“Eh? What’s that?” wrinkling his narrow forehead.
“Fine weather,” I repeated.
“Can’t hear you,” shoving his chair a little nearer mine. He was
evidently deaf.
“A pleasant day, this!” I thundered.
“Damn the weather! Where you from?”
“Asheville.”
“What’s your business?
“Seeing the country.”
“Seein’ the country?” Then with a cynical curl of his lip, “Poor
business,” and he continued, whittling at his plaster cast.
I felt interested in the man. His cordial manners prompted me to fall on
his neck, but I restrained myself. Then I took up the examination.
“You’re not a native. You have a foreign air about you, you have,” I
shouted.
“You’re right.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Been living with the Osage Indians for the last twelve years.”
I thought as much. He was all Indian, and I concluded to avoid him, but
he did not intend to drop the subject so easily.
“Do you see that Osage relic?” pointing to an Indian blanket hanging on
a hook against the wall. “That’s one of the things I brought back with
me. I’m a man with a history. I can give you some points about a country
that is a country.”
He again lapsed into silence. On the invitation to procure points, I
determined to interview him.
“What were you doing among the Indians? Hunting?” I asked.
“No.”
“A trader?”
“No.”
“A dentist?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“None of your damn business!”
I felt disconcerted. Evidently, the man was a gentleman,--he objected to
being interviewed. The tack looked like a bad one; clouds a little too
electric for fine sailing. A thin-haired woman in a calico dress and
rough shoes, with a care-worn expression on her pale face, was sitting
at one end of the porch. She now spoke, in a voice inaudible to the
unapproachable:
“Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s been drinkin’. Hit allers makes
him ugly.”
“Who is he?” I whispered.
“My husband. We’ve been married a year; soon arter he cum from the
West.”
And then she sighed and looked out across the rickety fence, the roaring
waters of the Broad river, the brown mill and the few houses by it, and
then at the stony-faced mountains beyond. I sighed in sympathy.
A bare-footed black girl stuck her head out of the door and announced
that dinner was ready. Being tired and hungry, I was not backward in
answering this notice, and moved into the dining-room. On my plate,
after helping myself from everything on the table, were a chunk of fat
pork, a piece of doughy, hot, wheat bread, and some boiled green beans.
A tin cup of butter-milk was beside the mess to wash it down. Let me say
right here that this was an exceptional meal! I have been on many tramps
and rides through the Carolina mountains, but never had I met with such
a reception and such fare. They were not backward in demanding half a
dollar, the usual price asked by the mountaineer for supper, lodging and
breakfast for man and his horse.
The man in brown, as he mended my saddle bags after dinner, filled my
ears with a recital of the mysteries of Bat cave. He represented it as
the wonder of the mountains. Its gloomy depths contained chambers of
marvelous dimensions, while bats, the unholy habitants of darkness,
stuck to the walls and flitted in its precincts. He volunteered as a
guide, and as it lay on the way to Chimney Rock hotel, I mounted and
rode along with him.
By the bouldered river, before the guide’s cabin, I tied my horse, and,
by means of a foot-log, crossed to the opposite bank. It was a half-mile
walk. We waded through the soft soil of several corn-fields, pitched
almost perpendicular on the mountain side; climbed a number of rail
fences; and after a steep ascent over tree-trunks and rocks, we arrived
at the mouth of the cave. An air as cold as a winter lake breeze came
from the darkness. It chilled us through and through. We went in without
torches. There were rifts in the apex of the roof, high above, through
which sunlight poured, dimly lighting up the whole interior. It failed
most miserably to meet my expectations.
“Where are your bats, Dotson?” I asked.
“Hit’s cu’rous; I don’t see nary one.”
Dotson shaded his eyes, as he spoke, and peered down into a well-like
hole, that broke away from our feet, and whose opposite wall, rock-piled
in front, ascended straight upward till the sides closed.
“Nor do I,” I returned; “where are they?”
“Hit ’pears they aint ’ere. I ’low they been skeered out,” he drawled,
rubbing his cheek.
That was all the satisfaction I obtained in regard to bats. A little
curiosity is connected with the cave, from the fact that it is in
granite rocks. At some convulsion of the mountain’s crust, the walls of
granite were rent asunder, and then their tops, meeting again, left an
opening between them. The air in it is cold and dry, for there is no
water dripping in its interior. There is another smaller, but deeper,
cave near the one just described. Torches are needed and one must crawl
to enter it. The rocks around it are also granite.
