on a civil war, which was
+only averted by the leniency of the Federal Government in granting
+wholesale amnesty. The most stubborn malcontents in the mountains moved
+southward along the Alleghanies into western Virginia and the Carolinas,
+where no serious attempt was made to collect the excise; so they could
+practice moonshining to their heart's content, and there their
+descendants remain to-day.
+
+On the accession of Jefferson, in 1800, the tax on spirits was repealed.
+The war of 1812 compelled the Government to tax whiskey again, but as
+this was a war tax, shared by commodities generally, it aroused no
+opposition. In 1817 the excise was again repealed; and from that time
+until 1862 no specific tax was levied on liquors. During this period of
+thirty-five years the average market price of whiskey was 24 cents a
+gallon, sometimes dropping as low as 14 cents. Spirits were so cheap
+that a "burning fluid," consisting of one part spirits of turpentine to
+four or five parts alcohol was used in the lamps of nearly every
+household. Moonshining, of course, had ceased to exist.
+
+Then came the Civil War. In 1862 a tax of 20 cents a gallon was levied.
+Early in 1864 it rose to 60 cents. This cut off the industrial use of
+spirits, but did not affect its use as a beverage. In the latter part of
+1864 the tax leaped to $1.50 a gallon, and the next year it reached the
+prohibitive figure of $2. The result of such excessive taxation was just
+what it had been in the old times, in Great Britain. In and around the
+centers of population there was wholesale fraud and collusion. "Efforts
+made to repress and punish frauds were of absolutely no account
+whatever.... The current price at which distilled spirits were sold in
+the markets was everywhere recognized and commented on by the press as
+less than the amount of the tax, allowing nothing whatever for the cost
+of manufacture."
+
+Seeing that the outcome was disastrous from a fiscal point of view--the
+revenue from this source was falling to the vanishing point--Congress,
+in 1868, cut down the tax to 50 cents a gallon. "Illicit distillation
+practically ceased the very hour that the new law came into operation;
+... the Government collected during the second year of the continuance
+of the act $3 for every one that was obtained during the last year of
+the $2 rate."
+
+In 1869 there came a new administration, with frequent removals of
+revenue officials for political purposes. The revenue fell off. In 1872
+the rate was raised to 70 cents, and in 1875 to 90 cents. The result is
+thus summarized by David A. Wells:
+
+"Investigation carefully conducted showed that on the average the
+product of illicit distillation costs, through deficient yields, the
+necessary bribery of attendants, and the expenses of secret and unusual
+methods of transportation, from two to three times as much as the
+product of legitimate and legal distillation. So that, calling the
+average cost of spirits in the United States 20 cents per gallon, the
+product of the illicit distiller would cost 40 to 60 cents, leaving but
+10 cents per gallon as the maximum profit to be realized from fraud
+under the most favorable conditions--an amount not sufficient to offset
+the possibility of severe penalties of fine, imprisonment, and
+confiscation of property.... The rate of 70 cents ... constituted a
+moderate temptation to fraud. Its increase to 90 cents constituted a
+temptation altogether too great for human nature, as employed in
+manufacturing and selling whiskey, to resist.... During 1875-6,
+highwines sold openly in the Chicago and Cincinnati markets at prices
+less than the average cost of production plus the Government tax.
+Investigations showed that the persons mainly concerned in the work of
+fraud were the Government officials rather than the distillers; and that
+a so-called 'Whiskey Ring' ... extended to Washington, and embraced
+within its sphere of influence and participation, not merely local
+supervisors, collectors, inspectors, and storekeepers of the revenue,
+but even officers of the Internal Revenue Bureau, and probably, also,
+persons occupying confidential relations with the Executive of the
+Nation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such being the condition of affairs in the centers of civilization in
+the latter part of the nineteenth century, let us now turn to the
+mountains, and see how matters stood among those primitive people who
+were still tarrying in the eighteenth. Their situation at that time is
+thus briefly sketched by a southern historian[7]:
+
+"Before the war these simple folks made their apples and peaches into
+brandy, and their corn into whiskey, and these products, with a few
+cattle, some dried fruits, honey, beeswax, nuts, wool, hides, fur,
+herbs, ginseng and other roots, and woolen socks knitted by the women in
+their long winter evenings, formed the stock in trade which they
+bartered for their plain necessaries and few luxuries, their homespun
+and cotton cloths, sugar, coffee, snuff, and fiddles.... The raising of
+a crop of corn in summer, and the getting out of tan-bark and lumber in
+winter, were almost their only resources.... The burden of taxation
+rested lightly on them. For near two generations no excise duties had
+been levied.... The war came on. They were mostly loyal to the Union.
+They paid the first moderate tax without a murmur.
+
+"They were willing to pay any tax that they were able to pay. But
+suddenly the tax jumped to $1.50, and then to $2, a gallon. The people
+were goaded to open rebellion. Their corn at that time brought only from
+25 to 40 cents a bushel; apples and peaches, rarely more than 10 cents
+at the stills. These were the only crops that could be grown in their
+deep and narrow valleys. Transportation was so difficult, and markets so
+remote, that there was no way to utilize the surplus except to distill
+it. Their stills were too small to bear the cost of government
+supervision. The superior officers of the Revenue Department
+(collectors, marshals, and district-attorneys or commissioners) were
+paid only by commissions on collections and by fees. Their subordinate
+agents, whose income depended upon the number of stills they cut up and
+upon the arrests made, were, as a class, brutal and desperate
+characters. Guerrilla warfare was the natural sequence."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"BLOCKADERS" AND "THE REVENUE"
+
+
+Little or no attention seems to have been paid to the moonshining that
+was going on in the mountains until about 1876, owing, no doubt, to the
+larger game in registered distilleries. In his report for 1876-7, the
+new Commissioner of Internal Revenue called attention to the illicit
+manufacture of whiskey in the mountain counties of the South, and urged
+vigorous measures for its immediate suppression.
+
+"The extent of these frauds," said he, "would startle belief. I can
+safely say that during the past year not less than 3,000 illicit stills
+have been operated in the districts named. Those stills are of a
+producing capacity of 10 to 50 gallons a day. They are usually located
+at inaccessible points in the mountains, away from the ordinary lines of
+travel, and are generally owned by unlettered men of desperate
+character, armed and ready to resist the officers of the law. Where
+occasion requires, they come together in companies of from ten to fifty
+persons, gun in hand, to drive the officers out of the country. They
+resist as long as resistance is possible, and when their stills are
+seized, and they themselves are arrested, they plead ignorance and
+poverty, and at once crave the pardon of the Government.
+
+"These frauds had become so open and notorious ... that I became
+satisfied extraordinary measures would be required to break them up.
+Collectors were ... each authorized to employ from five to ten
+additional deputies.... Experienced revenue agents of perseverance and
+courage were assigned to duty to co-operate with the collectors. United
+States marshals were called upon to co-operate with the collectors and
+to arrest all persons known to have violated the laws, and
+district-attorneys were enjoined to prosecute all offenders.
+
+"In certain portions of the country many citizens not guilty of
+violating the law themselves were in strong sympathy with those who did
+violate, and the officers in many instances found themselves unsupported
+in the execution of the laws by a healthy state of public opinion. The
+distillers--ever ready to forcibly resist the officers--were, I have no
+doubt, at times treated with harshness. This occasioned much
+indignation on the part of those who sympathized with the
+lawbreakers...."
+
+The Commissioner recommended, in his report, the passage of a law
+"expressly providing that where a person is caught in the act of
+operating an illicit still, he may be arrested without warrant." In
+conclusion, he said: "At this time not only is the United States
+defrauded of its revenues, and its officers openly resisted, but when
+arrests are made it often occurs that prisoners are rescued by mob
+violence, and officers and witnesses are often at night dragged from
+their homes and cruelly beaten, or waylaid and assassinated."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day I asked a mountain man, "How about the revenue officers? What
+sort of men are they?"
+
+"Torn down scoundrels, every one."
+
+"Oh, come, now!"
+
+"Yes, they are; plumb onery--lock, stock, barrel and gun-stick."
+
+"Consider what they have to go through," I remarked. "Like other
+detectives, they cannot secure evidence without practicing deception.
+Their occupation is hard and dangerous. Here in the mountains, every
+man's hand is against them."
+
+"Why is it agin them? We ain't all blockaders; yet you can search these
+mountains through with a fine-tooth comb and you wunt find ary critter
+as has a good word to say for the revenue. The reason is 't we know them
+men from 'way back; we know whut they uster do afore they jined the
+sarvice, and why they did it. Most of them were blockaders their own
+selves, till they saw how they could make more money turncoatin'. They
+use their authority to abuse people who ain't never done nothin' nohow.
+Dangerous business? Shucks! There's Jim Cody, for a sample [I suppress
+the real name]; he was principally raised in this county, and I've
+knowed him from a boy. He's been eight years in the Government sarvice,
+and hain't never been shot at once. But he's killed a blockader--oh,
+yes! He arrested Tom Hayward, a chunk of a boy, that was scared most
+fitified and never resisted more'n a mouse. Cody, who was half drunk
+his-self, handcuffed Tom, quarreled with him, and shot the boy dead
+while the handcuffs was on him! Tom's relations sued Cody in the County
+Court, but he carried the case to the Federal Court, and they were too
+poor to follow it up. I tell you, though, thar's a settlement less 'n a
+thousand mile from the river whar Jim Cody ain't never showed his nose
+sence. He knows there'd be another revenue 'murdered.'"
+
+"It must be ticklish business for an officer to prowl about the
+headwaters of these mountain streams, looking for 'sign.'"
+
+"Hell's banjer! they don't go prodjectin' around looking for stills.
+They set at home on their hunkers till some feller comes and informs."
+
+"What class of people does the informing?"
+
+"Oh, sometimes hit's some pizen old bum who's been refused credit.
+Sometimes hit's the wife or mother of some feller who's drinkin' too
+much. Then, agin, hit may be some rival blockader who aims to cut off
+the other feller's trade, and, same time, divert suspicion from his own
+self. But ginerally hit's jest somebody who has a gredge agin the
+blockader fer family reasons, or business reasons, and turns informer to
+git even."
+
+It is only fair to present this side of the case, because there is much
+truth in it, and because it goes far to explain the bitter feeling
+against revenue agents personally that is almost universal in the
+mountains, and is shared even by the mountain preachers. It should be
+understood, too, in this connection, that the southern highlander has a
+long memory. Slights and injuries suffered by one generation have their
+scars transmitted to sons and grandsons. There is no denying that there
+have been officers in the revenue service who, stung by the contempt in
+which they were held as renegades from their own people, have used their
+authority in settling private scores, and have inflicted grievous wrongs
+upon innocent people. This is matter of official record. In his report
+for 1882, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue himself declared that
+"Instances have been brought to my attention where numerous prosecutions
+have been instituted for the most trivial violations of law, and the
+arrested parties taken long distances and subjected to great
+inconveniences and expense, not in the interest of the Government, but
+apparently for no other reason than to make costs."
+
+An ex-United States Commissioner told me that, in the darkest days of
+this struggle, when he himself was obliged to buckle on a revolver every
+time he put his head out of doors, he had more trouble with his own
+deputies than with the moonshiners. "As a rule, none but desperadoes
+could be hired for the service," he declared. "For example, one time my
+deputy in your county wanted some liquor for himself. He and two of his
+cronies crossed the line into South Carolina, raided a still, and got
+beastly drunk. The blockaders bushwhacked them, riddled a mule and its
+rider with buckshot, and shot my deputy through the brain with a
+squirrel rifle. We went over there and buried the victims a few days
+later, during a snow storm, working with our holster flaps unbuttoned. I
+had all that work and worry simply because that rascal was bent on
+getting drunk without paying for it. However, it cost him his life.
+
+"They were not all like that, though," continued the Judge. "Now and
+then there would turn up in the service a man who had entered it from
+honorable motives, and whose conduct, at all times, was chivalric and
+clean. There was Hersh Harkins, for example, now United States Collector
+at Asheville. I had many cases in which Harkins figured."
+
+"Tell me of one," I urged.
+
+"Well, one time there was a man named Jenks [that was not the real name,
+but it will serve], who was too rich to be suspected of blockading.
+Jenks had a license to make brandy, but not whiskey. One day Harkins was
+visiting his still-house, and he noticed something dubious. Thrusting
+his arm down through the peach pomace, he found mash underneath. It is a
+penitentiary offense to mix the two. Harkins procured more evidence
+from Jenk's distiller, and hauled the offender before me. The trial was
+conducted in a hotel room, full of people. We were not very formal in
+those days--kept our hats on. There was no thought of Jenks trying to
+run away, for he was well-to-do; so he was given the freedom of the
+room. He paced nervously back and forth between my desk and the door,
+growing more restless as the trial proceeded. A clerk sat near me,
+writing a bond, and Harkins stood behind him dictating its terms.
+Suddenly Jenks wheeled around, near the door, jerked out a navy
+revolver, fired and bolted. It is hard to say whom he shot at, for the
+bullet went through Harkins's coat, through the clerk's hat, and through
+my hat, too. I ducked under the desk to get my revolver, and Harkins,
+thinking that I was killed, sprang to pick me up; but I came up firing.
+It was wonderful how soon that room was emptied! Harkins took after the
+fugitive, and had a wild chase; but he got him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was my good fortune, a few evenings later, to have a long talk with
+Mr. Harkins himself. He was a fine giant of a man, standing six feet
+three, and symmetrically proportioned. No one looking into his kindly
+gray eyes would suspect that they belonged to one who had seen as hard
+and dangerous service in the Revenue Department as any man then living.
+In an easy, unassuming way he told me many stories of his own adventures
+among moonshiners and counterfeiters in the old days when these southern
+Appalachians fairly swarmed with desperate characters. One grim affair
+will suffice to give an impression of the man, and of the times in which
+his spurs were won.
+
+There was a man on South Mountain, South Carolina, whom, for the sake of
+relatives who may still be living, we will call Lafonte. There was
+information that Lafonte was running a blind tiger. He got his whiskey
+from four brothers who were blockading near his father's house, just
+within the North Carolina line. The Government had sent an officer named
+Merrill to capture Lafonte, but the latter drove Merrill away with a
+shotgun. Harkins then received orders to make the arrest. Taking Merrill
+with him as guide, Harkins rode to the father's house, and found Lafonte
+himself working near a high fence. As soon as the criminal saw the
+officers approaching, he ran for the house to get his gun. Harkins
+galloped along the other side of the fence, and, after a
+rough-and-tumble fight, captured his man. The officers then carried
+their prisoner to the house of a man whose name I have forgotten--call
+him White--who lived about two miles away. Meantime they had heard
+Lafonte's sister give three piercing screams as a signal to his
+confederates in the neighborhood, and they knew that trouble would
+quickly brew.
+
+Breakfast was ready in White's home when the mob arrived. Harkins sent
+Merrill in to breakfast, and himself went out on the porch, carbine in
+hand, to stand off the thoroughly angry gang. White also went out,
+beseeching the mob to disperse. Matters looked squally for a time, but
+it was finally agreed that Lafonte should give bond, whereupon he was
+promptly released.
+
+The two officers then finished their breakfast, and shortly set out for
+the Blue House, an abandoned schoolhouse about forty miles distant,
+where the trial was to be conducted. They were followed at a distance by
+Lafonte's half-drunken champions, who were by no means placated, owing
+to the fact that the Blue House was in a neighborhood friendly to the
+Government. Harkins and Merrill soon dodged to one side in the forest,
+until the rioters had passed them, and then proceeded leisurely in the
+rear. On their way to the Blue House they cut up four stills,
+destroyed a furnace, and made several arrests.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Mountain Home]
+
+
+The next day three United States commissioners opened court in the old
+schoolhouse. The room was crowded by curious spectators. The trial had
+not proceeded beyond preliminaries when shots and shouts from the
+pursuing mob were heard in the distance. Immediately the room was
+emptied of both crowd and commissioners, who fled in all directions,
+leaving Harkins and Merrill to fight their battle alone.
+
+There were thirteen men in the moonshiners' mob. They surrounded the
+house, and immediately began shooting in through the windows. The
+officers returned the fire, but a hard-pine ceiling in the room caused
+the bullets of the attacking party to ricochet in all directions and
+made the place untenable. Harkins and his comrade sprang out through the
+windows, but from opposite sides of the house. Merrill ran, but Harkins
+grappled with the men nearest to him, and in a moment the whole force of
+desperadoes was upon him like a swarm of bees. Unfortunately, the brave
+fellow had left his carbine at the house where he had spent the night.
+His only weapon was a revolver that had only three cartridges in the
+cylinder. Each of these shots dropped a man; but there were ten men
+left. Nothing but Harkins's gigantic strength saved him, that day, from
+immediate death. His long arms tackled three or four men at once, and
+all went down in a bunch. Others fell on top, as in a college cane-rush.
+There had been swift shooting, hitherto, but now it was mostly knife and
+pistol-butt. It is almost incredible, but it is true, that this
+extraordinary battle waged for three-quarters of an hour. At its end
+only one man faced the now thoroughly exhausted and badly wounded, but
+indomitable officer. At this fellow, Harkins hurled his pistol; it
+struck him in the forehead, and the battle was won.
+
+A thick overcoat that Mr. Harkins wore was pierced by twenty-one
+bullets, seven of which penetrated his body. He received, besides, three
+or four bad knife-wounds in his back, and he was literally dripping
+blood from head to foot.
+
+This tragedy had an almost comic sequel. After all danger had passed, a
+sheriff appeared on the scene, who placed, not the mob-leader, but the
+Federal officer under arrest. Harkins left a guard over the three men
+whom he had shot, and submitted to arrest, but demanded that he be taken
+to the farmhouse where he had left his horse. This the sheriff actually
+refused to permit, although Harkins was evidently past all possibility
+of continuing far afoot. Disgusted at such imbecility, the deputy
+stalked away from the sheriff, leaving the latter with his mouth open,
+and utterly obsessed.
+
+A short distance up the road, Harkins met a countryman mounted on a
+sorry old mule. "Loan me that mule for half an hour," he requested; "you
+see, I can walk no further." But the fellow, scared out of his wits by
+the spectacle of a man in such desperate plight, refused to accommodate
+him.
+
+"Get down off that mule, or I'll break your neck!"
+
+The mule changed riders.
+
+When the story was finished, I asked Mr. Harkins if it was true, as the
+reading public generally believes, that moonshiners prefer death to
+capture. "Do they shoot a revenue officer at sight?"
+
+The answer was terse:
+
+"They used to shoot; nowadays they run."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have come to the time when our Government began in dead earnest to
+fight the moonshiners and endeavor to suppress their traffic. It was in
+1877. To give a fair picture, from the official standpoint, of the state
+of affairs at that time, I will quote from the report of the
+Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the year 1877-78:
+
+"It is with extreme regret," he said, "I find it my duty to report the
+great difficulties that have been and still are encountered in many of
+the Southern States in the enforcement of the laws. In the mountain
+regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina,
+Georgia and Alabama, and in some portions of Missouri, Arkansas and
+Texas, the illicit manufacture of spirits has been carried on for a
+number of years, and I am satisfied that the annual loss to the
+Government from this source has been very nearly, if not quite, equal to
+the annual appropriation for the collection of the internal revenue tax
+throughout the whole country. In the regions of country named there are
+known to exist about 5,000 copper stills, many of which at certain times
+are lawfully used in the production of brandy from apples and peaches,
+but I am convinced that a large portion of these stills have been and
+are used in the illicit manufacture of spirits. Part of the spirits thus
+produced has been consumed in the immediate neighborhood; the balance
+has been distributed and sold throughout the adjacent districts.
+
+"This nefarious business has been carried on, as a rule, by a
+determined set of men, who in their various neighborhoods league
+together for defense against the officers of the law, and at a given
+signal are ready to come together with arms in their hands to drive the
+officers of internal revenue out of the country.
+
+"As illustrating the extraordinary resistance which the officers have
+had on some occasions to encounter, I refer to occurrences in Overton
+County, Tennessee, in August last, where a posse of eleven internal
+revenue officers, who had stopped at a farmer's house for the night,
+were attacked by a band of armed illicit distillers, who kept up a
+constant fusillade during the whole night, and whose force was augmented
+during the following day till it numbered nearly two hundred men. The
+officers took shelter in a log house, which served them as a fort,
+returning the fire as best they could, and were there besieged for
+forty-two hours, three of their party being shot--one through the body,
+one through the arm, and one in the face. I directed a strong force to
+go to their relief, but in the meantime, through the intervention of
+citizens, the besieged officers were permitted to retire, taking their
+wounded with them, and without surrendering their arms.
+
+"So formidable has been the resistance to the enforcement of the laws
+that in the districts of 5th Virginia, 6th North Carolina, South
+Carolina, 2d and 5th Tennessee, 2d West Virginia, Arkansas, and
+Kentucky, I have found it necessary to supply the collectors with
+breech-loading carbines. In these districts, and also in the States of
+Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, in the 4th district of North Carolina,
+and in the 2d and 5th districts of Missouri, I have authorized the
+organization of posses ranging from five to sixty in number, to aid in
+making seizures and arrests, the object being to have a force
+sufficiently strong to deter resistance if possible, and, if need be, to
+overcome it."
+
+The intention of the Revenue Department was certainly not to inflame the
+mountain people, but to treat them as considerately as possible. And
+yet, the policy of "be to their faults a little blind" had borne no
+other fruit than to strengthen the combinations of moonshiners and their
+sympathizers to such a degree that they could set the ordinary force of
+officers at defiance, and things had come to such a pass that men of
+wide experience in the revenue service had reached the conclusion that
+"the fraud of illicit distilling was an evil too firmly established to
+be uprooted, and that it must be endured."
+
+The real trouble was that public sentiment in the mountains was almost
+unanimously in the moonshiners' favor. Leading citizens were either
+directly interested in the traffic, or were in active sympathy with the
+distillers. "In some cases," said the Commissioner, "State officers,
+including judges on the bench, have sided with the illicit distillers
+and have encouraged the use of the State courts for the prosecution of
+the officers of the United States upon all sorts of charges, with the
+evident purpose of obstructing the enforcement of the laws of the United
+States.... I regret to have to record the fact that when the officers of
+the United States have been shot down from ambuscade, in cold blood, as
+a rule no efforts have been made on the part of the State officers to
+arrest the murderers; but in cases where the officers of the United
+States have been engaged in enforcement of the laws, and have
+unfortunately come in conflict with the violators of the law, and
+homicides have occurred, active steps have been at once taken for the
+arrest of such officers, and nothing would be left undone by the State
+authorities to bring them to trial and punishment."
+
+There is no question but that this statement of the Commissioner was a
+fair presentation of facts; but when he went on to expose the root of
+the evil, the underlying sentiment that made, and still makes, illicit
+distilling popular among our mountaineers, I think that he was
+singularly at fault. This was his explanation--the only one that I have
+found in all the reports of the Department from 1870 to 1904:
+
+"Much of the opposition to the enforcement of the internal revenue laws
+[he does not say _all_, but offers no other theory] is properly
+attributable to a latent feeling of hostility to the government and laws
+of the United States still prevailing in the breasts of a portion of the
+people of these districts, and in consequence of this condition of
+things the officers of the United States have often been treated very
+much as though they were emissaries from some foreign country quartered
+upon the people for the collection of tribute."
+
+This shows an out-and-out misunderstanding of the character of the
+mountain people, their history, their proclivities, and the
+circumstances of their lives. The southern mountaineers, as a class,
+have been remarkably loyal to the Union ever since it was formed. Far
+more of them fought for the Union than for the Confederacy in our Civil
+War. And, anyway, politics has never had anything to do with the
+moonshining question. The reason for illicit distilling is purely an
+economic one, as I have shown. If officers of the Federal Government
+have been treated as foreigners they have met the same reception that
+_all_ outsiders meet from the mountaineers. A native of the Carolina
+tidewater is a "furriner" in the Carolina mountains, and so is a native
+of the "bluegrass" when he enters the eastern hills of his own State.
+The highlander's word "furriner" means to him what +barbaros+ did
+to an ancient Greek. Ordinarily he is courteous to the unfortunate
+alien, though never deferential; in his heart of hearts he regards the
+queer fellow with lofty superiority. This trait is characteristic of all
+primitive peoples, of all isolated peoples. It is provincialism, pure
+and simple--a provincialism more crudely expressed in Appalachia than in
+Gotham or The Hub, but no cruder in essence for all that.
+
+The vigorous campaign of 1877 bore such fruit that, in the following
+year, the Commissioner was able to report: "We virtually have peaceable
+possession of the districts of 4th and 5th North Carolina, Georgia, West
+Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas, in many of which formidable
+resistance to the enforcement of the law has prevailed.... In the
+western portion of the 5th Virginia district, in part of West Virginia,
+in the 6th North Carolina district, in part of South Carolina, and in
+the 2d and 5th districts of Tennessee, I apprehend further serious
+difficulties.... It is very desirable, in order to prevent bloodshed,
+that the internal revenue forces sent into these infected regions to
+make seizures and arrests shall be so strong as to deter armed
+resistance."
+
+In January, 1880, a combined movement by armed bodies of internal
+revenue officers was made from West Virginia southwestward through the
+mountains and foothills infested with illicit distillers. "The effect of
+this movement was to convince violators of the law that it was the
+determination of the Government to put an end to frauds and resistance
+of authority, and since that time it has been manifest to all
+well-meaning men in those regions of the country that the day of the
+illicit distiller is past." In his report for 1881-82 the Commissioner
+declared that "The supremacy of the laws ... has been established in all
+parts of the country."
+
+As a matter of fact, the number of arrests per annum, which hitherto had
+ranged from 1,000 to 3,000, now dropped off considerably, and the
+casualties in the service became few and far between. But, in 1894,
+Congress increased the tax on spirits from the old 90 cents figure to
+$1.10 a gallon. The effect was almost instantaneous. We have no means
+of learning how many new moonshine stills were set up, but we do know
+that the number of seizures doubled and trebled, and that bloodshed
+proportionally increased. Again the complaint went out that "justice was
+frequently defeated," even in cases of conviction, by failure to visit
+adequate punishment upon the offenders. It is, to-day, a notorious fact
+that our blockaders dread their own State courts far more than they do
+the Federal courts, because the punishment for selling liquor in the
+mountain counties is surer to follow conviction than is the penalty for
+violating Federal law. The latter is severe enough, if it were enforced;
+for defrauding, or attempting to defraud, the United States of the tax
+on spirits, the law prescribes forfeiture of the distillery and
+apparatus, and of all spirits and raw materials, besides a fine of not
+less than $500 nor more than $5,000, _and_ imprisonment for not less
+than six months nor longer than three years. I am not able to say what
+percentage of arrests is followed by conviction, nor how many convicted
+persons suffer the full penalty of the law. I only know that public
+opinion in the mountains did not consider an arrest, or even a
+conviction, by the Federal authorities, as a very serious matter during
+the period from 1880 up to the past two or three years, and little
+resistance was offered by blockaders when captured.
+
+Recently, however, a new factor has entered the moonshining problem and
+profoundly altered it: the South has gone "dry."
+
+One might have expected that prohibition would be bitterly opposed in
+Appalachia, in view of the fact that here the old-fashioned principle
+still prevails, in practice, that moderate drinking is neither a sin nor
+a disgrace, and that a man has the same right to make his own whiskey as
+his own soup, if he chooses. Undoubtedly those who fight the liquor
+traffic on purely moral grounds are a small minority in the mountains.
+But the blockaders themselves are glad to see prohibitory laws enforced
+to the letter, so far as saloons and registered distilleries are
+concerned, and the drinking public prefer their native product from both
+patriotic and gustatory motives. Such a combination is irresistible.
+
+When pure "blockade" of normal strength sold as cheaply as it did before
+prohibition there was no great profit in it, all risks and expenses
+considered. But to-day, even with interstate shipments of liquors to
+consumers, a gallon of "blockade" will be watered to half-strength, then
+fortified with cologne spirits or other abominations, and peddled out
+by bootleggers, at $1.50 a quart, in villages and lumber camps where
+somebody always is thirsty and can find the coin to assuage it. Thus,
+amid a poverty-stricken class of mountaineers, the temptation to run a
+secret still, and adulterate the output, inflames and spreads.
+
+In any case, the fact is that blockading as a business conducted in
+armed defiance of the law is increasing by leaps and bounds since the
+mountain region went "dry." The profits to-day are much greater than
+before, because liquor is harder to get, in country districts, and
+consumers will pay higher prices without question.
+
+Correspondingly, the risks are greater than ever. Arrests have increased
+rapidly, and so have mortal combats between officers and outlaws.
+Blockading has returned to much the same status described (as previously
+quoted) by our Commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1876. I have not seen
+recent revenue reports, but I do not need to; for the war between
+officers and moonshiners is so close to us that we almost live within
+gun-crack of it. If Mr. Harkins were alive to-day, he would say: "They
+used to shoot--and they have taken it up again."
+
+Observe, please, that this is no argument for or against prohibition.
+That is not my business. As a descriptive writer it is my duty to
+collect facts, whether pleasant or unpleasant, regardless of my own or
+anyone else's bias, and present them in orderly sequence. It is for the
+reader to deduce his own conclusions, and with them I have nothing at
+all to do.
+
+I have given in brief the history of illicit distilling because we must
+consider it before we can grasp firmly the basic fact that this is not
+so much a moral as an economic problem. Men do not make whiskey in
+secret, at the peril of imprisonment or death, because they are outlaws
+by nature nor from any other kind of depravity, but simply and solely
+because it looks like "easy money to poor folks."
+
+If I may voice my own opinion of a working remedy, it is this: Give the
+mountaineers a lawful chance to make decent livings where they are. This
+means, first of all, decent roads whereby to market their farm produce
+without losing all profit in cost of transportation. The first problem
+of Appalachia to-day is the very same problem as that of western
+Pennsylvania in 1784.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE
+
+
+Among the many letters that come to me from men who think of touring or
+camping in Highland Dixie there are few but ask, "How are strangers
+treated?"
+
+This question, natural and prudent though it be, never fails to make me
+smile, for I know so well the thoughts that lie back of it: "Suppose one
+should blunder innocently upon a moonshine still--what would happen? If
+a feud were raging in the land, how would a stranger fare? If one goes
+alone into the mountains, does he run any risk of being robbed?"
+
+Before I left the tame West and came into this wild East, I would have
+asked a few questions myself, if I had known anyone to answer them. As
+it was, I turned up rather abruptly in a backwoods settlement where the
+"furriner" was more than a nine-days wonder. I bore no credentials; and
+it was quite as well. If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or
+from the President of the United States it would have been--just what I
+was myself--a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and
+marvelous new bug.
+
+Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome
+to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as
+affable as common folks. I dwelt alone for a long time, first in open
+camp, afterwards in a secluded hut. Then I boarded with a native family.
+Often I left my belongings to look out for themselves whilst I went away
+on expeditions of days or weeks at a time. And nobody ever stole from me
+so much as a fish-hook or a brass cartridge. So, in the retrospect, I
+smile.
