to do the driving, taking in a wild section, lying far above and north
of the Little Tennessee; we four city boys were to occupy drive-ways,
and watch for, halt, and slay every deer that passed. Lester volunteered
to show me to my proposed stand. He proved himself to be an intelligent
and educated fellow, but of taciturn disposition. I succeeded in
starting him, however, and it was this way he talked:
“November is the prime time for hunting deer, but this month is very
good. You see, the deer, owing to the thinness of hair, are red in the
summer. As the weather gets cooler, their hair grows longer, and their
color gets blue. If you shoot a deer in the deep water before the middle
of October, he’s liable to sink, and you lose him.”
“Why is that?”
“His hair is what buoys him up. He’d sink like a stone, in the summer or
early fall.”
“Where are the most deer killed?”
“On the river. Sometimes they steer straight for the water. If the day
is hot, they’re sure to get there in a short time. On cool days, they’ll
sometimes race the hounds from morning till night; and then, as a last
hope, with the pack on their heels, they’ll break for the river.
“Do the hounds follow by the ground scent?”
“No. The best hounds leap along snuffing at the bushes that the deer has
brushed against.”
“When, where, and on what do they feed?”
“Here, I know, where the deer have become timid on account of so much
driving, they doze in the day-time, and feed at night. The heavy woods
along the upper streams afford excellent coverts for their day dreams.
In summer picking is plenty; in winter they brouse on the scanty grass,
the diminished mast, and the green but poisonous ivy.”
“Poisonous ivy?”
“Yes. It is singular, but it has no effect on them. It will kill
everything else. Why, one buck, killed here several winters since, had
been living on ivy, and every dog that fed on his entrails was taken
with the blind staggers and nearly died.”
“What’s a slink?”
“A year-old deer. When past a year old, the male deer is called a
spike-buck. It is said that, with every year, a prong is added to their
antlers, but it’s a mistake. I never saw one with more than six prongs;
and in these mountains there’s a certain deer, with short legs, known as
the ‘duck-legged buck,’ that has been seen for the last fifteen years,
and in some unaccountable manner, on every drive he has escaped. Now he
has only six prongs.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“Yes; once five years ago, and again last fall.”
“Did you ever hear of a stone being found in a deer?”
“Yes, the mad stone. People believe it will cure snake-bite and
hydrophobia. Here’s one. It was found in the paunch of a white deer that
I shot this fall was a year ago; and, mind you, the deer with a
mad-stone in him is twice as hard to kill as one of the ordinary kind.”
“A fact?”
“Yes. Five bullets were put in the buck that carried this.”
The stone he showed was smooth and red, as large as a man’s thumb, and
with one flat, white side. The peculiar properties attributed to it are,
in all probability, visionary. The idea of its being a life preserver
for the deer which carries it, savors of superstition.
“Now,” said Lester, coming to a halt on the ridge; “here’s your stand.
You must watch till you hear the dogs drop into that hollow, or cross
the ridge above you. In such case, the deer has taken another drive-way,
and it’s no use for you to wait any longer. Start on the minute, as fast
as you can go it, down this ridge a quarter of a mile to a big, blasted
chestnut; then turn sharp to the right, cross the hollow and follow
another leading ridge till you strike the river. You know where the Long
rock is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, make right for it, and stand there.”
He disappeared with his hounds, leaving me alone in a wooded, level
expanse. It was then full morning, and the ground was well checkered
with light and shadow. My seat was a mossy rock at the base of a beech
tree, and with breech-loading shot-gun, cocked, and lying across my
knees, I kept my eyes fixed on the depths of forest, and waited for the
bark which would announce the opening of the chase.
Soon it came,--a loud, deep baying, floating, as it seemed, from a long
distance, across steeps, over the trees, and gathering in volume. One of
the deep-mouthed hounds had evidently snuffed something satisfactory in
the dewy grasses or on the undergrowth. His baying had been reinforced
by several pairs of lungs, and the drive was under full head-way. Now it
would be faint, telling of a ravine, rhododendrons, and trees with low
umbrageous branches; then would come a full burst of melody, as the
noses of the pack gained the summit of a ridge, or swept through an open
forest. But, all in all, it grew louder. It was still far above me, on
the spurs of the Smokies, and seemed bearing across the long ridge on
which I rested. Then again it turned, and, in all its glorious strength,
swept below me, through the deep hollow. My excitement reached its
climax just then, for suddenly there was a discord in the music, and
every hound was yelping like mad.
