The Cumberland Mountains

East Tennessee, 1st September 1880.

Here I am at my goal, and so full of new impressions that I must put

some of them down at once, lest they should slip away like the new kind

of recruits, and I should not be able to lay my hand on them again when

I want them. The above address is vague, as this range of highlands

extends for some 200 miles through this State and Kentucky; but, though

fixed as fate myself, I can for the moment put no more definite heading

to my letters. The name of the town that is to be, and which is already

laid out and in course of building here, is a matter of profound

interest to many persons, and not to be decided hastily. The only point

which seems clear is that it will be some name round which cluster

tender memories in the old Motherland. We are some 1800 feet above the

sea, and after the great heat of New York, Newport, and Cincinnati,

the freshness and delight of this brisk, mountain air are quite past

describing. For mere physical enjoyment, I have certainly never felt its

equal, and can imagine nothing finer.

And now for our journey down. We left Cincinnati early in the morning by

the Cincinnati Southern Railway, a line built entirely by the city,

and the cost of which will probably make the municipality poor for

some years to come. But it seems to me a splendid and sagacious act of

foresight in a great community, to have boldly taken hold of and opened

up at once what must be one, if not the main, artery of communication

between North and South in the future. I believe the impelling motive

was the tendency of the carrying trade of late years to settle along

other routes, leaving the metropolis of the south-west out in the cold.

If this be so, the result justifies the prompt courage of the citizens

of Cincinnati, for the tide has obviously set in again with a vengeance.

The passenger-cars are filled to the utmost of their capacity, and

freight, as we know here too well, is often delayed for days, in spite

of all the efforts of the excellent staff of the road. Besides its

through traffic, the line has opened up an entirely new country,

of which these highlands seem likely to prove a profitable, as they

certainly are the most interesting, tract. This section has not been

open for six months, and already it is waking up life all over these

sparsely-settled regions. Down below on the way to Chatanooga I hear

that the effect is the same, and that in that great mineral region

blast-furnaces are already at work, and coal-mines opening all along the

line. At Chatanooga there are connections with all the great Southern

lines, so that we on this aerial height are, in these six months, in

direct communication with every important seaport from Boston to New

Orleans, and almost every great centre of inland population; and the

settlers here, looking forward with that sturdy faith which seems to

inspire all who have breathed the air for a week or two, are already

considering upon which favoured mart they shall pour out their abundance

of fruits and tobacco, from the trees yet to be planted and seed yet to

be sown. All which seems to prove that Cincinnati, at any rate, has

done well to adopt the motto, “L’audace, toujours l’audace,” which is,

indeed, characteristic of this country and this time.

And the big work has not only been done, but done well and permanently.

The engineering difficulties must have been very great; the cuttings and

tunnels had to be made through hard rock, and the bridges over streams

which have cut for themselves channels hundreds of feet deep. We crossed

the Kentucky river, on (I believe) the highest railway bridge in

the world, 283 feet above the water; and rushed from a tunnel in the

limestone rock right on to the bridge which spans the north fork of the

Cumberland river, 170 feet below. The lightness of the ironwork on which

these bridges rest startles one at first, but experience has shown them

to be safe, and the tests to which they have been put on this line would

have tried most seriously the strength of far more massive structures.

But it is only in its bridges that the Cincinnati Southern Railway has

a light appearance. The building of the line has a solid and permanent

look, justifying, I should think, the very considerable sum per mile

which has been spent on it above the ordinary cost in this country. And

by the only test which an amateur is as well able to apply as an expert,

that of writing on a journey, I can testify that it is as smoothly laid

as the average of our leading English lines. For the last fifty miles we

ran almost entirely through forests, which are, however, falling rapidly

all along the side of the line, and yielding place to corn-fields in

the rich bottoms, wherever any reasonably level ground bordered the

water-courses, up which we could glance as we hurried past. I was

surprised, and, I need not say, greatly pleased, to see the apparently

excellent terms on which the white and coloured people were, even in

the Kuklux regions through which we came. A Northern express man, our

companion at this point, denounced it as the most lawless in the United

States. About one hundred homicides, he declared, had taken place in the

last year, and no conviction had been obtained, the juries looking on

such things as regrettable accidents. This may be so, but I can, at any

rate, testify, from careful observation of the mixed gangs of workmen

on the road, and the groups gathered at the numerous stations, to the

familiar and apparently friendly footing on which the races met. As

for the decrease of the blacks, it must be in other regions than those

traversed by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, for the cabins we passed

in the clearings and round the stations swarmed with small urchins, clad

in single garments, the most comic little figures of fun, generally,

that one had ever seen, as they stood staring and signalling to the

train. There is something to me so provocative of mirth in the race,

and I have found them generally such kindly folk, that I regret

their absence from this same Alpine settlement,--a regret not shared,

doubtless, by the few householders, to whom their constant small

peculations must be very trying.

About five we stopped at the station from which this place is reached,

and turning out on the platform were greeted by four or five young

Englishmen, who had preceded us, on one errand or another, every one

of whom was well known to me in ordinary life, but whom for the

first moment I did not recognise. I had seen them last clothed in the

frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of our much-vaunted civilisation, and

behold, here was a group which I can compare to nothing likely to be

familiar to your readers, unless it be the company of the _Danites_, as

they have been playing in London. Broad-brimmed straw or felt hats, the

latter very battered and worse for wear; dark-blue jerseys, or flannel

shirts of varying hue; breeches and gaiters, or long boots, were the

prevailing, I think I may say the universal costume, varied according

to the taste of the wearer with bits of bright colour laid on in

handkerchief at neck or waist. And tastes varied deliciously, two of

the party showing really a fine feeling for the part, and one, our

geologist, 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, and a mighty Etonian and

Cantab, in brains as well as bulk, turning out, with an heroic scorn of

all adornment, in woefully battered nether-garment and gaiters, and a

felt which a tramp would have looked at several times before picking

it out of the gutter. There was a light buggy for passengers and a

mule waggon for luggage by the platform; but how were nine men, not

to mention the manager and driver, both standing over 6 feet, and the

latter as big at least as our geologist, to get through the intervening

miles of forest tracks in time for tea up here? Fancy our delight when

a chorus of “Will you ride or drive?” arose, and out of the neighbouring

bushes the Danites led forth nine saddle-horses, bearing the comfortable

half-Mexican saddles with wooden stirrups in use here. Our choice was

quickly made, and throwing coats and waistcoats into the waggon, which

the manager good-naturedly got into himself, surrendering his horse for

the time, we joined the cavalcade in our shirts.

A lighter-hearted party has seldom scrambled through the Tennessee

mountain roads on to this plateau. We were led by a second Etonian, also

6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, whose Panama straw hat and white corduroys

gleamed like a beacon through the deep shadows cast by the tall pine

trees and white oaks. The geologist brought up the rear, and between

rode the rest of us--all public schoolmen, I think, another Etonian, two

from Rugby, one Harrow, one Wellington--through deep gullies, through

four streams, in one of which I nearly came to grief, from not following

my leader; but my gallant little nag picked himself up like a goat from

his floundering amongst the boulders, and so up through more open ground

till we reached this city of the future, and in the dusk saw the bright

gleam of light under the verandahs of two sightly wooden houses. In one

of these, the temporary restaurant, we were seated in a few minutes at

an excellent tea (cold beef and mutton, tomatoes, rice, cold apple-tart,

maple syrup, etc.); and during the meal the news passed round that

the hotel being as yet unfurnished and every other place filled with

workpeople, we must all (except the geologist and the Wellingtonian,

who had a room over the office) pack away in the next cottage, which had

been with difficulty reserved for us. If it had been a question of men

only, no one would have given it a thought; but our party had now been

swollen by two young ladies, who had hurried down by an earlier train

to see their brother and brother-in-law, settlers on the plateau, and

by another young Englishman who had accompanied them. A puzzle, you will

allow, when you hear a description of our tenement. It is a four-roomed

timber house, of moderate size, three rooms on the ground floor, and one

long loft upstairs. You enter through the verandah on a common room, 20

ft. long by 14 ft. broad, opening out of which are two chambers, 14

ft. by 10 ft. One of these was, of course, at once appropriated to the

ladies. The second, in spite of my remonstrances, was devoted to me,

as the Nestor of the party, and on entering it I found an excellent bed

(which had been made by two of the Etonians), and a great basin full of

wild-flowers on the table. There were four small beds in the loft, for

which the seven drew lots, and two of the losers spread rugs on the

floor of the common room, and the third swung a hammock in the verandah.

Up drove the mule waggon with luggage, and the way in which big and

little boxes were dealt with and distributed filled me with respect and

admiration for the rising generation. The house is ringing behind

me with silvery and bass laughter, and jokes as to the shortness of

accommodation in the matter of washing appliances, while I sit here

writing in the verandah, the light from my lamp throwing out into strong

relief the stems of the nearest trees. Above, the vault is blue beyond

all description, and studded with stars as bright as though they were

all Venuses. The katydids are making delightful music in the trees, and

the summer lightning is playing over the Western heaven; while a gentle

breeze, cool and refreshing as if it came straight off a Western sea, is

just lifting, every now and then, the corner of my paper. Were I young

again,--but as I am not likely to be that, I refrain from bootless

castle-building, and shall turn in, leaving windows wide open for the

katydid’s chirp and the divine breeze to enter freely, and wishing as

good rest as they have all so well earned to my crowded neighbours in

this enchanted solitude.

Rugby, Tennessee, 10th September 1880.