+
+Does this mean, then, that Poe's characterization of the mountaineers is
+out of date? Not at all. They are the same "fierce and uncouth race of
+men" to-day that they were in his time. Homicide is so prevalent in the
+districts that I personally am acquainted with that nearly every adult
+citizen has been directly interested in some murder case, either as
+principal, officer, witness, kinsman, or friend.
+
+This grewsome subject I shall treat elsewhere, in detail. It is
+introduced here only to emphasize a fact pertinent to the present topic,
+namely: that the private wars of the highlanders are limited to their
+own people. In our corner of North Carolina no traveler from the
+outside ever has been a victim, nor do I know of any such case in the
+whole Appalachian region.
+
+
+[Illustration: Many of the homes have but one window]
+
+
+And here is another significant fact: as regards personal property I do
+not know any race in the world that is more honest than our backwoodsmen
+of the southern mountains. As soon as you leave the railroad you enter a
+land where sneak-thieves are rare and burglars almost unheard of. In my
+own county and all those adjoining it there has been only one case of
+highway robbery and only one of murder for money, so far as I can learn,
+in the past _forty_ years.
+
+The mountain code of conduct is a curious mixture of savagery and
+civility. One man will kill another over a pig or a panel of fence (not
+for the property's sake, but because of hot words ensuing) and he will
+"come clear" in court because every fellow on the jury feels he would
+have done the same thing himself under similar provocation; yet these
+very men, vengeful and cruel though they are, regard hospitality as a
+sacred duty toward wayfarers of any degree, and the bare idea of
+stealing from a stranger would excite their instant loathing or
+white-hot scorn.
+
+Anyone of tact and common sense can go as he pleases through the darkest
+corner of Appalachia without being molested. Tact, however, implies the
+will and the insight to put yourself truly in the other man's place.
+Imagine yourself born, bred, circumstanced like him. It implies, also,
+the courtesy of doing as you would be done by if you were in that
+fellow's shoes. No arrogance, no condescension, but man to man on a
+footing of equal manliness.
+
+And there are "manners" in the rudest community: customs and rules of
+conduct that it is well to learn before one goes far afield. For
+example, when you stop at a mountain cabin, if no dogs sound an alarm,
+do not walk up to the door and knock. You are expected to call out
+_Hello!_ until someone comes to inspect you. None but the most intimate
+neighbors neglect this usage and there is mighty good reason back of it
+in a land where the path to one's door may be a warpath.
+
+If you are armed, as a hunter, do not fail to remove the cartridges from
+the gun, in your host's presence, before you set foot on his porch. Then
+give him the weapon or stand it in a corner or hang it up in plain view.
+Even our sheriff, when he stopped with us, would lay his revolver on the
+mantel-shelf and leave it there until he went his way. If you think a
+moment you can see the courtesy of such an act. It proves that the
+guest puts implicit trust in the honor of his host and in his ability to
+protect all within his house. There never has been a case in which such
+trust was violated.
+
+I knew a traveler who, spending the night in a one-room cabin, was fool
+enough (I can use no milder term) to thrust a loaded revolver under his
+pillow when he went to bed. In the morning his weapon was still there,
+but empty, and its cartridges lay conspicuously on a table across the
+room. Nobody said a word about the incident: the hint was left to soak
+in.
+
+The only real danger that one may encounter from the native people, so
+long as he behaves himself, is when he comes upon a man who is wild with
+liquor and cannot sidestep him. In such case, give him the glad word and
+move on at once. I have had a drunken "ball-hooter" (log-roller) from
+the lumber camps fire five shots around my head as a _feu-de-joie_, and
+then stand tantalizingly, with hammer cocked over the sixth cartridge,
+to see what I would do about it. As it chanced, I did not mind his
+fireworks, for my head was a-swim with the rising fever of erysipelas
+and I had come dragging my heels many an irk mile down from the
+mountains to find a doctor. So I merely smiled at the fellow and asked
+if he was having a good time. He grinned sheepishly and let me pass
+unharmed.
+
+The chief drawback to travel in this region, aside from the roads, is
+not the character of the people, but the quality of bed and board. Of
+course there are good hotels at most of the summer resorts, but these
+are few and scattering, at present, for a territory so immense. In most
+regions where there is noble scenery, unspoiled forest, and good
+fishing, the accommodations are extremely rude. Many of the village inns
+are dirty, and their tables a shock and a despair to the hungry pilgrim.
+There are blessed exceptions, to be sure, but on the other hand the
+traveler sometimes will encounter a cuisine that is neither edible nor
+speakable, and will be shown to a bed wherein it needs no Sherlock
+Holmes to detect that the previous biped retired with his boots on, or
+at least with much realty attached to his person. Such places often are
+like that unpronounceable town in Russia of which Paragot said: "The
+bugs are the most companionable creatures in it, and they are the
+cleanest."
+
+If one be of the same mind as the plain-spoken Dr. Samuel Johnson, that
+"the finest landscape in the world is not worth a damn without a cozy
+inn in the foreground," he should keep to the stock show-places of our
+highlands or seek other playgrounds.
+
+By far the most comfortable way to stay in the back country at present
+is in a camp of one's own where he can keep things tidy and have food to
+suit him. If you be, though, of stout stomach and wishful to get true
+insight into mountain ways and character you can find some sort of
+boarding-place almost anywhere. In such case go first to the sheriff of
+the county (in person, not by letter). This officer is a walking bureau
+of information and dispenses it freely to any stranger. He knows almost
+every man in the county, his character and his circumstances. He may be
+depended upon to direct you to the best stopping-places, will tell you
+how to get hunting and fishing privileges, and will recommend a good
+packer or teamster if such help is wanted.
+
+Along the railways and main county roads the farmers show a
+well-justified mistrust about admitting company for the night. But in
+the back districts the latch-string generally is out to all comers. "If
+you-uns can stand what we-uns has ter, w'y come right in and set you a
+cheer."
+
+If the man of the house has misgivings as to the state of the larder, he
+will say: "I'll ax the woman gin she can git ye a bite." Seldom does
+the wife demur, though sometimes her patience is sorely tried.
+
+A stranger whose calked boots betrayed his calling stopped at Uncle
+Mark's to inquire, "Can I git to stay all night?" Aunt Nance, peeping
+through a crack, warned her man in a whisper: "Them loggers jest louzes
+up folkses houses." Whereat Mark answered the lumberjack: "We don't
+ginerally foller takin' in strangers."
+
+Jack glanced significantly at the lowering clouds, and grunted:
+"Uh--looks like I could stand hitched all night!"
+
+This was too much for Mark. "Well!" he exclaimed, "mebbe we-uns can find
+ye a pallet--I'll try to enjoy ye somehow." Which, being interpreted,
+means, "I'll entertain you as best I can."
+
+The hospitality of the backwoods knows no bounds short of sickness in
+the family or downright destitution. Travelers often innocently impose
+on poor people, and even criticise the scanty fare, when they may be
+getting a lion's share of the last loaf in the house. And few of them
+realize the actual cost of entertaining company in a home that is long
+mountain miles from any market. Fancy yourself making a twenty-mile
+round trip over awful roads to carry back a sack of flour on your
+shoulder and a can of oil in your hand; then figure what the
+transportation is worth.
+
+Once when I was trying a short-cut through the forest by following vague
+directions I swerved to the wrong trail. Sunset found me on the summit
+of an unfamiliar mountain, with cold rain setting in, and below me lay
+the impenetrable laurel of Huggins's Hell. I turned back to the head of
+the nearest water course, not knowing whither it led, fought my way
+through thicket and darkness to the nearest house, and asked for
+lodging. The man was just coming in from work. He betrayed some anxiety
+but admitted me with grave politeness. Then he departed on an errand,
+leaving his wife to hear the story of my wanderings.
+
+I was eager for supper; but madame made no move toward the kitchen. An
+hour passed. A little child whimpered with hunger. The mother, flushing,
+soothed it on her breast.
+
+It was well on in the night when her husband returned, bearing a little
+"poke" of cornmeal. Then the woman flew to her post. Soon we had hot
+bread, three or four slices of pork, and black coffee unsweetened--all
+there was in the house.
+
+It developed that when I arrived there was barely enough meal for the
+family's supper and breakfast. My host had to shell some corn, go in
+almost pitch darkness, without a lantern, to a tub-mill far down the
+branch, wait while it ground out a few spoonfuls to the minute and bring
+the meal back.
+
+Next morning, when I offered pay for my entertainment, he waved it
+aside. "I ain't never tuk money from company," he said, "and this ain't
+no time to begin."
+
+Laughing, I slipped some silver into the hand of the eldest child. "This
+is not pay; it's a present." The girl was awed into speechlessness at
+sight of money of her own, and the parents did not know how to thank me
+for her, but bade me "Stay on, stranger; pore folks has a pore way, but
+you're welcome to what we got."
+
+This incident is a little out of the common, nowadays; but it is typical
+of what was customary until lumbering and other industrial works began
+to invade the solitudes. To-day it is the rule to charge twenty-five
+cents a meal and the same for lodging, regardless of what the fare and
+the bed may be. When you think of it, this is right, for "the porer
+folks is the harder it is to _git_ things."
+
+The mountaineers always are eager for news. In the drab monotony of
+their shut-in lives the coming of an unknown traveler is an event that
+will set the whole neighborhood gossiping. Every word and action of his
+will be discussed for weeks after he has gone his way. This, of course,
+is a trait of rural people everywhere; but imagine, if you can, how it
+may be intensified where there are no newspapers, few visitors, and
+where the average man gets maybe two or three letters a year!
+
+Riding up a branch road, you come upon a white-bearded patriarch who
+halts you with a wave of the hand.
+
+"Stranger--meanin' no harm--_whar_ are you gwine?"
+
+You tell him.
+
+"What did you say your name was?"
+
+You had not mentioned it; but you do so now.
+
+"What mought you-uns foller for a living?"
+
+It is wise to humor the old man, and tell him frankly what is your
+business "up this 'way-off branch."
+
+Half a mile farther you espy a girl coming toward you. She stops like a
+startled fawn, wide-eyed with amazement. Then, at a bound, she dodges
+into a thicket, doubles on her course and runs back as fast as her
+nimble bare legs can carry her to report that "Some-_body_ 's comin'!"
+
+At the next house, stopping for a drink of water, you chat a few
+moments. High up the opposite hill is a half-hidden cabin from which
+keen eyes scrutinize your every move, and a woman cries to her boy:
+"Run, Kit, down to Mederses, and ax who _is_ he!"
+
+As you approach a cross-roads store every idler pricks up to instant
+attention. Your presence is detected from every neighboring cabin and
+cornfield. Long John quits his plowing, Red John drops his axe, Sick
+John ("who's allers ailin', to hear _him_ tell") pops out of bed, and
+Lyin' John (whose "mouth ain't no praar-book, if it _does_ open and
+shet") grabs his hat, with "I jes' got ter know who that feller is!"
+Then all Johns descend their several paths, to congregate at the store
+and estimate the stranger as though he were so many board-feet of lumber
+in the tree or so many pounds of beef on the hoof.
+
+In every settlement there is somebody who makes a pleasure of gathering
+and spreading news. Such a one we had--a happy-go-lucky fellow from
+whom, they said, "you can hear the news jinglin' afore he comes within
+gunshot." It amused me to record the many ways he had of announcing his
+mission by indirection. Here is the list:
+
+"I'm jes' broguin' about."
+
+"Yes, I'm jest cooterin' around."
+
+"I'm santerin' about."
+
+"Oh, I'm jes' prodjectin' around."
+
+"Jist traffickin' about."
+
+"No, I ain't workin' none--jest spuddin' around."
+
+"Me? I'm jes' shacklin' around."
+
+"Yea, la! I'm jist loaferin' about."
+
+And yet one hears that our mountaineers have a limited vocabulary!
+
+Although this is no place to discuss the mountain dialect, I must
+explain that to "brogue" means to go about in brogues (brogans
+nowadays). A "cooter" is a box-tortoise, and the noun is turned into a
+verb with an ease characteristic of the mountaineers. "Spuddin' around"
+means toddling or jolting along. To "shummick" (also "shammick") is to
+shuffle about, idly nosing into things, as a bear does when there is
+nothing serious in view. And "shacklin' around" pictures a shackly,
+loose-jointed way of walking, expressive of the idle vagabond.
+
+A stranger takes the mountaineers for simple characters that can be
+gauged at a glance. This illusion--for it is an illusion--comes from
+the childlike directness with which they ask him the most intimate
+questions about himself, from the genuine good-will with which they
+admit him to their homes, and from the stark openness of their domestic
+affairs in houses where no privacy can possibly exist.
+
+In so far as simplicity means only a shrewd regard for essentials, a
+rigid exclusion of whatever can be done without, perhaps no white race
+is nearer a state of nature than these highlanders of ours. Yet this
+relates only to the externals of life. Diogenes sat in a tub, but his
+thoughts were deep as the sea. And whoever estimates our mountaineers as
+a shallow-minded or open-minded people has much to learn.
+
+When Long John asks, "What you aimin' to do up hyur? How much money do
+you make? Whar's your old woman?" he does not really expect sincere
+answers. Certainly he will take them with more than a grain of salt.
+Conversation, with him, is a game. In quizzing you, the interests that
+he is actually curious about lie hidden in the back of his head, and he
+will proceed toward them by cunning circumventions, seeking to entrap
+you into telling the truth by accident. Being himself born to intrigue
+and skilled in dodging the leading question, he assumes that you have
+had equal advantages. When you discuss with him any business of serious
+concern, if you should go straight to the point, and open your mind
+frankly, he would be nonplussed.
+
+The fact is that our highlanders are a sly, suspicious, and secretive
+folk. That, too, is a state of nature. Primitive society is by no means
+a Utopia or a Garden of Eden. In wilderness life the feral arts of
+concealment, spying, false "leads," and doubling on trails, are the arts
+self-preservative. The native backwoodsman practices them as
+instinctively and with as little compunction upon his own species as
+upon the deer and the wolf from whom he learned them.
+
+As a friend, no one will spring quicker to your aid, reckless of
+consequences, and fight with you to the last ditch; but fear of betrayal
+lies at the very bottom of his nature. His sleepless suspicion of
+ulterior motives is no more, no less, than a feral trait, inherited from
+a long line of forebears whose isolated lives were preserved only by
+incessant vigilance against enemies that stalked by night and struck
+without warning.
+
+Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the
+mountaineers. I am not speaking of personal but of race character--type.
+No outsider can discern and measure those powerful but obscure motives,
+those rooted prejudices, that constitute their real difference from
+other men, until he has lived with the people a long time on terms of
+intimacy. Nor can anyone be trusted to portray them if he holds a brief
+either for or against this people. The fluttering tourist marks only the
+oddities he sees, without knowing the reason for them. On the other
+hand, a misguided champion flies to arms at first mention of an
+unpleasant fact, and either denies it, clamoring for legal proof, or
+tries to befog the whole subject and run it on the rocks of altercation.
+
+The mountaineers are high-strung and sensitive to criticism. No one has
+less use for "that worst scourge of avenging heaven, the candid friend."
+Of late years they are growing conscious of their own belatedness, and
+that touches a tender spot. "Hit don't take a big seed to hurt a sore
+tooth." Since they do not see how anyone can find beauty or historic
+interest in ways of life that the rest of the world has cast aside, so
+they resent every exposure of their peculiarities as if that were
+holding them up to ridicule or blame.
+
+Strange to say, it provokes them to be called mountaineers, that being a
+"furrin word" which they take as a term of reproach. They call
+themselves mountain people, or citizens; sometimes humorously "mountain
+boomers," the word boomer being their name for the common red squirrel
+which is found here only in the upper zones of the mountains.
+Backwoodsman is another term that they deem opprobrious. Among
+themselves the backwoods are called "the sticks." Hillsman and
+highlander are strange words to them--and anything that is strange is
+suspicious. Hence it is next to impossible for anyone to write much
+about these people without offending them or else falling into singsong
+repetition of the same old terms.
+
+I have found it beyond me to convince anyone here that my studies of the
+mountain dialect are made from any better motive than vulgar curiosity.
+It has been my habit to jot down, on the spot, every dialectical word or
+variant or idiom that I hear, along with the phrase or sentence in which
+it occurred; for I never trust memory in such matters. And although I
+tell frankly what I am about, and why, yet all that the folks can or
+will see is that--
+
+  A chiel 's amang ye, takin' notes,
+  And, faith, he'll prent 'em.
+
+
+Nothing worse than dour looks has yet befallen me, but other scribes
+have not got off so easy. On more than one occasion newspaper men who
+went into eastern Kentucky to report feuds were escorted forcibly to the
+railroad and warned never to return. The feudists are scarce to blame,
+for the average news story of their wars is neither sacred nor profane
+history. It is bad enough to be shown up as an assassin; but when one is
+posed as "cocking the _trigger_" of a gun, or shooting a "forty-four"
+bullet from a thirty-caliber "automatic _revolver_," who in Kentucky
+could be expected to stand it?
+
+The novelists have their troubles, too. President Frost relates that
+when John Fox gave a reading from his Cumberland tales at Berea College
+"the mountain boys were ready to mob him. They had no comprehension of
+the nature of fiction. Mr. Fox's stories were either true or false. If
+they were true, then he was 'no gentleman' for telling all the family
+affairs of people who had entertained him with their best. If they were
+not true, then, of course, they were libellous upon the mountain people.
+Such an attitude may remind us of the general condemnation of fiction by
+the 'unco gude' a generation ago."
+
+
+[Illustration: The Schoolhouse]
+
+
+As for settlement workers, let them teach more by example than by
+precept. Bishop Wilson has given them some advice that cannot be
+bettered: "It must be said with emphasis that our problem is an
+exceedingly delicate one. The Highlanders are Scotch-Irish in their
+high-spiritedness and proud independence. Those who would help them must
+do so in a perfectly frank and kindly way, showing always genuine
+interest in them but never a trace of patronizing condescension. As
+quick as a flash the mountaineer will recognize and resent the intrusion
+of any such spirit, and will refuse even what he sorely needs if he
+detects in the accents or the demeanor of the giver any indication of an
+air of superiority."
+
+"The worker among the mountaineers," he continues, "must 'meet with them
+on the level and part on the square' and conquer their oftentimes
+unreasonable suspicion by genuine brotherly friendship. The less he has
+to say about the superiority of other sections or of the deficiencies of
+the mountains, the better for his cause. The fact is that comparatively
+few workers are at first able to pass muster in this regard under the
+searching and silent scrutiny of the mountain people."
+
+Allow me to add that this is no place for the "unco gude" to exercise
+their talents, but rather for those whose studies and travels have
+taught them both tolerance and hopefulness. Some well-meaning
+missionaries are shocked and scandalized at what seems to them incurable
+perversity and race degeneration. It is nothing of the sort. There are
+reasons, good reasons, for the worst that we find in any Hell-fer-Sartin
+or Loafer's Glory. All that is the inevitable result of isolation and
+lack of opportunity. It is no more hopeless than the same features of
+life were in the Scotch highlands two centuries ago.
+
+But it must be known that the future of this really fine race is, at
+bottom, an economic problem, which must be studied hand-in-hand with the
+educational one. Civilization only repels the mountaineer until you show
+him something to gain by it--he knows by instinct what he is bound to
+lose. There is no use in teaching cleanliness and thrift to serfs or
+outcasts. The _independence_ of the mountain farm must be preserved, or
+the fine spirit of the race will vanish and all that is manly in the
+Highlander will wither to the core.
+
+It is far from my own purpose to preach or advise. "Portray the
+struggle, and you need write no tract." Still farther is it from my
+thought to let characterization degenerate into caricature. Wherever I
+tell anything that is unusual or below the average of backwoods life, I
+give fair warning that it is admitted only for spice or contrast, and
+let it go at that. But even in writing with severe restraint it will be
+necessary at times to show conditions so rude and antiquated that
+professional apologists will growl, and many others may find my
+statements hard to credit as typical of anything at all in our modern
+America.
+
+So, let me remind the reader again that full three-fourths of our
+mountaineers still live in the eighteenth century, and that in their
+far-flung wilderness, away from large rivers and railways, the habits,
+customs, morals of the people have changed but little from those of our
+old colonial frontier; in essentials they are closely analogous to what
+we read of lower-class English and Scottish life in Covenanter and
+Jacobite times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS
+
+
+In delineating a strange race we are prone to disregard what is common
+in our own experience and observe sharply what is odd. The oddities we
+sketch and remember and tell about. But there is little danger of
+misrepresenting the physical features and mental traits of the hill
+people, because among them there is one definite type that greatly
+predominates. This is not to be wondered at when we remember that fully
+three-fourths of our highlanders are practically of the same descent,
+have lived the same kind of life for generations, and have intermarried
+to a degree unknown in other parts of America.
+
+Our average mountaineer is lean, inquisitive, shrewd. If that be what
+constitutes a Yankee, as is popularly supposed outside of New England,
+then this Yankee of the South is as true to type as the conventional
+Uncle Sam himself.
+
+A fat mountaineer is a curiosity. The hill folk even seem to affect a
+slender type of comeliness. In Alice MacGowan's _Judith of the
+Cumberlands_, old Jepthah Turrentine says of one of his sons: "I named
+that boy after the finest man that ever walked God's green earth--and
+then the fool had to go and git fat on me! Think of me with a _fat_ son!
+I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort
+p'intedly to be led out and killed!"
+
+Spartan diet does not put on flesh. Still, it should be noted that long
+legs, baggy clothing, and scantiness or lack of underwear make people
+seem thinner than they really are. Our highlanders are conspicuously a
+tall race. Out of seventy-six men that I have listed just as they
+occurred to me, but four are below average American height and only two
+are fat. About two-thirds of them are brawny or sinewy fellows of great
+endurance. The others generally are slab-sided, stoop-shouldered, but
+withey. The townsfolk and the valley farmers, being better nourished and
+more observant of the prime laws of wholesome living, are noticeably
+superior in appearance but not in stamina.
+
+Nearly all males of the back country have a grave and deliberate
+bearing. They travel with the long, sure-footed stride of the born
+woodsman, not graceful and lithe like a moccasined Indian (their coarse
+brogans forbid it), but shambling as if every joint had too much play.
+There is nothing about them to suggest the Swiss or Tyrolean
+mountaineers; rather they resemble the gillies of the Scotch Highlands.
+Generally they are lean-faced, sallow, level-browed, with rather high
+cheek-bones. Gray eyes predominate, sometimes vacuous, but oftener hard,
+searching, crafty--the feral eye of primitive man.
+
+From infancy these people have been schooled to dissimulate and hide
+emotion, and ordinarily their faces are as opaque as those of veteran
+poker players. Many wear habitually a sullen scowl, hateful and
+suspicious, which in men of combative age, and often in the old women,
+is sinister and vindictive. The smile of comfortable assurance, the
+frank eye of good-fellowship, are rare indeed. Nearly all of the young
+people and many of the adults plant themselves before a stranger and
+regard him with a fixed stare, peculiarly annoying until one realizes
+that they have no thought of impertinence.
+
+Many of the women are pretty in youth; but hard toil in house and field,
+early marriage, frequent child-bearing with shockingly poor attention,
+and ignorance or defiance of the plainest necessities of hygiene, soon
+warp and age them. At thirty or thirty-five a mountain woman is apt to
+have a worn and faded look, with form prematurely bent--and what wonder?
+Always bending over the hoe in the cornfield, or bending over the hearth
+as she cooks by an open fire, or bending over her baby, or bending to
+pick up, for the thousandth time, the wet duds that her lord flings on
+the floor as he enters from the woods--what wonder that she soon grows
+short-waisted and round-shouldered?
+
+The voices of the highland women, low toned by habit, often are
+singularly sweet, being pitched in a sad, musical, minor key. With
+strangers, the women are wont to be shy, but speculative rather than
+timid, as they glance betimes with "a slow, long look of mild inquiry,
+or of general listlessness, or of unconscious and unaccountable
+melancholy." Many, however, scrutinize a visitor calmly for minutes at a
+time or frankly measure him with the gipsy eye of Carmen.
+
+Outsiders, judging from the fruits of labor in more favored lands, have
+charged the mountaineers with indolence. It is the wrong word. Shiftless
+many of them are--afflicted with that malady which Barrie calls "acute
+disinclination to work"--but that is not so much in their physical
+nature as in their economic outlook. Rarely do we find mountaineers who
+loaf all day on the floor or the doorstep like so many of the poor
+whites of the lowlands. If not laboring, they at least must be doing
+something, be it no more than walking ten miles to shoot a squirrel or
+visit a crony.
+
+As a class, they have great and restless physical energy. Considering
+the quantity and quality of what they eat there is no people who can
+beat them in endurance of strain and privation. They are great walkers
+and carriers of burdens. Before there was a tub-mill in our settlement
+one of my neighbors used to go, every other week, thirteen miles to
+mill, carrying a two-bushel sack of corn (112 pounds) and returning with
+his meal on the following day. This was done without any pack-strap but
+simply shifting the load from one shoulder to the other, betimes.
+
+One of our women, known as "Long Goody" (I measured her; six feet three
+inches she stood) walked eighteen miles across the Smokies into
+Tennessee, crossing at an elevation of 5,000 feet, merely to shop more
+advantageously than she could at home. The next day she shouldered fifty
+pounds of flour and some other groceries, and bore them home before
+nightfall. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, in his seventy-second year came to
+join a party of us on a bear hunt. He walked twelve miles across the
+mountain, carrying his equipment and four days' rations for himself _and
+dogs_. Finding that we had gone on ahead of him he followed to our camp
+on Siler's Bald, twelve more miles, climbing another 3,000 feet, much of
+it by bad trail, finished the twenty-four-mile trip in seven hours--and
+then wanted to turn in and help cut the night-wood. Young mountaineers
+afoot easily outstrip a horse on a day's journey by road and trail.
+
+
+[Illustration: "At thirty a mountain woman is apt to have a worn and
+faded look"]
+
+
+In a climate where it showers about two days out of three through spring
+and summer the women go about, like the men, unshielded from the wet. If
+you expostulate, one will laugh and reply: "I ain't sugar, nor salt, nor
+nobody's honey." Slickers are worn only on horseback--and two-thirds of
+our people had no horses. A man who was so eccentric as to carry an
+umbrella is known to this day as "Umbrell'" John Walker.
+
+In winter, one sometimes may see adults and children going barefoot in
+snow that is ankle deep. It used to be customary in our settlement to do
+the morning chores barefooted in the snow. "Then," said one, "our feet
+'d tingle and burn, so 't they wouldn't git a bit cold all day when we
+put our shoes on." I knew a family whose children had no shoes all one
+winter, and occasionally we had zero weather.
+
+It seems to have been common, in earlier times, to go barefooted all the
+year. Frederick Law Olmsted, a noted writer of the Civil War period, was
+told by a squire of the Tennessee hills that "a majority of the folks
+went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the time four or
+five inches deep; and the man said he didn't think most of the men about
+here had more than one coat, and they never wore one in winter except on
+holidays. 'That was the healthiest way,' he reckoned, 'just to toughen
+yourself and not wear no coat.' No matter how cold it was, he 'didn't
+wear no coat.'" One of my own neighbors in the Smokies never owned a
+coat until after his marriage, when a friend of mine gave him one.
+
+It is the usual thing for men and boys to wade cold trout streams all
+day, come in at sunset, disrobe to shirt and trousers, and then sit in
+the piercing drafts of an open cabin drying out before the fire, though
+the night be so cool that a stranger beside them shivers in his dry
+flannels. After supper, the women, if they have been wearing shoes, will
+remove them to ease their feet, no matter if it be freezing cold--and
+the cracks in the floor may be an inch wide.
+
+In bear hunting, our parties usually camped at about 5,000 feet above
+sea level. At this elevation, in the long nights before Christmas, the
+cold often was bitter and the wind might blow a gale. Sometimes the
+native hunters would lie out in the open all night without a sign of a
+blanket or an axe. They would say: "La! many's the night I've been out
+when the frost was spewed up so high [measuring three or four inches
+with the hand], and that right around the fire, too." Cattle hunters in
+the mountains never carry a blanket or a shelter-cloth, and they sleep
+out wherever night finds them, often in pouring rain or flying snow. On
+their arduous trips they find it burden enough to carry the salt for
+their cattle, with a frying-pan, cup, corn pone, coffee, and
+"sow-belly," all in a grain sack strapped to the man's back.
+
+Such nurture, from childhood, makes white men as indifferent to the
+elements as Fuegians. And it makes them anything but comfortable
+companions for one who has been differently reared. During "court week"
+when the hotels at the county-seat are overcrowded with countrymen, the
+luckless drummers who happen to be there have continuous exercise in
+closing doors. No mountaineer closes a door behind him. Winter or
+summer, doors are to be shut only when folks go to bed. That is what
+they are for. After close study of mountain speech I have failed to
+discern that the word draft is understood, except in parts of the
+Virginia and Kentucky mountains, where it means a brook. One is reminded
+of the colonial, who, visiting England, remarked of the British people:
+"It is a survival of the fittest--the fittest to exist in fog." Here, it
+is the fittest to survive cold, and wet, and drafts.
+
+Running barefooted in the snow is exceptional nowadays; but it is by no
+means the limit of hardiness or callosity that some of these people
+display. It is not so long ago that I passed an open lean-to of chestnut
+bark far back in the wilderness, wherein a family of Tennesseans was
+spending the year. There were three children, the eldest a lad of
+twelve. The entire worldly possessions of this family could easily be
+packed around on their backs. Poverty, however, does not account for
+such manner of living. There is none so poor in the mountains that he
+need rear his children in a bark shed. It is all a matter of taste.
+
+There is a wealthy man known to everyone around Waynesville, who, being
+asked where he resided, as a witness in court, answered: "Three, four
+miles up and down Jonathan Creek." The judge was about to fine him for
+contempt, when it developed that the witness spoke literal truth. He
+lives neither in house nor camp, but perambulates his large estate and
+when night comes lies down wherever he may happen to be. In winter he
+has been known to go where some of his pigs bedded in the woods, usurp
+the middle for himself, and borrow comfort from their bodily heat.
+
+This man is worth over a hundred thousand dollars. He visited the
+world's fairs at Chicago and St. Louis, wearing the old long coat that
+serves him also as blanket, and carrying his rations in a sack. Far from
+being demented, he is notoriously so shrewd on the stand and so learned
+in the law that he is formidable to every attorney who cross-questions
+him.
+
+I cite these last two instances not merely as eccentricities of
+character, but as really typical of the bodily stamina that most of the
+mountaineers can display if they want to. Their smiling endurance of
+cold and wet and privation would have endeared them to the first
+Napoleon, who declared that those soldiers were the best who bivouacked
+shelterless throughout the year.
+
+In spite of such apparent "toughness," the mountaineers are not a
+notably healthy people. The man who exposes himself wantonly year after
+year must pay the piper. Sooner or later he "adopts a rheumatiz," and
+the adoption lasts till he dies. So also in dietary matters. The
+backwoodsmen through ruthless weeding-out of the normally sensitive have
+acquired a wonderful tolerance of swimming grease, doughy bread and
+half-fried cabbage; but, even so, they are gnawed by dyspepsia. This
+accounts in great measure for the "glunch o' sour disdain" that mars so
+many countenances. A neighbor said to me of another: "He has a gredge
+agin all creation, and glories in human misery." So would anyone else
+who ate at the same table. Many a homicide in the mountains can be
+traced directly to bad food and the raw whiskey taken to appease a
+soured stomach.
