VALLEY OF THE NOON-DAY SUN.

([See page 98.])

THE
Heart of the Alleghanies
OR
WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

COMPRISING
ITS TOPOGRAPHY, HISTORY, RESOURCES, PEOPLE,
NARRATIVES, INCIDENTS, AND PICTURES OF TRAVEL,
ADVENTURES IN HUNTING AND FISHING.
AND
LEGENDS OF ITS WILDERNESSES.
BY
WILBUR G. ZEIGLER AND BEN S. GROSSCUP
————————
WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS
————————
RALEIGH, N. C.
ALFRED WILLIAMS & CO.
CLEVELAND, O.
WILLIAM W. WILLIAMS

Copyright, 1883
By Wilbur G. Zeigler and Ben S. Grosscup

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

Oh, holy melody of peace!
Oh, nature in thy grandest mood!
I love thee most where ways are rude
Of men, and wild the landscape’s face.

HE great mountain system that begins in that part of Canada south of the St. Lawrence, and under the name of the Alleghanies, or Appalachians, extends southward for 1,300 miles, dying out in the Georgia and Alabama foot-hills, attains its culmination in North Carolina. The title of Appalachians, as applied by De Soto to the whole system, is preferred by many geographers. Alleghany is the old Indian word, signifying “endless.” It is ancient in its origin, and in spite of its being anglicized still retains its soft, liquid sound. It was not until a comparatively late year that Western North Carolina was discovered to be the culminating region. Until 1835 the mountains of New Hampshire were considered the loftiest of the Alleghanies, and Mount Washington was placed on the maps and mentioned in text books as the highest point of rock in the eastern United States. It now holds its true position below several summits of the Black, Smoky, and Balsam ranges. From the barometrical measurements of trustworthy explorers, no less than 57 peaks in Western North Carolina are found to be over 6,000 feet in altitude. The more accurate observations being taken by means of levels, by the coast survey, may slightly reduce this number.

It was John C. Calhoun who, in 1825, first called particular attention to the southern section of the system. His attention had been turned to it by observing the numerous wide rivers, and tributaries of noble streams, which, like throbbing arteries, came forth from all sides of the North Carolina mountains, as from the chambers of a mighty heart. He saw the New river flowing towards the Ohio; the Watauga, the Nolechucky, the French Broad, the Big Pigeon, the Little Tennessee, the Hiawassee, and their thousand tributaries, pouring from the central valleys through the deep gaps of the Smokies into the western plains, and uniting with the branches from the Cumberland mountains to form the stately Tennessee; the Yadkin, the Catawba, the Broad, the Chatooga, and the headwaters of the greatest streams south of Virginia that empty into the Atlantic. From these observations he reasoned rightly that between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees and 30 minutes, north latitude, lay the highest plateau and mountains of the Atlantic coast.

The region, as measured in a bee line through the center of the plateau from Virginia to Georgia, is 200 miles in length. Its breadth, from the summits of the parallel rampart ranges of the Blue Ridge and Smokies, varies from 15 to 65 miles, and includes within this measurement a plateau expanse of 6,000 square miles, with an altitude of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet. Inclusive of the eastern slope, the off-shooting spurs of the Blue Ridge and the South mountains, the average breadth is 70 miles. A portion of the piedmont section, properly a part of the mountain district, would be taken in the latter measurement. The counties are 25 in number, reaching from Ashe, Alleghany, and Surrey in the north to Macon, Clay, and Cherokee in the south.

After the bifurcation of the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains in Virginia, embracing with a wide sweep several counties of that state and Ashe, Alleghany, and Watauga of North Carolina, they almost meet again in the northeastern limit of Mitchell county. Here, in collosal conjunction, through their central sentinel heads, the two ranges seem holding conference before making their final separation. The Grandfather, the highest peak of the Blue Ridge and the oldest mountain of the world, stands on one side; the majestic Roan of the Smokies, on the other, connected by the short transverse upheaval known as Yellow mountain. This spot is poetically spoken of as the grand portal to the inner temple of the Alleghanies; the Grandfather and the Roan being the two pillars between which hangs, forever locked, the massive gate of Yellow mountain. The high table-land of Watauga forms the green-carpeted step to it. Trending southwest, between the two separating ranges,—the Blue Ridge bending like a bow, and the Smokies resembling the bow-string,—lies wrapped in its robe of misty purple, the central valley, comprising 13 counties.

The western rampart range, bearing the boundary line between North Carolina and Tennessee, lifts its crest much higher than the Blue Ridge; is more massive in its proportions; less straggling in its contour; but with lower gaps or gorges, narrow and rugged, through which flow all the rivers of the plateau. Generically known as the Smoky mountains, it is by the river gorges divided into separate sections, each of which has its peculiar name. The most northerly of these sections is termed the Stone mountains; then follow the Iron, Bald, Great Smoky, Unaka, and the Frog mountains of Georgia. Twenty-three peaks of the Smoky mountains are over 6,000 feet in altitude, the loftiest being Clingman’s Dome, 6,660 feet. The deepest gap is that of the Little Tennessee, 1,114 feet.

The eastern rampart range—the Blue Ridge—trends southward with the convolutions of a snake; its undulations rising seldom above a mile in altitude and sinking sometimes so low that, in passing through its wide gaps, one is not aware that he is crossing a mountain range, the fact being concealed by the parallel spurs rising, in many instances, to a higher altitude than their parent chain. In spite of its depressions, and, when compared with the Smoky mountains, the low average elevation of its crest, it is the water-shed of the system. Not a stream severs it. On the east every stream sweeps toward the Atlantic. On the west the waters of its slopes are joined at its base line by those flowing down the east or south side of the Smoky mountains; and, mingling with the latter, pour through the deep passes of the loftier range into the valley of the western confluent of the Tennessee.

From the Blue Ridge is thrown off many short ranges, trending east and south across the submontane plateau. In character of outline they are similar to the parent chain. This plateau, known as the Piedmont, walled on the west by the Blue Ridge, diversified by mountains and hills, and seamed by the Yadkin, Catawba, and Broad rivers and their affluents, incloses in its limits many beautiful and fertile valleys. The outer slope of the Blue Ridge, overlooking Piedmont, is abrupt in its descent and presents wild and picturesque features; cascades marking the channels of the streams. Further south, where the range bends around the South Carolina and Georgia lines, bold escarpments of rock and ragged pine-set declivities, seamed by cataracts, and beaten on by a hot and sultry sun, break sheer off into the southern plains. The inner slope of the Blue Ridge throughout its entire length from Virginia to Georgia, as contrasted with the outer slope, is more gentle in its descent; is heavily wooded and diversified with clearings. The Smoky mountains present similar characteristics—richly wooded descents toward the central valley; rocky and sterile fronts toward Tennessee.

The reader must not imagine that the central valley or plateau, of which we have been speaking, is a level or bowl-shaped expanse between the ranges described. On the contrary, its surface is so broken by transverse mountain ranges and their foot-hills that, by means of vision alone, the observer from no one point can obtain a correct idea of the structural character of the region. From the loftiest peaks, he can see the encircling ranges and the level lands beyond their outer slopes; but below him is rolled an inner sea of mountains, which, when looked upon in some directions, seems of limitless expanse. The transverse chains, comprising the Yellow mountain, the Black, Newfound, Balsam, Cowee, Nantihala, and Valley River mountains, hold a majority of the highest summits of the Alleghanies.

The Black mountain chain, the highest of these ranges, is only 20 miles long, and has 18 peaks in altitude over 6,000 feet; the highest of which, Mitchell’s Peak, 6,711 feet above sea-level, is the sovereign mountain of the Alleghanies. The Balsam range, the longest of the transverse chains, is 45 miles in length and crested by 15 wooded pinnacles over 6,000 feet high. The parallel cross-chains have, nestling between their slopes, central valleys, varying in length and width, and opening back into little vales between the foot-hills and branching spurs. Through the lowest dip of each great valley, sweeps toward the Smokies a wide, crystal river fed by its tributaries from the mountain heights.

The great valleys, or the distinct regions drained each by one of the rivers which cut asunder the Smokies, are six in number. The extreme northern part of the state is drained by the New river and the Watauga. Between the Yellow mountain and the Blacks lies that deeply embosomed valley region watered by the head-springs of the Nolechucky. Next comes the widest and longest plain of the mountain section—the valley of the French Broad. The Big Pigeon winds through the high plateau between the Newfound and Balsam mountains. The region of the Little Tennessee comprises not only the wide lands along its own banks, but those along its great forks—the Tuckasege, Nantihala, and Ocona Lufta. West of the Valley River mountains the country is drained by the Hiawassee.

Geologically speaking, the mountains of North Carolina are the oldest in the world. During the period of general upheavals and subsidences of the crust of the earth, these mountains were the only lands remaining throughout firm above the surface of the ocean. Rocks of the Archæan or earliest age are exposed, and with their edges turned at a high angle lie upon the beds of later periods of formation. North of the southern boundary of Virginia, the structural character of the mountains is different.

The entire region is mantled with forests to the summit of every peak; the valleys and many of the adjacent coves are cleared and inhabited by a happy, healthy, and hospitable people. It is rich in picturesque scenery—romantic rivers, luxuriant forests, majestic mountain heights, valleys of exquisite beauty, quaint villages, cliffs, and waterfalls. It is rich in a life-giving climate, brilliant skies, fertile lands, pastured steeps, and timber and mineral wealth.

It is of this country—the Heart of the Alleghanies—that in the following pages we have treated in as full, concise, and entertaining a manner as we could conceive and carry into execution.

UNAKA KANOOS.

THE NATIVE MOUNTAINEERS.

All kinds of creatures stand and fall
By strength of prowess or of wit;
’Tis God’s appointment who must sway,
And who is to submit.
—Wordsworth.

E are excluded from a knowledge of ancient American history by an impenetrable veil of mystery and silence. The past has left us only relics—relics of things and relics of races—which are interpreted by an unreined imagination. Before Europeans set foot on the western shore of the Atlantic, before the Indians occupied the forest continent, there dwelt on all the sunniest plains and fertile valleys a race well advanced in mechanical and æsthetic art, skilled in war and consecrated in religion. It came and flourished and perished, leaving only monuments of its existence in the form of works of earth, and works of stone—mounds, forts, and pottery. The old mounds scattered everywhere are the sepulchres of illustrious dead, and because of their number, the race has been designated the “Mound Builders.” They inhabited, among other places, the southern Alleghanies, the largest number of mounds being found in the upper valley of the Little Tennessee. Most of the rich mica dikes bear evidence of having been worked centuries ago. The marks of stone picks may still be seen upon the soft feldspar with which the mica is associated, and tunnels and shafts show some knowledge of mining. The fact that a great many ancient mounds all over the country contain skeletons, encased in mica plates, associates these diggings with the builders of the mounds.

The earliest traditional knowledge we have of the habitation of the southern highlands has been handed down by the Cherokees. They say that before they conquered the country and settled in the valleys, the inhabitants were “moon-eyed,” that is, were unable to see during certain phases of the moon. During a period of blindness, the Creeks swept through the mountain passes, up the valleys, and annihilated the race. The Cherokees in turn conquered the Creeks, with great slaughter, which must have occurred at a very ancient date, for the country of their conquest and adoption is the seat of their religious legends and traditional romances.

No definite boundaries can be assigned to the land of any Indian tribe, much less a nation of proud and warlike mountaineers who were happy only when carrying bloodied tomahawks into an enemy’s country. The tribe was distinguished by two great geographical divisions, the Ottari, signifying “among the mountains,” and the Erati, signifying “lowland.” Provincial historians have designated them as “In the Valley” and “Overhill” towns, the great highland belt between the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains being designated as a valley. The ancient realm of the tribe may, in a general way, be described as the headwater valleys of the Yadkin and Catawba on the east; of the Keowee, Tugaloo, Flint, Etowa and Coosa on the south, and the several tributaries of the Tennessee on the west. There were 60 towns, and 6,000 fighting men could at any time be called by the grand chief to the war path. It was the military prowess of these warriors that gave to the nation the most picturesque and most secure home of all the American tribes. A keen and delicate appreciation of the beautiful in nature, as associated with the grandeur of their surroundings, inspired them to unparalleled heroism in its defense against intrusion. They successfully withstood neighboring tribes, but their contest with the whites was a contest with destiny, in which they yielded only after a long and bloody struggle. The ancient nation of the mountains, expelled from its home, crippled and enervated, but improved in some respects, has found a home in the less picturesque and distant west; but has left a dissevered and withered limb which, like a fossil, merely reminds us of a bygone period of history.

If any one doubts that the Cherokees possessed an appreciative love of country and a genuine sympathy with nature, let him turn to his map, and pronounce those Indian names which have not been cruelly, almost criminally, displaced by English common-places. Let him remember too that there is a meaning in their euphony, and a suggestiveness in their melody. It is a grievous fault, the more grievous because it is irreparable, that so many of the bold streams which thunder down forest slopes and through echoing cañons, have lost those designations whose syllables glide from the tongue in harmony with the music of the crystal currents. Of many natural features the names are preserved, but their meanings have been lost.

East of the Blue Ridge, in North Carolina, very few geographical names of Indian origin have survived. In the valley of the French Broad there is also a barrenness of prehistoric nomenclature. From this circumstance it is argued, and the argument is well sustained, that there was no permanent habitation of Indians in these two localities. The villages were located in valley, and were known by the name of the streams. In some instances, traditions became associated with the name, and in them we have a key to an unwritten scroll. A village, furthermore, gave to a region an importance which made its name widely known, not only in the tribe but among traders and other white adventurers, and thus made it a fixture. There is the additional negative evidence of no permanent habitation, in the fact that mention is no where made, in the annals of military expeditions against the Indians, of villages east of the Balsam mountains. Hunters and warriors penetrated the forests for game, and carried the tomahawk to every frontier, frequently making the Upper Catawba and French Broad valleys their camping ground. While we know nothing about the facts, the presumption is reasonable that at least all the larger rivers and their tributaries were given names by the Indians, which perished with the change of race and ownership.

Catawba is not of Cherokee origin. The river takes its name from the tribe which inhabited its valley until a recent date; South Carolina. It was a species of vandalism to substitute French Broad for Agiqua and Tocheeostee, the former being the name applied by the Erati, or “over the mountain” Cherokees, to the lower valley, and the latter by the Ottari, or “valley” towns, to the upper or North Carolina section below Asheville. “Racing river” is a literal translation of the term Tocheeostee. Above Asheville, where the stream is placid and winds snake-like through the wide alluvions, it took the name Zillicoah.

Swanannoa is one of the most resonant of Indian names, though in being accommodated to English orthography it has lost much of its music. It would be impossible to indicate the original pronunciation. I can, perhaps, tell you nearer how to utter it. Begin with a suppressed sound of the letter “s,” then with tongue and palate lowered, utter the vowel sound of “a” in swan four times in quick succession, giving to the first as much time as to the second two, and raise the voice one note on the last. The word is said to have been derived from the sound made by a raven’s wing as it sweeps through the air. Before white settlers came into the country that species of bird was very plentiful along all the streams, and at their points of confluence were its favorite roosting places, whence, aided by the scent of the water, it sallied up stream in search of food. Hundreds collected at the mouth of the Swanannoa, and the name was the oft repeated imitation, by the voice, of the music of their wings, as they whizzed past the morning camp-fire of the hunter or warrior bands, on the bank of the stream. The hungry, homely, and hated raven is indeed an humble origin for a name so beautiful, applied to an object so much applauded for its beauty.