I take it I must have “written you frequent” (as they say here), at

this time of year, in the last quarter-century on this theme, but, if

you let me, should like to go back once more on the old lines. “Loafing

as she should be taken” is likely, I fear, to become a lost art,

though to my generation it is the one luxury. A country without good

loafing-places is no longer a country for a self-respecting man in

his second half-century. The rapid deterioration of our poor dear old

England in this respect fills me with forebodings far more than the

Irish Question, which we shall worry through on the lines so staunchly

advocated by you. No fear of that, to my thinking; but, alas! great fear

of our losing the power and the means of loafing. Time was when John

Bull, in his own isle, was the best loafer in Christendom--(I may say in

the world, the Turk and Otaheitan loafer doing nothing else, and he who

does nothing but loaf loses the whole flavour of it)--and I can

remember the time when at the seaside--for instance, Cromer, and inland,

Betwys-y-Coed, Penygurd, and the like--the true loafer might be happy,

gleaning “the harvest of a quiet eye,” and far from any one who wanted

to go anywhere or do anything in particular. The railway has come

to Cromer, and I hear that the guardian phalanx of Buxtons, Hoares,

Gurneys, and Barclays, all good loafers in the last generation, have

thrown up the sponge and gone with the stream. I was at Betwys and

Penygurd last year, and at the former there were three or four long

pleasure-vans meeting every train; at the latter, three parties came in,

in a few hours, to do Snowdon and get back to dinner at Capel Curig or

Bethgellert. Indeed, I was sore to mark that even Henry Owen, landlord

and guide, once a good loafer, has succumbed., Over here it is still

worse in the Atlantic States; but this is a big country, in which oases

_must_ be left yet for many a long year for the loafer, of which this

is one. It lies on a mountain plateau, seven miles from the station,

to which a hack goes twice daily to meet the morning and evening mails

(once too often, perhaps, for the highest enjoyment of the loafer);

but otherwise the outer world, its fidgets and its businesses, no more

concern us than they did Cooper’s jackdaw. I am conscious that regular

work here must be done by some one, as daily meals at 7 A.M., and

12.30 and 6 P.M., never fail, with abundance of grapes and melons--the

peaches, alas! were cut off by frosts when the trees were in blossom.

But beyond this, and the presence of a young Englishman in the house,

who, in blue shirt and trousers, tends and milks the cows, and puts

in six or eight hours’ work a day at one thing or another in the

neighbouring fields, there is nothing to remind one that this world

doesn’t go on by itself, at any rate in these autumn days. Almost every

cottage, or shanty, as they call these attractive wooden houses, has

a deep verandah (from which you get a view, over the forest, of the

southern range of mountains, with Pilot Knob for highest point), and,

in the verandah, rocking-chairs and hammocks, in one or other of which

a chatty host or hostess is almost sure to be found, enjoying air, view,

rocking, and the indescribable depth of blue atmosphere which laps us

all round. There is surely something very uplifting in finding the sky

twice as far off as you know it at home. I felt this first on the Lower

Danube and in Greece; but I doubt if Bulgarian or Greek heavens are as

high as these. Every now and again, a merry group of young folk go by

in waggon or on horseback; but even they are loafers, as they have no

object in view beyond enjoying one another’s company, and possibly lunch

or tea at the junction of the two mountain-streams, the only lion we

have within a day’s journey. Their parents may be found for the most

part in and round the hotel, for they are wise enough to let the young

ones knock about very much as they please, while they take their own

ease in the verandahs or shady grounds of “The Tabard.” That hostelry

of historic name stands on an eminence next to this shanty, and my

“loaf-brothers,” when I get any, are generally saunterers from amongst

its guests, and the one who comes oftenest is perhaps the best loafer I

have ever come across. He is a rancheman on the Rio Grande, and has been

out here ever since he left Marlborough, some fourteen years ago. Since

then I should think he has done as hard work as any man, in the long

drives of 2000 miles which he used to make from Southern Texas up to

Colorado or Kansas, before the railway came. Even now, I take it that

for ten months in the year he covers more ground and exhausts more

tissue than most men, which makes him such a model loafer when he gets

away. Yesterday, for instance, he started after lunch from “The Tabard,”

300 yards off, under a sort of engagement, as definite as we make

them, to spend the afternoon here. On the way he came across a hammock

swinging unoccupied in the hotel grounds, and a volume of Pendennis,

and only arrived here after supper, in the superb starlight (the moon is

objectionably late in rising just now), to smoke a pipe before bed-time.

His experience of Western life is as racy as a volume of Bret Harte.

Take the following, for instance:--At a prairie-town not far from his

ranche, as distances go in the West, there is a State Court of First

Instance, presided over by one Roy Bean, J.P., who is also the owner of

the principal grocery. Some cowboys had been drinking at the grocery one

night, with the result that one of them remained on the floor, but with

sense enough left to lie on the side of the pocket where he kept

his dollars. In the morning, it appeared that he had been

“rolled”--_Anglicè_, turned over and his pocket picked--whereupon a

court was called to try a man on whom suspicion rested. Roy Bean sat on

a barrel, swore in a jury, and then addressed the prisoner thus: “Now,

you give that man his money back.” The culprit, who had sent for the

lawyer of the place to defend him, hesitated for a moment, and then

pulled out the money. “You treat this crowd,” were Roy’s next words;

and while “drinks round” were handed to the delighted cowboys at the

prisoner’s expense, Roy pulled out his watch and went on: “You’ve got

just five minutes to clear out of this town, and if ever you come in

again, we’ll hang you.” The culprit made off just as his lawyer came up,

who remonstrated with Roy, explaining that the proper course would have

been to have heard the charge, committed the prisoner, and sent him to

the county town for trial. “And go off sixty miles, and hang round with

the boys [witnesses] for you to pull the skunk through and touch the

dollars!” said Roy scornfully; whereupon the lawyer disappeared in

pursuit of his client and unpaid fee.

It occurs to one to ask how much of the litigation of England might be

saved if Judges of First Instance might open with Roy’s formula: “Now,

you give that man his money back.” I am bound to add that his practice

is not without its seamy side. When the railway was making, two men

came in from one of the gangs for a warrant. A brutal murder had been

committed. Roy told his clerk (the boy in the grocery, he being no

penman himself) to make out the paper, asking: “Wot’s the corpse’s

name?” “Li Hung,” was the reply. “Hold on!” shouted Roy to his clerk;

and then to the pursuers: “Ef you ken find anything in them books,”

pointing to the two or three supplied by the State, “about killin’ a

Chinaman, it ken go,” and the pursuers had to travel on to the next

fount of justice.

Here is one more: my “loaf-brother” heard it himself as he was leaving

Texas, and laughed at it nearly all the way up. A group of cowboys at

the station were discussing the problem of how long the world would last

if this drought went on, the prevailing sentiment being that they would

rather it worruted through somehow. A cowboy down on his luck here

struck in: “Wall, if the angel stood right thar,” pointing across the

room, “ready to sound, and looked across at me, I’d jest say, ‘Gabe!

toot your old horn!’”

Rugby, Tennessee.

I was roused at five or thereabouts on the morning after our arrival

here by a visit from a big dog belonging to a native, not quite a

mastiff, but more like that than anything else, who, seeing my window

wide open, jumped in from the verandah, and came to the bed to give me

goodmorning with tail and muzzle. I was glad to see him, having made

friends the previous evening, when the decision of his dealings with the

stray hogs who came to call on us from the neighbouring forest had won

my heart; but as his size and attentions somewhat impeded my necessarily

scanty ablutions, I had to motion him apologetically to the window when

I turned out. He obeyed at once, jumped out, laid his muzzle on the

sill, and solemnly, and, I thought, somewhat pityingly, watched my

proceedings. Meantime, I heard sounds which announced the uprising of

“the boys,” and in a few minutes several appeared in flannel shirts and

trousers, bound for one of the two rivers which run close by, in gullies

200 feet below us. They had heard of a pool ten feet deep, and found it

too; and a most delicious place it is, surrounded by great rocks, lying

in a copse of rhododendrons, azaleas, and magnolias, which literally

form the underwood of the pines and white oak along these gullies. The

water is of a temperature which allows folk whose blood is not so hot

as it used to be to lie for half an hour on its surface and play

about without a sensation of chilliness. On this occasion, however,

I preferred to let them do the exploring, and so at 6.15 went off to

breakfast.

This is the regular hour for that meal here, dinner at twelve, and tea

at six. There is really no difference between them, except that we get

porridge at breakfast and a great abundance of vegetables at dinner.

At all of them we have tea and fresh water for drink, plates of beef or

mutton, apple sauce, rice, tomatoes, peach pies or puddings, and several

kinds of bread. As the English garden furnishes unlimited water and

other melons, and as the settlers--young English, who come in to see

us--bring sacks of apples and peaches with them, and as, moreover, the

most solvent of the boys invested at Cincinnati in a great square box

full of tinned viands of all kinds, you may see at once that in this

matter we are not genuine objects either for admiration or pity. I must

confess here to a slight disappointment. Having arrived at an age myself

when diet has become a matter of indifference, I was rather chuckling as

we came along over the coming short-commons up here, when we got fairly

loose in the woods, and the excellent discipline it would be for the

boys, especially the Londoners, to discover that the human animal can be

kept in rude health on a few daily crackers and apples, or a slap-jack

and tough pork. And now, behold, we are actually still living amongst

the flesh-pots, which I had fondly believed we had left in your Eastern

Egypt; and I am bound to add, “the boys” seem as provokingly indifferent

to them as if their beards were getting grizzled. One lives and learns,

but I question whether these states are quite the place to bring home

to our Anglo-Saxon race the fact that we are an overfed branch of the

universal brotherhood. Tanner, I fear, has fasted in vain.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when there was a muster of cavalry.

Every horse that could be spared or requisitioned was in demand for an

exploring ride to the west, and soon every charger was bestrid by “a

boy” in free-and-easy garments, and carrying a blanket for camping out.

Away they went under the pines and oaks, a merry lot, headed by our

geologist, who knows the forest by this time like a native, and whose

shocking old straw blazed ahead in the morning sun like, shall we say,

“the helmet of Navarre,” or Essex’s white hat and plumes before the

Train Bands, as they crowned the ridge where Falkland fell and his

monument now stands, at the battle of Newbury. Charles Kingsley’s lines

came into my head, as I turned pensively to my table in the verandah to

write to you:--

When all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, and round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog his day.