+
+Every stranger in Appalachia is quick to note the high percentage of
+defectives among the people. However, we should bear in mind that in the
+mountains proper there are few, if any, public refuges for this class,
+and that home ties are so powerful that mountaineers never send their
+"fitified folks" or "half-wits," or other unfortunates, to any
+institution in the lowlands, so long as it is bearable to have them
+around. Such poor creatures as would be segregated in more advanced
+communities, far from the public eye, here go at large and reproduce
+their kind.
+
+Extremely early marriages are tolerated, as among all primitive people.
+I knew a hobbledehoy of sixteen who married a frail, tuberculous girl of
+twelve, and in the same small settlement another lad of sixteen who
+wedded a girl of thirteen. In both cases the result was wretched beyond
+description.
+
+The evil consequences of inbreeding of persons closely akin are well
+known to the mountaineers; but here knowledge is no deterrent, since
+whole districts are interrelated to start with. Owing to the isolation
+of the clans, and their extremely limited travels, there are abundant
+cases like those caustically mentioned in _King Spruce_: "All Skeets and
+Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till
+ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger
+relationship."
+
+The mountaineers are touchy on these topics and it is but natural that
+they should be so. Nevertheless it is the plain duty of society to study
+such conditions and apply the remedy. There was a time when the Scotch
+people (to cite only one instance out of many) were in still worse
+case, threatened with race degeneration; but improved economic
+conditions, followed by education, made them over into one of the most
+vigorous of modern peoples.
+
+When I lived up in the Smokies there was no doctor within sixteen miles
+(and then, none who ever had attended a medical school). It was
+inevitable that my first-aid kit and limited knowledge of medicine
+should be requisitioned until I became a sort of "doctor to the
+settle_ment_."[8] My services, being free, at once became popular, and
+there was no escape; for, if I treated the Smiths, let us say, and
+ignored a call from the Robinsons, the slight would be resented by all
+Robinson connections throughout the land. So my normal occupations often
+were interrupted by such calls as these:
+
+"John's Lize Ann she ain't much; cain't you-uns give her some
+easin'-powder for that hurtin' in her chist?"
+
+"Old Uncle Bobby Tuttle's got a pone come up on his side; looks like he
+mought drap off, him bein' weak and right narvish and sick with a
+head-swimmin'."
+
+"Ike Morgan Pringle's a-been horse-throwed down the clift, and he's in a
+manner stone dead."
+
+"Right sensibly atween the shoulders I've got a pain; somethin' 's gone
+wrong with my stummick; I don't 'pear to have no stren'th left; and
+sometimes I'm nigh sifflicated. Whut you reckon ails me?"
+
+"Come right over to Mis' Fullwiler's, quick; she's fell down and busted
+a rib inside o' her!"
+
+On these errands of mercy I soon picked up some rules of practice that
+are not laid down in the books. I learned to carry not only my own
+bandages but my own towels and utensils for washing and sterilizing. I
+kept my mouth shut about germ theories of disease, having no troops to
+enforce orders and finding that mere advice incited downright
+perversity. I administered potent drugs in person and left nothing to be
+taken according to direction except placebos.
+
+Once, in forgetfulness, I left a tablet of corrosive sublimate on the
+mantel after dressing a wound, and the man of the house told me next day
+that he had "'lowed to swaller it' and see if it wouldn't ease his
+headache!" A geologist and I, exploring the hills with a mountaineer,
+fell into discussion of filth diseases and germs, not realizing that we
+were overheard. Happening to pass an ant-hill, Frank remarked to me
+that formic acid was supposed to be antagonistic to the germ of
+laziness. Instantly we heard a growl from our woodsman: "By God, I was
+_expectin'_ to hear the like o' that!"
+
+Ordinarily wounds are stanched with dusty cobwebs and bound up in any
+old rag. If infection ensues, Providence has to take the blame. A woman
+gashed her foot badly with an axe; I asked her what she did for it;
+disdainfully she answered, "Tied it up in sut and a rag, and went to
+hoein' corn."
+
+An injured person gets scant sympathy, if any. So far as outward
+demeanor goes, and public comment, the witnesses are utterly callous.
+The same indifference is shown in the face of impending death. People
+crowd around with no other motive, seemingly, than morbid curiosity to
+see a person die. I asked our local preacher what the folks would do if
+a man broke his thigh so that the bone protruded. He merely elevated his
+eyebrows and replied: "We'd set around and sing until he died."
+
+The mountaineers' fortitude under severe pain is heroic, though often
+needless. For all minor operations and frequently for major ones they
+obstinately refuse to take an anesthetic, being perversely suspicious
+of everything that they do not understand. Their own minor surgery and
+obstetric practice is barbarous. A large proportion of the mountain
+doctors know less about human anatomy than a butcher does about a pig's.
+Sometimes this ignorance passes below ordinary common sense. There is a
+"doctor" still practicing who, after a case of confinement, sits beside
+the patient and presses hard upon the hips for half an hour, explaining
+that it is to "push the bones back into place; don't you know they
+allers comes uncoupled in the socket?" This, I suppose, is the limit;
+but there are very many practicing physicians in the back country who
+could not name or locate the arteries of either foot or hand to save
+their lives.
+
+It was here I first heard of "tooth-jumping." Let one of my old
+neighbors tell it in his own way:
+
+"You take a cut nail (not one o' those round wire nails) and place its
+squar p'int agin the ridge of the tooth, jest under the edge of the gum.
+Then jump the tooth out with a hammer. A man who knows how can jump a
+tooth without it hurtin' half as bad as pullin'. But old Uncle Neddy
+Cyarter went to jump one of his own teeth out, one time, and missed the
+nail and mashed his nose with the hammer. He had the weak trembles."
+
+"I have heard of tooth-jumping," said I, "and reported it to dentists
+back home, but they laughed at me."
+
+"Well, they needn't laugh; for it's so. Some men git to be as
+experienced at it as tooth-dentists are at pullin'. They cut around the
+gum, and then put the nail at jest sich an angle, slantin' downward for
+an upper tooth, or upwards for a lower one, and hit one lick."
+
+"Will the tooth come at the first lick?"
+
+"Ginerally. If it didn't, you might as well stick your head in a swarm
+o' bees and fergit who you are."
+
+"Are back teeth extracted in that way?"
+
+"Yes, sir; any kind of a tooth. I've burnt my holler teeth out with a
+red-hot wire."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"Hit's so. The wire'd sizzle like fryin'."
+
+"Kill the nerve?"
+
+"No; but it'd sear the mar so it wouldn't be so sensitive."
+
+"Didn't hurt, eh?"
+
+"Hurt like hell for a moment. I held the wire one time for Jim Bob
+Jimwright, who couldn't reach the spot for hisself. I _told_ him to hold
+his tongue back; but when I touched the holler he jumped and wropped
+his tongue agin the wire. The words that man used ain't fitty to tell."
+
+Some of the ailments common in the mountains were new to me. For
+instance, "dew pizen," presumably the poison of some weed, which,
+dissolved in dew, enters the blood through a scratch or abrasion. As a
+woman described it, "Dew pizen comes like a risin', and laws-a-marcy how
+it does hurt! I stove a brier in my heel wunst, and then had to hunt
+cows every morning in the dew. My leg swelled up black to clar above the
+knee, and Dr. Stinchcomb lanced the place seven times. I lay on a pallet
+on the floor for over a month. My leg like to killed me. I've seed
+persons jest a lot o' sores all over, as big as my hand, from dew
+pizen."
+
+A more mysterious disease is "milk-sick," which prevails in certain
+restricted districts, chiefly where the cattle graze in rich and deeply
+shaded coves. If not properly treated it is fatal both to the cow and to
+any human being who drinks her fresh milk or eats her butter. It is not
+transmitted by sour milk or by buttermilk. There is a characteristic
+fetor of the breath. It is said that milk from an infected cow will not
+foam and that silver is turned black by it. Mountaineers are divided in
+opinion as to whether this disease is of vegetable or of mineral origin;
+some think it is an efflorescence from gas that settles on plants. This
+much is certain: that it disappears from "milk-sick coves" when they are
+cleared of timber and the sunlight let in. The prevalent treatment is an
+emetic, followed by large doses of apple brandy and honey; then oil to
+open the bowels. Perhaps the extraordinary distaste for fresh milk and
+butter, or the universal suspicion of these foods that mountaineers
+evince in so many localities, may have sprung up from experience with
+"milk-sick" cows. I have not found this malady mentioned in any treatise
+on medicine; yet it has been known from our earliest frontier times.
+Abraham Lincoln's mother died of it.
+
+That the hill folk remain a rugged and hardy people in spite of
+unsanitary conditions so gross that I can barely hint at them, is due
+chiefly to their love of pure air and pure water. No mountain cabin
+needs a window to ventilate it: there are cracks and cat-holes
+everywhere, and, as I have said, the doors are always open except at
+night. "Tight houses," sheathed or plastered, are universally despised,
+partly from inherited shiftlessness, partly for less obvious reasons.
+
+One of Miss MacGowan's characters fairly insulted the neighborhood by
+building a modern house. "Why lordy! Lookee hyer, Creed," remonstrated
+Doss Provine over a question of matching boards and battening joints,
+"ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh
+air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open
+all the time like we-all do; but when you're a-holdin' co't and
+sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes--and then whar'll
+ye git breath to breathe?... All these here glass winders is blame
+foolishness to _me_. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes
+that ye don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the
+walls full o' holes an' set in glass winders, an' any feller that's got
+a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set
+by the fire of an evenin'."
+
+When mountain people move to the lowlands and go to living in
+tight-framed houses, they soon deteriorate like Indians. It is of no use
+to teach them to ventilate by lowering windows from the top. That is
+some more "blame foolishness"--their adherence to old ways is stubborn,
+sullen, and perverse to a degree that others cannot comprehend. Then,
+too, in the lowlands, they simply cannot stand the water. As Emma Miles
+says: "No other advantages will ever make up for the lack of good water.
+There is a strong prejudice against pumps; if a well must be dug, it is
+usually left open to the air, and the water is reached by means of a
+hooked pole which requires some skillful manipulation to prevent losing
+the bucket. Cisterns are considered filthy; water that has stood
+overnight is 'dead water,' hardly fit to wash one's face in. The
+mountaineer takes the same pride in his water supply as the rich man in
+his wine cellar, and is in this respect a connoisseur. None but the
+purest and coldest of freestone will satisfy him."
+
+Once when I was staying in a lumber camp on the Tennessee side, near the
+top of Smoky, my friend Bob and I tramped down to the nearest town, ten
+miles, for supplies. We did not start until after dinner and intended to
+spend the night at a hotel. It was a sultry day and we arrived very
+thirsty. Bob took some ice-water into his mouth, and instantly spat it
+out, exclaiming: "Be damned if I'll stay here; that ain't fit to drink;
+I'm goin' back." And back he would have gone, ten miles up a hard grade,
+at night, if someone had not shown us a spring.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+A misty veil of falling water]
+
+
+A little colony of our Hazel Creek people took a notion to try the
+Georgia cotton mills. They nearly died there from homesickness, tight
+houses, and "bad water." All but one family returned as soon as they
+possibly could. While trying to save enough money to get away one old
+man said; "I lied to my God when I left the mountains and kem to these
+devilish cotton mills. Ef only He'd turn me into a varmint I'd run back
+to-night! Boys, I dream I'm in torment; an' when I wake up I lay thar
+an' think o' the spring branch runnin' over the root o' that thar
+poplar; an' I say, could I git me one drink o' that water I'd be content
+to lay me down and die!"
+
+Poor old John! In his country there are a hundred spring branches
+running over poplar roots; but "_that thar_ poplar": we knew the very
+one he meant. It was by the roadside. The brooklet came from a disused
+still-house hidden in laurel and hemlock so dense that direct sunlight
+never penetrated the glen. Cold and sparkling and crystal clear, the
+gushing water enticed every wayfarer to bend and drink, whether he was
+thirsty or no. John is back in his own land now, and doubtless often
+goes to drink of that veritable fountain of youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT
+
+
+Homespun jeans and linsey used to be the universal garb of the mountain
+people. Nowadays you will seldom find them, except in far-back places.
+Shoddy "store clothes" are cheaper and easier to get. And this is a
+sorry change, for the old-time material was sound and enduring, the
+direct product of hard personal toil, and so it was prized and taken
+care of; whereas such stuff as a backwoodsman can buy in his crossroads
+store is flimsy, soon loses shape and breaks down his own pride of
+personal appearance. Our average hillsman now goes about in a dirty blue
+shirt, wapsy and ragged trousers toggled up with a nail or two, thick
+socks sagging untidily over rusty brogans, and a huge, black, floppy hat
+that desecrates the landscape. Presently his hatband disappears, to be
+replaced with a groundhog thong, woven in and out of knife slits, like a
+shoestring.
+
+When he comes home he "hangs his hat on the floor" until his wife picks
+it up. He never brushes it. In time that battered old headpiece becomes
+as pliant to its owner's whim, as expressive of his mood, as a clown's
+cap in the circus. Commonly it is a symbol of shiftlessness and
+unconcern. A touch, and it becomes a banner of defiance to law and
+order. To meet on some lonesome road at night a horseman enveloped to
+the heels in a black slicker and topped with one of those prodigious
+funnels that conceals his features like a cowl, is to face the Ku Klux
+or the Spanish Inquisition.
+
+When your young mountaineer is properly filled up on corn liquor and
+feels like challenging the world, the flesh, and the devil, he pins up
+the front of his hat with a thorn, sticks a sprig of balsam or cedar in
+the thong for an aigrette, and then gallops forth with bottle and pistol
+to tilt against whatsoever may dare oppose him. And on the gray dawn of
+the morning after you may find _that hat_ lying wilted in a corner, as
+crumpled, spiritless and forlorn as--its owner, upon whom we charitably
+drop the curtain.
+
+I doubt, though, if anywhere in this wide world mere personal appearance
+is more deceitful than among our mountaineers. The slovenly lout whom
+you shrink from approaching against the wind is one of the most
+independent and self-satisfied fellows on earth, as quick to resent alms
+as to return a blow. And it is wonderful what soap and clean clothes
+will do! About the worst specimen of tatter-demalion that I ever saw
+outside of trampdom used to come into town every week, always with a
+loaded Winchester on his shoulder. He may have washed his face now and
+then, but there was no sign that he ever combed his mane. I took him for
+one of those defectives alluded to in a previous chapter; but no, I was
+told he was "nobody's fool." The rifle, it was explained, never left his
+hand when he was abroad: they said that a feud was brewing "over on
+'Larky," and that this man was "in the bilin'." Well, it boiled over,
+and the person in question killed two men in front of his own door.
+
+When the prisoner was brought into court I could not recognize him. A
+bath, the barber, and a new store suit had transformed him into a right
+good-looking fellow--anything but a tramp, anything but a desperado. He
+bore himself throughout that grilling ordeal like the downright man he
+was, made out a clear case of self-defense, was set at liberty
+and--promptly reverted to a condition in which he is recognizable once
+more.
+
+The women of the back country usually go bareheaded around home and
+often barefooted, too, as did the daughters of Highland chiefs a century
+or two ago, and for the same reason: simply that they feel better so.
+When "visit-in" or expecting visitors their extremities are clad. They
+make their own dresses and the style seems never to change. When
+traveling horseback they use a man's saddle and ride astride in their
+ordinary skirts with an ingenuity of "tucking up" that is beyond my
+understanding (as no doubt it should be). Often one sees a man and a
+woman riding a-pillion, in which case the lady perches sidewise, of
+course.
+
+If I were disposed to startle the reader, after the manner of
+impressionistic writers who strive after effect at any cost, I could
+fill a book with oddities observed in the mountains, and that without
+exaggeration by commission or omission. Let one or two anecdotes
+suffice; and then we will get back to our averages again. I took down
+the following incident verbatim (save for proper names) from lips that I
+know to be truthful. It is introduced here as a specimen of vivid
+offhand description in few words:
+
+"There was a fam'ly on Pick-Yer-Flint that was named Higgins, and
+another named the McBees. They married through and through till the
+whole gineration nigh run out; though what helped was that they'd fly
+mad sometimes and kill one another like fools. They had great big heads
+and mottly faces--ears as big as sheepskins. Well, when they dressed up
+to come to church the men--grown men--'d have shirts made of this common
+domestic, with the letters _AAA_ on their backs; and them barefooted,
+and some without hats, but with three yards of red ribbon around their
+necks. The sleeves of their shirts looked like a whole web of cloth jest
+sewed up together; and them sleeves'd git full o' wind, and that red
+ribbon a-flyin'--O my la!
+
+"There was lots o' leetle boys of 'em that kem only in their
+shirt-tails. There was cracks between the logs that a dog could jump
+through, and them leetle fellers 'd git 'em a crack and grin in at us
+all through the sarmon. 'T ain't no manner o' use to ax me what the tex'
+was that day!"
+
+I may explain that it still is common in many districts of the mountain
+country for small boys to go about through the summer in a single
+abbreviated garment and that they are called "shirt-tail boys."
+
+Some of the expedients that mountain girls invent to make themselves
+attractive are bizarre in the extreme. Without invading the sanctities
+of toilet, I will cite one instance that is interesting from a
+scientific viewpoint. They told me that a certain blue-eyed girl thought
+that black eyes were "purtier" and that she actually changed her eyes to
+jet black whenever she went to "meetin'" or other public gathering.
+While I could see how the trick might be worked, it seemed utterly
+absurd that an unschooled maid of the wilderness could acquire either
+the knowledge or the means to accomplish such change. Well, one day I
+was called to treat a sick baby. While waiting for the medicine to react
+I chanced to mention this tale as it had been told me. The father, who
+had blue eyes, solemnly assured me that there was "no lie about it," and
+said he would convince me in a few minutes.
+
+He stepped to the garden and plucked a leaf of jimson weed. His wife
+crushed the leaf and instilled a drop of its juice into one of his eyes.
+I took out my watch. One side of the eyeball reddened slightly. The man
+said "hit smarts a leetle--not much." Within fifteen minutes the pupil
+had expanded like a cat's eye in the dark, leaving a rim of blue iris so
+thin as to be quite unnoticeable without close inspection. The eye
+consequently was jet black and its expression utterly changed. My host
+said it did not affect his vision materially, save that "things glimmer
+a bit." I met him again the next day and he still was an odd-looking
+creature indeed, with one eye a light blue and the other an absolute
+black. The thing puzzled me until I recalled that the Latin name of
+jimson weed is _Datura stramonium_; then, in a flash, it came to me that
+stramonium is a powerful mydriatic.
+
+If our man killer, hitherto mentioned, had had blue or gray eyes and had
+not chosen to stand trial, then, with a cake of soap and a new suit and
+a jimson leaf he might have made himself over so that his own mother
+would not have known him. These simple facts are offered gratis to
+writers of detective tales, whose stock of disguises nowadays is so
+threadbare and (pardon me) so absurd.
+
+The mountain home of to-day is the log cabin of the American
+pioneer--not such a lodge as well-to-do people affect in Adirondack
+"camps" (which cost more than framed structures of similar size), but a
+pen that can be erected by four "corner men" in one day and is finished
+by the owner at his leisure. The commonest type is a single large room,
+with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank door, a big stone
+chimney at one end, a single sash for a window at the other, and a seven
+or eight-foot lean-to at the rear for kitchen.
+
+
+[Illustration: An Average Mountain Cabin]
+
+
+Some of the early settlers, who had first choice of land, took pains in
+building their houses, squaring the logs like bridge timbers, joining
+them closely, smoothing their puncheons with an adze almost as truly as
+if they were planed, and using mortar instead of clay in laying chimney
+and hearth. But such houses nowadays are rare. If a man can afford so
+much effort as all that he will build a framed dwelling. If not, he will
+content himself with such a cabin as I have described. If he prospers he
+may add a duplicate of it alongside and cover the whole with one roof,
+leaving a ten or twelve-foot entry between.
+
+In Carolina they seldom build a house of round logs, but rather hew the
+inner and outer faces flat, out of a curious notion that this adds an
+appearance of finish to the structure. If only they would turn the logs
+over, so that the flat faces joined, leaving at least the outside in the
+natural round, the house would need hardly any chinking and the effect
+would be far more pleasing to good taste. As it is they merely notch the
+logs at the corners, leaving wide spaces to be filled up with splits,
+rocks, mud--anything to keep out the weather. As a matter of fact, few
+houses ever are thoroughly chinked and he who would take pains to make a
+workmanlike job of chinking would be ridiculed as "fussin' around like
+an old granny-woman." Nobody but a tenderfoot feels drafts, you know.
+
+It is hard to keep such a dwelling clean, even if the family be small.
+The whole structure being built of green timber throughout, soon
+shrinks, checks, warps and sags, so that there cannot be a square joint,
+a neat fit, a perpendicular face, or a level place anywhere about it.
+The roof droops in a season or two, the shingles curl and leaky places
+open. Flooring shrinks apart, leaving wide and irregular cracks through
+which the winter winds are sucked upward as through so many flues (no
+mountain home has a cellar under it). Everywhere there are crannies and
+rough surfaces to hold dust and soot, there being probably not a single
+planed board in the whole house.
+
+But, for all that, there is something very attractive and picturesque
+about the little old log cabin. In its setting of ancient forests and
+mighty hills it fits, it harmonizes, where the prim and precise product
+of modern carpentry would shock an artistic eye. The very roughness of
+the honest logs and the home-made furniture gives texture to the
+picture. Having no mathematically straight lines nor uniform curves, the
+cabin's outlines conform to its surroundings. Without artificial stain,
+or varnish, or veneer, it _is_ what it seems, a genuine thing, a jewel
+in the rough. And it is a home. When wind whistles through the cracks
+and snow sifts into the corners of the room one draws his stumpy little
+split-bottomed chair close to the wide hearth and really knows the
+comfort of fire leaping and sap singing from big birch logs.
+
+Every room except the kitchen (if there be a kitchen) has a couple of
+beds in it: enough all told for the family and, generally, one spare
+bed. If much company comes, some pallets are made on the floor for the
+women and children of the household. In a single-room cabin there
+usually is a cockloft, reached by a ladder, for storage, and maybe a
+bunk or two. Closets and pantries there are none, for they would only
+furnish good harborage for woods-rats and other vermin.
+
+Everything must be in sight and accessible to the housewife's little
+sedge broom. Linen and small articles of apparel are stored in a chest
+or a cheap little tin trunk or two. Most of the family wardrobe hangs
+from pegs in the walls or nails in the loft beams, along with strings
+of dried apples, peppers, bunches of herbs, twists of tobacco, gourds
+full of seeds, the hunter's pouch, and other odd bric-a-brac interesting
+to "furrin" eyes. The narrow mantel-shelf holds pipes and snuff and
+various other articles of frequent use, among them a twig or two of
+sweet birch that has been chewed to shreds at one end and is queerly
+discolored with something brown (this is what the mountain woman calls
+her "tooth brush"--a snuff stick, understand).
+
+For wall decorations there may be a few gaudy advertisements
+lithographed in colors, perhaps some halftones from magazines that
+travelers have left (a magazine is always called a "book" in this
+region, as, I think, throughout the South). Of late years the agents for
+photo-enlarging companies have invaded the mountains and have reaped a
+harvest; for if there be one curse of civilization that our hillsman
+craves, it is a huge _tinted_ "family group" in an abominable rococo
+frame.
+
+There is an almanac in the cabin, but no clock. "What does man need of a
+clock when he has a good-crowin' rooster?" Strange as it may seem, in
+this roughest of backwoods countries I have never seen candles, unless
+they were brought in by outsiders like myself. Beef, you must remember,
+is exported, not eaten, by our farmers, and hence there is no tallow to
+make candles with. Instead of these, every home is provided with a
+kerosene lamp of narrow wick, and seldom do you find a chimney for it.
+This is partly because lamp chimneys are hard to carry safely over the
+mountain roads and partly because "man can do without sich like,
+anyhow." But kerosene, also, is hard to transport, and so one sometimes
+will find pine knots used for illumination; but oftener the woman will
+pour hog's grease into a tin or saucer, twist up a bit of rag for the
+wick and so make a "slut" that, believe me, deserves the name. In fact,
+the supply of pine knots within convenient distance of home is soon
+exhausted, and anyway, as the mountaineer disdains to be forehanded, he
+would burn up the knots for kindling rather than save any for
+illumination.
+
+Very few cabins have carpet on the floor. It would hold too much mud
+from the feet of the men who would not use a scraper if there was one.
+Beds generally are bought, nowadays, at the stores, but some are
+home-made, with bedcords of bast rope. Tables and chairs mostly are made
+on the spot or obtained by barter from some handy neighbor. In many
+homes you will still find the ancient spinning-wheel, with a hand-loom
+on the porch and in the loft there will be a set of quilting frames for
+making "kivers."
+
+Out in the yard you see an ash hopper for running the lye to make soap,
+maybe a few bee gums sawed from hollow logs, and a crude but effective
+cider press. At the spring there is a box for cold storage in summer.
+Near by stands the great iron kettle for boiling clothes, making soap,
+scalding pigs, and a variety of other uses. Alongside of it is the
+"battlin' block" on which the family wash is hammered with a beetle
+("battlin' stick") if the woman has no washboard, which very often is
+the case.
+
+Naturally there can be no privacy and hence no delicacy, in such a home.
+I never will forget my embarrassment about getting to bed the first
+night I ever spent in a one-room cabin where there was a good-sized
+family. I did not know what was expected of me. When everybody looked
+sleepy I went outdoors and strolled around in the moonlight until the
+women had time to retire. On returning to the house I found them still
+bolt upright around the hearth. Then the hostess pointed to the bed I
+was to occupy and said it was ready whenever I was. Well, I "shucked off
+my clothes," tumbled in, turned my face to the wall, and immediately
+everybody else did the same. That is the way to do: just _go_ to bed! I
+lay there awake for a long time. Finally I had to roll over. A ruddy
+glow from the embers showed the family in all postures of deep, healthy
+slumber. It also showed something glittering on the nipple of the long,
+muzzle-loading rifle that hung over the father's bed. It was a bright,
+new percussion cap, where a greased rag had been when I went out for my
+moonlight stroll. There was no need of a curtain in that house. They
+could do without.
+
+I have been describing an average mountain home. In valleys and coves
+there are better ones, of course. Along the railroads, and on fertile
+plateaus between the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, are hundreds of fine
+farms, cultivated by machinery, and here dwell a class of farmers that
+are scarcely to be distinguished from people of similar station in the
+West. But a prosperous and educated few are not the people. When
+speaking of southern mountaineers I mean the mass, or the average, and
+the pictures here given are typical of that mass. It is not the
+well-to-do valley people, but the real mountaineers, who are especially
+interesting to the reading public; and they are interesting _chiefly_
+because they preserve traits and manners that have been transmitted
+almost unchanged from ancient times--because, as John Fox puts it, they
+are "a distinct remnant of an Anglo-Saxon past."
+
+Almost everywhere in the backwoods of Appalachia we have with us to-day,
+in flesh and blood, the Indian-fighter of our colonial border--aye, back
+of him, the half-wild clansman of elder Britain--adapted to other
+conditions, but still virtually the same in character, in ideas, in
+attitude toward the outer world. Here, in great part, is spoken to-day
+the language of Piers the Ploughman, a speech long dead elsewhere, save
+as fragments survive in some dialects of rural England.
+
+No picture of mountain life would be complete or just if it omitted a
+class lower than the average hillsman I have been describing. As this is
+not a pleasant topic, I shall be terse. Hundreds of backwoods families,
+large ones at that, exist in "blind" cabins that remind one somewhat of
+Irish hovels, Norwegian saeters, the "black houses" of the Hebrides, the
+windowless rock piles inhabited by Corsican shepherds and by Basques of
+the Pyrenees. Such a cabin has but one room for all purposes. In rainy
+or gusty weather, when the two doors must be closed, no light enters the
+room save through cracks in the wall and down the chimney. In the
+damp climate of western Carolina such an interior is fusty, or even wet.
+In many cases the chimney is no more than a semi-circular pile of rough
+rocks and rises no higher than a man's shoulder, hence the common
+saying, "You can set by the fire and spit out through the chimbly." When
+the wind blows "contrary" one's lungs choke and his eyes stream from the
+smoke.
+
+
+[Illustration: A Bee-Gum]
+
+
+In some of these places you will find a "pet pig" harbored in the house.
+I know of two cases where the pig was kept in a box directly under the
+table, so that scraps could be chucked to him without rising from
+dinner.
+
+Hastening from this extreme, we still shall find dire poverty the rule
+rather than the exception among the multitude of "branch-water people."
+One house will have only an earthen floor; another will be so small that
+"you cain't cuss a cat in it 'thout gittin' ha'r in yer teeth." Utensils
+are limited to a frying-pan, an iron pot, a coffee-pot, a bucket, and
+some gourds. There is not enough tableware to go around, and children
+eat out of their parents' plates, or all "soup-in together" around one
+bowl of stew or porridge.
+
+Even to families that are fairly well-to-do there will come periods of
+famine, such as Lincoln, speaking of his boyhood, called "pretty
+pinching times." Hickory ashes then are used as a substitute for soda in
+biscuits, and the empty salt-gourd will be soaked for brine to cook
+with. Once, when I was boarding with a good family, our stores ran out
+of everything, and none of our neighbors had the least to spare. We had
+no meat of any kind for two weeks (the game had migrated) and no lard or
+other grease for nearly a week. Then the meal and salt played out. One
+day we were reduced to potatoes "straight," which were parboiled in
+fresh water, and then burnt a little on the surface as substitute for
+salt. Another day we had not a bite but string beans boiled in unsalted
+water.
+
+It is not uncommon in the far backwoods for a traveler, asking for a
+match, to be told there is none in the house, nor even the pioneer's
+flint and steel. Should the embers on the hearth go out, someone must
+tramp to a neighbor's and fetch fire on a torch. Hence the saying: "Have
+you come to borry fire, that you're in sich a hurry you can't chat?"
+
+The shifts and expedients to which some of the mountain women are put,
+from lack of utensils and vessels, are simply pathetic. John Fox tells
+of a young preacher who stopped at a cabin in Georgia to pass the night.
+"His hostess, as a mark of unusual distinction, killed a chicken, and
+dressed it in a pan. She rinsed the pan and made up her dough in it. She
+rinsed it again and went out and used it for a milk-pail. She came in,
+rinsed it again, and went to the spring and brought it back full of
+water. She filled up the glasses on the table, and gave him the pan with
+the rest of the water in which to wash his hands. The woman was not a
+slattern; it was the only utensil she had."