I was on my horse again. The scenery for the next two miles is of a
sublime description. The stone portals of a collossal gateway rise
against the sky. The large mountain on the north is the Round Top. It
presents a red cracked-stone front, and resembles the venerable ruins
of a massive building, once swept by fire. Opposite to it is a line of
Titanic stone cliffs--the front of Chimney Rock mountain. A luxuriant
forest grows half way up its precipitous slope to the foot of the cliffs
of bare rock, in height over 1,000 feet. A silver thread of water can be
seen springing from the top-most edge, and falling down the bare face.
It is the highest water-fall in the mountain system. The eastern end of
the mountain projects its top forward, an abrupt headland. Its summit is
covered with trees. From the glimpses caught of it along the shaded
river, one might liken it to the bare forehead of some Cæsar, with
laurel crown, overlooking the distant lands of Rutherford county.
Around the traveler, as he rides, are beautiful wood-land landscapes. A
river, dammed with brown boulders, flows by the roadside. Where its
channel narrows, it runs deep and smooth under the birches, oaks and
pines; then at the shallows, among the rocks, it becomes a foaming
torrent. The road is on a stone causeway, high above the crooked stream.
Between the over-arching trees, glimpses of level road, yellow and
dusty, can be seen at times. In the center of the valley, that widens
out from the foot of the stone-fronted mountains, is a comfortable
farm-house, enlarged for summer boarders, and kept by General G. W.
Logan. It is the central point to view this scenic region of the
mountains. It is reached by good roads from Rutherfordton, seventeen
miles; Hendersonville, nineteen miles; Asheville, twenty-three miles;
and Shelby, the terminus of the Carolina Central railroad, forty miles
distant.
One mile from the hotel are the Pools. The stream is known as Pool
creek. It seeks its level down a steep ravine, clothed principally with
pines and oaks. Over three ledges of brown rock, whose edges still
remain abrupt, the crystal waters of the stream plunge in quick
succession, in as many thundering cascades. Where the cascades fall are
basins, or pot-holes, formed perfectly round by the whirling of the
waters. They are from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and of fabulous
depth. The lower one is the largest, and has been sounded (as any one in
the neighborhood, with straight face, will tell you) to the depth of 200
feet without striking bottom. Fifteen feet of the stock end of a giant
pine projects out of it. The beauty and wildness of the spot could not
be enhanced by a knowledge, even if true, that a depth of more than 200
feet of water lay in the lower pool.
On the edge of the ford of the river, our party halted to witness a
sunset. It was an admirable point for observation. Before us spread a
level, yellow field, forming the bottom of a beautiful, little valley.
High mountains bound this vale on north and south, while directly in
front of us, like companion sentinels, guarding the western gateway down
which the sun was to march, stand Round Top and Chimney Rock mountains.
Behind Chimney Rock, trending toward the west, arise in close
succession, a number of mountains with distinct, broken summits,--a long
palisade, fencing the gap in whose depths rushes the Broad river. In the
center of the west, stands Bear Wallow mountain, the last visible knob
of Hickory Nut gap. The sun was sinking behind the white cumuli that
capped this mountain. Streamers of golden light, like the spokes of a
celestial chariot, whose hub was the hidden sun, barred the western sky.
The clouds shone with edges of beaten gold. Their centers, with every
minute, changed to all hues imaginable. The fronts of the sentinel
mountains were somber in the shadows, while the gap was radiant with the
light pouring through it, and every pine on the top of the palisade
stood black against the glowing sky.
It was dusk a few minutes after, but the roar of the river continued;
the scents of summer filled the air; the trees bowed in luxuriant
greenness over the road; the chirping of insects made musical the
valley; the mountains rose gloomy and magnificent in the twilight.