If the upper tributaries of the French Broad ever had names worthy of their character which have been displaced by such colloquialisms as Cathey’s creek, Davidson’s river, Mills’ river, and Little river, they perished with the race more in sympathy with nature than the inhabitants of the last century. By some chance that gentle stream which snakes through the flat valley of Henderson county, has preserved an Indian designation, though it is probably a borrowed one. Ocklawaha is the name which we find in old legal documents, and its tributary, which gives the county’s capital a peninsular situation, is designated the Little Ocklawaha—a barbarous mixture of Indian and English. The word is of Seminole origin, and means “slowly moving water.” It was applied to a river in Florida by the natives, and to this Carolina stream by the “low country” people who found summer homes beyond the Blue Ridge, because of the applicability of the name and its resemblance in some other respects to the original Ochlawaha. Reverence of antiquity and the geographical genius of the red race, can not be claimed as an argument in favor of the re-substitution of the Indian designation for the present universally used colloquialism, “Mud creek,” as homely as it is false in the idea it suggests. Ochlawaha is not only more pleasing to the ear, but gives a much more faithful description of the landscape feature designated, and hence has sufficient claims to the public recognition which we take the lead in giving it.

Going southward, and crossing the Blue Ridge and Green river, which derives its name from the tint of its water, we come to the Saluda range, the fountain of a river of the same name. The word is of Catawba origin, as is also Estatoa. Toxaway, or more properly spelled Tochawha, is Cherokee, but we have no satisfactory interpretation of its meaning.

The Balsams are rich in legendary superstitions. The gloom of their dark solitudes fills even the hurried tourist with an unaccountable fear, and makes it impossible for him to suppress the recollection of tales of ghosts and goblins upon which his childish imagination was fed. The mountains assume mysterious shapes, projecting rocks seem to stand beckoning; and the echo of cascades falls upon the ear like ominous warnings. No wonder then, that it was a region peopled by pagan superstition, with other spirits than human. It is the instinct of the human mind, no matter what may be its degree of cultivation, to seek an explanation of things. When natural causes can not be discovered for the phenomena of nature, the supernatural is drawn upon. The Cherokees knew no natural reason why the tops of high mountains should be treeless, but having faith in a personal devil they jumped at the conclusion that the “bald” spots must be the prints of his horrid feet as he walked with giant strides from peak to peak.

Near the Great Divide, between the waters of Pigeon river and French Broad, is situated the Devil’s Court-house, which rises to an altitude of 6,049 feet. Near it is Court-house mountain. At both places his Satanic majesty was believed to sit in judgment, and doom to punishment all who had been wayward in courage, or had departed from a strict code of virtue, though bravery in war atoned for a multitude of sins.

The devil had besides these a supreme court-house, where finally all mankind would be summoned for trial. This was one of the great precipices of the Whiteside mountain, situated in Jackson county, at the southern terminus of the Cowee range. There is no wonder that the simple minded pagans supposed that nature had dedicated this structure to supernatural use, for it excels in grandeur the most stupendous works of human hands. It consists of a perpendicular wall of granite, so curved as to form an arc more than a mile long, and rises 1,800 feet from the moss-blanketed rocks which form the pavement of an enclosed court. About half way up there is a shelf-like projection, not more than two feet wide, which leads from one side to a cave. This was supposed to be the inner room of the great temple, whence the judge of human conduct would come to pronounce sentence at the end of the world. That this important business should be entrusted to Satan is a mythological incongruity. A certain sorcerer, or medicine-man, taking advantage of the popular superstition about the place, made the cave his home, going in and out by the narrow shelf. He announced that he was in league with the spirits of the next world, and consequently could go in and out with perfect safety, which fact caused him to be recognized as a great man. There have been found, in the vicinity of Whiteside, Indian ladders—that is, trees with the limbs trimmed so as to form steps. What they could have been used for we are unable to conjecture; certainly not to scale the mountain sides, for such a thing would be impossible.

Old Field mountain, in the Balsam range, derives its name from the tradition that it was Satan’s bed-chamber. The Cherokees of a recent generation affirm that his royal majesty was often seen by their forefathers, and even some of the first white settlers had knowledge of his presence. On the top of the mountain there is a prairie-like tract, almost level, reached by steep slopes covered with thickets of balsam and rhododendron, which seem to garrison the reputed sacred domain. It was understood among the Indians to be forbidden territory, but a party one day permitted their curiosity to tempt them. They forced a way through the entangled thickets, and with merriment entered the open ground. Aroused from sleep and enraged by their audacious intrusion, the devil, taking the form of an immense snake, assaulted the party and swallowed 50 of them before the thicket could be regained.

Among the first whites who settled among the Indians and traded with them, was a party of hunters who used this superstition to escape punishment for their reprehensible conduct. They reported that they were in league with the great spirit of evil, and to prove that they were, frequented this “old field.” They described his bed, under a large overhanging rock, as a model of neatness. They had frequently thrown into it stones and brushwood during the day, while the master was out, but the place was invariably as clean the next morning “as if it had been brushed with a bunch of feathers.”

But there is another legend of the Balsams more significant than any of these. It is the Paradise Gained of Cherokee mythology, and bears some distant resemblance to the Christian doctrine of mediation. The Indians believed that they were originally mortal in spirit as well as body, but above the blue vault of heaven there was, inhabited by a celestial race, a forest into which the highest mountains lifted their dark summits. It is a fact worth noticing that, while the priests of the orient described heaven as a great city with streets of gold and gates of pearl and fine gems, the tribes of the western continent aspired to nothing beyond the perpetual enjoyment of wild nature.

The mediator, by whom eternal life was secured for the Indian mountaineers, was a maiden of their own tribe. Allured by the haunting sound and diamond sparkle of a mountain stream, she wandered far up into a solitary glen, where the azalea, the kalmia, and the rhododendron brilliantly embellished the deep, shaded slopes, and filled the air with their delicate perfume. The crystal stream wound its crooked way between moss covered rocks over which tall ferns bowed their graceful stems. Enchanted by the scene she seated herself upon the soft moss and overcome by fatigue was soon asleep. The dream picture of a fairyland was presently broken by the soft touch of a strange hand. The spirit of her dream occupied a place at her side, and wooing, won her for his bride.

Her supposed abduction caused great excitement among her people, who made diligent search for her recovery in their own villages. Being unsuccessful, they made war upon the neighboring tribes in the hope of finding the place of her concealment. Grieved because of so much bloodshed and sorrow, she besought the great chief of the eternal hunting grounds to make retribution. She was accordingly appointed to call a council of her people at the forks of the Wayeh (Pigeon) river. She appeared unto the chiefs in a dream, and charged them to meet the spirits of the hunting ground with fear and reverence.

At the hour appointed the head men of the Cherokees assembled. The high Balsam peaks were shaken by thunder and aglare with lightning. The cloud, as black as midnight, settled over the valley; then lifted, leaving upon a large rock a cluster of strange men, armed and painted as for war. An enraged brother of the abducted maiden swung his tomahawk, and raised the war whoop; but a swift thunderbolt dispatched him before the echo had died in the hills. The chiefs, terror-stricken, fled to their towns.

The bride, grieved by the death of her brother and the failure of the council, prepared to abandon her new home and return to her kindred in the valleys. To reconcile her the promise was granted that all brave warriors and their faithful women should have an eternal home in the happy hunting ground above, after death. The great chief of the forest beyond the clouds became the guardian spirit of the Cherokees. All deaths, either from wounds in battle or disease, were attributed to his desire to make additions to the celestial hunting ground, or on the other hand, to his wrath which might cause their unfortunate spirits to be turned over to the disposition of the evil genius of the mountain tops. Plagues and epidemics were sometimes supposed to be the work of sorcerers, witches and monsters, human and superhuman. Once during an epidemic of smallpox, so says a traditional tale, a devil in human form was tracked to the headwaters of Tusquittee, where he was apprehended in a cave. They saluted him with a volley of poisoned arrows, which he tossed back with derisive laughter. After several repetitions with the same result, a bird spoke to the disheartened warriors, telling them that their enemy was invulnerable, except one finger which, if hit, would cause his instant death. As in the case of Achilles, of Troy, the vulnerable spot received a fatal shot, and the plague ceased its ravages. The bird was of the variety of little yellow songsters—a variety protected as sacred down to within the memory of the man from whom the writer received this legend.

We return now to the discussion of Indian names, with which the narration of incidents, connected with the geographical nomenclature of the Balsam mountains has slightly interfered. The Indian names of the French Broad have already been given. The present name has an historical signification to commend its continued use, if nothing more. Prior to the treaty made between England and France in 1763, the latter nation claimed all the country drained by the Mississippi, the ground of this claim being actual settlement near the mouth of that river and at several places along its course. International customs gave the claim validity, though the English never admitted it. Adair, an early historian, says: “Louisiana stretched to the head-springs of the Alleghany and Monongahela, of the Kenawha and Tennessee. Half a mile from the southern branch of the Savannah is Herbert’s spring, which flows into the Mississippi. Strangers who drank of it, would say they had tasted of French waters.” In like manner, traders and hunters from the Atlantic settlements, in passing from the headwaters of Broad river over the Blue Ridge, and coming to the streams with which they inosculate, would hear, as Adair did, of the French claim, and call it most naturally “French Broad.”

Watauga and Nollichucky are Cherokee designations, but the latter should be spelled Nouachuneh. We are unable to learn the original name of New river. Estatoa, flowing from the Black mountains, has been shortened to “Toe.” The Pigeon was originally Wayeh, which has been simply translated.

The reader should be reminded before going further into this subject that absolute accuracy in the importation of the Cherokee into our language cannot be attained. In the first place no combination of English letters can be made to represent the original sounds, nor can they be uttered by the English mouth. Then again, the same syllables with different inflections have different meanings. The English spelling is merely an attempt at imitation, and the meanings, given by those who profess to know, are sometimes only guesses. In spelling, uniformity is chiefly to be sought. One rule, however, should be followed implicitly: never use a letter whose sound requires closing the lips. A Cherokee said everything with his mouth open. “Tsaraghee” would come nearest a correct pronunciation of the name of the tribe, yet in its application to a mountain in Georgia it is “Currahee.”

The country occupied by the Cherokees down to within the memory of men still living, embraced the valleys west of the Balsam mountains. The first white settlers adopted the geographical nomenclature of the natives, which is still retained. Junaluska, the name of the picturesque mountain group overlooking the Richland and Scott’s creek valleys, was applied by white settlers in honor of the intrepid war chief who commanded the Indian forces in Alabama, belonging to Jackson’s army in the war of 1812. He was an exemplary man, honored by his people and respected by the whites. The State, in recognition of his military services, granted him a boundary of land in the Cheowah valley, known as the Junaluska farm, on which he was buried in 1847.

Tennessee, the name of the largest river in upper Carolina, is of Indian origin, but was written by the first explorers, “Tennasee.” Kalamutchee was the name of the main stream formed by the Clinch and Holston. The French named the whole river Cosquinambeaux which happily perished with the old maps.

The principal tributary of the Little Tennessee above the Smoky mountains is spelled differently on almost every map. The best authority, however, derived from the Indians themselves, through intelligent citizens, makes it a word of three syllables, spelled Tuckasege. Most old maps give it an additional syllable by doubling the final “e.” The English signification of the word is “terrapin.” There was a town of the same name above the site of Webster, and near it a pond which abounded in the water species of that reptile. The shells were much sought and highly prized by the Indians for ornaments. The couplet of mountains which divide the Tuckasege from Cashier’s valley, are locally known by the English signification “Terrapin,” but the original, “Tuckasege,” should be restored.

Ocona Lufta, the name of the pearly stream which flows through the Indian settlement, is derived from its having been a nesting place for ducks and other water fowls. One of its affluents, the Colehmayeh, is derived from Coleh, “raven,” and Mayeh, “water.” The English “Raven’s fork” is in common use among the whites. Soco, the name of another tributary of the Lufta, means “one.”

Charlestown, in Swain county, occupies the ancient site of the Indian village of Younaahqua or Big Bear. Wesuh, meaning “cat,” has taken the colloquialism Conley’s creek for its name. The post hamlet of Qualla town, in the present Cherokee settlement, is an English name modified to suit the Indian tongue. A white woman named Polly, familiarly “Aunt Polly,” opened a small store. Her Indian customers, unable to give the sound of “p,” their speech being open-mouthed, substituted the “q” sound, which came into general use and finally changed the word. Qualla is a very common name for Indian women.

The euphonious name Nantahala seems to be little understood. The most commonly given interpretation is “maiden’s bosom,” though that meaning can only be derived by a stretch of metaphor. If the word, as supposed by some interpreters, is compounded of Nantaseh and Eylee, it means “between ridges,” whence by far-fetched simile “maiden’s bosom.” But it is more probably compounded of Nantaseh and Eyalee, which literally means “The sun between,” or “half way,” hence “noonday sun.”

The Hiawassee was known among the earliest explorers as the Euphrasee, which was perhaps the name applied by a more southern tribe. The largest affluent of the Hiawassee is the Valley river, known by the Cherokees as Ahmachunahut, meaning “long stream.”

Cullasaja is the old name of that tributary of the Little Tennessee which heads in the Macon highlands, and is noted for the beauty of its cascades. The English signification of the word is “sweet water.” Sugar fork is the local designation, though the maps preserve the old and rich sounding original.

Satoola, the name of a high peak overlooking the upper Macon plateau, has been mercilessly pruned to “Stooley.” Horse Cove is the homely appellation of a parquet-shaped valley within the curved precipice which leads from Satoola to Whitesides. Sequilla, the old Indian name, has a much better sound. Cowee, the designation of the great transverse chain which divides the Tuckasege from the Tennessee is a corruption of Keowe, the form which still attaches to the river. It means “near”, or “at hand.”

The writers regret that they are unable to give the meaning of all the words of Indian origin which appear upon the map. They regret still more that they are unable to restore to all places of general interest the rich accents of the Cherokee tongue. It is a subject which will require long and patient study. Public interest must also be aroused, so that designations long since laid aside, when made known, will be locally applied.

We will now trace the rapid decline of the most warlike of all the Indian tribes, and conclude with an account of the remnant band known as the Eastern Cherokees. One of the first white invasions of the picturesque dominion of the ancient tribe was made by slave traders, late in the seventeenth century, in the interest of West India planters. Hundreds of strong warriors were bound and carried from Arcadia and freedom to malarious swamps and bondage, where they soon sank under the burden of oppressive labor. Cherokees made better slaves than any other Indians, on account of their superior strength and intelligence, and consequently were the most sought. Neighboring tribes were incited to make war upon them by the offer of prizes for captives. After long suffering and much bloodshed, the governor of Carolina, in response to the solicitations of the head men of the tribe, interposed the authority of his government. The Cherokee nation in return acknowledged Great Britain as its protector, and permitted the erection of British forts within its territory. Emissaries of France attempted to win the allegiance of these Indians with presents of gaudy blankets, and arms for the chase. While their affections vacillated between the two nations, the tribe proved loyal in the end to its first vow. In the French war in the year 1757, the Cherokees bore arms against France, with which nation most of the red race were in alliance. On their return from the forks of the Ohio, after the fall of Fort Duquesne, being poorly fed, they raided the settlements and carried away a large number of negro slaves. These taught their masters the elements of farming.

