scenery on the route is picturesque. In the valleys they were raking hay
that August day. One valley in particular, by the Watauga, is of
captivating loveliness. The mountains rise around it, as though placed
there with no other purpose than to protect its jewel-like expanse from
rough incursions of storm. It lay smooth and level under the warm
sunlight. Nothing but grass and clover covered it--in some fields wholly
standing, in others being laid low by the reapers. It is evidently a
stock farm; for large droves of sleek, fat cattle were grazing in some
of the meadows. A cheerful farm-house and large out-buildings stand on
one side of the road. The noise of a spinning wheel, coming from the
sunlight-flooded porch where a gray-haired matron was visible, blended
with the sounds from the fields--the lowing of cattle, the noise of
sharpening scythes, and laughter from rosy-cheeked girls and men, who,
pausing in their work, looked for a moment at the travel-worn horse and
rider. This valley I would love to live in.
As a county perfectly adapted for stock-raising, Watauga cannot be
surpassed. One and three-quarters miles off the road you are now
pursuing, is the Marianna falls of the Little Dutch creek. It is easily
approached by the foot-traveler. After reaching the stream from above,
by descending a winding, trail you come out on the flat rocks directly
below and before the fall. It is eighty-five feet high and makes a
perpendicular descent over mossed and lichened rocks.
Valle Crucis lie on the left of the way that winds under the trees along
the base of one of its mountain limits. It is a valley containing
probably 600 acres, and noted for its beauty. The name is taken from its
imaginary resemblance to a cross. The length of the valley, running
between the rounded parallel ranges, is compared to the upright piece of
the cross, and the openings between these ranges on either side where
green levels reach back, to the arms. From the best point of observation
which I gained, it seemed a perfect square--a vivid green lake, fringed
with the rich foliage of the forests which decked the slopes of the
bordering mountains.
A little religious history is connected with this Valley of the Cross.
On one spot in it there are still to be seen amid weeds and luxuriant
grasses the scattered ruins of a building. They are all the remaining
evidences of a mission school, founded many years since by the Episcopal
Church of the state. It was under the particular supervision of Bishop
Levi S. Ives; and it was here that, 30 years ago, he openly renounced
loyalty to his church and went over to the Roman Catholic faith. With
this singular apostacy, work at the mission school closed, and the
building gradually assumed its present proportions.
Over lonely mountains the road now leads to Elk river. I rode for mile
after mile that evening without seeing a cabin or farm-house. The
scenery along the Elk has something decidedly romantic in its features.
On one hand would be perched a moss-grown cottage on the mountain slope,
with a few giant hemlocks, allowed to stand at the time of the general
clearing, overshadowing it. Below, on the other hand, would lie fertile
fields, watered by the noisy Elk, and enclosed on three sides by the
dark and sober forests of the hemlock. The serenity of the evening was
not disturbed by the farewell whistling of the quails; the rattling of
the bells from the cows coming homeward across the pastures; the barking
of a dog behind the barnyard fence, and the opening cry of the
whip-poor-will.
The moon had turned from silver to gold; the stream under the spruces
was sparkling where no shadows fell athwart its surface, and a cold,
evening breeze, the usual companion of night over the mountains, was
rustling the black foliage of the trees, when I dismounted at a
hospitable farm-house on the Elk, where I had a wholesome supper; shared
a bed with the farmer’s son, a graduate of the North Carolina
University; had an early breakfast, and before sunrise, mounting my
horse, I was on the way toward the foot of the Roan. An old forge, where
the iron taken from the mountain near by was smelted, stands by the
road. It was abandoned a few years since. The Cranberry mines are a mile
off the main road. They are in Humpback mountain, Mitchell county, North
Carolina, and included in a tract of 4,000 acres, owned by the Cranberry
Iron & Coal Company of Philadelphia, of which A. Pardee is president.
Mines have been worked in this mountain for the last half-century. They
are now being operated on a large scale. The narrow-gauge railway, an
off-shoot of the E. T:, V. & G. R. R., runs to the tunnel; and the raw
ore is transferred by rail to furnaces in the North. The tunnel to the
ore bank is run in on a level from the railroad, to a depth of 325 feet.
