"THE BACK OF BEYOND"
Of certain remote parts of Erin, Jane Barlow says: "In Bogland, if you
inquire the address of such or such person, you will hear not very
infrequently that he or she lives 'off away at the Back of Beyond.'... A
Traveler to the Back of Beyond may consider himself rather exceptionally
fortunate, should he find that he is able to arrive at his destination
by any mode of conveyance other than 'the two standin' feet of him.'
Often enough the last stage of his journey proceeds down some boggy
_boreen_, or up some craggy hill-track, inaccessible to any wheel or
hoof that ever was shod."
So in Appalachia, one steps shortly from the railway into the primitive.
Most of the river valleys are narrow. In their bottoms the soil is rich,
the farms well kept and generous, the owners comfortable and urbane. But
from the valleys directly spring the mountains, with slopes rising
twenty to forty degrees or more. These mountains cover nine-tenths of
western North Carolina, and among them dwell a majority of the native
people.
The back country is rough. No boat nor canoe can stem its brawling
waters. No bicycle nor automobile can enter it. No coach can endure its
roads. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle-bags, and shackly
little sleds that are dragged over the bare ground by harnessed steers.
This is the country that ordinary tourists shun. And well for such that
they do, since whoso cares more for bodily comfort than for freedom and
air and elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pastures.
To him the backwoods could be only what Burns called Argyleshire: "A
country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly
overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage
inhabitants."
When I went south into the mountains I was seeking a Back of Beyond.
This for more reasons than one. With an inborn taste for the wild and
romantic, I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm
of originality. Again, I had a passion for early American history; and,
in Far Appalachia, it seemed that I might realize the past in the
present, seeing with my own eyes what life must have been to my pioneer
ancestors of a century or two ago. Besides, I wanted to enjoy a free
life in the open air, the thrill of exploring new ground, the joys of
the chase, and the man's game of matching my woodcraft against the
forces of nature, with no help from servants or hired guides.
So, casting about for a biding place that would fill such needs, I
picked out the upper settlement of Hazel Creek, far up under the lee of
those Smoky Mountains that I had learned so little about. On the edge of
this settlement, scant two miles from the post-office of Medlin, there
was a copper mine, long disused on account of litigation, and I got
permission to occupy one of its abandoned cabins.
A mountain settlement consists of all who get their mail at the same
place. Ours was made up of forty-two households (about two hundred
souls) scattered over an area eight miles long by two wide. These are
air-line measurements. All roads and trails "wiggled and wingled around"
so that some families were several miles from a neighbor. Fifteen homes
had no wagon road, and could be reached by no vehicle other than a
narrow sled. Quill Rose had not even a sledpath, but journeyed full five
miles by trail to the nearest wagon road.
Medlin itself comprised two little stores built of rough planks and
bearing no signs, a corn mill, and four dwellings. A mile and a half
away was the log schoolhouse, which, once or twice a month, served also
as church. Scattered about the settlement were seven tiny tub-mills for
grinding corn, some of them mere open sheds with a capacity of about a
bushel a day. Most of the dwellings were built of logs. Two or three,
only, were weatherboarded frame houses and attained the dignity of a
story and a half.
All about us was the forest primeval, where roamed some sparse herds of
cattle, razorback hogs, and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were in all
the streams. Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a
common nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the vast woodland
that encompassed it.
The post-office occupied a space about five feet square, in a corner of
one of the stores. There was a daily mail, by rider, serving four other
communities along the way. The contractor for this service had to
furnish two horses, working turnabout, pay the rider, and squeeze his
own profit, out of $499 a year. In Star Route days the mail was carried
afoot, two barefooted young men "toting the sacks on their own wethers"
over this thirty-two-mile round trip, for forty-eight cents a day; and
they boarded themselves!
In the group that gathered at mail time I often was solicited to "back"
envelopes, give out the news, or decipher letters for men who could not
read. Several times, in the postmaster's absence, I registered letters
for myself, or for someone else, the law of the nation being suspended
by general consent.
Our stores, as I have said, were small, yet many of their shelves were
empty. Oftentimes there was no flour to be had, no meat, cereals, canned
goods, coffee, sugar, or oil. It excited no comment at all when Old Pete
would lean across his bare counter and lament that "Thar's lots o' folks
a-hurtin' around hyur for lard, and I ain't got none."
