is a fortunate thing for the hunters obliged to break through them
(sometimes for hundreds of yards), that they are singularly free from
briers. While the berries are ripe in July in the valleys, these are
green, and it is not until September and October that they become
mature. The bears grow fat in such gardens. Peruvian berries are a great
delicacy for them. That day, on the Spruce Ridge, Wid Medford called my
attention to a small tree of this kind, no more than four inches through
at the base, with branches broken on its top about 15 feet from the
ground. Deep scratches of an animal’s claws were visible in the bark. It
had been climbed by a bear a month since; and a good-sized bear at that,
judging from the distance he had reached from where his claws had left
their imprint to the highest broken branch. The wonder was how so heavy
an animal had climbed a tree so slender.
In this connection, I had with the old hunter an interesting talk
containing considerable information concerning the habits of the black
bear. Whatever Wid Medford says on natural history can be accepted as
truth gained by him through long years of experience, close observation,
retained by a good memory, and imparted, as such matters would be,
without any incentive for exaggeration. His quaint vernacular being the
most fitting medium for the conveyance of the sense of his remarks, it
is not necessary to clothe it in the king’s English.
“Wid,” I asked, “do bears sleep all winter?”
“Thet calls fer more o’ an answer than a shake or nod o’ the head. Bears
go inter winter quarters ’tween Christmas an’ New Ye’r. The ole he bats
fast his eyes an’ never shuffles out till about the fust o’ May. The
bearing she has cubs in Feb’ry, an’ then she comes out fer water an’
goes back till April fust, when she mosies out fer good.”
“What are their winter quarters?”
“Caves, holler trees, or bray-sheaps cut by them and piled high ’ginst a
log. When they git it high nuff, they dig a tunnel from the furder side
o’ the log, an’ then crawl through an’ under the brashe.”
“Do they quarter together?”
“No, sar’ee; every one alone.”
“What is their condition when they come out?”
“Fat as seals.”
“That would be the best time to kill them, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but you’d hev to be quick about it.”
“Why?”
“In jist a few days they grow ez lean ez a two-acre farmyer’s hoss,
arter corn hez been a dollar an’ a half a bushel fer three month, an’
roughness can’t be got fer love or money. Jist figger to yerself the
weight of an animal under sich sarcumstances. The fust thing they eat is
grasses, weeds, an’ green stuff fer a physic, an’ hit has a powerful
effec’ on runnin’ ’em down to skin an’ bone. They’re mighty
tender-footed tho’ when the daylight fust hits ’em sq’ar in the eyes,
an’ hit don’t take long fer the dogs ter git ’em ter stan’ an’ fight.”
“How are their hides in April and May?”
“Fine; the ha’r is thick, long, an’ black; but they soon begin ter shed,
an’ hit’s not till cold weather agin thet they make fit skins fer
tannin’.”
“What do they sell at?”
“Three dollars is a fa’r price fer a prime hide.”
It is a fact worth mentioning, that these same hides are sold at $10,
and even as high as $15 in the cities.
“Now,” I inquired with considerable interest, “will a black bear attack
a man?”
“Hit ’pends on sarcumstances. He wouldn’t tech the illest human, ’les he
war cornered an’ hed to fight his way out, or he war wounded, or hit war
an ole she with cubs. In sich cases, look out, I say! I memorize one
time thet I war in a tight box. Hit war down on Pigeon, whar the laurel
is too thick fer a covey o’ patridges ter riz from. Thar war one
straight trail an’ I war in it. My gun war empty. I heered the dogs
a-comin’ an’ knowed without axin’ thet the bar war afore ’em. I never
hed no objections ter meetin’ a varmint in a squar, stan’-up fight,--his
nails agin my knife, ye know; so without wunct thinkin’ on gittin’
outer the way, I retched fer my sticker. The tarnal thing war gone, an’
thar war me without a weepin’ big enuff to skin a boomer. I run along
lookin’ at the laurel on both sides, but thar warn’t a place in it fer a
man ter git even one leg in. Ticklish? You’re sound thar! I didn’t know
what the devil ter do, an’ I got all in a sweat, an’ drawin’ nigher,
nigher, up the windin’ trail I heerd the varmint comin’. Wal, I drapped
on my elbows an’ knees squar across the narrer path, so narrer thet I
hed ter hump myself up. I kinder squinted out one side, to see the
percession, ye know. Hit cum: a big monster brute, with a loose tongue
hangin’ out, an’ red eyes. He war trottin’ like a stage-hoss. He never
stopped, even to sniff me, but puttin’ his paws on my back, as tho’ I
war a log, he jist leaped over me an’ war out o’ sight in a jerk. The
dogs war clus on his heels, a snappin’ away, an’ every one o’ ’em jumped
over me as kerless like as him, an’ raced along without ever stoppin’
ter lick ther master’s han’.”
