1.
I MUST first tell you how I came to be ever a commercial
traveller. My father was a Higginbotham--one of the Higginbothams of
Salem--but my mother, Marie Lawrence, was a far-off cousin of the wife
of old Thomas Lawrence, the great tobacconist of New York. Horatio
Higginbotham was both an author and an artist, but he neither wrote nor
painted down to the popular taste; and as he was also a gentleman, and
had lived like one, he left very little money. Not that he took it with
him when he died, but he had spent it on the way. It costs considerable
to get through this world, if you travel first-class and pay as you go.
And, at least, my father left no debts.
He left my dear mother, however, and his assets were represented
by me, an expensive Junior at Newbridge. And as none of the family
counting-rooms and cotton-mills seemed to open the door for me--so
degenerate a scion of a money-making race as to have already an artist
behind him--I was glad to enter the wide portal of Cousin Lawrence’s
tobacco manufactory.
Here, as in most successful trades, you were, all but the very
heir-presumptive, put through a regular mill. First, a year or two in
the factory, just to get used to the sneezing; and then you took to
the road; and after a few years of this had thoroughly taught you the
retail trade, you were promoted to be a gentleman and hob-nob with the
planters in Cuba, and ride over their landed estates.
I got through the factory well enough; but the road, as you may fancy,
was a trial in prospect. When my time came (being then, as you will
see, something of a snob) I was careful to choose the wildest circuit,
most remote from Boston and from Boston ways. The extreme West--Denver,
Kansas City, Omaha--was out of the question; even the South--New
Orleans, Charleston, Florida particularly--was unsafe. Indiana was
barbarous enough, but went with Ohio and Michigan; and I finally
chose what was called the Tennessee Circuit, which included all the
country west of the Alleghanies, from the Ohio River to the Gulf
States. Louisville belonged to my Cincinnati colleague, but the rest of
Kentucky and Tennessee, from the Cumberland and Great Smoky Mountains
to the hills of Alabama and the plains of Memphis, were mine.
And by no means uninteresting I found it. I travelled, you must know,
in snuff; and the Southern mountains, with the headwaters of the
Western rivers, Cumberland, Alabama, Tennessee, are the country of the
snuff-taker in America.
The civilization, the picturesqueness of our country lies always
between the mountains and the seaboard. Trace the Appalachian summits
from their first uprearing at Tracadiegash or Gaspé, to that last
laurel-hill near Tupelo in Mississippi--on the left of you lies
history, character, local identity; on the right that great common
place, that vast central prairie, lying stolidly spread out between the
Rockies and the Blue Ridge, producing food. Heaven keep us above that
central plain, one would say, and from the men and moods and motives
that it breeds--but that out of it, in the very unidentified middle of
it, the Lord upreared a Lincoln.
However, my beat lay so well to the south of it, lurked so far up in
the mountain alleyways and southern river-cañons, that I found much
to study and more to see. The railway did little more than take me
to the field of labor; the saddle or the wagon or the country stage
must do the rest. My first trip was to the east of my dominions; my
headquarters were at Knoxville, and from there I rode through some
thousand miles of mountain and of cove; and different enough and remote
enough it was from all that I had known before, and from all that
might know me or look askance upon a travelling-merchant selling snuff
by sample. But this was but a breather, as it were; and on my second
journey I was ordered to replace my predecessor, Jerry Sullivan, at his
headquarters in Chattanooga, and take entire charge of that country.
Already I had contracted a prejudice for the slow and unconventional
modes of travelling; and after I had seen Jerry Sullivan, a genial
Irishman, and had formal delivery of his office, and he had gone back
with evident delight to his beloved New York, and I had sat there
alone a day or two, I thought that I would open out the business
westward. And looking at the map, it occurred to me that the Tennessee
River was the natural avenue to my domains in that direction. Luckily,
I made the acquaintance of a young land-prospector, with romantic
instincts like my own; and the second evening after this idea came
to me he and I were seated in a wooden dug-out canoe, my parcels of
samples and his instruments in the waist of the boat, drifting swiftly
down the brown stream at sunset, under the lofty shadow of the Lookout
Mountain.