I have seen the time when our neighborhood could get no salt nor tobacco
without making a twenty-four-mile trip over the mountain and back, in
the dead of winter. This was due, partly, to the state of the roads, and
to the fact that there would be no wagon available for weeks at a time.
Wagoning, by the way, was no sinecure. Often it meant to chop a fallen
tree out of the road, and then, with handspikes, "man-power the log
outen the way." Sometimes an axle would break (far upon the mountain,
of course); then a tree must be felled, and a new axle made on the spot
from the green wood, with no tools but axe and jackknife.
[Illustration: At the Post-Office]
Trade was mostly by barter, in which 'coon skins and ginseng had the
same rank as in the days of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Long credits
were given on anticipated crops; but the risks were great and the market
limited by local consumption, as it did not pay to haul bulky
commodities to the railroad. Hence it was self-preservation for the
storekeepers to carry only a slender stock of essentials and take pains
to have little left through unproductive times.
As a rule, credit would not be asked so long as anything at all could be
offered in trade. When Bill took the last quart of meal from the house,
as rations for a bear hunt, his patient Marg walked five miles to the
store with a skinny old chicken, last of the flock, and offered to
barter it for "a dustin' o' salt." There was not a bite in her house
beyond potatoes, and "'taters don't go good 'thout salt."
In our primitive community there were no trades, no professions. Every
man was his own farmer, blacksmith, gunsmith, carpenter, cobbler,
miller, tinker. Someone in his family, or a near neighbor, served him as
barber and dentist, and would make him a coffin when he died. One
farmer was also the wagoner of the district, as well as storekeeper,
magistrate, veterinarian, and accoucheur. He also owned the only
"tooth-pullers" in the settlement: a pair of universal forceps that he
designed, forged, filed out, and wielded with barbaric grit. His wife
kept the only boarding-house for leagues around. Truly, an accomplished
couple!
About two-thirds of our householders owned their homes. Of the remainder
about three-fifths were renters and two-fifths were squatters, in the
sense that these last were permitted to occupy ground for the sake of
reporting trespass and putting out fires--or, maybe, to prevent them
doing both. Nearly all of the wild land belonged to Northern timber
companies who had not yet begun operations (they have done so within the
past three years).
Titles were confused, owing to careless surveys, or guesswork, in the
past. Many boundaries overlapped, and there were bits of no-man's land
here and there, covered by no deed and subject to entry by anyone who
discovered them. Our old frontier always was notorious for
happy-go-lucky surveys and neglect to make legal entry of claims. Thus
Boone lost the fairest parts of the Kentucky he founded, and was
ejected and sent adrift. In our own time, overlapping boundaries have
led to bitter litigation and murderous feuds.
As our territory was sparsely occupied, there were none of those
"perpendicular farms" so noticeable in older settlements near the river
valleys, where men plow fields as steep as their own house roofs and
till with the hoe many an acre that is steeper still. John Fox tells of
a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his own cornfield and broke his neck.
I have seen fields in Carolina where this might occur, as where a
forty-five degree slope is tilled to the brink of a precipice. A woman
told me: "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees--yes, I have;" and
another: "Many's the hill o' corn I've propped up with a rock to keep it
from fallin' down-hill."[1]
Even in our new region many of the fields suffered quickly from erosion.
When a forest is cleared there is a spongy humus on the ground surface
that is extremely rich, but this washes away in a single season. The
soil beneath is good, but thin on the hillsides, and its soluble,
fertile ingredients soon leach out and vanish. Without terracing, which
I have never seen practiced in the mountains of the South, no field with
a surface slope of more than ten degrees (about two feet in ten) will
last more than a few years. As one of my neighbors put it: "Thar, I've
cl'ared me a patch and grubbed hit out--now I can raise me two or three
severe craps!"
"Then what?" I asked.
"When corn won't grow no more I can turn the field into grass a couple
o' years."
"Then you'll rotate, and grow corn again?"
"La, no! By that time the land will be so poor hit wouldn't raise a
cuss-fight."
"But then you must move, and begin all over again. This continual moving
must be a great nuisance."
He rolled his quid and placidly answered: "Huk-uh; when I move, all I
haffter do is put out the fire and call the dog."