Both steam and hand drills are being worked. The vein now struck appears
inexhaustible. It was discovered half a mile above on the mountain side,
and then the lower tunnel was projected in to it. The company’s
saw-mill is in active operation near by. A town will soon be in
existence here.
From the Tennessee side the ascent of the Roan is arduous, and if one
has not taken precaution to secure explicit directions, he may be
obliged to sleep out all night in the gloomy woods, in this regard being
more unfortunate than the two travelers whom I met on the Linville.
Profiting through their misfortune, I learned every crook of the way,
and with only the steepness of the ascent to discomfit me, arrived at
sunset on the summit of that majestic mountain. The scene below, in
every direction, except where the Little Roan uplifts its gray dome, was
one tumultuous mountain ocean, rolling with rough and smooth swells
alternately toward the ragged horizon:
“And half the sky
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry,
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep west into a wondrous hue,
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent,
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
Among the many-folded hills.”
One hundred and twelve feet below the extreme top of Roan mountain is
situated Cloudland Hotel, over 6,200 feet above the sea, and the highest
habitation east of the Rockies. There is enough novelty in the situation
of a summer resort at so lofty an altitude to captivate the tourist,
even were there no attractions of sky, climate, scenery, or the aspect
of the mountain top itself. It is a beautiful, rounded meadow, where the
rocks, which one would naturally expect to see exposed, are hidden under
a soil clad with luxuriant grasses, mountain heather, and clumps of
rhododendrons, and azaleas. Sombre forests of balsam stretch like
natural fences around the edges of the treeless expanse, which, for over
two miles, pursues the center ridge of the mountain. At one end of the
Roan, naked granite cliffs descend into soundless gorges, and the
sublimity of the view from the brow of the precipice is indescribable.
The mountain brooks teem with speckled trout, and a series of beautiful
cascades on one wild slope will attract the lover of nature. From June
until October the air is balmy and bracing, the temperature ranging
during the summer from 58° to 73°.
The regular route to Cloudland is over a turnpike from Johnson City, a
station on the East Tennessee, Virginia, & Georgia railroad. A line of
comfortable, covered stages make the trip of thirty-two miles every
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For travelers coming from Eastern North
Carolina and beyond, conveyances can be obtained at Marion, on the
Western North Carolina railroad; distant 45 miles.
The slopes of this mountain are covered by vast tracts of cherry and
other hard-wood trees. Its timbered wealth is incalculable. Saw-mills
have lately sprung into place, and the bases and gentle uplands are now
crossed with fresh roads and dotted with loggers’ camps. General Wilder,
of Chattanooga, the owner of Cloudland Hotel and of most of the
mountain, is the principal operator in this line.
As related by General J. W. Bowman, one of the first citizens of
Mitchell county and descendant of a Revolutionary patriot, the summit of
the Roan was the rendezvous for the mountain men of the Washington
district and Watauga settlement, assembling for the march ending in the
battle of King’s mountain.
In Yancey county, visible from the Roan, and forty-five miles from
Asheville, is a peak known as Grier’s Bald, named in memory of David
Grier, a hermit, who lived upon it for thirty-two years. From posthumous
papers of Silas McDowell, we learn the following facts of the hermit’s
singular history. A native of South Carolina, he came into the mountains
in 1798, and made his home with Colonel David Vance, whose daughter he
fell in love with. His suit was not encouraged; the young lady was
married to another, and Grier, with mind evidently crazed, plunged into
the wilderness. This was in 1802. On reaching the bald summit of the
peak which bears his name, he determined to erect a permanent lodge in
one of the coves. He built a log house and cleared a tract of nine
acres, subsisting in the meantime by hunting and on a portion of the
$250 paid him by Colonel Vance for his late services. He was twenty
miles from a habitation. For years he lived undisturbed; then settlers
began to encroach on his wild domains. In a quarrel about some of his
real or imaginary landed rights, he killed a man named Holland Higgins.
