cottons by the Ohio to Pittsburgh, in order to be thence conveyed to
the remote parts of Pennsylvania. I met several barges laden with them
near Marietta; they were going up the river with a staff, and making
about twenty miles a day. Thus are the remotest parts of the western
states united by commercial interests, of which cotton is the basis,
and the Ohio the tie of communication, the results of which must give
a high degree of prosperity to this part of Tennessea, and insure its
inhabitants a signal advantage over those of the Ohio and Kentucky,
the territorial produce of which is not of a nature to meet with a
great sale in the country or the adjoining parts, and which they are
obliged to send to New Orleans.
I had a letter from Dr. Brown, of Lexinton, for Mr. William Peter
Anderson, a gentleman of the law at Nasheville, who received me in the
most obliging manner; I am also indebted to him for the acquaintance
of several other gentlemen; among others was a Mr. Fisk, of New
England, president of the college, with whom I had the pleasure of
travelling to Knoxville.[52] The inhabitants are very engaging in
their manners, and use but little ceremony. {202} On my arrival, I had
scarcely alighted when several of them who were at the inn invited me
to their plantations.
All the inhabitants of the western country who go by the river to New
Orleans, return by land, pass through Nasheville, which is the first
town beyond the Natches. The interval that separates them is about six
hundred miles, and entirely uninhabited; which obliges them to carry
their provisions on horseback to supply them on the road. It is true
they have two or three little towns to cross, inhabited by the
Chicasaws; but instead of recruiting their stock there, the natives
themselves are so indifferently supplied, that travellers are obliged
to be very cautious lest they should wish to share with them. Several
persons who have been this road assured me, that for a space of four
or five hundred miles beyond the Natches the country is very
irregular, that the soil is very sandy, in some parts covered with
pines, and not much adapted to any kind of culture; but that the
borders of the river Tennessea are, on the contrary, very fertile, and
even superior to the richest counties in Kentucky and Tennessea.
The settlement of the Natches, which is described by the name of the
Mississippi Territory, daily acquires {203} a fresh degree of
prosperity, notwithstanding the unhealthiness of the climate, which is
such that three-fourths of the inhabitants are every year exposed to
intermittent fevers during the summer and autumn; nevertheless, the
great profits derived from the cotton entice an immense number of
foreigners into that part. The population now amounts to five thousand
whites and three thousand negro slaves.[53]
The road that leads to the Natches was only a path that serpentined
through these boundless forests, but the federal government have just
opened a road, which is on the point of being finished, and will be
one of the finest in the United States, both on account of its breadth
and the solidity of the bridges constructed over the small rivers that
cut through it; to which advantages it will unite that of being
shorter than the other by a hundred miles. Thus we may henceforth, on
crossing the western country, go in a carriage from Boston to New
Orleans, a distance of more than two thousand miles.
{204} CHAP. XXII
_Departure for Knoxville.--Arrival at Fort Blount.--Remarks upon
the drying up of the Rivers in the Summer.--Plantations on
the Road.--Fertility of the Soil.--Excursions in a Canoe on
the River Cumberland._
On the 5th of September I set out from Nasheville for Knoxville, with
Mr. Fisk, sent by the state of Tennessea to determine in a more
correct manner, in concert with the commissaries of Virginia, the
boundaries between the two states. We did not arrive till the 9th at
Fort Blount, built upon the river Cumberland, about sixty miles from
Nasheville; we stopped on the road with different friends of Mr. Fisk,
among others, at the house of General Smith, one of the oldest
inhabitants in the country, where he has resided sixteen or seventeen
years. It is to him they are indebted for the best map of this state,
which is found in the _Geographical Atlas_, published by Matthew
Carey, bookseller, at Philadelphia. He confessed to me, notwithstanding,
that this map, {205} taken several years ago, was in many respects
imperfect. The General has a beautiful plantation cultivated in Indian
wheat and cotton; he has also a neat distillery for peach brandy,
which he sells at five shillings per gallon. In his leisure hours he
busies himself in chemistry. I have seen at his house English
translations of the works of Lavoisier and Fourcroy.[54]
We likewise saw, _en passant_, General Winchester, who was at a stone
house that was building for him on the road; this mansion, considering
the country, bore the external marks of grandeur; it consisted of four
large rooms on the ground floor, one story, and a garret. The workmen
employed to finish the inside came from Baltimore, a distance of
nearly seven hundred miles. The stones are of a chalky nature; there
are no others in all that part of Tennessea except round flints, which
are found in the beds of some of the rivers which come originally from
the mountainous region, whence they have been hurried by the force of
the torrents. On the other hand there are so very few of the
inhabitants that build in this manner, on account of the price of
workmanship, masons being still scarcer than carpenters and joiners.