“Yip, yip, yip!” they rang out.
The quick barks told a new story,--the hounds had sighted the game, and,
for the moment, were close on its haunches. It was manifest that the
drive-way I was on was not to be taken. The guide’s instructions for
seeking the river were now to be followed. Starting on a quick pace
through the woods, I traveled as directed, and was soon on the leading
ridge. One rifle shot startled the forest as I ran; and, in the evening,
at Daniel Lester’s pleasant fireside, by the Little Tennessee, Kenswick
told the following story:
Jake Rose had selected for him an excellent stand; admonished him to
keep his eyes peeled, his gun cocked, and not take the “buck-ague” if a
deer shot by him. He heard the chorus, and watched and panted. Suddenly,
under the branches of the wood, appeared a big, blue buck, making long
leaps toward him. Just as he was about to pass within 20 steps, Kenswick
jumped out from behind his tree, and yelled like a Cherokee. The buck
stopped, as though turned to stone, in his tracks, and gazed in
amazement at the noisy Kenswick, who already had his gun at his
shoulder. He tried to draw a bead, but his hands shook so, that he
could not cover the animal by a foot. The buck snuffed the air, made a
leap, and was away as Kenswick, in utter despair, pulled the trigger,
and sent a ball from his Remington whistling through the oak leaves.
“Why!” he exclaimed, in the excitement of telling it, “look at my arm.”
He held it out as steady as a man taking sight in a duel. “Isn’t that
steady? Now why the devil couldn’t I hold it that way then?”
“Buck ague,” answered Ben Lester, quietly; and then the old and young
hunters, around that fireside, laughed uproariously.
The barking of the hounds, like my pace, stopped for a moment at the
report of Kenswick’s gun. Ten minutes after, I was on the Long rock on
the bank of the Little Tennessee. This stand merits a description, for
from it probably more deer have been killed than at any other single
point in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It is at the Narrows.
Here, in the narrowest channel of its course, from below where it begins
to merit the name of a river, this stream, of an average width of 150
yards, pours the whole drainage of the counties of Swain, Jackson,
Macon, one-half of Graham and a small portion of Northern Georgia,
between banks eighty-five feet apart. The waters are those of the rivers
Tuckasege, Cullasaja, Nantihala, Ocona Lufta, and the large creeks Soco,
Scott’s, Caney Fork, Stecoah, Forney, and Hazel, heading in the
cross-chains of the Balsam, Cowee, Nantihala, and Valley River
mountains, and on the southern slope of the Great Smoky.
For 100 yards the stream shoots along like a mill-race. Brown boulders,
the size of horses, coaches and cabins, are piled at the edges of the
current. At the entrance to the Narrows, a line of rocks forms a broken
fall of several feet. Over it the waters are white, and the trees wet
with spray. Above its roar, no rifle shot, or hound’s bay can be heard a
few feet away. Long rock is a dark boulder projecting into the river,
at its very narrowest point, 100 yards below, and in full sight of the
white rapids. The hunter leaves the road, jumps and clambers over a
succession of immense boulders, and at length seats himself on Long
rock. The water, close at its edge, is forty feet deep. A steep
mountain, following the river round every bend, showing square, mossed
rocks under the heavy autumn-tinted forests on its front, rises close
along the river’s opposite edge. A few sand-bars, below the stand, reach
out from the mountain’s foot. There is one narrow band of sandy bank
directly opposite the stand. Projecting boulders shield it from the rush
of waters. On this sandy bank the deer, if frightened when swimming down
mid-stream, will climb out, affording just the shot desired by the
hunter. If not frightened, they will pass on to the smooth-water
sand-bars below, and then, leaving the water, disappear up the mountain.
