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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT
OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers
BY HORACE KEPHART
Author of "The Book of Camping and Woodcraft," "Camp Cookery," "Sporting Firearms," Etc.
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922
Copyright, 1913 and 1922, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Reprinted 1921. New and rerised edition with added ctiapters, 1922
:i.A600068
m\l~9'22
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. "Something Hidden; Go and Find It"
II. "The Back of Beyond" .
III. The Great Smoky Mountains .
IV. A Bear Hunt in the Smokies . V. Moonshine Land
VI. Ways That Are Dark ....
VII. A Leaf from the Past .
VIII. "Blockaders" and "The Revenue"
IX. The Snake-Stick Man
X. A Raid into the Sugarlands .
XI, The Killing of Hol Rose .
XII. The Outlander and the Native
XIII. The People of the Hills .
XIV. The Land of Do Without . XV. Home Folks and Neighbor People
XVI. The Mountain Dialect .
XVII. The Law of the Wilderness .
XVIII. The Blood-Feud
XIX. Who Are the Mountaineers? .
XX. "When the Sleeper Wakes" .
II 28 50 75 no 126 145 167 igi 207 238 265 286 308 330 350
379 401 428 452
ILLUSTRATIONS
In the Great Smoky Mountains .... Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Map of Appalachia 8
The author's first camp in the Smokies . . . . i6
The old copper mine 24
Cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of Hazel
Creek, where the author lived alone for three years 32
At the post-office 40
A tub-mill 48
A family of pioneers in the 20th century .... 56
The schoolhouse 64
Scouting in the laurel 72
The Spencer Place, near Thunderhead Mountain . . 80
Skinning a frozen bear 88
"By and by up they came, carrying the bear" ... 96
A home-made bear trap 104
Moonshine still-house hidden in the laurel . . .112
Moonshine still in full operation 120
Corn mill and blacksmith's forge 136
A "rock house" in moonshine land 152
ILLUSTRATIONS
rAOINQ PAGE
Mr. Quick, and one of his hobbies 184
Buck's exit 192
"Court week" at Bryson City, N. C 208
"The torrent dashed over ledges and boulders" . .216
One of the Chimney Tops 224^
A hunter's cabin 240"
Splitting clapboards 256'
A natural "bald" 272
"She knows no other lot" 288
A mountain home 304
"Be it ever so humble — " 320
"Come in and rest" 336
The Alum Cave, Great Smoky Mountains . . . .352
"Making 'lasses" 368'
"Let the women do the work" 384
In the valley 400
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
Nine years have passed since this book first came from the press. My log cabin on the Little Fork of Sugar Fork has fallen in ruin. The great forest wherein it nestled is falling, too, before the loggers' steel. A rail- road has pierced the wilderness. A graded highway crosses the county. There are mill towns where newcomers dwell. An aeroplane has passed over the county seat. Mountain boys are listening, through instruments of their own construction, to concerts played a thousand miles away.
We have had the war. We are having an at- tempt at prohibition. Even in farthest Appa- lachia people realize that the world has been upset, and that old ways, old notions, old con- victions perhaps, must give place to new ones.
And yet, if one strolling along our new Ashe- ville-to-Atlanta highway should step aside at the first brook crossing, turn "up the branch," and follow the rough by-road that steeply as- cends the glen, he would come presently to a
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
log cabin where time still lingers a century be- lated. The old-fashioned hospitality would be offered him with right good will. And if he tarried (who would not?) he would observe something of the pioneer life this book de- scribes. They die hard, those old ways, in the mountains. Some of them were good ways, too. They were picturesque, at least.
I have tried to give a true picture of life among the southern mountaineers, as I have found it during eighteen years of intimate as- sociation with them. This book deals with the mass of the mountain people. It is not con- cerned with the relatively few townsmen, and prosperous valley farmers, who owe to outside influences all that distinguishes them from their back-country kinsmen. The real mountaineers are the multitude of little farmers living up the branches and on the steep hillsides, away from the main-traveled roads, who have been shaped by their own environment. They are the ones who interest the reading public; and this is as it should be; for they are original, they are "characters."
No one book can give a complete survey of mountain life in all its aspects. Much must be left out. I have chosen to write about those features that seemed to me most picturesque.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The narrative is to be taken literally. There is not a line of fiction or exaggeration in it.
Our Southern Highlanders was first published in 1913. It has had several printings in the original form. In the present edition I have corrected errors of the press, and one or two of my own, but otherwise no alteration has been made of the text. I have continued the story of moonshining to the present day, and have added three new chapters: The Snake-Stick Man, A Raid into the Sugarlands, and The Killing of Hoi Rose.
Most of the illustrations in this edition are new, some of them taken by myself, others by friends who generously let me select specimens of their work with the camera here in the Great Smoky Mountains. I am particularly indebted, for such courtesies, to Francis B. Laney, of the U. S. Geological Survey; Professor S. H. Es- sary, of the University of Tennessee; Paul M. Fink, of Jonesboro, Tenn.; and John Ogden Morrell, of Knoxville.
Some parts of this book originally appeared in Outing and All Outdoors.
Bryson City, N. C. HORACE KepharT.
April, 1922.
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OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
CHAPTER I
" SOMETHING HIDDEN ; GO AND FIND IT "
N one of Poe's minor tales, written in 1845, there is a vague allusion to wild mountains in western Virginia " tenanted by fierce and uncouth races of men." This, so far as I know, was the first reference in literature to our South- ern mountaineers, and it stood as their only characterization until Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") began her stories of the Cumberland hills.
Tim.e and retouching have done little to soften our Highlander's portrait. Among reading peo- ple generally. South as well as North, to name him is to conjure up a tall, slouching figure In homespun, who carries a rifle as habitually as he does his hat, and who may tilt its muzzle toward a stranger before addressing him, the
form of salutation being:
II
12 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
"Stopthar! Whut's you-unses name? Whar's you-uns a-goin' ter? "
Let us admit that there is just enough truth in this caricature to give it a point that will stick. Our typical mountaineer is lank, he is always unkempt, he is fond of toting a gun on his shoul- der, and his curiosity about a stranger's name and business is promptly, though politely, out- spoken. For the rest, he is a man of mystery. The great world outside his mountains knows almost as little about him as he does of it; and that is little indeed. News in order to reach him must be of such widespread interest as fairly to fall from heaven; correspondingly, scarce any incidents of mountain life will leak out uniess they be of sensational nature, such as the shoot- ing of a revenue officer in Carolina, the massacre of a Virginia court, or the outbreak of another feud in " bloody Breathitt." And so, from the grim sameness of such reports, the world infers that battle, murder, and sudden death are com- monplaces in Appalachia.
To be sure, in Miss Murfree's novels, as in those of John Fox, Jr., and of Alice MacGowan, we do meet characters more genial than feudists and illicit distillers ; none the less, when we have closed the book, who is it that stands out clearest as type and pattern of the mountaineer? Is it
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 13
not he of the long rifle and peremptory chal- lenge? And whether this be because he gets most of the limelight, or because we have a fur- tive liking for that sort of thing (on paper), or whether the armed outlaw be indeed a genuine protagonist — in any case, the Appalachian peo- ple remain in public estimation to-day, as Poe judged them, an uncouth and fierce race of men, inhabiting a wild mountain region little known.
The Southern highlands themselves are a mysterious realm. When I prepared, in 1904, for my first sojourn in the Great Smoky Mountains, which form the master chain of the Appalachian system, I could find in no library a guide to that region. The most diligent research failed to discover so much as a magazine article, written within this genera- tion, that described the land and its people. Nay, there was not even a novel or a story that showed intimate local knowledge. Had I been going to Teneriffe or Timbuctu, the libraries would have furnished information a-plenty; but about this housetop of eastern America they were strangely silent; it was terra incognita.
On the map I could see that the Southern Appalachians cover an area much larger than New England, and that they are nearer the
H OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
center of our population than any other moun- tains that deserve the name. Why, then, so little known? Quaintly there came to mind those lines familiar to my boyhood: "Get you up this way southward, and go up into the moun- tain ; and see the land, what it is ; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strongholds; and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be vvood therein or not."
In that dustiest room of a great library where " pub. docs." are stored, I unearthed a govern- ment report on forestry that gave, at last, a clear idea of the lay of the land. And here was news. We are wont to think of the South as a low country with sultry climate; yet its mountain chains stretch uninterruptedly southwestward from Virginia to Alabama, 650 miles in an air line. They spread over parts of eight contigu- ous States, and cover an area somewhat larger than England and Scotland, or about the same as that of the Alps. In short, the greatest moun- tain system of eastern America is massed in our Southland. In its upper zone one sleeps under blankets the year round.
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 15
In all the region north of Virginia and east of the Black Hills of Dakota there is but one sum- mit (Mount Washington, in New Hampshire) that reaches 6,000 feet above sea level, and there are only a dozen others that exceed 5,000 feet. By contrast, south of the Potomac there are forty-six peaks, and forty-one miles of dividing ridges, that rise above 6,000 feet, besides 288 mountains and some 300 miles of divide that stand more than 5,000 feet above the sea. In North Carolina alone the mountains cover 6,000 square miles, with an average elevation of 2,700 feet, and with twenty-one peaks that overtop Mount Washington.
I repeated to myself: "Why, then, so little known ? " The Alps and the Rockies, the Pyren- nees and the Harz are more familiar to the American people, in print and picture, if not by actual visit, than are the Black, the Balsam, and the Great Smoky Mountains. It is true that summer tourists flock to Asheville and Toxaway, Linville and Highlands, passing their time at modern hotels and motoring along a few maca- damed roads, but what do they see of the billowy wilderness that conceals most of the native homes? Glimpses from afar. What do they learn of the real mountaineer? Hearsay. For, mark you, nine-tenths of the Appalachian popu-
i6 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
lation are a sequestered folk. The typical, the average mountain man prefers his native hills and his primitive ancient ways.
We read more and talk more about the Fili- pinos, see more of the Chinese and the Syrians, than of these three million next-door Americans who are of colonial ancestry and mostly of Brit- ish stock. New York, we say, is a cosmopoli- tan city; more Irish than in Dublin, more Ger- mans than in Munich, more Italians than in Rome, more Jews than in nine Jerusalems; but how many New Yorkers ever saw a Southern mountaineer? I am sure that a party of hills- men fresh from the back settlements of the Una- kas, if dropped on the streets of any large city in the Union, and left to their ov/n guidance, would stir up more comment (and probably more trouble) than would a similar body of whites from any other quarter of the earth; and yet this same odd people is more purely bred from old American stock than any other element of our population that occupies, by itself, sc great a territory.
The mountaineers of the South are marked apart from all other folks by dialect, by cus- toms, by character, by self-conscious isolation. So true is this that they call all outsiders '^ fur- riners." It matters not whether your descent
Th:^ Author's I'irst Camp in the Smokies.
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 17
be from Puritan or Cavalier, whether you come from Boston or Chicago, Savannah or New Or- leans, in the mountains you are a " furriner." A traveler, puzzled and scandalized at this, asked a native of the Cumberlands what he would call a " Dutchman or a Dago." The fel- low studied a bit and then replied: "Them's the outlandish."
Foreigner, outlander, it is all one; we are " different," we are " quar," to the mountaineer. He knows he is an American ; but his conception of the metes and bounds of America is vague to the vanishing point. As for countries over- sea— well, when a celebrated Nebraskan re- turned from his trip around the globe, one of my backwoods neighbors proudly informed me: " I see they give Bryan a lot of receptions when he kem back from the other world."
No one can understand the attitude of our highlanders toward the rest of the earth until he realizes their amazing isolation from all that lies beyond the blue, hazy skyline of their moun- tains. Conceive a shipload of emigrants cast away on some unknown island, far from the regular track of vessels, and left there for five or six generations, unaided and untroubled by the growth of civilization. Among the descend- ants of such a company we would expect to find
i8 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
customs and ideas unaltered from the time of their forefathers. And that is just what we do find to-day among our castaways in the sea of mountains. Time has lingered in Appalachia. The mountain folk still live in the eighteenth century. The progress of mankind from that age to this is no heritage of theirs.
Our backwoodsmen of the Blue Ridge and the Unakas, of their connecting chains, and of the outlying Cumberlands, are still thinking es- sentially the same thoughts, still living in much the same fashion, as did their ancestors In the days of Daniel Boone. Nor is this their fault. They are a people of keen intelligence and strong initiative when they can see anything to win. But, as President Frost says, they have been " beleaguered by nature." They are be- lated— ghettoed in the midst of a civilization that is as aloof from them as if It existed only on another planet. And so, in order to be fair and just with these, our backward kinsmen, we must, for the time, decivilize ourselves to the ex- tent of going back and getting an eighteenth cen- tury point of view.
But, first, how comes It that the mountain folk have been so long detached from the life and movement of their times? Why are they so foreign to present-day Americanism that they
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 19
innocently call all the rest of us foreigners?
The answer lies on the map. They are crea- tures of environment, enmeshed in a labyrinth that has deflected and repelled the march of our nation for three hundred years.
In 1728, when Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, was running the boundary line be- tween Virginia and North Carolina, he finally was repulsed by parallel chains of savage, un- peopled mountains that rose tier beyond tier to the westward, everywhere densely forested, and matted into jungle by laurel and other under- growth. In his Journal, writing in the quaint, old-fashioned way, he said: "Our country has now been inhabited more than 130 years by the English, and still we hardly know anything of the Appalachian Mountains, that are nowhere above 250 miles from the sea. Whereas the French, who are later comers, have rang'd from Quebec Southward as far as the Mouth of Mis- sissippi, in the bay of Mexico, and to the West almost as far as California, which is either way above 2,000 miles."
A hundred and thirty years later, the same thing could have been said of these same moun- tains ; for the " fierce and uncouth races of men " that Poe faintly heard of remained practically undiscovered until they startled the nation on
20 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
the scene of our Civil War, by sending 180,000 of their riflemen into the Union Army.
If a corps of surveyors to-day should be en- gaged to run a line due west from eastern Vir- ginia to the Blue Grass of Kentucky, they would have an arduous task. Let us suppose that they start from near Richmond and proceed along the line of 37° 50^ The Blue Ridge is not es- pecially diflicult: only eight transverse ridges to climb up and down in fourteen miles, and none of them more than 2,000 feet high from bottom to top. Then, thirteen miles across the lower end of The Valley, a curious formation begins.
As a foretaste, in the three and a half miles crossing Little House and Big House mountains, one ascends 2,200 feet, descends 1,400, climbs again 1,600, and goes down 2,000 feet on the far side. Beyond lie steep and narrow ridges athwart the way, paralleling each other like vvavcs at sea. Ten distinct mountain chains are scaled and descended in the next forty miles. There are few " leads " rising gradually to their crests. Each and every one of these ridges is a Chinese wall magnified to altitudes of from a thousand to two thousand feet, and covered with thicket. The hollows between them are merely deep troughs.
In the next thirty miles we come upon novel
"SOMETHING HIDDEN'^ 21:
topography. Instead of wave following wave in orderly procession, we find here a choppy sea of small mountains, with hollows running to- ward all points of the compass. Instead of Chinese walls, we now have Chinese puzzles. The innate perversity of such configuration grows more and more exasperating as we toil westward. In the two hundred miles from the Greenbrier to the Kentucky River, the ridges are all but unscalable, and the streams sprangle in every direction like branches of mountain laurel.
The only roads follow the beds of tortuous and rock-strewn water courses, which may be nearly dry when you start out in the morning, but within an hour may be raging torrents. There are no bridges. One may ford a dozen times in a mile. A spring " tide " will stop all travel, even from neighbor to neighbor, for a day or two at a time. Buggies and carriages are unheard of. In many districts the only means of transportation is with saddlebags on horse- back, or with a " tow sack " afoot. If the pe- destrian tries a short-cut he will learn what the natives mean when they say: " Goin' up, you can might' nigh stand up straight and bite the ground; goin' down, a man wants hobnails in the seat of his pants."
James Lane Allen .was not writing fiction
22 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
when he said of the far-famed Wilderness Road into Kentucky: "Despite all that has been done to civilize it since Boone traced its course in 1790, this honored historic thoroughfare re- mains to-day as it was in the beginning, with all its sloughs and sands, its mud and holes, and jut- ting ledges of rock and loose boulders, and twists and turns, and general total depravity. . . . One such road was enough. They are said to have been notorious for profanity, those who came into Kentucky from this side. Naturally. Many were infidels — there are roads that make a man lose faith. It is known that the more pious companies of them, as they traveled along, would now and then give up in despair, sit down, raise a hymn, and have prayers before they could go further. Perhaps one of the pro- vocations to homicide among the mountain people should be reckoned this road. I have seen two of the mildest of men, after riding over it for a few hours, lose their temper and begin to fight — fight their horses, fight the flies, fight the cobwebs on their noses."
Such difficulties of intercommunication are enough to explain the isolation of the mountain- eers. In the more remote regions this loneliness reaches a degree almost unbelievable. Miss El- len Semple, in a fine monograph published in
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 23
the Geographical Journal, of London, In 1901, gave us some examples :
" These Kentuckj' mountaineers are not only cut off from the outside world, but they are separated from each other. Each is confined to his own locality, and finds his little world within a radius of a few miles from his cabin. There are many men in these mountains who have never seen a town, or even the poor village that constitutes their county- seat. . . . The women . . . are almost as rooted as the trees. We met one woman who, during the twelve years of her married life, had lived only ten miles across the mountain from her own home, but had never in this time been back home to visit her father and mother. Another back in Perry county told me she had never been farther from home than Hazard, the county-seat, which is only six miles distant. Another had never been to the post- office, four miles away; and another had never seen the ford of the Rockcastle River, only two miles from her home, and marked, moreover, by the country store of the district."
When I first went into the Smokies, I stopped one night in a single-room log cabin, and soon had the good people absorbed in my tales of travel beyond the seas. Finally the housewife said to me, with pathetic resignation: " Bush- nell's the furdest ever I've been." Bushnell, at that time, was a hamlet of thirty people, only seven miles from where we sat. When I lived alone on "the Little Fork of Sugar Fork of
24 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Hazel Creek," there were WDmen in the neigh- borhood, young and old, who had never seen a railroad, and men who had never boarded a train, although the Murphy branch ran within sixteen miles of our post-office. The first time that a party of these people went to the railroad, they were uneasy and suspicious. Near- ing the way-station, a girl in advance came upon the first negro she ever saw in her life, and ran screaming back: "My goddamighty. Mam, thar's the boogerman — I done seed him!"
But before discussing the mountain people and their problems, let us take an imaginary balloon voyage over their vast domain. South of the Potomac the Blue Ridge is a narrow ram- part rising abruptly from the east, one or two thousand feet above its base, and descending sharply to the Shenandoah Valley on the west. Across the Valley begin the Alleghanies. These mountains, from the Potomac through to the northern Tennessee border, consist of a multi- tude of narrow ridges with steep escarpment on both sides, running southwesterly in parallel chains, and each chain separated from its neigh- bors by deep, slender dales. Wherever one goes westward from the Valley he will encounter tier after tier of these ridges, as I have already de- scribed.