The stream was shallow, and its waters so opaque that six inches
looked like six fathoms, and it happened not rarely that we ran upon a
sand-bar in full mid-stream; but a hard shove at the pole would send
us off, usually sideways, careening in the swirl. When we were not
aground our time was rapid--some six or seven miles an hour, with the
current, and the pole, and paddle. The mountains came close around us,
and the shores contracted; and pretty soon the railway took a plunge
into a tunnel and disappeared. No house nor light was in sight when
the moon came out. For some twenty miles or more we swung down the
swift stream silently, in a country that seemed quite unsettled. And
as the night made it still harder to make out the deeper places, it is
not surprising that after one long, gradual grate upon a mid-channel
sand-bank, we settled in a bed that all our efforts were insufficient
to dislodge us from. And Arthur Coe, my companion, by way of making
the best night of it possible, and the moon and the mild May weather
falling in, drew out a banjo from his traps in the bow and made
melodies not unpleasant to a man who lay silent in the stern, looking
at the stars and smoking his pipe.
A fine range of trees lined the opposite shore and, beyond, the forest
rolled up in mountain-shoulders to the sky; but not a sign of human
life was visible. So that we both started when, at the end of some
negro melody, the refrain was taken up by a lusty chorus, and rang far
out over the murmuring Tennessee. And in a few moments a large gum
canoe filled with joyous darkies came to us from the farther shore;
and finding our trouble, nothing would do but they must pull us
ashore and we spend the night with “Massa.” Which we did, and a kind
and queer old pair of gentry we found them, him and his wife, living
alone with a dozen of old freed slaves, some dozen miles from anywhere.
The old, wide, one-story plantation house stood in a clearing facing
the river (which used to be much more of a river, with many steamers
and cotton-craft, “befo’ de wo’”); and we had quite a concert before
we went to bed, with all the cigars and other accompaniment that we
needed. There were no young people in the house, only old massa and
missus and the old slaves; and we heard some story of death in battle
from the latter, as we all sang a hymn together before we went to bed,
and took one final glass of whiskey; and even the negroes were allowed
a taste of something, for wetting their whistles they had blown so well.
Thus it was, almost every night; and the long days were spent in
drifting down the river; and even Coe was in no hurry to get to the
place where he was to survey his railway or prospect his town; and
either the people were so lonely, or their good will was so great,
that they gave orders for snuff in a way that was surprising. Only
one thing struck us--the absence of young people; not only of young
men, but of girls. Coe said he thought the people were too old to have
any children; but what had become of the children they should have had
twenty years ago? “War-time,” said Coe, as if that explained it.
So we got down into Georgia, and then into Northern Alabama; and the
river wound so that we were two weeks on the way. Coe was to prospect
near a town called Florence, or Tuscumbia; places that then we never
had heard of.
That day, at dawn, we ran on Muscle Shoals. Fresh from a night under
the wild-grape vines, blossoming fragrantly, with a sweetness troubling
to the spirit, acrid, whereunder we had slept like one drugged with
wine--we had got into our canoe at sunrise or before, and pushed out
into the stream. It lay broad and still and shimmering--so broad that
we ought to have noticed its two or three miles of surface could scarce
cover but three or four inches of depth. But our eyelids were heavy
with the wild grape--as if its breath had been some soul phantasm of
what was to be its fruit--and so we paddled dreamily to the midstream
and ran aground.
“I say!” said Coe. But there was nothing to be said, and there we hung,
two miles from either shore, and the sun rose full up stream, and
gilded us.
In all that inland lake was but a hand’s-depth of water, flowing swift
and softly over sand and shells. We took to our poles; hard choosing
it would be which way lay deepest; and, one at either end, “Now then!”
from Coe; and we moved, or didn’t move, or for the most part spun
around upon the grinding shells, and Coe fell out of the boat and
splashed shallowly upon his back upon the sand.
So all that day we labored; and the sun grew hot, so that Coe at noon
sought wading for the shore to some shelter in the wild grapes; but
that, half a stone’s-throw from the white clay bank ran swiftly some
two fathoms deep of river Tennessee. So he came back and swore, and I
laughed; and we set at it again. Meantime the slow, deep-laden scows,
each with an appetizing tent for shade, spun downward close under that
vine-shaded bank and jeered at us.