The Cherokees remained loyal to the king during the Revolution, and, associated with tory guerrillas, engaged in many acts of bloody violence. The transmontane settlement, on the Holston in East Tennessee, was the chief object of the tribe’s malignant jealousy. For six years, the little band of settlers held their lives in their hands, struggling incessantly with blood-thirsty foes and slowly devouring poverty.

The Indians themselves suffered incursions from both sides of the mountains. Their villages on the Tuckasege, Little Tennessee and the Hiawassee were frequently destroyed, the country pillaged, corn burned and ponies led away. Ramsey thus describes an expedition of Tennesseeans under command of Colonel John Sevier, the lion of the western border:

“The command, consisting of 120 men, went up Cane creek (from the Holston), crossed Ivy and Swanannoa,” thence through Balsam gap to the Tuckasege. “He entered and took by surprise the town of Tuckasege. Fifty warriors were slain, and fifty women and children taken prisoners. In that vicinity the troops under Sevier burnt 15 or 20 towns and all the graneries of corn they could find. It was a hard and disagreeable necessity that led to the adoption of these apparently cruel measures.” The lower and valley towns afterwards suffered a similar fate.

An incident illustrative of the times is associated with the naming of Fine’s creek in Haywood county. The Indians were in the habit of making sallies down the Pigeon into the Tennessee settlements, then returning to their mountain fastnesses. On one of these expeditions they were routed and followed by Peter Fine and a company of plucky militia. The Indians were overtaken in camp beyond the mountains, one killed and the property recovered. The whites were in turn followed by the Indians, and, while sustaining a night attack, Vinet Fine, the major’s brother, was killed. A hole was cut in the ice, and, to conceal the body from the savages, it was dropped into the creek. It is appropriate, therefore, that the stream should be called Fine’s creek.

Soon after the Revolution the Cherokees made a session of all their lands between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. More than 12,000 Indians were present at the council. Monnette’s History gives the prophetic speech of an old chief—Oconnastotee. He began by describing the flourishing condition of his nation in the past, and the encroachments of the whites upon the retiring and expiring tribes of Indians, who left their homes and the seats of their ancestors to gratify the insatiable thirst of the white people for more land. Whole nations had melted away, and had left their names only as recorded by their enemies and destroyers. It was once hoped that they would not be willing to travel beyond the mountains so far from the ocean on which their commerce was carried on. That fallacious hope had vanished, for the whites had already settled on the Cherokee lands, and now wished to have their usurpations sanctioned by treaty. When that shall have been done new sessions will be applied for, and finally the country which the Cherokees and their forefathers occupied will be applied for. The small remnant which may then exist of this once great and powerful nation will be compelled to seek a new home in some far distant wilderness.

But a few years elapsed before the beginning of the fulfillment of this prophesy. Emigration after the Revolution became a mania. The Watauga passes were filled with teams en route for the Holston valley, and roads were constructed up the Blue Ridge to the garden valley of the upper French Broad.

The Indians were soon forced to retire beyond the Balsams, into the valley of the Little Tennessee and its upper branches. Tennessee acquired, by purchase and otherwise, most of the Cherokee territory in that state, while Georgia adopted a harsh and oppressive policy, calculated to produce discontent. As early as 1790, a band of low country Cherokees emigrated beyond the Mississippi, from which time, as the hunting grounds became more and more contracted, discouragement and a desire to go west, became general among the clans below the Smoky mountains and Blue Ridge. Several treaties ceding portions of their domain were made, and finally a faction representing themselves as agents of the tribe, in 1835 surrendered “all rights, title, and possession to all the lands owned and occupied by the Cherokee Indians,” in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi. The North Carolina Indians and a portion of those in Georgia and Tennessee protested vigorously against the terms of the treaty. Under the leadership of the proud warrior Junaluska, they were among the most valiant of General Jackson’s soldiers in the second war with Great Britain. They now vainly appealed to the same General Jackson as President of the United States, for the privilege of remaining in the land of their fathers.

By a treaty made in 1819 the Cherokees had ceded all their lands, “saving and reserving one section for each family who chose to remain.” The clans that desired to emigrate were given lands and transportation. The treaty of 1835 provided for an exchange of all the eastern reservations for lands in the west, without discretion; but through the influence of Colonel W. H. Thomas, the treaty was so modified that certain towns were to have money compensation for their reservations under the treaty of 1819, with which to purchase new homes in their native land. These were to be held in fee simple by as many as chose to remain.

A large percentage of the tribe denied the validity of the treaty altogether, and only yielded when the force of General Scott’s army was brought to bear, in 1837. It is in those who accepted the advice and offices of Colonel Thomas, and remained in North Carolina, we are chiefly interested. Their kin who voluntarily emigrated or were driven west of the Mississippi have progressed steadily in the useful arts, have schools, churches, farms and cattle.

The Eastern Band, as those who remained and purchased farms, and their descendants are known, has been steadily decreasing in numbers, there being at present but slightly above 1100 souls.

Colonel Thomas, who was, until recent years, the chief of the band, was born in the Pigeon river valley, and, at a very early age, left an orphan. Felix Walker, the Congressional representative from the Western North Carolina district, had two stores, one at Waynesville and one in the Indian country, on Soco, in which latter store young Thomas was placed as clerk. Most of the customers being Indians, he soon learned to speak and write Cherokee. These linguistic attainments made him invaluable to the tribe for the transaction of public and private business. Younaguska (Drowning Bear), the reigning chief, adopted the lad into his family and tribe, and gave him entire clerical charge of public affairs.

The chief, Younaguska, was an extraordinary Indian. He was acute, vigorous, and determined; qualities which made him both respected and feared by his people. He knew how to control their weaknesses and use their superstitions.

The Cherokees, like all Indians who come in contact with the whites, became intemperate. Younaguska, though himself addicted to the use of whisky to excess, determined upon a reformation of his people. He sank into a trance, so heavy that the whole town supposed him to be dead, though some signs of life remained. Anxiously they watched and waited for fifteen days, when it was determined to perform the funeral rites according to their ancient usages. The tribe assembled. The plaintive notes of the funeral song began to mingle with the roll of the Lufty. They marched and counter-marched, 1,200 of them, around the prostrate body of their chief. Then came a sudden pause and fright, for the dead had returned to life! An old familiar voice was summoning their attention. He spoke with deep feeling, telling his people that he had been in a trance; that he had communed with the great spirit; that his long service for his people was not yet ended; he was to remain with them as many years as he had been days in the “happy hunting ground.”

Having thus given to his speech the authority of inspiration, he proceeded to tell them that he had served them upwards of 40 years without any pecuniary consideration whatever. His sole aim had been to promote their good. Their happiness in the future was his chief concern. He was convinced that intemperance was the cause of the extermination of the Indian tribes who lived in contact with the whites. As an example he referred to the previous and present condition of the Catawbas, with whom they were acquainted. He deplored the scenes of dissipation so common among his own people, and closed by directing Mr. Thomas, from whom this account has been derived, to write the following pledge: “The undersigned Cherokees, belonging to the town of Qualla, agree to abandon the use of spirituous liquors.” The old chief signed first and was followed by the whole town. This pledge was enforced with the rigor of a written law, its violation in every instance being punished at the public whipping post. Younaguska expressed pleasure in the knowledge that his people confided in him. He advised them to remain where they were, in North Carolina, a State more friendly and better disposed toward the red man than any other. Should they remove west they would there too soon be surrounded by the whites and perhaps included in a State disposed to oppress them.

Younaguska’s influence over them was well nigh omnipotent, and was exerted uniformly with a view to their improvement. Colonel Thomas, whose acquaintance with public men was extensive, has declared that this old Indian was the intellectual peer of John C. Calhoun. There is certainly a place in history for the individual, whatever be his race, who can elevate a band of warriors and hunters into a community of agriculturists, capable of raising their own food and manufacturing their own clothing.

Before Younaguska died he assembled his people and publicly willed the chieftainship to his clerk, friend and adopted son, W. H. Thomas, whom he commended as worthy of respect and whom he adjured them to obey as they had obeyed him. He was going to the home provided for him by the great spirit; he would always keep watch over his people and would be grieved to see any of them disobey the new chief he had chosen to rule over them. It was therefore under the most auspicious circumstances that Colonel Thomas became chief of the Eastern Band of the Cherokees. He had been with them long enough to know their character. He made himself absolute in everything, and required the strictest obedience. He kept constantly in their minds the injunction of Younaguska, and warned them at every critical juncture of the danger of incurring the displeasure of the spirit of their old chief. Councils were held according to the ancient usages of the tribe, but they did little more than confirm the transactions of the chief.

Colonel Thomas, as provided by the treaty of 1835, used the funds of the Indians in the purchase of homes. He provided for their education and encouraged religious exercises among them. When the war broke out he led four companies into the Confederate army. They showed capacity for discipline and were not wanting in courage; but like a great many of these highlanders, they had no interest in the cause, and employed the first opportunity to desert, some of them joining the Federal army and many finding their mountain homes. During the war the tribe’s internal affairs were in chaos, its councils were without a head, and its members lapsed into dissipation and laziness. The ban of an adverse fatality seemed to rest over these unfortunate pilgrims on their way from barbarism to civilization.

Their chief was stricken with nervous disease when his services were most needed, and years of confusion and imposition followed. There were rival pretenders to the chieftainship, who divided the band into factions and threatened at one time a contest at arms. The animus of this whole affair was the avarice of several white adventurers who were seeking to control the business of the tribe in order to get into their own hands the claims due the Indians from the United States. Even under such circumstances these people demonstrated their capacity for self government. One of the contestants, whose English name was John Ross, was forced to abandon his pretensions, and Lloyd Welsh, his competitor, soon after died. A written constitution had in the meantime been adopted, which is still in force. Nimrod Jarrett Smith, an intelligent and educated member of the tribe, was elected by popular vote to the chieftainship for the term of four years, and has since been re-elected.

The Eastern Band of Cherokees have title in fee simple to 50,000 acres of land on the Ocona Lufta and Soco creek, known as the Qualla boundary. A few small tracts belonging to individual Indians are included. Besides this boundary, there are belonging to the band and individuals 1,521 acres in detached tracts lying in the counties of Cherokee, Graham, Jackson, and Swain. According to the census of 1880, there were living in the Qualla reserve, 825; in Cherokee county, 83; in Graham county, 189, and in Macon county, 12, making a total of 1,109. This number is ten per cent. less than in 1870. The Graham county Indians live along the head branches of the Cheowah, those in Cherokee county on Valley river.

The Indians have no towns, nor does their manner of life differ in many particulars from that of the white people among whom they reside. A stranger, unless he sees the inmates, does not distinguish an Indian cabin from a white man’s, nor, with few exceptions, an Indian’s little cove farm from one of its class cultivated by a white man.

The valley of Soco is the locality of densest Indian population. The fields, originally of average fertility, are worn out by bad farming. There is an abundance of fruit—apples, peaches and plums. The predominant crop is corn, which is reduced to meal by the simple little mills common to the mountain country. Small herds of ponies are frequently seen by the wayside. These, and a few cattle, are the main sources of revenue upon which the people rely for what money they need. Taxes and expenses incident to their government, including schools is the extent of cash demands made upon them. They manufacture their own clothing. The primitive dress of the warriors and hunters consisted of deer skin leggins and moccasins, a highly colored shirt, and a kind of turban ornamented with feathers. The moccasins alone survive, the dress of an Indian in all other respects being like that of his white neighbor. The Cherokee women of the present generation are unattractive. Some of the young children who attend school are clean and neat in person and dress, which is more than can be said of many of the mothers. The women are seldom seen upon the road without burdens, though the men rarely carry anything. The lower valley of the Soco is barren of scenic interest, yet these metamorphosed representatives of a primitive population cannot fail to occupy the attention of the tourist. You may be interested in some of the details of our trip from the mouth of the Ocona Lufta to Soco gap.

A SOCO LASS

The loquacious innkeeper at Charleston started us off with a comfortable breakfast and the information that the distance to Yellow Hill, the residence of Chief Smith and Cherokee seat of government, was about eleven miles, and from there to Waynesville, through Soco gap, was twenty-five. Two hours’ ride through the sandy, but well cultivated valley of the Tuckasege brought us to the Ocona Lufta. From this point the road follows the general course of the stream, but, avoiding its curves, is at places so far away that the roar of the rapids sounds like the distant approach of a storm. At places the road is almost crowded into the river by the stern approach of precipices, and then again they separate while crossing broad, green, undulating bottoms. Overtaking an old squaw and a girl probably ten years old, we inquired the distance to Yellow Hill. The old woman shook her head and gave us an expressionless look, indicating that she did not understand. The girl in good English gave us intelligible directions. We learned subsequently that nearly all the Cherokee children can speak and write English. Many of the old folks can understand our language, but will not admit it. I began asking some questions of a stoop-shouldered, heavy-set fellow about the country. He stood dumb, but when I told him I wanted to buy a few peaches his eye brightened, and the words “How many?” were distinctly uttered.

We arrived at Yellow Hill about 11 o’clock. Chief Smith resides in a comfortable house of four rooms, situated on top of an elevation in the midst of a plain of considerable extent. In an open yard near the house is a frame building used for a school-house, meeting-house, and council-house. We found Chief Smith in his residence, writing at a table covered with books, pamphlets, letters, and manuscripts. The room is neatly papered and comfortably furnished. The chief received us with cordiality. He was dressed in white starched shirt, with collar and cuffs, Prince Albert coat, well-fitting black pantaloons, and calf-skin boots shining like ebony. He is more than six feet tall, straight as a plumb line, and rather slender. His features are rough and prominent. His forehead is full but not high, and his thick, black hair, combed to perfect smoothness, hung down behind large protruding ears, almost to the coat collar. He has a deep, full-toned voice, and earnest, impressive manner. His wife is a white woman, and his daughters, bright, intelligent girls, have been well-educated. One of them was operating a sewing-machine, another writing for her father.

Under the present constitution the chief’s term of office is four years. His salary is $500 a year, and $4 a day additional when on business in Washington. No one but a Cherokee of more than 35 years of age is eligible to the chieftainship. There is an assistant chief who receives $250 yearly. He is one of the council, and in the absence of the chief performs his duties. There are in addition three executive advisers. The council consists of two delegates to every 100 persons. It is presided over by the chief, who has the veto power, but who is not at liberty to act in any matter of public policy without the authority of the council. Every male Indian over sixteen years old, and every white man who has an Indian wife, is allowed to vote. No one is eligible to office who has ever aided and abetted, or in any way joined the whites in defrauding the tribe; neither can any one hold office who denies the being of a God, or of a future state of rewards and punishments. There is general satisfaction with the present government, and Mr. Smith declares there is entire loyalty in all the settlements.