His apparent indifference was only philosophy expressed with sardonic
humor; just as another neighbor would say, "This is good, strong land,
or it wouldn't hold up all the rocks there is around hyur."
Right here is the basis for much of what strangers call shiftlessness
among the mountaineers. But of that, more anon in other chapters.
In clearing new ground, everyone followed the ancient custom of girdling
the tree trunks and letting them stand in spectral ugliness until they
rotted and fell. This is a quick and easy way to get rid of the shade
that otherwise would stunt the crops, and it prevents such trees as
chestnut, buckeye and basswood from sprouting from the stumps. In the
fields stood scores of gigantic hemlocks, deadened, that never would be
used even for fuel, save as their bark furnished the women with
quick-burning stove-wood in wet weather. No one dreamt that hemlock ever
would be marketable. And this was only five years ago!
The tillage was as rude and destructive as anything we read of in
pioneer history. The common plow was a "bull-tongue," which has aptly
been described as "hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim."
The harrows were of wood, throughout, with locust teeth (a friend and I
made one from the green trees in half a day, and it lasted three seasons
on rocky ground). Sometimes no harrow was used at all, the plowed ground
being "drug" with a big evergreen bough. This needed only to be withed
directly to a pony's tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and
the picture of prehistoric agriculture would have been complete. After
the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the
entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows
while their mother toiled like a man.
Corn was the staple crop--in fact, the only crop of most farmers. Some
rye was raised along the creek, and a little oats, but our settlement
grew no wheat--there was no mill that could grind it. Wheat is raised,
to some extent, in the river bottoms, and on the plateaus of the
interior. I have seen it flailed out on the bare ground, and winnowed by
pouring the grain and chaff from basket to basket while the women
fluttered aprons or bed-sheets. Corn is topped for the blade-fodder, the
ears gathered from the stalk, and the main stalks afterwards used as
"roughness" (roughage). The cribs generally are ramshackle pens, and
there is much waste from mold and vermin.
The Carolina mountains are, by nature, one of the best fruit regions in
eastern America. Apples, grapes, and berries, especially, thrive
exceeding well. But our mountaineer is no horticulturist. He lets his
fruit trees take care of themselves, and so, everywhere except on select
farms near the towns, we see old apple and peach trees that never were
pruned, bristling with shoots, and often bearing wizened fruit, dry and
bitter, or half rotted on the stem.
So, too, the gardens are slighted. Late in the season our average garden
is a miniature jungle, chiefly of weeds that stand high as one's head.
Cabbage and field beans survive and figure mightily in the diet of the
mountaineer. Potatoes generally do well, but few farmers raise enough to
see them through the winter. Generally some tobacco is grown for family
consumption, the strong "twist" being smoked or chewed indifferently.
An interesting crop in our neighborhood was ginseng, of which there were
several patches in cultivation. This curious plant is native throughout
the Appalachians, but has been exterminated in all but the wildest
regions, on account of the high price that its dried root brings. It has
long since passed out of our pharmacopoeia, and is marketed only in
China, though our own people formerly esteemed it as a panacea for all
ills of the flesh. Colonel Byrd, in his "History of the Dividing Line,"
says of it:
"Though Practice wilt soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able
Footman, yet, as a help to bear Fatigue I us'd to chew a Root of
Ginseng as I Walk't along. This kept up my Spirits, and made me
trip away as nimbly in my half Jack-Boots as younger men cou'd in
their Shoes. This Plant is in high Esteem in China, where it sells
for its Weight in Silver.... Its vertues are, that it gives an
uncommon Warmth and Vigour to the Blood, and frisks the Spirits,
beyond any other Cordial. It chears the Heart, even of a Man that
has a bad Wife, and makes him look down with great Composure on the
crosses of the World. It promotes insensible Perspiration,
dissolves all Phlegmatick and Viscous Humours, that are apt to
obstruct the Narrow channels of the Nerves. It helps the Memory and
would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the Lungs,
much more than Scolding itself. It comforts the Stomach, and
Strengthens the Bowels, preventing all Colicks and Fluxes. In one
Word, it will make a Man live a great while, and very well while he
does live. And what is more, it will even make Old Age amiable, by
rendering it lively, chearful, and good-humour'd."
Alas that only Chinamen and eighteenth-century Cavaliers could absorb
the virtues of this sovereign herb!