Late in the afternoon, raw-handed from the poles and raw in visage
from a straight-down sun, we got away. Still breathless, burning, we
too swung down the smooth stream, narrower, though still a half-mile
wide; here it ran in curves by bold cliff-points castellated into
white, vine-garlanded turrets of the strangely worn and carven
limestone. No Rhine could be so beautiful; for here all was unprofaned,
silent, houseless, lined by neither road nor rail.
The sun was nearly setting, and Coe’s soul turned to beauty, and again
he began to marvel at the want of womankind. No country was visible
behind the river-banks; and he stood up and studied carefully the shore
through his field-glass.
“I think this is the spot,” he said.
“Tuscumbia?” said I. But Coe was rapt in study of the river-bank.
“Do you see her?” said I, louder.
Suddenly Coe turned to me in some excitement. “Paddle hard--I think
it’s the place.” And seizing his bow paddle he drove it into the
stream so deep that had I not steadied the craft she had rolled over.
Englishmen can never get used to inanimate objects; deft is not their
word.
So we rounded, always approaching the shore, a bold promontory; in four
successive terraces three hundred feet of ranged limestone towers rose
loftily, adorned with moss, and vines, and myrtle-ivy, their bases
veiled in a grand row of gum-trees lining the shore. No Rheinstein ever
was finer, and as we turned one point, a beautiful rich-foliaged ravine
came down to meet us, widening at the river to a little park of green
and wild flowers, walled on both sides by the castled cliffs; in the
centre the most unsullied spring I have ever seen. And all about, no
sign of man; no house, or smoke, or road, or track, or trail.
“This is it,” said Coe again, as the canoe grated softly on the
dazzling sand, and he prepared to leap ashore.
“What,” said I, “Tuscumbia?” For there is a legend of this place; and
of Tuscumbia, the great chieftain, and the Indian maiden, and their
trysting by the silent spring.
“No,” said he; “Sheffield. That gorge is the only easy grade to the
river for many miles. Through it we shall put our railroad, and this
flat will do for terminal facilities--eh!” and he leaped clumsily; for
the loud report of a shot-gun broke the air and the charge whisked
almost about our ears, and flashed a hundred yards behind us in the
Tennessee.
With one accord we ran up the ravine. There was no path, and the heavy
vines and briers twined about our legs, and the tree-trunks of the
Middle Ages still lay greenly, but when we sought to clamber over them,
collapsed and let us to their punky middles.
Suddenly, as we rounded a bend between two gloomy ravages of rock,
there stood before us a young girl, in the green light--her hair as
black as I had ever seen, with such a face of white and rose! I stared
at her helplessly; Coe, I think, cowered behind me. She looked at us
inquiringly a moment; and then, as we neither spoke, turned up the side
of the ravine, with her fowling-piece, and vanished by some way unknown
to us. I would have followed her, I think, but Coe held me back by the
coat-tails.
“Don’t,” said he. “She’s quite welcome to a shot, I am sure.”
2.
NEVERTHELESS, after this one moment of chivalrous impulse,
Coe set up his levelling-machine and began taking the gradients of the
ravine up which this girl had gone. I have never known an Englishman
upon whose heart you could make any impression until his stomach was
provided for. Meantime I wandered on, admiring the red hibiscus blossom
and liana vine that veiled the gorge in tropical luxuriance up to the
myrtles of the limestone. Finally I emerged upon the plateau above the
river, and found myself in a glorious, green, flowing prairie, many
miles broad and apparently as long as the brown Tennessee that lay hid
behind me. In the midst of it one iron-furnace was already in blast.
The inn (the International Hotel) at Tuscumbia was very noisy. I was
struck by this when I went to my room to dress for supper; I had only
been able to get one room for myself and Coe; there were two beds in
it, but only one wash-stand. Through the walls, which were very thin,
I could hear at least four distinct feminine voices on the one side,
and several upon the other. There were also some across the hall that
seemed to be engaged in the same conversation; and that the speakers
were young ladies I had fleeting but satisfactory evidence when I
opened my door to set out my water-jug for a further supply.
“Look here, young man,” said the landlord to me, when I again
endeavored to get another room for Coe. “How many rooms do you reckon
this yer house’ll hold, with fifty-seven guests all wantin’ em?”
“Fifty-seven!” said I. The International Hotel was a small two-story
wooden house with a portico. “How many can the hotel accommodate?”
“Thirty in winter,” said the landlord. “In summer sixty to seventy.”