A public school is maintained, and even the old and middle-aged are better educated than the whites in many communities. The young are taught in both Cherokee and English. It is unfortunate that no public fund is provided for the advanced education of the more intelligent of them, that they might become teachers. Others should be placed in shops where they would become artisans. Finely engraved pipes, ornaments, and well made baskets show their capacity in this direction. Their industry at present is not commendable.

The christianization of the Cherokees was begun in 1801, by Moravian missionaries. It was easy to adapt their old faith to the new creed, and many were converted. Other churches have since taken up the work, Baptists deserving the most credit, and next to them the Methodists. They are naturally devout, and most of them are in regular communion with the church, thereby imposing marriage laws and other social regulations. Christianity has strengthened and solemnized the marriage tie, which in the prouder but more barbarous condition of the tribe was a very weak relation. Boys used to choose their wives at sixteen to eighteen years of age, live with them a few years and then abandon them and their families. It not unfrequently happened that after rioting with strange women for a period, they came back to their first choice, unless their places had been taken by others. Prostitution was common, though considered the most disgraceful of crimes, and punished by shearing the head. This punishment has been discontinued. Although there has been a healthy change in social morals there is room for improvement.

Rigid seriousness is a marked element of Indian character, and is written in unmistakable lines upon their faces. The Cherokee language is not capable of expressing a witticism, and anything like a joke is foreign to their nature. They have a great many so-called dances, but none of them, like the dance of the negro, is the effervescence of irrepressible joy. The Indian dances as a preparation for some coming event; he never celebrates. It seems to be a legacy of his heathen ideas of making sacrifice to the great spirit, apparently involving much painful labor. In the primitive days the whole tribe danced before making war, and the warriors danced before going into battle. It is still their custom to go through these melancholy perambulations before every contest of strength, such as a game of ball or a wrestling match. The funeral dance and the wedding dance are performed with the same stern immobility of features.

From Yellow Hill our party started to Qualla post-office, a collection of a half-dozen unattractive houses, inhabited by whites, but at one time the council house of the band. The Ocona Lufta crossed our path at the beginning. The purity of the stream seemed to forbid the intrusion of a dirty hoof, but there was no time to indulge sentiment. The ford is shallow, and angles down stream. My horse mistook a canoe landing, almost opposite, for his place of destination, his rider’s attention being absorbed in the blocks of many colored granite and transparent crystals of quartz, which form the bottom pavement. Three-fourths way across, the water was smooth and touched the horse’s neck. Another length, a plunge, and the horse was swimming; still the lustrous bottom shone with undiminished distinctness.

On our way through Quallatown to Soco creek, we passed numerous wayfarers carrying corn, fruit, baskets, and babies. One woman had a bushel of corn tied in a sack around her waist, a basket of apples on her head, and a baby in her arms. A slouchy man was walking at her side empty-handed and scolding, probably because she was unable to carry him. Under a peach tree before a cabin stood a witch-like squaw and half a dozen unattractive children. “Is this the Soco road?” was asked. “Satula” issued from her grim old mouth, and her finger pointed at the peaches.

“No, Soco; is this Soco?” nervously urged our companion, pointing up the stream.

“Uh,” she grunted out, and handed him one peach, from which we inferred that “soco” means “one.” A white woman in the vicinity confirmed our guess, and told us that “satula” is equivalent to the phrase “do you want it?”

Pause, and look at an “Indian maiden” by the road side. We did. Who, that has read Longfellow, and Cooper, and Irving, could pass without looking? She certainly could not have been the inspiration of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. She stands, in my recollection, with fishing rod in hand—about five feet tall, and 140 pounds in weight. Black, coarse, knotted hair hangs down her back to the waist. Under her low forehead is a pair of large, black eyes, which, unfortunately, are devoid of expression. Her cheek bones are wider than her forehead and almost touch the level of her eyes. A flat nose, straight mouth, and small ears, complete the physiognomy which showed no sign of thinking. Her neck is short and thick, and her shoulders broader than her broad hips. Her waist is almost manly. A gown of homespun, patched and dirty, half conceals her knees. With a glance at a large, but clumsy, pair of ankles, and flat feet, we pass on out of the Indian settlement along the rapids of Soco. We had not been approached by a beggar, or asked to buy a penny worth of anything during the whole day.

The scenery along the torrents of Soco creek, down the western slope of the Balsams, rivals in variety and picturesque effect that of any place in the Appalachians. There are no grand chasms, nor grand cascades. There is nothing, indeed, which calls for superlative adjectives, unless, possibly, we except the immensity of the trees, the unbroken carpeting of moss, and the perfect grace of tall ferns. There is, in the curves of the torrent, as it bounds over precipices and down rapids, compelling us to cross its noisy channel at least twenty times; in the conformation of the glens through which we rode; in the massiveness and towering height of the great chain, up whose side we were climbing; in the white fragments of rock, which reflect the sun light from the stream’s channel and the highway; in the rounded cliffs, so modest that they keep themselves perpetually robed in a seamless vesture of moss; in the ferns, the shrubs, the trees, in the absolute solitude and loneliness of the place,—there is something so complex in its effect upon the interested student of nature that he is unwearied by the two hours and a half required to make the ascent.

MOUNT PISGAH.

West Asheville in the Foreground.

IN THE HAUNTS OF THE BLACK BEAR.

The bear, with shaggy hide
Red-stained from blood of slaughtered swine, at night
Slain by him on the mountain’s lower side,
Roused by the breaking light,
Comes growling to his lair.
Distant, the baying of an eager pack,
Like chiming bells, sweeps thro’ the chilly air
Above the scented track.

HE black bear, native to North America, still exists in large numbers on the wildest ranges of the southern mountains. The work of extermination pursued by hunter and trapper proceed more slowly against him than against his fellow inhabitant of the wilderness—the deer, in which every faint halloo of mountaineer, or distant bay of the hounds, strikes terror; and whose superior fleetness of limb only serves to carry him to the open river—his slaughter ground.

Bruin’s usual haunts are in those melancholy forests which hood the heads of the Black, Smoky, and Balsam ranges, and deck a few summits of the Blue Ridge, resorted to either from liking, or to avoid his enemies; and it is only when pushed by hunger or when his tooth has become depraved by a bait of hog, taken during one of these starving periods, that he appears on the lower slopes or in the cultivated valleys. However, there are some localities, much lower than those mantled by the fir forests, where the black bear still roams. In some sections of the lower French Broad he is occasionally seen. The region of the Great Hog-back, Whiteside, Satoola, and Short-off, afford some sport in this line for the hunter; while among the Nantihalas frequent successful hunts are undertaken.

For bear-driving in the Black mountains, the best place for a stranger who really wishes to kill a bear, and who feels himself equal to so arduous a tramp, is “Big Tom” Wilson’s, on Cane river. To reach it, you take the stage from Asheville to Burnsville, and then ride or walk from the village 15 miles to the home of the old hunter. He is familiar with every part of the mountains. He it was that discovered the body of Professor Mitchell. Another good starting point would be from some cabin on the Toe river side, reaching it by leaving the main traveled road at a point, shown you by the native, between Burnsville and Bakersville. A start might be made on the Swannanoa side; but the guides close at the base of the mountains have become perverted by too much travel from abroad, and will show more anxiety about securing pay for their accommodations and services than interest in driving up a bear. Judging, however, from the number of traps set in the latter locality, one would form the idea that bears pay frequent visits to the cornfields.

For a drive in the Smoky mountains, read the sketch on deer hunting. The region of the Cataluche, 22 miles north of Waynesville, is an excellent place to visit. The log-cabin of Tyre McCall on the head-waters of the French Broad, and near Brevard, would afford fair headquarters for him who wished to rough it. Deer and bear roam on the Tennessee Bald within five miles of the cabin. Tyre is a horny-handed but hospitable host, and would hunt with you in earnest.

In the Nantihalas, Alexander Mundy’s is the point from which to start on a bear hunt. Further into the wilderness, on the far boundary of Graham county, rise the Santeelah and Tellico mountains. At Robbinsville information can be obtained regarding the best hunter with whom to remain for a week’s sport.

With this slight introduction, the writer proposes to convey to the reader some idea of what bear hunting in the heart of the Alleghanies is like; what one must expect to encounter, and what sort of friends he is likely to make on such expeditions. Besides the usual equipments carried by every hunter, it would be well to take a rubber blanket and have the guide carry an ax.

It was one night about the 1st of December that we were in camp; eight of us, huddled together under a low bark roof, and within three frail sides of like material. Around the camp lay seventeen dogs. The ground beneath us was cold and bare, except for a thin layer of ferns lately bundled in by some of the party. Before the front of the shelter, lay a great fire of heavy logs, heaped close enough for a long-legged sleeper to stick his feet in, while his head rested on the bolster log. The hot flames, fanned by a strong wind, leaped high and struggled up into the darkness. On long sticks, several of the group were toasting chunks of fat pork; others were attending to black tin pails of water boiling for coffee, while the remaining few were eating lunches already prepared. The wood crackled, and occasionally the unseasoned chestnut timber snapped, sending out showers of sparks. Around and within the circle of fire-light, stood the trees with stripped, gaunt limbs swaying in the wind. Above, clouds rolled darkly, concealing the face of the sky.

The temporary camp of a party of mountaineers on the hunt for Bruin, as viewed by night, presents a scene of unique interest. It is a shelter only for the time being; no one expects to return to it, for by the following night the hounds may be 20 miles away, and the drivers and standers toasting bear steaks in their cabins, or encamping on some distant height preparatory to resuming on the morrow the chase of a bruin who had through one day eluded their pursuit. The mountain straggler often sees by the trail which he follows, the ashes and scattered black brands of an extinguished fire, and the poles and birch bark of an abandoned camp. At this view he imagines he has some idea of a hunter’s camp; but it is like the conception of the taste of an oyster from a sight of the empty shell.

Situated as above described, we were improving an opportunity afforded for devouring the whole oyster. Our encampment was on Old Bald; not the famous shaking mountain, but of the Balsams, eight miles south of Waynesville. A few days previous, a denizen of Caney Fork, while crossing the mountain by the new dug road, came face to face with a black bear, gray about the nose and ears, and of enormous size, as he said. Did you ever hear a tale where the bear was not of size too large to swallow? The denizen of the valley had no fire-arms with him, so both, equally frightened, stood staring at each other, until the denizen of the mountain shuffled into the beech woods. This report considerably interested the Richland settlers. They laid their plans for an early hunt, and had them prematurely hatched by information brought in by the highest log-chopper on the creek, that his yard had been entered the last past night by some “varmint,” and a fine hundred-pound hog (otherwise known as a mountain shad) killed and eaten within the pig-pen. The log-chopper had followed the trail for some distance, but without avail.

That same afternoon our party climbed the mountain by an old bridle-path, arriving just before sunset at a place admirably suited for a camp. Two steep ridges, descending from the main mountain top, hold between them the channel of a sparkling brook. Its water is crystal in clearness and icy cold. The wood, principally beech, is green with casings of moss, and the cold rocks in the brook’s bed and on the slopes above it are covered with a like growth. Where the trail enters the water the ground is level on one bank, and here we decided to kindle our fire, and, as the air was quite chilly, bearing indications of a storm, to erect a light shelter.

Dry leaves and twigs make excellent tinder for a flint’s spark to settle and blaze in, and enough seasoned logs, bark, and limbs always lie scattered through this forest to afford campfires. Our’s was soon flaming. The loosened bark of a fallen beech furnished us the material for the roof and sides of a shelter, which we built up on four forked limbs driven into the ground and covered with long poles. It was secured against wind assaults by braces.

Near where we encamped, and below on the Beech Flats, stand trees as stately and magnificent as any ever touched by woodman’s ax. We noticed several cherries measuring four and a half feet through, and towering, straight as masts, 70 feet before shooting out a limb; poplars as erect and tall to their lower branches and of still greater diameter; chestnuts from 15 to 33 feet in circumference, and thousands of sound, lofty linns, ashes, buckeyes, oaks, and sugar maples. A few hemlocks considerably exceed 100 feet in height. A tree called the wahoo, grows here as well as on many of the ranges. It bears a white lily-shaped flower in the summer. Numerous cucumber trees are scattered on the slopes. These with the beech, water birch, black birch or mountain mahogany, black gum, red maple, and hickory, form the forests from the mountain bases to the line of the balsams. On the Beech Flats there is no underbrush, except where the rhododendron hedges the purling streams. In places the plain path, the stately trees, and the level or sloping ground, covered only with the mouldering leaves of autumn, form parks more magnificent than those kept in trim by other hands than nature’s.

The best hounds, known as the “leaders,” were fastened to poles stuck in the ground at the corners of our lodge. This was done to prevent them starting off during the night on the trail of a wolf, raccoon, or wildcat, thereby exhausting themselves for the contemplated bear hunt. The rest of the pack were either standing around, looking absently into the fire, or had already stretched themselves out in close proximity to it.

“The way them curs crawl up to the blaze,” said Wid Medford, “is a shore sign thet hits goin’ ter be cold nuff ter snow afore mornin’.”

No one disputed his assertion, and so, relative to this subject, he spun a story of how one of his hounds, one night many years since, had crept so close to the camp fire that all of his hair on one side was burnt off, and Wid awoke to detect the peculiar scent and to feel the first flakes of a snow storm that fell three feet deep before daylight. As though this story needed something to brace it up, Wid continued: “Whatever I talk of as facts, you kin count on as true as Scriptur.”

Israel Medford, nicknamed Wid, the master-hunter of the Balsam range, is a singular character, and a good representative of an old class of mountaineers, who, reared in the wilderness, still spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. He possesses a standard type of common sense; an abundance of native wit, unstrengthened by even the slightest “book-larnin’;” is a close observer, a perfect mimic, and a shrewd judge of character. His reputation as a talker is wide-spread; and, talking to the point, he commands the closest attention. His conversation abounds in similes; and, drawn as they are from his own observation, they are always striking. He is now sixty-five years old, and has been all his life a resident of Haywood county.

That night as he sat cross-legged close to the fire, turning in the flames a stick with a slice of fat pork on it, with his broad-brimmed hat thrown on the ground, fully exposing his thick, straight, gray locks, and clear, ruddy, hatchet-shaped face, bare but for a red mustache, lighted up with youthful animation, he kept shaking the index finger of his right hand, while in his talk he jumped from one subject to another with as much alacrity as his bow legs might carry him over the mountains.

“What I don’t know about these mountings,” said he, directing his keen blue eyes upon one member of the group, “haint of enny profit to man or devil. Why, I’ve fit bars from the Dark Ridge kentry to the headwaters of the French Broad. I’ve brogued it through every briar patch an’ laurel thicket, an’ haint I bin with Guyot, Sandoz, Grand Pierre, and Clingman over every peak from hyar to the South Caroliny an’ Georgy lines? Say?”

“What do you mean by ‘brogued it’?” was asked.

“Crawled, thets what hit means; just as you’d hev to do ef you perused every pint o’ the mountings; ef you went through Hell’s Half Acre; ef you slid down the Shinies, or clim the Chimbleys.”

“Hit’s rough thar,” remarked a broad-shouldered, heavy-mustached young fellow, named Allen.

