illiterate. But still many strong and distinguished men have come from
these mountain towns. Many families send their children away to school,
and there are fair schools at Barbersville, Harlan Court-house, and in
other places. Long isolated from the moving world, they have retained
the habits of the early settlers, and to some extent the vernacular
speech, though the dialect is not specially marked. They have been until
recently a self-sustaining people, raising and manufacturing nearly
everything required by their limited knowledge and wants. Not long ago
the women spun and wove from cotton and hemp and wool the household
linen, the bed-wear, and the clothes of the family. In many houses the
loom is still at work. The colors used for dyeing were formerly all of
home make except, perhaps, the indigo; now they use what they call the
“brought in” dyes, bought at the stores; and prints and other fabrics
are largely taking the places of the home-made. During the morning we
stopped at one of the best houses on the fork, a house with a small
apple-orchard in front, having a veranda, two large rooms, and a porch
and kitchen at the back. In the back porch stood the loom with its
web of half-finished cloth. The farmer was of the age when men sun
themselves on the gallery and talk. His wife, an intelligent, barefooted
old woman, was still engaged in household duties, but her weaving days
were over. Her daughters did the weaving, and in one of the rooms were
the linsey-woolsey dresses hung up, and piles of gorgeous bed coverlets,
enough to set up half a dozen families. These are the treasures and
heirlooms handed down from mother to daughter, for these handmade
fabrics never wear out. Only eight of the twelve children were at home.
The youngest, the baby, a sickly boy of twelve, was lounging about the
house. He could read a little, for he had been to school a few weeks.
Reading and writing were not accomplishments in the family generally.
The other girls and boys were in the cornfield, and going to the back
door, I saw a line of them hoeing at the top of the field. The field
was literally so steep that they might have rolled from the top to the
bottom. The mother called them in, and they lounged leisurely down, the
girls swinging themselves over the garden fence with athletic ease.
The four eldest were girls: one, a woman of thirty-five, had lost her
beauty, if she ever had any, with her teeth; one, of thirty, recently
married, had a stately dignity and a certain nobility of figure; one,
of sixteen, was undeniably pretty—almost the only woman entitled to this
epithet that we saw in the whole journey. This household must have been
an exception, for the girls usually marry very young. They were all,
of course, barefooted. They were all laborers, and evidently took life
seriously, and however much their knowledge of the world was limited,
the household evidently respected itself. The elder girls were the
weavers, and they showed a taste and skill in their fabrics that would
be praised in the Orient or in Mexico. The designs and colors of the
coverlets were ingenious and striking. There was a very handsome one
in crimson, done in wavy lines and bizarre figures, that was called the
Kentucky Beauty, or the Ocean Wave, that had a most brilliant effect.
A simple, hospitable family this. The traveller may go all through
this region with the certainty of kindly treatment, and in perfect
security—if, I suppose, he is not a revenue officer, or sent in to
survey land on which the inhabitants have squatted.
We came at night to Harlan Court-house, an old shabby hamlet, but
growing and improving, having a new court-house and other signs of the
awakening of the people to the wealth here in timber and mines. Here in
a beautiful valley three streams—Poor, Martin, and Clover forks—unite to
form the Cumberland. The place has fourteen “stores” and three taverns,
the latter a trial to the traveller. Harlan has been one of the counties
most conspicuous for lawlessness. The trouble is not simply individual
wickedness, but the want of courage of public opinion, coupled with a
general disrespect for authority. Plenty of people lament the state of
things, but want the courage to take a public stand. The day before we
reached the Court-house the man who killed his wife and his brother
had his examination. His friends were able to take the case before a
friendly justice instead of the judge. The facts sworn to were that in a
drunken dispute over cards he tried to kill his son-in-law, who escaped
out of the window, and that his wife and brother opposed him, and he
killed them with his pistol. Therefore their deaths were accidental,
and he was discharged. Many people said privately that he ought to be
hanged, but there was entire public apathy over the affair. If Harlan
had three or four resolute men who would take a public stand that this
lawlessness must cease, they could carry the community with them. But
the difficulty of enforcing law and order in some of these mountain
counties is to find proper judges, prosecuting officers, and sheriffs.