Not far from the General’s house runs a river, {206} from forty to
fifty feet wide, which we crossed dry-footed. Its banks in certain
places are upwards of twenty-five feet high, the bottom of its bed is
formed with flag stones, furrowed by small grooves, about three or
four inches broad, and as many deep, through which the water flowed;
but on the contrary the tide is so high in winter, that by means of a
lock, they stop a sufficient quantity to turn a mill, situated more
than thirty feet in height.
We had now passed several of these rivers that we could have strided
over, but which, during the season, are crossed by means of
ferry-boats.
A few miles from General Winchester’s plantation, and at a short
distance from the road, is situated a small town, founded within these
few years, and to which they have given the name of Cairo, in memory
of the taking of Cairo by the French.
Between Nasheville and Fort Blount the plantations, although always
isolated in the woods, are nevertheless, upon the road, within two or
three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log
houses; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in
abundance. For the whole of this space the soil is but slightly
undulated at times very even, and in general excellent; in consequence
of {207} which the forests look very beautiful. It is in particular,
at _Dixon’s Spring_, fifty miles from Nasheville, and a few miles on
this side Major Dixon’s, where I sojourned a day and a half, that we
remarked this great fertility. We saw again in the environs a
considerable mass of forests, filled with those canes or reeds I have
before mentioned, and which grow so close to each other, that at the
distance of ten or twelve feet a man could not be perceived was he
concealed there. Their tufted foliage presents a mass of verdure that
diverts the sight amid these still and gloomy forests. I have before
remarked that, in proportion as new plantations are formed, these
canes in a few years disappear, as the cattle prefer the leaves of
them to any other kind of vegetables, and destroy them still more by
breaking the body of the plant while browzing on the top of the
stalks. The pigs contribute also to this destruction, by raking up the
ground in order to search for the young roots.
Fort Blount was constructed about eighteen years ago, to protect the
emigrants who came at that time to settle in Cumberland, against the
attacks of the natives, who declared a perpetual war against them, in
order to drive them out; but peace having been concluded with them,
and the population being {208} much increased, they have been reduced
to the impossibility of doing them farther harm, and the Fort has been
destroyed. There now exists on this spot a beautiful plantation,
belonging to Captain William Samson, with whom Mr. Fisk usually
resides. During the two days that we stopped at his house, I went in a
canoe up the river Cumberland for several miles. This mode of
reconnoitring the natural productions still more various upon the bank
of the rivers, is preferable to any other, especially when the rivers
are like the latter, bounded by enormous rocks, which are so very
steep, that scarcely any person ventures to ascend their lofty
heights. In these excursions I enriched my collections with several
seeds of trees and plants peculiar to the country, and divers other
objects of natural history.