The Old Copper Mine.
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 25
As a rule, the links in each chain can be passed by following small gaps; but often one must make very wide detours. For example, Pine Mountain (every link has its own distinct name) is practically impassable for nearly 150 miles, except for two water gaps and five difficult cross- ings. Although it averages only a mile thick, the people on its north side, generally, know less about those on the south than a Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutchmen.
The AUeghanies together have a width of from forty to sixty miles. Westward of them, for a couple of hundred miles, are the labyrin- thine roughs of West Virginia and eastern Ken- tucky.
In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the AUeghanies coalesce, but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in the north. The south- east front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarp- ment, rising abruptly from the Piedmont Pla- teau of Carolina. Not one river cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the westward are higher and much more mas- sive. It is the watershed of this whole moun- tain region. The streams rising on its north- western front flow down into central plateaus,
26 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
and thence cut their way through the Unakas in deep and precipitous gorges, draining finally into the Gulf of Mexico, through the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
The northwestern range, which corresponds to the Alleghanies of Virginia, now assumes a character entirely different from them. In- stead of parallel chains of low ridges, we have here, on the border of North Carolina and Ten- nessee, a single chain that dwarfs all others in the Appalachian system. It is cut into seg- ments by the rivers (Nolichucky, French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee) that drain the interior plateaus, and each segment has a distinct name of its own (Iron, Northern Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi mountains). The Carolina mountaineer? still call this system collectively the Alleghanies, but the U. S. Geological Survey has given it a more distinctive name, the Unakas. While the Blue Ridge has only seven peaks that rise above 5,000 feet, the Unakas have 125 summits exceed- ing 5,000, and ten that are over 6,000 feet.
Connecting the Unaka chain with the Blue Ridge are several transverse ranges, the Stone, -Beech, Roan, Yellow, Black, -Newfound, Pis- gah, Balsam, Cowee, Nantahala, Tusquitee, and a few minor mountains, which as a whole are
"SOMETHING HIDDEN" 27
much higher than the Blue Ridge, 156 summits rising over 5,000 feet, and thirty-six over 6,000 feet above sea-level.
In northern Georgia the Unakas and the Blue Ridge gradually fade aw^ay into straggling ridges and foothills, which extend into small parts of South Carolina and Alabama.
The Cumberland Plateau is not attached to either of these mountain systems, but is rather a prolongation of the roughs of eastern Ken- tucky. It is separated from the Unakas by the broad valley of the Tennessee River. The Pla- teau rises very abruptly from the surrounding plains. It consists mainly of tableland gashed by streams that have cut their way down in deep narrow gulches with precipitous sides.
Most of the literature about our Southern mountaineers refers only to the inhabitants of the comparatively meagre hills of eastern Ken- tucky, or to the Cumberlands of Tennessee. Little has been written about the real mountain- eers of southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, and the extreme north of Georgia. The great mountain masses still await their an- nalist, their artist, and, in some places, even their explorer.
CHAPTER II
"THE BACK OF BEYOND"
F certain remote parts of Erin, Jane Bar- low says: "In Bogland, if you inquire the address of such or such person, you will hear not very infrequently that he or she lives ' off away at the Back of Beyond.' ... A traveler to the Back of Beyond may consider himself rather exceptionally fortunate, should he find that he is able to arrive at his destination by any mode of conveyance other than ' the two standin' feet of him.' Often enough the last stage of his journey proceeds down some boggy boreen, or up some craggy hill-track, inacces- sible to any wheel or hoof that ever was shod." So in Appalachia, one steps shortly from the railway into the primitive. Most of the river valleys are narrow. In their bottoms the soil is rich, the farms well kept and generous, the own- ers comfortable and urbane. But from the val- leys directly spring the mountains, with slopes
rising twenty to forty degrees or more. These
28
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 29
mountains cover nine-tenths of western North Carolina, and among them dwell a majority of the native people.
The back country Is rough. No boat nor canoe can stem its brawling waters. No bicy- cle nor automobile can enter it. No coach can endure its roads. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle-bags, and shackly little sleds that are dragged over the bare ground by har- nessed steers. This is the country that ordinary tourists shun. And well for such that they do, since whoso cares more for bodily comfort than for freedom and air and elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pastures. To him the backwoods could be only what Burns called Argyleshire: "A country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage inhabitants."
When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond. This for more rea- sons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American his- tory; and, in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my
30 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
pioneer ancestors of a century or two ago. Be- sides, I wanted to enjoy a free life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of the chase, and the man's game of matching my woodcraft against the forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides.
So, casting about for a biding place that would fill such needs, I picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there was a copper mine, long disused on ac- count of litigation, and I got permission to oc- cupy one of its abandoned cabins.
A mountain settlement consists of all who get their mail at the same place. Ours was made up of forty-two households (about two hundred souls) scattered over an area eight miles long by two wide. These are air-line measurements. All roads and trails "wiggled and wingled around" so that some families were several miles from a neighbor. Fifteen homes had no wagon road, and could be reached by no vehicle other than a narrow sled. Quill Rose had not even a sledpath, but journeyed full five miles by trail to the nearest wagon road.
Medlin itself comprised two little stores built
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 31
of rough planks and bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings. A mile and a half away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also as church. Scat- tered about the settlement were seven tiny tub- mills for grinding corn, some of them mere open sheds with a capacity of about a bushel a day. Most of the dwellings were built of logs. Two or three, only, were weatherboarded frame houses and attained the dignity of a story and a half.
All about us was the forest primeval, where roamed some sparse herds of cattle, razorback hogs, and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were In all the streams. Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a common nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the vast woodland that encompassed it.
The post-office occupied a space about five feet square, in a corner of one of the stores. There w^as a daily mail, by rider, serving four other communities along the way. The contrac- tor for this service had to furnish two horses, working turnabout, pay the rider, and squeeze his own profit, out of $499 a year. In 'Star Route days the mail was carried afoot, two bare- footed young men "toting the sacks on their own wethers " over this thirty-two-mile round
32 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
trip, for forty-eight cents a day; and they boarded themselves!
In the group that gathered at mail time I of- ten was solicited to " back " envelopes, give out the news, or decipher letters for men who could not read. Several times, in the postmaster's ab- sence, I registered letters for myself, or for someone else, the law of the nation being sus- pended by general consent.
Our stores, as I have said, were small, yet many of their shelves were empty. Oftentimes there was no flour to be had, no meat, cereals, canned goods, coffee, sugar, or oil. It excited no comment at all when Old Pete would lean across his bare counter and lament that " Thar's lots o' folks a-hurtin' around hyur for lard, and I ain't got none."
I have seen the time when our neighborhood could get no salt nor tobacco without making a twenty-four-mile trip over the mountain and back, in the dead of winter. This was due, partly, to the state of the roads, and to the fact that there would be no wagon available for weeks at a time. Wagoning, by the way, was no sinecure. Often it meant to chop a fallen tree out of the road, and then, with handspikes, " man-power the log outen the way." Some- times an axle would break (far up on the moun-
Cabin on the Little Fork of Su^ar Fork of Hazel Creek, where the author lived alone for three years.
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 33
tain, of course) ; then a tree must be felled, and a new axle made on the spot from the green wood, with no tools but axe and jackknife.
Trade was mostly by barter, in which 'coon skins and ginseng had the same rank as in the days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Long credits were given on anticipated crops; but the risks were great and the market limited by local consumption, as it did not pay to haul bulky commodities to the railroad. Hence it was self- preservation for the storekeepers to carry only a slender stock of essentials and take pains to have little left through unproductive times.
As a rule, credit would not be asked so long as anything at all could be offered in trade. When Bill took the last quart of meal from the house, as rations for a bear hunt, his patient Marg walked five miles to the store with a skinny old chicken, last of the flock, and offered to barter it for " a dustin' o' salt." There was not a bite in her house beyond potatoes, and " 'taters don't go good 'thout salt."
In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler, miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he
34 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
died. One farmer was also the wagoner of the district, as well as storekeeper, magistrate, veterinarian, and accoucheur. He also owned the only "tooth-pullers" in the settlement: a pair of universal forceps that he designed, forged, filed out, and wielded with barbaric grit. His wife kept the only boarding-house for leagues around. Truly, an accomplished couple!
About two-thirds of our householders owned their homes. Of the remainder about three- fifths were renters and two-fifths were squatters, in the sense that these last were permitted to occupy ground for the sake of reporting trespass and putting out fires — or, maybe, to prevent them doing both. Nearly all of the wild land ■belonged to Northern timber companies who had not yet begun operations (they have done so within the past three years).
Titles were confused, owing to careless sur- veys, or guesswork, in the past. Many boun- daries overlapped, and there were bits of no- man's land here and there, covered by no deed and subject to entry by anyone who discovered them. Our old frontier always was notorious for happy-go-lucky surveys and neglect to make legal entry of claims. Thus Boone lost the fair- est parts of the Kentucky he founded, and was
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 35
ejected and sent adrift. In our own time, over- lapping boundaries have led to bitter litigation and murderous feuds.
As our territory was sparsely occupied, there were none of those " perpendicular farms " so noticeable in older settlements near the river valleys, where men plow fields as steep as their own house roofs and till with the hoe many an acre that is steeper still. John Fox tells of a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his own corn- field and broke his neck. I have seen fields in Carolina where this might occur, as where a forty-five degree slope is tilled to the brink of a precipice. A woman told me: "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees — yes, I have;" and another: " Many's the hill o' corn I've propped up with a rock to keep it from fallin'' down-hill." *
Even in our new region many of the fields suffered quickly from erosion. When a forest is cleared there is a spongy humus on the ground surface that is extremely rich, but this washes away in a single season. The soil beneath is
*A friend of mine on the U. S. Geological Survey tested with his clinometer a mountain cornfield that sloped at an angle of fifty degrees.
36 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
gooa, but thin on the hillsides, and its soluble, fertile ingredients soon leach out and vanish. Without terracing, which I have never seen practiced in the mountains of the South, no field with a surface slope of more than ten degrees (about two feet in ten) will last more than a few years. As one of my neighbors put it: " Thar, I've cl'ared me a patch and grubbed hit out — now I can raise me two or three severe craps!"
"Then what?" I asked.
" When corn won't grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple o' years."
"Then you'll rotate, and grow corn again?"
"La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn't raise a cuss-fight."
" But then you must move, and begin all over again. This continual moving must be a great nuisance."
He rolled his quid and placidly answered: " Huk-uh ; when I move, all I haf¥ter do is put out the fire and call the dog."
His apparent indifference was only phil- osophy expressed with sardonic humor; just as another neighbor would say, " This is good, strong land, or it wouldn't hold up all the rocks there is around hyur."
Right here is the basis for much of what strangers call shiftlessness among the
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" ^H
mountaineers. But of that, more anon.
In clearing new ground, everyone followed the ancient custom of girdling the tree trunks and letting them stand in spectral ugliness un- til they rotted and fell. This is a quick and easy way to get rid of the shade that otherwise would stunt the crops, and it prevents such trees as chestnut, buckeye and basswood from sprout- ing from the stumps. In the fields stood scores of gigantic hemlocks, deadened, that never would be used even for fuel, save as their bark furnished the women with quick-burning stove- wood in wet weather. No one dreamt that hemlock ever would be marketable. And this was only five years ago!
The tillage was as rude and destructive as anything we read of in pioneer history. The common plow was a " bull-tongue," which has aptly been described as " hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim." The har- rows were of wood, throughout, with locust teeth (a friend and I made one from the green trees in half a day, and it lasted three seasons on rocky ground). Sometimes no harrow was used at all, the plowed ground being " drug " with a big evergreen bough. This needed only to be withed directly to a pony's tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and the picture
38 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
of prehistoric agriculture would have been com- plete. After the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows while their mother toiled like a man.
Corn was the staple crop — in fact, the only crop of most farmers. Some rye was raised along the creek, and a little oats, but our settle- ment grew no wheat — there was no mill that could grind it. Wheat is raised, to some extent, in the river bottoms, and on the plateaus of the interior. I have seen it flailed out on the bare ground, and winnowed by pouring the grain and chaff from basket to basket while the women fluttered aprons or bed-sheets. Corn is topped for the blade-fodder, the ears gathered from the stalk, and the main stalks afterwards used as "roughness" (roughage). The cribs generally are ramshackle pens, and there is much waste from mold and vermin.
The Carolina mountains are, by nature, one of the best fruit regions in eastern America. Apples, grapes, and berries, especially, thrive exceeding well. But our mountaineer is no hor- ticulturist. He lets his fruit trees take care of themselves, and so, everywhere except on select farms near the towns, we see old apple and
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 39
peach trees that never were pruned, bristling with shoots, and often bearing wizened fruit, dry and bitter, or half rotted on the stem.
So, too, the gardens are slighted. Late in the season our average garden is a miniature jungle, chiefly of weeds that stand high as one's head. Cabbage and field beans survive and fig- ure mightily in the diet of the mountaineer. Potatoes generally do well, but few farmers raise enough to see them through the winter. Generally some tobacco is grown for family con- sumption, the strong " twist " being smoked or chewed indifferently.
An interesting crop in our neighborhood was ginseng, of which there were several patches in cultivation. This curious plant is native throughout the Appalachians, but has been ex- terminated in all but the wildest regions, on ac- count of the high price that its dried root brings. It has long since passed out of our pharmaco- poeia, and is marketed only in China, though our own people formerly esteemed it as a pana- cea for all ills of the flesh. Colonel Byrd, in his " History of the Dividing Line," says of it:
" Though Practice will soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able Footman, yet, as a help to bear Fatigue I us'd to chew a Root of Ginseng as I Walk't along. This
40 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
kept up mj' Spirits, and made me trip away as nimbly in my half Jack-Boots as younger men cou'd in their Shoes. This Plant is in high Esteem in China, where it sells for its Weight in Silver. ... Its vertues are, that it gives an uncommon Warmth and Vigour to the Blood, and frisks the Spirits, beyond any other Cordial. It chears the Heart, even of a Man that has a bad Wife, and makes him look down with great Composure on the crosses of the World. It promotes insensible Perspiration, dissolves all Phlegmatick and Viscous Humours, that are apt to obstruct the Narrow channels of the Nerves. It helps the Memory and would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the Lungs, much more than Scolding itself. It comforts the Stomach, and Strengthens the Bowels, preventing ail Colicks and Fluxes. In one Word, it will make a Man live a great while, and very well while he does live. And what is more, it will even make Old Age amiable, by rendering it lively, chearful, and good-humour'd."
Alas that only Chinamen and eighteenth-cen- tury Cavaliers could absorb the virtues of this sovereign herb!
A successful ginseng grower of our settlement told me that two acres of the plant will bring an income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year, planting 100,000 to the acre. The roots take eight years to mature. They weigh from one and a half to four ounces each, when fresh, and one-third of this dried. Two acres produce 25,000 roots a year, by progression. The dried root, at that time, brought five dollars a pound. At present,
->A-i.A^'^-.»'»'J*!-r„
At the Post-Office. (SherifY Collecting Taxes.)
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 41
I believe, it is higher. Another friend of mine, who is in this business extensively, tried export- ing for himself, but got only $6.50 a pound in Amoy, when the U. S. consul at that port as- sured him that the real market price was from $12.60 to $24.40. The local trader, knowing American prices, pocketed the difference.
In times of scarcity many of our people took to the woods and gathered commoner medicinal roots, such as bloodroot and wild ginger (there are scores of others growing wild in great pro- fusion), but made only a pittance at it, as syn- thetic drugs have mostly taken the place of herbal simples in modern medicine. Women and children did better, in the days before Christmas, by gathering galax, "hemlock" {leucothoe), and mistletoe, selling to the dealers at the railroad, who ship them North for holi- day decorations. One bright lad from town in- formed me, with evident pride of geography, that " Some of this goes to London, England." Nearly everywhere in our woods the beautiful ruddy-bronze galax is abundant. Along the water-courses, leucothoe, which similarly turns bronze in autumn, and lasts throughout the win- ter, is so prolific as to be a nuisance to travelers, being hard to push through.
Most of our farmers had neither horse nor
42 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
mule. For the rough work of cultivating the hillsides a single steer hitched to the " bull- tongue " was better adapted, and the same steer patiently dragged a little sled to the trading post. On steep declivities the sled is more prac- tical than a cart or wagon, because it can go where wheels cannot, it does not require so wide a track, and it " brakes " automatically in going downhill. Nearly all the farmer's hauling is downhill to his home, or down farther to the village. A sled can be made quite easily by one man, out of wood growing on the spot, and with few iron fittings, or none at all. The run- ners are usually made of natural sourwood crooks, this timber being chosen because it wears very smooth and does not fur up nor splinter.
The hinterland is naturally adapted to graz- ing, rather than to agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the mountains, where there are " balds " covered with succu- lent wild grass that resembles Kentucky blue- grass. Clearing and sowing would extend such areas Indefinitely. The cattle forage for them- selves through eight or nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only attention given them Is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark the calves. Nearly
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 43
all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges, but the backwoodsman does not want " critters that haffter be gentled and hand-fed." The result is that many fam- ilies go without milk a great part of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.
The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse, with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export — let the buyer fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any pro- vision for taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.
On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel all over the neighbor- hood to dispose of it in small portions. The carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the cheap " bilin' pieces " were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an axe and a jack-
44 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
knife. The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit it for boot- heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.
Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool. The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering hand of man and perish without his shepherd- ing. Curiously enough, our mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat — an animal per- fectly adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats would be more profit- able to the small farmers of the wild mountains than cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which there is a vast superfluity in all the Southern mountains. Un- like the weak, timorous and stupid sheep, a flock of goats can fight their own battles against wild animals. They are hardy in any weather, and thrive from their own pickings where other for- agers would starve.
A good milch goat gives more and richer milk than the average mountain cow. And a kid yields excellent fresh meat in manageable quan- tity, at a time when no one would butcher a
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 45
beef because it would spoil. I used to shut my eyes and imagine the transformation that would be wrought in these mountains by a colony of Swiss, who would turn the coves into gardens, the moderate slopes into orchards, the steeper ones into vineyards, by terracing, and who would export the finest of cheese made from the sur- plus milk of their goats. But our native moun- taineers— well, a man who will not eat beef nor drink fresh cow's milk, and who despises but- ter, cannot be interested in anything of the dairy order.
The chickens ran wild and scratched for a living; hence were thin, tough, and poor layers. Eggs seldom were for sale. It was not of much use to try to raise many chickens where they were unprotected from hawks, minks, foxes, weasels and snakes.