The officers are as likely as not to be the worst men in the community,
and if they are not, they are likely to use their authority for
satisfying their private grudges and revenges. Consequently men take
the “law” into their own hands. The most personally courageous become
bullies and the terror of the community. The worst citizens are not
those who have killed most men, in the opinion of the public. It ought
to be said that in some of the mountain counties there has been very
little lawlessness, and in some it has been repressed by the local
authorities, and there is great improvement on the whole. I was sorry
not to meet a well-known character in the mountains, who has killed
twenty-one men. He is a very agreeable “square” man, and I believe
“high-toned,” and it is the universal testimony that he never killed a
man who did not deserve killing, and whose death was a benefit to the
community. He is called, in the language of the country, a “severe” man.
In a little company that assembled at the Harlan tavern were two elderly
men, who appeared to be on friendly terms enough. Their sons had had
a difficulty, and two boys out of each family had been killed not very
long ago. The fathers were not involved in the vendetta. About the old
Harlan court-house a great many men have been killed during court week
in the past few years. The habit of carrying pistols and knives, and
whiskey, are the immediate causes of these deaths, but back of these is
the want of respect for law. At the ford of the Cumberland at Pineville
was anchored a little house-boat, which was nothing but a whiskey-shop.
During our absence a tragedy occurred there. The sheriff with a posse
went out to arrest some criminals in the mountain near. He secured his
men, and was bringing them into Pineville, when it occurred to him that
it would be a good plan to take a drink at the houseboat. The whole
party got into a quarrel over their liquor, and in it the sheriff was
killed and a couple of men seriously wounded. A resolute surveyor,
formerly a general in our army, surveying land in the neighborhood of
Pineville, under a decree of the United States Court, has for years
carried on his work at the personal peril of himself and his party. The
squatters not only pull up his stakes and destroy his work day after
day, but it was reported that they had shot at his corps from the
bushes. He can only go on with his work by employing a large guard of
armed men.
This state of things in eastern Kentucky will not be radically changed
until the railways enter it, and business and enterprise bring in
law and order. The State Government cannot find native material for
enforcing law, though there has been improvement within the past two
years. I think no permanent gain can be expected till a new civilization
comes in, though I heard of a bad community in one of the counties
that had been quite subdued and changed by the labors of a devout and
plain-spoken evangelist. So far as our party was concerned, we received
nothing but kind treatment, and saw little evidences of demoralization,
except that the young men usually were growing up to be “roughs,” and
liked to lounge about with shot-guns rather than work. But the report of
men who have known the country for years was very unfavorable as to the
general character of the people who live on the mountains and in the
little valleys—that they were all ignorant; that the men generally were
idle, vicious, and cowardly, and threw most of the hard labor in the
field and house upon the women; that the killings are mostly done
from ambush, and with no show for a fair fight. This is a tremendous
indictment, and it is too sweeping to be sustained. The testimony of
the gentlemen of our party, who thoroughly know this part of the State,
contradicted it. The fact is there are two sorts of people in the
mountains, as elsewhere.
The race of American mountaineers occupying the country from western
North Carolina to eastern Kentucky is a curious study Their origin is
in doubt. They have developed their peculiarities in isolation. In this
freedom stalwart and able men have been from time to time developed, but
ignorance and freedom from the restraints of law have had their logical
result as to the mass. I am told that this lawlessness has only existed
since the war; that before, the people, though ignorant of letters, were
peaceful. They had the good points of a simple people, and if they were
not literate, they had abundant knowledge of their own region. During
the war the mountaineers were carrying on a civil war at home. The
opposing parties were not soldiers, but bushwhackers. Some of the best
citizens were run out of the country, and never returned. The majority
were Unionists, and in all the mountain region of eastern Kentucky I
passed through there are few to-day who are politically Democrats. In
the war, home-guards were organized, and these were little better than
vigilance committees for private revenge. Disorder began with
this private and partly patriotic warfare. After the war, when the
bushwhackers got back to their cabins, the animosities were kept up,
though I fancy that politics has little or nothing to do with them now.