Our two lasses are, undoubtedly, queens out here. The thought occurs,

are our swans--our visions, already so bright, of splendid crops, and

simple life, to be raised and lived in this fairyland--to prove geese? I

hope not. It would be the downfall of the last castle in Spain I am ever

likely to build.

On reaching our abode, I was aware of the Forester coming across from

the English garden, of which he has charge, followed by a young native.

He walked up to me, and announced that they were come across to tidy

up, and _black the boots_. Here was another shock, that we should

be followed by the lumber of civilisation so closely! Will boots be

blacked, I wonder, in the New Jerusalem? I was at first inclined to

protest, while they made a collection, and set them out on the verandah,

but the sight of the ladies’ neat little high-lows made me pause.

These, at any rate, it seemed to me, _should_ be blacked, even in the

Millennium. Next minute I was so tickled by a little interlude between

the Forester and the native, that all idea of remonstrance vanished. The

latter, contemplating the boots and blacking-pot and brushes--from under

the shapeless piece of old felt, by way of hat, of the same mysterious

colour as the ragged shirt and breeches, his only other garments--joined

his hands behind his back, and said, in their slow way, “Look ’ere, Mr.

Hill, ain’t this ’ere pay-day?” The drift was perfectly obvious.

This citizen had no mind to turn shoe-black, and felt like discharging

himself summarily. Mr. Hill, who was already busily sweeping the

verandah, put down his broom, and after a short colloquy, which I did

not quite catch, seized on a boot and brush, and began shining away with

an artistic stroke worthy of one of the Shoeblack Brigade at the London

Bridge Station. The native looked on for a minute, and then slowly

unclasped his hands. Presently he picked up a boot and looked round

it dubiously. I now took a hand myself. If there was one art which

I learned to perfection at school, and still pride myself on, it is

shining a boot. In a minute or two my boot was beginning “to soar and

sing,” while the Forester’s was already a thing of beauty. The native,

with a grunt, took up the spare brush, and began slowly rubbing. The

victory was complete. He comes now and spends two hours every morning

over his new accomplishment, evidently delighted with the opportunity it

gives him for loafing and watching the habits of the strange occupants,

for whom also he fetches many tin pails of water from the well, in a

slow, vague manner. He has even volunteered to fix up the ladies’ room

and fill their bath (an offer which has been declined, with thanks), but

I doubt whether he will ever touch the point of a genuine “shine.”

They are a curious people, these natives, as the Forester (an

Englishman, reared in Lord Denbigh’s garden at Newnham Paddocks, and

thirty years out here) told me, as we walked off to examine the English

garden, but I must keep his experiences and my own observation for

separate treatment. The English garden is the most advanced, and, I

think, the most important and interesting feature of this settlement.

If young Englishmen of small means are to try their fortunes here, it is

well that they should have trustworthy guidance at once as to what are

the best crops to raise. With this view, Mr. Hill was placed, in the

spring of this year, in charge of the only cleared space available. All

the rest is beautiful, open forest-land. You can ride or drive almost

anywhere under the trees, but there is no cultivated spot for many

miles, except small patches here and there of carelessly sown maize and

millet, and a rood or two of sweet potatoes. The Forester had a hard

struggle to do anything with the garden at all this season. He was only

put in command in May, six weeks at least too late. He could only

obtain the occasional use of a team, and his duties in the forest and in

grading and superintending the walks interfered with the garden. Manure

was out of the question, except a little ashes, which he painfully

gathered here and there from the reckless log-fires which abound in the

woods. He calls his garden a failure for the year. But as half an acre

which was wild forest-land in May is covered with water-melons and

cantalupes, as the tomatoes hang in huge bunches, rotting on the vines

for want of mouths enough to eat them, as the Lima beans are yielding at

the rate of 250 bushels an acre, and as cabbages, sweet potatoes, beets,

and squash are in equally prodigal abundance, the prospect of making a

good living is beyond all question, for all who will set to work with a

will.

In the afternoon, I inspected the hotel, nearly completed, on a knoll

in the forest, between the English garden and this frame-house. It is a

sightly building, with deep verandahs prettily latticed, from which

one gets glimpses through the trees of magnificent ranges of blue

forest-covered mountains. We have named it “The Tabard,” at the

suggestion of one of our American members, who, being in England when

the old Southwark hostelry from which the Canterbury Pilgrims started

was broken up, and the materials sold by auction, to make room for a hop

store, bought some of the old banisters, which he has reverently kept

till now. They will be put up in the hall of the new Tabard, and

marked with a brass plate and inscription, telling, I trust, to

many generations of the place from which they came. The Tabard, when

finished, as it will be in a few days, will lodge some fifty guests;

and, in spite of the absence of alcoholic drinks, has every chance, if

present indications can be trusted, of harbouring and sending out as

cheery pilgrims as followed the Miller and the Host, and told their

world-famous stories five hundred years ago.

The drink question has reared its baleful head here, as it seems to do

all over the world. The various works had gone on in peace till the last

ten days, when two young natives toted over some barrels of whisky, and

broached them in a shanty, on a small lot of no-man’s land in the woods,

some two miles from hence. Since then there has been no peace for the

manager. Happily the feeling of the community is vigorously temperate,

so energetic measures are on foot to root out the pest. A wise state

law enacts that no liquor store shall be permitted under heavy penalties

within four miles of an incorporated school; so we are pushing on our

school-house, and organising a board to govern it. Meantime, we have

evidence of unlawful sale (in quantities less than a pint), and of

encouraging gambling, by these pests, and hope to make an example of

them at the next sitting of the county court. This incident has decided

the question for us. If we are to have influence with the poor whites

and blacks, we must be above suspicion ourselves. So no liquor will be

procurable at the Tabard, and those who need it will have to import for

themselves.

A bridle-path leads from the hotel down to the Clear Fork, one of the

streams at the junction of which the town site is situate. The descent

is about 200 feet, and the stream, when you get to it, from thirty

feet to fifty feet wide,--a mountain stream, with deep pools and big

boulders. Your columns are not the place for descriptions of scenery, so

I will only say that these gorges of the Clear Fork and White Oak are

as fine as any of their size that I know in Scotland, and not unlike in

character, with this difference, that the chief underwood here consists

of rhododendron (called laurel here), azalea, and a kind of magnolia I

have not seen before, and of which I cannot get the name. I passed huge

faggots of rhododendron, twelve feet and fourteen feet long, lying by

the walks, which had been cleared away ruthlessly while grading them.

They are three miles long and cost under £100, a judicious outlay, I

think, even before an acre of land has been sold. They have been named

the Lovers’ Walks, appropriately enough, for no more well-adapted place

could possibly be found for that time-honoured business, especially in

spring, when the whole gorges under the tall pines and white oak are one

blaze of purple, yellow, and white blossom.

On my return to the plateau, my first day’s experiences came to an end

in a way which no longer surprised me, after the boot-blacking and the

Lovers’ Walks. I was hailed by one of “the boys,” who had been unable to

obtain a mount, or had some business which kept him from exploring. He

was in flannels, with racquet in hand, on his way to the lawn-tennis

ground, to which he offered to pilot me. In a minute or two we came upon

an open space, marked, I see on the plans, “Cricket Ground,” in which

rose a fine, strong paling, enclosing a square of 150 feet, the uprights

being six feet high, and close enough to keep, not only boys out,

but tennis-balls in. Turf there was none, in our sense, within the

enclosure, and what there must have once been as a substitute for turf

had been carefully cleared off on space sufficient for one full-sized

court, which was well marked out on the hard, sandy loam. A better

ground I have rarely seen, except for the young sprouts of oak, and

other scrub, which here and there were struggling up, in a last effort

to assert their “ancient, solitary reign.” At any rate, then and there,

upon that court, I saw two sets played in a style which would have done

credit to a county match (the young lady, by the way, who played far

from the worst game of the four, is the champion of her own county).

This was the opening match, the racquets having only just arrived from

England, though the court has been the object of tender solicitude for

six weeks or more to the four Englishmen already resident here or near

by. The Rugby Tennis Club consists to-day of seven members, five English

and two native, and will probably reach two figures within a few days on

the return of the boys. Meantime the effect of their first practice has

been that they have resolved on putting a challenge in the Cincinnati

and Chatanooga papers offering to play a match--best out of five

sets--with any club in the United States. Such are infant communities,

in these latitudes!

You may have been startled by the address at the head of this letter.

It was adopted unanimously on our return in twilight from the

tennis-ground, and application at once made to the State authorities

for registration of the name and establishment of a post-office. It was

sharp practice thus to steal a march on the three Etonians, still far

away in the forest. Had they been present, possibly Thames might have

prevailed over Avon.

A Forest Ride, Rugby, Tennessee.

There are few more interesting experiences than a ride through these

southern forests. The scrub is so low and thin, that you can almost

always see away for long distances amongst pine, white oak, and chestnut

trees; and every now and then at ridges where the timber is thin, or

where a clump of trees has been ruthlessly “girdled,” and the bare,

gaunt skeletons only remain standing, you may catch glimpses of mountain

ranges of different shades of blue and green, stretching far away to the

horizon. You can’t live many days up here without getting to love the

trees even more, I think, than we do in well-kempt England; and this

outrage of “girdling,” as they call it--stripping the bark from the

lower part of the trunk, so that the trees wither and die as they

stand--strikes one as a kind of household cruelty, as if a man should

cut off or disfigure all his wife’s hair. If he wants a tree for lumber

or firewood, very good. He should have it. But he should cut it down

like a man, and take it clean away for some reasonable use, not leave it

as a scarecrow to bear witness of his recklessness and laziness. Happily

not much mischief of this kind has been done yet in the neighbourhood

of Rugby, and a stop will now be put to the wretched practice. There

is another, too, almost as ghastly, but which, no doubt, has more to be

said for it. At least half of the largest pines alongside of the sandy

tracts which do duty for roads have a long, gaping wound in their sides,

about a yard from the ground. This was the native way of collecting

turpentine, which oozed down and accumulated at the bottom of the gash;

but I rejoice to say it no longer pays, and the custom is in disuse. It

must be suppressed altogether, but carefully and gently. It seems that

if not persisted in too long, the poor, dear, long-suffering trees will

close up their wounds, and not be much the worse: so I trust that many

of the scored pines, springing forty or fifty feet into the air before

throwing out a branch, which I passed in sorrow and anger on my first

long ride, may yet outlive those who outraged them. Having got rid of my

spleen, excited by these two diabolic customs, I can return to our ride,

which had otherwise nothing but delight in it.