+
+Such poverty is exceptional; yet it is an all but universal rule that
+anything that cannot be cooked in a pot or fried in a pan must go
+begging in the mountains. Once I helped my hostess to make kraut. We
+chopped up a hundred pounds of cabbage with no cutter but a tin
+coffee-can, holding this in the two hands and chopping downward with the
+edge. Many times I stopped to hammer the edge smooth on a round stick.
+Verily this is the land of make-it-yourself-or-do-without!
+
+Yet, however destitute the mountain people may be, they are never
+abject. The mordant misery of hunger is borne with a sardonic grin.
+After a course of such diet as described above, a woman laughingly said
+to me: "I'm gittin' the dropsy--the meat is all droppin' off my bones."
+During the campaign of 1904 a brother Democrat confided to me that "The
+people around hyur is so pore that if free silver war shipped in by the
+carload, we-uns couldn't pay the freight." So, when a settlement is
+dubbed Poverty, it is with no suggestion of whining lament, but with the
+stoical good-humor that shows in Needmore, Poor Fork, Long Hungry, No
+Pone, and No Fat--all of them real names.
+
+Occasionally, as at "hog-killin' time," the poorest live in abundance;
+occasionally, as at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking them
+the year through, the Highlanders are a notably abstemious race. When a
+family is reduced to dry corn bread and black coffee unsweetened--so
+much and no more--it will joke about the lack of meat and vegetables.
+And, when there is meat, two mountaineers engaged in hard outdoor work
+will consume less of it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed,
+the heartiness with which "furriners" stuff themselves is a wonder and a
+merriment to the people of the hills. When a friend came to visit me,
+the landlady giggled an aside to her husband: "Git the almanick and see
+when that feller 'll full!" (as though she were bidding him look to see
+when the moon would be full).
+
+In truth, it is not so bad to be poor where everyone else is in the same
+fix. One does not lose caste nor self-respect. He is not tempted by a
+display of good things all around him, nor is he embittered by the
+haughtiness and extravagance of the rich. And, socially, the mountaineer
+is a democrat by nature: equal to any man, as all men are equal before
+him. Even though hunger be eating like a slow acid into his vitals, he
+still will preserve a high spirit, a proud independence, that accepts no
+favor unless it be offered in a neighborly way, as man to man. I have
+never seen a mountain beggar; never heard of one.
+
+Charity, or anything that smells to him like charity, is declined with
+patrician dignity or open scorn. In the last house up Hazel Creek dwelt
+"old man" Stiles. He had a large family, and was on the verge of
+destitution. His eldest son, a veteran from the Philippines, had been
+invalided home, and died there. Jack Coburn, in the kindness of his
+heart, sent away and got a blank form of application to the Government
+for funeral expenses, to which the family was entitled by law. He filled
+it out, all but the signature, and rode away up to Stiles's to have the
+old man sign it. But Stiles peremptorily refused to accept from the
+nation what was due his dead son. "I ain't that hard pushed yit," was
+his first and last word on the subject. This might seem to be the very
+perversity of ignorance; but it was, in fact, renunciation on a point of
+honor, and native pride refused to see the matter in any other light.
+
+The mountaineer, born and bred to Spartan self-denial, has a scorn of
+luxury, regarding its effeminacies with the same contempt as does the
+nomadic Arab. And any assumption of superiority he will resent with blow
+or sarcasm. A ragged hobbledehoy stood on the Vanderbilt grounds at
+Biltmore, mouth open but silent, watching a gardener at work. The
+latter, annoyed by the boy's vacuous stare, spoke up sharply: "What do
+you want?" Like a flash the lad retorted: "Oh, dad sent me down hyur to
+look at the place--said if I liked it, he mought buy it for me."
+
+Once, as an experiment, I took a backwoodsman from the Smokies to
+Knoxville, and put him up at a good hotel. Was he self-conscious,
+bashful? Not a bit of it. When the waiter brought him a juicy
+tenderloin, he snapped: "I don't eat my meat raw!" It was hard to find
+anything on the long menu that he would eat. On the street he held his
+head proudly erect, and regarded the crowd with an expression of "Tetch
+me gin ye dar!" Although the surroundings were as strange to him as a
+city of Mars would be to us, he showed neither concern nor approval,
+but rather a fine disdain, like that of Diogenes at the country fair:
+"Lord, how many things there be in this world of which Diogenes hath no
+need!"
+
+The poverty of the mountain people is naked, but high-minded and
+unashamed. To comment on it, as I have done, is taken as an
+impertinence. This is a fine trait, in its way, though rather hard on a
+descriptive writer whose motives are ascribed to mere vulgarity and a
+taste for scandal-mongering. The people, of course, have no ghost of an
+idea that poverty may be more picturesque than luxury; and they are
+quite as far from conceiving that a plain and friendly statement of
+their actual condition, published to the world, is the surest way to
+awaken the nation to consciousness of its duties toward a region that it
+has so long and so singularly neglected.
+
+The worst enemies of the mountain people are those public men who,
+knowing the true state of things, yet conceal or deny the facts in order
+to salve a sore local pride, encourage the supine fatalism of "what must
+be will be," and so drug the highlanders back into their Rip Van Winkle
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HOME FOLKS AND NEIGHBOR PEOPLE
+
+
+Despite the low standard of living that prevails in the backwoods, the
+average mountain home is a happy one, as homes go. There is little worry
+and less fret. Nobody's nerves are on edge. Our highlander views all
+exigencies of life with the calm fortitude and tolerant good-humor of
+Bret Harte's southwesterner, "to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods,
+pestilence and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if
+it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall."
+
+It is a patriarchal existence. The man of the house is lord. He takes no
+orders from anybody at home or abroad. Whether he shall work or visit or
+roam the woods with dog and gun is nobody's affair but his own. About
+family matters he consults with his wife, but in the end his word is
+law. If Madame be a bit shrewish he is likely to tolerate it as natural
+to the weaker vessel; but if she should go too far he checks her with a
+curt "Shet up!" and the incident is closed.
+
+"The woman," as every wife is called, has her kingdom within the house,
+and her man seldom meddles with its administration. Now and then he may
+grumble "A woman's allers findin' somethin' to do that a man can't see
+no sense in;" but, then, the Lord made women fussy over trifles--His
+ways are inscrutable--so why bother about it?
+
+The mountain farmer's wife is not only a household drudge, but a
+field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder,
+sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for
+a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her
+man leaves home on a journey he is not likely to have laid in wood for
+the stove or hearth: so she and the children must drag from the
+hillsides whatever dead timber they can find.
+
+Outside the towns no hat is lifted to maid or wife. A swain would
+consider it belittled his dignity. At table, if women be seated at all,
+the dishes are passed first to the men; but generally the wife stands by
+and serves. There is no conscious discourtesy in such customs; but they
+betoken an indifference to woman's weakness, a disregard for her finer
+nature, a denial of her proper rank, that are real and deep-seated in
+the mountaineer. To him she is little more than a sort of superior
+domestic animal. The chivalric regard for women that characterized our
+pioneers of the Far West is altogether lacking in the habits of the
+backwoodsman of Appalachia.
+
+And yet it is seldom that a highland woman complains of her lot. She
+knows no other. From aboriginal times the men of her race have been
+warriors, hunters, herdsmen, clearers of forests, and their women have
+toiled in the fields. Indeed she would scarce respect her husband if he
+did not lord it over her and cast upon her the menial tasks. It is
+"manners" for a woman to drudge and obey. All respectable wives do that.
+And they stay at home where they belong, never visiting or going
+anywhere without first asking their husband's consent.
+
+I am satisfied that there is less bickering in mountain households than
+in the most advanced society of Christendom. Certainly there are fewer
+divorces in proportion to the marriages. This is not by grace of any
+uncommon regard for the seventh commandment, but rather from a more
+tolerant attitude of mind.
+
+Mountain women marry early, many of them at fourteen or fifteen, and
+nearly all before they are twenty. Large families are the rule, seven
+to ten children being considered normal, and fifteen is not an uncommon
+number; but the infant mortality is high.
+
+The children have few toys other than rag dolls, broken bits of crockery
+for "play-purties," and such "ridey-hosses" and so forth as they make
+for themselves. They play few games, but rather frisk about like young
+colts without aim or method. Every mountain child has at least one dog
+for a playfellow, and sometimes a pet pig is equally familiar. In many
+districts there is not enough level land for a ballground. A prime
+amusement of the small boys is "rocking" (throwing stones at marks or at
+each other), in which rather doubtful pastime they become singularly
+expert.
+
+To encourage a child to do chores about the house and stable, he may be
+promised a pig of his own the next time a sow litters. To know when to
+look for the pigs an expedient is practiced that I never heard of
+elsewhere: the child bores a small hole at the base of his thumbnail. I
+was assured by a mountain preacher that the hole "will grow out to the
+edge of the nail in three months and twenty-four days"--the period, he
+said, of a sow's gestation (in reality the average term is about three
+months).
+
+Most mountaineers are indulgent, super-indulgent parents. The oft-heard
+threat "I'll w'ar ye out with a hick'ry!" is seldom carried out. The
+boys, especially, grow up with little restraint beyond their own natural
+sense of filial duty. Little children are allowed to eat and drink
+anything they want--green fruit, adulterated candy, fresh cider, no
+matter what--to the limit of repletion; and fatal consequences are not
+rare. I have observed the very perversity of license allowed children,
+similar to what Julian Ralph tells of a man on Bullskin Creek, who,
+explaining why his child died, said that "No one couldn't make her take
+no medicine; she just wouldn't take it; she was a Baker through and
+through, and you never could make a Baker do nothin' he didn't want to!"
+
+The saddest spectacle in the mountains is the tiny burial-ground,
+without a headstone or headboard in it, all overgrown with weeds, and
+perhaps unfenced, with cattle grazing over the low mounds or sunken
+graves. The spot seems never to be visited between interments. I have
+remarked elsewhere that most mountaineers are singularly callous in the
+presence of serious injury or death. They show a no less remarkable lack
+of reverence for the dead. Nothing on earth can be more poignantly
+lonesome than one of these mountain burial-places, nothing so mutely
+evident of neglect.
+
+Funeral services are extremely simple. In the backwoods, where lumber is
+scarce, a coffin will be knocked together from rough planks taken from
+someone's loft, or out of puncheons hewn from the green trees. It is
+slung on poles and carried like a litter. The only exercises at the
+grave are singing and praying; and sometimes even those are omitted, as
+in case no preacher can be summoned in time.
+
+In all back settlements that I have visited, from Kentucky southward,
+there is a strange custom as to the funeral sermon, that seems to have
+no analogue elsewhere. It is not preached until long after the
+interment, maybe a year or several years. In some districts the practice
+is to hold joint services, at the same time and place, for all in the
+neighborhood who died within the year. The time chosen will be after the
+crops are gathered, so that everybody can attend. In other places a
+husband's funeral sermon is postponed until his wife dies, or _vice
+versa_, though the interval may be many years. These collective funeral
+services last two or three days, and are attended by hundreds of people,
+like a camp-meeting.
+
+Strange scenes sometimes are witnessed at the graveside, prompted
+perhaps by weird superstitions. At one of our burials, which was
+attended by more than the usual retinue of kinsfolk, there were present
+two mothers who bore each other the deadliest hate that women know. Each
+had a child at her breast. When the clods fell, they silently exchanged
+babies long enough for each to suckle her rival's child. Was it a
+reconciliation cemented by the very life of their blood? Or was it a
+charm to keep off evil spirits? No one could (or would) explain it to
+me.
+
+Weddings never are celebrated in church, but at the home of the bride,
+and are jolly occasions, of course. Often the young men, stimulated with
+more or less "moonshine," add the literally stunning compliment of a
+shivaree.
+
+The mountaineers have a native fondness for music and dancing, which,
+with the shouting-spells of their revivals, are the only outlets for
+those powerful emotions which otherwise they studiously conceal. The
+harmony of "part singing" is unknown in the back districts, where men
+and women both sing in a jerky treble. Most of their music is in the
+weird, plaintive minor key that seems spontaneous with primitive people
+throughout the world. Not only the tone, but the sentiment of their
+hymns and ballads is usually of a melancholy nature, expressing the
+wrath of God and the doom of sinners, or the luckless adventures of wild
+blades and of maidens all forlorn. A Highlander might well say, with the
+clown in _A Winter's Tale_, "I love a ballad but even too well; if it be
+doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and
+sung lamentably."
+
+But where banjo and fiddle enter, the vapors vanish. Up strike The Fox
+Chase, Shady Grove, Gamblin' man, Sourwood Mountain, and knees are
+limbered, and merry voices rise.--
+
+  Call up your dog, O call up your dog!
+    Call up your dog!
+    Call up your dog!
+  Let 's a-go huntin' to ketch a groundhog.
+    Rang tang a-whaddle linky day!
+
+
+Wherever the church has not put its ban on "twistifications" the country
+dance is the chief amusement of young and old. I have never succeeded in
+memorizing the queer "calls" at these dances, in proper order, and so
+take the liberty of quoting from Mr. Haney's _Mountain People of
+Kentucky_.--
+
+     "Eight hands up and go to the left; half and back; corners turn;
+     partners sash-i-ate. First four, forwards and back; forward again
+     and cross over; forward and back and home you go. Gents stand and
+     ladies swing in the center; own partners and half sash-i-ate.
+
+     "Eight hands and gone again; half and back; partners by the right
+     and opposite by the left--sash-i-ate. Right hands across and howdy
+     do? Left and back and how are you? Opposite partners, half
+     sash-i-ate and go to the next (and so on for each couple).
+
+     "All hands up and go to the left. Hit the floor. Corners turn and
+     sash-i-ate. First couple cage the bird with three arms around. Bird
+     hop out and hoot-owl in; three arms around and hootin' agin. Swing
+     and circle four, ladies change and gents the same; right and left;
+     the shoo-fly swing (and so on for each couple)."
+
+
+In homes where dancing is not permitted, and often in others,
+"play-parties" are held, at which social games are practiced with
+childlike abandon: Roll the Platter, Weavilly Wheat, Needle's Eye, We
+Fish Who Bite, Grin an' Go 'Foot, Swing the Cymblin, Skip t' m' Lou
+(pronounced "Skip-tum a-loo") and many others of a rollicking,
+half-dancing nature.
+
+  Round the house; skip t' m' Lou, my darlin'.
+  Steal my partner and I'll steal again; skip (etc.).
+  Take her and go with her--I don't care; skip (etc.).
+  I can get another as pretty as you; skip (etc.).
+  Pretty as a red-bird, and prettier too; skip (etc.).
+
+
+A substitute for the church fair is the "poke-supper," at which dainty
+pokes (bags) of cake and other home-made delicacies are auctioned off
+to the highest bidder. Whoever bids-in a poke is entitled to eat with
+the girl who prepared it, and escort her home. The rivalry excited among
+the mountain swains by such artful lures may be judged from the fact
+that, in a neighborhood where a man's work brings only a dollar a day, a
+pretty girl's poke may be bid up to ten, twenty, or even fifty dollars.
+
+
+[Illustration: Let the women do the work]
+
+
+As a rule, the only holidays observed in the mountains, outside the
+towns, are Christmas and New Year's. Christmas is celebrated after the
+southern fashion, which seems bizarre indeed to one witnessing it for
+the first time. The boys and men, having no firecrackers (which they
+would disdain, anyway), go about shooting revolvers and drinking to the
+limit of capacity or supply. Blank cartridges are never used in this
+uproarious jollification, and the courses of the bullets are left to
+chance, so that discreet people keep their noses indoors. Christmas is a
+day of license, of general indulgence, it being tacitly assumed that
+punishment is remitted for any ordinary sins of the flesh that may be
+committed on that day. There is no church festivity, nor are Christmas
+trees ever set up. Few mountain children hang up their stockings, and
+many have never heard of Santa Claus.
+
+New Year's Day is celebrated with whatever effervescence remains from
+Christmas, and in the same manner; but generally it is a feeble
+reminder, as the liquid stimulus has run short and there are many sore
+heads in the neighborhood.
+
+Most of the mountain preachers nowadays denounce dances and
+"play-parties" as sinful diversions, though their real objection seems
+to be that such gatherings are counter-attractions that thin out the
+religious ones. Be that as it may, they certainly have put a damper on
+frolics, so that in very many mountain settlements "goin' to meetin'" is
+recognized primarily as a social function and affords almost the only
+chance for recreation in which family can join family without restraint.
+
+Meetings are held in the log schoolhouse. The congregation ranges
+itself, men on one side, women on the other, on rude benches that
+sometimes have no backs. Everybody goes. If one judged from attendance
+he would rate our highlanders as the most religious people in America.
+This impression is strengthened, in a stranger, by the grave and
+astoundingly patient attention that is given an illiterate or nearly
+illiterate minister while he holds forth for two or three mortal hours
+on the beauties of predestination, free-will, foreordination,
+immersion, foot-washing, or on the delinquencies of "them acorn-fed
+critters that has gone New Light over in Cope's Cove."
+
+After an _al fresco_ lunch, everybody doggedly returns to hear another
+circuit-rider expound and denounce at the top of his voice until late
+afternoon--as long as "the spirit lasts" and he has "good wind." When he
+warms up, he throws in a gasping _ah_ or _uh_ at short intervals, which
+constitutes the "holy tone." Doctor MacClintock gives this example: "Oh,
+brethren, repent ye, and repent ye of your sins, ah; fer if ye don't ah,
+the Lord, ah, he will grab yer by the seat of yer pants, ah, and held
+yer over hell fire till ye holler like a coon!"
+
+During these services there is a good deal of running in and out by the
+men and boys, most of whom gradually congregate on the outside to
+whittle, gossip, drive bargains, and debate among themselves some point
+of dogma that is too good to keep still about.
+
+Nearly all of our highlanders, from youth upward, show an amazing
+fondness for theological dispute. This consists mainly in capping texts,
+instead of reasoning, with the single-minded purpose of confusing or
+downing an opponent. Into this battle of memories rather than of wits
+the most worthless scapegrace will enter with keen gusto and perfect
+seriousness. I have known two or three hundred mountain lumber-jacks,
+hard-swearing and hard-drinking tough-as-they-make-'ems, to be whetted
+to a fighting edge over the rocky problem "Was Saul damned?" (Can a
+suicide enter the kingdom of heaven?)
+
+The mountaineers are intensely, universally Protestant. You will seldom
+find a backwoodsman who knows what a Roman Catholic is. As John Fox
+says, "He is the only man in the world whom the Catholic Church has made
+little or no effort to proselyte. Dislike of Episcopalianism is still
+strong among people who do not know, or pretend not to know, what the
+word means. 'Any Episcopalians around here?' asked a clergyman at a
+mountain cabin. 'I don't know,' said the old woman. 'Jim's got the skins
+of a lot o' varmints up in the loft. Mebbe you can find one up thar.'"
+
+The first settlers of Appalachia mainly were Presbyterians, as became
+Scotch-Irishmen, but they fell away from that faith, partly because the
+wilderness was too poor to support a regular ministry, and partly
+because it was too democratic for Calvinism with its supreme authority
+of the clergy. This much of seventeenth century Calvinism the
+mountaineer retains: a passion for hair-splitting argument over points
+of doctrine, and the cocksure intolerance of John Knox; but the
+ancestral creed itself has been forgotten.
+
+The circuit-rider, whether Methodist or Baptist, found here a field ripe
+for his harvest. Being himself self-supporting and unassuming, he won
+easily the confidence of the people. He preached a highly emotional
+religion that worked his audience into the ecstasy that all primitive
+people love. And he introduced a mighty agent of evangelization among
+outdoor folk when he started the camp-meeting.
+
+The season for camp-meetings is from mid-August to October. The festival
+may last a week in one place. It is a jubilee-week to the work-worn and
+home-chained women, their only diversion from a year of unspeakably
+monotonous toil. And for the young folks, it is their theater, their
+circus, their county fair. (I say this with no disrespect: "big-meetin'
+time" is a gala week, if there be any such thing at all in the
+mountains--its attractiveness is full as much secular as spiritual to
+the great body of the people.)
+
+It is a camp by day only, or up to closing time. No mountaineer owns a
+tent. Preachers and exhorters are housed nearby, and visitors from all
+the country scatter about with their friends, or sleep in the open,
+cooking their meals by the wayside.
+
+In these backwoods revival meetings we can witness to-day the weird
+phenomena of ungovernable shouting, ecstasy, bodily contortions, trance,
+catalepsy, and other results of hypnotic suggestion and the contagious
+one-mindedness of an overwrought crowd. This is called "taking a big
+through," and is regarded as the madness of supernatural joy. It is a
+mild form of that extraordinary frenzy which swept the Kentucky
+settlements in 1800, when thousands of men and women at the
+camp-meetings fell victims to "the jerks," "barking exercises," erotic
+vagaries, physical wreckage, or insanity, to which the frenzy led.
+
+Many mountaineers are easily carried away by new doctrines extravagantly
+presented. Religious mania is taken for inspiration by the superstitious
+who are looking for "signs and wonders." At one time Mormon prophets
+lured women from the backwoods of western Carolina and eastern
+Tennessee. Later there was a similar exodus of people to the
+Castellites, a sect of whom it was commonly remarked that "everybody who
+joins the Castellites goes crazy." In our day the same may be said of
+the Holy Rollers and Holiness People.
+
+In a feud town of eastern Kentucky, not long ago, I saw two Holiness
+exhorters prancing before a solemnly attentive crowd in the court-house
+square, one of them shouting and exhibiting the "holy laugh," while the
+other pointed to the Cumberland River and cried, "I don't say _if_ I had
+the faith, I say I _have_ the faith, to walk over that river dry-shod!"
+I scanned the crowd, and saw nothing but belief, or willingness to
+believe, on any countenance. Of course, most mountaineers are more
+intelligent than that; but few of them are free from superstitions of
+one kind or other. There are to-day many believers in witchcraft among
+them (though none own it to any but their intimates) and nearly
+everybody in the hills has faith in portents.
+
+The mountain clergy, as a general rule, are hostile to "book larnin',"
+for "there ain't no Holy Ghost in it." One of them who had spent three
+months at a theological school told President Frost, "Yes, the seminary
+is a good place ter go and git rested up, but 'tain't worth while fer me
+ter go thar no more 's long as I've got good wind."
+
+It used to amuse me to explain how I knew that the earth was a sphere;
+but one day, when I was busy, a tiresome old preacher put the
+everlasting question to me: "Do you believe the yearth is round?" An
+impish perversity seized me and I answered, "No--all blamed humbug!"
+"Amen!" cried my delighted catechist, "I knowed in reason you had more
+sense."
+
+In general the religion of the mountaineers has little influence on
+every-day behavior, little to do with the moral law. Salvation is by
+faith alone, and not by works. Sometimes a man is "churched" for
+breaking the Sabbath, "cussin'," "tale-bearin'"; but sins of the flesh
+are rarely punished, being regarded as amiable frailties of mankind. It
+should be understood that the mountaineer's morals are "all tail-first,"
+like those of Alan Breck in Stevenson's _Kidnapped_.
+
+One of our old-timers nonchalantly admitted in court that he and a
+preacher had marked a false corner-tree which figured in an important
+land suit. On cross-examination he was asked:
+
+"You admit that you and Preacher X---- forged that corner-tree? Didn't
+you give Preacher X---- a good character, in your testimony? Do you
+consider it consistent with his profession as a minister of the Gospel
+to forge corner-trees?"
+
+"Aw," replied the witness, "religion ain't got nothin' to do with
+corner-trees!"
+
+John Fox relates that, "A feud leader who had about exterminated the
+opposing faction, and had made a good fortune for a mountaineer while
+doing it, for he kept his men busy getting out timber when they weren't
+fighting, said to me in all seriousness:
+
+"'I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time agin. The Lord's on my
+side, and I gits a better and better Christian ever' year.'
+
+"A preacher, riding down a ravine, came upon an old mountaineer hiding
+in the bushes with his rifle.
+
+"'What are you doing there, my friend?'
+
+"'Ride on, stranger,' was the easy answer. 'I'm a-waitin' fer Jim
+Johnson, and with the help of the Lawd I'm goin' to blow his damn head
+off.'"
+
+But let us never lose sight of the fact that these people,
+intellectually, are not living in our age. To judge them fairly we must
+go back and get a medieval point of view, which, by the way, persisted
+in Europe and America until well into the Georgian period. If history be
+too dry, read Stevenson's _Kidnapped_, and especially its sequel _David
+Balfour_, to learn what that viewpoint was. The parallel is so
+close--eighteenth century Britain and twentieth century
+Appalachia--that here we walk the same paths with Alan and David, the
+Edinboro' law-sharks, Katriona and Lady Allardyce. The only difference
+of moment is that we have no aristocracy.
+
+As for the morals of our highlanders, they are precisely what any
+well-read person would expect after taking their belatedness into
+consideration. In speech and conduct, when at ease among themselves,
+they are frank, old-fashioned Englishmen and Scots, such as Fielding and
+Smollet and Pepys and Burns have shown us to the life. Their manners are
+boorish, of course, judged by a feminized modern standard, and their
+home conversation is as coarse as the mixed-company speeches in
+Shakespeare's comedies or the offhand pleasantries of Good Queen Bess.
+
+But what is refinement? What is morality?
+
+"I don't mind," said the Beloved Vagabond, "I don't mind the frank
+dungheap outside a German peasant's kitchen window; but what I loathe
+and abominate is the dungheap hidden beneath Hedwige's draper papa's
+parlor floor." And we do well to consider that fine remark by Sir Oliver
+Lodge: "Vice is reversion to a lower type _after perception of a
+higher_."
+
+I have seen the worst as well as the best of Appalachia. There _are_
+"places on Sand Mountain"--scores of them--where unspeakable orgies
+prevail at times. But I know that between these two extremes the great
+mass of the mountain people are very like persons of similar station
+elsewhere, just human, with human frailties, only a little more honest,
+I think, in owning them. And even in the tenebra of far-back coves,
+where conditions exist as gross as anything to be found in the wynds and
+closes of our great cities, there is this blessed difference: that these
+half-wild creatures have not been hopelessly submerged, have not been
+driven into desperate war against society. The worst of them still have
+good traits, strong characters, something responsive to decent
+treatment. They are kind-hearted, loyal to their friends, quick to help
+anyone in distress. They know nothing of civilization. They are simply
+_the unstarted_--and their thews are sound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE MOUNTAIN DIALECT
+
+
+One day I handed a volume of John Fox's stories to a neighbor and asked
+him to read it, being curious to learn how those vivid pictures of
+mountain life would impress one who was born and bred in the same
+atmosphere. He scanned a few lines of the dialogue, then suddenly stared
+at me in amazement.
+
+"What's the matter with it?" I asked, wondering what he could have found
+to startle him at the very beginning of a story.
+
+"Why, that feller _don't know how to spell_!"
+
+Gravely I explained that dialect must be spelled as it is pronounced, so
+far as possible, or the life and savor of it would be lost. But it was
+of no use. My friend was outraged. "That tale-teller then is jest makin'
+fun of the mountain people by misspellin' our talk. You educated folks
+don't spell your own words the way you say them."
+
+A most palpable hit; and it gave me a new point of view.
+
+To the mountaineers themselves their speech is natural and proper, of
+course, and when they see it bared to the spotlight, all eyes drawn
+toward it by an orthography that is as odd to them as it is to us, they
+are stirred to wrath, just as we would be if our conversation were
+reported by some Josh Billings or Artemas Ward.
+
+The curse of dialect writing is elision. Still, no one can write it
+without using the apostrophe more than he likes to; for our highland
+speech is excessively clipped. "I'm comin' d'reck'ly" has a quaintness
+that should not be lost. We cannot visualize the shambling but eager
+mountaineer with a sample of ore in his hand unless the writer reports
+him faithfully: "Wisht you'd 'zamine this rock fer me--I heern tell you
+was one o' them 'sperts."
+
+Although the hillsmen save some breath in this way, they waste a good
+deal by inserting sounds where they do not belong. Sometimes it is only
+an added consonant: gyarden, acrost, corkus (caucus); sometimes a
+syllable: loaferer, musicianer, suddenty. Occasionally a word is both
+added to and clipped from, as cyarn (carrion). They are fond of grace
+syllables: "I gotta me a deck o' cyards." "There ain't nary bitty sense
+in it."
+
+More interesting are substitutions of one sound for another. In mountain
+dialect all vowels may be interchanged with others. Various sounds of
+_a_ are confused with _e_, as hed (had), kem (came), keerful; or with
+_i_, grit (grate), rifle (raffle); with _o_, pomper, toper (taper),
+wrop; or with _u_, fur, ruther. So any other vowel may serve in place of
+_e_: sarve, chist, upsot, tumble. Any other may displace _i_: arn
+(iron), eetch, hender, whope or whup. The _o_ sounds are more stable,
+but we have crap (crop), yan, clus, and many similar variants. Any other
+vowel may do for _u_: braysh or bresh (brush), shet, sich, shore (sure).
+
+Mountaineers have peculiar difficulty with diphthongs: haar (hair),
+cheer (chair), brile, and a host of others. The word coil is variously
+pronounced quile, querl or quorl.
+
+Substitution of consonants is not so common as of vowels, but most
+hillsmen say nabel (navel), ballet (ballad), Babtis', rench or rinch,
+brickie (brittle), and many say atter or arter, jue (due), tejus,
+vascinator (fascinator--a woman's scarf). They never drop _h_, nor
+substitute anything for it.
+
+The word woman has suffered some strange sea-changes. Most mountaineers
+pronounce it correctly, but some drop the _w_ ('oman), others add an
+_r_ (womern and wimmern), while in Michell County, North Carolina, we
+hear the extraordinary forms ummern and dummern ("La, look at all the
+dummerunses a-comin'!")
+
+On the other hand, some words that most Americans mispronounce are
+always sounded correctly in the southern highlands, as dew and new
+(never doo, noo). Creek is always given its true _ee_ sound, never
+crick. Nare (as we spell it in dialect stories) is simply the right
+pronunciation of ne'er, and nary is ne'er a, with the _a_ turned into a
+short _i_ sound.
+
+It should be understood that the dialect varies a good deal from place
+to place, and, even in the same neighborhood, we rarely hear all
+families speaking it alike. Outlanders who essay to write it are prone
+to err by making their characters speak it too consistently. It is only
+in the backwoods, or among old people and the penned-at-home women, that
+the dialect is used with any integrity. In railroad towns we hear little
+of it, and farmers who trade in those towns adapt their speech somewhat
+to the company they may be in. The same man, at different times, may say
+can't and cain't, set and sot, jest and jes' and jist, atter and arter
+or after, seed and seen, here and hyur and hyar, heerd and heern or
+heard, sich and sech, took and tuk--there is no uniformity about it. An
+unconscious sense of euphony seems to govern the choice of hit or it,
+there or thar.
+
+Since the Appalachian people have a marked Scotch-Irish strain, we would
+expect their speech to show a strong Scotch influence. So far as
+vocabulary is concerned, there is really little of it. A few words,
+caigy (cadgy), coggled, fernent, gin for if, needcessity, trollop,
+almost exhaust the list of distinct Scotticisms. The Scotch-Irish, as we
+call them, were mainly Ulstermen, and the Ulster dialect of to-day bears
+little analogy to that of Appalachia.