The habit of reckless shooting, of taking justice into private hands, is
no doubt a relic of the disorganization during the war.
Worthless, good-for-nothing, irreclaimable, were words I often heard
applied to people of this and that region. I am not so despondent of
their future. Railways, trade, the sight of enterprise and industry,
will do much with this material. Schools will do more, though it seems
impossible to have efficient schools there at present. The people in
their ignorance and their undeveloped country have a hard struggle for
life. This region is, according to the census, the most prolific in
the United States. The girls marry young, bear many children, work like
galley-slaves, and at the time when women should be at their best they
fade, lose their teeth, become ugly, and look old. One great cause of
this is their lack of proper nourishment. There is nothing unhealthy in
out-door work in moderation if the body is properly sustained by good
food. But healthy, handsome women are not possible without good fare.
In a considerable part of eastern Kentucky (not I hear in all) good
wholesome cooking is unknown, and civilization is not possible without
that. We passed a cabin where a man was very ill with dysentery. No
doctor could be obtained, and perhaps that, considering what the doctor
might have been, was not a misfortune. But he had no food fit for a
sick man, and the women of the house were utterly ignorant of the diet
suitable to a man in his state. I have no doubt that the abominable
cookery of the region has much to do with the lawlessness, as it visibly
has to do with the poor physical condition.
The road down the Cumberland, in a valley at times spreading out into
fertile meadows, is nearly all the way through magnificent forests,
along hill-sides fit for the vine, for fruit, and for pasture, while
frequent outcroppings of coal testify to the abundance of the fuel that
has been so long stored for the new civilization. These mountains
would be profitable as sheep pastures did not the inhabitants here, as
elsewhere in the United States, prefer to keep dogs rather than sheep.
I have thus sketched hastily some of the capacities of the Cumberland
region. It is my belief that this central and hitherto neglected
portion of the United States will soon become the theatre of vast and
controlling industries.
I want space for more than a concluding word about western Kentucky,
which deserves, both for its capacity and its recent improvements,
a chapter to itself. There is a limestone area of some 10,000 square
miles, with a soil hardly less fertile than that of the blue-grass
region, a high agricultural development, and a population equal in all
respects to that of the famous and historic grass country. Seven of the
ten principal tobacco-producing counties in Kentucky and the largest
Indian corn and wheat raising counties are in this part of the State.
The western coal-field has both river and rail transportation, thick
deposits of iron ore, and more level and richer farming lands than the
eastern coal-field. Indeed, the agricultural development in this western
coal region has attracted great attention.
Much also might be written of the remarkable progress of the towns of
western Kentucky within the past few years. The increase in population
is not more astonishing than the development of various industries. They
show a vigorous, modern activity for which this part of the State has
not, so far as I know, been generally credited. The traveller will
find abundant evidence of it in Owensborough, Henderson, Hopkinsville,
Bowling Green, and other places. As an illustration: Paducah, while
doubling its population since 1880, has increased its manufacturing 150
per cent. The town had in 1880 twenty-six factories, with a capital of
$600,000, employing 950 men; now it has fifty factories, with a cash
capital of $2,000,000, employing 3250 men, engaged in a variety of
industries—to which a large iron furnace is now being added. Taking it
all together—variety of resources, excellence of climate, vigor of
its people—one cannot escape the impression that Kentucky has a great
future.
COMMENTS ON CANADA.
I.
The area of the Dominion of Canada is larger than that of the United
States, excluding Alaska. It is fair, however, in the comparison, to
add Alaska, for Canada has in its domain enough arctic and practically
uninhabitable land to offset Alaska. Excluding the boundary great lakes
and rivers, Canada has 3,470,257 square miles of territory, or more than
one-third of the entire British Empire; the United States has 3,026,494
square miles, or, adding Alaska (577,390), 3,603,884 square miles. From
the eastern limit of the maritime provinces to Vancouver Island the
distance is over three thousand five hundred miles. This whole distance
is settled, but a considerable portion of it only by a thin skirmish
line. I have seen a map, colored according to the maker’s idea of
fertility, on which Canada appears little more than a green flush along
the northern boundary of the United States. With a territory equal to
our own, Canada has the population of the single State of New York—about
five millions.