Honey often was procured by spotting wild bees to their hoard and chopping the tree, a mild form of sport in w^hich most settlers are ex- pert. Our local preacher had a hundred hives of tame bees, producing 1,500 pounds of honey a year, for which he got ten cents a pound at the railroad.
The mainstay of every farmer, aside from his cornfield, was his litter of razorback hogs. " Old cornbread and sowbelly" are a menu complete
46 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
for the mountaineer. The wild pig, roaming foot-loose and free over hill and dale, picks up his own living at all seasons and requires no attention at all. He is the cheapest possible source of meat and yields the quickest return: " no other food animal can increase his own weight a hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of his life." And so he is regarded by his owner with the same affection that Conne- mara Paddy bestows upon " the gintleman that pays the rint."
In physique and mentality, the razorback dif- fers even more from a domestic hog than a wild goose does from a tame one. Shaped in front like a thin wedge, he can go through laurel thickets like a bear. Armored with tough hide cushioned by bristles, he despises thorns, bram- bles, and rattlesnakes, alike. His extravagantly long snout can scent like a cat's, and yet burrow, uproot, overturn, as if made of metal. The long legs, thin flanks, pliant hoofs, fit him to run like a deer and climb like a goat. In courage and sagacity he outranks all other beasts. A warrior born, he is also a strategist of the first order. Like man, he lives a communal life, and unites with others of his kind for purposes of defense.
The pig is the only large mammal I know
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 47
of, besides man, whose eyes will not shine by reflected light — they are too bold and craft3^ 1 wit. The razorback has a mind of his own ; not instinct, but mind — whatever psychologists may say. He thinks. Anybody can see that when he is not rooting or sleeping he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable understand- ing of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an uncanny gift of reading men's thoughts, whenever those thoughts are directed against the peace and dignity of pigship. He bears grudges, broods over indignities, and plans redresses for the morrow or the week af- ter. If he cannot get even with you, he will lay for your unsuspecting friend. And at the last, when arrested in his crimes and lodged in the pen, he is liable to attacks of mania from sheer helpless rage.
If you camp out In the mountains, nothing will molest you but razorback hogs. Bears will flee and wildcats sneak to their dens, but the moment incense of cooking arises from your camp every pig within two miles will scent it and hasten to call. You may throw your arm out of joint: they will laugh in your face. You may curse in five languages: It Is music to their titillating ears.
Throughout summer and autumn I cooked out
48 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
of doors, on the woodsman's range of forked stakes and a lug-pole spanning parallel beds of rock. When the pigs came, I fed them red- pepper pie. Then all said good-bye to my hos- pitality save one slab-sided, tusky old boar — and he planned a campaign. At the first smell of smoke he would start for my premises. Hid- ing securely in a nearby thicket, he would spy on the operations until my stew got to simmer- ing gently and I would retire to the cabin and get my fists in the dough. Then, charging at speed, he would knock down a stake, trip the lug-pole, and send my dinner flying. Every day he would do this. It got so that I had to sit there facing the fire all through my cooking, or that beast of a hog would ruin me. With this I thought he was outgeneraled. Idle dream! He would slip off to my favorite neighbor's, break through the garden fence, and raise Ned instanter — all because he hated me, for that pep- pery fraud, and knew that Bob and I were cronies.
I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own notion by calling it Be-liar. "That Be-liar," swore he, "would cross hell on a rotten rail to git into my 'tater patch!"
Finally I could stand it no longer, and took
«>ia!^.
;«v
.^-
A Tub Mill
"THE BACK OF BEYOND" 49
down my rifle. It was a nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squir- rels, was in good form. However, in the moun- tains it is more heinous to kill another man's pig than to shoot the owner. So I took craft for my guide, and guile for my heart's counsel. I stalked Belial as stealthily as ever hunter crept on an antelope against the wind. At last I had him dead right: broadside to me and motionless as if in a daydream. I knew that if I drilled his ear, or shot his tail clean ofif, it would only make him meaner than ever. He sported an uncommonly fine tail, and was proud to flaunt it. I drew down on that member, purposely a trifle scant, fired, and — away scuttled that boar, with a broken tail that would dangle and cling to him disgracefully through life.
Exit Belial! It was equivalent to a broken heart. He emigrated, or committed suicide, I know not which, but the Smoky Mountains knew him no more.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS
FOR a long time my chief interest was not in human neighbors, but in the mountains themselves — in that mysterious beckoning hinterland which rose right back of my chimney and spread upward, outward, almost to three cardinal points of the compass, mile after mile, hour after hour of lusty climbing — an Eden still unpeopled and unspoiled.
I loved of a morning to slip on my haversack, pick up my rifle, or maybe a mere staff, and stride forth alone over haphazard routes, to enjoy in my own untutored way the infinite variety of form and color and shade, of plant and tree and animal life, in that superb wilderness that tow- ered there far above all homes of men. (And I love it still, albeit the charm of new discovery is gone from those heights and gulfs that are now so intimate and full of memories).
The Carolina mountains have a character all their own. Rising abruptly from a low base,
50
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 51
and then rounding more gradually upward for 2,000 to 5,000 feet above their valleys, their ap- parent height is more impressive than that of many a loftier summit in the West which forms only a protuberance on an elevated plateau. Nearly all of them are clad to their tops in dense forest and thick undergrowth. Here and there is a grassy " bald ": a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber- line, few jutting crags, no ribs and vertebrae of the earth exposed. Seldom does one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very clififs are sheathed with trees and shrubs, so that one tread- ing their edges has no fear of falling into an abyss.
Pinnacles or serrated ridges are rare. There are few commanding peaks. From almost anv summit in Carolina one looks out upon a sea of flowing curves and dome-shaped eminences un- dulating, with no great disparity of height, unto the horizon. Almost everywhere the contours are similar: steep sides gradually rounding to the tops, smooth-surfaced to the eye because of the endless verdure. Every ridge is separated from its sisters by deep and narrow ravines. Not one of the thousand water courses shows a glint of its dashing stream, save where some far-
52 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
off river may reveal, through a gap in the moun- tain, one single shimmering curve. In all this vast prospect, a keen eye, knowing where to look, may detect an occasional farmer's clearing, but to the stranger there is only mountain and forest, mountain and forest, as far as the eye can reach.
Characteristic, too, is the dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer intensified, that ever hovers over the mountains, unless they be swathed in cloud, or, for a few minutes, after a sharp rain-storm has cleared the atmosphere. Both the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains owe their names to this tenuous mist. It softens all outlines, and lends a mirage-like effect of great distance to objects that are but a few miles off, while those farther removed grow more and more intangible until finally the sky-line blends with the sky itself.
The foreground of such a landscape, in sum- mer, is warm, soft, dreamy, caressing, habit- able; beyond it are gentle and luring solitudes; the remote ranges are inexpressibly lonesome, isolated and mysterious; but everywhere the green forest mantle bespeaks a vital present; no- where does cold, bare granite stand as the sepul- chre of an immemorial past.
And yet these very mountains of Carolina are among the ancients of the earth. They were
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 53
old, very old, before the Alps and the Andes, the Rockies and the Himalayas were molded into their primal shapes. Upon them, in after ages, were born the first hardwoods of Amer- ica— perhaps those of Europe, too — and upon them to-day the last great hardwood forests of our country stand in primeval majesty, mutely awaiting their imminent doom.
The richness of the Great Smoky forest has been the wonder and the admiration of every- one who has traversed it As one climbs from the river to one of the main peaks, he passes successively through the same floral zones he would encounter in traveling from mid-Georgia to southern Canada.
Starting amid sycamores, elms, gums, willows, persimmons, chinquapins, he soon enters a re- gion of beech, birch, basswood, magnolia, cu- cumber, butternut, holly, sourwood, box elder, ash, maple, buckeye, poplar, hemlock, and a great number of other growths along the creeks and branches. On the lower slopes are many species of oaks, with hickory, hemlock, pitch pine, locust, dogwood, chestnut. In this region nearly all trees attain their fullest development. On north fronts of hills the oaks reach a diam- eter of five to six feet. In cool, rich coves, chest- nut trees grow from six to nine feet across the
54 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
stump; and tulip poplars up to ten or eleven feet, their straight trunks towering like gigan- tic columns, with scarcely a noticeable taper, seventy or eighty feet to the nearest limb.
Ascending above the zone of 3,000 feet, white oak is replaced by the no less valuable " moun- tain oak." Beech, birch, buckeye, and chestnut persist to 5,000 feet. Then, where the beeches dwindle until adult trees are only knee-high, there begins a sub-arctic zone of black spruce, balsam, striped maple, aspen and the " Peru- vian " or red cherry.
I have named only a few of the prevailing growths. Nowhere else in the temperate zone is there such a variety of merchantable timber as in western Carolina and the Tennessee front of the Unaka system. About a hundred and twenty species of native trees grow in the Smoky forest itself. When Asa Gray visited the North Carolina mountains he identified, in a thirty-mile trip, a greater variety of indige- nous trees than could be observed in crossing Europe from England to Turkey, or in a trip from Boston to the Rocky Mountain plateau. As John Muir has said, our forests, "however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God ; for they were the best He ever planted."
The undergrowth is of almost tropical lux-
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 55
uriance and variety. Botanists say that this is the richest collecting ground in the United States. Whether one be seeking ferns or fungi or orchids or almost anything else vegetal, each hour will bring him some new delight. In summer the upper mountains are one vast flower garden: the white and pink of rhododendron, the blaze of azalea, conspicuous above all else, in settings of every imaginable shade of green. It was the botanist who discovered this Eden for us. Far back in the eighteenth century, when this was still " Cherokee Country," inhab- ited by no whites but a few Indian-traders, Wil- liam Bartram of Philadelphia came plant- hunting into the mountains of western Carolina, and spread their fame to the world. One of his choicest finds was the fiery azalea, of which he recorded: "The epithet fiery I annex to this most celebrated species of azalea, as being expressive of the appearance of its flowers; which are in general of the color of the finest red-lead, orange, and bright gold, as well as yellow and cream-color. These various splen- did colors are not only in separate plants, but frequently all the varieties and shades are seen in separate branches on the same plant; and the clusters of the blossoms cover the shrubs in such incredible profusion on the hillsides that, sud-
56 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
denly opening to view from dark shades, we are alarmed with apprehension of the woods being set on fire. This is certainly the most gay and brilliant flowering shrub yet known."
And we of a later age, seeing the same wild gardens still unspoiled, can appreciate the al- most religious fervor of those early botanists, as of Michaux, for example, w^ho, in 1794, ascending the peak of Grandfather, broke out in song: '^ Monte au sommet de la plus haut montagne de tout rAmerique Septentrionale, chante avec mon compagnon-guide Vhymn de Marsellois, et crie, 'Vive la Liberie et la Re pub liq u e Fra nqaise! ' "
Of course Michaux was wildly mistaken in thinking Grandfather " the highest mountain in all North America." It is far from being even the highest of the Appalachians. Yet we scarcely know to-day, to a downright certainty, which peak is supreme among our Southern highlands. The honor is conceded to Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountains, northeast of Asheville. Still, the heights of the Carolina peaks have been taken (with but one exception, so far as I know) only by barometric measure- ments, and these, even when official, may vary as much as a hundred feet for the same moun- tain. Since the highest ten or a dozen of our
A Family of Pioneers in the Twentieth Century
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS t^^
Carolina peaks differ in altitude only one or two hundred feet, their actual rank has not yet been determined.
For a long time there was controversy as to whether Mount Mitchell or Clingman Dome w^as the crowning summit of eastern America. The Coast and Geodetic Survey gave the height of Mount Mitchell as 6,688 feet; but later fig- ures of the U. S. Geological Survey are 6,711 and 6,712. In 1859 Buckley claimed for Cling- man Dome of the Smokies an altitude of 6,941 feet. In recent government reports the Dome appears variously as 6,619 ^^d 6,660. In 191 1 I was told by Mr. H. M. Ramseur that when he laid out the route of the railroad from Ashe- ville to Murphy he ran a line of levels from a known datum on this road to the top of Cling- man, and that the result was "four sixes" (6,666 feet above sea-level). It is probable that second place among the peaks of Appalachia may belong either to Clingman Dome or Guyot or LeConte, of the Smokies, or to Balsam Cone of the Black Mountains.
In any case, the Great Smoky mountains are the master chain of the Appalachian system, the greatest mass of highland east of the Rockies. This segment of the Unakas forms the boundary between North Carolina and
S8 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Tennessee from the Big Pigeon River to the McDaniel Bald.
Although some parts of the Smokies are very rugged, with sharp changes of elevation, yet the range as a whole has no one dominating peak. Mount Guyot (pronounced Gee-o, with f/ as in get). Mount LeConte, and Clingman Dome all are over 6,600 feet and under 6,700, according to the most trustworthy measure- ments. Many miles of the divide rise 6,000 feet above sea-level, with only small undula- tions like ocean swells.
*****
The most rugged and difficult part of the Smokies (and of the United States east of Colo- rado) is in the sawtooth mountains between Collins and Guyot, at the headwaters of the Okona Lufty River. I know but few men who have ever followed this part of the divide, al- though during the present year trails have been cut from Clingman to Collins, or near it, and possibly others beyond to the northeastward.
In August and September, 1900, Mr. James H. Ferriss and wife, naturalists from Joliet, Illinois, explored the Smokies to the Lufty Gap northeast of Clingman, collecting rare species of snails and ferns. No doubt Mrs. Ferriss is the only white woman who ever went beyond
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 59
Clingman or even ascended the Dome itself. She stayed at the Lufty Gap while her husband and a Carolina mountaineer of my acquaint- ance struggled through to Guyot and returned. Of this trip Mr. Ferriss sent me the following account:
" We bought another axe of a moonshiner, and, with a week's provisions on our backs, one of the guides and I took the Consolidated American Black Bear and Ruffed Grouse Line for Mount Guyot, twenty miles farther by map measurement. The bears were in full posses- sion of the property, and we could get no infor- mation in the settlements, as the settlers do not travel this line. They did not know the names of the peaks other than as tops of the Great Smokies — knew nothing of the character of the country except that it was rough. The Tennes- seeans seem afraid of the mountains, and the Cherokees of the North Carolina side equally so; for, two miles from camp, all traces of man, except surveyors' marks, had disappeared. In the first two days we routed eight bears out of their nests and mud wallow^s, and they seemed to stay routed, for upon our return we found the blackberry crop unharvested and had a bag pudding — * duff ' — or what you call it.
" A surveyor had run part of the line this
6o CUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
year, which helped us greatly, and the bears had made well-beaten trails part of the way. In places they had mussed up the ground as much as a barnyard. We tried to follow the boundary line between the two States, which is exactly upon the top of the Smokies, but often missed it. The government [state] surveyor many years ago made two hacks upon the trees, but sometimes the linemen neglected to use their axes for half a mile or so. It took us three and one-half days to go, and two and one-half to return, and we arose with the morning star and worked hard all day. The last day and a half, going, there was nothing to guide us but the old hacks.
" Equipped with government maps, a good compass, and a little conceit, I thought I could follow the boundary-line. In fact, at one time We intended to go through without a guide. A trail that runs through blackberry bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then there was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists growing thickly upon the ground as tomato vines, curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like a field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one place we walked fully a quarter of a mile over the tops of laurel bushes and these were ten or twelve feet in height, but
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 611
blown over one way by the wind. Much of the trail was along rocky edges, sometimes but six inches or so Avide, but almost straight down on both sides for hundreds of feet. One night, delayed by lack of water, we did not camp till dark, and, finding a smooth spot, lay down with a small log on each side to hold us from rolling out of bed. When daylight came we found that, had we rolled over the logs, my partner would have dropped 500 feet into Tennessee and I would have dropped as far into North Caro- lina, unless some friendly tree top had caught us. Sometimes the mountain forked, and these ridges, concealed by the balsams, would not be seen. Then there were round knobs — and who can tell where the highest ridge lies on a round mountain or a ball? My woolen shirt was torn off to the shoulders, and my partner, who had started out with corduroys, stayed in the brush until I got him a pair of overalls from camp." Even to the west of Clingman a stranger is likely to find some desperately rough travel if he should stray from the trail that follows the divide. It is easy going for anyone in fair weather, but when cloud settles on the moun- tain, as it often does without warning, it may be so thick that one cannot see a tree ten feet away. Under such circumstances I have my-
62 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
self floundered from daylight till dark through heart-breaking laurel thickets, and without a bite to eat, not knowing whither I was going except that it was toward the Little Tennessee River.
In 1906 I spent the summer in a herders' hut on top of the divide, just west of the Locust Ridge (miscalled Chestnut Ridge on the map) , about six miles east of Thunderhead. This time I had a partner, and we had a glorious three months of it, nearly a mile above sea-level, and only half a day's climb from the nearest settle- ment. One day I was alone, Andy having gone down to Medlin for the mail. It had rained a good deal — in fact, there was a shower nearly every day throughout the summer, the only sem- blance of a dry season in the Smokies being the autumn and early winter. The nights were cold enough for fires and blankets, even In our well- chinked cabin.
Well, I had finished my lonesome dinner, and was washing up, when I saw a man approach- ing. This was an event, for we seldom saw other men than our two selves. He was a lame man, wearing an iron extension on one foot, and he hobbled with a cane. He looked played-out and gaunt. T met him outside. He smiled as though I looked good to him, and asked with
]
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 63
some eagerness, " Can I buy something to eat here?"
"No," I answered, "you can't buy anything here" — how his face fell! — "but I'll give you the best we have, and you're welcome."
Then you should have seen that smile!
He seemed to have just enough strength left to drag himself into the hut. I asked no ques- tions, though wondering what a cripple, evi- dently a gentleman, though in rather bad repair, was doing on top of the Smoky Mountains. It was plain that he had spent more than one night shelterless in the cold rain, and that he was quite famished. While I was baking the biscuit and cooking some meat, he told his story. This is the short of it:
" I am a Canadian, McGill University man, electrician. My company sent me to Cincin- nati. I got a vacation of a couple of weeks, and thought I'd take a pedestrian tour. I can walk better than you'd think," and he tapped the short leg.
I liked his grit.
" I knew no place to go," he continued; "so I took a map and looked for what might be interesting country, not too far from Cincinnati. I picked out these mountains, got a couple of
64 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
government topographical sheets, and, thinking they would serve like European ordnance maps, I had no fear of going astray. It was my plan to walk through to the Balsam Mountains, and so on to the Big Pigeon River. I went to Mary- ville, Tennessee, and there I was told that I would find a cabin every five or six miles along the summit from Thunderhead to the Balsams." I broke in abruptly: "Whoever told you that was either an impostor or an ignoramus. There are only four of these shacks on the whole Smoky range. Two of them, the Russell cabin and the Spencer place, you have already passed without knowing it. This is called the Hall cabin. None of these three are occupied save for a week or so in the fall when the cattle are being rounded up, or by chance, as my partner and I happen to be here now. Beyond this there is just one shack, at Siler's Meadow. It is down below the summit, hidden in timber, and you would never have seen it. Even if you had, you would have found it as bare as a last year's mouse nest, for nobody ever goes there except a few bear-hunters. From there onward for forty miles is an uninhabited wilderness so rough that you could not make seven miles a day in it to save your life, even- if you knew the course; and there is no trail at all.