The drive-way, for which Long rock is a stand, comes down to the river a
few yards above the fall described. There are no rapids on the
Tennessee, but what can be swum by the deer. In many instances, to cool
his body and baffle the hounds, he keeps the center of the stream for a
mile or more, sometimes stopping in the water for hours before resuming
his course. The hounds, when the deer is in sight, follow him in the
water, and generally succeed in drowning him before he reaches the bank.
A deer in the water can be easily managed, but, as seen by the following
anecdote, there is considerable danger in venturing in after one. Still
living in the Smoky Mountain section of the Tennessee, is an old hunter,
by name, Brit Mayner. In the days when his limbs were more supple, he
was brave, even to foolhardiness, and, on one occasion, as told by a
participant in the hunt, he came near losing his life. A deer had been
run to the river, and in mid-stream was surrounded by the hounds.
Through the great strength and endurance of the deer, the hounds were
kept in the water until Mayner, becoming impatient, decided to settle
the fight by his own hand. He divested and swam out. At his first pass
at the deer, the hounds took umbrage, and fiercely attacked him. It was
deer and dogs against man. All were in earnest, and it was only by his
expertness as a swimmer that Mayner escaped being drowned.
That morning I reached the river, and covered the stand. The sun’s rays,
striking the open water, were bright and warm. Only a slight breeze was
blowing, and the frostiness of the air had disappeared. There was no
shadow over the rock; and, sweating from my rapid run, to make myself
comfortable I threw off my coat, vest and shoes.
A position on the deer stand, when one must keep his eyes on the running
water, is most tiresome, even for a few hours. The hunter on Long rock
can, however, study his surroundings without much imperiling his
reputation as a sportsman; for, unless he turned his back entirely on
the upper stream, it would be impossible for a deer to reach his point
unnoticed. The white rapids, the mountains around the distant bend, the
rich-colored wooded slopes on both sides, the sound of waves dashing
against the banks, and the swash of water among the piles of rock, has,
in all, something to make him a dreamer, and pass the hours away
uncounted.
An hour passed, and then I noticed a dark object amid the white foam of
the rapids. A moment later it was in the smooth, swift-flowing waters,
and bearing down the center of the current. My blood jumped in my veins
as I saw plainly the outline of the object. There was the nose, the
eyes, the ears, and, above all, a pair of branching antlers, making up
the blue head of what was undoubtedly a magnificent buck.
When he was within 50 yards of Long rock, I jumped to my feet, hallooed
at the top of my voice, took off my hat and waved it aloft. The buck
saw me. I dropped my hat and leveled my gun. He tried to turn and stem
the current, but it was too strong, and bore him to the sand-bank,
directly opposite my stand. What a shot he would have made in the water!
His feet touched bottom, and then his blue neck and shoulders appeared,
but not before the report of my gun rang out. True, my hand trembled,
but, with a fair bead on his head, I had made the shot. Through the
smoke, I saw him make several spasmodic efforts to draw his body out of
the water, and then, still struggling, he fell back with a splash.
As I stood there, in my stocking feet, and feeling a few inches taller,
I had no doubt that the deer was dead, but I was all at once startled by
the danger I was in of losing him. The current before the sand-bank kept
moving his body, and I saw plainly that in a few minutes it might drift
him into swifter waters, where he might sink. To lose the game, at any
hazard, was out of the question. In a twinkling, my pantaloons and shirt
were off, besides the clothes of which I had previously denuded myself,
and a second after, I had plunged head-first into the Tennessee.
The current bore me down stream like an arrow, but an accomplishment,
picked up in truant days, came in good stead, and with a few, strong
strokes, I reached and climbed out on a sand-bar, at some distance below
where I had made the plunge. As I rose to my feet, I was dumb-founded to
see an antlered head rise from behind the rocks where lay the supposed
slaughtered deer. Then the whole blue form of a buck appeared in view,
and leaped from sight, up the rocks, and under the trees on the
mountain’s steep front. The sight chilled me more than the waters of the
Tennessee. It was the very buck I had shot.