The famous Bald mountain forms the north wall of the valley. Its sterile
face is distinctly visible from the hotel porch. Caves similar to Bat
cave are high on its front. In 1874, Bald mountain pushed itself into
prominence by shaking its eastern end with an earthquake-like rumble,
that rattled plates on pantry-shelves in the cabins of the valleys,
shook windows to pieces in their sashes, and even startled the quiet
inhabitants of Rutherfordton, 17 miles away. Since then rumblings have
occasionally been heard, and some people say they have seen smoke rising
in the atmosphere. There is an idea, wide-spread, that the mountain is
an extinct volcano. As evidence of a crater, they point to a fissure
about half a mile long, six feet wide in some places, and of unmeasured
depth. This fissure, bordered with trees, extends across the eastern end
of the peak. But the crater idea is effectually choked up by the fact
that the crack is of recent appearance. The crack widens every year,
and, as it widens, stones are dislodged from the mountain steeps. Their
thundering falls from the heights may explain the rumbling, and their
clouds of dust account for what appears to be smoke. The widening of the
crack is possibly due to the gradual upheaval of the mountain.
The region of the gap is famous for sensational stories. In 1811, when
known as Chimney Rock pass, a superstitious tale of a spectre cavalry
fight, occurring here, was widely published in the newspapers of the
day. The alleged witnesses of the spectacle were an old man and his wife
living in the gap before Chimney Rock fall. So much interest was created
in Rutherfordton by its recital, that a public meeting was held and a
delegation, headed by Generals Miller and Walton, with a magistrate and
clerk, visited the old couple and took their affidavits, to this effect:
For several evenings, while shadows filled the pass and sunlight still
lingered on the mountain summits, they had seen, from their doorway, two
bodies of cavalry advance toward each other across the sky. They heard
the charge sounded, and saw them meet in conflict, with flashing swords,
groans, shouts of victory, and then disappear. Three more settlers
testified as witnesses of the same vision. They were all believed
trustworthy, but evidently deluded by some natural phenomenon. Giving
credence to the tale, explanations were advanced, but none are
satisfactory.
It is a half-day’s ride of unmarked interest from the bank of Broad
river across the Bald mountains to the Catawba. The road is an old mail
route to Marion, McDowell county. The air was hot and sultry in the
middle of the day, when, after crossing the Bald mountains, I traveled
over the foot-hills through woods of scrubby oaks and pines. The road
was white, dry, and dusty. The branches of the impoverished trees,
hanging with a melancholy droop, seemed panting with heat, and craving
the presence of a breeze. Hawks circled overhead, and on a rail fence,
visible at one break in the forest, a line of crows was roosting, with
their glossy black plumage reflecting the sunlight. Their cawing
heightened the effect of the scene. A ride alone through such scenery,
and under such influences, tells upon one’s strength and spirits. After
winding through a beautiful valley, and a moment later fording the Mill
fork of Catawba river, I found myself in the little village of Old Fort.
Its houses line a wide street, running parallel with the Western North
Carolina railroad, and range along several short cross streets. A wooded
hill rises back of it. During the Revolutionary war, and after, a fort
with a strong stockade, enclosing a spring, stood on the bank of the
stream. There were no battles fought here, but many depredations by
Cherokees occurred, in which several people were killed in the vicinity.
It is from this fort that the town takes its name.
About an hour before sunset, on that August day, I left Old Fort, by way
of a well-traveled road, for Pleasant Gardens. There is many a level
stretch for a gallop along this road, and I improved the opportunities
afforded for a rapid push on my journey. Through the country I went,
with the fields on my right, and the woods of the hills on my left; past
large, pleasant-looking farm houses in the midst of ancestral orchards
and wide-spreading farm lands. The streams are clear, but slow and
smooth-flowing. The number of persimmon trees and hollies along the
roadside mark a difference between the woods of this section and those
of the higher counties.
It was after one of my easy gallops, that, bursting from a twilight
wood, I beheld lying before me a valley scene of striking beauty. A
broad and level tract of farming land, covered with meadows, corn and
pea-fields, stretched away from the forested skirts of the hill-sides.