3 O
o
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 65
Those government maps are good and reliable to show the approaches to this wild country, but where you need them most they are good for nothing."
" Then," said he, " if I had missed your cabin I would have starved to death, for I depended on finding a house to the eastward, and would have followed the trail till I dropped. I have been out in the laurel thickets, now, three days and two nights; so nothing could have induced me to leave this trail, once I^ found it, or until I could see out to a house on one side or other of the mountain."
"You would see no house on either side from here to beyond Guyot, about forty miles. Had you no rations at all?"
" I traveled light, expecting to find entertain- ment among the natives. Here is what I have left."
He showed me a crumpled buckwheat flap- jack, a pinch of tea, and a couple of ounces of brandy.
"I was saving them for the last extremity; have had nothing to eat since yesterday morn- ing. Drink the brandy, please; it came from Montreal."
"No, my boy, that liquor goes down your own throat instanter. You're the chap that
66 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
needs it. This coffee will boil now in a minute. I won't give you all the food you want, for it wouldn't be prudent; but by and by you shall have a bellyful."
Then, as well as he could, he sketched the route he had followed. Where the trail from Tennessee crosses from Thunderhead to Haw Gap he had swerved off from the divide, and he discovered his error somewhere in the neigh- borhood of Blockhouse. There, instead of re- tracing his steps, he sought a short-cut by plung- ing down to the headwaters of Haw Creek, thus worming deeper and deeper into the devil's nest. One more day would have finished him. When I told him that the trip from Clingman to Guyot would be hard work for a party of expe- rienced mountaineers, and that it would prob- ably take them a week, during which time they would have to pack all supplies on their own backs, he agreed that his best course would be
down into Carolina and out to the railroad.
* * * * *
Of animal life in the mountains I was most entertained by the raven. This extraordinary bird was the first creature Noah liberated from the ark — he must have known, even at that early period of nature study, that it was the most saga- cious of all winged things. Or perhaps Noah
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 67
and the raven did not get on well together and he rid himself of the pest at first opportunity. Doubtless there could have been no peace aboard a craft that harbored so inquisitive and talkative a fowl. Anyway, the wild raven has been superlatively shy of man ever since the flood.
Probably there is no place south of Labrador where our raven (Corvtis corax principalis) is seen so often as in the Smokies; and yet, even here, a man may haunt the tops for weeks with- out sight or sound of the ebon mystery — then, for a few days, they will be common. On the southeast side of the Locust Ridge, opposite Huggins's Hell, between Bone Valley and the main fork of Hazel Creek, there is a " Raven's Cliff" where they winter and breed, using the same nests year after year. Occasionally one is trapped, with bloody groundhog for bait; but I have yet to meet a man who has succeeded in shooting one.
If the raven's body be elusive his tongue as- suredly is not. No other animal save man has anything like his vocal range. The raven croaks, clucks, caws, chuckles, squalls, pleads, " pooh-poohs," grunts, barks, mimics small birds, hectors, cajoles — yes, pulls a cork, whets a scythe, files a saw — with his throat. As is
68 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
well known, ravens can be taught human speech, like parrots ; and I am told they show the same preference for bad words — which, I think, is quite in character with their reputation as thieves and butchers. However, I may be prej- udiced, seeing that the raven's favorite dainties for his menu are the eyes of living fawns and lambs.
A stranger in these mountains will be sur- prised at the apparent scarcity of game animals. It is not unusual for one to hunt all day in an absolute wilderness, where he sees never a fresh track of man, and not get a shot at anything fit to eat. The cover is so dense that one still- hunting (going without dogs) has poor chance of spying the game that lurks about him; and there really is little of it by comparison with such hunting fields as the Adirondacks, Maine, Canada, where game has been conserved for many years. It used to be the same up there. The late W. J. Stillman, writing in 1877 of the Maine woods, said:
" The most striking feature of the forest, after one has become habituated to the gloom, the pathlessness, and the apparent impenetrability of the screen it forms around him, is the absence of animal life. You may wander for hours without seeing a living creature. . . . One thinks of
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 69
the woods and the wild beasts; yet in all the years of my wilderness living I can catalogue the wild creatures other than squirrels, grouse, and small birds (never plenty, gen- erally very rare) which I have accidentally encountered and seen while wandering for hunting or mere pastime in the wild forest: one deer, one porcupine, one marten (com- monly called sable), and maybe half a dozen hares. You may walk hours and not see a living creature larger than a fly, for days together and not see a grouse, a squirrel, or a bird larger than the Canada jay. . . . Lands running with game are like those flowing with milk and honey ; and when the sporting books tell you that game is abundant, don't imagine that you are assured from starvation thereby. I have been reduced, in a country where deer were swarm- ing, to live several days together on corn meal."
It is much the same to-day in our Appalach- ian wilderness, where no protection worthy the name has ever been aflforded the game and fish since Indian times. There is a class of woods- loafers, very common here, that ranges the for- est at all seasons with single-barrel shotguns or " hog rifles," killing bearing females as well as legitimate game, fishing at night, even using dynamite in the streams; and so, in spite of the fact that there is no better game harborage granted by Nature on our continent than the Carolina mountains, the deer are all but exter- minated in most districts, turkeys and even squirrels are rather scarce, and good trout fish-
70 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
ing is limited to stocked waters or streams flow- ing through virgin forest. The only game ani- mal that still holds his own is the black bear, and he endures in few places other than the roughest districts, such as that southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, where laurel and cliffs daunt all but the hardiest of men.
The only venomous snakes in the mountains are rattlers and copperheads, the former com- mon, the latter rare. The chance of being bit- ten by one is about as remote as that of being struck by lightning — either accident might hap- pen, of course. The mountaineers have an absurd notion that the little lizard so common in the hills is rank " pizen." Oddly enough, they call it a " scorpion."
From those two pests of the North Woods, black-flies and mosquitoes, the Smokies are mercifully exempt. At least there are no mos- quitoes that bite or sing, except down in the river valleys where they have been introduced by railroad trains — and even there they are but a feeble folk. The reason is that in the moun- tains there is almost no standing water where they can breed.
On the other hand, the common house-fly is extraordinarily numerous and persistent — a
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 71
daily curse, even on top of Smoky. I imagine this is due to the wet climate, as in Ireland. Minute gnats (the " punkies " or " no-see-ums " of the North) are also offensively present in trout-fishing time. And every cabin is alive / with fleas. A hundred nights I have anointed myself with citronella from head to foot, and outsmelt a cheap barber-shop, to escape their plague. In a tent, and without dogs, one can be immune.
In most years there are very few chiggers, except on pine ridges. They are worse along rivers than in the mountains. The ticks of this country are not numerous, and seldom fasten on man.
The climate of the Carolina mountains is pleasantly cool in summer. Even at low alti- tudes (1,600 to 2,000 feet) the nights generally are refreshing. It may be hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. The air is drier (less relative humidity) than in the lowlands, not- withstanding that there is greater rainfall here than elsewhere in the United States outside of Florida and the Puget Sound country. The annual rainfall varies a great deal according to locality, being least at Asheville (42 inches) and greatest on the southeastern slope of the
y
72 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Blue Ridge, where as much as 105 inches has been recorded in a year. The average rainfall of the whole region is 73 inches a year.*
In general the mornings are apt to be lowery, with fogs hanging low until, say, 9 o'clock, so that one cannot predict weather for the day. Heavy dews remain on the bushes until about the same hour.
The winters are short. What Northerners would call cold weather is not expected until Christmas, and generally it is gone by the end of February. Snow sometimes falls on the higher mountains by the first of October, and the last snow may linger there until April (ex- ceptionally it falls in May). Tornadoes are unknown here, but sometimes a hurricane w^ill sweep the upper ranges. On April 19, 1900, a blizzard from the northwest struck the Smokies. In twenty minutes everything was frozen. At Siler's Meadow seventeen cattle climbed upon each other for warmth and froze to death in a solid hecatomb. A herdsman who was out at the time, and narrowly escaped a similar fate, assured me that " that was the beatenest snow- storm ever I seen." In the valleys there may be a few days in January and February
* Average annual rainfall of New York City, 44 inches; of Glencoe, in the Scotch Highlands, nearly 130 inches.
Scouting in the Ljurel (The Autlior.)
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 73
when the mercury drops to zero or a few de- grees lower. On the high peaks, of course, the winter cold often is intense, and on the sunless north side of Clingman there are overhangs or crevices where a little ice may be found the year around.
Undoubtedly there Is vast mineral wealth hidden in the Carolina mountains. A greater variety of minerals has been found here than in any other State save Colorado. But, for the present, it is a hard country to prospect in, owing to the thick covering of the forest floor. Not only is the underbrush very dense, but be- neath it there generally is a thick stratum of clay overlaying the rocks, even on steep slopes. Gold has been found in numberless places, but finely disseminated. I do not know a locality In the mountains proper where a working vein has been discovered. At my cabin I did just enough panning to get a notion that If I could stand working in icy water ten hours a day I might average a dollar in yellow dust by It. The adjacent copper mine carries considerable gold. Silver and lead are not common, so far as known, but there are many good copper and iron properties. Gems are mined profitably in several of the western counties. The corundum, mica, talc, and monazite arc, I believe, unex-
74 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
celled in the United States. Building stone is abundant, and there is fine marble in various places. Kaolin is shipped out in considerable quantities. The rocks chiefly are gneisses, gran- ites, metamorphosed marbles, quartzites, and slates, all of them far too old to bear fossils or coal.
CHAPTER IV
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES
^ C /^^ IT up, pup! you've scrouged right in &j- hyur in front of the fire. You Dred! what makes you so blamed conten- tious?"
Little John shoved both dogs into a corner, and strove to scrape some coals from under a l)eech forestick that glowed almost hot enough to melt brass.
" This is the wust coggled-up fire I ever seed, to fry by. Bill, hand me some Old Ned from that suggin o' mine."
A bearded hunchback reached his long arm to a sack that hung under our rifles, drew out a chuck of salt pork, and began slicing it with his jackknife. On inquiry I learned that "Old Ned " is merely slang for fat pork, but that "suggin" or "sujjit" (the u pronounced like 00 in look) is true mountain dialect for a pouch, valise, or carryall, its et3^mology being some- thing to puzzle over.
75
76 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Four dogs growled at each other under a long bunk of poles and hay that spanned one side of our cabin. The fire glared out upon the middle of an unfloored and windowless room. Deep shadows clung to the walls and benches, char- itably concealing much dirt and disorder left by previous occupants, much litter of our own contributing.
At last we were on a saddle of the divide, a mile above sea-level, in a hut built years ago for temporary lodgment of cattle-men herding on the grassy '' balds " of the Smokies. A sag- ging clapboard roof covered its two rooms and the open space between them that we called our " entry." The State line between North Caro- lina and Tennessee ran through this uninclosed hallway. The Carolina room had a puncheon floor and a clapboard table, also better bunks than its mate; but there had risen a stiff south- erly gale that made the chimney smoke so abom- inably that we were forced to take quarters in the neighbor State.
Granville lifted the lid from a big Dutch oven and reported " Bread's done."
There was a flash in the frying-pan, a curse and a puff from Little John. The coffee-pot boiled over. We gathered about the hewn benches that served for tables, and sat a la Turc
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES -j^
upon the ground. For some time there was no sound but the gale without and the munching of ravenous men.
" If this wind '11 only cease afore mornin', we'll git us a bear to-morrow."
A powerful gust struck the cabin, by way of answer; a great roaring surged up from the gulf of Defeat, from Desolation, and from the other forks of Bone Valley — clamor of ten thousand trees struggling with the blast.
" Hit's gittin' wusser."
" Any danger of this roost being blown off the mountain?" I inquired.
" Hit's stood hyur twenty year through all the storms; I reckon it can stand one more night of it."
''A man couldn't walk upright, outside the cabin," I asserted, thinking of the St. Louis tornado, in which I had lain flat on my belly, clinging to an iron post.
The hunchback turned to me with a grave face. " I've seed hit blow, here on top o' Smoky, till a boss couldn't stand up agin it. You'll spy, to-morrow, whar several trees has been wind- throwed and busted to kindlin'."
I recalled that several, in the South, means many — " a good many," as our own tongues phrase it.
78 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
"Oh, shucks! Bill Cope," put in "Doc" Jones, "whut do you-uns know about wind- storms? Now, I've hed some experiencin' uj) hyur that '11 do to tell about. You remember the big storm three year ago, come grass, when the cattle all huddled up a-top o' each other and friz in one pile, solid."
Bill grunted an affirmative.
"Wal, sir, I was a-herdin', over at the Spencer Place, and was out on Thunderhead when the wind sprung up. Thar come one turrible vyg'- rous blow that jest nacherally lifted the ground. I went up in the sky, my coat ripped off, and I went a-sailin' end-over-ecd."
"Yes?"
" Yes. About half an hour later, I lit spang in the mud, way down yander in Tuckaleechee Cove — yes, sir: ten mile as the crow flies, and a mile deeper 'n trout-fish swim."
There was silence for a moment. Then Little John spoke up: " I mind about that time. Doc; but I disremember which buryin'-ground they- all planted ye in."
"Planted! Me? Huh! But I had one tor- mentin' time findin' my hat!"
The cabin shook under a heavier blast, to match Doc's yarn.
"Old Wind-maker's blowin' liars out o'
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 79
North Car'lina. Hang on to yer hat, Doc! Whoop! hear 'em a-comin'I "
" Durn this blow, anyhow! No bear '11 cross the mountain sich a night as this."
" Can't we hunt down on the Carolina side? " I asked.
"That's whar we're goin' to drive; but hit's no use if the bear don't come over."
" How is that? Do they sleep in one State and eat in the other?"
"Yes: you see, the Tennessee side of the mountain is powerful steep and laurely, so 't man nor dog cain't git over it in lots o' places; that's whar the bears den. But the mast, sich as acorns and beech and hickory nuts, is mostly on the Car'lina side; that's whar they hafter come to feed. So, when it blows like this, they stay at home and suck their paws till the weather clars."
" So we'll have to do, at this rate."
" I'll go see whut the el-e-ments looks like."
We arose from our squatting postures. John opened the little clapboard door, which swung violently backward as another gust boomed against the cabin. Dust and hot ashes scattered in every direction. The dogs sprang up, one encroached upon another, and they flew at each other's throats. They were powerful beasts.
8o OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
dangerous to man as well as to the brutes they were trained to fight ; but John was their master, and he soon booted them into surly subjection.
" The older dog don't ginerally raise no ruc- tion; hit's the younger one that's ill," by which he meant vicious. " You, Coaly, you'll git some o' that meanness shuck outen you if you tackle an old she-bear to-morrow!"
"Has the young dog ever fought a bear?"
"No; he don't know nothin'; but I reckon he'll pick up some larnin' in the next two, three days."
" Have these dogs got the Plott strain? I've been told that the Plott hounds are the best bear dogs in the country."
" 'Tain't so," snorted John. " The Plott curs are the best: that is, half hound, half cur — though what we-uns calls the cur, in this case, raelly comes from a big furrin dog that I don't rightly know the breed of. Fellers, you can talk as you please about a streak o' the cur spilin' a dog; but I know hit ain't so — not for bear fightin' in these mountains, whar you cain't fol- ler up on hossback, but hafter do your own runnin'."
"What is the reason, John?"
" Waal, hit's like this: a plumb cur, of course, cain't f oiler a cold track — he just runs by sight;
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 8i
and he won't hang — he quits. But, t'other way, no hound '11 raelly fight a bear — hit takes a big severe dog to do that. Hounds has the best noses, and they'll run a bear all day and night, and the next day, too ; but they won't never tree ■ — they're afeared to close in. Now, look at them dogs o' mine. A cur ain't got no dew- claws — them dogs has. My dogs can foller ary trail, same's a hound; but they'll run right in on the varmint, snappin' and chawin' and wor- ryin' him till he gits so mad you can hear his tushes pop half a mile. He cain't run away — he haster stop every bit, and fight. Finally he gits so tired and het up that he trees to rest hisself. Then we-uns ketches up and finishes him."
" Mebbe you-uns don't know that a dew- clawed dog is snake-proof "
But somebody, thinking that dog-talk had gone far enough, produced a bottle of soothing- syrup that was too new to have paid tax. Then we discovered that there was musical talent, of a sort, in Little John. He cut a pigeon-wing, twirled around with an imaginary banjo, and sang in a quaint minor:
Did you ever see the devil, With his pitchfork and ladle, And his old iron shovel,
82 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
And his old gourd head? O, I will go to meetin', And I luill go to meetin', Yes, I will go to meetin', In an old tin pan.
Other songs followed, with utter Irrelevance — mere snatches from " ballets " composed, mainly, by the mountaineers themselves, though some dated back to a long-forgotten age when the British ancestors of these Carolina woods- men were battling with lance and long-bow. It was one of modern and local origin that John was singing when there came a diversion from without —
La-a-ay down, boys,
Le's take a nap: Thar's goin' to be trouble
In the Cumberland Gap —
Our ears were stunned by one sudden thun- dering crash. The roof rose visibly, as though pushed upward from within. In an instant we were blinded by moss and dried mud — the chinking blown from between the logs of our shabby cabin. Dred and Coaly cowered as though whipped, while " Doc's " little hound slunk away in the keen misery of fear. We men
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 83
looked at each other with lowered eyelids and the grim smile that denotes readiness, though no special eagerness, for dissolution. Beyond the " gant-lot " we could hear trees and limbs popping like skirmishers in action.
Then that tidal wave of air swept by. The roof settled again with only a few shingles miss- ing. We went to " redding up." Squalls broke against the mountainside, hither and yon, like the hammer of Thor testing the foundations of the earth. But they were below us. Here, on top, there was only the steady drive of a great surge of wind; and speech was possible once more.
" Fellers, you want to mark whut you dream about, to-night: hit'll shore come true to-mor- row."
"Yes: but you mustn't tell whut yer dream was till the hunt's over, or It'll spile the charm."
There ensued a grave discussion of dream- lore. In which the Illiterates of our party de- clared solemn faith. If one dreamt of blood, he would surely see blood the next day. An- other lucky sign for a hunter was to dream of quarreling with a woman, for that meant a she- bear; It was favorable to dream of clear water, but muddy water meant trouble.