“Rough?” resumed Wid, “wal, I reckon hit is.”

“But a man can git in rough places right on this slope, can’t he?” some one inquired.

“In course,” remarked another hunter, “Wid, you cum powerful nigh peeterin’ out nigh hyar, wunct, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Wid, now devoting his attention partly to a boiling pot of coffee, “Thet day war a tough un. Hit war a hot summer day. We,—thet is, Bill Massey who’s awmost blind now, Bill Allen who gin up huntin’ long ye’rs ago, my brother El, me, an’ sev’ral others,—we started a bar on the Jackson county line nigh Scotts creek in the mornin’. We driv till arter-noon, an’ in the chase I got below hyar. I heered the dogs up on Ole Bald, an’ abearin’ down the ridge-top I was on. Powerful soon I seed the bar comin’ on a dog-trot under the trees. He war a master brute!”

“How big, Wid?”

“Four-hunderd an’ fifty pound, net. Thinks me to myself, ‘Gun fust, knife next’; fer, you see, I war clean played out with the heat and long run, an’ I war in favor o’ bringin’ the thing to a close; so I brought my ole flint-lock to my shoul’er. This is the very gun I hed then,” and he tapped the battered stock of a six-foot, black-barreled, flint-lock rifle.

“I wouldn’t hev your cap arrangements. This kind never misses fire; an’ rain never teches hit, fer this ’ere kiver, ter put over the pan, keeps hit as dry as a tarripin hull.”

“Go on with the story,” exclaimed an interested auditor.

“Jist tend ter brilin’ your bacon, Jonas, an’ let me travel ter suit my own legs. I fetched my gun to my shoul’er an’ fired. The brute never stopped, but I knowed I’d hit him, for I hed a dead sight on his head; an’, like blockade whisky, a ball outer thet black bore allus goes to the spot. He’s a thick-skulled varmint, I thought. I dropped my gun, an’ pulled my knife. On he cum. He didn’t pay no more tenshun to me then ef I’d bin a rock. I drew back a step, an’ as he brashed by me, I bent over him, grabbin’ the ha’r o’ his neck with one hand, an’ staubed him deep in the side with the knife in the other. Thet’s all I knowed for hours.”

“Did you faint?” some one asked.

“Faint?” sneered Wid, sticking out his square chin and showing his teeth. “You ass! You don’t reckon I faint, do you? Women faint. I fell dead! You see all the blood in me jumped over my heart into my head, an’ ov course hit finished me fer a time.”

“A dead faint,” was suggested.

“I don’t like thet word, stranger. But, the boys an’ dogs cum on me a second arter. Bill Allen cut my veins an’ in a short time I cum round, but I war sick fer a week.”

“How about the bear?”

“Hit lay dead by the branch below, staubed clean through the heart.”

Before the story ended, a noise like thunder came rolling to us through the forests. Owing to the strange time of the year for a thunder storm, we were slow in realizing that one was brooding, but repeated peals and long rumbling echoes, preceded by vivid flashes of light in the northern sky, soon convinced us of this fact. The wind changed, grew stronger, and soughed dismally through the trees. Rain began pattering on the bark roof: it came in slight showers, ceasing with each gust and flaw, then descending in torrents. The fire grew fiercer under these attempts to smother it, and with the shifting of the wind, much to our discomfiture, smoke and sparks were driven under the roof. Occasionally, a strong blast would make us draw up our feet as the flames, leveled to the ground, whirled in on us.

The situation became unendurable, and in a lull of the storm we crawled out in the open air; tore down our camp, and changed it around with its back wall towards the wind. This occupied but a few minutes, and we were soon ensconced again. It was a wretched night. We lay tight together, like spoons, the six middle men being well protected from cold, but not from leaks in the roof. The two end men fared less comfortably with one side exposed. No one slept unless it was the gray-headed Medford, hardened by 1001 nights of like experience. The rain ceased before morning, but the temperature was considerably below the freezing point, and icicles had formed on the end of the roof fartherest from the fire. All night we had shifted and changed our positions, and the gray light of dawn found us in the ashes, seemingly close enough to the fire to blister our faces, suffering in martyr-like submission with smoke in our eyes and backs cold.

I never saw a man with a good appetite for breakfast after a night of wakefulness beside a camp fire. After a long tramp, you can eat the roughest food with relish, but there is nothing tempting about hot coffee without sugar and cream, dry cornbread and fat meat, in the ashes, on a cold, raw morning before the stars have paled in the sky. However, on the unpleasant prospect of seven hours elapsing before another snack, on this occasion we did stuff down some solid food, and drank copiously of the coffee.

At this time an artist, seated at some distance up the brook, would have seen a spectacle of striking interest for the subject of a painting. In the center of his canvas he would have placed a huge fire with blaze, ten feet high; behind it, half hidden by smoke and flame, the outlines of a rude shelter; around it, their rugged features brightly lighted up, a group of shivering mountaineers, some wrapped to their hat rims in blankets, others with closely buttoned coats, and all squatting on the ground or standing leaning on their rifles; the dogs in all imaginable postures, either crouched close to the fire, or, outside the human circle, struggling for the possession of a dry crust; the great, mossed trunks of trees springing from the ferny rocks and slopes on which moved fantastic shadows. He could have shown the stillness of the air by the straightness of the column of ascending smoke, and the winter chill by the gaunt branches encased in ice. But the sounds of camp life—striking characteristics of the scene—would have eluded him. No brush could have conveyed to the canvas the snarling of the dogs, the laugh of a strong-lunged hunter, or Wid’s startling imitation of the hoot of the owl, awakening the echoes of the gorges and responses from the night-bird just repairing to his roost.

We ascended Old Bald by a trail termed the “winds.” It was icy underfoot, and some of the party had severe falls before we issued, from the dwarf beeches, upon the bare backbone of the range. Although no breeze was stirring that morning on the north side of the mountain, a bitter, winter blast was sweeping the summit. It cut through our clothing like wizard, sharp-edged knives that left no traces except the tingling skin. This blast had chased off every cloud, leaving clear, indigo-blue depths for the sun, just lifting over Cold Spring mountain, to ride through. As we reached the bare, culminating point of the narrow ridge between Old Bald and Lone Balsam, the sun had cleared himself from the mountain tops; and, red and round, doubly increased in size, he was shedding his splendor on a scene unsurpassed in beauty and wild sublimity. The night rain, turning to sleet on the summits of the mountains, had encased the black balsam forests, covering the Spruce Ridge and Great Divide, in armors of ice. They glistened like hills and pinnacles of silver in the sunlight. Below the edges of these iced forests, stood the deciduous trees of the mountains, brown and bare. No traces of the storm clung to them. The hemlocks along the head-prongs of the Richland were green and dark under the shadows of the steep declivities. No clouds were clinging to the streams through the valleys, and visible in all the glory of the frosty morn, lay the vale of the Richland, with its stream winding through it like an endless silver ribbon. The white houses of Waynesville were shining in the sunlight pouring through the gap towards the Pigeon. No smoke was circling above their roofs. The quiet of night apparently still pervaded the street. High, and far behind it, rose the mystic, purple heights of the Newfound.

On the side towards the south the scene was different. Mountains are here rolled so closely together that the valleys between them are hidden from sight. There are no pleasant vales, dotted with clearings or animated by a single column of cabin smoke. No evergreens are to be seen beyond the slope of the Balsams. That December morning the vast ranges looked black and bare under the cutting wind, and far off, 30 miles on a bee-line through space, rose Whiteside and its neighboring peaks, veritably white from snow mantling their summits.

Medford had been right in his prediction; snow had fallen, but not in our immediate vicinity. Before noon, as we had good reasons to believe, the wintry character of the scene would be changed under the influence of the sun in an unclouded sky. As we descended into the low gap between Lone Balsam and the next pinnacle of the Balsams, Ickes, who had started in advance, came out in sight, on the ridge top, at a point some distance below us. Just at the moment he appeared, a turkey rose, like a buzzard, out of the winter grass near him, and was about to make good its flight for the iced forests beyond, when his gun came to his shoulder, a flash and a report succeeded, and the great bird whirled and fell straight downward into the firs. The mountaineers yelled with delight. Shot-guns being little used in this section, shooting on the wing is an almost unheard of art. Not one of those bear hunters had ever seen a shot of like nature, and the unostentatious young sportsman was raised to a high notch in their estimation. When we reached him, he had already descended into the grove and returned with his game. It was somewhat bruised, and feathers considerably ruffled from falling through tree-tops upon a rocky ground.

A mountain turkey is no small game. This one was a magnificent specimen; a royal turkey-gobbler, that by stretching his brilliant neck would have stood four feet high. Stripped of his green and blue bronzed plumage, and prepared for the oven, he weighed 24 pounds. In the neighborhood of Waynesville I have bought the same birds about Christmas time for 50 cents a piece, and the hunter, who, with heavy rifle, had ranged the cold mountain top before day-break, and then brought his game eight miles down the winding trail, felt satisfied with this sum (all he had asked) as compensation for his labor and skill as a sportsman. Perhaps he weighed the fun of killing the bird on his side of the scales.

We now reached the edge of the great forests of the balsam firs,—forests which mantle nearly every peak above 6,000 feet in altitude in North Carolina. The balsam is one of the most beautiful of evergreens. When transplanted, as it is occasionally, to the valleys of this region, it forms an ornamental tree of marked appearance, with its dark green, almost black, foliage, its straight, tapering trunk and symmetrical body. In the rich dark soil in some of the lofty mountain gaps it attains to a height of 150 feet, and in certain localities growing so thickly together as to render it almost impossible for the hunters to follow the bear through its forests. It is of two sorts, differing in many particulars, and termed the black and white or male and female balsams. Every grove is composed of both black and white balsams, and no single tree is widely separated from its opposite sex. The black balsam has a rougher bark, more ragged limbs, and darker foliage than the white. The latter is more ornamental, with its straight-shooting branches and smooth trunk; it bears blisters containing an aromatic resinous substance of peculiar medicinal properties. A high price is paid for this balsam of firs, but it seems that the price is not in proportion to the amount of time and labor necessary to be expended in puncturing the blisters for their contents, for very little of it is procured by the mountaineers. It covers every high pinnacle of the Balsam mountains. On some slopes, however, extending only a few hundred yards down from the top before blending, and disappearing into the deciduous forests; but on other slopes, like those descending to the west prongs of the Pigeon, it reaches downward for miles from the summit of the mountains, forming the wildest of wooded landscapes.

Although the observer, from the outer edge of this sombre wood-line, fails to see any foliage but that of the balsam, when he enters the shadows he discovers a number of trees and shrubs, peculiar to the firs forests of the extreme mountain heights. Of the trees indigenous to the valleys, the wild cherry and hawthorn appear to be the only species growing here. The most ornamental of the trees of the firs forests is the Peruvian, with its smooth, slender trunk, and great branches of brilliant red berries, which appear in the early fall and hang until the severest frosts. Its bark and berries taste like the kernel of a peach-pit, and are frequently mixed by the mountaineers in their whisky, as a bitters having the flavor of peach brandy. Here also spring the service tree, with its red, eatable berry, ripe in August; the balsam haw, with its pleasant tasting black fruit; the Shawnee haw; the Peru tree; the small Indian arrow wood; and thick in some of the most darkly shaded localities, hedges of the balsam whortle-berry, a peculiar species of that bush, bearing in October a jet black berry, juicy and palatable, but lacking the sweetness of the common whortle-berry, which is also found on heights above 6,000 feet in altitude.

Scattered near these hedges, are great thickets of blackberry bushes. It is a fortunate thing for the hunters obliged to break through them (sometimes for hundreds of yards), that they are singularly free from briers. While the berries are ripe in July in the valleys, these are green, and it is not until September and October that they become mature. The bears grow fat in such gardens. Peruvian berries are a great delicacy for them. That day, on the Spruce Ridge, Wid Medford called my attention to a small tree of this kind, no more than four inches through at the base, with branches broken on its top about 15 feet from the ground. Deep scratches of an animal’s claws were visible in the bark. It had been climbed by a bear a month since; and a good-sized bear at that, judging from the distance he had reached from where his claws had left their imprint to the highest broken branch. The wonder was how so heavy an animal had climbed a tree so slender.

In this connection, I had with the old hunter an interesting talk containing considerable information concerning the habits of the black bear. Whatever Wid Medford says on natural history can be accepted as truth gained by him through long years of experience, close observation, retained by a good memory, and imparted, as such matters would be, without any incentive for exaggeration. His quaint vernacular being the most fitting medium for the conveyance of the sense of his remarks, it is not necessary to clothe it in the king’s English.

“Wid,” I asked, “do bears sleep all winter?”

“Thet calls fer more o’ an answer than a shake or nod o’ the head. Bears go inter winter quarters ’tween Christmas an’ New Ye’r. The ole he bats fast his eyes an’ never shuffles out till about the fust o’ May. The bearing she has cubs in Feb’ry, an’ then she comes out fer water an’ goes back till April fust, when she mosies out fer good.”

“What are their winter quarters?”

“Caves, holler trees, or bray-sheaps cut by them and piled high ’ginst a log. When they git it high nuff, they dig a tunnel from the furder side o’ the log, an’ then crawl through an’ under the brashe.”

“Do they quarter together?”

“No, sar’ee; every one alone.”

“What is their condition when they come out?”

“Fat as seals.”

“That would be the best time to kill them, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’d hev to be quick about it.”

“Why?”

“In jist a few days they grow ez lean ez a two-acre farmyer’s hoss, arter corn hez been a dollar an’ a half a bushel fer three month, an’ roughness can’t be got fer love or money. Jist figger to yerself the weight of an animal under sich sarcumstances. The fust thing they eat is grasses, weeds, an’ green stuff fer a physic, an’ hit has a powerful effec’ on runnin’ ’em down to skin an’ bone. They’re mighty tender-footed tho’ when the daylight fust hits ’em sq’ar in the eyes, an’ hit don’t take long fer the dogs ter git ’em ter stan’ an’ fight.”

“How are their hides in April and May?”

“Fine; the ha’r is thick, long, an’ black; but they soon begin ter shed, an’ hit’s not till cold weather agin thet they make fit skins fer tannin’.”

“What do they sell at?”

“Three dollars is a fa’r price fer a prime hide.”

It is a fact worth mentioning, that these same hides are sold at $10, and even as high as $15 in the cities.

“Now,” I inquired with considerable interest, “will a black bear attack a man?”