From my point of observation not a house dotting the expanse could be
seen, and not even the sound of running water (a marked feature of the
higher valleys) disturbed the evening stillness. A cool pleasant breeze
was stirring, but it scarcely rustled the leaves overhead. The dark
outlines of Mackey’s mountains filled the foreground, making a broken
horizon for the blue sky. On the right lay low hills. On the left the
summits of a lofty line of peaks, behind which the sun was sinking, were
crowned with clouds of flame, while the scattered cat-tails held all the
tints and lustre of mother of pearl. That night I stopped in Pleasant
Gardens, one of the richest and most beautiful valleys to be found in
any land. It is miles in extent. John S. Brown was my hospitable and
entertaining host. The large, frame house and surroundings vividly
reminded me of my native state. Everything showed evidence of thrift and
neatness, and withal a certain ancestral air, one that only appears with
age, overhung the approach to, and portals of, the mansion. It was built
a century ago, but many additions and repairs have been made since the
original log-raising. Osage-orange hedges line the path to it under the
cluster of noble trees. On the left as you approach, only a few feet
from the house’s foundations, flows Buck creek with swift, clear waters:
a trout stream in a day before civilization had cleared its banks.
Under a clouded sky I mounted my horse on the third morning of my
journey, and set out from Pleasant Gardens. The fording of a stream is
of so frequent occurrence in a trip through the Carolina mountains, that
one is apt to have a confused recollection of any one river or creek
that he crosses, although few are devoid of beauty or wildness. Those of
the Catawba, as it flows through McDowell county, have lost the
characteristics of the mountain ford. Boulders and out-cropping ledges
of rock are absent; the rush and roar of crystal waters have given place
to a smooth and less transparent flow, or noiseless, dimpled surface;
the banks are of crumbling soil, and, instead of rhododendrons and
pines, alders and willows fringe the waters’ edges.
The great valleys of the Catawba are covered principally with unfenced
fields of corn. The road leads through rustling acres, where one’s
horse, guided with slack rein by absent-minded rider, can, as he walks
along, break a green ear of corn from the standing stalk, without
stretching his neck over a fence. To prevent cattle from running at
large through these thickly-planted lands, gates are swung across the
roads at the division fence of each plantation, and from necessity, the
traveler must open them to ride through; and then, from moral
obligation, he must shut them behind him. The farm-houses are home-like
in appearance. They denote prosperity, happiness and culture in the
families inhabiting them. Many are of antique architecture, and set back
on level lawns, under ornamental trees and flourishing orchards.
Toward the middle of the morning, the sharp outlines of the Linville
mountains showed themselves in the east, and after an abrupt turn from
the Bakersville road, I struck the North fork of the Catawba, and rode
twelve miles along its picturesque course. Its waters have a peculiar,
clear, green hue, and speak of speckled trout in their depths and shaded
rapids. Without a guide, I could have followed up the North fork, under
the shadows of Humpback mountain, and, by a trail, have crossed the
ridge to the Linville falls; but by this route the wild scenery of the
Linville cañon is lost. Bryson Magee was my guide to the Burke county
road along the summit of Bynum’s bluff. Just after a slight shower, he
overtook me as he was returning from a day’s work for a North Fork
farmer. He had an open, tanned countenance, fringed by a brown beard,
and capped by a head of long hair, hidden under the typical mountain
hat--a black, slouch felt, with a hole for ventilation in the center of
the crown and minus the band. An unbleached, linen shirt, crossed by
“galluses” which held his homespun pantaloons in place, covered his
body. He wore shoes and walked leisurely.
“Is there anyone on this road who can guide me up Bynum’s bluff?” I
asked him, after returning his “howdy.”
“Why, some niggers live nigh hyar who could do hit, but they’re all at
work two mile below.”
“Any one else I could get?”
“Not a soul, except--”
“Who?” I asked.
“Wal, stranger--I reckon you’s a furriner--I kin do hit, but I’m
powerful tired: worked all day.”
When we arrived at his log cabin, he had definitely determined to go. It
was then four o’clock, and clouds were driving thick and dark across the
sky. We tied the saddle-bags to the saddle, and then began the ascent.
Bryson led my horse; I walked on behind.
Before we had proceeded 100 yards, a light rain began falling. This did
not deter us, for Bryson, like all the denizens of the coves, was
callous to dampness, heat, and cold, and as for myself, a rubber coat
came in play. The flinty ground was set with whortleberry bushes--a true
indicator of sterility. These berries were ripe, and we gathered them,
as we tramped along the trail, while the clouds grew heavier around us,
and the rain swept in blinding sheets through the scrubby forest. There
was no thunder to add variety to the storm, only the moan of the wind,
and the sound of tree tops swaying in the gusts. The water poured in
streams from my hat, and my legs, to the knees, were soaked from contact
with wet bushes; but gradually it cleared over-head, and when we reached
the main road, on the summit of the ridge, the clouds had parted, and
through their rifts the sun, still an hour high, poured a burning glory
over the dripping forests.