{209} CHAP. XXIII
_Departure from Fort Blount to West Point, through the
Wilderness.--Botanical excursions upon Roaring
River.--Description of its Banks.--Saline productions found
there.--Indian Cherokees.--Arrival at Knoxville._
On the 11th of September we went from Fort Blount to the house of a
Mr. Blackborn, whose plantation, situated fifteen miles from this
fortress, is the last that the whites possess on this side the line,
that separates the territory of the United States from that of the
Indian Cherokees. This line presents, as far as West Point upon the
Clinch, a country uninhabited upward of eighty miles in breadth, to
which they give the name of the _Wilderness_, and of which the
mountains of Cumberland occupy a great part. As Mr. Fisk was obliged
to go to the court of justice, which is held a few miles from thence
in the county {210} of Jackson; we deferred crossing the Wilderness
for a few days, and I profited by his absence to go and see Roaring
River, one of the branches of the Cumberland. This river, from ten to
fifteen fathoms broad, received its name from the confused noise that
is heard a mile distant, and which is occasioned by falls of water
produced by the sudden lapse of its bed, formed by large flat stones
contiguous to each other. These falls, from six, eight, to ten feet
high, are so near together, that several of them are to be seen within
the space of fifty to a hundred fathoms. We observed in the middle of
this river, great stones, from five to six feet in diameter,
completely round, and of which nobody could form the least idea how
they could have been conveyed there.
The right bank of Roaring River rises in some places from eighty to a
hundred feet, and surmounted at this height by rocks that jet out
fifteen or twenty feet, and which cover again thick beds of
ferruginous _schiste_, situated horizontally. The flakes they consist
of are so soft and brittle, that as soon as they are touched, they
break off in pieces of a foot long, and fall into a kind of dust,
which, in the course of time, imperceptibly undermines the rocks. Upon
the flakes of _schiste_ that are least exposed to the air {211} and
water, we observed a kind of white efflorescence, extremely thin, and
very similar to snow.
There exists again upon the banks of this river, and in other parts of
Cumberland, immense caverns, where there are masses of aluminous
substances, within so small a degree of the purity necessary to be
employed in dyeing, that the inhabitants not only go to fetch it for
their own use, but export it to Kentucky. They cut it into pieces with
an axe; but nobody is acquainted there with the process used on the
_Old Continent_ to prepare the different substances, as it is found in
trade.
Large rivulets, after having serpentined in the forests, terminate
their windings at the steep banks of this river, whence they fall
murmuring into its bed, and form magnificent cascades several fathoms
wide. The perpetual humidity that these cascades preserve in these
places gives birth to a multitude of plants which grow in the midst of
a thick moss, with which the rock is covered, and which forms the most
beautiful verdant carpet.
All these circumstances give the borders of Roaring River a cool and
pleasing aspect, which I had never witnessed before on the banks of
other rivers. A {212} charming variety of trees and shrubs are also
seen there, which are to be met with no where else. We observed the
_magnolia auriculata_, _macrophilla_, _cordata_, _acuminata_, and
_tripetala_. The fruit of these trees, so remarkable for the beauty of
their flowers and superb foliage, were in the highest perfection. I
gathered a few seeds to multiply them in France, and to add to the
embellishment of our gardens. These seeds grow rancid very soon. I
endeavoured to remedy this inconvenience by putting them into fresh
moss, which I renewed every fortnight till my return to Carolina,
where I continued the same precautions till the epoch of my embarking
for Europe. I have since had the satisfaction to see that my pains
were not fruitless, and that I succeeded by this means in preserving
their germinative faculty.
Major Russel, with whom I went to lodge after I had taken my leave of
Mr. Blackborn, and where Mr. Fisk rejoined me, furnished us very
obligingly with necessary provisions for the two days journey through
the territory of the Cherokees. Notwithstanding the harmony that at
present subsists between the whites and these Indians, it is always
more prudent to travel five or six in a party. Nevertheless as we were
at a considerable distance from the usual place of _rendezvous_, where
the travellers put up, we resolved {213} to set out alone, and we
arrived happily at West Point. This country is exceedingly
mountainous, we could not make above forty-five miles the first day,
although we travelled till midnight. We encamped near a small river,
where there was an abundance of grass; and after having made a fire we
slept in our rugs, keeping watch alternately in order to guard our
horses, and make them feed close by us for fear of the natives, who
sometimes steal them in spite of all the precaution a traveller can
take, as their dexterity in that point exceeds all that a person can
imagine. During this day’s journey we saw nothing but wild turkies,
thirty or forty in a flight.