Most of Canada lies north of the limit of what was reckoned agreeably
habitable before it was discovered that climate depends largely on
altitude, and that the isothermal lines and the lines of latitude do not
coincide. The division between the two countries is, however, mainly
a natural one, on a divide sloping one way to the arctic regions, the
other way to the tropics. It would seem better map-making to us if our
line followed the northern mountains of Maine and included New
Brunswick and the other maritime provinces. But it would seem a better
rectification to Canadians if their line included Maine with the harbor
of Portland, and dipped down in the North-west so as to take in the Red
River of the North, and all the waters discharging into Hudson’s Bay.
The great bulk of Canada is on the arctic slope. When we pass the
highlands of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York we fall away into
a wide champaign country. The only break in this is the Lauren-tian
granite mountains, north of the St. Lawrence, the oldest land above
water, now degraded into hills of from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. The
central mass of Canada consists of three great basins: that portion of
the St. Lawrence in the Dominion, 400,000 square miles; the Hudson’s
Bay, 2,000,000 square miles; the Mackenzie, 550,000 square miles.
That is to say, of the 3,470,257 square miles of the area of Canada,
3,010,000 have a northern slope.
This decrease in altitude from our northern boundary makes Canada a
possible nation. The Rocky Mountains fall away north into the Mackenzie
plain. The highest altitude attained by the Union Pacific Railroad is
8240 feet; the highest of the Canadian Pacific is 5296; and a line of
railway still farther north, from the North Saskatchewan region, can,
and doubtless some time will, reach the Pacific without any obstruction
by the Rockies and the Selkirks. In estimating, therefore, the capacity
of Canada for sustaining a large population we have to remember that
the greater portion of it is but little above the sea-level; that the
climate of the interior is modified by vast bodies of water; that the
maximum summer heat of Montreal and Quebec exceeds that of New York;
and that there is a vast region east of the Rockies and north of
the Canadian Pacific Railway, not only the plains drained by the two
branches of the Saskatchewan, but those drained by the Peace River still
farther north, which have a fair share of summer weather, and winters
much milder than are enjoyed in our Territories farther south but higher
in altitude. The summers of this vast region are by all reports
most agreeable, warm days and refreshing nights, with a stimulating
atmosphere; winters with little snow, and usually bright and pleasant,
occasional falls of the thermometer for two or three days to arctic
temperature, but as certain a recovery to mildness by the “Chinook”
or Pacific winds. It is estimated that the plains of the
Saskatchewan—500,000 square miles—are capable of sustaining a population
of thirty millions. But nature there must call forth a good deal of
human energy and endurance. There is no doubt that frosts are liable
to come very late in the spring and very early in the autumn; that
persistent winds are hostile to the growth of trees; and that varieties
of hardy cereals and fruits must be selected for success in agriculture
and horticulture. The winters are exceedingly severe on all the prairies
east of Winnipeg, and westward on the Canadian Pacific as far as
Medicine Hat, the crossing of the South Saskatchewan. Heavy items in
the cost of living there must always be fuel, warm clothing, and solid
houses. Fortunately the region has an abundance of lignite and extensive
fields of easily workable coal.
Canada is really two countries, separated from each other by the vast
rocky wilderness between the lakes and James Bay. For a thousand miles
west of Ottawa, till the Manitoba prairie is reached, the traveller
on the line of the railway sees little but granite rock and stunted
balsams, larches, and poplars—a dreary region, impossible to attract
settlers. Copper and other minerals there are; and in the region north
of Lake Superior there is no doubt timber, and arable land is spoken
of; but the country is really unknown. Portions of this land, like that
about Lake Nipigon, offer attractions to sportsmen. Lake navigation is
impracticable about four months in the year, so that Canada seems to
depend for political and commercial unity upon a telegraph wire and
two steel rails running a thousand miles through a region where local
traffic is at present insignificant.