At the trial he was cleared on the ground of insanity, and returned home
to meet his death at the hands of one of Holland’s friends. Grier was a
man of strong mind and fair education. After killing Higgins, he
published a pamphlet in justification of his act, and sold it on the
streets. He left papers of interest, containing his life’s record and
views of life in general, showing that he was a deist, and a believer in
the right of every man to take the executive power of the law into his
own hands.
While I was at the hotel a terrific thunder storm visited--not the
summit of the Roan--but the valleys below it. It came after dark, and
from the porch we looked out and down upon the world in which it raged.
Every flash of lightning was a revelation of glory, disclosing a sea of
clouds of immaculate whiteness--a boundless archipelago whose islands
were the black peaks of the mountains. Not a valley could be seen;
nothing but the snowy bosom of this cloud ocean, and the stately summits
which had lifted themselves above its vapors. In the height of the
storm, the lightning blazed in one incessant sheet, and the thunder came
rolling up through the black awful edge of the balsams, producing
somewhat similar sensations to those which fill the breast of a
superstitious savage at the recurrence of an every-day storm above him.
When I descended the mountains on the following afternoon, the ravages
of the storm were visible on several splintered oak trees, which lay
prone across some of the wayside clearings and Big Rock creek was high
and still roaring, with its excess of water.
At sight, of the rocky fords of this stream, the traveler would
naturally form the opinion that it flows through wild, rugged scenery,
in a country devoid of clearings. There is, however, fine farming land,
cleared and occupied, along Big Rock creek. One portion of it, in
particular, of soil rich and fertile, is settled by a prosperous and
hard-working class of people, who, during the late war, sided with the
North. It is now said that they will allow none, except white men, to
stay, either permanently or as day laborers, in their community. The
reason given is that they fought to liberate the negro from bondage,
and, having thus helped him, they wish to be free from all contact with
him. The same feeling prevails in other isolated localities through the
mountains, one being on the Little Tennessee, in the region of its lower
reaches, near the state line.
Bakersville, with a population of 500 people, is eight miles down from
the summit of the Roan. It is situated on Cane creek. The town has been
in existence only twenty-one years, is substantially built up, and
growing rapidly. The mica interests are doing considerable to enrich it.
An Indian town was once situated here, and to this day, although unused
for 100 years, the old beaten trail of the red man, leading from Turkey
Cove to the Nollichucky, is still visible, by the bank of the creek,
under the bending grasses which grow along its edges, but still refuse
to spring where the moccasin-footed aborigines, for probably centuries,
wended back and forth from Tennessee.
Here, near the village, for one night’s encampment, in the course of
their flight from Morganton, halted the “Franks” with “Nollichucky
Jack,” their spirited and beloved leader. The details of his escape from
trial are given in another chapter.
The 400 acres of valley, in which the town is situated, was a land grant
of 1778, from North Carolina to William Sharpe and John McKnitt
Alexander, clerk of the famous Mecklenburg convention. The old grant,
with the surveyor’s plat of date September 30, 1770, and the great wax
seal of the state attached, is among the archives of the county.
The Clarissa mica mine, in operation about three miles from the village,
is a point of attraction for the tourist. At present work is going on
more than 400 feet under ground, the passage down being through a dismal
hole. If you attempt the descent, the daylight will be appreciated on
your return.
The blocks of mica, after being blasted from the quartz and granite
walls in which they lie embedded, are brought to the company’s shop in
Bakersville. Here it is again sorted, the bent and otherwise worthless
mica being thrown aside. That which appears merchantable is piled on the
table before the workmen. Block by block it is taken and split into
sheets, sufficiently thin to be cut by large iron shears. Specks or
flaws in the mica are discovered by the workman holding each sheet, in
turn, between his eyes and the light through a window, before him. The
defects are remedied by again splitting the piece and taking off the
thin defective layer. When entirely clear it is marked off in
rectangular shapes, with patterns, and then cut by the shears. The sizes
are assorted, and then wrapped and tied in pound packages. The value of
mica ranges from half a dollar to three or four dollars per pound, the
price depending upon the size.