“Do you like hunting?” I asked, as he finished.
“Good law!”
That was his sole answer, but with the astounded look on his face, it
expressed everything.
“Wid, your life has been one long, rough experience. If you had it to
live over again, knowing as much as you do now, how would you live?”
As though the question was one he had thought over again and again,
without hesitating a moment, he laid his hand on my shoulder and said:
“I’d git me a neat woman, an’ go to the wildest kentry in creation, an’
hunt from the day I was big nuff to tote a rifle-gun, ontil ole age an’
roomaticks fastened on me.”
Just after shooting the wild turkey we prepared to separate. The hounds
were all leashed with ropes and fresh bark straps. Four of the hunters
held them in check. This was done to prevent them starting on the track
of a wild cat or wolf. The Judyculla drive was the first one to be
undertaken. It is a wild, tumbled forest of balsams, matted laurels and
briers, on the south slope of the Spruce Ridge. When a bear is started
in the valleys, or on the slopes above it, he always climbs the
mountain, crossing through one of its lowest gaps, and then plunges down
the rugged heights into the wilderness lying on the opposite side.
The stands for the Judyculla drive are on the backbone between the
Spruce Ridge and the Great Divide. Through some one of them Bruin always
passes on his way to the waters of Richland creek. The drivers with
fourteen dogs now descended the ridge, and four of us, designated as
standers, with three dogs, entered the forest of balsams. The three dogs
were to be held in check by one of the standers, and only to be loosened
to take up the fresh trail when Bruin should cross, as he might, through
one of the mountain gaps. At fifteen steps one seems to be in the heart
of the woods. The light, so strongly shed on the open meadows beyond the
outskirts, is lost; the thickly set trees intercept it and one’s sight
from detecting that an open expanse lies so near.
The transition from the broad daylight of the meadows to the darkness of
the fir forests is not always as sudden. The approach from the Cold
Spring mountain side is entirely different. For the first few square
rods the trees--straight, beautiful evergreens--are set widely apart. A
green, closely-cut sward, soft for the foot, covers the rounded mountain
side. The few rocks lying here are so green and thick-grown with moss
and lichens that they appear like artificial mounds. Over all broods a
slumberous silence, unbroken but for the march of the forces of the
storm, the tinkling bells of lost cattle, the voice of an occasional
hunter, the singing of the mountain boomer, or the howl of wolves. It
seems like a vast cemetery.
Although in December, a luxuriant greenness mantled everything, except
where beds of ferns had found root and then faded with the approach of
autumn, or the yellow leaves of the few scattered hard wood trees lay
under foot. The rich, black soil was well grown with that species of
grass that dies during the summer and springs up heavy and green in the
fall. Mosses, with stems and leaves like diminutive ferns, covered every
ledge of rock and crag, and formed for the trail a carpet soft and
springy. This trail is as crooked as a rail fence, and as hard to follow
as it would be to follow closely the convolutions of a rail fence, where
every corner had been used as a receptacle for gathered rocks, and left
for nature to plant with the hazel and blackberry. It was hard enough to
crawl up and down the moss-mantled rocks and cliffs, and over or under
an occasional giant balsam that, yellow with age, had fallen from its
own feebleness; but, along the narrow backbone approaching the Great
Divide, a recent hurricane had spread such devastation in its path as to
render walking many times more difficult.
For two miles, along this sharp ridge, nearly every other tree had been
whirled by the storm from its footing. They not only covered the path
with their trunks bristling with straight branches; but, instead of
being cut off short, the wind had torn them up by the roots, lifting
thereby all the soil from the black rocks, and leaving great holes for
us to descend into, cross and then ascend it was a continual crawl and
climb for this distance.
There were only three stands, and Wid and I, with the three dogs,
occupied one of these. It was a rather low dip in the ridge. We seated
ourselves on a pile of rocks, upholstered with mosses, making an easy
and luxurious couch. A gentle hollow sloped down toward where lay the
tangles of the Judyculla drive. A dense, black forest surrounded us.