+
+Scotch influence does appear, however, in one vital characteristic of
+the pronunciation: with few exceptions our highlanders sound _r_
+distinctly wherever it occurs, though they never trill it. In the
+British Isles this constant sounding of _r_ in all positions is
+peculiar, I think, to Scotland, Ireland, and a few small districts in
+the northern border counties of England. With us it is general practice
+outside of New England and those parts of the southern lowlands that had
+no flood of Celtic immigration in the eighteenth century. I have never
+heard a Carolina mountaineer say niggah or No'th Ca'lina, though in the
+last word the syllable _ro_ is often elided.
+
+In some mountain districts we hear do' (door), flo', mo', yo', co'te,
+sca'ce (long _a_), pusson; but such skipping of the _r_ is common only
+where lowland influence has crept in. Much oftener the _r_ is dropped
+from dare, first, girl, horse, nurse, parcel, worth (dast, fust, gal,
+hoss, nuss, passel, wuth). By way of compensation the hillsmen sometimes
+insert a euphonic _r_ where it has no business; just as many New
+Englanders say, "The idear of it!"
+
+Throughout Appalachia such words as last, past, advantage, are
+pronounced with the same vowel sound as is heard in man. This helps to
+delimit the people, classifying them with Pennsylvanians and Westerners:
+a linguistic grouping that will prove significant when we come to study
+the origin and history of this isolated race.
+
+An editor who had made one or two short trips into the mountains once
+wrote me that he thought the average mountaineer's vocabulary did not
+exceed three hundred words. This may be a natural inference if one
+spends but a few weeks among these people and sees them only under the
+prosaic conditions of workaday life. But gain their intimacy and you
+shall find that even the illiterates among them have a range of
+expression that is truly remarkable. I have myself taken down from the
+lips of Carolina mountaineers some eight hundred dialectical or
+obsolete words, to say nothing of the much greater number of standard
+English terms that they command.
+
+Seldom is a "hill-billy" at a loss for a word. Lacking other means of
+expression, there will come "spang" from his mouth a coinage of his own.
+Instantly he will create (always from English roots, of course) new
+words by combination, or by turning nouns into verbs or otherwise
+interchanging the parts of speech.
+
+Crudity or deficiency of the verb characterizes the speech of all
+primitive peoples. In mountain vernacular many words that serve as verbs
+are only nouns of action, or adjectives, or even adverbs. "That bear 'll
+meat me a month." "They churched Pitt for tale-bearin'." "Granny kept
+faultin' us all day." "Are ye fixin' to go squirrelin'?" "Sis blouses
+her waist a-purpose to carry a pistol." "My boy Jesse book-kept for the
+camp." "I disgust bad liquor." "This poke salat eats good." "I ain't
+goin' to bed it no longer" (lie abed). "We can muscle this log up." "I
+wouldn't pleasure them enough to say it." "Josh ain't much on
+sweet-heartin'." "I don't confidence them dogs much." "The creek away up
+thar turkey-tails out into numerous leetle forks."
+
+A verb will be coined from an adverb: "We better git some wood, bettern
+we?" Or from an adjective: "Much that dog and see won't he come along"
+(pet him, make much of him). "I didn't do nary thing to contrary her."
+"Baby, that onion 'll strong ye!" "Little Jimmy fell down and benastied
+himself to beat the devil."
+
+Conversely, nouns are created from verbs. "Hit don't make no differ." "I
+didn't hear no give-out at meetin'" (announcement). "You can git ye one
+more gittin' o' wood up thar." "That Nantahala is a master shut-in, jest
+a plumb gorge." Or from an adjective: "Them bugs--the little old
+hatefuls!" "If anybody wanted a history of this county for fifty years
+he'd git a lavish of it by reading that mine-suit testimony." Or from an
+adverb: "Nance tuk the biggest through at meetin'!" (shouting spell). An
+old lady quoted to me in a plaintive quaver:
+
+  "It matters not, so I've been told,
+  Where the body goes when the heart grows cold;
+
+"But," she added, "a person has a rather about where he'd be put."
+
+In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in
+begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum.
+Holp is used both as preterite and as infinitive: the _o_ is long, and
+the _l_ distinctly sounded by most of the people, but elided by such as
+drop it from almost, already, self (the _l_ is elided from help by many
+who use that form of the verb).
+
+Examples of a strong preterite with dialectical change of the vowel are
+bruk, brung, drap or drapped, drug, friz, roke or ruck (raked), saunt
+(sent), shet, shuck (shook), whoped (long _o_). The variant whupped is a
+Scotticism. Whope is sometimes used in the present tense, but whup is
+more common. By some the vowel of whup is sounded like _oo_ in book (Mr.
+Fox writes "whoop," which, I presume, he intends for that sound).
+
+In many cases a weak preterite supplants the proper strong one: div,
+driv, fit, gi'n or give, rid, riv, riz, writ, done, run, seen or seed,
+blowed, crowed, drawed, growed, knowed, throwed.
+
+There are many corrupt forms of the verb, such as gwine for gone or
+going, mought (mowt) for might, dim, het, ort or orter, wed (weeded),
+war (was or were--the _a_ as in far), shun (shone), cotch (in all
+tenses) or cotched, fotch or fotched, borned, hurted, dremp.
+
+Peculiar adjectives are formed from verbs. "Chair-bottoming is easy
+settin'-down work." "When my youngest was a leetle set-along child"
+(interpreted as "settin' along the floor"). "That Thunderhead is the
+torndowndest place!" "Them's the travellinest hosses ever I seed."
+"She's the workinest woman!" "Jim is the disablest one o' the fam'ly."
+"Damn this fotch-on kraut that comes in tin cans!"
+
+A verb may serve as an adverb: "If I'd a-been thoughted enough." An
+adverb may be used as an adjective: "I hope the folks with you is gaily"
+(well). An adjective can serve as an adverb: "He laughed master."
+Sometimes a conjunction is employed as a preposition: "We have oblige to
+take care on him."
+
+These are not mere blunders of individual illiterates, but usages common
+throughout the mountains, and hence real dialect.
+
+The ancient syllabic plural is preserved in beasties (horses), nesties,
+posties, trousies (these are not diminutives), and in that strange word
+dummerunses that I cited before.
+
+Pleonasms are abundant. "I done done it" (have done it or did do it).
+"Durin' the while." "In this day and time." "I thought it would surely,
+undoubtedly turn cold." "A small, little bitty hole." "Jane's a
+tol'able big, large, fleshy woman." "I ginerally, usually take a dram
+mornin's." "These ridges is might' nigh straight up and down, and, as
+the feller said, perpendic'lar."
+
+Everywhere in the mountains we hear of biscuit-bread, ham-meat,
+rifle-gun, rock-clift, ridin'-critter, cow-brute, man-person,
+women-folks, preacher-man, granny-woman and neighbor-people. In this
+category belong the famous double-barreled pronouns: we-all and you-all
+in Kentucky, we-uns and you-uns in Carolina and Tennessee. (I have even
+heard such locution as this: "Let's we-uns all go over to youerunses
+house.") Such usages are regarded generally as mere barbarisms, and so
+they are in English, but Miss Murfree cites correlatives in the Romance
+languages: French _nous autres_, Italian _noi altri_, Spanish
+_nosotros_.
+
+The mountaineers have some queer ways of intensifying expression. "I'd
+_tell_ a man," with the stress as here indicated, is simply a strong
+affirmative. "We had one more _time_" means a rousing good time.
+"P'int-blank" is a superlative or an epithet: "We jist p'int-blank got
+it to do." "Well, p'int-blank, if they ever come back again, I'll move!"
+
+A double negative is so common that it may be crowded into a single
+word: "I did it the unthoughtless of anything I ever done in my life."
+Triple negatives are easy: "I ain't got nary none." A mountaineer can
+accomplish the quadruple: "That boy ain't never done nothin' nohow."
+Yea, even the quintuple: "I ain't never seen no men-folks of no kind do
+no washin'."
+
+On the other hand, the veriest illiterates often startle a stranger by
+glib use of some word that most of us picked up in school or seldom use
+informally. "I can make a hunderd pound o' pork outen that hog--tutor it
+jist right." "Them clouds denote rain." "She's so dilitary!" "They stood
+thar and caviled about it." "That exceeds the measure." "Old Tom is
+blind, but he can discern when the sun is shinin'." "Jerry proffered to
+fix the gun for me." I had supposed that the words cuckold and moon-calf
+had none but literary usage in America, but we often hear them in the
+mountains, cuckold being employed both as verb and as noun, and
+moon-calf in its baldly literal sense that would make Prospero's taunt
+to Caliban a superlative insult.
+
+Our highlander often speaks in Elizabethan or Chaucerian or even
+pre-Chaucerian terms. His pronoun hit antedates English itself, being
+the Anglo-Saxon neuter of he. Ey God, a favorite expletive, is the
+original of egad, and goes back of Chaucer. Ax for ask and kag for keg
+were the primitive and legitimate forms, which we trace as far as the
+time of Layamon. When the mountain boy challenges his mate: "I dar ye--I
+ain't afeared!" his verb and participle are of the same ancient and
+sterling rank. Afore, atwixt, awar, heap o' folks, peart, up and done
+it, usen for used, all these everyday expressions of the backwoods were
+contemporary with the _Canterbury Tales_.
+
+A man said to me of three of our acquaintances: "There's been a fray on
+the river--I don't know how the fraction begun, but Os feathered into
+Dan and Phil, feedin' them lead." He meant fray in its original sense of
+deadly combat, as was fitting where two men were killed. Fraction for
+rupture is an archaic word, rare in literature, though we find it in
+_Troilus and Cressida_. "Feathered into them!" Where else can we hear
+to-day a phrase that passed out of standard English when "villainous
+saltpetre" supplanted the long-bow? It means to bury an arrow up to the
+feather, as when the old chronicler Harrison says, "An other arrow
+should haue beene fethered in his bowels."
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+"Till the skyline blends with the sky itself."--Great Smokies. N. C.
+from Mt. Collins.]
+
+
+Our schoolmaster, composing a form of oath for the new mail-carrier,
+remarked: "Let me study this thing over; then I can edzact it"--a verb
+so rare and obsolete that we find it in no American dictionary, but only
+in Murray.
+
+A remarkable word, common in the Smokies, is dauncy, defined for me as
+"mincy about eating," which is to say fastidious, over-nice. Dauncy
+probably is a variant of daunch, of which the _Oxford New English
+Dictionary_ cites but one example, from the _Townley Mysteries_ of
+_circa_ 1460.
+
+A queer term used by Carolina mountaineers, without the faintest notion
+of its origin, is doney (long _o_) or doney-gal, meaning a sweetheart.
+Its history is unique. British sailors of the olden time brought it to
+England from Spanish or Italian ports. Doney is simply _dona_ or _donna_
+a trifle anglicized in pronunciation. Odd, though, that it should be
+preserved in America by none but backwoodsmen whose ancestors for two
+centuries never saw the tides!
+
+In the vocabulary of the mountaineers I have detected only three words
+of directly foreign origin. Doney is one. Another is kraut, which is the
+sole contribution to highland speech of those numerous Germans (mostly
+Pennsylvania Dutch) who joined the first settlers in this region, and
+whose descendants, under wondrously anglicized names, form to-day a
+considerable element of the highland population. The third is sashiate
+(French _chasse_), used in calling figures at the country dances.
+
+There is something intrinsically, stubbornly English in the nature of
+the mountaineer: he will assimilate nothing foreign. In the Smokies the
+Eastern Band of Cherokees still holds its ancient capital on the Okona
+Lufty River, and the whites mingle freely with these redskins, bearing
+them no such despite as they do negroes, but eating at the same table
+and admitting Indians to the white compartment of a Jim Crow car. Yet
+the mountain dialect contains not one word of Cherokee origin, albeit
+many of the whites can speak a little Cherokee.
+
+In our county some Indians always appear at each term of court, and an
+interpreter must be engaged. He never goes by that name, but by the
+obsolete title linkister or link'ster, by some lin-gis-ter.
+
+Many other old-fashioned terms are preserved in Appalachia that sound
+delightfully quaint to strangers who never met them outside of books. A
+married woman is not addressed as Missis by the mountaineers, but as
+Mistress when they speak formally, and as Mis' or Miz' for a
+contraction. We will hear an aged man referred to as "old Grandsir'"
+So-and-So. "Back this letter for me" is a phrase unchanged from the days
+before envelopes, when an address had to be written on the back of the
+letter itself. "Can I borry a race of ginger?" means the unground
+root--you will find the word in _A Winter's Tale_. "Them sorry fellers"
+denotes scabby knaves, good-for-nothings. Sorry has no etymological
+connection with sorrow, but literally means sore-y, covered with sores,
+and the highlander sticks to its original import.
+
+We have in the mountains many home-born words to fit the circumstances
+of backwoods life. When maize has passed from the soft and milky stage
+of roasting-ears, but is not yet hard enough for grinding, the ears are
+grated into a soft meal and baked into delectable pones called
+gritted-bread.
+
+In some places to-day we still find the ancient quern or hand-mill,
+jocularly called an armstrong-machine. Someone who irked from turning it
+invented the extraordinary improvement that goes by the name of
+pounding-mill. This consists of a pole pivoted horizontally on top of a
+post and free to move up and down like the walking-beam of an
+old-fashioned engine. To one end of this pole is attached a heavy
+pestle that works in a mortar underneath. At the other end is a box
+from which water flows from an elevated spout. When the box fills it
+will go down, lifting the pestle; then the water spills out and the
+pestle's weight lifts the box back again.
+
+Who knows what a toddick or taddle is? I did not until my friend Dargan
+reported it from the Nantahala. "Ben didn't git a full turn o' meal, but
+jest a toddick." When a farmer goes to one of our little tub-mills,
+mentioned in previous chapters, he leaves a portion of the meal as toll.
+This he measures out in a toll-dish or toddick or taddle (the name
+varies with the locality) which the mill-owner left for that purpose.
+Toddick, then, is a small measure. A turn of meal is so called because
+"each man's corn is ground in turn--he waits his turn."
+
+When one dines in a cabin back in the hills he will taste some strange
+dishes that go by still stranger names. Beans dried in the pod, then
+boiled "hull and all," are called leather-breeches (this is not slang,
+but the regular name). Green beans in the pod are called snaps; when
+shelled they are shuck-beans. The old Germans taught their Scotch and
+English neighbors the merits of scrapple, but here it is known as
+poor-do. Lath-open bread is made from biscuit dough, with soda and
+buttermilk, in the usual way, except that the shortening is worked in
+last. It is then baked in flat cakes, and has the peculiar property of
+parting readily into thin flakes when broken edgewise. I suppose that
+poor-do was originally poor-doin's, and lath-open bread denotes that it
+opens into lath-like strips. But etymology cannot be pushed recklessly
+in the mountains, and I offer these clews as a mere surmise.
+
+Your hostess, proffering apple sauce, will ask, "Do you love sass?" I
+had to kick my chum Andy's shins the first time he faced this question.
+It is well for a traveler to be forewarned that the word love is
+commonly used here in the sense of like or relish.
+
+If one is especially fond of a certain dish he declares that he is a
+fool about it. "I'm a plumb fool about pickle-beans." Conversely, "I
+ain't much of a fool about liver" is rather more than a hint of
+distaste. "I et me a bait" literally means a mere snack, but jocosely it
+may admit a hearty meal. If the provender be scant the hostess may say,
+"That's right at a smidgen," meaning little more than a mite; but if
+plenteous, then there are rimptions.
+
+To "grabble 'taters" is to pick from a hill of new potatoes a few of
+the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature
+ones.
+
+If the house be in disorder it is said to be all gormed or gaumed up, or
+things are just in a mommick.
+
+When a man is tired he likely will call it worried; if in a hurry, he is
+in a swivvet; if nervous, he has the all-overs; if declining in health,
+he is on the down-go. If he and his neighbor dislike each other, there
+is a hardness between them; if they quarrel, it is a ruction, a rippit,
+a jower, or an upscuddle--so be it there are no fatalities which would
+amount to a real fray.
+
+A choleric or fretful person is tetchious. Survigrous (ser-_vi_-grus) is
+a superlative of vigorous (here pronounced _vi_-grus, with long _i_): as
+"a survigrous baby," "a most survigrous cusser." Bodaciously means
+bodily or entirely: "I'm bodaciously ruint" (seriously injured). "Sim
+greened him out bodaciously" (to green out or sap is to outwit in
+trade). To disfurnish or discon_fit_ means to incommode: "I hope it has
+not disconfit you very bad."
+
+To shamp means to shingle or trim one's hair. A bastard is a woods-colt
+or an outsider. Slaunchways denotes slanting, and si-godlin or
+si-antigodlin is out of plumb or out of square (factitious words, of
+course--mere nonsense terms, like catawampus).
+
+Critter and beast are usually restricted to horse and mule, and brute to
+a bovine. A bull or boar is not to be mentioned as such in mixed
+company, but male-brute and male-hog are used as euphemisms.[9]
+
+A female shoat is called a gilt. A spotted animal is said to be pieded
+(pied), and a striped one is listed. In the Smokies a toad is called a
+frog or a toad-frog, and a toadstool is a frog-stool. The woodpecker is
+turned around into a peckerwood, except that the giant woodpecker (here
+still a common bird) is known as a woodcock or woodhen.
+
+What the mountaineers call hemlock is the shrub leucothoe. The hemlock
+tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is
+she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel. In some places
+pine needles are called twinkles, and the locust insect is known as a
+ferro (Pharaoh?). A treetop left on the ground after logging is called
+the lap. Sobby wood means soggy or sodden, and the verb is to sob.
+
+Evening, in the mountains, begins at noon instead of at sunset. Spell is
+used in the sense of while ("a good spell atterward") and soon for early
+("a soon start in the morning"). The hillsmen say "a year come June,"
+"Thursday 'twas a week ago," and "the year nineteen and eight."
+
+Many common English words are used in peculiar senses by the mountain
+folk, as call for name or mention or occasion, clever for obliging,
+mimic or mock for resemble, a power or a sight for much, risin' for
+exceeding (also for inflammation), ruin for injure, scout for elude,
+stove for jabbed, surround for go around, word for phrase, take off for
+help yourself. Tale always means an idle or malicious report.
+
+Some highland usages that sound odd to us are really no more than the
+original and literal meanings, as budget for bag or parcel, hampered for
+shackled or jailed. When a mountain swain "carries his gal to meetin'"
+he is not performing so great an athletic feat as was reported by
+Benjamin Franklin, who said, "My father carried his wife with three
+children to New England" (from Pennsylvania).
+
+A mountaineer does not throw a stone; he "flings a rock." He sharpens
+tools on a grindin'-rock or whet-rock. Tomato, cabbage, molasses and
+baking powder are used always as plural nouns. "Pass me them molasses."
+"I'll have a few more of them cabbage." "How many bakin'-powders has you
+got?"
+
+Many other peculiar words and phrases are explained in their proper
+place elsewhere in this volume.
+
+The speech of the southern highlanders is alive with quaint idioms. "I
+swapped hosses, and I'll tell you fer why." "Your name ain't much
+common." "Who got to beat?" "You think me of it in the mornin'." "I 'low
+to go to town to-morrow." "The woman's aimin' to go to meetin'." "I had
+in head to plow to-day, but hit's come on to rain." "I've laid off and
+laid off to fix that fence." "Reckon Pete was knowin' to the
+sarcumstance?" "I'll name it to Newt, if so be he's thar." "I knowed in
+reason she'd have the mullygrubs over them doin's." "You cain't handily
+blame her."
+
+"Air ye plumb bereft?" "How come it was this: he done me dirt." "I ain't
+carin' which nor whether about it." "Sam went to Andrews or to Murphy,
+one." "I tuk my fut in my hand and lit out." "He lit a rag fer home."
+"Don't much believe the wagon 'll come to-day." "Tain't powerful long
+to dinner, I don't reckon." "Phil's Ann give it out to each and every
+that Walt and Layunie 'd orter wed."
+
+"Howdy, Tom: light and hitch."
+
+"Reckon I'd better git on."
+
+"Come in and set."
+
+"Cain't stop long."
+
+"Oh, set down and eat you some supper!"
+
+"I've been."
+
+"Won't ye stay the night? Looks like to me we'll have a rainin', windin'
+spell."
+
+"No: I'll haffter go down."
+
+"Well, come agin, and fix to stay a week."
+
+"You-uns come down with me."
+
+"Won't go now, I guess, Tom."
+
+"Giddep! I'll be back by in the mornin'."
+
+"Farwell!"
+
+Rather laconic. Yet, on occasion, when the mountaineer is drawn out of
+his natural reserve and allows his emotions free rein, there are few
+educated people who can match his picturesque and pungent diction. His
+trick of apt phrasing is intuitive. Like an artist striking off a
+portrait or a caricature with a few swift strokes his characterization
+is quick and vivid. Whether he use quaint obsolete English or equally
+delightful perversions, what he says will go straight to the mark with
+epigrammatic force.
+
+I cannot quit this topic without reference to the bizarre and original
+place-names that sprinkle the map of Appalachia.
+
+Many readers of John Fox's novels take for granted that the author
+coined such piquant titles as Lonesome, Troublesome, Hell fer Sartin,
+and Kingdom Come. But all of these are real names in the Kentucky
+mountains. They denote rough country, and the country _is_ rough, so
+that to a traveler it is plain enough why travel and travail were used
+interchangeably in old editions of Shakespeare. There is nothing like
+first-hand knowledge of mountain roads to revive sixteenth-century
+habits of thought and speech. The most scrupulous visitor will fain
+admit the aptness of mountain nomenclature.
+
+Kentucky has no monopoly of grotesque and whimsical local names. The
+whole Appalachian region, from the Virginias to Alabama, is peppered
+with them. Whatever else the southern mountaineer may be, he is
+original. Elsewhere throughout America we have place-names imported from
+the Old World as thick as weeds; but the pioneers of the southern hills
+either forgot that there was an Old World or they disdained to borrow
+from it.
+
+Personal names applied to localities are common enough, but they are
+those of actual settlers, not of notables honored from afar (Mitchell,
+LeConte, Guyot, were not the highlanders' names for those peaks). Often
+a surname is put to such use, as Jake's Creek, Old Nell Knob, and Big
+Jonathan Run. We even have Granny's Branch, and Daddy and Mammy creeks.
+
+In the main it is characteristic of our Appalachian place-names that
+they are descriptive or commemorate some incident. The Shut-in is a
+gorge; the Suck is a whirlpool; Pinch-gut is a narrow passage between
+the cliffs. Calf-killer Run is "whar a meat-eatin' bear was usin'," and
+Barren She Mountain was the death-ground of a she-bear that had no cubs.
+Kemmer's Old Stand was a certain hunter's favorite ambush on a runway.
+Meat-scaffold Branch is where venison was hung up for "jerking."
+Graining-block Creek was a trappers' rendezvous, and Honey Camp Run is
+where the bee hunters stayed. Lick-log denotes a notched log used for
+salting cattle. Still-house Branch was a moonshiners' retreat. Skin-linn
+Fork is where the bast was peeled from young lindens. Big Butt is what
+Westerners call a butte. Ball-play Bottom was a lacrosse field of the
+Indians. Pizen Gulch was infested with poison ivy or sumach. Keerless
+Knob is "a joyful place for wild salat" (_amaranthus_). A "hell" or
+"slick" or "woolly-head" or "yaller patch" is a thicket of laurel or
+rhododendron, impassable save where the bears have bored out trails.
+
+The qualities of the raw backwoodsmen are printed from untouched
+negatives in the names he has left upon the map. His literalness shows
+in Black Rock, Standing Stone, Sharp Top, Twenty Mile, Naked Place, The
+Pocket, Tumbling Creek, and in the endless designations taken from
+trees, plants, minerals, or animals noted on the spot. Incidents of his
+lonely life are signalized in Dusk Camp Run, Mad Sheep Mountain, Dog
+Slaughter Creek, Drowning Creek, Burnt Cabin Branch, Broken Leg, Raw
+Dough, Burnt Pone, Sandy Mush, and a hundred others. His contentious
+spirit blazes forth in Fighting Creek, Shooting Creek, Gouge-eye,
+Vengeance, Four Killer, and Disputanta.
+
+Sometimes even his superstitions are commemorated. In Owesley County,
+Kentucky, is a range of hills bearing the singular name of Whoop fer
+Larrie. A party of hunters, so the legend goes, had encamped for the
+night in the shelter of a bluff. They were startled from sleep by a
+loud rumble, as of some wagon hurrying along the pathless ridge, and
+they heard a voice shouting "Whoop fer Larrie! Whoop fer Larrie!" The
+hills would return no echo, for the cry came from a riotous "ha'nt."
+
+A sardonic humor, sometimes smudged with "that touch of grossness in our
+English race," characterizes many of the backwoods place-names. In the
+mountains of Old Virginia we have Dry Tripe settlement and Jerk 'em
+Tight. In West Virginia are Take In Creek, Get In Run, Seldom Seen
+Hollow, Odd, Buster Knob, Shabby Room, and Stretch Yer Neck. North
+Carolina has its Shoo Bird Mountain, Big Bugaboo Creek, Weary Hut, Frog
+Level, Shake a Rag, and the Chunky Gal. In eastern Tennessee are No Time
+settlement and No Business Knob, with creeks known as Big Soak, Suee, Go
+Forth, and How Come You. Georgia has produced Scataway, Too Nigh, Long
+Nose, Dug Down, Silly Cook, Turkey Trot, Broke Jug Creek, and Tear
+Breeches Ridge.
+
+Allowing some license for the mountaineer's irreverence, his whimsical
+fancies, and his scorn of sentimentalism, it must be said that his
+descriptive terms are usually apposite and sometimes felicitous. Often
+he is poetically imaginative, occasionally romantic, and generally
+picturesque. Roan Mountain, Grandfather, the Lone Bald, Craggy Dome,
+the Black Brothers, Hairy Bear, the Balsam Cone, Sunset Mountain, the
+Little Snowbird, are names that linger lovingly in one's memory.
+
+The writer recalls with pleasure not only the features but the mere
+titles of that superb landscape that he shared with the wild creatures
+and a few woodsmen when living far up on the divide of the Great Smoky
+Mountains. Immediately below his cabin were the Defeat and Desolation
+branches of Bone Valley, with Hazel Creek meandering to the Little
+Tennessee. Cheoah, Tululah, Santeetlah, the Tuckaseegee, and the
+Nantahala (Valley of the Noonday Sun) flowed through gorges overlooked
+by the Wauchecha, the Yalaka and the Cowee ranges, Tellico, Wahyah, the
+Standing Indian and the Tusquitee.[10] Sonorous names, these, which our
+pioneers had the good sense to adopt from the aborigines.
+
+To the east were Cold Spring Knob, the Miry Ridge, Siler's Bald,
+Clingman's Dome, and the great peaks at the head of Okona Lufty. On the
+west rose Brier Knob, Laurel Top, Thunderhead, Blockhouse, the
+Fodder-stack, and various "balds" of the Unakas guarding Hiwassee. To
+the northward were Cade's Cove and the vale of Tuckaleechee, with
+Chilhowee in the near distance, and the Appalachian Valley stretching
+beyond our ramparts to where the far Cumberlands marked an ever-blue
+horizon.
+
+What matter that the plenteous roughs about us were branded with rude or
+opprobrious names? Rip Shin Thicket, Dog-hobble Ridge, the Rough Arm,
+Bear-wallow, Woolly Ridge, Roaring Fork, Huggins's Hell, the Devil's
+Racepath, his Den, his Courthouse, and other playgrounds of Old
+Nick--they, too, were well and fitly named.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+It is only a town-dreamed allegory that represents Nature as a fond
+mother suckling her young upon her breast. Those who have lived
+literally close to wild Nature know her for a tyrant, void of pity and
+of mercy, from whom nothing can be wrung without toil and the risk of
+death.
+
+To all pioneer men--to their women and children, too--life has been one
+long, hard, cruel war against elemental powers. Nothing else than
+warlike arts, nothing short of warlike hazards, could have subdued the
+beasts and savages, felled the forests and made our land habitable for
+those teeming millions who can exist only in a state of mutual
+dependence and cultivation. The first lesson of pioneering was
+self-reliance. "Provide with thine own arm," said the Wilderness,
+"against frost and famine and skulking foes, or thou shalt surely die!"
+
+But there were compensations. As the school of the woods was harsh and
+stern, so it brought up sons and daughters of lion heart. And its
+reward to those who endured was the most outright independence to be had
+on earth. No king was so irresponsible as the pioneer, no czar so
+absolute as he. It needed no martyr spirit in him to sing:
+
+  "I am the master of my fate,
+  I am the captain of my soul."
+
+
+We have seen that the Appalachian region was peculiar in this: that good
+bottom lands were few and far between. So our mountain farmers were cut
+off more from the world and from each other, were thrown still more upon
+their individual resources, than other pioneers. By compulsion their
+self-reliance was more complete; hence their independence grew more
+haughty, their individualism more intense. And these traits, exaggerated
+as they were by force of environment, remain unweakened among their
+descendants to the present day.
+
+Here, then, is a key to much that is puzzling in highland character. In
+the beginning isolation was forced upon the mountaineers; they accepted
+it as inevitable and bore it with stoical fortitude until in time they
+came to love solitude for its own sake and to find compensations in it
+for lack of society.
+
+Says a native writer, Miss Emma Miles, in a clever and illuminating book
+on _The Spirit of the Mountains_: "We who live so far apart that we
+rarely see more of one another than the blue smoke of each other's
+chimneys are never at ease without the feel of the forest on every
+side--room to breathe, to expand, to develop, as well as to hunt and to
+wander at will. The nature of the mountaineer demands that he have
+solitude for the unhampered growth of his personality, wing-room for his
+eagle heart."
+
+Such feeling, such longing, most of us have experienced in passing
+moods; but in the highlander it is a permanent state of mind, sustaining
+him from the cradle to the grave. To enjoy freedom and air and
+elbow-room he cheerfully puts aside all that society can offer, and
+stints himself and bears adversity with a calm and steadfast soul. To be
+free, unbeholden, lord of himself and his surroundings--that is the wine
+of life to a mountaineer.
+
+Such a man cannot stand it to be bossed around. If he works for another,
+it must be on a footing of equality. Poverty may oblige him to take a
+turn on some "public works" (by which he means any job where many men
+work together, such as lumbering or railroad building), but he must be
+handled with more respect than is shown common laborers elsewhere. At a
+sharp order or a curse from the foreman he will flare back: "That's
+enough out o' you!" and immediately he will drop his tools. Generally he
+will stay on a job just long enough to earn money for immediate needs;
+then back to the farm he goes.
+
+Bear in mind that in the mountains every person is accorded the
+consideration that his own qualities entitle him to, and no whit more.
+It has always been so. Our Highlanders have neither memory nor tradition
+of ever having been herded together, lorded over, persecuted or denied
+the privileges of free-men. So, even within their clans, there is no
+servility nor any headship by right of birth. Leaders arise, when
+needed, only by virtue of acknowledged ability and efficiency. In this
+respect there is no analogy whatever to the clan system of ancient
+Scotland, to which the loose social structure of our own highlanders has
+been compared.