The wind died away. When we went out for
84 OUR SOUTHEPvN HIGHLANDERS
a last observation of the weather we found the air so clear that the lights of Knoxville were plainly visible, in the north-northwest, thirty- two miles in an air line. Not another light was to be seen on earth, although in some directions we could scan for nearly a hundred miles. The moon shone brightly. Things looked rather
favorable for the morrow, after all.
*****
"Brek-k-k-M//"
I awoke to a knowledge that somebody had built a roaring fire and was stirring about. Be- tween the cabin logs one looked out upon a starry sky and an almost pitch-dark world. What did that pottering vagabond mean by arousing us in the middle of the night? But I was hungry. Everybody half arose on elbows and blinked about. Then we got up, each after his fashion, except one scamp who resumed snoring.
" Whar's that brekfust you're yellin' about? "
" Hit's for you-uns to help git! I knowed I couldn't roust ye no other way. Here, you, go down to the spring and fetch water. Rustle out, boys; we've got to git a soon start if you want bear brains an' liver for supper."
The " soon start " tickled me into good humor.
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 85
Our dogs were curled together under the long bunk, having popped indoors as soon as the way was opened. Somebody trod on Coaly's tail. Coaly snapped Dred. Instantly there was ac- tion between the four. It is interesting to ob- serve what two or three hundred pounds of dog can do to a ramshackle berth with a man on top of it. Poles and hay and ragged quilts flew in every direction. Sleepy Matt went down in the midst of the melee, swearing valiantly. I went out and hammered ice out of the wash-basin while Granville and John quelled the riot. Presently our frying-pans sputtered and the huge coffee-pot began to get up steam.
"Waal, who dreamt him a good dream?"
" I did," affirmed the writer. " I dreamt that I had an old colored woman by the throat and was choking dollars out of her mouth "
"Good la!" exclaimed four men in chorus; " you hadn't orter a-told."
" Why? Wasn't that a lovely dream? "
" Hit means a she-bear, shore as a cap- shootin' gun; but you've done spiled it all by tellin'. Mebbe somebody'll git her to-day, but you won't — your chanct is ruined."
So the reader will understand why, in this veracious narrative, I cannot relate any heroic
86 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
exploits of my own In battling with Ursus Major. And so you, ambitious one, when you go Into the Smokies after that long-lost bear, remember these two cardinal points of the Law:
(i) Dream that you are fighting some poor old colored woman. (That is easy: the victuals you get will fix up your dream, all right.) And —
(2) Keep your mouth shut about it.
There was still no sign of rose-color In the eastern sky when we sallied forth. The ground, to use a mountaineer's expression, was " all spewed up with frost." Rime crackled under- foot and our mustaches soon stiffened in the icy wind.
It was settled that Little John Cable and the hunchback Cope should take the dogs far down Into Bone Valley and start the drive, leaving Granville, " Doc," Matt, and myself to picket the mountain. I was given a stand about half a mile east of the cabin, and had but a vague notion of where the others went.
By jinks, it was cold! I built a little fire be- tween the buttressing roots of a big mountain oak, but still my toes and fingers were numb. This was the 25th of November, and we were at an altitude where sometimes frost forms in
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 87
July. The other men were more thinly clad than I, and with not a stitch of wool beyond their stockings; but they seemed to revel in the keen air. I wasted some pity on Cope, who had no underwear worthy of the name; but after- wards I learned that he would not have worn more clothes if they had been given him. Many a night my companions had slept out on the mountain without blanket or shelter, when the ground froze and every twig in the forest was coated with rime from the winter fog.
Away out yonder beyond the mighty bulk of Clingman Dome, which, black with spruce and balsam, looked like a vast bear rising to con- template the northern world, there streaked the first faint, nebulous hint of dawn. Presently the big bear's head was tipped w^ith a golden crown flashing against the scarlet fires of the firma- ment, and the earth awoke.
A rustling some hundred yards below me gave signal that the gray squirrels were on their way to water. Out of a tree overhead hopped a mountain "boomer" (red squirrel), and down he came, eyed me, and stopped. Cocking his head to one side he challenged peremp- torily: "Who are you? Stump? Stump? Not a stump. What the deuce!"
88 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
I moved my hand.
"Lawk — the booger-mani Run, run, run!"
Somewhere from the sky came a strange, half- human note, as of someone chiding: " Wal~ lace, IFal-lace, Wat! " I could get no view for the trees. Then the voice flexibly changed to a deep-toned " Co-logne, Qo-logne, Qo-lognel' that rang like a bell through the forest aisles.
Two names uttered distinctly from the air I Two scenes conjured in a breath, vivid but un- related as in dreams: Wallace — an iron-bound Scottish coast; Cologne — tall spires, and cliffs along the Rhine! What magic had flashed such pictures upon a remote summit of the Smoky Mountains?
The weird speaker sailed into view — a raven. Forward it swept with great speed of ebon wings, fairly within gunshot for one teasing moment. Then, as if to mock my gaping stupor, it hurtled like a hawk far into the safe distance, whence it flung back loud screams of defiance and chuckles of derision.
As the morning drew on, I let the fire die to ashes and basked lazily in the sun. Not a sound had I heard from the dogs. My hoodoo was working malignly. Well, let it work. I was comfortable now, and that old bear could go to any other doom she preferred. It was pleas-
Skinning a frozen bear
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 89
ant enough to lie here alone in the forest and be free! Aye, it was good to be alive, and to be far, far away from the broken bottles and old tin cans of civilization.
For many a league to the southward clouds covered all the valleys in billows of white, from which rose a hundred mountain tops, like islands in a tropic ocean. My fancy sailed among and beyond them, beyond the horizon's rim, even unto those far seas that I had sailed in my youth, to the old times and the old friends that I should never see again.
But a forenoon is long-drawn-out when one has breakfasted before dawn, and has nothing to do but sit motionless in the woods and watch and listen. I got to fingering my rifle trigger impatiently and wishing that a wild Thanks- giving gobbler might blunder into view. Squirrels made ceaseless chatter all around my stand. Large hawks shrilled by me within tempting range, whistling like spent bullets. A groundhog sat up on a log and whistled, too, after a manner of his own. He was so near that I could see his nose wiggle. A skunk wad- dled around for twenty minutes, and once came so close that I thought he would nibble my boot. I was among old mossy beeches, scaled with polyphori, and twisted into postures of torture
90 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
by their battles with the storms. Below, among chestnuts and birches, I could hear the t-wee, t-wee of " joree-birds " (towhees), which win- ter in the valleys. Incessantly came the chip- chip-cluck of ground squirrels, the saucy bark of the grays, and great chirruping among the " boomers," which had ceased swearing and were hard at w^ork.
Far off on my left a rifle cracked. I pricked up and listened intently, but there was never a yelp from a dog. Since it is a law of the chase to fire at nothing smaller than turkeys, lest big game be scared away, this shot might mean a gobbler. I knew that Matt Hyde could not, to save his soul, sit ten minutes on a stand without calling turkeys (and he could call them, with his unassisted mouth, better than anyone I ever heard perform with leaf or wing-bone or any other contrivance).
Thus the slow hours dragged along. I yearned mightily to stretch my legs. Finally, being certain that no drive would approach my stand that day, I ambled back to the hut and did a turn at dinner-getting. Things were smoking, and smelt good, by the time four of our men turned up, all of them dog-tired and disappointed, but stoical.
" That pup Coaly chased off atter a wildcat,"
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 91
blurted John. " We held the old dogs together and let him rip. Then Dred started a deer. It was that old buck that everybody's shot at, and missed, this three year back. I'd believe he's a hant if 't v^asn't for his tracks — they're the biggest I ever seen. He must weigh two hun- derd and fifty. But he's a foxy cuss. Tuk right down the bed o' Desolation, up the left prong of Roaring Fork, right through the Devil's Race-path (how a deer can git through thar I don't see!), crossed at the Meadow Gap, went down Eagle Creek, and by now he's in the Little Tennessee. That buck, shorely to God, has wings! "
We were at table in the Carolina room when Matt Hyde appeared. Sure enough, he bore a turkey hen.
" I was callin' a gobbler when this fool thing showed up. I fired a shoot as she riz in the air, but only bruk her wing. She made off on her legs like the devil whoppin' out fire. I run, an' she run. Guess I run her half a mile through all-fired thickets. She piped ^ Quit — quit' but I said, ' I'll see you in hell afore I quit! ' and the chase resumed. Finally I knocked her over with a birch stob, and here we are."
Matt ruefully surveyed his almost denuded
92 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
legs, evidence of his chase. " Boys," said he, " I'm nigh breechless! "
-:i:- -:iJ * * *
None but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But the stamina of these " withey " little men was even more remarkable than their endurance of cold. After a small slice of fried pork, a chunk of half-baked johnny-cake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh as ever.
What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together! — some man like Daniel Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!
I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought from home. After his first deep draught. Little John exclaimed:
" Hah ! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it ! "
I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.
We took new stands ; but the afternoon passed without incident to those of us on the mountain tops. I returned to camp about five o'clock, and was surprised to see three of our men lugging
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 93
across the " gant-lot " * toward the cabin a small female bear.
'' Hyur's yer old nigger woman," shouted John.
The hunters showed no elation — in fact, they looked sheepish — and I suspected a nigger in the woodpile.
" How's this? I didn't hear any drive."
"There wa'n't none."
"Then where did you get your bear?"
"In one of Wit Hensley's traps, dum him! Boys, I wish t' we hed roasted the temper outen them trap-springs, like we talked 0' doin'."
" Was the bear alive? "
"Live as a hot coal. See the pup's head!"
I examined Coaly, who looked sick. The flesh was torn from his lower jaw and hung down a couple of inches. Two holes in the top of his head showed where the bear's tusks had tried to crack his skull.
" When the other dogs found her, he rushed right in. She hadn't been trapped more'n a few
* Gant-lot: a fenced enclosure into which cattle are driven after cutting them out from tliose of other owners. So called because the mountain cattle run wild, feeding only on grass and browse, and " they couldn't travel well to market when filled up on green stuff: so they're penned up to git gant and nimble."
94 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
hours, and she larned Coaly somethin' about the bear business."
" Won't this spoil him for hunting here- after?"
" Not if he has his daddy's and mammy's grit. We'll know by to-morrow whether he's a shore- enough bear dog; for I've larned now whar they're crossin' — seed sign a-plenty and it's spang fraish. Coaly, old boy! you-uns won't be so feisty and brigaty atter this, will ye!"
'^John, what do those two words mean?"
'^ Good la! whar was you fotch up? Them's common. They mean nigh about the same thing, only there's a differ. When I say that Doc Jones thar is brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he's stuck on hisself and wants to show off "
" And John Cable's sulkin' around with his nose out o' jint," interjected " Doc."
" Feisty," proceeded the interpreter, " feisty means when a feller's allers wigglin' about, wantin' ever'body to see him, like a kid when the preacher comes. You know a feist is one o' them little bitty dogs that ginerally runs on three legs and pretends a whole lot."
All of us were indignant at the setter of the trap. It had been hidden in a trail, with no
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 95
sign to warn a man from stepping Into It. In Tennessee, I was told, It Is a penitentiary offense to set out a bear trap. We agreed that a similar law ought to be passed as soon as possible in North Carolina.
" It's only two years ago," said Granville to me, " that Jasper Millington, an old man living on the Tennessee side, started acrost the moun- tain to get work at the Everett mine, where you live. Not fur from where we are now, he stepped into a bear trap that was hid In the leaves, like this one. It broke his leg, and he starved to death in It."
Despite our Indignation meeting, it was de- cided to carry the trapped bear's hide to Hens- ley, and for us to use only the meat as recom- pense for trouble, to say nothing of risk to life and limb. Such Is the mountaineers' regard for property rights!
The animal we had Inglorlously won was undersized, weighing scant 175 pounds. The. average weight of Smoky Mountain bears Is not great, but occasionally a very large beast is killed. Matt Hyde told us that he killed one on the Welch Divide In 1901, the meat of which, dressed, without the hide, weighed 434 pounds, and the hide "squared eight feet"
96 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
when stretched for drying. "Doc" Jones kill- ed a bear that was ^'kivered with fat, five inches thick.'*
Afterwards I took pains to ask the most fa- mous bear hunters of our region what were the largest bears they had personally killed. Uncle Jimmy Crawford, of the Balsam Mountains, estimated his largest at 500 pounds gross, and the hide of another that he had killed weighed forty pounds after three days' drying. Quill Rose, of Eagle Creek, said that, after stripping the hide from one of his bears, he took the fresh skin by the ears and raised it as high as he could reach above his head, and that four inches of the butt end of the hide (not legs) trailed on the ground. " And," he added severely, " thar's no lie about it." Quill is six feet one and one-half inches tall. Black Bill Walker, of the middle prong of Little River (Tennessee side), told me " The biggest one I ever saw killed had a hide that measured ten feet from nose to rump, stretched for drying. The biggest I ever killed myself measured nine and a half feet, same way, and weighed a good four hunderd net, which, allowin' for hide, blood, and entrails, would run full five hunderd live weight."
Within the past two years two bears of about 500 pounds each have been killed in Swain and Graham counties, the Cables getting one of
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 97
them. The veteran hunters that I have named have killed their hundreds of bears and are men superior to silly exaggeration. In the Smoky Mountains the black bear, like most of the trees, attains its fullest development, and that it occa- sionally reaches a weight of 500 pounds when "hog fat" is beyond reasonable doubt, though the average would not be more than half that
weight.
* * * * *
We spent the evening in debate as to where the next drive should be made. Some favored moving six miles eastward, to the old mining shack at Siler's Meadow, and trying the head- waters of Forney's Creek, around Rip Shin Thicket and the Gunstick Laurel, driving to- wards Clingman Dome and over into the bleak gulf, southwest of the Sugarland Mountains, that I had named Godforsaken — a title that stuck. We knew there were bears in that re- gion, though it was a desperately rough country to hunt in.
But John and the hunchback had found '' sign " in the opposite direction. Bears were crossing from Little River in the neighborhood of Thunderhead and Briar Knob, coming up just west of the Devil's Court House and " using " around Block House, Woolly Ridge,
98 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Bear Pen, and thereabouts. The motion car- ried, and we adjourned to bed.
We breakfasted on bear meat, the remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, and wheat bread shortened with bear's grease until it was light as a feather; and I made tea. It was the first time that Little John ever saw " store tea." He swallowed some of it as if it had been boneset, under the impression that it was some sort of " yerb " that would be good for his insides. Without praising its flavor, he asked what it had cost, and, when I told him " a dollar a pound," reckoned that it was "rich man's medicine"; said he preferred dittany or sassafras or golden- rod. " Doc " Jones opined that it " looked yal- ler," and he even affirmed that it " tasted yaller."
" Waal, people," exclaimed Matt, " I 'low I've done growed a bit, atter that mess o' meat. Le's be movin'."
It was a hard pull for me, climbing up the rocky approach to Briar Knob. This was my first trip to the main divide, and my heart was not yet used to mountain climbing.
The boys were anxious for me to get a shot. I was paying them nothing; it was share-and- share alike; but their neighborly kindness moved them to do their best for the out- lander.
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 99
So they put me on what was probably the best stand for the day. It was above the Fire- scald, a brule or burnt-over space on the steep southern side of the ridge between Briar Knob and Laurel Top, overlooking the grisly slope of Killpeter. Here I could both see and hear an uncommonly long distance, and if the bear went either east or west I would have timely warning.
This Fire-scald, by the way, is a famous place for wildcats. Once in a blue moon a lynx is killed in the highest zone of the Smokies, up among the balsams and spruces, where both the flora and fauna, as well as the climate, resemble those of the Canadian woods. Our native hunt- ers never heard the word lynx, but call the ani- mal a " catamount." Wolves and panthers used to be common here, but it is a long time since either has been killed in this region, albeit im- pressionable people see wolf tracks or hear a " pant'er" scream every now and then.
I had shivered on the mountain top for a couple of hours, hearing only an occasional yelp from the dogs, which had been working in the thickets a mile or so below mc, when suddenly there burst forth the devil of a racket.
On came the chase, right in my direction. Presently I could distinguish the different
loo OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
notes: the deep bellow of old Dred, the hound- like baying of Rock and Coaly, and little Towse's feisty yelp.
I thought that the bear might chance the com- paratively open space of the Fire-scald, because there were still some ashes on the ground that would dust the dogs' nostrils and throw them off the scent. And such, I believe, was his in- tention. But the dogs caught up with him. They nipped him fore and aft. Time after time he shook them off; but they were true bear dogs, and, like Matt Hyde after the turkey, they knew no such word as quit.
I took a last squint at my rifle sights, made sure there was a cartridge in the chamber, and then felt my ears grow as I listened. Suddenly the chase swerved at a right angle and took straight up the side of Saddle-back. Either the bear w^ould tree, or he would try to smash on through to the low rhododendron of the Devil's Court House, where dogs who followed might break their legs. I girded myself and ran, " wiggling and wingling" along the main di- vide, and then came the steep pull up Briar Knob. As I was grading around the summit with all the lope that was left in me, I heard a rifle crack, half a mile down Saddle-back. Old " Doc " was somewhere in that vicinity. I
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES loi
halted to listen. Creation, what a rumpus I Then another shot. Then the warwhoop of the South, that we read about.
By and by, up they came, John and Cope and " Doc," two at a time, carrying the bear on a trimmed sapling. Presently Hyde joined us, then came Granville, and we filed back to camp, where " Doc " told his story:
" Boys, them dogs' eyes shined like new money. Coaly fit agin, all right, and got his tail bit. The bear div down into a sink-hole with the dogs a-top o' him. Soon's I could shoot without hittin' a dog, I let him have it. Thought I'd shot him through the head, but he fit on. Then I jumped down into the sink and kicked him loose from the dogs, or he'd a-killed Coaly. Waal, sir, he wa'n't hurt a bit — the ball jest glanced ofif his head. He riz an' knocked me down with his left paw, an' walked right over me, an' lit up the ridge. The dogs treed him in a minute. I went to shoot up at him, but my new hulls [cartridges] fit loose in this old cham- ber and this one drap [dropped] out, so the gun stuck. Had to git my knife out and fix hit. Then the dad-burned gun wouldn't stand roost- ered [cocked] ; the feather-spring had jumped out o' place. But I held back with my thumb, and killed him anyhow.
102 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
" Fellers," he added feelingly, " I wish f my legs growed hind-side-fust."
''What fer?"
*' So 's 't I wouldn't bark my shins! "
" Bears," remarked John, " is all left-handed. Ever note that? Hit's the left paw you wanter look out fer. He'd a-knocked somethin' out o' yer head if there'd been much in it, Doc."
" Funny thing, but hit's true," declared Bill, " that a bear allers dies flat on his back, onless he's trapped."
"So do men," said "Doc" grimly; 'men who've been shot in battle. You go along a battlefield, right atter the action, and you'll find most o' the dead faces pintin' to the sky."