The manager, an invaluable guest from New York, a doctor, who had served

on the Sanitary Commission through the war, and I, formed the party.

The manager drove the light buggy, which held one of us also, and the

handbags 3 while the other rode by the side, where the road allowed, or

before or behind, as the fancy seized him. We were bound for a

solitary guest-house in the forest, some seventeen miles away, in the

neighbourhood of a cave and waterfall which even here have a reputation,

and are sometimes visited. We allowed three and a half hours for the

journey, and it took all the time. About five miles an hour on wheels

is all you can reckon on, for the country roads, sandy tracts about ten

feet broad, are just left to take care of themselves, and wherever there

is a sufficient declivity to give the rain a chance of washing all the

surface off them, are just a heap of boulders of different sizes. But,

after all, five miles an hour is as fast as you care to go, for the play

of the sunlight amongst the varied foliage, and the new flora and fauna,

keep you constantly interested and amused. I never regretted so much

my ignorance of botany, for I counted some fourteen sorts of flowers in

bloom, of which golden-rod and Michaelmas-daisy were the only ones I was

quite sure I knew,--and by the way, the daisy of Parnassus, of which

I found a single flower growing by a spring. The rest were like home

flowers, but yet not identical with them--at least, I think not--and the

doubt whether one had ever seen them before or not was provoking. The

birds--few in number--were all strangers to me; buzzards, of which we

saw five at one time, quite within shot, and several kinds of hawk and

woodpecker, were the most common; but at one point, quite a number of

what looked like very big swifts, but without the dash in their flight

of our bird, and with wings more like curlews’, were skimming over the

tree-tops..1 only heard one note, and that rather sweet, a cat-bird’s,

the doctor thought; but he was almost as much a stranger in these woods

as I. Happily, however, he was an old acquaintance of that delightful

insect, the “tumble-bug,” to which he introduced me on a sandy bit

of road. The gentleman in question took no notice of me, but went on

rolling his lump of accumulated dirt three times his own size backwards

with his hind legs, as if his life depended on it. Presently his lump

came right up against a stone and stopped dead. It was a “caution” to

see that bug strain to push it farther, but it wouldn’t budge, all he

could do. Then he stopped for a moment or two, and evidently made up his

small mind that something must be wrong behind, for no bug could have

pushed harder than he. So he quitted hold with his hind legs, and turned

round to take a good look at the situation, in order, I suppose, to see

what must be done next. At any rate, he presently caught hold again on

a different side, and so steered successfully past the obstacle. There

were a number of them working about, some single and some in pairs, and

so full of humour are their doings that I should have liked to watch for

hours.

We got to our journey’s end about dusk, a five-roomed, single-storied,

wooden house, built on supports, so as to keep it off the ground. We

went up four steps to the verandah, where we sat while our hostess, a

small, thin New Englander, probably seventy or upwards, but as brisk

as a bee, bustled about to get supper. The table was laid in the middle

room, which opened on the kitchen at the back, where we could see the

stove, and hear our hostess’s discourse. She boiled us two of her fine

white chickens admirably, and served with hot bread, tomatoes, sweet

potatoes, and several preserves, of which I can speak with special

praise of the huckleberry, which grows, she said, in great abundance all

round. _The boys_, we heard, had been there to breakfast, after sleeping

out, and not having had a square meal since they started. Luckily for

us, her white chickens are a very numerous as well as beautiful family,

or we should have fared badly. She and her husband supped after us, and

then came and sat with us in the balcony, and talked away on all manner

of topics, as if the chances of discourse were few, and to be made the

most of. They had lived at Jamestown, close by, a village of some

eight or ten houses, all through the war, through which the Confederate

cavalry had passed again and again. They had never molested her or hers

in any way, but had a fancy for poultry, which might have proved fatal

to her white family, but for her Yankee wit. She and her husband managed

to fix up a false floor in one of their rooms in which they fed the

roosters, so whenever a picket came in sight, her call would bring the

whole family out of the woods and clearing into the refuge, where they

remained peacefully amongst corn-cobs till the danger had passed. She

had nothing but good to say of her native neighbours, except that they

could make nothing of the country. The Lord had done all He could for

it, she summed up, and Boston must take hold of the balance. We heard

the owls all night, as well as the katydids, but they only seemed to

emphasise the forest stillness. The old lady’s beds, to which we retired

at ten, after our long gossip in the balcony, were sweet and clean, and

I escaped perfectly scatheless, a rare experience, I was assured, in

these forest shanties. I was bound, however, to admit, in answer to our

hostess’s searching inquiries, that I had seen, and slain, though not

felt, an insect suspiciously like a British B flat.

The cave which we sought out after breakfast was well worth any trouble

to find. We had to leave the buggy and horses hitched up and scramble

down a glen, where presently, through a tangle of great rhododendron

bushes, we came on a rock, with the little iron-stained stream just

below us, and opposite, at the top of a slope of perhaps fifteen or

twenty feet, was the cave, like a long black eye under a red eyebrow,

glaring at us. I could detect no figure in the sandstone rock (the

eyebrow), which hung over it for its whole length. The cave is said to

run back more than 300 feet, but we did not test it. There would be good

sitting-room for 300 or 400 people along the front, and so obviously

fitted for a conventicle, that I could not help peopling it with

fugitive slaves, and fancying a black Moses preaching to them of their

coming Exodus, with the rhododendrons in bloom behind. Maidenhair grow

in tufts about the damp floor, and a creeping fern, with a bright red

berry, the name of which the doctor told me, but I have forgotten, on

the damp, red walls. What the nook must be when the rhododendrons are

all ablaze with blossom, I hope some day to see.

We had heard of a fine spring somewhere in this part of the forest,

and in aid of our search for it presently took up a boy whom we found

loafing round a small clearing. He was bare-headed and bare-footed,

and wore an old, brown, ragged shirt turned up to the elbows, and old,

brown, ragged trousers turned up to the knees. I was riding, and in

answer to my invitation he stepped on a stump and vaulted up behind me.

He never touched me, as most boys would have done, but sat up behind

with perfect ease and balance as we rode along, a young centaur. We

soon got intimate, and I found he had never been out of the forest, was

fourteen, and still at (occasional) school. He could read a little, but

couldn’t write. I told him to tell his master, from me, that he ought

to be ashamed of himself, which he promised to do with great glee; also,

but not so readily, to consider a proposal I made him, that if he would

write to the manager within six months to ask for it, he should be paid

$1. I found that he knew nothing of the flowers or butterflies, of which

some dozen different kinds crossed our path. He just reckoned they were

all butterflies, as indeed they were. He knew, however, a good deal

about the trees and shrubs, and more about the forest beasts. Had seen

several deer only yesterday, and an old opossum with nine young, a

number which took the doctor’s breath away. There were lots of foxes in

the woods, but he did not see them so often. His face lighted up when he

was promised $2 for the first opossum he would tame and bring across to

Rugby. After guiding us to the spring, and hunting out an old wooden cup

amongst the bushes, he went off cheerily through the bushes, with two

quarter-dollar bits in his pocket, an interesting young wild man. Will

he ever bring the opossum?

We got back without further incident (except flushing quite a number of

quail, which must be lovely shooting in these woods), and found the boys

at home, and hard at lawn-tennis and well-digging. The hogs are becoming

an object of their decided animosity, and having heard of a Yankee

notion, a sort of tweezers, which ring a hog by one motion, in a second,

they are going to get it, and then to catch and ring every grunter who

shows his nose near the asylum. Out of this there should come some fun,

shortly.

The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee.

When all is said and sung, there is nothing so interesting as the man

and woman who dwell on any corner of the earth; so, before giving you

any further details of our surroundings, or doings, or prospects, let me

introduce you to our neighbours, so far as I have as yet the pleasure of

their acquaintance. And I am glad at once to acknowledge that it _is_ a

pleasure, notwithstanding all the talk we have heard of “mean whites,”

“poor, white trash,” and the like, in novels, travels, and newspapers.

It may possibly be that we have been fortunate, and that our neighbours

here are no fair specimens of the “poor whites” of the South. This, and

the next three counties, are in the north-western corner of Tennessee,

bordering on Kentucky. They are entirely mountain land. There are very

few negroes in them, and they were strongly Unionist during the war.

At present, they are Republican, almost to a man. There is not one

Democratic official in this county, and I am told that only three votes

were cast for the Democratic candidates at the last State elections.

They are overwhelmed by the vote of western and central Tennessee, which

carries the State with the solid South; but here Union men can speak

their minds freely, and cover their walls with pictures in coloured

broad-sheet of the heroes of the war,--Lincoln, Governor Brownlow, Grant

and his captains. They are poor almost to a man, and live in log-huts

and cabins which, at home, could scarcely be rivalled out of Ireland.