The Sink-hole mines, near Bakersville, now abandoned, have some
interesting facts connected with them. Years ago, a series of
closely-connected, round, basin-like holes in the soil of a slope,
creating some curiosity as to why and by whom they were formed, induced
investigations. One was dug into, and in the center of its bottom,
embedded in the rock, was discovered a vein of mica, which was followed
until exhausted. The other holes were then worked in turn by the miners,
several thousand dollars’ worth of mica being obtained. All efforts to
strike the vein, beyond the line of the holes, proved unsuccessful.
There was no mica discovered in the vicinity outside the sink-holes. In
some of them curious stone tools were found, and the surface of the
rock, around the mica blocks, in many instances, was chipped and worn,
as though done by instruments in the hands of persons trying to
extricate the mica. These ancient operations are attributed to the Mound
Builders. In this connection, I had a conversation with Garret Ray, of
Burnsville, containing the following:
When a boy, Mr. Ray had his attention attracted by a line of stone posts
set, with about fifteen feet of space between each, on a mountain slope
of his father’s farm. Years after, upon gaining possession of the
property, he carried into execution a long-cherished idea of
investigating the mystery of these posts. They marked a valuable mica
vein, whose limits did not extend beyond them. There was no evidence
that the located vein had ever been worked. By what surface indications
or arts the mica was first discovered by the pre-historic practical
miners, can only be answered by an oracle.
Many other traces have been discovered through the mountain country of a
people who inhabited it before the advent of the Cherokees. Among the
numerous mounds to be seen by the traveler in the broad valleys of the
region, the one at Franklin undoubtedly takes precedence in shapeliness
of outline. A few years since it was opened and a quantity of stone
tools and ornaments taken from it. Eight miles southeast of Franklin, in
the year 1820, soon after the transfer of that section by the Cherokees
to the whites, a negro tenant of Silas McDowell, while at work plowing,
discovered, fifteen inches under ground, a stratum of charcoal, and
under this a burned clay slab, bearing on its lower side the imprint of
the face and form of a man. Unfortunately, the slab, which was seven by
four feet in dimensions, was broken into pieces, thus destroying a relic
of untold value to the archæologist. The former inmate of this sepulchre
was probably buried and then cremated by the race, according to its
religious rites.
The Pigeon valley has been a great field for the relic hunter. Mr.
Osborne, living about three miles south of the Pigeon River station,
has, for a number of years, acted as an agent for a Richmond gentleman,
in collecting the most curious of the ornaments and pieces of pottery
turned up by the farmer’s plows. At least 2,000 of these relics have
passed through his hands. Among a few which the writer saw at Mr.
Osborne’s farm-house, was a group of men seated around a great bowl and
smoking the pipe of peace. It consisted of one entire piece of
soapstone, the figures being sculptured in correct proportions. They
were raised about three inches above the ground part on which they were
resting. Another was of two men struggling with a bear. Thousands of
arrow and spear heads have been found in the valley. That the latter
have no commercial value is evident from the fact that the long walks
from the front fence to the house of the above mentioned farmer, are
paved with them. Stone walls upon hill slopes have been unearthed in the
vicinity. After this digression let us return to the journey.
The ride, by the nearest road from Bakersville to Burnsville, will lead
the traveler for some distance along the banks of the Toe river. Deep,
wide fords are to be crossed, and lonely forests ridden through. To the
lover of nature, the solitude of some portions of the road will have in
them nothing of a depressing nature. Burnsville is described in another
chapter. From the latter village the road leads direct to Asheville. The
dark outlines of the Black mountains are visible throughout a great part
of the way. The road was in splendid condition when I traveled over it,
and enabled me, with a sound horse, to arrive, in good shape, in the
county seat of Buncombe, after an interesting horse-back journey of more
than 300 miles.
BEYOND IRON WAYS.