The present government of Canada is an evolution on British lines,
modified by the example of the republic of the United States. In form
the resemblances are striking to the United States, but underneath,
the differences are radical. There is a supreme federal government,
comprehending a union of provinces, each having its local government.
But the union in the two countries was brought about in a different way,
and the restrictive powers have a different origin. In the one, power
descends from the Crown; in the other, it originates with the people.
In the Dominion Government all the powers not delegated to the provinces
are held by the Federal Government. In the United States, all the powers
not delegated to the Federal Government by the States are held by the
States. In the United States, delegates from the colonies, specially
elected for the purpose, met to put in shape a union already a necessity
of the internal and external situation. And the union expressed in the
Constitution was accepted by the popular vote in each State. In the
provinces of Canada there was a long and successful struggle for
responsible government. The first union was of the two Canadas, in
1840; that is, of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada—Ontario and
Quebec—with Parliaments sitting sometimes in Quebec and sometimes in
Toronto, and at last in Ottawa, a site selected by the Queen. This
Government was carried on with increasing friction. There is not space
here to sketch the politics of this epoch. Many causes contributed to
this friction, but the leading ones were the antagonism of French and
English ideas, the superior advance in wealth and population of Ontario
over Quebec, and the resistance of what was called French domination. At
length, in 1863-64, the two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals
(or, in the political nomenclature of the day, the “Tories” and the
“Grits”—i. e., those of “clear grit”), were so evenly divided that a
dead-lock occurred, neither was able to carry on the government, and
a coalition ministry was formed. Then the subject of colonial
confederation was actively agitated. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
contemplated a legislative union of the maritime provinces, and a
conference was called at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in the
summer of 1864. Having in view a more comprehensive union, the Canadian
Government sought and obtained admission to this conference, which
was soon swallowed up in a larger scheme, and a conference of all the
colonies was appointed to be held at Quebec in October. Delegates,
thirty-three in number, were present from all the provinces, probably
sent by the respective legislatures or governments, for I find no note
of a popular election. The result of this conference was the adoption
of resolutions as a basis of an act of confederation. The Canadian
Parliament adopted this scheme after a protracted debate. But the
maritime provinces stood out. Meantime the Civil War in the United
States, the Fenian invasion, and the abrogation of the reciprocity
treaty fostered a spirit of Canadian nationality, and discouraged
whatever feeling existed for annexation to the United States. The
colonies, therefore, with more or less willingness, came into the plan,
and in 1867 the English Parliament passed the British North American
Act, which is the charter of the Dominion. It established the union of
the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and provided
for the admission to the union of the other parts of British North
America; that is, Prince Edward Island, the Hudson Bay Territory,
British Columbia, and Newfoundland, with its dependency Labrador. Nova
Scotia was, however, still dissatisfied with the terms of the union, and
was only reconciled on the granting of additional annual subsidies.
In 1868, by Act of the British Parliament, the Hudson’s Bay Company
surrendered to the Crown its territorial rights over the vast region it
controlled, in consideration of £300,000 sterling, grants of land around
its trading posts to the extent of fifty thousand acres in all, and
one-twentieth of all the fertile land south of the north branch of the
Saskatchewan, retaining its privileges of trade, without its exclusive
monopoly. The attempt of the Dominion Government to take possession
of this north-west territory (Manitoba was created a province July 15,
1870) was met by the rising of the squatters and half-breeds under Louis
Riel in 1869-70. Riel formed a provisional government, and proceeded
with a high hand to banish persons and confiscate property, and on a
drumhead court-martial put to death Thomas Scott, a Canadian militia
officer. The murder of Scott provoked intense excitement throughout
Canada, especially in Ontario. Colonel Garnet Wolseley’s expedition to
Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) followed, and the Government authority
was restored. Riel and his squatter confederates fled, and he was
subsequently pardoned.