" Bears is almost human, anyhow. A skinned bear looks like a great big-bodied man with long arms and stumpy legs."
I did not relish this turn of the conversation, for we had two bears to skin immediately. The one that had been hung up over night was frozen solid, so I photographed her standing on her legs, as in life. When it came to skin- ning this beast the job was a mean one; a fellow had to drop out now and then to warm his fingers.
The mountaineers have an odd way of sharing the spoils of the chase. They call it " stoking
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 103
the meat," a use of the word stoke that I have never heard elsewhere. The hide is sold, and the proceeds divided equally among the hunters, but the meat is cut up into as many pieces as there are partners in the chase; then one man goes indoors or behind a tree, and somebody at the carcass, laying his hand on a portion, calls out: "Whose piece is this?"
" Granville Calhoun's," cries the hidden man, v^ho cannot see it.
"Whose is this?"
" Bill Cope's."
And so on down the line. Everybody gets what chance determines for him, and there can
be no charge of unfairness.
*****
It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde protesting to the hunchback:
" Durn you. Bill Cope, you're so cussed crooked a man cain't lay cluss enough to you to keep warm! "
Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like rifle-shots from the intense frost.
Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.
" Night afore last," he said, " Bill dremp that
104 OUR SOUTHERN FIIGHLANDERS
he seed a lot o' fat meat layiii' on the table; an' it done come true. Last night I dremp me one that never was kno ^ved to fail yet. Now you seel"
It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured much — standers as well as drivers — but not a rifle had spoken up to the time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.
Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling the Tennessee for- est. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.
" All this," I apostrophized, " shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast and fish. Fire will blacken the earth ; flood will swallow and spew forth the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases; the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 105
" *. . . Get me to some far-off land
Where higher mountains under heaven stand . . . Where other thunders roll amid the hills, Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills
With other strains through other-shapen boughs.' "
Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but " Doc." The old man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday's scrim- mage, but complained only of " a touch 0' rheu- matiz." Just how this disease had left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.
It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.
About nine o'clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired signals, but there was no answer. The last we had known of the drivers was that they had been beyond Thun- derhead, six miles of hard travel to the west- ward. There was fog on the mountain. We did some uneasy speculating. Then Granville and Matt took the lantern and set out for Briar Knob. " Doc" was too stiff for travel, and I, being at that time a stranger in the Smokies,
io6 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
would be of no use hunting amid clouds and darkness. " Doc " and I passed a dreary three hours. Finally, at midnight, my shots were an- swered, and soon the dogs came limping in. Dred had been severely bitten in the shoulders and Rock in the head. Coaly was bloody about the mouth, where his first day's wound had re- opened. Then came the four men, empty- handed, it seemed, until John slapped a bear's "melt" (spleen) upon the table. He limped from a bruised hip.
" That bear outsharped us and went around all o' you-uns. We follered him clar over to the Spencer Place, and then he doubled and come back on the fur side o' the ridge. He crossed through the laurel on the Devil's Court House and tuk down an almighty steep place. It was plumb night by that time. I fell over a rock clift twenty feet down, and if 't hadn't been for the laurel I'd a-bruk some bones. I landed right in the middle of them, bear and dogs, fightin' like gamecocks. The bear dim a tree. Bill sung out 'Is it fur down thar? ' and I said ' Purty fur.' 'Waal, I'm a-comin',' says he; and with that he grabbed a laurel to swing his- self down by, but the stem bruk, and down he come suddent, to jine the music. Hit was so dark I couldn't see my gun barrel, and we wuz
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 107
all tangled up in greenbriers as thick as plough- lines. I had to fire twiste afore he tumbled. Then Matt an' Granville come. The four of us tuk turn-about crawlin' up out o' thar with the bear on our back. Only one man could handle him at a time — and he'll go a good two hun- derd, that bear. We gutted him, and left him near the top, to fotch in the mornin'. Fellers, I'm bodaciously tired out. This is the time I'd give half what I'm worth for a gallon o' liquor — and I'd promise the rest!"
"You'd orter see what Coaly did to that var- mint," said Bill. " He bit a hole under the fore leg, through hide and ha'r, clar into the holler, so t' you can stick your hand in and seize the bear's heart."
" John, what was that dream of yours? "
" I dremp I stole a feller's overcoat. Now d'ye see? That means a bear's hide."
Coaly, three days ago, had been an Inconse- quential pup; but now he looked up Into my eyes with the calm dignity that no fool or brag- gart can assume. He had been knighted. As he licked his wounds he was proud of them. " Scars of battle, sir. You may have your swag- ger ribbons and prize collars in the New York dog show, but this for me! "
Poor Coaly! after two more years of valiant
io8 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
service, he was to meet an evil fortune. In con- nection with it I will relate a queer coinci- dence:
Two years after this hunt, a friend and I spent three summer months in this same old cabin on top of Smoky. When Andy had to return North he left with me, for sale, a .30-30 carbine, as he had more guns than he needed. I showed this carbine to Quill Rose, and the old hunter said: " I don't like them power-guns; you could shoot clar through a bear and kill your dog on the other side." The next day I sold the weapon to Granville Calhoun. Within a short time, word came from Granville's father that " Old Reel- foot " was despoiling his orchard. This Reel- foot was a large bear whose cunning had defied our best hunters for five or six years. He got his name from the fact that he " reeled " or twisted his hind feet in walking, as some horses do, leaving a peculiar track. This seems rather common among old bears, for I have known of several " reelfoots " in other, and widely sep- arated, regions.
Cable and his dogs were sent for, A drive was made, and the bear was actually caught within a few rods of old Mr. Calhoun's stable. His teeth were worn to the gums, and, as he could no longer kill hogs, he had come down to
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES 109
an apple diet. He was large-framed, but very poor. The only hunters on the spot were Gran- ville, with the .30-30, and a northern lumberman named Hastings, with a Luger carbine. After two or three shots had wounded the bear, he rose on his hind feet and made for Granville. A .30-30 bullet went clear through the beast at the very instant that Coaly, who was unseen, jumped up on the log behind it, and the missile gave both animals their death woundo
CHAPTER V
MOONSHINE LAND
I WAS hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron " slick," and, to some extent, lost my bearings.
After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or loft, and without a sawed board showing in Its construction. A thin curl of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut through the log wall. The stones of this fire- no
MOONSHINE LAND in
place were not even plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite each other. These, helped by wide crevices be- tween the unchinked logs, served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw Novem- ber air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep in muck that reached to the door- sill, two pigs scampered out through the op- posite door.
Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.
I shivered as I looked at this midget, com- paring her only garment, a torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter's garb that seemed none too warm for such a day as this.
Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl, I chose the quickest way to reassure her by saluting in the vernacular:
112 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
"Howdy?"
" Howdy? " she gasped.
"Who lives here?"
"Tom Kirby."
" Kirby? Oh! yes, I know him — we've been hunting together. Is your father at home? "
" No, he's out somewheres."
"Where is your mother?"
" She's in the field, up yan, gittin' roughness."
I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. " Roughness," in mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.
" How far is it to the next house? "
" I don't know; maw, she knows."
"All right; I'll find her."
I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was walking away from me, and I conjectured that " maw's" feet were under it; so I hailed:
"Hello!"
The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a bare-headed, bare- footed woman, coarse featured but of superb physique — one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two without letting it down.
J
o
MOONSHINE LAND 113
She flushed, then paled, staring at me round- eyed — frightened, I thought, by this apparition of a stranger whose approach she had not de- tected. To these people of the far backwoods everyone from outside their mountains is a doubtful character at best.
However, Mistress Kirby quickly recovered her aplomb. Her mouth straightened to a thin slit. She planted herself squarely across my path, now regarding me with contracted lids and a hard glint, till I felt fairly bayoneted by those Steel-gray eyes.
" Good-morning. Is Mr. Kirby about? " I inquired.
There was no answer. Instead, the thin slit opened and let out a yell of almost yodel quality, penetrating as a warwhoop — a yell that would carry near half a mile. I wondered what she meant by this; but she did not enlighten me by so much as a single word. It was puzzling, not to say disconcerting; but, charging it to the custom of a country that still was new to me, I found my tongue again, and started to give credentials.
" My name is Kephart. I am staying at the Everett Mine on Sugar Fork "
Another yell that set the wild echoes flying.
'' I am acquainted with your husband; we've
114 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS hunted together. Perhaps he has told you "
Yell number three, same pitch and vigor as before.
By this time I was quite nonplussed. I waited for her to speak; but never a word did the woman deign. So there we stood and stared at each other in silence — I leaning on my rifle, she with red arms akimbo — till I grew embar- rassed, half wondering, too, if the creature were demented.
Suddenly a light flashed upon my groping wits. This amazon was on picket. Her three shrieks had been a signal to someone up the branch. Her attitude showed that there was no thoroughfare in that direction at present. Circumstances, whatever they were, forbade ex- planation. Clearly, the woman thought that I could not help seeing how matters stood. Not for a moment did she suspect but that her yells, her belligerent attitude, and her refusal to speak, were the conventional way, this world over, of intimating that there was a contretemps. She considered that if I was what I claimed to be, an acquaintance of her husband and on friendly footing, I would be gentleman enough to retire. If I was something else — an officer, a spy — well, she was there to stop me until the captain of the guard arrived.
MOONSHINE LAND 115
For one silly moment I was tempted to ad- vance and see what this martial spouse would do if I tried to pass her on the trail. But a hunter's instinct made me glance forward to the upper corner of the field. There was thick cover beyond the fence, with a clear range of a hundred and fifty yards between it and me — too far for Tom to recognize me, I thought, but deadly range for his Winchester, I knew. One forward step of mine would put me in the status of an armed intruder. So I concluded that common sense would better become me at this juncture than a bit of fooling that surely would be misinterpreted, and that might end inglori- ously.
"Ah, well!" I remarked, "when your hus- band gets back, tell him, please, that I was sorry to miss him; though I did not call on any special business — just wanted to say ' Howdy?* you know. Good day! "
I turned and went down the valley.
All the way home I speculated on this queer adventure. What was going on " up yan "?
A month before, when I had started for this wildest nook of the Smokies, a friend had inti- mated that I was venturing into a dubious dis- trict— Moonshine Land. It is but frank to con- fess that this prospect was not unpleasant. My
ii6 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
only fear had been that I might not find any moonshiners, or that, having found them, I might not succeed in winning their confidence to the extent of learning their own side of an in- teresting story. As to how I could do this with- out getting tarred with the same stick, I was by no means clear; but I hoped that good luck might find a way. And now it seemed as if luck had indeed favored me with an excuse for broaching the topic to some friendly mountain- eer, so I could at least see how he would take it.
And it chanced (or was it chance?) that I had no more than finished supper, that evening, when a man called at my lonely cabin. He was the one that I knew best among my scattered neighbors. I gave him a rather humorous ac- count of my reception by Madame Kirby, and asked him what he thought she was yelling about.
There was no answering smile on my visitor's face. He pondered in silence, weighing many contingencies, it seemed, and ventured no more than a helpless " Waal, now I wonder! "
It did not suit me to let the matter go at that; so, on a sudden impulse, I fired the ques- tion point-blank at him: " Do you suppose that Tom is running a still up there at the head of that little cove?"
MOONSHINE LAND 117
The man's face hardened, and there came a glint into his eyes such as I had noticed in Mis- tress Kirby's.
" Jedgmatically, I don't know."
" Excuse me! I don't want to know, either. But let me explain just what I am driving at. People up North, and in the lowlands of the South as well, have a notion that there is little or nothing going on in these mountains except feuds and moonshining. They think that a stranger traveling here alone is in danger of being potted by a bullet from almost any laurel thicket that he passes, on mere suspicion that he may be a revenue officer or a spy. Of course, that is nonsense;* but there is one thing that I'm as ignorant about as any novel-reader of them all. You know my habits ; I like to explore — I never take a guide — and when I come to a place that's particularly wild and primitive, that's just the place I want to peer into. Now the dubious point is this: Suppose that, one of these days when I'm out hunting, or looking for rare plants, I should stumble upon a moonshine still in full operation — what would happen? What would they do? "
* Pure bluff of mine, at that time ; but it was good policy to assume perfect confidence.
ii8 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
" Waal, sir, I'll tell you whut they'd do. They'd fust-place ask you some questions about yourself, and whut you-uns was doin' in that thar neck o' the woods. Then they'd git you to do some triflin' work about the still — feed the furnace, or stir the mash — jest so 's 't they could prove that you took a hand in it your own self."
" What good would that do? "
" Hit would make you one o' them in the eyes of the law.
" I see. But, really, doesn't that seem rather childish? I could easily convince any court that I did it under compulsion; for that's what it would amount to."
" I reckon you-uns would find a United States court purty hard to convince. The judge 'd right up and want to know why you let grass go to seed afore you came and informed on them."
He paused, watched my expression, and then continued quizzically: " I reckon you wouldn't be in no great hurry to do that."
"No! Then, if I stirred the mash and sam- pled their liquor, nobody would be likely to mistreat me? "
" Shucks! Why, man, whut could they gain by hurtin' you? At the wust, s'posin' they was convicted by your own evidence, they'd only git
MOONSHINE LAND 119
a month or two in the pen. So why should they murder you and get hung for it? Hit's all 'tarnal foolishness, the notions some folks has! "
"I thought so. Now, here! the public has been fed all sorts of nonsense about this moon- shining business. I'd like to learn the plain truth about it, without bias one way or the other. I have no curiosity about personal affairs, and don't want to learn incriminating details; but I would like to know how the busi- ness is conducted, and especially how it is re- garded from the mountain people's own point of view. I have already learned that a stran- ger's life and property are safer here than they would be on the streets of Chicago or of St. Louis. It will do your country good to have that known. But I can't say that there is no moonshining going on here; for a man with a wooden nose could smell it. Now what Is your excuse for defying the law? You don't seem ashamed of it."
The man's face turned an angry red.
" Mister, we-uns hain't no call to be ashamed of ourselves, nor of ary thing we do. We're poor; but we don't ax no favors. We stay 'way up hyar in these coves, and mind our own busi- ness. When a stranger comes along, he's wel- come to the best we've got, such as 'tis; but if
I20 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
he imposes on us, he gits his medicine purty damned quick! '"'
" And you think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposition,''
" Hit is, und'-^r some sarcumstances."
My guest stretched his legs, and '' jedgmati- cally " proceeded to enlighten me.
" Thar's plenty o' men and women grown, in these mountains, who don't know that the Gov- ernment is ary thing but a president in a biled shirt who commands two-three judges and a gang o' revenue officers. They know thar's a president, because the men folks 's voted for him, and the women folks 's seed his pictur. They've heered tell about the judges ; and they've seed the revenuers in flesh and blood. They be- lieve in supportin' the Government, because hit's the law. Nobody refuses to pay his taxes, for taxes is fair and squar'. Taxes cost mebbe three cents on the dollar; and that's all right. But revenue costs a dollar and ten cents on twenty cents' worth o' liquor; and that's robbin' the people with a gun to their faces.
" Of course, I ain't so ignorant as all that — ' I've traveled about the country, been to Ashe- ville wunst, and to Waynesville a heap o' times — and I know the theory. Theory says 't reve- nue is a tax on luxury. Waal, that's all right —
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anything In reason. The big fellers that makes lots of money out o' stillin', and lives In luxury, ought to pay handsome for It. But who ever seen luxury cavortin' around In these Smoky Mountains?"
He paused for a reply. Even then, with my limited experience In the mountains, I could not help wincing at the Idea. Often, In later times, this man's question came back to me with peculiar force. Luxury! In a land where the little stores were often out of coffee, sugar, kerosene, and even salt; where, in dead of winter, there was no meal, much less flour, to be had for love or money. Luxury! where I had to live on bear-meat (tough old sow bear) for six weeks, because the only side of pork that I could find for sale was full of maggots.
My friend continued: ''Whiskey means more to us mountain folks than hit does to folks In town, whar thar's drug-stores and doctors. Let ary thing go wrong In the fam'ly — fever, or snake bite, or somethin' — and we can't git a doctor up hyar less'n three days; and it costs scand'lous. The only medicines we-uns has is 3'erbs, which customarily ain't no good 'thout a leetle grain o' whiskey. Now, th'r ain't no saloons allowed in all these western counties. The nighest State dispensary, even, is sixty miles
122 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
away.* The law wunt let us have liquor shipped to us from anywhars in the State. If we git it sent to us from outside the State it has to come by express — and reg-lar old pop-skull it is, too. So, to be good law-abiding citizens, we-uns must travel back and forth at a heap of expense, or pay express rates on pizened liquor — and we are too durned poor to do ary one or t'other.
^'Now, yan's my field o' corn. I gather the corn, and shuck hit and grind hit my own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o' bread to eat — and I don't pay no tax, do I? Then why can't I make some o' my corn into pure whiskey to drink, without payin' tax? I tell you, 'taint fair, this way the Government does! But, when all's said and done, the main reason for this * moonshining,' as you-uns calls it, is bad roads."
" Bad roads? " I exclaimed. " What the "
" Jest thisaway : From hyar to the railroad is seventeen miles, with two mountains to cross; and you've seed that road! I recollect you-uns said every one o' them miles was a thousand rods long. Nobody's ever measured them, ex- cept by mountain man's foot-rule — big feet, and a long stride between 'em. Seven hundred
*This was in 1904.
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pounds is all the load a good team can haul over that road, when the weather's good. Hit takes three days to make the round trip, less'n you break an axle, and then hit takes four. When you do git to the railroad, th'r ain't no town of a thousand people within fifty mile. Now us folks ain't even got wagons. Thar's only one sarviceable wagon in this whole settle- ment, and you can't hire it without team and driver, which is two dollars and a half a day. Whar one o' our leetle sleds can't go, we haffter pack on mule-back or tussle it on our own wethers. Look, then! The only farm produce we-uns can sell is corn. You see for yourself that corn can't be shipped outen hyar. We can trade hit for store credit — that's all. Corn juice is about all we can tote around over the country and git cash money for. Why, man, that's the only way some folks has o' payin' their taxes!"
" But, aside from the work and the worry," I remarked, " there is the danger of being shot, in this business."
" Oh, we-uns don't lay tliat up agin the Gov- ernment! Hit's as fair for one as 'tis for t'other. When a revenuer comes sneakin' around, why, whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that's a ' fortune of war,' as the old sayin' is."
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There is no telegraph, wired or wireless, in the mountains, but there is an efficient substi- tute. It seemed as though, in one night, the news traveled from valley to cove, and from cove to nook, that I was investigating the moon- shining business, and that I was apparently *' safe." Each individual interpreted that word to suit himself. Some regarded me askance, others were so confiding that their very frank- ness threatened at times to become embarrassing.