+
+We might expect such fiery individualism to cool gradually as population
+grew denser; but, oddly enough, crowding only intensifies it in the shy
+backwoodsman. Neighborliness has not grown in the mountains--it is on
+the wane. There are to-day fewer log-rollings and house-raisings, fewer
+husking bees and quilting parties than in former times; _and no new
+social gatherings have taken their place_. Our mountain farmer, seeing
+all arable land taken up, and the free range ever narrowing, has grown
+jealous and distrustful, resenting the encroachment of too many sharers
+in what once he felt was his own unfenced domain. And so it has come
+about that the very quality that is his strength and charm as a man--his
+staunch individualism--is proving his weakness and reproach as a
+neighbor and citizen. The virtue of a time out-worn has become the vice
+of an age new-born.
+
+The mountaineers are non-social. As they stand to-day, each man
+"fighting for his own hand, with his back against the wall," they
+recognize no social compact. Each one is suspicious of the other. Except
+as kinsmen or partisans they cannot pull together. Speak to them of
+community of interests, try to show them the advantages of co-operation,
+and you might as well be proffering advice to the North Star. They will
+not work together zealously even to improve their neighborhood roads,
+each mistrusting that the other may gain some trifling advantage over
+himself or turn fewer shovelfuls of earth. Labor chiefs fail to organize
+unions or granges among them because they simply will not stick
+together.
+
+Miss Miles says of her people (the italics are my own): "There is no
+such thing as a community of mountaineers. They are knit together, man
+to man, as friends, but not as a body of men.... Our men are almost
+incapable of concerted action unless they are needed by the
+Government.... Between blood-relationship and the Federal Government no
+relations of master and servant, rich and poor, learned and ignorant,
+employer and employee, are interposed to bind society into a whole....
+_The mountaineers must awake to a consciousness of themselves as a
+people._ For although throughout the highlands of Kentucky, Tennessee
+and the Carolinas our nature is one, our hopes, our loves, our daily
+life the same, we are yet a people asleep, _a race without knowledge of
+its own existence_. This condition is due ... to the isolation that
+separates the mountaineer from all the world but his own blood and kin,
+and to the consequent utter simplicity of social relations. When they
+shall have established a unity of thought corresponding to their
+homogeneity of character, then their love of country will assume a
+practical form, and then, indeed, America, with all her peoples, can
+boast no stronger sons than these same mountaineers."
+
+To the Highlanders of four States here mentioned should be added all
+those of Old Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, making an
+aggregate to-day of close on four million souls. Together they
+constitute a distinct people. Not only are they all closely akin in
+blood, in speech, in ideas, in manners, in ways of living; but their
+needs, their problems are identical throughout this vast domain. There
+is no other ethnic group in America so unmixed as these mountaineers and
+so segregated from all others.
+
+And the strange thing is that they do not know it. Their isolation is so
+complete that they have no race consciousness at all. In this respect I
+can think of no other people on the face of the earth to which they may
+be likened.
+
+As compensation for the peculiar weakness of their social structure, the
+Highlanders display an undying devotion to family and kindred.
+Mountaineers everywhere are passionately attached to their homes. Tear
+away from his native rock your Switzer, your Tyrolean, your Basque, your
+Montenegrin, and all alike are stricken with homesickness beyond speech
+or cure. At the first chance they will return, and thenceforth will
+cling to their patrimonies, however poor these be.
+
+So, too, our man of the Appalachians.--"I went down into the valley,
+wunst, and I declar I nigh sultered! 'Pears like there ain't breath
+enough to go round, with all them people. And the water don't do a body
+no good; an' you cain't eat hearty, nor sleep good o' nights. Course
+they pay big money down thar; but I'd a heap-sight ruther ketch me a big
+old 'coon fer his hide. Boys, I did hone fer my dog Fiddler, an' the
+times we'd have a-huntin', and the trout-fishin', an' the smell o' the
+woods, and nobody bossin' and jowerin' at all. I'm a hill-billy, all
+right, and they needn't to glory their old flat lands to me!"
+
+Domestic affection is seldom expressed by the mountaineers--not even by
+motherly or sisterly kisses--but it is very deep and real for all that.
+In fact, the ties of kinship are stronger with them, and extend to
+remoter degrees of consanguinity, than with any other Americans that I
+know. Here again we see working the old feudal idea, an anachronism, but
+often a beautiful one, in this bustling commercial age. Our hived and
+promiscuous life in cities is breaking down the old fealty of kith and
+kin. "God gives us our relatives," sighs the modern, "but, thank God, we
+can choose our friends!" Such words would strike a mountaineer deep
+with horror. Rather would he go the limit of Stevenson's Saint Ives:
+"If it is a question of going to hell, go to hell like a gentleman, with
+your ancestors!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+Whitewater Falls]
+
+
+When the wilderness came to be settled by white men, courts were feeble
+to puerility, and every man was a law unto himself. Many hard characters
+came in with the pioneers--bad neighbors, arrogant, thievish, bold. As
+society was not organized for mutual protection, it was inevitable that
+cousin should look to cousin for help in time of trouble. So arose the
+clan, the family league, and, as things change very slowly in the
+mountains, we still have clan loyalty outside of and superior to the
+law. "My family _right or wrong_!" is a slogan to which every highlander
+will rise, with money or arms in hand, and for it he will lay down his
+last dollar, the last drop of his blood. There is scarce any limit to
+which this fealty will not go. Your brother or cousin may have committed
+a crime that shocks you as it does all other decent citizens; but will
+you give him up to the officers and testify against him? Not if you are
+a mountaineer. You will hide him out in the laurel, carry him food, keep
+him posted, help him to break jail, perjure yourself for him in
+court--anything, everything, to get him clear.
+
+We see here a survival, very real and widespread, in this
+twentieth-century Appalachia, of a condition that was general throughout
+the Scotch Highlands in the far past. "The great virtue of the
+Highlander," says Lecky, "was his fidelity to his chief and to his clan.
+It took the place of patriotism and of loyalty to his sovereign.... In
+the reign of James V., an insurrection of Clan Chattan having been
+suppressed by Murray, two hundred of the insurgents were condemned to
+death. Each one as he was led to the gallows was offered a pardon if he
+would reveal the hiding-place of his chief, but they all answered that,
+were they acquainted with it, no sort of punishment could induce them to
+be guilty of treachery to their leader.... In 1745 the house of
+Macpherson of Cluny was burnt to the ground by the King's troops. A
+reward of L1,000 was offered for his apprehension. A large body of
+soldiers was stationed in the district and a step of promotion was
+promised to any officer who should secure him. Yet for nine years the
+chief was able to live concealed on his own property in a cave which his
+clansmen dug for him during the night, and, though upwards of one
+hundred persons knew of his place of retreat, no bribe or menace could
+extort the secret."
+
+The same chivalrous, self-sacrificing fidelity to family and to clan
+leader is still shown by our own highlanders, as scores of feuds and
+hundreds of criminal trials attest. All this is openly and unblushingly
+"above the law"; but let us remember that the law itself, in many of
+these localities, is but a feeble, dilatory thing that offers
+practically no protection to those who would obey its letter. So, in an
+imperfectly organized society, it is good to have blood-ties that are
+faithful unto death. And none knows it better than he who has missed
+it--he who has lived strange and alone in some wild, lawless region
+where everyone else had a clan to back him.
+
+So far as primitive society is concerned, we may admit with the Scotch
+historian Henderson that "the clan system of government was in its way
+an ideally perfect one--probably the only perfect one that has ever
+existed.... The clansman was not the subject--a term implying some sort
+of conquest--but the kinsman of his chief.... Obedience became rather a
+privilege than a task, and no possible bribery or menace could shake his
+fidelity. Towards the Sassenach or the members of clans at feud with him
+he might act meanly, treacherously, and cruelly without check and
+without compunction, for there he recognized no moral obligations
+whatever. But as a clansman to his clan he was courteous, truthful,
+virtuous, benevolent, with notions of honor as punctilious as those of
+the ancient knight."
+
+The trouble with clan government was, as this same writer has pointed
+out, that "it was the very thoroughness of its adaptation to early needs
+that made it so hard to adjust to new necessities. In its principles and
+motives it was essentially opposed to the bent of modern influences. Its
+appeal was to sentiment rather than to law or even reason: it was a
+system not of the letter but of the spirit.... The clan system was
+efficient only within a narrow area; it gave rise to interminable feuds;
+and it was inapplicable to the circumstances created by the rise of
+modern industry and trade."
+
+Everywhere throughout Highland Dixie to-day we can observe how clan
+loyalty interferes with the administration of justice. When a case
+involving some strong family comes up in the courts, immediately a cloud
+of false witnesses arises, men who should testify on the other side are
+bribed or run out of the country before subpoenas can be served, and
+every juror knows that his peace and prosperity in future depend largely
+upon which side he espouses.
+
+To what lengths the hostility of a clan may go in defying justice was
+shown recently in the massacre of almost a whole court by the Allen clan
+at Hillsville, Virginia. The news of that atrocity swept like wildfire
+throughout all Appalachia, its history is being reviewed to-day in
+thousands of mountain cabins, and it is deeply significant that, away
+out here in western Carolina, where no Allen blood relationship
+prejudices men's minds, the prevailing judgment of our backwoodsmen is
+that the State of Virginia did wrong in executing any of the offenders.
+"There was something back of it--you mark my words," say the country
+folk. And the drummers, cattle-buyers, and others who pass this way from
+southwestern Virginia tell us, "Everybody up our way sympathizes with
+the Allens."
+
+In some measure this morbid sentiment is due to the spectacular features
+of the Hillsville tragedy. If there be one human quality that the
+mountaineer admires above all others, it is "nerve." And what greater
+display of nerve has been made in this generation than for a few
+clansmen to shoot down a judge at the bench, the public prosecutor, the
+sheriff, the clerk of the court, and two jurymen, then take to the
+mountain laurel like Corsicans to the _maquis_, and defy the armed
+power of the country? The cause does not matter, to a mountaineer. Our
+Highlanders are anything but robbers, for instance, and yet the only
+outsider who has ballads sung in his memory throughout Appalachia is
+Jesse James!--unless Jack Donohue was one--I do not know.--
+
+  Come all ye bold undaunted men
+    And outlaws of the day,
+  Who'd rather wear the ball and chain
+    Than work in slavery!
+
+     *       *       *       *
+
+  Said Donohue to his comrades,
+    "If you'll prove true to me,
+  This day I'll fight with all my might,
+    I'll fight for liberty;
+  Be of good courage, be bold and strong,
+    Be galliant and be true;
+  This day I'll fight with all my might,"
+    Says bold Jack Donohue.
+
+     *       *       *       *
+
+  Six policemen he shot down
+    Before the fatal ball
+  Pierced the heart of Donohue
+    And 'casioned him to fall;
+  And then he closed his struggling eyes,
+  And bid this world adieu.
+    Come all ye boys that fear no noise,
+    And pray for Donohue!
+
+
+No doubt the mountain minstrels are already composing ballads in honor
+of the Allens; for it is a fact we cannot blink at that the outlaw is
+the popular hero of Appalachia to-day, as Rob Roy and Robin Hood were in
+the Britain of long ago. This is not due to any ingrained hostility to
+law and order as such, but simply to admiration for any men who fight
+desperately against overwhelming odds. There is a glamour about bold and
+lawless adventure that fascinates mature men and women who have never
+outgrown youthful habits of mind. Whoever has the reputation of being a
+dangerous man to cross--the "marked" man, who carries his life upon his
+sleeve, but bears himself as a smiling cavalier--he is the only true
+aristocrat among a valorous but primitive people.
+
+But this is only half an explanation. The statement that our highlanders
+are not hostile to law and order must be qualified to this extent: they
+have a profound distrust of the courts. The mountaineer is not only a
+born fighter but he is also litigious by nature and tradition. A
+stranger will be surprised to find how deeply the average backwoodsman
+is versed in the petty subtleties of legal practice. It comes from
+experience. "Court-week" draws bigger crowds than a circus. The
+mountaineer who has never served as juror, witness, or principal in a
+lawsuit is a curiosity. And this familiarity has bred secret contempt. I
+violate no confidence in saying that many a mountaineer would hold up
+one hand to testify his respect for the law while the other hand hovered
+over his pistol.
+
+Why so?
+
+Just because his experience has taught him (rightly or wrongly--but he
+firmly believes it) that courts are swayed by sinister influences when
+important matters are at stake. Those influences are clan money and clan
+votes. Hence, if he or a kinsman be involved in "lawin'" with a member
+of some rival tribe, he does not look for impartial treatment, but
+prepares to fight cunning with cunning, local influence with local
+influence. There are no moral obligations here. "All's fair in love and
+war"--and this is one form of war.
+
+If the reader will take down his _David Balfour_ and read the intrigues,
+plots, and counterplots of David's attorneys and those of the Crown, he
+will grasp our own highlanders' viewpoint.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by Arthur Keith
+
+The road follows the Creek.--There may be a dozen fords in a mile.]
+
+
+That mountain courts are often impotent is due in part to the
+limitations under which their officers are obliged to serve. For
+example, in the judicial district where I reside, the solicitor
+(State's attorney) receives nothing but fees, and then only _in case
+of conviction_. It might seem that this would stir him to extra zeal,
+and perhaps it does; but he has a large circuit, there are no local
+officials specially interested in securing evidence for him while the
+case is white-hot, everything spurs the defendant to get rid of
+dangerous witnesses before the solicitor can get at them, public opinion
+is extremely lenient toward homicides, and man-slayers so often get off
+scot-free after the most faithful and laborious efforts of the
+solicitor, that he becomes discouraged.
+
+The sheriff, too, serves without salary, getting only fees and a
+percentage of tax collections. How this works, in securing witnesses,
+may be shown by an anecdote.--
+
+I looked up from my work, one day, to see a neighbor striding swiftly
+along the trail that passed my cabin.
+
+"You seem in a hurry, John. Woods afire?"
+
+"No: I'm dodgin' the sheriff."
+
+"Whose pig was it?"
+
+"Aw! He wants me as witness in a concealed weepon case."
+
+"One of your boys?"
+
+"Huk-uh: nobody as I'm keerin' fer."
+
+"Then why don't you go?"
+
+"I cain't afford to. I'd haffter walk nineteen miles out to the
+railroad, pay seventy cents the round-trip to the county-site, pay my
+board thar fer mebbe a week, and then a witness don't git no fee at all
+onless they convict."
+
+"What does the sheriff get for coming away up here?"
+
+"Thirty cents for each witness he cotches. He won't git me, Mister Man;
+not if I know these woods since yistiddy."
+
+Verily the law of Swain is hard on the solicitor, hard on the sheriff,
+and hard on the witness, too!
+
+Mountaineers place a low valuation on human life. I need not go outside
+my own habitat for illustrations. In our judicial district, which
+comprises the westernmost seven counties of North Carolina, the present
+yearly toll of homicides varies, according to counties, from about one
+in 1,000 to one in 2,500 of the population. And ours is not a feud
+district, nor are there any negroes to speak of. Compare these figures
+with the rate of homicide in the United States at large, about one to
+8,300 population; of Italy, one to 66,000; Great Britain, one to
+111,000; Germany, one to 200,000.
+
+And the worst of it is that no Black Hand conspirators or ward gun-men
+or other professional criminals figure in these killings. Practically
+all of them are committed by representative citizens, mostly farmers.
+Take that fact home, and think what it means. Remember, too, that most
+of these murderers either escape with light penal sentences or none at
+all. The only capital sentence imposed in our district within the past
+ten years was upon an Indian who had assaulted and murdered a white girl
+(there was no red tape or procrastination about _that_ trial, the
+court-house being filled with men who were ready to lynch him under the
+judge's nose if the sentence were not satisfactory).
+
+I said at the very outset of this book that "Our mountain folk still
+live in the eighteenth century. The progress of mankind from that age to
+this is no heritage of theirs.... And so, in order to be fair and just
+with these our backward kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize
+ourselves to the extent of _going back_ and getting an eighteenth
+century point of view."
+
+As regards the valuation of human life, what was that point of view?
+
+The late Professor Shaler of Harvard, himself a Southerner, one time
+explained the prevalence of manslaughter among southern gentlemen. His
+remarks apply with equal truth to our mountaineers, for they, however
+poor they may be in worldly goods, are by no means "poor white trash,"
+but rather patricians, like the ragged but lofty chiefs and clansmen of
+old Scotland.--
+
+     "Nothing so surprises the northern people as the fact that southern
+     men of good estate will, for what seems to the distant onlooker
+     trifling matters of dispute, proceed to slay each other. Nothing so
+     gravely offends the characteristic southern man as the incapacity
+     of his brethren of northern societies to perceive that such action
+     is natural and consistent with the rules of gentlemanly behavior.
+     The only way to understand these differences of opinion is by a
+     proper consideration of the history of the moral growth of these
+     diverse peoples.
+
+     "The Southerner has retained and fostered--in a certain way
+     reinstated--the medieval estimate as to the value of life. In the
+     opinion of those ages it was but lightly esteemed; it was not a
+     supreme good for which almost all else was to be sacrificed, but
+     something to be taken in hand and put in risk in the pursuit of
+     manly ideals.
+
+     "Modernism has worked to intensify the passion for existence until
+     those who are the most under its dominion cannot well conceive how
+     a man, except for some supreme duty to which he is pledged by
+     altruistic motives, can give up his own life or take that of his
+     neighbor. If these people of to-day will but perceive that the
+     characteristic Southerner has preserved the motives of two
+     centuries ago, if they will but inform themselves as to the state
+     of mind on this subject which prevailed in the epoch when those
+     motives were shaped in men, they will see that their judgment is
+     harsh and unreasonable. It is much as if they judged the actions of
+     Englishmen of the seventeenth century by the changed standards of
+     to-day.
+
+     "Nor will it be altogether reasonable to condemn the lack of regard
+     of life which we find in the southern gentleman as compared with
+     his northern contemporary. We must, of course, reprobate in every
+     way the evil consequences of this state of mind; but the question
+     as to the propriety of that extreme devotion to continued mundane
+     existence which is so manifest in our modern civilization is
+     certainly open to debate. Irrational and brutal as are the ways in
+     which the old-fashioned gentleman of the South shows that his
+     regard for his own honor or that of his household outweighs his
+     love of life, it must be remembered that the same condition existed
+     in the richest ages of our race--those which gave proportionally
+     the largest share of ability and nobility to its history.
+
+     "As long as men are more keenly sensitive to the opinions of their
+     fellows than they are to the other goods which existence brings
+     them, as long as this opinion makes personal valor and truthfulness
+     the jewels of their lives, we must expect now and then to have
+     degradation of the essentially noble motives. It is, undoubtedly, a
+     dangerous state of mind, but not one that is degraded."--(_North
+     American Review_, October, 1890.)
+
+
+"The motives of two centuries ago" are the motives of present-day
+Appalachia. Here the right of private war is not questioned, outside of
+a judge's charge from the bench, which everybody takes as a mere
+formality, a convention that is not to be taken seriously. The argument
+is this: that when Society, as represented by the State, cannot protect
+a man or secure him his dues, then he is not only justified but in duty
+bound to defend himself or seize what is his own. And in the mountains
+Society with the big _S_ is often powerless against the Clan with a
+bigger _C_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE BLOOD-FEUD
+
+
+In Corsica, when a man is wronged by another, public sentiment requires
+that he redress his own grievance, and that his family and friends shall
+share the consequences.
+
+"Before the law made us citizens, great Nature made us men."
+
+"When one has an enemy, one must choose between the three
+S's--_schiopetto, stiletto, strada_: the rifle, the dagger, or
+flight."
+
+"There are two presents to be made to an enemy--_palla calda o ferro
+freddo_: hot shot or cold steel."
+
+The Corsican code of honor does not require that vengeance be taken in
+fair fight. Rather should there be a sudden thrust of the knife, or a
+pistol fired point-blank into the enemy's breast, or a rifle-shot from
+some ambush picked in advance.
+
+The assassin is not conscious of any cowardice in such act. If the
+trouble between him and his foe had been strictly a personal matter, to
+be settled forever by one man's fall, then he might have welcomed a
+duel with all the punctilios. But his blood is not his alone--it belongs
+to his clan. Whenever a Corsican is slain his family takes up the feud.
+A vendetta ensues--a war of extermination by clan against clan.
+
+Now, the chief object of war, as all strategists agree, is to inflict
+the greatest loss upon the enemy with the least loss to one's own side.
+Hence we have hostilities without declaration of war; we have the
+ambush, the night attack, masked batteries, mines and submarines. Thus
+we murder hundreds asleep or unshriven. This is war.
+
+Moreover, while a soldier must be brave in any extremity, it is no less
+his duty to save himself unharmed as long as he can, so that he may help
+his own side and kill more and more of the enemy. Therefore it is proper
+and military for him to "snipe" his foes by deliberate sharpshooting
+from behind any lurking-place that he can find. This is war.
+
+And the vendetta, says our Corsican, is nothing else than war.
+
+When Matteo has been slain by an enemy, his friends carry his body home
+and swear vengeance over the corpse, while his wife soaks her
+handkerchief in his wounds to keep as a token whereby she will incite
+her children, as they grow up, to war against all kinsmen of their
+father's murderer.
+
+Then a son or brother of Matteo slips forth into the night, full-armed
+to slay like a dog any member of the rival faction whom he may find at a
+disadvantage. The deed done, he flies to the _maquis_, the mountain
+thicket, and there he will hide, dodging the gendarmes, fighting off his
+enemies--an outlaw with a price upon his head, but pitied or admired by
+all Corsicans outside the feud, and succored by his clan.
+
+It is a far cry from the Mediterranean to our own Appalachia: so why
+this prelude? Our mountaineers never heard of Corsica. Not a drop of
+South European blood flows in their veins. Few of them ever heard one
+word of a foreign tongue. True. And yet we shall mark some strange
+analogies between Corsican vendettas and Appalachian feuds, Corsican
+clannishness and Appalachian clannishness, Corsican women and our
+mountain women--before this chapter ends.
+
+Long, long ago, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, Dr. Abner Baker
+married a Miss White. Daniel Bates married Baker's sister, but separated
+from her in 1844. Baker charged Bates with undue intimacy with his wife,
+and killed him. The Whites, defending their kinswoman, prosecuted the
+Doctor, but he was acquitted, and moved to Cuba.
+
+Afterwards Baker returned. In flat violation of the Constitution of the
+United States, he was tried a second time for the murder of Bates, was
+convicted, and was hanged. Thenceforth there was "bad blood" between the
+Bakers and the Whites, involving the Garrards on one side and the
+Howards on the other, as allies to the respective clans.
+
+In 1898, Tom Baker, reputed to be the best shot in the Kentucky
+mountains, bought a note given by A. B. Howard, for whom he was cutting
+timber. Howard became furious, a fight ensued, one of the Howard boys
+and Burt Stores were killed from ambush, and the elder Howard was
+wounded.
+
+Thereupon Jim Howard, son of the clan chief, sought out Tom Baker's
+father, who was county attorney, compelled the unarmed old man to fall
+upon his knees, shot him twenty-five times with careful aim to avoid a
+vital spot, and so killed him by inches. Howard was tried and convicted
+of murder, but it is said that a pardon was offered him if he would go
+to the State Capitol at Frankfort and assassinate Governor Goebel, which
+he is charged with having done.
+
+In Clay County, where this feud waged, the judge, clerk, sheriff, and
+jailer were of the White clan. Tom Baker killed a brother of the sheriff
+and took to the hills rather than give himself up to a court ruled by
+his foemen. Then Albert Garrard was fired upon from ambush while riding
+with his wife to a religious meeting. He removed to Pineville, in
+another county, under guard of two armed men, both of whom were shot
+dead "from the bresh."
+
+Governor Bradley sent State troops into Clay County, and Tom Baker
+surrendered to them. Baker was tried in the Knox Circuit Court, on a
+change of venue, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. On
+appeal his attorneys secured a reversal of the verdict, and Baker was
+released on bail. The new trial was set for June, 1899. Governor Bradley
+again sent a company of State militia, with a Gatling gun, to Manchester
+where the trial was to be held. Baker was put in a guard-tent surrounded
+by a squad of soldiers. A hundred yards or so from this tent stood the
+unoccupied residence of the sheriff, at the foot of a wooded mountain.
+An assassin hidden in this house spied upon the guard-tent, and, when
+Baker appeared, shot him dead with a rifle, then took to the woods and
+escaped.
+
+I quote now from a history of this feud published in _Munsey's Magazine_
+of November, 1903.--
+
+     "Captain John Bryan, of the 2d Kentucky, said to the widow of the
+     murdered Tom Baker, after they returned from the funeral:
+
+     "'Mrs. Baker, why don't you leave this miserable country and escape
+     from these terrible feuds? Move away, and teach your children to
+     forget.'
+
+     "'Captain Bryan,' said the widow, and she spoke evenly and quietly,
+     'I have twelve sons. It will be the chief aim of my life to bring
+     them up to avenge their father's death. Each day I shall show my
+     boys _the handkerchief stained with his blood_, and tell them who
+     murdered him.'"
+
+
+Corsican vendetta or Kentucky feud--what are language and race against
+age-long isolation and an environment that keeps humanity feral to the
+core?
+
+Shortly after Baker's death, four Griffins, of the White-Howard faction,
+ambushed Big John Philpotts and his cousin, wounding the former severely
+and the latter mortally. Big John fought them from behind a log and
+killed all four.
+
+On July 17, 1899, four of the Philpotts were attacked by four Morrises,
+of the Howard side. Three men were killed, three mortally wounded, and
+the other two were severely injured. No arrests were made.
+
+Finally, in 1901, the two clans fought a pitched battle in front of the
+court-house in Manchester. At its conclusion they formally signed a
+truce.
+
+This is a mere scenario of a feud in the wealthiest and best-schooled
+county of eastern Kentucky. Two of the families involved were of
+distinguished lineage, counting in their ranks a governor, three
+generals, a member of Congress, and a prohibition candidate for the
+Presidency.
+
+In reviewing this feud, Governor Bradley stated:
+
+     "The whole fault in Clay County is a vitiated public sentiment and
+     a failure of the civil authorities to do their duty. The laws are
+     insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy. Such feuds have
+     been in progress more or less for years, and no Governor of the
+     State has ever been able to quell them. They have terminated only
+     when their force was spent by one side or the other being killed or
+     moving out of the country."
+
+
+"The laws are insufficient for the Governor to apply a remedy." One
+naturally asks, "How so?" The answer is that the Governor cannot send
+troops into a county except upon request of the civil authorities, and
+they must go as a posse to civil officers. In most feuds these officers
+are partisans (in fact, it is a favorite ruse for one clan to win or
+usurp the county offices before making war). Hence the State troops
+would only serve as a reinforcement to one of the contending factions.
+To show how this works out, we will sketch briefly the course of another
+feud.--
+
+In Rowan County, Kentucky, in 1884, there was an election quarrel
+between two members of the Martin and Toliver families. The Logans sided
+with the Martins and the Youngs with the Tolivers. The Logan-Martin
+faction elected their candidate for sheriff by a margin of twelve votes.
+Then there was an affray in which one Logan was killed and three were
+wounded.
+
+As usual, in feuds, no immediate redress was attempted, but the injured
+clan plotted its vengeance with deadly deliberation. After five months,
+Dick Martin killed Floyd Toliver. His own people worked the trick of
+arresting him themselves and sent him to Winchester for safe-keeping.
+The Tolivers succeeded in having him brought back on a forged order and
+killed him when he was bound and helpless.
+
+The leader of the Young-Toliver faction was a notorious bravo named
+Craig Toliver. To strengthen his power he became candidate for town
+marshal of Morehead, and he won the office by intimidation at the polls.
+Then, for two years, a bushwhacking war went on. Three times the
+Governor sent troops into Rowan County, but each time they found nothing
+but creeks and thickets to fight. Then he prevailed upon the clans to
+sign a truce and expatriate their chiefs for one year in distant States.
+Craig Toliver obeyed the order by going to Missouri, but returned
+several months before the expiration of his term, _resumed office_, and
+renewed his atrocities. In the warfare that ensued all the county
+officers were involved, from the judge down.
+
+In 1887, Proctor Knott, Governor of Kentucky, said in his message, of
+the Logan-Toliver feud:
+
+     "Though composed of only a small portion of the community, these
+     factions have succeeded by their violence in overawing and
+     silencing the voice of the peaceful element, and in intimidating
+     the officers of the law. Having their origin partly in party
+     rancor, they have ceased to have any political significance, and
+     have become contests of personal ambition and revenge; each party
+     seeking apparently to possess itself of the machinery of justice in
+     order that it may, under the forms of law, seek the gratification
+     of personal animosities.
+
+     "During the present year the local leader of one of these factions
+     came in possession of the office of police judge of the town of
+     Morehead. Under color of the authority of that office, and
+     sustained by an armed band of adherents, he exercised despotic sway
+     over the town and its vicinage. He banished citizens who were
+     obnoxious to him; and, in one instance, after arresting two
+     citizens who seem to have been guilty of no offense, he and his
+     party, attended by a deputy sheriff of the county, murdered them in
+     cold blood.
+
+     "This act of atrocity fully aroused the community. A posse acting
+     under the authority of a warrant from the county judge attacked the
+     police judge and his adherents on the 22d of June last, killed
+     several of their number, and put the rest to flight, and
+     temporarily restored something like tranquility to the community.
+
+     "The proceedings of the Circuit Court, which was held in August,
+     were not calculated to inspire the citizens with confidence in
+     securing justice. The report of the Adjutant General on this
+     subject shows, from information derived 'from representative men
+     without reference to party affiliations,' that the judge of the
+     Circuit Court seems so far under the influence of the reputed
+     leader of one of the factions as to permit such an organization of
+     the grand juries as will effectually prevent the indictment of
+     members of that faction for the most flagrant crimes."
+
+
+The posse here mentioned was organized by Daniel Boone Logan, a cousin
+of the two young men who had been murdered, a college graduate, and a
+lawyer of good standing. With the assent of the Governor, he gathered
+fifty to seventy-five picked men and armed them with the best modern
+rifles and revolvers. Some of the men were of his own clan; others he
+hired. His plan was to end the war by exterminating the Tolivers.
+
+
+[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service
+
+"Dense forest luxuriant undergrowth."--Mixed hardwoods, Jackson Co., N. C.]
+
+
+The posse, led by Logan and the sheriff, suddenly surrounded the town of
+Morehead. Everybody gave in except Craig Toliver, Jay Toliver, Bud
+Toliver, and Hiram Cook, who barricaded themselves in the railroad
+station, where all of them were shot dead by the posse.
+
+Boone Logan was indicted for murder. At the trial he admitted the
+killings; but he showed that the feud had cost the lives of not less
+than twenty-three men, that not one person had been legally punished for
+these murders, and that he had acted for the good of the public in
+ending this infamous struggle. The court accepted this view of the case,
+the community sustained it, and the "war" was closed.