“Hit ’pends on sarcumstances. He wouldn’t tech the illest human, ’les he war cornered an’ hed to fight his way out, or he war wounded, or hit war an ole she with cubs. In sich cases, look out, I say! I memorize one time thet I war in a tight box. Hit war down on Pigeon, whar the laurel is too thick fer a covey o’ patridges ter riz from. Thar war one straight trail an’ I war in it. My gun war empty. I heered the dogs a-comin’ an’ knowed without axin’ thet the bar war afore ’em. I never hed no objections ter meetin’ a varmint in a squar, stan’-up fight,—his nails agin my knife, ye know; so without wunct thinkin’ on gittin’ outer the way, I retched fer my sticker. The tarnal thing war gone, an’ thar war me without a weepin’ big enuff to skin a boomer. I run along lookin’ at the laurel on both sides, but thar warn’t a place in it fer a man ter git even one leg in. Ticklish? You’re sound thar! I didn’t know what the devil ter do, an’ I got all in a sweat, an’ drawin’ nigher, nigher, up the windin’ trail I heerd the varmint comin’. Wal, I drapped on my elbows an’ knees squar across the narrer path, so narrer thet I hed ter hump myself up. I kinder squinted out one side, to see the percession, ye know. Hit cum: a big monster brute, with a loose tongue hangin’ out, an’ red eyes. He war trottin’ like a stage-hoss. He never stopped, even to sniff me, but puttin’ his paws on my back, as tho’ I war a log, he jist leaped over me an’ war out o’ sight in a jerk. The dogs war clus on his heels, a snappin’ away, an’ every one o’ ’em jumped over me as kerless like as him, an’ raced along without ever stoppin’ ter lick ther master’s han’.”

“Do you like hunting?” I asked, as he finished.

“Good law!”

That was his sole answer, but with the astounded look on his face, it expressed everything.

“Wid, your life has been one long, rough experience. If you had it to live over again, knowing as much as you do now, how would you live?”

As though the question was one he had thought over again and again, without hesitating a moment, he laid his hand on my shoulder and said:

“I’d git me a neat woman, an’ go to the wildest kentry in creation, an’ hunt from the day I was big nuff to tote a rifle-gun, ontil ole age an’ roomaticks fastened on me.”

Just after shooting the wild turkey we prepared to separate. The hounds were all leashed with ropes and fresh bark straps. Four of the hunters held them in check. This was done to prevent them starting on the track of a wild cat or wolf. The Judyculla drive was the first one to be undertaken. It is a wild, tumbled forest of balsams, matted laurels and briers, on the south slope of the Spruce Ridge. When a bear is started in the valleys, or on the slopes above it, he always climbs the mountain, crossing through one of its lowest gaps, and then plunges down the rugged heights into the wilderness lying on the opposite side.

The stands for the Judyculla drive are on the backbone between the Spruce Ridge and the Great Divide. Through some one of them Bruin always passes on his way to the waters of Richland creek. The drivers with fourteen dogs now descended the ridge, and four of us, designated as standers, with three dogs, entered the forest of balsams. The three dogs were to be held in check by one of the standers, and only to be loosened to take up the fresh trail when Bruin should cross, as he might, through one of the mountain gaps. At fifteen steps one seems to be in the heart of the woods. The light, so strongly shed on the open meadows beyond the outskirts, is lost; the thickly set trees intercept it and one’s sight from detecting that an open expanse lies so near.

The transition from the broad daylight of the meadows to the darkness of the fir forests is not always as sudden. The approach from the Cold Spring mountain side is entirely different. For the first few square rods the trees—straight, beautiful evergreens—are set widely apart. A green, closely-cut sward, soft for the foot, covers the rounded mountain side. The few rocks lying here are so green and thick-grown with moss and lichens that they appear like artificial mounds. Over all broods a slumberous silence, unbroken but for the march of the forces of the storm, the tinkling bells of lost cattle, the voice of an occasional hunter, the singing of the mountain boomer, or the howl of wolves. It seems like a vast cemetery.

Although in December, a luxuriant greenness mantled everything, except where beds of ferns had found root and then faded with the approach of autumn, or the yellow leaves of the few scattered hard wood trees lay under foot. The rich, black soil was well grown with that species of grass that dies during the summer and springs up heavy and green in the fall. Mosses, with stems and leaves like diminutive ferns, covered every ledge of rock and crag, and formed for the trail a carpet soft and springy. This trail is as crooked as a rail fence, and as hard to follow as it would be to follow closely the convolutions of a rail fence, where every corner had been used as a receptacle for gathered rocks, and left for nature to plant with the hazel and blackberry. It was hard enough to crawl up and down the moss-mantled rocks and cliffs, and over or under an occasional giant balsam that, yellow with age, had fallen from its own feebleness; but, along the narrow backbone approaching the Great Divide, a recent hurricane had spread such devastation in its path as to render walking many times more difficult.

For two miles, along this sharp ridge, nearly every other tree had been whirled by the storm from its footing. They not only covered the path with their trunks bristling with straight branches; but, instead of being cut off short, the wind had torn them up by the roots, lifting thereby all the soil from the black rocks, and leaving great holes for us to descend into, cross and then ascend it was a continual crawl and climb for this distance.

There were only three stands, and Wid and I, with the three dogs, occupied one of these. It was a rather low dip in the ridge. We seated ourselves on a pile of rocks, upholstered with mosses, making an easy and luxurious couch. A gentle hollow sloped down toward where lay the tangles of the Judyculla drive. A dense, black forest surrounded us. Where the hollow reached the center line of the ridge it sunk down on the other side rather abruptly toward the Richland. This was the wildest front of the mountain. At one point near the stand an observer can look down into what is called the Gulfs. The name is appropriate. It is an abyss as black as night. Its depth is fully 2,000, possibly 2,500 feet. No stream can be seen. It is one great, impenetrable wilderness.

The bear-hunters are the only men familiar with these headwaters of the Richland. At the foot of the steep, funereal wall lies one spot known as Hell’s Half-acre. Did you ever notice, in places along the bank of a wide woodland river, after a spring flood, the great piles of huge drift-logs, sometimes covering an entire field, and heaped as high as a house? Hell’s Half-acre is like one of these fields. It is wind and time, however, which bring the trees, loosened from their hold on the dizzy heights and craggy slopes, thundering down into this pit.

The “Chimbleys and Shinies,” as called by the mountaineers, form another feature of the region of the Gulfs. The former are walls of rock, either bare or overgrown with wild vines and ivy. They take their name from their resemblance to chimneys as the fogs curl up their faces and away from their tops. The Shinies are sloping ledges of rock, bare like the Chimneys, or covered with great thick plats of shrubs, like the poisonous hemlock, the rhododendron, and kalmia. Water usually trickles over their faces. In winter it freezes, making surfaces that, seen from a distance, dazzle the eye.

The trees began to drip as we sat there, and the air grew warm. With this warmth a little life was awakened in the sober and melancholy forest. A few snow-birds twittered in the balsams; the malicious blue-jay screamed overhead, and robins, now and then, flew through the open space. The most curious noise of these forests is that of the boomer, a small red squirrel, native to the Alleghanies. He haunts the hemlock-spruce, and the firs, and unlike the gray squirrel, the presence of man seems to make him all the more noisy. Perched, at what he evidently deems a safe distance, amid the lugubrious evergreen foliage of stately balsams, he sings away like the shuttle of a sewing-machine. The unfamiliar traveler would insist that it was a bird thus rendering vocal the forest.

Wid had been silent for several minutes. Suddenly he laid his hand softly on my knee, and without saying a word pointed to the dogs. They lay at our feet, with ropes round their necks held by the old hunter. Three noses were slightly elevated in the air, and the folds of six long ears turned back. A moment they were this way, then, as a slight breeze came to us from the south, they jumped to their feet, as though electrified, and began whining.

“Thar’s suthin’ in the wind,” whispered Wid. “I reckon hits the music o’ the pack. Sh——! Listen!”

A minute passed, in which Wid kicked the dogs a dozen times to quiet them, and then we heard a faint bell-like tinkle. The likening of the baying of a pack of hounds to the tinkling of bells is as true in fact as it is beautiful in simile. There is every intonation of bells of all descriptions, changing with distance and location. It was a mellow, golden chiming at the beginning; then it grew stronger, stronger, until it swung through the air like the deep resonant tones of church bells. Did you ever hear it sweeping up a mountain side? It would light with animation the eyes of a man who had never pulled a trigger; but how about the hunter who hears it? He feels all the inspiration of the music, but mingled with it are thoughts of a practical nature, and a sportsman’s kindling ardor to see the “varmint” that rings the bells.

It steadily grew louder, coming with every echo right up the wooded slope.

“They’re on the trail now, shore,” remarked Wid, “an hit-’ll keep the bar hoppin’ ter climb this ’ere mounting without whoppin’ some o’ ’em off. I reckon I’d better unlimber my gun.”

Suiting the action to the word, the old hunter laid his flintlock rifle across his knees, and with deliberation fixed the priming anew in the pan. As he did so, he kept talking; “Hark sharp, an’ you kin hear my slut’s voice like a cow-bell. She’s the hound fer ye tho’. Her legs are short, her tail stubby an’ her hide yaller, but thar’s no pearter hound in the kentry.”

“Are they likely to wind and overtake the bear coming up the mountain?” I asked.

“Yes, sar; a dog travels the faster comin’ up hill, but when wunst the varmint turns ter go down hill, the pack mought ez well try ter ketch a locomotion an’ keers. I’ve heered tell thet them things go sixty mile an hour. Wal, a bar is trumps goin’ down hill. They don’t stop fer nuthin’. They go down pricipises head-fust, rollin’ an’ jumpin’. Now a dog hez to pick his way in sich places.”

We waited; the baying was bearing towards the east below us. Then it seemed ascending. An expression of astonishment spread over Wid’s face. “Hits cur’ous!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“Why them dogs is racin’ like deer. Thet proves thet the bar is fur ahead, an’ they’re close to the top o’ the ridge at Eli’s stan’. The bar must hev crossed thar. But Good Jim! why aint he shot? Come, lets git out o’ this.”

The three dogs tugged on ahead of us. We traveled through a windfall for a quarter of a mile, and then came into the stand to find it vacant, and the hounds baying on the slopes, towards the Richland. They had crossed the gap, hounds and hunters, too; for a moment after we heard the musical notes from a horn wound by some one in the lower wilderness. It was wound to tell the standers to pass around the heights to the lofty gaps between the Richland and the waters of the Pigeon.

As was afterwards related, the bear had passed through Eli’s stand, but Eli was not there on account of his mistaking and occupying for a drive-way a gully that ended in a precipice on either side of the ridge. He, with the other stander, soon joined us and we pushed along the trail, towards the summit of the Great Divide.

This mountain stands 6,425 feet above the sea, and is the loftiest of the Balsams. Among the Cherokees it is known as Younaguska, named in honor of an illustrious chief. Except when the king of winter, puffing his hollow cheeks, wraps the sharp summits in the pure white mantle of the snow, or locks them in frosted armor, the Great Divide with its black, unbroken forests of fir, ever rises an ebon mountain. Its fronts are gashed, on the east, south and north sides, by the headwaters of the Pigeon, Caney Fork and Richland. For the reason of the two last-mentioned streams springing here, the mountain is termed by some geographers the Caney Fork or the Richland Balsam mountain.

Three distinct spurs of mountains, forming portions of the great Balsam chain, lead away from it as from a hub. One, trending in a due west course, splits into various connected but distinct ranges; and, after leaping a low gap, culminates in a lofty cluster of balsam-crowned peaks, known as the Junaluska or Plott group, seven of which are over 6,000 feet in altitude. The spur towards the north terminates in Lickstone and its foot-hills; while the one bearing east, a long, massive black wall, holding six pinnacles in altitude above 6,000 feet, breaks into ranges terminating in the Cold mountain, Pisgah, and far to the south, the Great Hogback.

From this description the reader may have some conception, however faint, of the majesty of the Balsam range, the longest of the transverse chains between the Blue Ridge and the Smokies, and forming with its high valleys, numerous mountains and those lofty summits of the Great Smoky chain towards which it trends, the culminating region of the Alleghanies.

On the south brow of the Great Divide, only a few feet lower than the extreme summit, lies an open square expanse of about 20 acres embosomed in the black balsams. It has every feature peculiar to a clearing left for nature to train into its primitive wildness, but in all its abandonment the balsams have singularly failed to encroach upon it; and, as though restrained by sacred lines which they dare not pass, stand dense and sombre around its margin. Its gentle slope is covered thick with whortleberry bushes, in this instance, contrary to the nature of that shrub, springing from a rich, black soil. Only one small clump of trees, near the upper edge, mars the level surface of the shrubs. It is called the Judyculla old field, and the tradition held by the Indians is that it is one of the footprints of Satan, as he stepped, during a pre-historic walk, from mountain to mountain.

We were informed by mountaineers that flint arrow heads and broken pieces of pottery have been found in this old field, showing almost conclusively that some of the Cherokees themselves, or the nation that built the many mounds, laid the buried stone walls and worked the ancient mica mines, occupied it as an abiding place for years.

There are other bare spots on these mountains known as scalds, and like this old field, situated in the heart of fir forests. They are grown with matted ivy, poisonous hemlock and briers, but traces of the fire, that at recent date swept them of their timber, are to be seen. In a few years the wilderness will have reclaimed them; but the Judyculla old field will remain, as now, a mysterious vistage, which the mutilations of time cannot efface.

Through a dark aisle, leading from the summit of the Great Divide, we descended to the Brier Patch gap, and here one of our number was stationed, while the rest of us toiled up a nameless black spur, crossed it and dropped slowly down to Grassy gap. It was past noon, and while we listened to the low baying of the hounds in the depths, we munched at a snack of corn bread and boiled corned beef. In the meantime, Wid was examining the trail from one slope to the other. He would peer closely into every clump of briers, pulling them apart with his hands, and bend so low over the grasses along the path, that the black strip in his light colored trousers, hidden by his brown coat tails when he walked erect, would be exposed to view.

At length he paused and called us to him. The branch of a whortleberry bush, to which he pointed, was freshly broken off, and in the black soft soil, close to the trail, was the visible imprint of a bears’ paw. Bruin evidently had a long start on the pack, and having climbed up from the gulf, had passed through Grassy gap, and descended to the Pigeon. We now all fired our guns in order to bring the hunters and hounds as soon as possible to us.

It was 4 o’clock, and the shadows were growing bluer, when up through the laurel tangles, out from under the service-trees, hawthornes, and balsams, came the pack,—one dog after another, the first five or six, in quick succession, and the others straggling after. Wid seemed to deliberate a moment about stopping them or not; but, as they raced by, he cut the thongs of the three dogs which we had kept all day, remarking: “Let ’em rip. Hits too late fer us to foller, tho’. We’ll hey ter lay by at the Double spring till mornin’. I’d kep’ ’em in check, too, but hit may snow to-night and thet wud spile the scent an’ hide the track. They’ll cum up with ’im by dark, an’ then badger ’im till daylight an’ we’uns git thar.”

“Won’t they leave the trail at dark?” was asked.

“Never! Why, I’ve knowed my ole hounds ter stick to hit fer three days without nary bite o’ meat, ’cept what they peeled, now an’ then, from the varmint’s flanks.”

All the hunters soon came straggling in; and as a soft, but cold evening breeze fanned the mountain glorified with the light of fading day, and the vales of the Pigeon grew blue-black under the heavy shadows of the Balsam range, we filed into the cove where bubbles the Double spring, and made preparations for supper and shelter similar to the previous night.

As it grew darker the breeze entirely died away, leaving that dead, awful hush that oftentimes precedes a heavy snow storm. The branches of the mountain mahogany hung motionless over the camp. Around, the stripped limbs of ancient beeches, and the white, dead branches of blasted hemlocks, unswayed and noiseless, caught the bright light of the fire. The mournful howl of the wolves from points beyond intervening dismal defiles, now and then came through the impenetrable darkness to our ears.