Thereafter I had many talks and adventures with men who, at one time or other, had been engaged in the moonshining industry. Some of these men had known the inside of the peni- tentiary; some were not without blood-guilt, I doubt not that more than one of them could, even now, find his way through night and fog and laurel thicket to some " beautiful piece of copper " that has not yet been punched full of holes. They knew that I was on friendly terms with revenue agents. What was worse, they knew that I was a scribbler. More than once I took notes in their presence while interviewing them, and we had the frankest understanding as to what would become of those notes.
My immunity was not due to any promises made or hostages given, for there were none. I did not even pose as an apologist, but merely
MOONSHINE LAND 125
volunteered to give a fair report of what I heard and saw. They took me at my word. Had I used such representations as a mask and secretly played the spy or informer — well, I would have deserved whatever might have befallen me. As it was, I never met with any but respectful treat- ment from these gentry, nor, to the best of my belief, did they ever tell me a lie.
CHAPTER Vr
WAYS THAT ARE DARK
OUR terms moonshiner and moonshining are not used in the mountains. Here an illicit distiller is called a blockader, his business is blockading, and the product is block- ade liquor. Just as the smugglers of old Britain called themselves free-traders, thereby pro- claiming that they risked and fought for a prin- ciple, so the moonshiner considers himself sim- ply a blockade-runner dealing in contraband. His offense is only malum prohibitum, not ma- lum in se.
There are two kinds of blockaders, big and little. The big blockader makes unlicensed whiskey on a fairly large scale. He may have several stills, operating alternately in different places, so as to avert suspicion. In any case, the still is large and the output is quite profitable. The owner himself may not actively engage In the work, but may furnish the capital and hire confederates to do the distilling for him, so that personally he shuns the appearance
126
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 127
of evil. These big fellows are rare. They are the ones who seek collusion with the small-fry of Government officialdom, or, failing in that, instruct their minions to " kill on sight."
The little moonshiner is a more interesting character, if for no other reason than that he fights fair, according to his code, and single- handed against tremendous odds. He is inno- cent of graft. There is nothing between him and the whole power of the Federal Government, except his own wits and a well-worn Winchester or muzzle-loader. He is very poor; he is very ignorant; he has no friends at court; his ap- paratus is crude in the extreme, and his output is miserably small. This man is usually a good enough citizen in other ways, of decent stand- ing in his own community, and a right good fel- low toward all the world, save revenue officers. Although a criminal in the eyes of the law, he is soundly convinced that the law is unjust, and that he is only exercising his natural rights. Such a man, as President Frost has pointed out, suffers none of the moral degradation that comes from violating his conscience; his self-respect is whole.
In describing the process of making whiskey in the mountain stills, I shall confine myself to the operations of the little moonshiner, because
128 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our backwoodsmen. Every man in the big woods is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in extemporiz- ing utensils, and even crude machines, out of the trees that grow around him, is of no mean order. As good cider as ever I drank w^as made in a hollowed log fitted with a press-block and operated by a handspike. It took but half a day's work to make this cider press, and the only tools used in its construction were an ax, a mattock in lieu of adze, an auger, and a jack- knife.
It takes two or three men to run a still. It is possible for one man to do the work, on so small a scale as is usually practiced, but it would be a hard task for him ; then, too, there are few mountaineers who could individually furnish the capital, small though it be. So three men, let us say, will " chip in " five or ten dol- lars apiece, and purchase a second-hand still, if such is procurable, otherwise a new one, and that is all the apparatus they have to pay money for. If they should be too poor even to go to this expense, they will make a retort by invert- ing a half-barrel or an old wooden churn over a soap-kettle, and then all they have to buy is a piece of copper tubing for the worm.
In choosing a location for their clandestine
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 129
work, the first essential is running water. This can be found in almost any gulch ; yet, out of a hundred known spring-branches, only one ar two may be suitable for the business, most of them being too public. In a country where cattle and hogs run wild, and where a good part of every farmer's time is taken in keeping track of his stock, there is no place so secret but that it is liable to be visited at any time, even though it be in the depths of the great forest, several miles from any human habitation. Moreover, cattle, and especially hogs, are pas- sionately fond of still-slop, and can scent it a great distance, so that no still can long remain unknown to them.* Consequently the still must be placed several miles away from the residence of anyone who might be liable to turn informer. Although nearly all the mountain people are in- dulgent in the matter of blockading, yet per- sonal rivalries and family jealousies are rife among them, and it is not uncommon for them.
* It is a curious fact that most horses despise the stuff. A celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years he rode a horse which was in the habit of drinking a mouth- ful from every stream that he forded; but if there was the least taint of still-slop in the water, he would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer then had only to follow up the stream, and he would infallibly find a still.
I30 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
to inform against their enemies in the neighbor- hood.
Of course, it would not do to set up a still near a common trail — at least in the far-back settlements. Our mountaineers habitually notice every track they pass, whether of beast or man, and " read the sign " with Indian-like facility. Often one of my companions would stop, as though shot, and point with his toe to the fresh imprint of a human foot in the dust or mud of a public road, exclaiming: " Now, I wonder who that feller was! 'Twa'n't (so-and-so), for he hain't got no squar'-headed hobnails; 'twa'n't (such-a-one), 'cause he wouldn't be hyar at this time o' day"; and so he would go on, figuring by a process of elimination that is extremely cunning, until some such conclusion as this was reached, "That's some stranger goin' over to Little River [across the line in Tennessee], and he's footin' hit as if the devil was atter him — I'll bet he's stobbed somebody and is runnin' from the sheriff!" Nor is the incident closed with that; our mountaineer will inquire of neighbors and passersby until he gets a descrip- tion of the wayfarer, and then he will pass the word along.
Some little side-branch is chosen that runs through a gully so choked with laurel and
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 131
briery and rhododendron as to be quite impass- able, save by such worming and crawling as must make a great noise. Doubtless a faint cat- tle-trail follows the backbone of the ridge above it, and this is the workers' ordinary highway in going to and fro; but the descent from ridge to gully is seldom made twice over the same course, lest a trail be printed direct to the still- house.
This house is sometimes inclosed with logs, but oftener it is no more than a shed, built low, so as to be well screened by the undergrowth. A great hemlock tree may be felled in such posi- tion as to help the masking, so long as its top stays green, which will be about a year. Back far enough from the still-house to remain in dark shadow when the furnace is going, there is built a sort of nest for the workmen, barely high enough to sit up in, roofed with bark and thatched all over with browse. Here many a dismal hour of night is passed when there is nothing to do but to wait on the " cooking.'' Now and then a man crawls on all fours to the furnace and pitches in a few billets of wood, keeping low at the time, so as to offer as small a target as possible in the flare of the fire. Such precaution is especially needed when the num- ber of confederates Is too small for efficient
132 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
picketing. Around the little plot where the still-shed and lair are hidden, laurel may be cut in such way as to make a cheval-de-frise, sharp stubs being entangled with branches, so that a quick charge through them would be out of the question. Two or three days' work, at most, will build the still-house and equip it ready for business, without so much as a shingle being brought from outside.
After the blockaders have established their still, the next thing is to make arrangements with some miller who will jeopardize himself by grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that corn which has been forced to sprout is a prime essential in the making of moonshine whiskey, and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn is an offense against the law of the United States no less than its distillation. Now, to any one living in a well-settled country, where there is, perhaps, only one mill to every hundred farms, and it is visited daily by men from all over the township, the finding of an accessory in the person of a miller would seem a most hopeless project. But when you travel in our southern mountains, one of the first things that will strike you is that about everj fourth or fifth farmer has a tiny tub-mill of his own. Tiny is indeed the word, for there are
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 133
few of these mills that can grind more than a bushel or two of corn in a day; some have a ca- pacity of only half a bushel in ten hours of steady grinding. Red grains of corn being harder than white ones, it is a humorous saying in the mountains that " a red grain in the gryste [grist] will stop the mill." The appurtenances of such a mill, even to the very buhr-stones them- selves, are fashioned on the spot. How primi- tive such a meal-grinder may be is shown by the fact that a neighbor of mine recently offered a new mill, complete, for sale at six dollars. A few nails, and a country-made iron rynd and spindle, were the only things in it that he had not made himself, from the raw materials.
In making spirits from corn, the first step is to convert the starch of the grain into sugar. Regular distillers do this in a few hours by using malt, but at the little blockade still a slower process is used, for malt is hard to get. The unground corn is placed in a vessel that has a small hole in the bottom, warm water is poured over the corn and a hot cloth is placed over the top. As water percolates out through the hole, the vessel is replenished with more of the warm fluid. This is continued for two or three days and nights until the corn has put forth sprouts a couple of inches long. The
134 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
diastase in the germinating seeds has the same chemical effect as malt — the starch is changed to sugar.
The sprouted corn is then dried and ground into meal. This sweet meal is then made into a mush with boiling water, and is let stand two or three days. The "sweet mash" thus made is then broken up, and a little rye malt, similarly prepared in the meantime, is added to it, if rye is procurable. Fermentation begins at once. In large distilleries, yeast is added to hasten fermentation, and the mash can then be used in three or four days ; the blockader, however, having no yeast, must let his mash stand for eight or ten days, keeping it all that time at a proper temperature for fermentation. This requires not only constant attention, but some skill as well, for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer in our mountain still-house. When done, the sugar of what is now "sour mash" has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The resulting liquid Is tech- nically called the "wash," but blockaders call it "beer." It is Intoxicating, of course, but "sour enough to make a pig squeal."
This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel with a closed head, connected with a spiral tube, the worm. The latter is surrounded by a closed
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 135
jacket through which cold water is constantly passing. A wood fire is built in the rude fur- nace under the still; the spirit rises in vapor, along with more or less steam; these vapors are condensed in the cold worm and trickle down into the receiver. The product of this first dis- tillation (the "low wines" of the trade, the " singlings " of the blockader) is a weak and im- pure liquid, which must be redistilled at a lower temperature to rid it of water and rank oils.
In moonshiners' parlance, the liquor of sec- ond distillation is called the " doublings." It Is in watching and testing the doublings that an accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if distillation be not carried far enough, the re- sulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and if carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will result. Regular distillers are assisted at this stage by scientific instruments by which the " proof " is tested ; but the maker of " mountain dew " has no other instrument than a small vial, and his testing is done entirely by the "bead" of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that rise when the vial is tilted. When a mountain man is shown any brand of whiskey, whether a regular distillery product or not, he Invariably tilts the bottle and levels it again, before tast- ing; if the bead rises and is persistent, well and
136 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the liquor at once.
It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at one distillation, by running the singlings through a steam-chest, commonly known as a " thumpin'-chist." The advantage claimed is that " Hit allows you to make your whiskey afore the revenue gits it; that's all."
The final process is to run the liquor through a rude charcoal filter, to rid it of most of its fusel oil. This having been done, we have moonshine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and ready for immediate consumption.
I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the words here italicised; but I am stating facts.
It is quite impracticable for a blockader to age his whiskey. In the first place, he is too poor to wait; in the second place, his product is very small, and the local demand is urgent; in the third place, he has enough trouble to con- ceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to say nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheer- fully he might " waive the quantum o' the sin," but he is quite alive to " the hazard o' con- cealin'." So, while the stuff is yet warm from the still, it is taken by confederates and quickly disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the answer a moonshiner once made to me when I
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 137
asked him how old the best blockade liquor ever got to be: "If it 'd git to be a month old, it 'd fool me!"
They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of mine, the redoubtable Quill Rose, which, to those who know him, sounds like one of his own: "A slick-faced dude from Knoxville," said Quill, " told me once that all good red- liquor was aged, and that if I'd age my block- ade it would bring a fancy price. Well, sir, I tried it; I kept some for three months — and, by godlings, // aint so.'*
As for purity, all of the moonshine whiskey used to be pure, and much of it still is; but every blockader knows how to adulterate, and when one of them does stoop to such tricks he will stop at no halfway measures. Some add washing lye, both to increase the yield and to give the liquor an artificial bead, then prime this abominable fluid with pepper, ginger, to- bacco, or anything else that will make it sting. Even buckeyes, which are poisonous themselves, are sometimes used to give the drink a soapy bead. Such decoctions are known in the moun- tains by the expressive terms " pop-skull," " bust head," "bumblings" ("they make a humbly noise in a feller's head "). Some of them are so toxic that their continued use miffht be fatal
138 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
to the drinker. A few drams may turn a nor- mally good-hearted fellow into a raging fiend who will shoot or stab without provocation.
As a rule, the mountain people have no com- punctions about drinking, their ideas on this, as on other matters of conduct, being those cur- rent everywhere in the eighteenth century. yMen, women and children drink whiskey in family concert. I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a spoonful at a time, by a babe that was still at the breast, and she never batted an eye (when I protested that raw whiskey would ruin the infant's stomach, the mother replied, with widened eyes : " Why, if there's liquor about, and she don't git none, she jist raarsf). In spite of this, taking the mountain people by and large, they are an abstemious race. In drink- ing, as in everything else, this is the Land of Do Without. Comparatively few highlanders see liquor oftener than once or twice a month. The lumberjacks and townspeople get most of the output; for they can pay the price.
Blockade whiskey, until recently, sold to the consumer at from $2.50 to $3.00 a gallon. The average yield is only two gallons to the bushel of corn. Two and a half gallons is all that can be got out of a bushel by blockaders' methods, even with the aid of a " thumpin'-chist," unless
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 139
lye be added. With corn selling at seventy- five cents to a dollar a bushel, as it did in our settlement, and taking into account that the aver- age sales of a little moonshiner's still probably did not exceed a gallon a day, and that a boot- legger must be rev^arded liberally for market- ing the stuff, it will be seen that there was no fortune in this mysterious trade, before prohibi- tion raised the price. Let me give you a picture in a few words. —
Here in the laurel-thicketed forest, miles from any wagon road, is a little still, without so much as a roof over it. Hard by is a little mill. There is not a sawed board in that mill — even the hopper is made of clapboards riven on the spot.
Three or four men, haggard from sleepless vigils, strike out into pathless forest through driving rain. Within five minutes the wet un- derbrush has drenched them to the skin. They climb, climb, climb. There is no trail for a long way ; then they reach a faint one that winds, winds, climbs, climbs. Hour after hour the men climb. Then they begin to descend.
They have crossed the divide, a mile above sea-level, and are in another State. Hour after hour they " climb down," as they would say. They visit farmers' homes at dead of night.
I40 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
Each man shoulders two bushels of shelled corn and starts back again over the highest mountain range in eastern America. It is twenty miles to the little mill. They carry the corn thither on their own backs. They sprout it, grind it, distill it. Two of them then carry the whiskey twenty miles in the opposite direction, and, at the risk of capture and imprisonment, or of death if they resist, peddle it out by dodging, secret methods.
This is no fancy sketch; it is literal truth. It is no story of the olden time, but of our own day. Do you wonder that one of these men should say, with a sigh — should say this? " Blockadin' is the hardest work a man ever done. And hit's wearin' on a feller's narves. Fust chance I git, I'm a-goin' ter quit! "
And it is a fact that nine out of ten of those who try the moonshining game do quit before long, of their own accord.
*****
One day there came a ripple of excitement in our settlement. A blockader had shot at Jack Coburn, and a posse had arrested the would-be assassin — so flew the rumor, and it proved to be true.
Coburn was a northern man who, years ago, opened a little store on the edge of the wilder-
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 141
ness, bought timber land, and finally rose to affluence. With ready wit he adapted himself to the ways of the mountaineers and gained as- cendancy among them. Once in a while an emergency would arise in which it was necessary either to fight or to back down, and in these contests a certain art that Jack had acquired in Michigan lumber camps proved the undoing of more than one mountain tough, at the same time winning the respect of the spectators. He was what a mountaineer described to me as " a prac- ticed knocker." This phrase, far from meaning what it would on the Bowery, was interpreted to me as denoting " a master hand in a knock- fight." Pugilism, as distinguished from shoot- ing or stabbing, was an unknown art in the mountains until Jack introduced it.
Coburn had several tenants, among whom was a character whom we will call Edwards. In leasing a farm to Edwards, Jack had expressly stipulated that there should be no moonshining on the premises. But, by and by, there was reason to suspect that Edwards was violating this part of the contract. Coburn did not send for a revenue officer; he merely set forth on a little still-hunt of his own. Before starting, he picked up a revolver and was about to stick it in his pocket, but, on second thought, he con-
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eluded that no red-headed man should be trusted with a loaded gun, even in such a case as this; so he thrust the weapon back into its drawer, and strode away, with nothing but his two big fists to enforce a seizure.
Coburn searched long and diligently, but could find no sign of a still. Finally, when he was about to give it up, his curiosity was aroused by the particularly dense browse in the top of an enormous hemlock that had recently been felled. Pushing his way forward, he discov- ered a neat little copper still installed in the tree- top itself. He picked up the contraband uten- sil, and marched away with it.
Meantime, Edwards had not been asleep. When Jack came in sight of the farmhouse, humped under his bulky burden, the enraged moonshiner seized a shotgun and ran toward him, breathing death and destruction. Jack, however, trudged along about his business. Ed- wards, seeing that no bluff would work, fired; but the range was too great for his birdshot even to pepper holes through the copper still.
Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot. It did not hurt Coburn's skin, but it ruffled his dignity. In this case it was out of the ques- tion to pommel the blackguard, for he had swiftly reloaded his gun. So Jack ran ofT with
WAYS THAT ARE DARK 143
the still, carried it home, sought out our magis- trate, Brooks, and forthwith swore out a war- rant.
Brooks did not fuss over any law books. Moonshining in itself may be only a peccadillo, a venial sin — let the Government skin its own skunks — but when a man has promised not to moonshine, and then goes and does it, why that, by Jeremy, is a breach of contract! Straight- way the magistrate hastened to the post-office, and swore in, as a posse comitatus, the first four men that he met.
Now, when four men are picked up at random in our township, It is safe to assume that at least three of them have been moonshiners them- selves, and know how this sort of thing should be done. At any rate, the posse wasted no time in discussion. They went straight after that malefactor, got him, and, within an hour after the shot was fired, he was drummed out of the county for good and forever.
But Edwards had a son who was a trifle brash. This son armed himself, and offered show of battle. He fired two or three shots with his Winchester (wisely over the posse's heads) and then took to the tall timber. Dodging from tree to tree he led the impromptu officers such a dance up the mountainside that by the time they
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had corralled him they were " plumb overhet." They set that impetuous young man on a sharp-spined little jackass, strapped his feet un- der the animal's belly, and their chief (my hunt- ing partner, he was) drove him, that same night, twenty-five miles over a horrible mountain trail, and lodged him in the county jail, on a charge more serious than t/iat of moonshining.
In due time, a United States deputy arrived in our midst, bearing a funny-looking hatchet with a pick at one end, which he called a " devil." With the pick end of this instrument he punched numerous holes through the offend- ing copper vessel, until the still looked some- what like a gigantic horseradish-grater turned inside out. Then he straightened out the worm by ramming a long stick through it, and tri- umphantly carried away with him the copper- sheathed staff, as legal proof, trophy, and bur- geon of office.