Within ten miles of this place there are possibly half a dozen (I have

seen two) which are equal in accommodation and comfort to those of good

farmers in England. The best of these belongs to our nearest neighbour,

with whom a party of us dined, at noon, the orthodox hour in the

mountains, some weeks since. He is a wiry man, of middle height,

probably fifty-five years of age, upright, with finely cut features, and

an eye that looks you right in the face. He has been on his farm twenty

years, and has cleared some fifty acres, which grow corn, millet, and

vegetables, and he has a fine apple orchard. We should call his farming

very slovenly, but it produces abundance for his needs. He sat at the

head of his table like an old nobleman, very quiet and courteous, but

quite ready to speak on any subject, and especially of the five years

of the war through which he carried his life in his hand, but never

flinched for an hour from his faith. His wife, a slight, elderly person,

whose regular features showed that she must have been very good-looking,

did not sit down with us, but stood at the bottom of the table,

dispensing her good things. Our drink was tea and cold spring water; our

viands, chickens, ducks, a stew, ham, with a profusion of vegetables,

apple and huckleberry tarts, and several preserves, one of which (some

kind of cherry, very common here) was of a lovely gold colour, and of

a flavour which would make the fortune of a London pastry-cook; a

profusion of water-melons and apples finished our repast; and no one

need ask a better,--but I am bound to add that our hostess has the name

for giving the best square meal to be had in the four counties. It

would be as fair to take this as an average specimen of the well-to-do

farmers’ fare here, as that of a nobleman with a French cook of

the gentry at home. Our host is a keen sportsman, and showed us his

flint-lock rifle, six feet long, and weighing 16 lbs.! He carries a

forked stick as a rest, and, we were assured, gets on his game about

as quickly as if it were a handy Westley-Richards, and seldom misses

a running deer. The vast majority of these mountaineers are in very

different circumstances. Most, but not all of them, own a log cabin and

minute patch of corn round it, probably also a few pigs and chickens,

but seem to have no desire to make any effort at further clearing, and

quite content to live from hand to mouth. They cannot do that without

hiring themselves out when they get a chance, but are most uncertain and

exasperating labourers. In the first place, though able, to stand great

fatigue in hunting and perfectly indifferent to weather, they are not

physically so strong as average English or Northern men. Then they are

never to be relied on for a job. As soon as one of them has earned three

or four dollars, he will probably want a hunt, and go off for it then

and there, spend a dollar on powder and shot, and these on squirrels and

opossums, whose skins may possibly bring him in ten cents as his week’s

earnings. It is useless to remonstrate, unless you have an agreement in

writing. An Englishman who came here lately, to found some manufactures,

left in sheer despair and disgust, saying he had found at last a place

where no one seemed to care for money. I do not say that this is true,

but they certainly seem to prefer loafing and hunting to dollars, and

are often too lazy, or unable, to count, holding out their small change

and telling you to take what you want. Temperate as a rule, they are

sadly weak when wild-cat whisky or “moonshine,” as the favourite illicit

beverage of the mountains is called, crosses their path. This is the

great trouble on pay nights at all the works which are starting in

this district. The inevitable booth soon appears, with the usual

accompaniment of cards and dice, and probably a third of your men are

thenceforth without a dime and utterly unfit for work on Mondays, if

you are lucky enough to escape dangerous rows amongst the drinkers. The

State laws give summary methods of suppressing the nuisance, but they

are hard to work, and though public sentiment is vehemently hostile to

whisky, the temptation proves in nine cases out of ten too strong. The

mountaineers are in the main well-grown men, though slight, shockingly

badly clothed, and sallow from chewing tobacco; suspicious in all

dealings at first, but hospitable, making everything they have in the

house, including their own beds, free to a stranger, and generally

refusing payment for lodging or food. They are also very honest, crimes

against property (though not against the person) being of very rare

occurrence. The other day, a Northern gentleman visiting here expressed

his fears to a native farmer, who, after inquiring whether there were

any prisons and police in New England, what these were for, and whether

his interrogator had locks to his doors and his safes, and bars to his

window-shutters, remarked, “Wal, I’ve lived here man and boy for forty

year, and never had a bolt to my house, or corn-loft, or smoke-house,

and I’ll give you a dollar for every lock you can find in Scott county.”

The cattle, sheep, and hogs wander perfectly unguarded through the

forest, and I have not yet heard of a single instance of a stolen beast.

There is a rough water-mill on a creek close by, called Back’s Mill,

which was run by the owner for years--until he sold it a few months

ago--on the following system. He put the running gear and stones up, and

above the latter a wooden box, with the charge for grinding meal marked

outside. He visited the mill once a fortnight, looked to the machinery,

and took away whatever coin was in the box. Folks brought their corn

down the steep bank if they chose, ground it at their leisure, and then,

if they were honest, put the fee in the box; if not, they went off with

their meal, and a consciousness that they were rogues. I presume Buck

found his plan answer, as he pursued it up to the date of sale.

In short, sir, I have been driven to the conclusion, in spite of all

traditional leanings the other way, that the Lord has much people in

these mountains, as I think a young English deacon, lately ordained

by the Bishop of Tennessee, will find, who passed here yesterday on a

buggy, with his young wife and child, and two boxes and ten dollars

of the goods of this world, on his way to open a church mission in a

neighbouring county. I heard yesterday a story which should give him

hope as to the female portion, at any rate, of his possible flock. They

are dreadful slatterns, without an inkling of the great Palmerstonian

truth that dirt is matter in its _wrong_ place. A mountain girl,

however, who had, strange to say, taken the fancy to go as housemaid

in a Knoxville family, gave out that she had been converted, and, upon

doubts being expressed and questions asked as to the grounds on which

she based the assurance, replied that she knew it was all right, because

now she swept underneath the rugs.

When one gets on stories of quaint and ready replies in these parts, one

“slops over on both shoulders.” Here are a couple which are current in

connection with the war, upon which, naturally enough, the whole mind

of the people is still dwelling, being as much occupied with it as with

their other paramount subject, the immediate future development of the

unbounded resources of these States, which have been really opened for

the first time by that terrible agency. An active Secessionist leader in

a neighbouring county, in one of his stump speeches before the war, had

announced that the Southerners, and especially Tennessee mountain men,

could whip the white-livered Yanks with pop-guns. Not long since, having

been amnestied and reconstructed again to a point when he saw his way

to running for a State office, he was reminded of this saying at the

beginning of his canvas. “Wal, yes,” he said, “he owned to that and

stood by it still, only those mean cusses [the Yanks] wouldn’t fight

that way.”

The other is of very different stamp, and will hold its own with many

world-wide stories of graceful compliments to former enemies by kings

and other big-wigs. General Wilder, one of the most successful and

gallant of the Northern corps commanders in the war, has established

himself in this State, with whose climate and resources he became so

familiar in the campaign which ended under Look-out Mountain, and has

built up a great iron industry at Chatanooga, in full sight of the

battlefields from which 14,000 bodies of Union soldiers were carried to

the national cemetery. Early in his Southern career he met one of the

most famous of the Southern corps commanders (Forrest, I believe, but

am not sure as to the name), who, on being introduced, said, “General,

I have long wished to know you, because you have behaved to me in a way

for which I reckon you owe me an apology, as between gentlemen.”

Wilder replied in astonishment that to his knowledge they had never met

before, but that he was quite ready to do all that an honourable man

ought. “Well now, General,” said the other, “you remember such and

such a fight (naming it)? By night you had taken every gun I had, and I

consider that quite an ungentlemanly advantage to take, anyhow.” By the

way, no man bears more frank testimony to the gallantry of the Southern

soldiers than General Wilder, or admits more frankly the odds which the

superior equipment of the Federals threw against the Confederate armies.

His corps, mounted infantry, armed with repeating rifles, were equal,

he thinks, to at least three times their numbers of as good soldiers

as themselves with the ordinary Southern arms. There are few pleasanter

things to a hearty well-wisher, who has not been in America for ten

years, than the change which has taken place in public sentiment,

indicated by such frank admissions as the one just referred to. In

1870, any expression of admiration for the gallantry of the South, or

of respect or appreciation of such men as Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, or

Johnson, was received either silently, or with strong disapproval. How

it is quite the other way, so far as I have seen as yet, and I cannot

but hope that the last scars of the mighty struggle are healing up

rapidly and thoroughly, and that the old sectional hatred and scorn lie

six feet under ground, in the national cemeteries:--

No more shall the war-cry sever,

Or the inland rivers run red;

We have buried our anger for ever,

In the sacred graves of the dead.

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the Judgment Day;

Love and tears for the blue!

Tears and love for the gray!

No man can live for a few weeks on these Cumberland Mountains, without

responding with a hearty “Amen!”

Our Forester, Rugby, Tennessee.

Nothing would satisfy our Forester but that some of us should ride over

with him, some nine miles through the forest, to see Glades, the farm

upon which he has been for the last eight years. He led the way, on his

yellow mare, an animal who had nearly given us sore trouble here. The

head stableman turned all the horses out one day for a short run, and

she being amongst them, and loving her old home best, went off straight

for Glades through the woods, with every hoof after her. Luckily,

Alfred, the Forester’s son, was there, and guessing what was the

matter, just rode her back, all the rest following. The ride was lovely,

glorious peeps of distant blue ranges, and the forest just breaking out

all over into golds, and vermilions, and purples, and russets. We only

passed two small farms on the way, both ramshackle, and so the treat of

coming suddenly on some one hundred acres cleared, drained, with large,

though rough, farm buildings, and bearing the look of being cared for,

was indescribably pleasant. Mrs. Hill and her son Alfred received us,

both worthy of the head of the house; more I cannot say. They run the

farm in his absence with scarcely any help, Alfred having also to attend

to a grist and saw mill in the neighbouring creek. There were a fine

mare and filly in the yard, as tame as pet dogs, coming and shoving

their noses into your pockets and coaxing you for apples. The hogs are

good Berkshire breed, the sheep Cotswolds. The cows (it is the only

place where we have had cream on the mountains), Alderney or shorthorns.