Snow began steadily falling,—that soft, flaky sort of snow, which seems to descend without a struggle, continues for hours, and then without warning suddenly ceases. All night it fell, sifting through our ill-constructed shelter, burying us in its white folds and extinguishing the fire. Notwithstanding the presence of this unwelcome visitant, we slept soundly. Sleep generally finds an easy conquest over healthy bodies, fatigued with a late past night of wakefulness, and an all day’s travel through rugged mountains.

I awoke to find my legs asleep from the weight of a fellow-sleeper’s legs crossed over them. As I sat up, leaning my elbows on the bodies of two mountaineers packed tight against me, I saw the old hunter, on his hands and knees in the snow, bending over a bed of coals surrounded by snow-covered fire-logs. Some live coals, awakened by the hunter’s breath, were glowing strong enough for me to thus descry his dark form, and the clear features and puffed cheeks of his face. He had a struggle before the flames sprung up and began drying the wet timbers. It was still dark around us, but a pale, rosy light was beginning to suffuse the sky, from which the storm-clouds had been driven.

While part of the company prepared breakfast, the rest of us picked our way through the shoe-mouth-deep snow to the summit of Cold Spring mountain. It was the prospect of a sunrise on mountains of snow that called us forth. The sky was radiant with light when we reached the desired point; but the sun was still hidden behind the symmetrical summit of Cold mountain, the terminal peak of the snowy and shadowed range looming across the dark, narrow valley of the upper Pigeon. Light was pouring, through an eastern gap, upon the wide vale of the river far to the north. In its bottom lay a silver fog. Snow-mantled mountains embosomed it. It resembled the interior of a great porcelain bowl, with a rim of gold appearing round it as day-light grew stronger. Fifty miles away, with front translucent and steel-blue, stood the Black mountains. Apparently no snow had fallen on them. Their elevated, rambling crest, like the edge of a broken-toothed, cross-cut saw, was visible.

After breakfast we started on the backbone of the Balsam range for the Rich mountain, distant about eight miles. It was a picturesque body of men, that in single file waded in the snow under the burdened balsams, and crawled over the white-topped logs. The head youth from Caney Fork had his hat pulled down so far over his ears, to protect them from the cold, that half of his head, flaunting yellow locks, was exposed above the tattered felt, and only the lower portion of his pale, weak face appeared below the rim. His blue, homespun coat hardly reached the top of his pantaloons; and his great, horny hands, and arms half way to the elbows protruded from torn sleeves. There was no necessity for him to roll up his pantaloons; for so short were they that his stork-like legs were not covered by fifteen inches from the heels. Next behind him came Wid, with his face as red as ever, and his long hair the color of the snow. Then followed Allen, a thick-set, sturdy youth from the Richland. He gloried in his health and vigor, and to show it, wore nothing over his back but a thin muslin shirt. He whistled as he walked, and laughed and halloed till the forests responded, whenever a balsam branch dislodged its snow upon his head and shoulders. Noah Harrison, another valley farmer, who likes hunting better than farming, came next. He was a matter-of-fact fellow, and showed his disrelish to the snow by picking, with his keen eyes, his steps in the foot-prints of those ahead. Jonas Medford, a stout, mustached son of the old hunter, followed behind the three young fellows who wore store clothes and carried breech-loading shot-guns, instead of the rifles borne by the natives.

When half-way round the ridge, we caught faint echoes from the hounds below. The sound was as stirring in tone as the reveille of the camp. A minute after, our party was broken into sections, every one being left to pick his way as best he could to the scene of the fight between the dogs and bear. Naturally, the three young fellows in store clothes stayed together. A balsam slope is the roughest ever trodden by the foot of man. The rhododendrons and kalmias are perfect net-works. In them a man is in as much danger of becoming irrecoverably entangled unto death as a fly in a spider’s web; but, in the excitement caused by that faint chiming of the hounds, no one seemed to think of the danger of being lost in the labyrinths.

Luckily, before we three had proceeded 100 yards down a steep declivity, we struck the channel of a tiny brook. Hedges of rhododendron grow rankly along it, on both sides, and almost meet over the clear, rushing water. It would be impossible for a man to penetrate these hedges for any great distance, unless time was of no object whatever. The path of the torrent affords the path for the hunter. We had on rubber boots, and so waded in, following it down a devious course. It was an arduous walk. At times slippery rocks sent us floundering; boulders intercepted us, and the surface of deep pools rose higher than our boot-tops. For two miles we pushed on, our ardor being kept aflame by the increasing noise of the pack, and a few minutes later, we reached the scene of the struggle.

The fight between two dogs on a village street affords great interest to the mixed crowd that gathers around it; cocks pitted against each other collect the rabble, and the bull fight of Spain furnishes a national amusement; but of all fights that between a pack of ravenous dogs and a frenzied bear is the most exciting. But few persons are ever accorded a sight of this nature. It can never be forgotten by them. This is what we saw on issuing from the laurel: A white wintry expanse, free from undergrowth, on which the trees were set a little further apart than usual; back of us the stream; while across the open expanse, at the distance of twenty yards, a leaning cliff with the wild vines on its front sprinkled with snow, and its top hidden from view by the giant hemlocks before it. Close at the base of one of these hemlocks, reared on his haunches, sat a shaggy black bear. He was licking his chops; and, holding his fore paws up in approved pugilistic style, was coolly eyeing ten hounds, which, forming a semi-circle, distant about ten feet before him, were baying and barking with uplifted heads and savage teeth exposed. One poor hound, with skull cracked by Bruin’s paw, lay within the circle. At the foot of a hemlock near us sat two bleeding curs, and one with a broken leg began dragging himself toward us.

By exposing ourselves we lost our chances for a shot; for, as soon as we came in view, the hounds, encouraged by the sight

THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

of men, sprang at their antagonist with redoubled fury and increased yelping. It would have been impossible for us to have made a shot with our shotguns without having killed or disabled several of the hounds; so with triggers cocked we bided our time and with interest watched the combat. Judging by his methods of defense, Bruin was an adept in that line. He had had time for experience, for he was a great, shaggy fellow with gray tufts of hair on his head. He showed his teeth and growled as the dogs kept jumping at him. A twelve hour fight, in which several of the pack had been rendered incapable of attack, had given caution to the remainder, and they were extremely wary about taking their nips at him.

During the melee that for the next minute ensued, one savage hound was caught in the clutches of the bear and hugged and bitten to death; while, taking advantage of the momentary exposure of his sides, the others of the pack fell upon old Bruin until he was completely hidden under the struggling mass. He had just shaken them off again and recovered his balance, when a rifle shot sounded, and a puff of white smoke arose from under a spruce at the edge of the laurel thicket. The noise of the fight had prevented us hearing the approach of Wid, the old hunter. I looked from him at the group. Bruin had fallen forward on his face. Every dog was on his body, now writhing in its death throes.

“Too bad ye didn’t git a chance to kiver him,” said the old man, “but hit wouldn’t done to kill the dogs no way.”

If I had had any idea of the game being thus easily taken from me, I would have availed myself of the minute before Wid’s appearance by killing the bear, and several dogs with him if necessary to that end. My companions were of the same mind. One by one the hunters straggled in. The animal was skinned where he lay; and then, packed with hide, meat, blankets and our guns, we descended the middle prong of the Pigeon to the road through the picturesque valley.

It was fortunate for us that the bear stopped to rest on the middle prong. Had he continued on a sharp trot he would have escaped us; for, when closely hounded, Bruin travels directly toward Sam’s Knob, a peak lying between the Rich and Cold mountains. It is the most inaccessible mountain of the range, and few persons have ever scaled its summit. The wildest woods and laurel, interlocked with thorns and briers, spring from its precipitous sides; while the voices of cascades and cataracts arise from its shadowy ravines. It is the safe retreat of Bruin. But what cannot be accomplished on this mountain by rifle and hound is attempted by traps. The true hunter is not prone to pursuing any other than open warfare against the black bear. While the sale of their hides and meat nets him a respectable sum each year, his chief incentive for slaying them is his passionate love for the chase.

Two kinds of traps are used. The common steel trap is familiar to nearly every one. Its great springs seem strong enough to splinter a man’s leg. They are carefully set on bear trails in the densest labyrinths, and covered with leaves and grasses to conceal them from the luckless “varmint” that walks that way. No bait is required. On some of the peaks there is far more danger to be apprehended by the mountain straggler from these steel traps than from rattlesnakes. One must be careful how he ventures into close paths through the lofty mountain thickets. However, the neighboring mountaineers are aware where these traps are set.

The wooden trap is used in some localities. It consists of a wide half log, about twelve feet in length, with level face up. With this log for a bottom, a long box is formed by using for the sides two similar half logs, fastened with flat sides facing each other along the edges of the bottom log. Into one end of this box is pinned a heavy timber inclined at an angle over the bed of the box, and supported by sticks constructed like a figure four, baited with bread and honey, or meat. Rocks are fastened to its elevated end to increase its weight. The bear, attracted by the sweet smell of the honey, ventures in, pulls the figure four to pieces, and is crushed down by the fallen cover. If not killed he is effectually pinned until the merciless trapper unintentionally shows some mercy by ending his struggles.

As the white-haired Wid said: “Traps is good fer ’em ez hunts rabbits, an’ rabbit huntin’ is good fer boys; but fer me gim me my ole flint-lock shootin’-iron, an’ let a keen pack o’ lean hounds be hoppin’ on ahead; an’ of all sports, the master sport is follerin’ their music over the mountings, an’ windin’ up, with bullet or sticker, a varminous ole bar!”

THE VALLEY OF THE NOON-DAY SUN.

It is one of those numerous chef-d’œuvre of creation which God has scattered over the earth, but which He conceals so frequently on the summit of naked rocks, in the depth of inaccessible ravines, on the unapproachable shores of the ocean, like jewels which He unveils rarely, and that only to simple beings, to children, to shepherds, or fishermen, or the devout worshippers of nature.—Lamartine.

N Macon county, North Carolina, is a section of country so seldom visited by strangers, that few persons living beyond its limits are aware of its existence, except as they find it located on the map. In pomp of forest, purity of water, beauty of sky, wildness of mountains, combining in a wonderful wealth of sublime scenery, the valley of the Nantihala river is not surpassed by any region of the Alleghanies. While a great portion of Macon and of other counties have had attention occasionally called to them by magazine articles, and by a few novels with plots laid in the familiar picturesque sections, the Nantihala and the mountains mirrored on its surface, have to this day remained an unrolled scroll. This is not strange, from the fact of the wild and rugged nature of the mountains, its few inhabitants, its remoteness from railroads, and the roughness of the highways and trails by which it is traversed. Even the ambitious tourist who enters Western North Carolina with the purpose of seeing all the points of picturesque interest, finds his summer vacation at a close before he has completed a tour of those scenic sections lying within a radius of fifty miles from Asheville.

The musical name of Nantihala, as applied to the river, is a slight change from the Cherokee pronunciation of it—Nanteyaleh. Judging from the fact of different interpreters giving different meanings for the name, its signification is involved in obscurity. By some it is said to mean Noon-day Sun, from the fact of the mountains hugging it so closely that the sunlight strikes it only during the middle of the day. The other meaning is Maiden’s Bosom.

The river is wholly in Macon county. Rising near the Georgia boundary, amid the wilds of the Standing Indian and Chunky Gal mountains—peaks of its bordering eastern and western ranges—it flows in a northerly and then north-easterly direction, and after a swift course of fifty miles, empties its waters into the Little Tennessee. The ragged, straggling range, sloping abruptly up from its eastern bank, takes the name of the river. This range breaks from the Blue Ridge, in Georgia, and trends north, with the Little Tennessee receiving its waters on one side, and the Nantihala, those on the other. The Valley River mountains, forming the Macon county western boundary, run parallel with the Nantihala range. It is in the narrow cradle between these two chains that the river is forever rocked.

Through most of the distance from its sources to where it crosses the State road, the river flows at the feet of piny crags, under vast forests, and down apparently inaccessible slopes. Its upper waters teem with trout, and its lower, with the gamiest fish of the pure streams of level lands. The red deer brouses along its banks, and amid the laurel and brier thickets which shade its fountain-heads, the black bear challenges the pursuit of hounds and hunters. Near the State road are gems of woodland scenery, where all the natural character of the stream—its wildness—is absent; and under the soft sunlight and cool shadows of quiet woods, beside a swift, noiseless stretch of water, on which every leaf of the red-maple and birch is mirrored, and along which the gnarled roots of the whitened sycamore offer inviting seats, the stroller is vividly reminded of some lowland river, familiar, perhaps, to his boyhood. At these places, the basin is just such a one as you would like to plunge headlong into. The grass is green and lush along the banks, and the interlacing hedges, and brilliant vines drooping from the over-arching trees, would render concealment perfect. If you are not afraid of ice-cold water, a swim here would be most enjoyable, but even at noon in July or August, the temperature of the stream is near the freezing point.

From the leaning beech, one can look down into the trout’s glassy pool, and see him lying motionless in the depths, or catch a glimpse of his dark shape as he shoots over the waving ferny-mossed rocks, and disappears under the cover of the bank. The king-fisher is not an unfamiliar object. His sharp scream as he flies low over the waters will attract the attention of the observer. Ungainly herons may be startled from their dreaming along the stream; and flocks of plover, seemingly out of their latitude, at times go wheeling and whistling high above the woods.

Monday’s has a place on the map. Why? It is a cheerful, home-like country tavern. Extensive cleared lands stretch back to the green forest lines. A board fence fronts the neatly-kept lawn, on whose elevated center rises a two-story weather-beaten frame house. The steep, mossy roof is guarded at either end by a grim, stone chimney. Large windows look out upon a crooked road, and a long porch with trellised railing is just the place to tip back in a hard-bottomed chair, elevate your feet, and enjoy a quiet evening smoke. The river is out of sight below the hill, but at times the music of its rapids can be distinctly heard. The ranges of the Nantihala and Valley River rise on either side the valley. The only wagon-ways to this point are across these ranges, from Franklin on the east and Murphy on the west.

THE WARRIOR BALD.

Franklin, the county seat of Macon, is situated in the heart of one of the most fertile sections of the mountains—the valley of the Little Tennessee. Its site is on a great hill on the west bank of the river. As the traveler, approaching from the east, winds through the lands lying along the banks of the slow-flowing stream, he will be attracted by the broad, level farms, and, if in summer or early fall, by the wealth of the harvest. One of the most charming views of the village and the magnificent valley is on the road coming from Highlands. You will halt your horse. Let it be on a summer evening, just as the shadows have crept across the landscape. The green and yellow fields will lie in the foreground pervaded with a dreamy quiet. Below, you see the covered bridge, and the red road, at first hidden behind the corn, at some distance beyond, climbing the hill and disappearing amid dwellings, buildings, and churches whose spires rise above the cluster. Far in the background looms the dark, bulky form of the Warrior Bald, of the Nantihalas, and further to the south, the long, level-topped continuation of the range. If old Sol is far down, the bright green glow that marks the last moment of the day will crown the summit of his sentinel peak. A moment later the stars are seen, and as you ride on and ascend the hill, the faint mists of the river will be visible, gathering as if to veil the scene.