The sorry old still itself reposes to this day in old Brooks's backyard, where it is regarded by passersby as an emblem, not so much of Federal omnipotence, as of local efficiency in adminis- tering the law with promptitude, and without a pennyworth of cost to anybody, save to the of- fender.
CHAPTER VII
A LEAF FROM THE PAST
BEFORE prohibition, moonshining was seldom practiced outside the mountains and foothills of the southern Appalach- ians, and those parts of the southwest (namely, in southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas), into which the mountaineers have immigrated in considerable numbers.
Here, then, was a conundrum: How does it happen that moonshining is distinctly a foible of the southern mountaineer?
To get to the truth, we must hark back into that eighteenth century wherein, as I have al- ready remarked, our mountain people are lin- gering to this day. We must leave the South; going, first, to Ireland of 150 or 175 years ago, and then to western Pennsylvania shortly after the Revolution.
The people of Great Britain, irrespective of race, have always been ardent haters of excise laws. As Blackstone has curtly said, " From its original to the present time, the very name of
145
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excise has been odious to the people of Eng- land." Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, defined excise as " A hateful tax levied upon commodi- ties, and adjudged not by the common judge? of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." In 1659, when the town of E^dinburgh placed an additional Impost on ale, the Convenanter Nicoll proclaimed It an act so Impious that immediately " God frae the heavens declared his anger by sending thunder and unheard tempests and storms." And we still recall Burns' fiery invective:
Thae curst horse-leeches o' the Excise Wha male the whisky stills their prize! Haud up thy han', Deil ! ance, twice, thrice!
There, seize the blinkers! [wretches] An bake them up in brunstane pies For poor d — n'd drinkers.
Perhaps the chief reason. In England, for this outspoken detestation of the exciseman lay in the fact that the law empowered him to enter private houses and to search at his own discre- tion. In Scotland and Ireland there was an- other objection, even more valid In the eyes of the common people; excise struck heaviest at their national drink. Englishmen, at the time of which we are speaking, were content with
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 147
their ale, not yet having contracted the habit of "^linking gin; but Scotchmen and Irishmen pre- ferred distilled spirits, manufactured, as a rule, out of their own barley, in small pot-stills [pot-, een means, literally, a little pot), the process being a common household art frequently prac- ticed '' every man for himself and his neigh- bor." A tax, then, upon whiskey was as odious as a tax upon bread baked on the domestic hearth — if not, indeed, more so.
Now, there came a time when the taxes laid upon spirituous liquors had increased almost to the point of prohibition. This was done, not so much for the sake of revenue, as for the sake of the public health and morals. Englishmen had suddenly taken to drinking gin, and the im- mediate effect was similar to that of introducing firewater among a race of savages. There was hue and cry (apparently with good reason), that the gin habit, spreading like a plague, among a people unused to strong liquors, would soon ex- terminate the English race. Parliament, alarmed at the outlook, then passed an excise law of extreme severity. As always happens in such cases, the law promptly defeated its own purpose by breeding a spirit of defiance and re- sistance among the great body of the people.
The heavier the tax. the more widespread be-
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came the custom of illicit distilling. The law was evaded in two different ways, the method depending somewhat upon the relative loyalty of the people toward the Crown, and somewhat upon the character of the country, as to whether it was thickly or thinly settled.
In rich and populous districts, as around Lon- don and Edinburgh and Dublin, the common practice was to bribe government officials. A historian of that time declares that "Not in- frequently the ganger could have laid his hands upon a dozen stills within as many hours; but he had cogent reasons for avoiding discoveries unless absolutely forced to make them. Where mformations were laid, it was by no means un- common for a trusty messenger to be dispatched from the residence of the ganger to give due notice, so that by daybreak next morning ' the boys,' with all their utensils, might disappear. Now and then they were required to leave an old and worn-out still in place of that which they were to remove, so that a report of actual seizure might be made. A good understanding was thus often kept up between the gangers and and the distillers; the former not infrequently received a ' duty ' upon every still within his jurisdiction, and his cellars were never without ' a sup of the best.' .... The commerce was car*
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 149
ried on to a very great extent, and openly. Poteen was usually preferred, even by the gen- try, to ' Parliament ' or ' King's ' whiskey. It was known to be free from adulteration, and had a smoky flavor (arising from the peat fires) which many liked." Another waiter says that " The amount of spirits produced by distillation avowedly illicit vastly exceeded that produced by the licensed distilleries. According to Wakefield, stills were erected even in the kitch- ens of baronets and in the stables of clergymen."
However, this sort of thing was not moon- shining. It was only the beginning of that sys- tem of wholesale collusion which, in later times, w^as perfected in our own country by the ^^ Whis- key Ring."
Tvloonshining proper was confined to the poorer class of people, especially in Ireland, who lived in wild and sparsely settled regions, who were governed by a clan feeling stronger than their loyalty to the central Government, and who either could not afford to share their profits with the gangers, or disdained to do so. Such people hid their little pot-stills in inac- cessible places, as in the savage mountains and glens of Connemara, where it was impossible, or at least hazardous, for tlic law to reach them, With arms in hand they defied the ofiice^-i
ISO OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
" The hatred of the people toward the gauger was for a very long period intense. The very- name invariably aroused the worst passions. To kill a gauger was considered anything but a crime; wherever it could be done with compara- tive safety, he was hunted to the death."
Thus we see that the townsman's weapon against the government was graft, and the mountaineer's weapon was his gun — a hundred and fifty years ago, in Ireland, as they are in America to-day. Whether racial character had much to do with this is a debatable question. But, having spoken of race, a new factor, and a curious one, steps into our story. Let it be noted closely, for it bears directly on a prob- lem that has puzzled many of our own people, namely: What was the origin of our southern mountaineers?
The north of Ireland, at the time of which we have been speaking, was not settled by Irish- men, but by Scotchm.en, who had been imported by James I. to take the place of native Hiber- nians whom he had dispossessed from the three northern counties. These immigrants came to be known as the Scotch-Irish. They learned how to make poteen in little stills, after the Irish fashion, and to defend their stills from intrusive foreigners, also after the Irish fashion. By and
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 151
by these Scotch-Irish fell out with the British Government, and large bodies of them emi- grated to America, settling, for the most part, in western Pennsylvania.
They were a fighting race. Accustomed to plenty of hard knocks at home, they took to the rough fare and Indian wars of our border as naturally as ducks take to water. They brought with them, too, an undying hatred of excise laws, and a spirit of unhesitating resistance to any authority that sought to enforce such laws.
It was these Scotchmen, in the main, assisted by a good sprinkling of native Irish, and by the wilder blades among the Pennsylvania-Dutch, who drove out the Indians from the Alleghany border, formed our rear-guard in the Revolu- tion, won that rough mountain region for civili- zation, left it when the game became scarce and neighbors' houses too frequent, followed the mountains southward, settled western Virginia and Carolina, and formed the vanguard west- ward into Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and so onward till there was no longer a West to conquer. Some of their descendants remained behind in the fastnesses of the Alleghanies, the Blue Ridge, and the Unakas, and became, in turn, the progenitors of that singular race which, by an absurd pleonasm, Is now commonly known
152 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
as the "mountain whites." but properly south- ern highlanders.
The first generation of Pennsylvania frontiers- men knew no laws but those of their own mak- ing. They were too far away, too scattered, and too poor, for the Crown to bother with them. Then came the Revolution. The backwoods- men were loyal to the new American Govern- ment— loyal to a man. They not only fought off the Indians from the rear, but sent many of their incomparable riflemen to fight at the front as well.
They were the first English-speaking people to use weapons of precision (the rifle, intro- duced by the Pennsylvania-Dutch about 1700, was used by our backwoodsmen exclusively throughout the war). They were the first to employ open-order formation in civilized war- fare. They were the first outside colonists to assist their New England brethren at the siege of Boston. They were mustered in as the First Regiment of Foot of the Continental Army (be- ing the first troops enrolled by our Congress, and the first to serve under a Federal banner). They carried the day at Saratoga, the Cowpens, and King's Mountain. From the beginning to the end of the war, they were Washington's favorite troops.
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 153
And yet these same men were the first rebels against the authority of the United States Gov- ernment! And it was their old commander-in- chief, Washington himself, who had the un- grateful task of bringing them to order by a show of Federal bayonets.
It happened in this wise:
Up to the year 1791 there had been no excise tax in the United Colonies or the United States. (One that had been tried in Pennsylvania was utterly abortive). Then the country fell upon hard times. A larger revenue had to be raised, and Hamilton suggested an excise. The meas- ure was bitterly opposed by many public men, notably by Jefiferson; but it passed. Immedi- ately there was trouble in the tall timber.
Western Pennsylvania, and the mountains southward, had been settled, as we have seen, by the Scotch-Irish; men who had brought with them a certain fondness for whiskey, a certain knack in making it, and an intense hatred of excise, on general as well as special principles. There were few roads across the mountains, and these few were execrable — so bad, indeed, that it was impossible for the backwoodsmen to bring their corn and rye to market, except in a con- centrated form. The farmers of the seaboard had grown rich, from the high prices that pre-
154 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
vailed during the French Revolution; but the mountain farmers had remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gal- latin said, in defending the western people, " We have no means of bringing the produce of our lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value in the smallest size and weight. The in- habitants of the eastern side of the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that labor upon it."
Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in the mountains. Com- merce was carried on by barter; but there had to be some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who brought them by pack train across the Alle- ghanies. Consequently a still had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen gallons of liquor, which repre- sented eight bushels of grain. In weight and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it had been transported
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 155
across the mountains, could undersell even so cheap a beverage as New England rum — so long as no tax was laid upon it.
But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers' grain, and let the grain of the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge. Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border re- garded such a law as aimed exclusively at them- selves. They remonstrated, petitioned, stormed. *' From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Vir- ginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legis- latures of North Carolina, Virginia and Mary- land passed resolutions against the law, and that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region the people were ready for revolt." " To tax their stills seemed a blow at the only thing which obdurate nature had given them — a lot hard in- deed, in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board."
Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now) resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which
156 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
reference has been made — only they were far wilder, far less populous, and inhabited by a people still prouder, more independent, more used to being a law unto themselves than were their ancestors in old Hibernia. When the Fed- eral exciseman came among this border people and sought to levy tribute, they blackened or otherwise disguised themselves and treated him to a coat of tar and feathers, at the same time threatening to burn his house. He resigned. Indignation meetings were held, resolutions were passed calling on all good citizens to dis- obey the law, and whenever anyone ventured to express a contrary opinion, or rented a house to a collector, he, too, was tarred and feathered. If a prudent or ultra-conscientious individual took out a license and sought to observe the law, he was visited by a gang of " Whiskey Boys " who smashed the still and inflicted corporal pun- ishment upon its owner.
Finally, warrants were issued against the law- breakers. The attempt to serve these writs pro- duced an uprising. On July 16, 1794, a com- pany of mountain militia marched to the house of the inspector, General Neville, to force him to give up his commission. Neville fired upon them, and, in the skirmish that ensued, five of the attacking force v/ere wounded and one was
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 157
killed. The next day, a regiment of 500 moun- taineers, led by one "Tom the Tinker," burned Neville's house, and forced him to flee for his life. His guard of eleven U. S. soldiers surren- dered, after losing one killed and several wounded.
A call was then issued for a meeting of the mountain militia at the historic Braddock's Field. On Aug. i, a large body assembled, of whom 2,000 were armed. They marched on Pittsburgh, then a village of 1,200 souls. The townsmen, eager to conciliate and to ward off pillage, appointed a committee to meet the mob half way. The committee, finding that it could not induce the mountain men to go home, made a virtue of necessity by escorting 5,400 of them into Pittsburgh town. As Fisher says, " The town was warned by messengers, and every prep- aration was made, not for defense, but to ex- tinguish the fire of the Whiskey Boys' thirst, which would prevent the necessity of having to extinguish the fire they might apply to houses. . . . Then the work began. Every citizen worked like a slave to carry provisions and buck- ets of whiskey to that camp." Judge Bracken- ridge tells us that it was an expensive as well as laborious day, and cost him personally four barrels of prime old whiskey. The day ended
158 OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS
in a bloodless, but probably uproarious, jollifi- cation.
On this same day (the Governor of Pennsyl- vania having declined to interfere) Washington issued a proclamation against the rioters, and called for 15,000 militia to quell the insurrec- tion. Meantime he had appointed commission- ers to go into the disaffected region and try to persuade the people to submit peacefully before the troops should arrive. Peace was offered on condition that the leaders of the disturbance should submit to arrest.
While negotiations were proceeding, the army advanced. Eighteen ringleaders of the mob were arrested, and the " insurrection " faded away like smoke. When the troops arrived, there was nothing for them to do. The insur- gent leaders were tried for treason, and two of them were convicted, but Washington pardoned both of them. The cost of this expedition was more than one-third of the total expenditures of the Government, for that year, for all other purposes. The moral effect upon the nation at large was wholesome, for the Federal Govern- ment had demonstrated, on this its first test, that it could enforce its own laws and maintain do- mestic tranquility. The result upon the moun- tain people themselves was dubious. Thomas
A LEAF FROM THE PAST 159
Jeffcnson wrote to Madison in December: " The information of our [Virginia's] militia, returned from the westward, is uniform, that though the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear; that one thousand men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleghany; that their detestation of the excise law was uni- versal, and has now associated with it a detesta- tion of the Government; and that a separation which was perhaps a very distant and proble- matical event, is now near and certain, and de- termined in the mind of every man."
But Jefferson himself came to the presidency within six years, and the excise tax was promptly repealed, never again to be instituted, save as a war measure, until within a time so recent that it is now remembered by men whom we would not call very old.
The moonshiners of our own day know noth- ing of the story that has here been written. Only once, within my knowledge, has it been told in the mountains, and then the result was so unex- pected, that I append the incident as a color contrast to this rather sombre narrative. —
I was calling on a white-bearded patriarch who was a trifle vain of his historical learning. He could not read, but one of his daughters
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read to him, and he had learned by heart nearly all that lay between the two lids of a " Univer- sal History " such as book agents peddle about. Like one of John Fox's characters, he was fond of the expression " hist'ry says " so-and-so, and he considered it a clincher in all matters of de- bate.
Our conversation drifted to the topic of moonshining.
" Down to the time of the Civil War," de- clared the old settler, " nobody paid tax on the whiskey he made. Hit was thataway in my Pa's time, and in Gran'sir's, too. And so 'way back to the time of George Washington. Now, hist'ry says that Washington was the Father of his Country; and I reckon he was the greatest man that ever lived — don't you? "
I murmured a complaisant assent.
" Waal, sir, if 't was right to make free whis- key in Washington's day, hit's right no^u! " and the old man brought his fist down on the table.
^' But that is where you make a mistake," I replied. "Washington did enforce a whiskey tax." Then I told about the Whiskey Insur- rection of 1794.
This was news to Grandpa. He listened with deep attention, his brows lowering as the nar- rative proceeded. When it was finished he
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offered no comment, but brooded to himself in silence. My own thoughts wandered far afield, until recalled to the topic by a blunt demand:
" You say Washington done that? "
'' He did."
" George Washington? "
"Yes, sir: the Father of his Country."
"Waal, Fm satisfied now that Washington was a leetle-grain cracked."
*****
The law of 1791, although it imposed a tax on whiskey of only 9 to 1 1 cents per proof gal- lon, came near bringing on a civil war, which was only averted by the leniency of the Federal Government in granting wholesale amnesty. The most stubborn malcontents in the mountains moved southward along the Alleghanies into western Virginia and the Carolinas, where no serious attempt was made to collect the excise; so they could practice moonshining to their heart's content, and there their descendants re- main to-day.
On the accession of Jefiferson, in 1800, the tax on spirits was repealed. The war of 181 2 com- pelled the Government to tax whiskey again, but as this was a war tax, shared by commodities generally, it aroused no opposition. In 1817
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the excise was again repealed; and from that time until 1862 no specific tax was levied on liquors. During this period of thirty^five years the average market price of wliTskey was 24 cents a gallon, sometimes dropping as low as 14 cents. Spirits were so cheap that a " burning fluid," consisting of one part spirits of turpen- tine to four or five parts alcohol was used in the lamps of nearly every household. Moonshining, of course, had ceased to exist.
Then came the Civil War. In 1862 a tax of 20 cents a gallon was levied. Early in 1864 it rose to 60 cents. This cut off the industrial use of spirits, but did not affect its use as a beverage. In the latter part of 1864 the tax leaped to $1.50 a gallon, and the next year it reached the prohibitive figure of $2. The result of such excessive taxation was just what it had been In the old times, in Great Britain. In and around the centers of population there was wholesale fraud and collusion. " Efforts made to repress and punish frauds were of absolutely no account whatever. . . . The current price at which distilled spirits were sold in the markets was everywhere recognized and commented on by the press as less than the amount of the tax, allowing nothing whatever for the cost of manu- facture."
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Seeing that the outcome was disastrous from a fiscal point of view — the revenue from this source was falling to the vanishing point — Con- gress, in 1868, cut down the tax to 50 cents a gallon. " Illicit distillation practically ceased the very hour that the new law came into opera- tion; . . . the Government collected during the second year of the continuance of the act $3 for every one that was obtained during the last year of the $2 rate."
In 1869 there came a new administration, with frequent removals of revenue officials for political purposes. The revenue fell ofif. In 1872 the rate was raised to 70 cents, and in 1875 to 90 cents. The result is thus summar- ized by David A. Wells:
" Investigation carefully conducted showed that on the average the product of illicit dis- tillation costs, through deficient yields, the nec- essary bribery of attendants, and the expenses of secret and unusual methods of transportation, from two to three times as much as the product of legitimate and legal distillation. So that, calling the average cost of spirits in the United States 20 cents per gallon, the product of the illicit distiller would cost 40 to 60 cents, leaving but 10 cents per gallon as the maximum profit to be realized from fraud under the most favor-
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able conditions — an amount not sufficient to off- set the possibility of severe penalties of fine, imprisonment, and confiscation of property. . . . The rate of 70 cents . . . constituted a moderate temptation to fraud. Its increase to 90 cents constituted a temptation altogether too great for human nature, as employed in manufacturing and selling whiskey, to resist. . . . During 1875-6, highwines sold openly in the Chicago and Cincinnati markets at prices less than the average cost of production plus the Government tax. Investigations showed that the persons mainly concerned in the work of fraud were the Government officials rather than the distillers; and that a so-called 'Whis- key Ring ' . . . extended to Washington, and embraced within its sphere of influence and par- ticipation, not merely local supervisors, collect- ors, inspectors, and storekeepers of the revenue, but even officers of the Internal