A successful ginseng grower of our settlement told me that two acres of
the plant will bring an income of $2,500 to $5,000 a year, planting
100,000 to the acre. The roots take eight years to mature. They weigh
from one and a half to four ounces each, when fresh, and one-third of
this dried. Two acres produce 25,000 roots a year, by progression. The
dried root, at that time, brought five dollars a pound. At present, I
believe, it is higher. Another friend of mine, who is in this business
extensively, tried exporting for himself, but got only $6.50 a pound in
Amoy, when the U. S. consul at that port assured him that the real
market price was from $12.60 to $24.40. The local trader, knowing
American prices, pocketed the difference.
[Illustration: The Author in Camp in the Big Smokies]
In times of scarcity many of our people took to the woods and gathered
commoner medicinal roots, such as bloodroot and wild ginger (there are
scores of others growing wild in great profusion), but made only a
pittance at it, as synthetic drugs have mostly taken the place of herbal
simples in modern medicine. Women and children did better, in the days
before Christmas, by gathering galax, "hemlock" (_leucothoe_), and
mistletoe, selling to the dealers at the railroad, who ship them North
for holiday decorations. One bright lad from town informed me, with
evident pride of geography, that "Some of this goes to London, England."
Nearly everywhere in our woods the beautiful ruddy-bronze galax is
abundant. Along the water-courses, _leucothoe_, which similarly turns
bronze in autumn, and lasts throughout the winter, is so prolific as to
be a nuisance to travelers, being hard to push through.
Most of our farmers had neither horse nor mule. For the rough work of
cultivating the hillsides a single steer hitched to the "bull-tongue"
was better adapted, and the same steer patiently dragged a little sled
to the trading post. On steep declivities the sled is more practical
than a cart or wagon, because it can go where wheels cannot, it does not
require so wide a track, and it "brakes" automatically in going
downhill. Nearly all the farmer's hauling is downhill to his home, or
down farther to the village. A sled can be made quite easily by one man,
out of wood growing on the spot, and with few iron fittings, or none at
all. The runners are usually made of natural sourwood crooks, this
timber being chosen because it wears very smooth and does not fur up nor
splinter.
The hinterland is naturally adapted to grazing, rather than to
agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the
mountains, where there are "balds" covered with succulent wild grass
that resembles Kentucky bluegrass. Clearing and sowing would extend such
areas indefinitely. The cattle forage for themselves through eight or
nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only
attention given them is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark
the calves. Nearly all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other
blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges,
but the backwoodsman does not want "critters that haffter be gentled and
hand-fed." The result is that many families go without milk a great part
of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.
The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse,
with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through
winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the
quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have
had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten
would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export--let the buyer
fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any provision for
taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.
On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel
all over the neighborhood to dispose of it in small portions. The
carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the
cheap "bilin' pieces" were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or
whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an
axe and a jackknife. The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a
crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit
it for boot-heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.
Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool.
The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep
will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering
hand of man and perish without his shepherding. Curiously enough, our
mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat--an animal perfectly
adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats
would be more profitable to the small farmers of the wild mountains than
cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which
there is a vast superfluity in all the Southern mountains. Unlike the
weak, timorous and stupid sheep, a flock of goats can fight their own
battles against wild animals. They are hardy in any weather, and thrive
from their own pickings where other foragers would starve.
A good milch goat gives more and richer milk than the average mountain
cow. And a kid yields excellent fresh meat in _manageable_ quantity, at
a time when no one would butcher a beef because it would spoil. I used
to shut my eyes and imagine the transformation that would be wrought in
these mountains by a colony of Swiss, who would turn the coves into
gardens, the moderate slopes into orchards, the steeper ones into
vineyards, by terracing, and who would export the finest of cheese made
from the surplus milk of their goats. But our native mountaineers--well,
a man who will not eat beef nor drink fresh cow's milk, and who despises
butter, cannot be interested in anything of the dairy order.
The chickens ran wild and scratched for a living; hence were thin,
tough, and poor layers. Eggs seldom were for sale. It was not of much
use to try to raise many chickens where they were unprotected from
hawks, minks, foxes, weasels and snakes.
Honey often was procured by spotting wild bees to their hoard and
chopping the tree, a mild form of sport in which most settlers are
expert. Our local preacher had a hundred hives of tame bees, producing
1,500 pounds of honey a year, for which he got ten cents a pound at the
railroad.