Where the hollow reached the center line of the ridge it sunk down on
the other side rather abruptly toward the Richland. This was the
wildest front of the mountain. At one point near the stand an observer
can look down into what is called the Gulfs. The name is appropriate. It
is an abyss as black as night. Its depth is fully 2,000, possibly 2,500
feet. No stream can be seen. It is one great, impenetrable wilderness.
The bear-hunters are the only men familiar with these headwaters of the
Richland. At the foot of the steep, funereal wall lies one spot known as
Hell’s Half-acre. Did you ever notice, in places along the bank of a
wide woodland river, after a spring flood, the great piles of huge
drift-logs, sometimes covering an entire field, and heaped as high as a
house? Hell’s Half-acre is like one of these fields. It is wind and
time, however, which bring the trees, loosened from their hold on the
dizzy heights and craggy slopes, thundering down into this pit.
The “Chimbleys and Shinies,” as called by the mountaineers, form another
feature of the region of the Gulfs. The former are walls of rock, either
bare or overgrown with wild vines and ivy. They take their name from
their resemblance to chimneys as the fogs curl up their faces and away
from their tops. The Shinies are sloping ledges of rock, bare like the
Chimneys, or covered with great thick plats of shrubs, like the
poisonous hemlock, the rhododendron, and kalmia. Water usually trickles
over their faces. In winter it freezes, making surfaces that, seen from
a distance, dazzle the eye.
The trees began to drip as we sat there, and the air grew warm. With
this warmth a little life was awakened in the sober and melancholy
forest. A few snow-birds twittered in the balsams; the malicious
blue-jay screamed overhead, and robins, now and then, flew through the
open space. The most curious noise of these forests is that of the
boomer, a small red squirrel, native to the Alleghanies. He haunts the
hemlock-spruce, and the firs, and unlike the gray squirrel, the presence
of man seems to make him all the more noisy. Perched, at what he
evidently deems a safe distance, amid the lugubrious evergreen foliage
of stately balsams, he sings away like the shuttle of a sewing-machine.
The unfamiliar traveler would insist that it was a bird thus rendering
vocal the forest.
Wid had been silent for several minutes. Suddenly he laid his hand
softly on my knee, and without saying a word pointed to the dogs. They
lay at our feet, with ropes round their necks held by the old hunter.
Three noses were slightly elevated in the air, and the folds of six long
ears turned back. A moment they were this way, then, as a slight breeze
came to us from the south, they jumped to their feet, as though
electrified, and began whining.
“Thar’s suthin’ in the wind,” whispered Wid. “I reckon hits the music o’
the pack. Sh----! Listen!”
A minute passed, in which Wid kicked the dogs a dozen times to quiet
them, and then we heard a faint bell-like tinkle. The likening of the
baying of a pack of hounds to the tinkling of bells is as true in fact
as it is beautiful in simile. There is every intonation of bells of all
descriptions, changing with distance and location. It was a mellow,
golden chiming at the beginning; then it grew stronger, stronger, until
it swung through the air like the deep resonant tones of church bells.
Did you ever hear it sweeping up a mountain side? It would light with
animation the eyes of a man who had never pulled a trigger; but how
about the hunter who hears it? He feels all the inspiration of the
music, but mingled with it are thoughts of a practical nature, and a
sportsman’s kindling ardor to see the “varmint” that rings the bells.
It steadily grew louder, coming with every echo right up the wooded
slope.
“They’re on the trail now, shore,” remarked Wid, “an hit-’ll keep the
bar hoppin’ ter climb this ’ere mounting without whoppin’ some o’ ’em
off. I reckon I’d better unlimber my gun.”
Suiting the action to the word, the old hunter laid his flintlock rifle
across his knees, and with deliberation fixed the priming anew in the
pan. As he did so, he kept talking; “Hark sharp, an’ you kin hear my
slut’s voice like a cow-bell. She’s the hound fer ye tho’. Her legs are
short, her tail stubby an’ her hide yaller, but thar’s no pearter hound
in the kentry.”
“Are they likely to wind and overtake the bear coming up the mountain?”
I asked.
“Yes, sar; a dog travels the faster comin’ up hill, but when wunst the
varmint turns ter go down hill, the pack mought ez well try ter ketch a
locomotion an’ keers. I’ve heered tell thet them things go sixty mile an
hour. Wal, a bar is trumps goin’ down hill. They don’t stop fer nuthin’.