The house is a large log-cabin, one big room, with a deep, open

fireplace, with a great pine-log smouldering at the back across plain

iron dogs, a big hearth in front, on which pitch-pine chips are thrown

when you feel inclined for a blaze. The room is carpeted and hung with

photographs and prints, a rifle and shot gun, and implements of one kind

or another. A small collection of books, mostly theological, and founded

on two big Bibles, two rocking and half a dozen other chairs, a table,

and two beds in the corners furthest from the fire, complete the

furniture of the room, which opens on one side on a deep verandah, and

on the other on a lean-to, which serves for kitchen and diningroom,

and ends in a small, spare bedroom. A loft above, into which the family

disappeared at night, completes the accommodation. I need not dwell on

our supper, which included tender mutton, chickens, apple-tart, custard

pudding, and all manner of vegetables and cakes. Mrs. Hill is as notable

a cook as her husband is a forester. After supper we drew round the big

fireplace, and soon prevailed on our host to give us a sketch of his

life, by way of encouragement to his three young countrymen who sat

round, and are going to try their fortunes in these mountains:--

“I was born and bred up in one of Lord Denbigh’s cottages, at Kirby, in

Warwickshire. My father was employed on the great place, that’s Newnham

Paddocks, you know. He was a labourer, and brought up sixteen children,

not one of whom, except me, has ever been summonsed before a justice,

or got into any kind of trouble. I went to school till about nine, but I

was always longing to be out in the fields at plough or birdkeeping; so

I got away before I could do much reading or writing. But I kept on

at Sabbath School, and learnt more than I did at the other. The young

ladies used to teach us, and they’d set us pieces and things to learn

for them in the week. My Cæsar (the only ejaculation Amos allows

himself; he cannot remember where he picked it up), how I would work at

my piece to get it for Lady Mary! I’ve fairly cried over it sometimes,

but I always managed to get it, somehow. After a bit, I was taken on at

the house. At first, I did odd jobs, like cleaning boots and carrying

messages; and then I got into the garden, and from that into the stable,

and then for a bit with the keepers, and then into livery, to wait on

the young ladies. So you see I learnt something of everything, and was

happy, and earning good wages. But I wanted to see the world, so I took

service with a gentleman who was a big railway contractor. I used to

drive him, and do anything a’most that he wanted. I stayed with him nine

years, and ’twas while going about with him that I met my wife here.

We got married down in Kent, thirty-six years ago. Yes (in answer to

a laughing comment by his wife), I wanted some one to mind me in those

days. That poaching trouble came about this way. I had charge for my

master of a piece of railway that ran through Lord--------‘s preserves,

in Wales. There were very strict rules about trespassing on the lines

then, because folks there didn’t like our line, and had been putting

things on it to upset the trains. One day I saw two keepers coming down

the line, with a labourer I knew between them. He was all covered with

blood, from a wound in his head. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘what’s the matter now?’

‘I’ve been out of work,’ he said, ‘this three weeks, and I was digging

out a rabbit to get something to eat, when they came up and broke my

head.’ From that time the keepers and I quarrelled. I summonsed them,

and got them fined for trespassing on the line; and then they got me

fined for trespassing on their covers. We watched one another like

hawks. I’d often lie out at night for hours in the cold, in a ditch,

where I knew they’d want to cross the line, and then jump up and catch

them; and they’d do the same by me. Once they got me fined £3: 10s. for

poaching. I remember it well. I was that riled, I said to the justices

right out, ‘How long do you think it’ll take me, gentlemen, to pay

all that money, with hares only 1d. apiece?’ Then I went in for it.

I remembered the text, ‘What thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy

might.’ I did it. I used to creep along at night, all up the fences, and

feel for the places where the hares came through, and set my wires; and

I’d often have ten great ones screaming and flopping about like mad. And

that’s what the keepers were, too. I’ve given a whole barrowful of

hares away to the poor folk of a morning. Well, I know (in answer to an

interpellation of Mrs. Hill), yes, ’twas all wrong, and I was a wild

chap in those days. Then I begun to hear talk about America, and all

there was for a man to see and do there, so I left my master, and we

came over, twenty-seven years ago. At first I took charge of gentlemen’s

gardens, in New York and New Jersey. Then we went to Miscejan, where I

could earn all I wanted. Money was of no account there for a good man

in those days, but the climate was dreadful sickly, and we had our baby;

the first we had in twelve years, and wanted to live on bread and water,

so as we could save him. So we went up right amongst the Indians, to a

place they call Grand Travers, a wonderful healthy place, on a lake

in the pine-forest country, as it was then. I went on to a promontory,

where the forest stood, not like it does here, but the trees that thick,

you had scarce room to swing an axe. Well, it was a beautiful healthy

place, and we and baby throve, and I soon made a farm; and then folk

began to follow after us, and before I left, there were twenty-three

saw-mills, cutting up from 80,000 to 150,000 feet a day, week in and

out. They’ve stripped the country so now, that there’s no lumber for

those mills to cut, and most of them have stopped. I used to have a

boat, with just a small sail, and I’d take my stuff down in the morning,

and trade it off to the lumber-men, and then sail back at night, for

the wind always changed and blew back in the evenings, most part of

the year. Well, then, the war came, and for two years I kept thinking

whether I oughtn’t to do my part to help the Government I’d lived under

so long. Besides, I hated slavery. So in the third year I made up my

mind, and ’listed in the Michigan Cavalry. I took the whole matter

before the Lord, and prayed I might do my duty as a soldier, and not

hurt any man. Well, we joined the Cavalry, near 60,000 strong down in

these parts; and I was at Knoxville, and up and down. It was awful, the

language and the ways of the men, many of them at least, swearing, and

drinking, and stealing any kind of thing they could lay hands on. Many’s

the plan for stealing I’ve broken up, telling them they were there to

sustain the flag, not to rob poor folks. I spoke very plain all along,

and got the men, many of them any way, to listen. I got on famously,

too, because I was never away plundering, and my horse was always ready

for any service. An officer would come in, after we had had a long day’s

work, to say a despatch or message must go, and no horse in our company

was fit to go but mine, so the orderly must have him; but I always said

no, I was quite ready to go myself, but would not part company from my

horse. The only time 1 took what was not mine was when we surprised a

Confederate convoy, and got hold of the stores they were carrying. There

they were lying all along the roads, greatcoats and blankets, and meal

bags, and good boots, with English marks on them. My Cæsar, how our men

were destroying them! I got together a lot of the poor, starving folk

out of the woods that both sides had been living on, and loaded them up

with meal and blankets. My Cæsar, how I loved to scatter them English

boots! They never had seen such before. No, sir (in reply to one of us),

I never fired a shot all that time, but I had hundreds fired at me. I’ve

been in the rifle-pits, and now and again seen a fellow drawing a bead

on me, and I’d duck down and hear the bullet ping into the bank close

above. They got to employ me a good deal carrying despatches and

scouting. That’s how I got took at last. We were at a place called

Strawberry Plains, with Breckenridge’s division pretty near all round

us. I was sent out with twelve other men, to try and draw them out, to

show their force and position; and so we did, but they were too quick

for us. Out they came, and it was a race back to our lines down a steep

creek. My horse missed his footing, and down we rolled over and over,

into the water. When I got up, I was up to my middle, and, first thing

I knew, there was a rebel, who swore at me for a G--d d------Yankee, and

fired his six shooter at me. The shot passed under my arm, and before he

could fire again an officer ordered him on, and gave me in charge. I was

taken to the rear, and marched off with a lot of prisoners. The rebels

treated me as if I’d been their father, after a day or two. I spoke out

to them about their swearing and ways, just as I had to our men; and

I might have been tight all the time I was a prisoner, only I’m a

temperance man. They put me on their horses on the march, and I was glad

of it, for I was hurt by my roll with my horse, and had about the chest.

After about six days I got my parole, with five others. They were hard

pressed then and didn’t want us toting along. Then we started north,

with nothing but just our uniforms, and they full of vermin. The first

house we struck I asked where we could find a Union man about there.

They didn’t know any one, didn’t think there was one in the county. I

said that was bad, as we were paroled Union soldiers,--and then all

was changed. They took us in and wanted us to use their beds, which we

wouldn’t do, because of the vermin on us. They gave us all they had,

and I saw the women, for I couldn’t sleep, covering us up with any spare

clothes they’d got, and watching us all night long. They sent us on to

other Union houses, and so we got north. I was too ill to stay north at

my old work, so I sold my farm, and came south to Knoxville, where I had

come to know many kind, good people, in the war. They were very kind,

and I got work at the improvements on Mr. Dickenson’s farm (a model farm

we had gone over), and in other gentlemen’s gardens. But I didn’t get my

health again, so eight years ago I came to this place on the mountains,

which I knew was healthy, and would suit me. Well, they all said I

should be starved out in two years and have to quit, but before three

years were out I was selling them corn and better bacon than they’d ever

had before. Some of ’em begin to think I’m right now, and there’s a

deal of improvement going on, and if they’d only, as I tell ’em, just

put in all their time on their farms, and not go loafing round gunning,

and contented with corn-dodgers and a bit of pork, and give up whisky,

they might all do as well as I’ve done. I should like to go back once

more and see the old country; but I mean to end my days here. There’s no

such country that I ever saw. The Lord has done all for us here. And

it seems like dreams, that I should live to see a Rugby up here on the

mountains. I mean to take a lot in the town, or close by, and call it

Newnham Paddocks. So I shall lay my bones, you see, in the same place,

as it were, that I was reared in.”