The mainstay of every farmer, aside from his cornfield, was his litter
of razorback hogs. "Old cornbread and sowbelly" are a menu complete for
the mountaineer. The wild pig, roaming foot-loose and free over hill and
dale, picks up his own living at all seasons and requires no attention
at all. He is the cheapest possible source of meat and yields the
quickest return: "no other food animal can increase his own weight a
hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of his life." And so he
is regarded by his owner with the same affection that Connemara Paddy
bestows upon "the gintleman that pays the rint."
In physique and mentality, the razorback differs even more from a
domestic hog than a wild goose does from a tame one. Shaped in front
like a thin wedge, he can go through laurel thickets like a bear.
Armored with tough hide cushioned by bristles, he despises thorns,
brambles, and rattlesnakes, alike. His extravagantly long snout can
scent like a cat's, and yet burrow, uproot, overturn, as if made of
metal. The long legs, thin flanks, pliant hoofs, fit him to run like a
deer and climb like a goat. In courage and sagacity he outranks all
other beasts. A warrior born, he is also a strategist of the first
order. Like man, he lives a communal life, and unites with others of his
kind for purposes of defense.
The pig is the only large mammal I know of, besides man, whose eyes
will not shine by reflected light--they are too bold and crafty, I wit.
The razorback has a mind of his own; not instinct, but _mind_--whatever
psychologists may say. He thinks. Anybody can see that when he is not
rooting or sleeping he is studying devilment. He shows remarkable
understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, and even an
uncanny gift of reading men's thoughts, whenever those thoughts are
directed against the peace and dignity of pigship. He bears grudges,
broods over indignities, and plans redresses for the morrow or the week
after. If he cannot get even with you, he will lay for your unsuspecting
friend. And at the last, when arrested in his crimes and lodged in the
pen, he is liable to attacks of mania from sheer helpless rage.
If you camp out in the mountains, nothing will molest you but razorback
hogs. Bears will flee and wildcats sneak to their dens, but the moment
incense of cooking arises from your camp every pig within two miles will
scent it and hasten to call. You may throw your arm out of joint: they
will laugh in your face. You may curse in five languages: it is music to
their titillating ears.
Throughout summer and autumn I cooked out of doors, on the woodsman's
range of forked stakes and a lug-pole spanning parallel beds of rock.
When the pigs came, I fed them red-pepper pie. Then all said good-bye to
my hospitality save one slab-sided, tusky old boar--and he planned a
campaign. At the first smell of smoke he would start for my premises.
Hiding securely in a nearby thicket, he would spy on the operations
until my stew got to simmering gently and I would retire to the cabin
and get my fists in the dough. Then, charging at speed, he would knock
down a stake, trip the lug-pole, and send my dinner flying. Every day he
would do this. It got so that I had to sit there facing the fire all
through my cooking, or that beast of a hog would ruin me. With this I
thought he was outgeneraled. Idle dream! He would slip off to my
favorite neighbor's, break through the garden fence, and raise Ned
instanter--all because he hated _me_, for that peppery fraud, and knew
that Bob and I were cronies.
I dubbed this pig Belial; a name that Bob promptly adapted to his own
notion by calling it Be-liar. "That Be-liar," swore he, "would cross
hell on a rotten rail to git into my 'tater patch!"
Finally I could stand it no longer, and took down my rifle. It was a
nail-driver, and I, through constant practice in beheading squirrels,
was in good form. However, in the mountains it is more heinous to kill
another man's pig than to shoot the owner. So I took craft for my guide,
and guile for my heart's counsel. I stalked Belial as stealthily as ever
hunter crept on an antelope against the wind. At last I had him dead
right: broadside to me and motionless as if in a daydream. I knew that
if I drilled his ear, or shot his tail clean off, it would only make him
meaner than ever. He sported an uncommonly fine tail, and was proud to
flaunt it. I drew down on that member, purposely a trifle scant, fired,
and--away scuttled that boar, with a _broken_ tail that would dangle and
cling to him disgracefully through life.
[Illustration: "Bob"]
Exit Belial! It was equivalent to a broken heart. He emigrated, or
committed suicide, I know not which, but the Smoky Mountains knew him no
more.