I hurried up the bank, clambered over the cold rocks, and reached the
sand-bar where my game had fallen. It was bare! I could not convince
myself of its being a dream, for there were the imprints of the hoofs. I
picked up the shattered prong of an antler. It had been cut off by a
charge of buckshot. The mystery of the fall and subsequent disappearance
was explained. My shot had hit one of his antlers and simply stunned him
for a moment. Just then a voice rang from the rocks across the river:
“Are ye taking a swim?”
“No, just cooling off,” I answered.
It was Ben Lester who spoke, and with him was Sanford and the dogs.
“Where is the deer that came this way? What luck have you had? Why aint
you here watching?” yelled Sanford.
I did not stop to answer his volley of questions, but plunged into the
river, and reached the opposite bank. Then, dressing myself, I
explained.
“Well,” said Lester, as I finished, “no more could have been expected.”
“Why?” I asked rather indignantly; for, although I fully realized that I
had proved myself a miserable shot, I did not like being accused of it
in terms like these.
“No one could have done any better,” he answered.
“No better?”
“Not a bit. It was the duck-legged buck!”
“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling like a drowning man sighting a buoy;
for here lay the shadow of an excuse for my failure.
“Of course. I saw him leave you. I’ll bet my last dollar that he has
inside of him a mad-stone as big as your fist!” Then shaking his head,
and talking half aloud to himself; “Strange, strange, strange! Fifteen
years old, and still alive!”
I did not attempt to scatter his superstition by telling that in reality
I had hit the buck, and that it was wholly due to my poor marksmanship
that he escaped. Sanford then told how he had topped a doe at his stand
and killed her,--the only game secured that day. In the afternoon the
Rose brothers brought it with our horses, as we had directed, to the
house of Daniel Lester.
Lester’s is an unpretentious, double log house, situated in the center
of a tract of cultivated hill-side land on the north or east bank of the
Little Tennessee, thirty-three miles from Charleston, North Carolina,
and three miles from the Tennessee state line. It is approached by a
good wagon-road from Charleston, or from Marysville, Tennessee, the head
of the nearest railroad. The view from the door-way is of exquisite
beauty, especially towards evening when the wine-red October sun is
sinking amid the clouds beyond the mountain summits at the far end of
the river, and pours a dying glory over the scene. Daniel Lester is a
man of prominence in the county. His is a North Carolinian hospitality,
and we will always hold in pleasant remembrance our short stay at his
humble dwelling.
The most pleasant time of the hunt is the evening of the hunt, when
darkness has fallen, all the party is within the same doors, a rousing
fire roars and leaps in the great, open chimney, and flings its light in
every face, the faucet of the cider-barrel is turned at intervals,
chestnuts are bursting on the hot hearth-stones, and after every man in
his turn has recounted his day’s experience, the oldest hunter of the
group tells his most thrilling “varmint” stories, till the flames die
down to glowing coals, and midnight proclaims the end of the day in
which we were after the antlers.
NATURAL RESOURCES.
“I’d kind o’ like to have a cot
Fixed on some sunny slope; a spot,
Five acres, more or less,
With maples, cedars, cherry-trees,
And poplars whitening in the breeze.”
[Illustration: T]hat clever humorist, Mark Twain, represents himself as
once patriotically telling the Secretary of the Treasury, that his
annual report was too dry, too statistical; that he ought to get some
jokes into it, wood cuts, at least; people read the almanac for the fun,
etc. The humorist’s idea is not new. It was unintentionally put into
practice by a much respected old geographer, who wrote the statistical
treatise on the earth’s surface, which occupied many long hours of our
pleasure loving youth, in obstinate efforts at memorizing. That
venerable book contained, with wood cuts and all, probably the most
successful joke in school literature. We remember this sentence: “The
staple productions of North Carolina are tar, pitch, resin, and
turpentine.” The picture represented a gloomy forest, a rude still, and
a group of dirty men. A crowd of later writers of school geographies
have thought this canard on a great state, with varied industries, too
good to be lost, but remembering that every ounce of fiction, to be
palatable, must contain a drachm of truth, added lumber. It has now been
stereotyped, “pitch, tar, turpentine, and lumber.” If anyone has been
fooled by the books of his youth, six hours travel from the coast
westward, during which he will see broad fields of corn and plantations
of cotton and tobacco, will lead him to an appreciation of the “tar-heel
joke.” North Carolina does lead all the states in the production of
resin and turpentine, but that industry does not employ one-thirtieth of
her active capital, nor constitute one-fifteenth of her gross
production. Her lumber resources constitute a real and important source
of wealth and will receive some attention in this sketch.