I do not pretend that these were his exact words,--the whole had to be

condensed to come within your space,--but they are not far off. It was

now past nine, the time for retiring, when Amos told us that he always

ended his day with family prayers. A psalm was read, and then we knelt

down, and he prayed for some minutes. Extemporary prayers always excite

my critical faculty, but there was no thought or expression in this I

could have wished to alter. Then we turned in, I, after a pipe in the

verandah, in one clean white bed, and two of the boys in the big one

in the opposite corner. There I soon dozed off, watching the big,

smouldering, white pine-log away in the depth of the chimney-nook, and

the last flickerings of the knobs of pitch pine in front of it, between

the iron dogs, and wondering in my mind over the brave story we had just

been listening to, so simply told (of which I fear I have succeeded in

giving a very poor reflection), and whether there are not some--there

cannot, I fear, be many--such lives lying about in out-of-the-way

corners, on mountain, or plain, or city. My last conscious speculation

was whether the Union would have been saved if all Union soldiers had

been Amos Hills.

I waked early, just before dawn, and was watching alternately the embers

of the big log, still aglow in the deep chimney, and the white light

beginning to break through the honeysuckles and vines which hung over

the verandah, and shaded the wide, open window, when the clock struck

five. The door opened softly, and in stepped Amos Hill in his stockings.

He came to the foot of our beds, picked up our dirty boots, and stole

out again, as noiselessly as he had entered. The next minute I heard the

blacking brushes going vigorously, and knew that I should appear at

breakfast with a shine on in which I should have reason to glory, if I

were preparing to walk in Bond Street, instead of through the scrub on

the Cumberland Mountains. I turned over for another, hour’s sleep

(breakfast being at 6.30 sharp), but not without first considering for

some minutes which of us two--if things were fixed up straight in this

blundering old world--ought to be blacking the other’s boots. The

conclusion I came to was that it ought _not_ to be Amos Hill.

The Negro “Natives”, Rugby, Tennessee, 30th October 1880.

There is one inconvenience in this desultory mode of

correspondence,--that one is apt to forget what one has told already,

and to repeat oneself. I have written something of the white native of

these mountains; have I said anything of his dark brother? The subject

is becoming a more and more interesting and important one every day,

through all these regions. In these mountains, the negro, perhaps, can

scarcely be called a native. Very few black families, I am told, were to

be found here a year or two since. My own eyes assure me that they are

multiplying rapidly. I see more and more black men amongst the gangs

on roads and bridges, and come across queer little encampments in the

woods, with a pile of logs smouldering in the midst, round which stand

the mirth-provoking figures of small black urchins, who stare and grin

at the intruder on horseback, till he rides on under the gold and russet

and green autumnal coping of hickories, chestnuts, and pines.

I am coming to the conclusion that wherever work is to be had, in

Tennessee, at any rate, there will the negro be found. He seems to

gather to a contractor like the buzzards, which one sees over the

tree-tops, to carrion. And unless the white natives take to “putting in

all their time,” whatever work is going will not long remain with them.

The negro will loaf and shirk as often as not when he gets the chance,

but he has not the same craving for knocking off altogether as soon

as he has a couple of dollars in his pocket; has no strong hunting

instinct, and has not acquired the art of letting his pick drop

listlessly into the ground with its own weight, and stopping to admire

the scenery after every half-dozen strokes. The negro is much more

obedient, moreover, and manageable,--obedient to a fault, if one can

believe the many stories one hears of his readiness to commit small

misdemeanours and crimes, and not always small ones, at the bidding of

his employers. There is one thing, however, which an equally unanimous

testimony agrees in declaring that he will not do, and that is, sell his

vote, or be dragooned into giving it for any one but his own choice; he

may, indeed, be scared from voting, but cannot be “squared,” a singular

testimony, surely, of his prospective value as a citizen. Equally

strong is the evidence of his resolute determination to get his children

educated. In some Southern States the children are, I believe, kept

apart, but in the only school I have had the chance of seeing, black and

white children were together. They were not in class, but in the front

of the barn-like building, used both for church and school, having just

come out for the dinner hour. There was a large, sandy, trampled place

under the trees, by no means a bad play-ground, on which a few of the

most energetic, the blacks in the majority, were playing at some game as

we came up, the mysteries of which I should have liked to study. But the

longer we stayed, the less chance there seemed of their going on, and

the game remains a mystery to me still. Where these children, some fifty

in number, came from, is a problem; but there they were, from somewhere.

And everywhere, I hear, the blacks are forcing the running, with respect

to education, and great numbers of them are showing a thrift and energy

which are likely to make them formidable competitors in the struggle for

existence in all states south of Kentucky, at any rate.

In one department (a very small one, no doubt), they will have crowded

out the native whites in a very short time, if I may judge by our

experience in this house. We number two ladies and six men, and our

whole service is done by one boy. Our first experiment was with a young

native, who “reared up” on the first morning at the idea of having to

black boots. This prejudice, I think I told you, was removed for the

moment, and he stayed for a few days. Where it was he “weakened on us”

I could not learn for certain, but incline to the belief that it was

either having to carry the racquets and balls to the lawn-tennis ground,

or to get a fire to burn in order to boil the water for a four-o’clock

tea. Both these services were ordered by the ladies, and I thought I saw

signs (though I am far from certain) that his manly soul rose against

feminine command. Be that as it may, off he went without warning, and

soon after Amos Hill arrived, with almost pathetic apologies and a negro

boy, short of stature, huge of mouth, fabulous in the apparent age of

his garments, named Jeff. He had no other name, he told us, and did not

know whether it signified Jefferson or Geoffrey, or where or how he got

it, or anything about himself, except that he had got our place at $5 a

month,--at which he showed his ivory, “some!”

From this time all was changed. Jeff, it is true, after the first two

days, gave proofs that he was not converted, like the white housemaid

who had learned to sweep under the mats. His sweeping and tidying were

decidedly those of the sinner, and he entirely abandoned the only hard

work we set him, as soon as it was out of sight from the Asylum. It was

a path leading to a shallow well, which the boys had dug at the bottom

of the garden. The last twenty yards or so are on a steeper incline than

the part next the house, so Jeff studiously completed the few feet that

were left to the brow, and never put pick or shovel on the remainder,

which lay behind the friendly brow of the slope. But in all other

directions, where the work was mainly odd jobs, a respectable kind of

loafing, Jeff was always to the fore, acquitting himself to the best,

I think, of his ability. We did not get full command of him till the

arrival of a young Texan cattle-driver, who taught us the peculiar cry

for the negro, by appending a high “Ho” to his name, or rather running

them together, so that the whole sounded, “Hojeff!” as nearly

as possible one syllable. Even the ladies picked up the cry, and

thenceforward Jeff’s substitute for the “Anon, anon, sir!” of the

Elizabethan waiter was instantaneous. He built a camp-oven, like those

of the Volunteers at Wimbledon, and neater of construction, from which

he supplied a reasonably constant provision of hot water between six

and six, of course cutting his own logs for the fire. His highest

achievement was ironing the ladies’ cotton dresses, which they declared

he did not very badly. Most of us entrusted him with the washing of

flannel shirts and socks, which at any rate were faithfully immersed in

suds, and hung up to dry under our eyes. The laundry was an army tent,

pitched at the back of the Asylum, where Jeff spent nearly all his time

when not under orders, and generally eating an apple, of which there was

always a sack, a present from some ranche-owner, or brought over from

the garden, lying about, and open to mankind at large. I never could

find out whether he could read. One evening he came up proudly to ask

whether his mail had come, and sure enough when the mail arrived there

was a post-card, which he claimed. We thought he would ask one of us to

read it for him, but were disappointed. He had a habit of crooning over

and over again all day some scrap of a song. One of these excited my

curiosity exceedingly, but I never succeeded in getting more than two

lines out of him--

Oh my! oh my! I’ve got a hundred dollars in a mine!

One had a crave to hear what came of those 100 dollars. It seems it is

so almost universally. The nearest approach to a complete negro ditty

which I have been able to strike is one which the Texan gives, with

a wonderful roll of the word “chariot,” which cannot be written. It

runs:--

The Debbie he chase me round a stump,

Gwine for to carry me home;

He catch me most at ebery jump,

Gwine for to carry me home.

Swing low, sweet chay-o-t,

Gwine for to carry me home.

The Debbie he make one grab at me,

Gwine, etc.,

He missed me, and my soul goed free,

Gwine, etc.

Swing low, etc.

Oh! won’t we have a gay old time,

Gwine, etc.

A eatin’ up o’ honey, and a drinkin’ up o’ wine.

Gwine, etc.

Swing low, etc.

This, sir, I think you will agree with me, though precious, is obviously

a fragment only. It took our Texan many months to pick it up, even in

this mutilated condition. But after all, Jeffs character and capacity

come out most in the direction of boots. It. is from his attitude with

regard to them that I incline to think that the Black race have a great

future in these States. You may have gathered from previous letters that

there is a clear, though not a well marked, division in this settlement

as to blacking. Amos Hill builds on it decidedly, and would have every

farmer appear in blacked boots, at any rate on Sunday. The opposition

is led by a young farmer of great energy and famous temper, who, having

been “strapped,” or left without a penny, 300 miles from the Pacific

coast, amongst the Mexican mines, and having made his hands keep his

head in the wildest of earthly settlements, has a strong contempt for

all amenities of clothing, which is shared by the geologist and others.

How the point will be settled at last, I cannot guess. It stands over

while the ladies are still here, and I have actually seen the “strapped”

one giving his wondrous boots a sly lick or two of blacking on Sunday

morning. But, anyhow, the blacks will be cordially on the side of polish

and the aristocracy. This one might, perhaps, have anticipated; but what

I was not prepared for, was Jeffs apparent passion for boots. I own

a fine, strong pair of shooting-boots, which he worshipped for five

minutes at least every morning. As my last day in the Asylum drew on,

I could see he was troubled in his mind. At last, out it came. Watching

his chance, when no one was near, he sidled up, and pointing to them

on the square chest in the verandah which served for blacking-board, he

said, “I’d like to buy dem boots.” After my first astonishment was over,

I explained to him that I couldn’t afford to sell them for less than

about six weeks of his wages, and that, moreover, I wanted them for

myself, as I could get none such here. He was much disappointed, and

muttered frequently, “I’d like to buy dem boots!”--but my heart did not

soften.