+
+A feud, in the restricted sense here used, is an armed conflict between
+families, each endeavoring to exterminate or drive out the other. It
+spreads swiftly not only to blood-kin and relatives by marriage, but to
+friends and retainers as well. It may lie dormant for a time, perhaps
+for a generation, and then burst forth with recruited strength long
+after its original cause has ceased to interest anyone, or maybe after
+it has been forgotten.
+
+Such feuds are by no means prevalent throughout the length and breadth
+of Appalachia, but are restricted mostly to certain well defined
+districts, of which the chief, in extent of territory as well as in the
+number and ferocity of its "wars," is the country round the upper waters
+of the Kentucky, Licking, Big Sandy, Tug, and Cumberland rivers,
+embracing many of the mountain counties of eastern Kentucky and
+adjoining parts of West Virginia, Old Virginia, and Tennessee. In this
+thinly settled region probably five hundred men have been slain in feuds
+since our centennial year, and only three of the murderers, so far as I
+know, have been executed by law.
+
+The active feudists, as a rule, include only a small part of the
+community; but public sentiment, in feud districts, approves or at least
+tolerates the vendetta, just as it does in Corsica or the Balkans. Those
+citizens who are not directly implicated take pains to hear little and
+see less. They keep their mouths shut. They can neither be persuaded,
+bribed, nor coerced into informing or testifying against either side,
+but, on the contrary, will throw dust in the eyes of an investigator or
+try to stare him down. A jury composed of such men will not convict
+anybody.
+
+When a feud is raging, nobody outside the warring clans is in any danger
+at all. A stranger is safer in the heart of Feuddom than he would be in
+Chicago or New York, so long as he attends strictly to his own business,
+asks no questions, and tells no "tales." If, on the contrary, he should
+express horror or curiosity, he is regarded as a busybody or suspected
+as a spy, and is likely to be run out of the country or even "laywayed"
+and silenced forever.
+
+What causes feuds?
+
+Some of them start in mere drunken rows or in a dispute over a game of
+cards; others in quarrels over land boundaries or other property. The
+Hatfield-McCoy feud started because Randolph McCoy penned up two wild
+hogs that were claimed by Floyd Hatfield. The spite over these hogs
+broke out two years later, and one partisan was killed from ambush. The
+feud itself began in 1882 over a debt of $1.75, with the hogs and the
+bushwhacking brought up in recrimination. Love of women is the primary
+cause, or the secondary aggravation, of many a feud. Some of the most
+widespread and deadliest vendettas have originated in political strifes.
+
+It should be understood that national and state politics cut little or
+no figure in these "wars." Local politics in most of the mountain
+counties is merely a factional fight, in which family matters and
+business interests are involved, and the contest becomes bitterly
+personal on that account. This explains most of the collusion or
+partisanship of county officers and their remissness in enforcing the
+law in murder cases. Family ties or political alliances override even
+the oath of office.
+
+Within the past year I have heard a deputy sheriff admit nonchalantly,
+on the stand, that when a homicide was committed near him, and he was
+the only officer in the vicinity, he advised the slayer to take to the
+mountains and "hide out." The judge questioned him sharply on this
+point, was reassured by the witness that it was so, and then--offered no
+comment at all. Within the same period, in another but not distant
+court, a desperado from the Shelton Laurel, on trial for murder,
+admitted that he had shot six men since he moved over from Tennessee to
+North Carolina, and swore that while he was being held in jail pending
+trial for this last offense the sheriff permitted him to "keep a gun in
+his cell, drink whiskey in the jail, and eat at table with the family of
+the sheriff."
+
+Feuds spread not only through clan fealty but also because they offer
+excellent chances to pay off old scores. The mountaineer has a long
+memory. The average highlander is fiery and combative by nature, but at
+the same time cunning and vindictive. If publicly insulted he will
+strike at once, but if he feels wronged by some act that does not demand
+instant retaliation he will brood over it and plot patiently to get his
+enemy at a disadvantage. Some mountaineers always fight fair; but many
+of them prefer to wait and watch quietly until the foe gets drunk and
+unwary, or until he is engaged in some illegal or scandalous act, or
+until he is known to be carrying a concealed weapon, whereupon he can be
+shot down unexpectedly and his assailant can "prove" by friendly
+witnesses that he acted in self-defense. So, if a man be involved in
+feud, he may be assassinated from ambush by someone who is not concerned
+in the clan trouble, but who has hated him for years on another account,
+and who knows that his death now will be charged up to the opposing
+faction.
+
+From the earliest times it has been customary for our highlanders to go
+armed most of the time. This was a necessity in the old Indian-fighting
+days, and throughout the kukluxing and white-capping era following the
+Civil War. Such a habit, once formed, is hard to eradicate. Even to-day,
+in all parts of Appalachia that I am familiar with, most of the young
+men, I judge, and many of the older ones, carry concealed weapons.
+
+Among them I have never seen a stand-up and knock-down fight according
+to the rules of the ring. They have many rough-and-tumble brawls, in
+which they slug, wrestle, kick, bite, strangle, until one gets the other
+down, whereat the one on top continues to maul his victim until he cries
+"Enough!" Oftener a club or stone will be used in mad endeavor to knock
+the opponent senseless at a blow. There is no compunction about striking
+foul and very little about "double-teaming." Let us pause long enough to
+admit that this was the British and American way of man-handling,
+universal among the common people, until well into the nineteenth
+century--and the mountaineers are still ignorant of any other, except
+fighting with weapons.
+
+Many of the young men carry home-made billies or "brass knucks." Every
+man and boy has at least a pocket-knife with serviceable blade. Fights
+with such crude weapons are frequent. There are few spectacles more
+sickening than two powerful but awkward men slashing each other with
+common jack-knives, though the fatalities are much less frequent than in
+gun-fighting. I have known two old mountain preachers to draw knives on
+each other at the close of a sermon.
+
+The typical highland bravo always carries a revolver or an automatic
+pistol. This is likely to be a weapon of large bore and good
+stopping-power that is worn in a shoulder-holster concealed under the
+coat or vest or shirt. Most mountaineers are good shots with such arms,
+though not so deadly quick as the frontiersmen of our old-time West--in
+fact, they cannot be so quick without wearing the weapon exposed. When a
+highlander has time, he prefers to hold his pistol in both hands (left
+clasped over right) and aims it as he would a rifle. To a Westerner such
+gun practice looks absurd; but it is accurate, beyond question. Few
+mountain gun-fights fail to score at least one victim.
+
+The average mountain woman is as combative in spirit as her menfolk. She
+would despise any man who took insult or injury without showing fight.
+In fact, the woman, in many cases, deliberately stirs up trouble out of
+vanity, or for the sheer excitement of it. Some of the older women
+display the ferocity of she-wolves. The mother of a large family said in
+my presence, with the calm earnestness of one fully experienced: "If a
+feller 'd treated me the way ------ did ------ I'd git me a
+forty-some-odd and shoot enough meat off o' his bones to feed a
+hound-dog a week." Three of this woman's brothers had been shot dead in
+frays. One of them killed the first husband of her sister, who married
+again, and whose second husband was killed by a man with whom she then
+tried a third matrimonial venture. Such matters may not be interesting
+in themselves, but they give one pause when he learns, in addition, that
+these people are received as friends and on a footing of equality by
+everybody in their community.
+
+That the mountaineers are fierce and relentless in their feuds is beyond
+denial. A warfare of bushwhacking and assassination knows no
+refinements. Quarter is neither given nor expected. Property, however,
+is not violated, and women are not often injured. There have been some
+atrocious exceptions. In the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Cap Hatfield and Tom
+Wallace attacked the latter's wife and her mother at night, dragged both
+women from bed, and Cap beat the old woman with a cow's tail that he had
+clipped off "jes' to see 'er jump." He broke two of the woman's ribs,
+leaving her injured for life, while Tom beat his wife. Later, on New
+Year's night, 1888, a gang of the Hatfields surrounded the home of
+Randolph McCoy, killed the eldest daughter, Allaphare, broke her
+mother's ribs and knocked her senseless with their guns, and killed a
+son, Calvin. In several instances women who fought in defense of their
+homes have been killed, as in the case of Mrs. Charles Daniels and her
+16-year-old daughter, in Pike County, Kentucky, in November, 1909.
+
+The mountain women do not shrink from feuds, but on the contrary excite
+and cheer their men to desperate deeds, and sometimes fight by their
+side. In the French-Eversole feud, a woman, learning that her unarmed
+husband was besieged by his foes, seized his rifle, filled her apron
+with cartridges, rushed past the firing-line, and stood by her "old man"
+until he beat his assailants off. When men are "hiding out" in the
+laurel, it is the women's part, which they never shirk, to carry them
+food and information.
+
+In every feud each clan has a leader, a man of prominence either on
+account of his wealth or his political influence or his shrewdness or
+his physical prowess. This leader's orders are obeyed, while hostilities
+last, with the same unquestioning loyalty that the old Scotch retainer
+showed to his chieftain. Either the leader or someone acting for him
+supplies the men with food, with weapons if they need them, with
+ammunition, and with money. Sometimes mercenaries are hired. Mr. Fox
+says that "In one local war, I remember, four dollars per day were the
+wages of the fighting man, and the leader on one occasion, while
+besieging his enemies--in the county court-house--tried to purchase a
+cannon, and from no other place than the State arsenal, and from no
+other personage than the Governor himself." In some of the feuds
+professional bravos have been employed who would assassinate, for a few
+dollars, anybody who was pointed out to them, provided he was alien to
+their own clans.
+
+The character of the highland bravo is precisely that of the western
+"bad man" as pictured by Jed Parker in Stewart Edward White's _Arizona
+Nights_:
+
+     "'There's a good deal of romance been written about the "bad man,"
+     and there's about the same amount of nonsense. The bad man is just
+     a plain murderer, neither more nor less. He never does get into a
+     real, good, plain, stand-up gun-fight if he can possibly help it.
+     His killin's are done from behind a door, or when he's got his man
+     dead to rights. There's Sam Cook. You've all heard of him. He had
+     nerve, of course, and when he was backed into a corner he made
+     good; and he was sure sudden death with a gun. But when he went out
+     for a man deliberate, he didn't take no special chances....
+
+     "'The point is that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable
+     proposition, and plain, cold-blooded murderers, willin' to wait for
+     a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatever. The bad man
+     takes you unawares, when you're sleepin', or talkin', or drinkin',
+     or lookin' to see what for a day it's goin' to be, anyway. He don't
+     give you no show, and sooner or later he's goin' to get you in the
+     safest and easiest way for himself. There ain't no romance about
+     that.'"
+
+
+And there is no romance about a real mountain feud. It is marked by
+suave treachery, "double-teaming," "laywaying," "blind-shooting," and
+general heartlessness and brutality. If one side refuses to assassinate
+but seeks open, honorable combat, as has happened in several feuds, it
+is sure to be beaten. Whoever appeals to the law is sure to be beaten.
+In either case he is considered a fool or a coward by most of the
+countryside. Our highlander, untouched by the culture of the world about
+him, has never been taught the meaning of fair play. Magnanimity to a
+fallen foe he would regard as sure proof of an addled brain. The motive
+of one who forgives his enemy is utterly beyond his comprehension. As
+for bushwhacking, "Hit's as fa'r for one as 'tis for t'other. You can't
+fight a man fa'r and squar who'll shoot you in the back. A pore man
+can't fight money in the courts." In this he is simply his ancient
+Scotch or English ancestor born over again. Such was the code of
+Jacobite Scotland and Tudor England. And _back there_ is where our
+mountaineer belongs in the scale of human evolution.
+
+The feud, as Miss Miles puts it, is an outbreak of _perverted_ family
+affection. Its mainspring is an honorable clan loyalty. It is a direct
+consequence of the clan organization that our mountaineers preserve as
+it was handed down to them by their forefathers. The implacability of
+their vengeance, the treacheries they practice, the murders from ambush,
+are invariable features of clan warfare wherever and by whomsoever it is
+waged. They are not vices or crimes peculiar to the Kentuckian or the
+Corsican or the Sicilian or the Albanian or the Arab, but natural
+results of clan government, which in turn is a result of isolation, of
+physical environment, of geographical position unfavorable to free
+intercourse and commerce with the world at large.
+
+The most hideous feature of the feud is the shooting down of unarmed or
+unwarned men. Assassination, in our modern eyes, is the last and lowest
+infamy of a coward. Such it truly is, when committed in the civilized
+society of our day. But in studying primitive races, or in going back
+along the line of our own ancestry to the civilized society of two
+centuries ago, we must face and acknowledge the strange paradox of a
+valorous and honorable people (according to their lights) who, in
+certain cases, practiced assassination without compunction and, in fact,
+with pride. History is red with it in those very "richest ages of our
+race" that Professor Shaler cited. Until a century or two ago,
+throughout Christendom, the secret murder of enemies was committed
+unblushingly by nobles and kings and prelates, often with a pious "Thus
+sayeth the Lord!" It was practiced by men valiant in open battle, and by
+those wise in the counsels of the realm. Take Scotland, for example, as
+pictured by a native writer.--
+
+     "No tenet nor practice, no influence nor power nor principality in
+     the Scotland of the past has outvied assassination in ascendancy or
+     in moment. Not theoretically, indeed, but practically, it occupied
+     for centuries a distinct, almost a supreme, place in her political
+     constitution--was, in fact, the understood if not recognized
+     expedient always in reserve should other milder and more hallowed
+     methods fail of accomplishing the desired political or, it might
+     be, religious consummation....
+
+     "For centuries such justice as was exercised was haphazard and
+     rude, and practically there was no law but the will of the
+     stronger. Few, if any, of the great families but had their special
+     feud; and feuds once originated survived for ages; to forget them
+     would have been treason to the dead, and wild purposes of revenge
+     were handed down from generation to generation as a sacred legacy.
+
+     "To take an enemy at a disadvantage was not deemed mean and
+     contemptible, but--
+
+       'Of all the arts in which the wise excel
+       Nature's chief masterpiece.'
+
+     To do it boldly and adroitly was to win a peculiar halo of renown;
+     and thus assassination ceased to be the weapon of the avowed
+     desperado, and came to be wielded unblushingly not only by
+     so-called men of honor, but by the so-called religious as well. A
+     noble did not scruple to use it against his king, and the king
+     himself felt no dishonor in resorting to it against a dangerous
+     noble. James I. was hacked to death in the night by Sir Robert
+     Graham; and James I. rid himself of the imperious and intriguing
+     Douglas by suddenly stabbing him while within his own royal palace
+     under protection of a safe conduct.
+
+     "The leaders of the Reformation discerned in assassination (that of
+     their enemies) the special 'work and judgment of God.'... When the
+     assassination of Cardinal Beaton took place in 1546, all the savage
+     details of it were set down by Knox with unbridled gusto. 'These
+     things we wreat mearlie,' is his own ingenuous comment on his
+     performance.
+
+     "The burden of George Buchanan's _De Jure Regni apud Scotos_ is the
+     lawfulness or righteousness of the removal--by assassination or any
+     other fitting or convenient means--of incompetent kings, whether
+     heinously wicked and tyrannical or merely unwise and weak of
+     purpose; and he cites as a case in point and an 'example in time
+     coming,' the murder of James III., which, if it were only on
+     account of the assassin's hideous travesty of the last offices of
+     the Church, would deserve to be held in unique and everlasting
+     detestation."--(Henderson, _Old-world Scotland_, 182-186.)
+
+
+Yet the Scots have always been a notably warlike and fearless race. So,
+too, are our southern mountaineers: in the Civil War and the Spanish War
+they sent a larger proportion of their men into the service than almost
+any other section of our country.
+
+Let us not overlook the fact that it demands courage of a high order for
+one to stay in a feud-infested district, conscious of being marked for
+slaughter--stay there month in and month out, year in and year out, not
+knowing at what moment he may be beset by overpowering numbers, from
+what laurel thicket he may be shot, or at what hour of the night he may
+be called to his door and struck dead before his family. On the credit
+side of their valor, then, be it entered that few mountaineers will
+shrink from such ordeal when, even from no fault of their own, it is
+thrust upon them.
+
+The blood-feud is simply a horrible survival of medievalism. It is the
+highlander's misfortune to be stranded far out of the course of
+civilization. He is no worse than that bygone age that he really belongs
+to. In some ways he is better. He is far less cruel than his ancestors
+were--than our ancestors were. He does not torture with the tumbril,
+the stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding-irons, the
+ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue-branks that were in everyday
+use under the old criminal code. He does not tie a woman to the cart's
+tail and publicly lash her bare back until it streams with blood, nor
+does he hang a man for picking somebody's pocket of twelve pence and a
+farthing. He does not go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for the
+sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their chains in rage or
+horror. He does not turn executions of criminals into public festivals.
+He never has been known to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he
+hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails and burn them before
+his eyes, with a mob crowding about to jeer the poor devil's flinching
+or to compliment him on his "nerve." Yet all these pleasantries were
+proper and legal in Christian Britain two centuries ago.
+
+This isolated and belated people who still carry on the blood-feud are
+not half so much to blame for such a savage survival as the rich,
+powerful, educated, twentieth-century nation that abandons them as if
+they were hopelessly derelict or wrecked. It took but a few decades to
+civilize Scotland. How much swifter and surer and easier are our means
+of enlightenment to-day! Let us not forget that these highlanders are
+blood of our blood and bone of our bone; for they are old-time Americans
+to a man, proud of their nationality, and passionately loyal to the flag
+that they, more than any other of us, according to their strength, have
+fought and suffered for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHO ARE THE MOUNTAINEERS?
+
+
+The Southern Appalachian Mountains happen to be parceled out among eight
+different States, and for that reason they are seldom considered as a
+geographical unit. In the same way their inhabitants are thought of as
+Kentucky mountaineers or Carolina mountaineers, and so on, but not often
+as a body of Appalachian mountaineers. And yet these inhabitants are as
+distinct an ethnographic group as the mountains themselves are a
+geographic group.
+
+The mountaineers are homogeneous so far as speech and manners and
+experiences and ideals can make them. In the aggregate they are nearly
+twice as numerous and cover twice as much territory as any one of the
+States among which they have been distributed; but in each of these
+States they occupy only the backyard, and generally take back seats in
+the councils of the commonwealth. They have been fenced off from each
+other by political boundaries, and have no such coherence among
+themselves as would come from common leadership or a sense of common
+origin and mutual dependence.
+
+And they are a people without annals. Back of their grandfathers they
+have neither screed nor hearsay. "Borned in the kentry and ain't never
+been out o' hit" is all that most of them can say for themselves. Here
+and there one will assert, "My foreparents war principally Scotch," or
+"Us Bumgyarners [Baumgartners] was Dutch," but such traditions of a
+far-back foreign origin are uncommon.
+
+Who are these southern mountaineers? Whence came they? What is the
+secret of their belatedness and isolation?
+
+Before the Civil War they were seldom heard of in the outside world.
+Vaguely it was understood that the Appalachian highlands were occupied
+by a peculiar people called "mountain whites." This odd name was given
+them not to distinguish them from mountain negroes, for there were,
+practically, no mountain negroes; but to indicate their similarity, in
+social condition and economic status, to the "poor whites" of the
+southern lowlands. It was assumed, on no historical basis whatever, that
+the highlanders came from the more venturesome or desperate element of
+the "poor whites," and differed from these only to the extent that
+environment had shaped them.
+
+Since this theory still prevails throughout the South, and is accepted
+generally elsewhere on its face value, it deserves just enough
+consideration to refute it.
+
+The unfortunate class known as poor whites in the South is descended
+mainly from the convicts and indentured servants with which England
+supplied labor to the southern plantations before slavery days. The
+Cavaliers who founded and dominated southern society came from the
+conservative, the feudal element of England. Their character and
+training were essentially aristocratic and military. They were not
+town-dwellers, but masters of plantations. Their chief crop and article
+of export was tobacco. The culture of tobacco required an abundance of
+cheap and servile labor.
+
+On the plantations there was little demand for skilled labor, small room
+anywhere for a middle class of manufacturers and merchants, no
+inducement for independent farmers who would till with their own hands.
+Outside of the planters and a small professional class there was little
+employment offered save what was menial and degrading. Consequently the
+South was shunned, from the beginning, by British yeomanry and by the
+thrifty Teutons such as flocked into the northern provinces. The demand
+for menials on the plantations was met, then, by importing bond-servants
+from Great Britain. These were obtained in three ways.--
+
+1. Convicted criminals were deported to serve out their terms on the
+plantations. Some of these had been charged only with political
+offenses, and had the making of good citizens; but the greater number
+were rogues of the shiftless and petty delinquent order, such as were
+too lazy to work but not desperate enough to have incurred capital
+sentences.
+
+2. Boys and girls, chiefly from the slums of British seaports, were
+kidnapped and sold into temporary slavery on the plantations.
+
+3. Impoverished people who wished to emigrate, but could not pay for
+their passage, voluntarily sold their services for a term of years in
+return for transportation.
+
+Thus a considerable proportion of the white laborers of the South, in
+the seventeenth century, were criminals or ne'er-do-wells from the
+start. A large number of the others came from the dregs of society. As
+for the remainder, the companionships into which they were thrust, the
+brutalities to which they were subjected, their impotence before the
+law, the contempt in which they were held by the ruling caste, and the
+wretchedness of their prospect when released, were enough to undermine
+all but the strongest characters. Few ever succeeded in rising to
+respectable positions.
+
+Then came a vast social change. At a time when the laboring classes of
+Europe had achieved emancipation from serfdom, and feudalism was
+overthrown, African slavery in our own Southland laid the foundation for
+a new feudalism. Southern society reverted to a type that the rest of
+the civilized world had outgrown.
+
+The effect upon white labor was deplorable. The former bond-servants
+were now freedmen, it is true, but freedmen shorn of such opportunities
+as they were fitted to use. Sprung from a more or less degraded stock,
+still branded by caste, untrained to any career demanding skill and
+intelligence, devitalized by evil habits of life, densely ignorant of
+the world around them, these, the naturally shiftless, were now turned
+out into the backwoods to shift for themselves. It was inevitable that
+most of them should degenerate even below the level of their former
+estate, for they were no longer forced into steady industry.
+
+The white freedmen generally became squatters on such land as was unfit
+for tobacco, cotton, and other crops profitable to slave-owners. As the
+plantations expanded, these freedmen were pushed further and further
+back upon more and more sterile soil. They became "pine-landers" or
+"piney-woods-people," "sand-hillers," "knob-people," "corn-crackers" or
+"crackers," gaining a bare subsistence from corn planted and "tended"
+chiefly by the women and children, from hogs running wild in the forest,
+and from desultory hunting and fishing. As a class, such whites lapsed
+into sloth and apathy. Even the institution of slavery they regarded
+with cynical tolerance, doubtless realizing that if it were not for the
+blacks they would be slaves themselves.
+
+Now these poor whites had nothing to do with settling the mountains.
+There was then, and still is, plenty of wild land for them in their
+native lowlands. They had neither the initiative nor the courage to seek
+a promised land far away among the unexplored and savage peaks of the
+western country. They were a brave enough folk in facing familiar
+dangers, but they had a terror of the unknown, being densely ignorant
+and superstitious. The mountains, to those who ever heard of them,
+suggested nothing but laborious climbing amid mysterious and portentous
+perils. The poor whites were not highlanders by descent, nor had they a
+whit of the bold, self-reliant spirit of our western pioneers. They
+never entered Appalachia until after it had been won and settled by a
+far manlier race, and even then they went only in driblets. The theory
+that the southern mountains were peopled mainly by outcasts or refugees
+from old settlements in the lowlands rests on no other basis than
+imagination.
+
+How the mountains actually were settled is another and a very different
+story.--
+
+The first frontiersmen of the Appalachians were those Swiss and Palatine
+Germans who began flocking into Pennsylvania about 1682. They settled
+westward of the Quakers in the fertile limestone belts at the foot of
+the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Here they formed the Quakers' buffer
+against the Indians, and, for some time, theirs were the westernmost
+settlements of British subjects in America. These Germans were of the
+Reformed or Lutheran faith. They were strongly democratic in a social
+sense, and detested slavery. They were model farmers and many of them
+were skilled workmen at trades.
+
+Shortly after the tide of German immigration set into Pennsylvania,
+another and quite different class of foreigners began to arrive in this
+province, attracted hither by the same lodestones that drew the Germans,
+namely, democratic institutions and religious liberty. These newcomers
+were the Scotch-Irish, or Ulstermen of Ireland.
+
+When James I., in 1607, confiscated the estates of the native Irish in
+six counties of Ulster, he planted them with Scotch and English
+Presbyterians. These outsiders came to be known as Scotch-Irish, because
+they were chiefly of Scotch blood and had settled in Ireland. The native
+Irish, to whom they were alien both by blood and by religion, detested
+them as usurpers, and fought them many a bloody battle.
+
+In time, as their leases in Ulster began to expire, the Scotch-Irish
+themselves came in conflict with the Crown, by whom they were persecuted
+and evicted. Then the Ulstermen began immigrating in large numbers to
+Pennsylvania. As Froude says, "In the two years that followed the Antrim
+evictions, thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a land where
+there was no legal robbery, and where those who sowed the seed could
+reap the harvest."
+
+So it was that these people became, in their turn, our westernmost
+frontiersmen, taking up land just outside the German settlements.
+Immediately they began to clash with the Indians, and there followed a
+long series of border wars, waged with extreme ferocity, in which
+sometimes it is hard to say which side was most to blame. One thing,
+however, is certain: if any race was ordained to exterminate the Indians
+that race was the Scotch-Irish.
+
+They were a brave but hot-headed folk, as might be expected of a people
+who for a century had been planted amid hostile Hibernians. Justin
+Winsor describes them as having "all that excitable character which goes
+with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity,
+predestination, and election," and as seeing "no use in an Indian but to
+be a target for their bullets." They were quick-witted as well as
+quick-tempered, rather visionary, imperious, and aggressive.
+
+Being by tradition and habit a border people the Scotch-Irish pushed to
+the extreme western fringe of settlement amid the Alleghanies. They were
+not over-solicitous about the quality of soil. When Arthur Lee, of
+Virginia, was telling Doctor Samuel Johnson, in London, of a colony of
+Scotch who had settled upon a particularly sterile tract in western
+Virginia, and had expressed his wonder that they should do so, Johnson
+replied, "Why, sir, all barrenness is comparative: the Scotch will never
+know that it is barren."
+
+West of the Susquehanna, however, the land was so rocky and poor that
+even the Scotch shied at it, and so, when eastern Pennsylvania became
+crowded, the overflow of settlers passed not westward but southwestward,
+along the Cumberland Valley, into western Maryland, and then into the
+Shenandoah and those other long, narrow, parallel valleys of western
+Virginia that we noted in our first chapter. This western region still
+lay unoccupied and scarcely known by the Virginians themselves. Its
+fertile lands were discovered by Pennsylvania Dutchmen. The first house
+in western Virginia was erected by one of them, Joist Hite, and he
+established a colony of his people near the future site of Winchester. A
+majority of those who settled in the eastern part of the Shenandoah
+Valley were Pennsylvania Dutch, while the Scotch-Irish, following in
+their train, pushed a little to the west of them and occupied more
+exposed positions. There were representatives of other races along the
+border: English, Irish, French Huguenots, and so on; but everywhere the
+Scotch-Irish and Germans predominated.
+
+And the southwestward movement, once started, never stopped. So there
+went on a gradual but sure progress of northern peoples across the
+Potomac, up the Shenandoah, across the Staunton, the Dan, the Yadkin,
+until the western piedmont and foot-hill region of Carolina was
+similarly settled, chiefly by Pennsylvanians.
+
+The archivist of North Carolina, the late William L. Saunders, Secretary
+of State, said in one of his historical sketches that "to Lancaster and
+York counties, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her
+population than to any other known part of the world." He called
+attention to the interesting fact that when the North Carolina boys of
+Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch descent followed Lee into
+Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg campaign, they were returning to the
+homes of their ancestors, by precisely the same route that those
+ancestors had taken in going south.
+
+Among those who made the long trek from Pennsylvania southward in the
+eighteenth century, were Daniel Boone and the ancestors of David
+Crockett, Samuel Houston, John C. Calhoun, "Stonewall" Jackson, and
+Abraham Lincoln. Boone and the Lincolns, although English themselves,
+had been neighbors in Berks County, one of the most German parts of all
+eastern Pennsylvania.
+
+So the western piedmont and the mountains were settled neither by
+Cavaliers nor by poor whites, but by a radically distinct and even
+antagonistic people who are appropriately called the Roundheads of the
+South. These Roundheads had little or nothing to do with slavery,
+detested the state church, loathed tithes, and distrusted all authority
+save that of conspicuous merit and natural justice. The first
+characteristic that these pioneers developed was an intense
+individualism. The strong and even violent independence that made them
+forsake all the comforts of civilization and prefer the wild freedom of
+the border was fanned at times into turbulence and riot; but it blazed
+forth at a happy time for this country when our liberties were
+imperilled.
+
+Daniel Boone first appears in history when, from his new home on the
+Yadkin, he crossed the Blue Ridge and the Unakas into that part of
+western Carolina which is now eastern Tennessee. He was exploring the
+Watauga region as early as 1760. Both British and French Indian traders
+and soldiers had been in this region before him, but had left few marks
+of their wanderings. In 1761 a party of hunters from Pennsylvania and
+contiguous counties of Virginia, piloted by Boone, began to use this
+region as a hunting-ground, on account of the great abundance of game.
+From them, and especially from Boone, the fame of its attractions spread
+to the settlements on the eastern slope of the mountains, and in the
+winter of 1768-69 the first permanent occupation of eastern Tennessee
+was made by a few families from North Carolina.
+
+About this time there broke out in Carolina a struggle between the
+independent settlers of the piedmont and the rich trading and official
+class of the coast. The former rose in bodies under the name of
+Regulators and a battle followed in which they were defeated. To escape
+from the persecutions of the aristocracy, many of the Regulators and
+their friends crossed the Appalachian Mountains and built their cabins
+in the Watauga region. Here, in 1772, there was established by these
+"rebels" the first republic in America, based upon a written
+constitution "the first ever adopted by a community of American-born
+freemen." Of these pioneers in "The Winning of the West," Theodore
+Roosevelt says: "As in western Virginia the first settlers came, for the
+most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in what was then western
+North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, the first settlers came
+mainly from Virginia, and indeed, in great part, from this same
+Pennsylvania stock."
+
+Boone first visited Kentucky, on a hunting trip, in 1769. Six years
+later he began to colonize it, in flat defiance of the British
+government, and in the face of a menacing proclamation from the royal
+governor of North Carolina. On the Kentucky River, three days after the
+battle of Lexington, the flag of the new colony of Transylvania was run
+up on his fort at Boonesborough. It was not until the following August
+that these "rebels of Kentuck" heard of the signing of the Declaration
+of Independence, and celebrated it with shrill warwhoops around a
+bonfire in the center of their stockade.