They go down pricipises head-fust, rollin’ an’ jumpin’. Now a dog hez to
pick his way in sich places.”
We waited; the baying was bearing towards the east below us. Then it
seemed ascending. An expression of astonishment spread over Wid’s face.
“Hits cur’ous!” he exclaimed.
“What?”
“Why them dogs is racin’ like deer. Thet proves thet the bar is fur
ahead, an’ they’re close to the top o’ the ridge at Eli’s stan’. The bar
must hev crossed thar. But Good Jim! why aint he shot? Come, lets git
out o’ this.”
The three dogs tugged on ahead of us. We traveled through a windfall for
a quarter of a mile, and then came into the stand to find it vacant, and
the hounds baying on the slopes, towards the Richland. They had crossed
the gap, hounds and hunters, too; for a moment after we heard the
musical notes from a horn wound by some one in the lower wilderness. It
was wound to tell the standers to pass around the heights to the lofty
gaps between the Richland and the waters of the Pigeon.
As was afterwards related, the bear had passed through Eli’s stand, but
Eli was not there on account of his mistaking and occupying for a
drive-way a gully that ended in a precipice on either side of the ridge.
He, with the other stander, soon joined us and we pushed along the
trail, towards the summit of the Great Divide.
This mountain stands 6,425 feet above the sea, and is the loftiest of
the Balsams. Among the Cherokees it is known as Younaguska, named in
honor of an illustrious chief. Except when the king of winter, puffing
his hollow cheeks, wraps the sharp summits in the pure white mantle of
the snow, or locks them in frosted armor, the Great Divide with its
black, unbroken forests of fir, ever rises an ebon mountain. Its fronts
are gashed, on the east, south and north sides, by the headwaters of the
Pigeon, Caney Fork and Richland. For the reason of the two
last-mentioned streams springing here, the mountain is termed by some
geographers the Caney Fork or the Richland Balsam mountain.
Three distinct spurs of mountains, forming portions of the great Balsam
chain, lead away from it as from a hub. One, trending in a due west
course, splits into various connected but distinct ranges; and, after
leaping a low gap, culminates in a lofty cluster of balsam-crowned
peaks, known as the Junaluska or Plott group, seven of which are over
6,000 feet in altitude. The spur towards the north terminates in
Lickstone and its foot-hills; while the one bearing east, a long,
massive black wall, holding six pinnacles in altitude above 6,000 feet,
breaks into ranges terminating in the Cold mountain, Pisgah, and far to
the south, the Great Hogback.
From this description the reader may have some conception, however
faint, of the majesty of the Balsam range, the longest of the transverse
chains between the Blue Ridge and the Smokies, and forming with its high
valleys, numerous mountains and those lofty summits of the Great Smoky
chain towards which it trends, the culminating region of the
Alleghanies.
On the south brow of the Great Divide, only a few feet lower than the
extreme summit, lies an open square expanse of about 20 acres embosomed
in the black balsams. It has every feature peculiar to a clearing left
for nature to train into its primitive wildness, but in all its
abandonment the balsams have singularly failed to encroach upon it; and,
as though restrained by sacred lines which they dare not pass, stand
dense and sombre around its margin. Its gentle slope is covered thick
with whortleberry bushes, in this instance, contrary to the nature of
that shrub, springing from a rich, black soil. Only one small clump of
trees, near the upper edge, mars the level surface of the shrubs. It is
called the Judyculla old field, and the tradition held by the Indians is
that it is one of the footprints of Satan, as he stepped, during a
pre-historic walk, from mountain to mountain.
We were informed by mountaineers that flint arrow heads and broken
pieces of pottery have been found in this old field, showing almost
conclusively that some of the Cherokees themselves, or the nation that
built the many mounds, laid the buried stone walls and worked the
ancient mica mines, occupied it as an abiding place for years.
There are other bare spots on these mountains known as scalds, and like
this old field, situated in the heart of fir forests. They are grown
with matted ivy, poisonous hemlock and briers, but traces of the fire,
that at recent date swept them of their timber, are to be seen. In a few
years the wilderness will have reclaimed them; but the Judyculla old
field will remain, as now, a mysterious vistage, which the mutilations
of time cannot efface.