The second day after our departure we met a party of eight or ten
Indians, who were searching for grapes and chinquapins, a species of
small chesnuts, superior in taste to those in Europe. As we had only
twenty miles to go before we reached West Point, we gave them the
remainder of our provisions, with which they were highly delighted.
Bread is a great treat for them, their usual food consisting of
nothing but venison and wild fowl.
The road that crosses this part of the Indian territory cuts through
the mountains in Cumberland; it is as broad and commodious as those in
the environs of Philadelphia, in consequence of the amazing number
{214} of emigrants that travel through it to go and settle in the
western country. It is, notwithstanding, in some places very rugged,
but nothing near so much as the one that leads from Strasburgh to
Bedford in Pennsylvania. About forty miles from Nasheville we met an
emigrant family in a carriage, followed by their negroes on foot, that
had performed their journey without any accident. Little boards
painted black and nailed upon the trees every three miles, indicate to
travellers the distance they have to go.
In this part of Tennessea the mass of the forests is composed of all
the species of trees that belong more particularly to the mountainous
regions of North America, such as oaks, maples, and nut trees. Pines
abound in those parts where the soil is the worst. What appeared to me
very extraordinary was, to find some parts of the woods, for the space
of several miles, where all the pines that formed at least one fifth
part of the other trees were dead since the preceding year, and still
kept all their withered foliage. I was not able to learn the causes
that produced this singular phenomenon. I only heard that the same
thing happens every fifteen or twenty years.
At West Point is established a fort, pallisadoed round with trees,
built upon a lofty eminence, at the {215} conflux of the rivers Clinch
and Holston. The fedral government maintain a company of soldiers
there, the aim of which is to hold the Indians in respect, and at the
same time to protect them against the inhabitants on the frontiers,
whose illiberal proceedings excite them frequently to war. The objects
of these insults were to drive them from their possessions; but the
government has prevented this fruitless source of broils and wars, by
declaring that all the possessions occupied by the Indians within the
boundaries of the United States, comprise a part of their domains.
The following trait will give an idea of the ferocious disposition of
some of these Americans on the frontiers. One of them belonging to the
environs of Fort Blount, had lost one of his horses, which had strayed
from his plantation and penetrated some distance into the Indian
territory. About a fortnight after it was brought to him by two
Cherokees; they were scarcely fifty yards from the house when the
owner perceiving them, killed one upon the spot with his carabine; the
other fled and carried the news to his fellow-countrymen. The murderer
was thrown into prison; but was afterwards released for the want of
evidence, although he stood convicted in the eyes {216} of every one.
During the time he was in prison the Indians suspended their
resentment, in hopes that the death of their fellow-countryman would
be revenged; but scarcely were they informed that he was set at
liberty when they killed a white, at more than a hundred and fifty
miles from the place where the first murder had been committed. To the
present moment we have never been able to make the Indians comprehend
that punishment should only fall upon the guilty; they conceive that
the murder of one or more of their people ought to be avenged by the
death of an equal number of individuals belonging to the nation of
that person who committed the deed. This is a custom they will not
renounce, more especially if the person so murdered belongs to a
distinguished family, as among the Creeks and Cherokees there exists a
superior class to the common of the nation. These Indians are above
the middling stature, well proportioned, and healthy in appearance,
notwithstanding the long fasting they frequently endure in pursuit of
animals, the flesh of which forms their chief subsistence. The
carabine is the only weapon they make use of; they are very dexterous
with it, and kill at a very great distance. The usual dress of the men
consists of a shirt, _à l’Européene_, which {217} hangs loose, and of
a slip of blue cloth about half a yard in length, which serves them as
breeches; they put it between their thighs, and fasten the two ends,
before and behind, to a sort of girdle. They wear long gaiters, and
shoes of stag skins prepared. When full dressed they wear a coat,
waistcoat, and hat, but never any breeches. The natives of North
America have never been able to adopt that part of our dress. They
have only on the top of their heads a tuft of hair, of which they make
several tresses, that hang down the sides of the face, and very
frequently they attach quills or little silver tubes to the
extremities. A great number of them pierce their noses, in order to
put rings through, and cut holes in their ears, that hang down two or
three inches, by the means of pieces of lead that they fasten to them
when they are quite young. They paint their faces red, blue, or black.