The state of North Carolina could probably get along without the rest of
the world more comfortably than any territory of equal size in the
western hemisphere. With its eastern border dipping into the tropical
gulf stream and its western border projecting more than a mile skyward,
the state possesses a climate almost continental in its range. An old
poet describing the spread-eagle breadth of his country said that it
stretched
“From Maine’s dark pines and crags of snow
To where Magnolian breezes blow.”
From a climatical and botanical point of view North Carolina is as large
as the country described by the poet’s couplet. But it is not the whole
state we propose to discuss. That subject is too long for the prescribed
brevity of our paper, which will permit us to do but partial justice to
the particular section included in the scope of this volume. We begin
with agriculture, the most varied of the three divisions of productive
industry.
The line of 800 feet altitude follows the general direction of the Blue
Ridge, and crosses the counties of Gaston, Lincoln, Catawba, Iredell,
Davie, Forsyth, and Stokes. The best cotton lands of the State lie east
of this line, but cotton is successfully raised in all the counties we
have named. There was a time when planters chose cotton lands with the
greatest regard for soil and climate, but experience has greatly
increased the cotton producing area, which, by the aid of improved
fertilizers, may be still further enlarged. The crop, without the aid of
artificial stimulants, can not be profitably raised in North Carolina
above the line of 800 feet altitude. It has been cultivated for more
than home consumption only within the last few years. Most planters have
realized profitable returns, though the probabilities are that it is not
the most remunerative crop.
Present tendencies indicate that tobacco will become the chief staple
agricultural product of Western North Carolina. The value of a crop,
especially where transportation is high, does not depend so much on the
number of pounds as on the price of each pound. This is why North
Carolina has the advantage of all other tobacco producing states. It can
easily be shown that the piedmont and transmontane table lands have
advantages over the other sections of the state in which they are
included. While the crop of Ohio, which produces a heavy dark leaf,
weighs more than double the crop of North Carolina, yet where estimates
are made upon the basis of market value the latter state will be found
to stand first. The heavy leaves of dark soils contain a large
percentage of nitrogen and are charged with nicotine, rendering them
unpleasant to the taste and smell, and injurious to the health. Not only
is the bright yellow leaf of the Southern Alleghanies singularly free of
these unpleasant and unhealthful properties, but the golden beauty of
its color gives it a value far above any American tobacco. “It is an
undeniable fact,” says Colonel Cameron in his _Sketch_, “that North
Carolina is the producer of tobacco, unequalled even in Virginia; and
yet, owing to the course trade has taken, she is deprived of her due
credit both in quality and quantity. Until within a few years, when she
has built up some interior markets, Virginia had absorbed her fame as
well as her products.”
It is the experience of planters, that a soil composed of sand mixed
with clay and gravel, is most favorable to the production of the gold
leaf. The conditions of climate are: cool nights, copious rainfall in
summer, and a dry September. These climatic conditions are more
perfectly filled in Western North Carolina than anywhere in the country.
So far as relates to soil, there are portions of every county, with the
possible exception of Watauga, which is too elevated, admirably adapted
to the crop. We will briefly speak of localities, beginning with the
piedmont belt, which consists of an irregular plain, sloping from the
foot of the Blue Ridge toward the southeast. The surface is undulating
and well drained, but even and easily cultivated; except where the South
mountain chain, and its projecting spurs, have made precipitous slopes.
The prevailing timber is yellow pine, post oak, and hickory, and in the
valleys and on the foot-hills, poplar, white oak, elm, and other
hardwoods abound. Large areas are yet in native forest, and smaller
tracts are covered with what is known as old field growth--scrub oak and
pines. There is too much of that desolation called “old field” to make
the landscape attractive to the tourist. Any who are interested in
agriculture, and those departments of business based upon it, should
survey with care the piedmont belt of counties.