You are on the village streets. A few shop lights gleam across the way, but there is no bustle before any of them, and you will imagine that the villagers, careful of their health, retire at sundown. Some of them certainly do, but it is no unusual thing to hear laughter on the hotel porch even as late as midnight, and no deaths or arrests chronicled the next morning. The hotel keeper, Cunningham, is a queer character. He is a good-natured landlord, an excellent story-teller, and a shrewd horse trader. The first two accomplishments are appreciated by travelers. The curiosity about the hotel porch is the chairs. They are too high for a short man to get into without climbing, and so large that he will feel lost in them. At sight of these great chairs ranged about the hotel door, the traveler will imagine that he has dropped into a colony of giants.

Franklin is a growing town. This is due to the fact of its being in the center of a farming and mining country. It is a market for grain, and in past years for the mica taken from several paying mines in the vicinity. It is 71 miles distant in a southwest course from Asheville, and about 30 miles from Clayton, the seat of Rabun county, Georgia. A fine brick court-house has lately been built in the village center.

From Franklin the State road toward the Nantihalas leads across hills and through valleys to the Savannah, whose meanderings it follows under heavy foliaged forests. The road from the eastern base of this range across the summit to the opposite base, winds through a lonely wilderness. It is the grandest highway of the mountains. At the commencement of the ascent stands a primitive toll-gate, one of the many obnoxious guardians to state roads. A quarter will be demanded before passage is permitted. The house of the toll-gate keeper is on one side. There is moss on its roof and green vines on its front. The skeleton of a venerable saw-mill, whose straight, perpendicular saw is allowed to rust through a great part of the time, stands on the opposite side below a beaver-like dam. The sound of crashing waters continually breaks the silence of the great woods.

The distance over the mountain is 12 miles, and but one house, a log cabin, empty and forlorn, almost hidden in a dark cove, is to be seen. The woods are as dense as those of the lowlands, and so well trimmed by nature, so fresh and green are they, so invigorating the air that circles through them, that one, if he ever felt like retiring to some vast wilderness, might well wish his lodge to be located here. All the mountains of the Nantihala range are exceedingly steep. To ascend this one, the road winds back and forth in zigzag trails, so that in reaching one point near the summit, you can clearly see three parallel roads below you. The view from the top of the pass is one never to be forgotten. Higher spurs of the Nantihalas shoot up in rugged magnificence across the gorge that falls away from the brow of the peak on which the highway winds. In spite of the rocky and perpendicular character of the slopes of these neighboring peaks, black wild forests cover them from bases to summits. Dazzling white spots on the front of the nearest mountain show where some enterprising miner had worked for mica. In one direction there is a valley view. It is toward the east. Its great depth renders one dizzy at the prospect. White specks on yellow clearings in the green basin mark the few farm houses. A streak of silver winds through it, vanishing before the eye strikes the bases of the Cowee mountains, which wall the background.

All along the lofty pass, the road is crossed by little sparkling streams pouring over the mossed rocks, under the birches and pines. By one of these roadside rivulets is an enchanting spot for a noonday lunch.

“Here twilight is and coolness: here is moss,
A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.
Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart
Be innocent, here, too, shalt thou refresh
Thy spirit, listening to some gentle sound,
Or passing gale, or hum of murmuring bees!”

The western slope is less precipitous than the eastern, and after a descent through an unbroken forest, the traveler arrives at Monday’s. The most direct course to Charlestown, Swain county, is down the river; but for the next ten or twelve miles the mountains so crowd the stream that no road is laid. A bridle-path winds through the forbidding fastnesses, occasionally in sight of the stream. From Brier Town, a scattered settlement, the falls of the river can be reached by a walk of four miles. These falls, on account of their inaccessibility, are seldom visited, except by the cattle herder and hunter. They pour over the lip of a ragged cliff in a wild gorge, hidden by lofty and precipitous mountains.

The State road crosses the river on a bridge just below the fork of the road to Hayesville, the county seat of Clay. A mill and several houses are clustered near the bridge; but a moment after passing them you ascend the Valley River mountains. It is a well graded road, through chestnut and oak woods, for five miles to the lowest dip in the mountains. There is no view to be had, except of one wild valley that presents no striking features, but in the utter loneliness brooding over it. Down the slope you go through one of the densest and most luxuriant forests of the mountain region. It is a tremendous labyrinth of monarch hemlocks and balsams, so heavily burdened with foliage that their greenness approaches blackness, and renders the air so cold that the traveler riding through them, even in the middle of the morning, shivers in his saddle. The laurel grows to twice its customary height, affording safe coverts for the bear and wolf. The ground is black. A stream flows along by and in the road, the only noisy occupant of the solitude visible and audible at all times.

Wild scenes appear as the base of the mountain is neared. As you advance under the shadows, around the foot of a steep ridge, bounded by a stream making mad music over the boulders, suddenly before you will tower a vine-mantled wall with top ragged with pines, cleaving the blue sky. Then, after lingering along the foot of this wall, as though loath to leave the cool greenness of its mossed rocks and woods, the road issues into a small circle of cleared land, where the ranges, drawing apart for a short distance, have allowed man to secure a foothold. In most of these confined dells it is, however, a feeble foothold; due, principally, to the indolence of the occupant. These homes are pictures of desolation;—a miserable log cabin with outside chimney crumbled to one-half its original height, and the end of the house blackened and charred from the flames and smoke poured upward along it; the roof heaped with stones to keep it in place; the door off its wooden hinges; the barn an unroofed ruin, and the clearing cultivated to the extent of one small patch of weed-strangled corn. The family who live in such a place will be alive, however, and outside as you go by. The man on the bench before the door will shout “howdy,” and continue smoking his pipe with as much complacency as if he had a hundred acres of golden wheat within his sight, a well filled granery, and cows weighing 1,200 instead of 500 pounds. From four to ten children, all about the same size, clustered along the fence, will excite wonder as to how they have lived so long.

Lazy men can be found in all countries; but no lazier specimen of humanity ever lived than one existing at present near the Tuckasege in Jackson county. We heard of him one night at a dilapidated farm-house of an ex-sheriff of that county. It can better be told in the exact words of the conversation through which we learned of the specimen’s existence; but, in order for you to fully appreciate it, it will be necessary to give an idea of the appearance of the house and its surroundings. The farm of level land was first owned by an enterprising farmer. The house, a large, log one, was built by him 40 years ago. It now consists of a main building of two stories, with a wing in the rear. It first struck us that the house had never been completed; for on riding toward it we found ourselves under a long roof extending from the main building. The loft and roof overhead were intact, and were supported by posts at the two corners out from the house. It was apparently a wing that had never been sided or floored.

After supper as we sat by the moonlight-flooded window, on inquiring of our host why the large wing had never been finished, he answered:

“Finished? Why, it war finished, but when the old man died, his son and heir, one of the no-countist fellows what ever lived, moved in. Wal, ye see them woods, yander?”

“Yes.”

“Not more ’en fifty yard away.”

“Just about that.”

“Wal, do you know thet thet man war too cussed lazy to go to them woods for fire wood, and so tore down thet wing, piece by piece, flooring, sidings, window sashes, doors—everything but the loft and roof, and he’d a took them ef he hadn’t been too lazy to climb up stairs.”

“Wonder he didn’t take the whole house.”

“I spect he would ef I hadn’t bought him out when I did. Why, man! this whole farm-yard was an apple orchard then. How many trees do you see now?”

“Three.”

“That’s all. Chopped down, every damned one of ’em, for the fire-place. Lazy, why, dog my skin!—”

“Where is he now?”

“He lives in a poor chunk of a cabin over in them woods, close enough now to fire-wood, shore.”

Down further on the Valley river the landscape grows more open, and the rugged mountains become softened down to undulating hills, drawn far back from the stream, and leaving between them wide vales, rich in soil, generous in crops, and in places over three miles in width. This is in Cherokee, the extreme southwest county of North Carolina. Murphy, the county-seat, is a small, weather-worn village, located in nearly the center of the county. The Western North Carolina Railroad, as projected, will, on its way to Ducktown, soon intersect it.

Just before reaching Valley river, the traveler will notice a large, white house, situated in a fine orchard. Mrs. Walker’s is known through the western counties as a place of excellent accommodation. At this point, the road to the lower valley of the Nantihala, turns abruptly to the right. It is a rough way through an uninviting country, thinly inhabited, poor in farming lands, and devoid of scenery. After miles of weary travel, the road disappears from the sunlight into a deep ravine. A stream disputes passage with the swampy road, which is fairly built upon the springy roots of the rhododendrons. It seems to be the bottom of some deep-sunk basin, which at one time was the center of a lake, whose waters, finding a way out, left a rich deposit for a luxuriant forest to spring from. The trunks of the trees are covered with yellowish-green moss. Matted walls of living and dead rhododendrons and kalmias line the way. Your horse will stumble wearily along, especially if it is soon after a rain; and if a buggy is behind him, it will take a good reinsman to keep it from upsetting in the axle-deep ruts, over low stumps and half-rotten logs. Keep up your spirits, and think little of the convenience of the place for the accomplishment of a dark deed. Soon it comes to an end, and a firmer, though rough, road leads into an open forest, and gradually descends a narrow valley between prodigiously high mountains.

The passage of Red Marble gap is now made, and the valley of the Nantihala again entered twelve miles below where the State road crosses at Monday’s. The first view of it will cause you to rise in your stirrups. It is a narrow valley, with one farm-house lying in the foreground. Around it rise massive mountain walls, perfectly perpendicular, veiled with woods, and in height fully 2,000 feet. Directly before you is a parting of the tremendous ranges, and through this steep-sided gap, purple lines of mountains, rising one behind another, bar the vision. The picture of these far-away ranges, in the subdued coloring of distance, is of inspiring grandeur. The river is unseen at this point; but, if the Cheowah Mountain road is ascended, its white line of waters will be visible, as it issues from the wild gorge at the head of the valley; and; bickering along between wood-fringed banks, by the farm-house, under and out from under the birches, at length disappears in the wilderness leading toward the great gap.

Widow Nelson lives in the only visible farm-house,—a low, ill-constructed, frame dwelling with a log cabin in the rear, and small barn near by. It is a hospitable shelter or dinner-place for the traveler. On the widow’s porch is always seated a fat old man named Reggles. He is short in stature, has red, puffed, smooth-shaven cheeks, and appears like “a jolly old soul.” You will hear his sonorous voice, if you draw rein at the fence to make inquiries concerning distances; for he is an animated, universal guide-post, and answers in a set manner all questions.

So few settlers live along the Nantihala that the strongest friendship binds them together; and every one considers all the people surrounding him, within a radius of ten miles, his neighbors. The social ties between the young folks are kept warm principally by the old-fashioned “hoe-downs.” During a week’s stay in the valley, we improved an opportunity to attend one of these dances. Satisfactory arrangements being made, one evening before dark we started with Owenby, a guide. A branch road led to our destination,—a path, that, though a faint cattle trail in the beginning, had grown, after being traveled over by the mountaineers’ oxen and their summer sleds, into a road. As is usually the case, it followed up an impetuous little torrent. At a small, log cabin, where we stopped after proceeding a mile on one journey, we were joined by a party of twenty young men and women; and with this body we began the ascent to Sallow’s, where the dance was to be held. Still enough twilight remained for us to find our way without difficulty. All walked with the exception of three men, who, each with his respective young lady seated behind him, rode mules, and led the way. After a steady climb for several miles we halted before the dim outlines of another little cabin. The mounted ones dismounted and fastened their steeds.

“I reckon we’ll surprise ’em, fer it ’pears they’ve all gone to roost,” remarked Owenby, as we silently stepped over the leveled bars of the fence into the potato patch bordering the road. Not a streak of light shone through a crack of the cabin, not a sound came from the interior. One of our party pushed the puncheon door, which easily swung open with a creak of wooden hinges.

“Come to life in hyar! Up an’ out! Hi, yi, Dan and Molly!” he yelled, while following his lead we all crowded into the single room. The fire had smouldered until only a few coals remained, and those were insufficient to throw any light on the scene.

“Good Lord! what does this mean?” growled, from a dark corner, some one who was evidently proprietor of the premises.

“Hit means we’re hyar for a dance, ole man; so crawl out,” laughingly returned our self-constituted spokesman.

“Well, I reckon we’re in fer it,” continued the disturbed, as we heard a bed creak, and bare feet strike the floor. “Pitch some pine knots on the fire, and face hit an’ the wall while wife an’ me gits our duds on.”

A few seconds after, the host and hostess were ready to receive company, and a blazing pine fire illuminated a room 20 × 25 feet in dimensions. The beds were one side and the frowsy heads of eight children stuck with wondering faces out from the torn covers. Two tables and a few chairs were on the middle floor, and numerous garments and household articles hung on the walls. The light from the great, gaping fire-place, in one end of the room, showed the party off to advantage. The girls were attired in their best garments; some of light yellow, though blue dresses preponderated. The characters of most interest to all present were two good-natured-looking young men dressed in “biled” shirts, green neckties, “store-boughten” coats, and homespun pantaloons. With self-important airs they accepted and immediately covered two chairs before the blazing hearth. One of the twain had a home-made banjo on his knee; the other, a violin. The necessary scraping and twanging to get the instruments in tune took place; and then the older musician announced that the ball was open.

“Trot out yer gals,” said he; “There mustn’t be enny hangin’ back while these ’ere cat-gut strings last. Git up an’ shine!”

After some hesitation four couples stepped into the center of the floor, forming two sets. Each one separated from and stood facing his partner. Then the music struck up, and such music! The tune was one of the liveliest jigs imaginable, and the musicians sang as they played. The dancers courtesied and then began a singular dance. There was no calling off; it was simply a jig on the part of each performer. The girls danced with arms akimbo, reeling sideways one way, and then sideways the other. Their partners, with slouched hats still on their heads, hair swinging loosely, every muscle in motion and all in time with the music, careered around in like manner. The rest of the party stood silent and interested looking on; and on the whole scene blazed the pine knots.

At intervals, parties of two, three, or more, of the men slipped out of the door, then in a few minutes returned, apparently refreshed by a draught of the night air, or something else. After the finish of one of the dances, in which we strangers engaged, a fierce-mustached mountaineer tapped me on the shoulder, whispering as he did so: “Come outside a minnit.”

I hesitated for a moment, hardly knowing whether I would better follow or not; then I stepped after him. As the light shone through the open door, I saw that three men were outside with him. The door shut behind me. It was intensely dark, every star was blotted out, and a damp, chilly wind was sweeping down the mountain. We walked a few steps from the house.

“What do you want?” I asked in an apprehensive tone.

No one spoke. I attempted to repeat the question, but before I could do so, the man who had invited me out, said: “We don’t know your principles, but we seed you ’aint got the big-head, an’ like yer way o’ joinin’ in. We want to do the fair thing, an’ no offence meant, we hope, whichever way you decide.—Won’t you take a drink?”

I had feared some harm was intended, possibly for dancing with the girl of one of the fellows. I felt relieved. In the darkness I felt a small jug placed in my hands, and heard the corn-cob stopper being drawn from it.