If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou would’st forget,
If thou would’st read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills!--No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
_Longfellow._
[Illustration: V]ainly the mountaineers beside the ancient stage-road,
up the Blue Ridge from McDowell county into Buncombe may listen for the
old-time winding of the driver’s bugle, the rumbling of strong-spoked
wheels, and the rattling of trace-chains; or wait to see the familiar
outlines of four gray horses, hallooing reinsman and loaded Concord
stage swinging round some bold cliff, and drawing nearer up the rich
green avenue of the forest: the days of staging by this route into
Asheville are over. But “Jehu” with his prancing steeds and swaying
coach is not, in this region, a being of the past; for the whistle of
the locomotive has only served to drive him further into the mountains.
To those who are little familiar with stage-riding, there is in it
something of pleasing novelty. I never see the old red vehicle lumbering
along without having awakened in my mind some one of Dickens’ many vivid
pictures of rapid drives, where, in his words:--“Houses in twos and
threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye-works,
tanneries and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The
hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud on either side.
Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that
clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we strike into ruts and stick there.
The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and
the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of
us.”
One of the stage routes, now in operation, is from the present terminus
of the Western North Carolina railroad at Pigeon River, to Waynesville,
ten miles distant. If the time-table is the same it was when we last
traveled over the new-laid rails from Asheville, up the Hominy valley,
over dizzy trestle-works, and burst through a narrow mud-cut between the
hills into the wide valley of the Pigeon;--if it is this way, I say, the
tourist will take a late dinner at a large brick farm-house beside the
station, and then secure a place with the colored driver on the top of
the stage. A jolly crowd is packed away inside. Perhaps, if you are an
agreeable fellow, one of the young ladies may prefer a perch outside
with you, and thus help to fill up the boot and hinder the spread of the
reinsman’s elbows as he rounds some of the coming curves. Trunks and
band-boxes are piled up behind you. You wave your hand to the landlord;
the driver gives a parting wink at the cook who is peering through the
shutters of the kitchen; and then, responsive to the crack of the whip,
the horses start, and whirling behind it a cloud of dust, the stage
begins its journey.
There is nothing particularly enchanting about the landscape for the
next ten miles. The road beneath is beaten hard, and smooth as a floor.
It is not always so agreeable riding over, however, for it is of red
clay; and in winter, with snows, thaws, and rains, it becomes almost
impassible. They tell of empty wagons being stalled in places during the
inclement seasons. I have a vivid recollection of helping, one dark
April night, to unload a light Jersey wagon, drawn by two stout horses,
in order to release the hub-deep sunken wheels, and allow us to proceed
on our way from Waynesville.
Now a broad valley is whirled through, with humble cottages along the
way; then a hill is ascended, the stage rising slowly, and then rattling
on behind the lively trotting of the horses as you pass down the
opposite declivity. The driver over mountain roads always trots his
horses going down hill. It is necessary in order to make up for the
delay incurred in the long, wearisome ascents, and the horses, in
contradiction to first principles, appear to stand up well under it.
Again you strike the Big Pigeon. Concealed by its wood-bordered banks,
it has passed through the valley, and now through vistas of vines,
azaleas, chinquapin bushes, locust and beech trees, reveals its limpid
waters, swift and slow, in turns, as the basin is deep, or a
pebble-shingled bottom throws it in splashing rapids. Pairs of whistling
sand-pipers run teetering over the sands, and then fly on down the river
at your noisy approach; turtle doves, with “shocking tameness,” only
rise from the road when some of the pebbles, struck up by the horses,
shower around them; a surly dog, from a weather-worn dwelling, leaps
through the broken pickets of the fence, and for a hundred yards
follows, barking, close to the wheels; long open fields extend on one
side; and then the driver, with foot on the break, with loud “whoa,”
stops the sweating horses before a country store. He reaches down under
his feet, into the giant pocket of the stage, and draws forth a
pad-locked leather mail-bag which he tosses down into the outstretched
arms of the bare-headed post-master, grocer, and township magistrate
combined.
“How yer to-day, squire?” asks the driver.
“Good. How’s yourself?”
“Bettah.”
“Who you got inside?”
“Party from Alabam’, I reckon.”
“Where they going?”
“White Sulphur; an’ say, look a heah, foh dis in-foh-ma-shun bring me
out a twist o’ backer.”