Perhaps I ought rather to be giving your readers more serious

experiences, but somehow the negro is apt to run one out into chaff.

However, I will conclude with one fact, which seems to me a very

striking confirmation of my view. All Americans are reading the _Fool’s

Errand_, a powerful novel, founded on the state of things after the

war in the Kuklux times. It is written by a Southern judge, a fair and

clever man, clearly, but one who has no more faith in the negro’s power

to raise himself to anything above hewing wood and drawing water for

the “Caucasian” than C. J. Taney himself. In all that book there is no

single instance of the drawing of a mean, corrupt, or depraved negro;

but the negroes are represented as full of patience, trustfulness,

shrewdness, and power of many kinds.

The Opening Day, Rugby, Tennessee.

Our opening day drew near, not without rousing the most serious

misgivings in the minds of most of us whether we could possibly be

ready to receive our guests. Invitations had been issued to our

neighbours--friends, as we had learnt to esteem them--in Cincinnati,

Knoxville, Chatanooga, whose hospitalities we had enjoyed, and who had

expressed a cordial sympathy with our enterprise, and a desire to visit

us. We looked also for some of our own old members from distant New

England, in all probability seventy or eighty guests, to lodge and

board, and convey from and back to the railway, seven miles over our new

road,--no small undertaking, under our circumstances. But the hotel was

still in the hands of the contractor, from whom, as yet, only the upper

floors had been rescued. The staircase wanted banisters, and the

hall and living-rooms were still only half-wainscotted, and full of

carpenters’ benches and plasterers’ trays; while the furniture and

crockery lumbered up the big barn, or stood about in cases on the broad

verandah. As for our road, it was splendid, so far as it went, but some

two miles were still merely a forest track, from which all trees and

stumps had been removed, but that was all; and the bridge over the Clear

Fork stream, by which the town site is entered, had only the first cross

timbers laid from pier to pier, while the approaches seemed to lie in

hopeless, weltering confusion, difficult on horseback, impossible on

wheels. However, the manager declared that we should drive over the

bridge on Saturday afternoon, and that the contractor should be out of

the hotel by Monday midday. With this we were obliged to be content,

though it was running things fine, as we looked for our guests on that

Monday afternoon, and the opening was fixed for the next morning. And

so it came to pass, as the manager said. Bridge and road were declared

passable by the named time, though nervous persons might well have

thought twice before attempting the former in the heavy omnibuses hired

for the occasion; and we were able to get possession and move furniture

and crockery into the hotel, though the carpenters still held the

unfinished staircase.

So far so good; but still everything, we felt, depended on the weather.

If the glorious days we had been having held, all would be well. The

promise was fair up to Sunday evening, but at sunset there was a change.

Amos Hill shook his head, and the geologist’s aneroid barometer gave

ominous signs. They proved only too correct. Early in the night the rain

set in, and by daybreak, when we were already astir, a steady, soft,

searching rain was coming down perpendicularly, which lasted, with

scarcely a break, clear through the day, and till midnight. With

feelings of blank despair we thought of the new road, softened into a

Slough of Despond, and the hastily thrown-up approaches to the bridge

giving way under the laden omnibuses, and waited our fate. It was, as

usual, better than we looked for. The morning train from Chatanooga

would bring our southern guests in time for early dinner, if no

break-down happened; and sure enough, within half an hour of the

expected time up came the omnibuses, escorted to the hotel door by the

manager and his son on horseback; and the Bishop of Tennessee, with his

chaplain, the Mayor of Chatanooga, and a number of the leading citizens

of that city and of Knoxville, descended in the rain. In five minutes

we were at our ease and happy. If they had all been Englishmen on a

pleasure-trip, they could not have taken the down-pour more cheerily as

a matter of course, and pleasant, rather than otherwise, after the

long drought. They dined, chatted, and smoked in the verandah, and then

trotted off in _gum_ coats to look round at the walks, gardens, streets,

and cots, escorted by “the boys.” The manager reported, with pride,

that they had come up in an hour and a quarter, and without any kind of

_contretemps_, though, no doubt, the new road _was_ deep, in places.

All anxiety was over for the moment, as the Northern train, bringing our

Cincinnati and New England friends, was not due till after dark. We sat

down to tea in detachments from six to eight, when, if all went well,

the northerners would be about due. The tables were cleared, and relaid

once more for them, and every preparation made to give them a warm

welcome. Nine struck, and still no sign of them; then ten, by which

time, in this early country, all but some four or five anxious souls

had retired. We sat round the stove in the hall, and listened to the

war-stories of the Mayor of Chatanooga, and our host of the Tabard, who

had served on opposite sides in the terrible campaigns in the south of

the State, which had ended at Missionary Ridge, and filled the national

cemetery of Chatanooga with 14,000 graves of Union soldiers. But neither

the interest of the stories themselves, nor the pleasure of seeing how

completely all bitterness had passed out of the narrators’ minds, could

keep our thoughts from dwelling on the pitch-dark road, sodden by this

time with the rain, and the _mauvais pas_ of the bridge. Eleven struck,

and now it became too serious for anything but anxious peerings into the

black night, and considerations as to what could be done. We had ordered

lanterns, and were on the point of starting for the bridge, when faint

sounds, as of men singing in chorus, came through the darkness. They

grew in volume, and now we could hear the omnibuses, from which came a

roll of, “John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave,” given with a

swing and precision which told of old campaigners. That stirring melody

could hardly have been more welcome to the first line waiting for

supports, on some hard-fought battle-ground, than it was to us. The

omnibuses drew up, a dense cloud rising from the drenched horses and

mules, and the singers got out, still keeping up their chorus, which

only ceased on the verandah, and must have roused every sleeper in the

settlement. The Old Bay State, Ohio, and Kentucky had sent us a set of

as stalwart good fellows as ever sang a chorus or ate a beef-steak at

midnight; and while they were engaged in the latter operation, they told

how from the break-down of a freight-train, theirs had been three hours

late, how the darkness had kept them to a foot’s-pace, how the last

omnibus had given out in the heavy places, and had to be constantly

helped on by a pair of mules detached from one of the others. “All’s

well that ends well,” and it was with a joyful sense of relief that we

piloted such of our guests as the hotel could not hold across to their

cots in the barracks at one in the morning. By nine, the glorious

Southern sun had fairly vanquished rain and mist, and the whole plateau

was ablaze with the autumn tints, and every leaf gleaming from its

recent shower-bath. Rugby outdid herself and “leapt to music and to

light” in a way which astonished even her oldest and most enthusiastic

citizens, some half dozen of whom had had something like twelve months’

experience of her moods and tempers. Breakfast began at six, and ended

at nine, and for three hours batches of well-fed visitors were turned

out to saunter round the walks, the English gardens, and lawn-tennis

grounds, until the hour of eleven, fixed by the Bishop for the opening

service. The church being as yet only some six feet above ground, this

ceremony was to be held in the verandah of the hotel. Meantime, Bishop

and chaplain were busy among “the boys,” organising a choir to sing the

hymns and lead the responses. The whole population were gathering

round the hotel, some four or five buggies, and perhaps twenty horses,

haltered to the nearest trees, showed the interest excited in the

neighbourhood. In addition to the seats in the verandah, chairs and

benches were placed on the ground below for the surplus congregation,

behind whom a fringe of white and black natives regarded the proceedings

with grave attention. Punctual to time, the Bishop and his chaplain, in

robes, took their places at the corner of the verandah, and gave out the

first verses of the “Old Hundredth.” There was a moment’s pause, while

the newly-organised choir exchanged glances as to who should lead off,

and the pause was fatal to them for the moment. For on the Bishop’s

left stood the stalwart New Englander who had led the pilgrims of

the previous evening in the “John Brown” chorus. He, unaware of the

episcopal arrangements, and of the consequent vested rights of “the

boys,” broke out with “All people that on earth do dwell,” in a voice

which carried the whole assembly with him, and at once reduced “the

boys” to humble followers. They had their revenge, however, when it came

to the second hymn at the end of the service. It was “Jerusalem, the

golden,” which is apparently sung to a different tune in Boston to

that in use in England, so though our musical guest struggled manfully

through the first line, and had almost discomfited “the boys” by sheer

force of lungs, numbers prevailed, and he was brought into line. The

service was a short one, consisting of two psalms, “Lord, who shall

dwell in thy tabernacle?” and “Except the Lord build the house,” the

chapter of Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple, half a

dozen of the Church collects, and a prayer by the Bishop that the town

and settlement might be built up in righteousness and the fear and love

of God, and ‘prove a blessing to the State. Then, after the blessing,

the gathering resolved itself into a public meeting after American

fashion. The Board spoke through their representatives, and Bishop,

judge, general manager, and visitors exchanged friendly oratorical

buffets, and wishes and prophecies for the prosperity of the New

Jerusalem in the Southern highlands. A more genuine or healthier act of

worship it has not been our good-fortune to attend in these late years.

Dinner began immediately afterwards, and then the company scattered

again, some to select town lots, some to the best views, the Bishop to

organise a vestry, and induce two of “the boys” to become lay readers,

pending the arrival of a parson (in which he was eminently successful);

the chaplain to the Clear Fork with one of “the boys’” fishing-rods,

after black bass; and a motley crowd to the lawn-tennis ground, to see

some set played which would have done no discredit to Wimbledon, and

excited much wonder and some enthusiasm amongst natives and visitors.

A cheerful evening followed, in which the new piano in the hotel

sitting-room did good service, and many war and other stories were told

round the big hall stove. Early the next morning the omnibuses began

carrying off the visitors, and by night Rugby had settled down again to

its ordinary life, not, however, without a sense of strength gained

for the work of building up a community which shall know how to comport

itself in good and bad times, and shall help, instead of hindering, its

sons and daughters in leading a brave, simple, and Christian life.