Through a dark aisle, leading from the summit of the Great Divide, we
descended to the Brier Patch gap, and here one of our number was
stationed, while the rest of us toiled up a nameless black spur, crossed
it and dropped slowly down to Grassy gap. It was past noon, and while we
listened to the low baying of the hounds in the depths, we munched at a
snack of corn bread and boiled corned beef. In the meantime, Wid was
examining the trail from one slope to the other. He would peer closely
into every clump of briers, pulling them apart with his hands, and bend
so low over the grasses along the path, that the black strip in his
light colored trousers, hidden by his brown coat tails when he walked
erect, would be exposed to view.
At length he paused and called us to him. The branch of a whortleberry
bush, to which he pointed, was freshly broken off, and in the black soft
soil, close to the trail, was the visible imprint of a bears’ paw. Bruin
evidently had a long start on the pack, and having climbed up from the
gulf, had passed through Grassy gap, and descended to the Pigeon. We now
all fired our guns in order to bring the hunters and hounds as soon as
possible to us.
It was 4 o’clock, and the shadows were growing bluer, when up through
the laurel tangles, out from under the service-trees, hawthornes, and
balsams, came the pack,--one dog after another, the first five or six,
in quick succession, and the others straggling after. Wid seemed to
deliberate a moment about stopping them or not; but, as they raced by,
he cut the thongs of the three dogs which we had kept all day,
remarking: “Let ’em rip. Hits too late fer us to foller, tho’. We’ll hey
ter lay by at the Double spring till mornin’. I’d kep’ ’em in check,
too, but hit may snow to-night and thet wud spile the scent an’ hide the
track. They’ll cum up with ’im by dark, an’ then badger ’im till
daylight an’ we’uns git thar.”
“Won’t they leave the trail at dark?” was asked.
“Never! Why, I’ve knowed my ole hounds ter stick to hit fer three days
without nary bite o’ meat, ’cept what they peeled, now an’ then, from
the varmint’s flanks.”
All the hunters soon came straggling in; and as a soft, but cold evening
breeze fanned the mountain glorified with the light of fading day, and
the vales of the Pigeon grew blue-black under the heavy shadows of the
Balsam range, we filed into the cove where bubbles the Double spring,
and made preparations for supper and shelter similar to the previous
night.
As it grew darker the breeze entirely died away, leaving that dead,
awful hush that oftentimes precedes a heavy snow storm. The branches of
the mountain mahogany hung motionless over the camp. Around, the
stripped limbs of ancient beeches, and the white, dead branches of
blasted hemlocks, unswayed and noiseless, caught the bright light of the
fire. The mournful howl of the wolves from points beyond intervening
dismal defiles, now and then came through the impenetrable darkness to
our ears.
Snow began steadily falling,--that soft, flaky sort of snow, which seems
to descend without a struggle, continues for hours, and then without
warning suddenly ceases. All night it fell, sifting through our
ill-constructed shelter, burying us in its white folds and extinguishing
the fire. Notwithstanding the presence of this unwelcome visitant, we
slept soundly. Sleep generally finds an easy conquest over healthy
bodies, fatigued with a late past night of wakefulness, and an all day’s
travel through rugged mountains.
I awoke to find my legs asleep from the weight of a fellow-sleeper’s
legs crossed over them. As I sat up, leaning my elbows on the bodies of
two mountaineers packed tight against me, I saw the old hunter, on his
hands and knees in the snow, bending over a bed of coals surrounded by
snow-covered fire-logs. Some live coals, awakened by the hunter’s
breath, were glowing strong enough for me to thus descry his dark form,
and the clear features and puffed cheeks of his face. He had a struggle
before the flames sprung up and began drying the wet timbers. It was
still dark around us, but a pale, rosy light was beginning to suffuse
the sky, from which the storm-clouds had been driven.
While part of the company prepared breakfast, the rest of us picked our
way through the shoe-mouth-deep snow to the summit of Cold Spring
mountain. It was the prospect of a sunrise on mountains of snow that
called us forth. The sky was radiant with light when we reached the
desired point; but the sun was still hidden behind the symmetrical
summit of Cold mountain, the terminal peak of the snowy and shadowed
range looming across the dark, narrow valley of the upper Pigeon. Light
was pouring, through an eastern gap, upon the wide vale of the river far
to the north. In its bottom lay a silver fog. Snow-mantled mountains
embosomed it. It resembled the interior of a great porcelain bowl, with
a rim of gold appearing round it as day-light grew stronger. Fifty miles
away, with front translucent and steel-blue, stood the Black mountains.
Apparently no snow had fallen on them. Their elevated, rambling crest,
like the edge of a broken-toothed, cross-cut saw, was visible.