A man’s shirt and a short petticoat form the dress of the women, who
wear also gaiters like the men; they let their hair grow, which is
always of a jet black, to its natural length, but they never pierce
their noses, nor disfigure their ears. In winter, the men and women,
in order to guard against the cold, wrap themselves in a blue rug,
which they always {218} carry with them, and which forms an essential
part of their luggage.
Near the fort is established a kind of warehouse where the Cherokees
carry ginseng and furs, consisting chiefly of bear, stag, and otter
skins. They give them in exchange for coarse stuffs, knives, hatchets,
and other articles that they stand in need of.
I learnt at West Point, of several persons who make frequent journies
among the Cherokees that within these few years they take to the
cultivating of their possessions, and that they make a rapid progress.
Some of them have good plantations, and even negro slaves. Several of
the women spin and manufacture cotton stuffs. The federal government
devotes annually a sum to supply them with instruments necessary for
agriculture and different trades. Being pressed for time I could not
penetrate farther into the interior of the country, as I had intended,
and I did not profit by the letters of recommendation that Mr. W. P.
Anderson had given me for that purpose to the garrison-officers in the
fort.
They reckon thirty-five miles from West Point to Knoxville. About a
mile from West Point we passed through Kingstown, composed of thirty
or forty log houses; after that the road runs upwards of eighteen
{219} miles through a rugged and flinty soil, although covered with a
kind of grass. The trees that occupy this extent grow within twenty or
thirty yards of each other, which makes it seem as though this
district changes from the appearance of a meadow to that of a forest.
After this the soil grows better, and the plantations are not so far
apart.
{220} CHAP. XXIV
_Knoxville.--Commercial intelligence.--Trees that grow in the
environs.--Converting some parts of the Meadows into
Forests.--River Nolachuky.--Greensville.--Arrival at
Jonesborough._
Knoxville, the seat of government belonging to the state of Tennessea,
is situate upon the river Holston, in this part nearly a hundred and
fifty fathoms broad. The houses that compose it are about two hundred
in number, and chiefly built of wood. Although founded eighteen or
twenty years ago, this little town does not yet possess any kind of
establishment or manufactory, except two or three tan yards. Trade,
notwithstanding, is brisker here than at Nasheville. The shops, though
very few in {221} number, are in general better stocked. The
tradespeople get their provisions by land from Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Richmond in Virginia; and they send in return, by the
same way, the produce of the country, which they buy of the
cultivators, or take in barter for their goods. Baltimore and Richmond
are the towns with which this part of the country does most business.
The price of conveyance from Baltimore is six or seven dollars per
hundred weight. They reckon seven hundred miles from this town to
Knoxville, six hundred and forty from Philadelphia, and four hundred
and twenty from Richmond.
They send flour, cotton and lime to New Orleans by the river
Tennessea; but this way is not so much frequented by the trade, the
navigation of this river being very much encumbered in two different
places by shallows interspersed with rocks. They reckon about six
hundred miles from Knoxville to the _embouchure_ of the Tennessea in
the Ohio, and thirty-eight miles thence to that of the Ohio in the
Mississippi.
{222} We alighted at Knoxville at the house of one Haynes, the sign of
the General Washington, the best inn in the town. Travellers and their
horses are accommodated there at the rate of five shillings per day;
though this is rather dear for a country where the situation is by no
means favourable to the sale of provisions, which they are obliged to
send to more remote parts. The reason of things being so dear proceeds
from the desire of growing rich in a short time, a general desire in
the United States, where every man who exercises a profession or art
wishes to get a great deal by it, and does not content himself with a
moderate profit, as they do in Europe.
There is a newspaper printed at Knoxville[55] which comes out twice a
week, and written and published by Mr. Roulstone, a fellow-countryman
and friend of my travelling companion, Mr. Fisk. It is very remarkable
that most of the emigrants from New England have an ascendancy over
the others in point of morals, industry, and knowledge.