Looking southward in the direction the guide pointed, a mighty,
rock-topped mountain, lifting itself into the sunlight above the fog,
was visible. It appeared like a stone wall rising from the ocean.
Squared off in sharp outlines, without trees or lesser visible
vegetation on its level summit, it presents a striking contrast to the
other peaks of the Alleghanies south. It is the Table Rock mountain,
3,918 feet in altitude. Hawk-bill, a peak named from its top being
crowned with a tilted ledge of moss-mantled rock, resembling the beak of
a hawk, stood before me as I turned toward the left. Its altitude is
4,090 feet. Both these peaks are accessible for climbers, and are much
visited by tourists curious to examine the character of their rock
formation.
“We jist hit it,” broke forth the guide, “a minute more an’ we wouldn’t
seen ’em. See, the fog’s crawlin’ up, slow but shore.”
It was as he had said. The massed vapors in the low sunk vales were
being driven upward, and a moment later they had enfolded Table Rock and
Hawk-bill, and were creeping through the woods around us. I now handed
him fifty cents, the price for a day’s common labor through that
section, and, shaking hands, we separated. It was five miles to the
nearest house, and lacked only one hour of sunset. Three miles had been
passed over, when a sound, as of some distant waterfall, struck on my
ears. It was a soft, steady, liquid murmur. Halting my horse, I sat in
the saddle and listened, then dismounted, tied, and walking through the
weeds a few steps, reached some broken rocks at the edge of a precipice.
Clinging to a tree, I leaned over and looked below through perpendicular
space over 1,000 feet. I shouted from the sensations created by the
wonderful wildness of the scene.
At first sight down into a cañon, that seemed almost fathomless, I saw
an inky, black band stretched through the depths, with surface streaked
with silver. It was the Linville river, but distance rendered its waters
motionless to the vision. A thin mist lent an indescribable weirdness to
the scene, and seemed veiling some mighty mystery in its folds.
“Wrapping the tall pines, dwindled as to shrubs in dizziness of
distance,” it was being shaken from its foothold by varying breezes,
broken into separate sheets of vapor, and pushed upward along the
perpendicular walls. It curled and twisted weirdly through the tangled
pines, filling black rents in the opposite mountain’s face, shielding a
ragged, red cliff here and there, but at every movement mounting toward
the cañon’s rim. Soon the profile faces on the upper cliffs jutted out
in clear air; the brick-like fronts of rock, in pine settings across the
chasm became plainly visible; the lower forests stood free; the dark
river, sweeping in an acute angle, within stone drop below, tossed
upward its eternal echo; the mists had clustered in thick clouds on the
summit of an unknown peak, and then all grew dusky with the approach of
night.
A scene is sublime, according to its power to awaken the sense of fear;
the more startling, the more sublime. The view of Linville cañon from
the Bynum’s Bluff road possesses, in the writer’s opinion, more of the
elements of sublimity than any other landscape in North Carolina. The
region of the Linville is one of scenery grandly wild and picturesque.
The only region that approaches it in wildness and sublimity--being
somewhat similar in the perpendicularity of its mountains and the
clearness of its stream, but contrasting by the fertility of its soil
and luxuriance of its forests--is the Nantihala River valley.
The Linville range is a spur of the Blue Ridge, separated from the
latter by the North Fork valley. It trends south, and for a distance is
the dividing line between Burke and McDowell. Its highest altitude is
about 4,000 feet. Jonas’ Ridge runs parallel with it on the east, and
between them, through a narrow gorge, over 1,000 feet deep, flows
Linville river. The rocks of these mountains are sandstones and
quartzites. The soil is scanty and sterile, and the forests scrubby. The
falls are distant from Marion on the Western North Carolina railroad,
about twenty-five miles, and reached as the writer has described. From
Morgantown, on the same railroad, they can be reached by a day’s ride in
conveyance over the highway on the summit of the mountains. Hickory is
also a point from which to start, and one frequently taken by tourists.