+
+Such was the stuff of which the Appalachian frontiersmen were made. They
+were the first Americans to cut loose entirely from the seaboard and
+fall back upon their own resources. They were the first to establish
+governments of their own, in defiance of king and aristocracy. Says John
+Fiske:
+
+     "Jefferson is often called the father of modern American democracy;
+     in a certain sense the Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian
+     regions may be called its cradle. In that rude frontier society,
+     life assumed many new aspects, old customs were forgotten, old
+     distinctions abolished, social equality acquired even more
+     importance than unchecked individualism. The notions, sometimes
+     crude and noxious, sometimes just and wholesome, which
+     characterized Jeffersonian democracy, flourished greatly on the
+     frontier and have thence been propagated eastward through the older
+     communities, affecting their legislation and their politics more or
+     less according to frequency of contact and intercourse.
+     Massachusetts, relatively remote and relatively ancient, has been
+     perhaps least affected by this group of ideas, but all parts of the
+     United States have felt its influence powerfully. This phase of
+     democracy, which is destined to continue so long as frontier life
+     retains any importance, can nowhere be so well studied in its
+     beginnings as among the Presbyterian population of the Appalachian
+     region in the 18th century."
+
+
+During the Revolution, the Appalachian frontier was held by a double
+line of the men whom we have been considering: one line east of the
+mountains, and the other west of them. The mountain region itself
+remained almost uninhabited by whites, because the pioneers who crossed
+it were seeking better hunting grounds and farmsteads than the mountains
+afforded. It was not until the buffalo and elk and beaver had been
+driven out of Tennessee and Kentucky, and those rolling savannahs were
+being fenced and tilled, that much attention was given to the mountains
+proper. Then small companies of hunters and trappers from both east and
+west began to move into the highlands and settle there.
+
+These explorers, pushing outward from the cross-mountain trails in every
+direction, found many interesting things that had been overlooked in the
+scurry of migration westward. They discovered fair river valleys and
+rich coves, adapted to tillage, which soon attracted settlers of a
+better class; and so, gradually, the mountain solitudes began to echo
+with the ring of axes and the lowing of herds. By 1830 about a million
+permanent settlers occupied the southern Appalachians. Naturally, most
+of them came from adjoining regions--from the foot of the Blue Ridge on
+one side and from the foot of the Unakas or of the Cumberlands on the
+other, and hence they were chiefly of the same frontier stock that we
+have been describing. No colonies of farmers from a distance ever have
+been imported into the mountains, down to our own day.
+
+Deterioration of the mountain people began as soon as population began
+to press upon the limits of subsistence. At first, naturally, the best
+people among the mountaineers were attracted to the best lands. And
+there to-day, in the generous river valleys, we find a class of
+citizens superior to the average mountaineers that we have been
+considering in this book. But the number and extent of such valleys was
+narrowly limited. The United States topographers report that in
+Appalachia, as a whole, the mountain slopes occupy 90 per cent. of the
+total area, and that 85 per cent. of the land has a steeper slope than
+one foot in five. So, as the years passed, a larger and larger
+proportion of the highlanders was forced back along the creek branches
+and up along the steep hillsides to "scrabble" for a living.
+
+It will be asked, Why did not this overplus do as other crowded
+Americans did: move west?
+
+First, because they were so immured in the mountains, so utterly cut off
+from communication with the outer world, that they did not know anything
+about the opportunities offered new settlers in far-away lands. Moving
+"west" to them would have meant merely going a few days' wagon-travel
+down into the lowlands of Kentucky or Tennessee, which already were
+thickly settled by a people of very different social class. Here they
+could not hope to be anything but tenants or menials, ruled over by
+proprietors or bosses--and they would die rather than endure such
+treatment. As for the new lands of the farther West, there was scarce a
+peasant in Ireland or in Scandinavia but knew more about them than did
+the southern mountaineers.
+
+Second, because they were passionately attached to their homes and
+kindred, to their own old-fashioned ways. The mountaineer shrinks from
+lowland society as he does from the water and the climate of such
+regions. He is never at ease until back with his home-folks, foot-loose
+and free.
+
+Third, because there was nothing in his environment to arouse ambition.
+The hard, hopeless life of the mountain farm, sustained only by a meager
+and ill-cooked diet, begat laziness and shiftless unconcern.
+
+Finally, the poverty of the hillside farmers and branch-water people was
+so extreme that they could not gather funds to emigrate with. There were
+no industries to which a man might turn and earn ready money, no markets
+in which he could sell a surplus from the farm.
+
+So, while the transmontane settlers grew rapidly in wealth and culture,
+their kinsfolk back in the mountains either stood still or retrograded,
+and the contrast was due not nearly so much to any difference of
+capacity as to a law of Nature that dooms an isolated and impoverished
+people to deterioration.
+
+Beyond this, it is not to be overlooked that the mountains were cursed
+with a considerable incubus of naturally weak or depraved characters,
+not lowland "poor whites," but a miscellaneous flotsam from all
+quarters, which, after more or less circling round and round, was drawn
+into the stagnant eddy of highland society as derelicts drift into the
+Sargasso Sea. In the train of western immigration there were some feeble
+souls who never got across the mountains. These have been described
+tersely as the men who lost heart on account of a broken axle.
+
+The anemic element thus introduced is less noticeable in Kentucky than
+in Virginia and the States farther south--for the reason, no doubt, that
+it took at least two axles to reach Kentucky--but it exists in all parts
+of Appalachia. Moreover, the vast roughs of the mountain region offered
+harborage for outlaws, desperadoes of the border, and here many of them
+settled and propagated their kind. In the backwoods one cannot choose
+his neighbors. All are on equal footing. Hence the contagion of crime
+and shiftlessness spreads to decent families and tends to undermine
+them.
+
+We can understand, then, how it happened in many cases that highland
+families founded by well-informed and thrifty pioneers deteriorated
+into illiterate and idle triflers, all run down at heels. Lincoln's
+family is an apt illustration. His grandfather sold his Virginia farms
+for seventeen thousand dollars and bought large tracts of land in
+Kentucky. But Abraham Lincoln's father set up housekeeping in a shed,
+later built a log hut of one room without doors or windows (although he
+was a carpenter by trade), then moved to another cabin a little better,
+tired of it, moved over into Indiana, and made his family spend the
+winter in a half-faced camp, where they were saved from freezing by
+keeping up a great log fire in front of the lean-to through days and
+nights when the temperature was far below zero. The Lincolns were not
+mountaineers, but they were of the same stock, and were subjected to
+much the same vicissitudes.
+
+So the southern highlanders languished in isolation, sunk in a Rip Van
+Winkle sleep, until aroused by the thunder-crash of the Civil War. Let
+John Fox tell the extraordinary result of that awakening.--
+
+     "The American mountaineer was discovered, I say, at the beginning
+     of the war, when the Confederate leaders were counting on the
+     presumption that Mason and Dixon's Line was the dividing line
+     between the North and South, and formed, therefore, the plan of
+     marching an army from Wheeling, in West Virginia, to some point on
+     the Lakes, and thus dissevering the North at one blow.
+
+     "The plan seemed so feasible that it is said to have materially
+     aided the sale of Confederate bonds in England. But when Captain
+     Garnett, a West Point graduate, started to carry it out, he got no
+     farther than Harper's Ferry. When he struck the mountains, he
+     struck enemies who shot at his men from ambush, cut down bridges
+     before him, carried the news of his march to the Federals, and
+     Garnett himself fell with a bullet from a mountaineer's squirrel
+     rifle at Harper's Ferry.
+
+     "Then the South began to realize what a long, lean, powerful arm of
+     the Union it was that the southern mountaineer stretched through
+     its very vitals; for that arm helped hold Kentucky in the Union by
+     giving preponderance to the Union sympathizers in the Blue-grass;
+     it kept the east Tennesseans loyal to the man; it made West
+     Virginia, as the phrase goes, 'secede from secession'; it drew out
+     a horde of one hundred thousand volunteers, when Lincoln called for
+     troops, depleting Jackson County, Kentucky, for instance, of every
+     male under sixty years of age and over fifteen; and it raised a
+     hostile barrier between the armies of the coast and the armies of
+     the Mississippi. The North has never realized, perhaps, what it
+     owes for its victory to this non-slaveholding southern
+     mountaineer."
+
+
+President Frost, of Berea College, says:
+
+     "The loyalty of this region in the Civil War was a surprise to both
+     northern and southern statesmen. The mountain people owned land
+     but did not own slaves, and the national feeling of the
+     revolutionary period had not spent its force among them. Their
+     services in West Virginia and east Tennessee are perhaps generally
+     known. But very few know or remember that the whole mountain region
+     was loyal [except where conscripted]. General Carl Schurz had
+     soldiers enlisted in the mountains of Alabama, and the writer has
+     recently seen a letter written by the Confederate Governor of South
+     Carolina in which he relates to General Hardee the troubles caused
+     by Union sentiment in the mountain counties.
+
+     "It is pathetic to know how these mountain regiments disbanded with
+     no poet or historian or monument to perpetuate the memory of their
+     valor. The very flag that was first on Lookout Mountain and 'waved
+     above the clouds' was lost to fame in an obscure mountain home
+     until Berea discovered and rescued it from oblivion and
+     destruction."
+
+
+It may be added that no other part of our country suffered longer or
+more severely from the aftermath of war. Throughout that struggle the
+mountain region was a nest for bushwhackers and bandits that preyed upon
+the aged and defenseless who were left at home, and thus there was left
+an evil legacy of neighborhood wrongs and private grudges. Most of the
+mountain counties had incurred the bitter hostility of their own States
+by standing loyal to the Union. After Appomattox they were cast back
+into a worse isolation than they had ever known. Most unfortunately,
+too, the Federal Government, at this juncture, instead of interposing
+to restore law and order in the highlands, turned the loyalty of the
+mountaineers into outlawry, as in 1794, by imposing a prohibitive excise
+tax upon their chief merchantable commodity.
+
+Left, then, to their own devices, unchecked by any stronger arm,
+inflamed by a multitude of personal wrongs, habituated to the shedding
+of human blood, contemptuous of State laws that did not reach them,
+enraged by Federal acts that impugned, as they thought, an inalienable
+right of man, it was inevitable that this fiery and vindictive race
+should fall speedily into warring among themselves. Old scores were now
+to be wiped out in a reign of terror. The open combat of bannered war
+was turned into the secret ferocity of family feuds.
+
+But the mountaineers of to-day are face to face with a mighty change.
+The feud epoch has ceased throughout the greater part of Appalachia. A
+new era dawns. Everywhere the highways of civilization are pushing into
+remote mountain fastnesses. Vast enterprises are being installed. The
+timber and the minerals are being garnered. The mighty waterpower that
+has been running to waste since these mountains rose from the primal sea
+is now about to be harnessed in the service of man. Along with this
+economic revolution will come, inevitably, good schools, newspapers, a
+finer and more liberal social life. The highlander, at last, is to be
+caught up in the current of human progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES"
+
+
+The southern mountaineers are pre-eminently a rural folk. When the
+twentieth century opened, only four per cent. of them dwelt in cities of
+8,000 inhabitants and upwards. There were but seven such cities in all
+Appalachia--a region larger than England and Scotland combined--and
+these owed their development to outside influences. Only 77 out of 186
+mountain counties had towns of 1,000 and upwards.
+
+Our highlanders are the most homogeneous people in the United States. In
+1900, out of a total population of 3,039,835, there were only 18,617 of
+foreign birth. This includes the cities and industrial camps. Back in
+the mountains, a man using any other tongue than English, or speaking
+broken English, was regarded as a freak. Nine mountain counties of
+Virginia, four of West Virginia, fifteen of Kentucky, ten of Tennessee,
+nine of North Carolina, eight of Georgia, two of Alabama, and one of
+South Carolina had less than ten foreign-born residents each. Three of
+them had none at all.
+
+Compare the North Atlantic states. In this same census year, 57 per
+cent. of their people lived in cities of 8,000 and upwards. As for
+foreigners--the one city of Fall River, Mass., with 104,863 inhabitants,
+had 50,042 of foreign birth.
+
+The mountains proper are free not only from foreigners but from negroes
+as well. There are many blacks in the larger valleys and towns, but
+throughout most of Appalachia the population is almost exclusively
+white. In 1900, Jackson County, Ky. (the same that sent every one of its
+sons into the Union army who could bear arms), had only nineteen negroes
+among 10,542 whites; Johnson County, Ky., only one black resident among
+13,729 whites; Dickenson County, Va., not a single negro within its
+borders.
+
+In many mountain settlements negroes are not allowed to tarry. It has
+been assumed that this prejudice against colored folk had its origin far
+back in the time when "poor whites" found themselves thrust aside by
+competition with slave labor. This is an error. Our mountaineers never
+had to compete with slavery. Few of them knew anything about it except
+from hearsay. Their dislike of negroes is simply an instinctive racial
+antipathy, plus a contempt for anyone who submits to servile conditions.
+A neighbor in the Smokies said to me: "I b'lieve in treatin' niggers
+squar. The Bible says they're human--leastways some says it does--and so
+there'd orter be a place for them. But it's _some place else_--not
+around me!" That is the whole thing in a nutshell.
+
+Here, then, is Appalachia: one of the great land-locked areas of the
+globe, more English in speech than Britain itself, more American by
+blood than any other part of America, encompassed by a high-tensioned
+civilization, yet less affected to-day by modern ideas, less cognizant
+of modern progress, than any other part of the English-speaking world.
+
+Of course, such an anomaly cannot continue. Commercialism has discovered
+the mountains at last, and no sentiment, however honest, however
+hallowed, can keep it out. The transformation is swift. Suddenly the
+mountaineer is awakened from his eighteenth-century bed by the blare of
+steam whistles and the boom of dynamite. He sees his forests leveled and
+whisked away; his rivers dammed by concrete walls and shot into turbines
+that outpower all the horses in Appalachia. He is dazed by electric
+lights, nonplussed by speaking wires, awed by vast transfers of
+property, incensed by rude demands. Aroused, now, and wide-eyed, he
+realizes with sinking heart that here is a sudden end of that Old
+Dispensation under which he and his ancestors were born, the beginning
+of a New Order that heeds him and his neighbors not a whit.
+
+All this insults his conservatism. The old way was the established order
+of the universe: to change it is fairly impious. What is the good of all
+this fuss and fury? That fifty-story building they tell about, in their
+big city--what is it but another Tower of Babel? And these silly,
+stuck-up strangers who brag and brag about "modern improvements"--what
+are they, under their fine manners and fine clothes? Hirelings all.
+Shrewdly he observes them in their relations to each other.--
+
+  "Each man is some man's servant; every soul
+    Is by some other's presence quite discrowned."
+
+Proudly he contrasts his ragged self: he who never has acknowledged a
+superior, never has taken an order from living man, save as a patriot in
+time of war. And he turns upon his heel.
+
+Yet, before he can fairly credit it as a reality, the lands around his
+own home are bought up by corporations. All about him, slash, crash, go
+the devastating forces. His old neighbors vanish. New and unwelcome ones
+swarm in. He is crowded, but ignored. His hard-earned patrimony is
+robbed of all that made it precious: its home-like seclusion,
+independence, dignity. He sells out, and moves away to some uninvaded
+place where he "will not be bothered."
+
+"I don't like these improve_ments_," said an old mountaineer to me.
+"Some calls them 'progress,' and says they put money to circulatin'. So
+they do; but _who gits it_?"
+
+There is a class of highlanders more sanguine, more adaptable, that
+welcomes all outsiders who come with skill and capital to develop their
+country. Many of these are shrewd traders in merchandise or in real
+estate, or they are capable foremen who can handle native labor much
+better than any strangers could. Such men naturally profit by the
+change.
+
+Others, deluded by what seems easy money, sell their little homesteads
+for just enough cash to set them up as laborers in town or camp. Being
+untrained to any trade, they can get only the lowest wages, which are
+quickly dissipated in rent and in foods that formerly they raised for
+themselves. Unused to continuous labor, they irk under its discipline,
+drop out, and fall into desultory habits. Meantime false ambitions
+arise, especially among the womenfolk. Store credit soon runs such a
+family in debt.
+
+"When I was a young man," said one of my neighbors, "the traders never
+thought of bringin' meal in here. If a man run out of meal, why, he was
+_out_, and he had to live on 'taters or somethin' else. Nowadays we
+dress better, and live better, but some other feller allers has his
+hands in our pockets."
+
+Then it is "good-by" to the old independence that made such characters
+manly. Enmeshed in obligations that they cannot meet, they struggle
+vainly, brood hopelessly, and lose that dearest of all possessions,
+their self-respect. Servility is literal hell to a mountaineer, and when
+it is forced upon him he turns into a mean, underhanded, slinking
+fellow, easily tempted into crime.
+
+The curse of our invading civilization is that its vanguard is composed
+of men who care nothing for the welfare of the people they dispossess. A
+northern lumberman admitted to me, with frankness unusual in his class,
+that "All we want here is to get the most we can out of this country, as
+quick as we can, and then get out." This is all we can expect of those
+who exploit raw materials, or of manufactures that employ only cheap
+labor. Until we have industries that demand skilled workmen, and until
+manual training schools are established in the mountains, we may look
+for deterioration, rather than betterment, of those highlanders who
+leave their farms.
+
+All who know the mountaineers intimately have observed that the sudden
+inroad of commercialism has a bad effect upon them. As President Frost
+says, "Ruthless change is knocking at the door of every mountain cabin.
+The jackals of civilization have already abused the confidence of many a
+highland home. The lumber, coal, and mineral wealth of the mountains is
+to be possessed, and the unprincipled vanguard of commercialism can
+easily debauch a simple people. The question is whether the mountain
+people can be enlightened and guided so that they can have a part in the
+development of their own country, or whether they must give place to
+foreigners and melt away like so many Indians."
+
+It is easy to say that the fittest will survive. But the fittest for
+what? Miss Miles answers: "I have heard it said that civilization, when
+it touches the people of the backwoods, acts as a useful precipitant in
+thus sending the dregs to the bottom. As a matter of fact, it is only
+the shrewder and more determined, not the truly fit, that survive the
+struggle. Among these very submerged ones, reduced to dependence on an
+alien people, there are thousands who inherit the skill of their
+forefathers who fashioned their own locks, musical instruments, and
+guns. And these very women who are breaking their health and spirit over
+a thankless tub of suds ought surely to turn their talents to better
+account, ought to be designing and weaving coverlets and Roman-striped
+rugs, or 'piecing' the quilt patterns now so popular. Need these razors
+be used to cut grindstones? Must this free folk who are in many ways the
+truest Americans of America be brought under the yoke of caste division,
+to the degradation of all their finer qualities, merely for lack of the
+right work to do?"
+
+There are some who would have it so; who would calmly write for these
+our own kindred, as for the Indians, _fuerunt_--their day is past. In a
+History of Southern Literature, written not long ago by a professor in
+the University of Virginia, a sketch of Miss Murfree's work closes with
+these words: "There [at Beersheba Springs, Tenn.] it was that she first
+studied the curious type of humanity, the Tennessee mountaineer, a
+people so ignorant, so superstitious, so far behind the world of to-day
+as to excite wonder and even pity in all who see them.... [She] is
+telling the story of a people who, in these opening years of the 20th
+century, wander on through their limited range of life much as their
+ancestors for generations have wandered. They, too, will some time
+vanish--the sooner the better."
+
+One cannot read such a sentiment without wonder and even pity for the
+ignorance of history and of human nature that it discloses. Is the case
+of our mountaineers so much worse than that of the Scotch highlanders of
+two centuries ago? We know that those Scotchmen did not "vanish--the
+quicker the better." What were they before civilization reached them?
+Let us open the ready pages of Macaulay.--
+
+     "It is not easy for a modern Englishman ... to believe that, in the
+     time of his great-grandfathers, Saint James's Street had as little
+     connection with the Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In
+     the south of our island scarcely anything was known about the
+     Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling but
+     contempt and loathing....
+
+     "It is not strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes
+     called, should, in the 17th century, have been considered by the
+     Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely strange that, considered
+     as savages, they should not have been objects of interest and
+     curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the
+     manners of rude nations separated from our island by great
+     continents and oceans. Numerous books were printed describing the
+     laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the
+     marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and
+     Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to
+     the usages of the black men of Africa and the red men of America.
+     The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
+     information was the Highlander....
+
+     "While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigor, no account
+     of them was given by any observer qualified to judge of them
+     fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the
+     Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely
+     intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised
+     nation. He would have found that the people had no love for their
+     country or for their king, that they had no attachment to any
+     commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any magistrate superior to
+     the chief. He would have found that life was governed by a code of
+     morality and honor widely different from that which is established
+     in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have learned that a
+     stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of rock, were
+     approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have
+     heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wracked
+     on hereditary enemies in a neighboring valley such vengeance as
+     would have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder.
+
+     "He would have found that robbery was held to be a calling not
+     merely innocent but honorable. He would have seen, wherever he
+     turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposition to
+     throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labor, which
+     are characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the
+     spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun, angling for salmon,
+     or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant
+     wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the scanty harvest of
+     oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In their view it
+     was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the aristocratic
+     title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the eagle's
+     feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting,
+     hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in
+     connection with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult.
+     Agriculture was indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was
+     much more becomingly employed in plundering the land of others than
+     in tilling his own.
+
+     "The religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude
+     mixture of Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was
+     associated with heathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptised men
+     poured libations of ale on one Daemon, and set out drink offerings
+     of milk for another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides,
+     and awaited, in that vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal
+     the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists whose
+     hereditary vocation was to preserve the memory of past events, an
+     enquirer would have found very few who could read. In truth, he
+     might easily have journeyed from sea to sea without discovering a
+     page of Gaelic printed or written.
+
+     "The price which he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the
+     country would have been heavy. He would have had to endure
+     hardships as great as if he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or
+     the Samoyeds. Here and there, indeed, at the castle of some great
+     lord who had a seat in the Parliament and Privy Council, and who
+     was accustomed to pass a large part of his life in the cities of
+     the South, might have been found wigs and embroidered coats, plate
+     and fine linen, lace and jewels, French dishes and French wines.
+     But, in general, the traveler would have been forced to content
+     himself with very different quarters. In many dwellings the
+     furniture, the food, the clothing, nay, the very hair and skin of
+     his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His lodging
+     would sometimes have been in a hut of which every nook would have
+     swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
+     peat smoke, and foul with a hundred exhalations. At supper grain
+     fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied
+     with a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company
+     with whom he would have feasted would have been covered with
+     cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar
+     like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as
+     the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half
+     poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half
+     mad with the itch.
+
+     "This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and
+     dispassionate observer would have found in the character and
+     manners of this rude people something which might well excite
+     admiration and a good hope. Their courage was what great exploits
+     achieved in all the four quarters of the globe have since proved it
+     to be. Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own
+     patriarch, though politically a great evil, partook of the nature
+     of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill regulated; but
+     still it was heroic. There must be some elevation of soul in a man
+     who loves the society of which he is a member and the leader whom
+     he follows with a love stronger than the love of life. It was true
+     that the Highlander had few scruples about shedding the blood of an
+     enemy; but it was not less true that he had high notions of the
+     duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality to guests. It was
+     true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to the
+     commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
+     resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities,
+     live by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland
+     farmers up the pass which led to his native glen, he no more
+     considered himself as a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes
+     considered themselves as thieves when they divided the cargoes of
+     Spanish galleons. He was a warrior seizing lawful prize of war, of
+     war never once intermitted during the thirty-five generations which
+     had passed away since the Teutonic invaders had driven the children
+     of the soil to the mountains....
+
+     "His inordinate pride of birth and his contempt for labor and trade
+     were indeed great weaknesses, and had done far more than the
+     inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil to keep his
+     country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some compensation.
+     It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician virtues were
+     not less widely diffused among the population of the Highlands than
+     the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the island where
+     men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves to such
+     a degree in the idle, sauntering habits of an aristocracy, so
+     there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
+     degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
+     manner, self-respect, and that noble sensibility which makes
+     dishonor more terrible than death. A gentleman of Skye or Lochaber,
+     whose clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years,
+     and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would often do
+     the honors of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the
+     splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little
+     book-learning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would
+     have been a great error to put him in the same intellectual rank
+     with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can
+     become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of
+     poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
+     may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in
+     which books are wholly or almost wholly unknown."
+
+
+So, too, in the rudest communities of Appalachia, among the most
+trifling and unmoral natives of this region, among the illiterate and
+hide-bound, there still is much to excite admiration and good hope. I
+have not shrunk from telling the truth about these people, even when it
+was far from pleasant; but I would have preserved strict silence had I
+not seen in the most backward of them certain sterling qualities of
+manliness that our nation can ill afford to waste. It is a truth as old
+as the human race that savageries may co-exist with admirable qualities
+of head and heart. The only people who can consistently despair of the
+future for even the lowest of our mountaineers are those who deny
+evolution and who believe, with Archbishop Usher, that man was created
+_perfect_ at 9 A. M. on the 21st of October, in the year B. C. 4004.
+
+Let us remember, Sir and Madam, that we ourselves are descended from
+white barbarians. From William the Conqueror, you? Very well; how many
+other ancestors of yours were walking about England and elsewhere at the
+time of William? Untold thousands of them were just such people as you
+can find to-day brawling in some mountain still-house (unless there has
+been a deal of incest somewhere along your line), and you have
+infinitely more of their blood in your veins than you have of the
+Conqueror's--who, by the way, could he be re-incarnated, would not be
+tolerated in your drawing-room for half an hour. I may have made the
+point too brutally plain; but if it sinks through the smug
+self-complacency of those who "do not belong to the masses," who act as
+though civilization and morals and good manners were entailed to them
+through a mere dozen or so of selected ancestors, I remain unrepentant
+and unashamed. Let us thank whatever gods there be that it is not
+merely thou and I, our few friends and next of kin, but all humanity,
+that scientific faith embraces and will sustain.
+
+"People who have been among the southern mountaineers testify," says Mr.
+Fox, "that, as a race, they are proud, sensitive, hospitable, kindly,
+obliging in an unreckoning way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal,
+in spite of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation; that they
+are naturally capable, eager to learn, easy to uplift. Americans to the
+core, they make the southern mountains a storehouse of patriotism; in
+themselves they are an important offset to the Old World outcasts whom
+we have welcomed to our shores; and they surely deserve as much
+consideration from the nation as the negroes, or as the heathen, to whom
+we give millions."
+
+President Frost, of Berea College, who has worked among these people for
+nearly a lifetime, and has helped to educate their young folks by
+thousands, says: "It does one's heart good to help a young Lincoln who
+comes walking in perhaps a three-days' journey on foot, with a few
+hard-earned dollars in his pocket and a great eagerness for the
+education he can so faintly comprehend. (Scores of our young people see
+their first railroad train at Berea.) And it is a joy to welcome the
+mountain girl who comes back after having taught her first school,
+bringing the money to pay her debts and buy her first comfortable
+outfit--including rubbers and suitable underclothing--and perhaps
+bringing with her a younger sister. Such a girl exerts a great influence
+in her school and mountain home. An enthusiastic mountaineer described
+an example in this wise: 'I tell yeou hit teks a moughty resol_ute_ gal
+ter do what that thar gal has done. She got, I reckon, about the
+toughest deestric' in the ceounty, which is sayin' a good deal. An' then
+fer boardin'-place--well, there warn't much choice. There was one house,
+with one room. But she kep right on, an' yeou would hev thought she was
+havin' the finest kind of a time, ter look at her. An' then the last
+day, when they was sayin' their pieces and sich, some sorry fellers come
+in thar full o' moonshine an' shot their revolvers. I'm a-tellin' ye hit
+takes a moughty resol_ute_ gal."
+
+The great need of our mountaineers to-day is trained leaders of their
+own. The future of Appalachia lies mostly in the hands of those resolute
+native boys and girls who win the education fitting them for such
+leadership. Here is where the nation at large is summoned by a solemn
+duty. And it should act quickly, because commercialism exploits and
+debauches quickly. But the schools needed here are not ordinary graded
+schools. They should be vocational schools that will turn out good
+farmers, good mechanics, good housewives. Meantime let a model farm be
+established in every mountain county showing how to get the most out of
+mountain land. Such object lessons would speedily work an economic
+revolution. It is an economic problem, fundamentally, that the
+mountaineer has to face.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+[1] A friend of mine on the U. S. Geological Survey tested with his
+clinometer a mountain cornfield that sloped at an angle of fifty
+degrees.
+
+[2] Average annual rainfall of New York City, 44 inches; of Glencoe, in
+the Scotch Highlands, nearly 130 inches.
+
+[3] _Gant-lot_: a fenced enclosure into which cattle are driven after
+cutting them out from those of other owners. So called because the
+mountain cattle run wild, feeding only on grass and browse, and "they
+couldn't travel well to market when filled up on green stuff: so they're
+penned up to git _gant_ and nimble."
+
+[4] Pure bluff of mine, at that time; but it was good policy to assume
+perfect confidence.
+
+[5] This was in 1904. There are no dispensaries in North Carolina now.
+
+[6] It is a curious fact that most horses despise the stuff. A
+celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years he rode a
+horse which was in the habit of drinking a mouthful from every stream
+that he forded; but if there was the least taint of still-slop in the
+water, he would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer
+then had only to follow up the stream, and he would infallibly find a
+still.
+
+[7] Ellwood Wilson, Sr., in the _Sewanee Review_.
+
+[8] In mountain dialect such words as settlement, government, studyment
+(reverie) are accented on the last syllable, or drawled with equal
+stress throughout.
+
+[9] So also in the lowland South. An extraordinary affectation of
+propriety appeared in a dispatch to the _Atlanta Constitution_ of
+October 29, 1912, which reported that an exhibitor of cattle at the
+State fair had been seriously horned by a _male cow_.
+
+[10] Pronounced Chee-_o_-ah, Chil-_how_-ee, Cow-_ee_, Cul-lo-_whee_,
+High-_wah_-see, Nan-tah-_hay_-lah, O-_ko_-na, _Luf_-ty, San-_teet_-lah,
+_Tel_-li-co, Tuck-a-_lee_-chee, Tuck-a-_see_-gee, Tuh-_loo_-lah,
+Tus-_quit_-ee, Wah-_yah_ (explosively on last syllable), _Wau_-ke-chah,
+Yah-_lah_-kah (commonly Ah-lar-ka or _'Lar_-ky by the settlers),
+You-_nay_-kah.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
+letters have been replaced with +transliterations+.
+
+Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate
+both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as
+presented in the original text.
+
+The following misprints have been corrected:
+  "Hiddden" corrected to "Hidden" (Table of Contents)
+  "sing" corrected to "sting" (page 70)
+  "hav-" corrected to "having" (page 134)
+  "and and" corrected to "and" (page 148)
+  "could could" corrected to "could" (page 172)
+  "haled" corrected to "hauled" (page 174)
+  "Some the expedients" corrected to "Some of the expedients" (page 238)
+  "hoplessly" corrected to "hopelessly" (page 275)
+  "civlization" corrected to "civilization" (page 384)
+
+Printer's inconsistencies in hyphenation usage have been retained.
+
+
+
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