about the door-way, and enters the store. A few minutes elapse in which
the “Jehu” fires some tongue shots at the loungers; then the mail-bag is
returned, the foot is taken from the break, the whip cracks, and away
you go. Another store is passed with a saw-mill opposite to it, and the
river, blocked until it spreads to twice its customary breadth, pouring
and thundering over a substantial dam. The noise of waters and the saw
is deafening; then, in a twinkling, it is all still, and you are
trotting along between green hedges, and great clouds of dust envelope
the barking dogs which follow.
Along the way is seen the prepared trail for the iron horse which is to
supersede stage-travel;--the great yellow dirt embankments through the
fields; the deep grading sinking dizzily close at the roadside; the
short curves through narrow valleys, and the swallowing of it all by the
solitary woods.
If you are fortunate enough to ride with the same good-natured driver
whom we had, and he is in mellow mood, you may be interested for an hour
by a story which he is fond of telling. For fear that you might get the
wrong man, I will tell it in condensed form.
In the fall of 1877, the driver was employed on the stage route from
Asheville to Henry’s. He was an old reinsman, but the road was
unfamiliar to him from the fact of his being only lately transferred
from another branch. One afternoon in November, with the highway
slippery under-foot from a cold sleet, he left Asheville with the heavy
stage and a party of five persons inside,--an old, white-haired man and
four women. He was unavoidably delayed at different points, so that,
when he began the actual descent of the Blue Ridge, a black, cold night
enveloped the landscape. With his teeth chattering, he lighted the
lamps, drew on his gloves again, mounted to his place, and began
rumbling downward. Over-head the trees creaked and groaned in the hollow
blast; the horses slipped in turns as they pushed along, and the huge
stage would occasionally slide, in spite of the locked brake, down on
the flanks of the rear span. Even with this uncomfortable state of
affairs, he could have driven along without much hazard, but suddenly
the lamps went out. Through strange carelessness he had forgotten to
refill them when he left the stables. The darkness was like that of a
soundless mine: it was almost palpable. Staggered with the situation, he
checked his horses. He must go on, but how could he? Near at hand he
knew was the most dangerous place in the whole road, where even a slight
pull to one side would send the stage and its occupants rolling down a
declivity, steep, deep and rugged enough to smash the former, and kill
every one of the latter. The horses, accustomed to the way, might
possibly be trusted; but then that possibility! It was too slippery to
lead them, and besides his foot must be on and off the break in turns.
It was imperative for him to be at Henry’s that night, both on account
of his express duties and his passengers, who would freeze before
morning. He sat shivering on the stage top.
He heard the stage door open below, but knew not for what reason, nor
whose feet were striking the ground, until a voice came up out of the
pitchy darkness:
“Why don’t you go on?”
It was the old gentleman who spoke.
“Can’t. Don’t you see de lamps ar’ out?”
“What of that? We must go on.”
“Dar’s a bad pitch right yeh, an’ I wouldn’t risk hit foh no money.”
“Do you know exactly where we are? I can’t distinguish anything.”
“Yes, at de cliff spring.”
“The cliff spring. I remember it. All right;” and, saying this, the
elderly passenger was climbing up beside the driver. “Let me take the
reins,” he continued.
“You!” exclaimed the driver.
“Yes. I know this road like a book. I’ve driven over it many as dark
nights as this, during forty years of my life.”
And as the driver told it to me: “I done jist let dat ole man pull dem
ribbans outer my han’s, an’ I hel’ onter de brake, while he put dose
hosses down aroun’ dat ben’; an’ in less ’en an houh we wuz stannin’
afoah de Henry hotel. Hit beat de debbil how dat wrinkled, rich-lookin’
ole fellah driv! Couldn’t fine out a ting ’bout him; no one peered ter
know him. An’ I’m done badgered ter know who he wuz, enny how. He’d a
made a crackin’ ole stage drivah; an’ dar’s no use talkin’ on dat pint!”
So went the story. Meanwhile your journey is progressing. The stage has
rattled around a bend, leaving the neat, home-like, brick dwelling of
Dr. Samuel Love, on the top of a wooded hill, beside the road; and then,
before you, stretches an enchanting mountain landscape. On the summit of
a plateau-like expanse, in the center of the scene, is a picturesque
village. You see the clustered white frame and brick buildings, with the
smoke curling above them from home fires; the modest church steeples,
and, perhaps, if it is growing dusky, you may hear the mellow chiming
of bells through the evening air. Majestic mountains rise on all sides
into the blue sky. Afar, Old Bald, his brethren Balsams, Lickstone
mountain, and Mount Serbal, lift their heads. In lofty outlines, the
Junaluska group of Balsams stand black against the glowing western sky.
Across a low, plank bridge, which covers a little stream coming from the
rabbit-haunted hedges of a valley meadow,--up a mild declivity of
hill,--through a long, yellow street with dwellings, a church, a
court-house, a jail, hotels, and stores, on either side,--and you are in
the center of Waynesville.
Waynesville, the county-seat of Haywood, is 2,756 feet above the ocean.
Of the peaks in sight around it, five attain a height of 6,000 feet and
upwards. Every mountain is clothed from base to summit with heavy woods.
That chain arising in the south in lofty outlines, black with firs, is
the Balsam. The Haywood mountains, bounding the northern line of vision,
are, owing to their distance, arrayed in purple, and usually crowned
with white masses of clouds, which at sunset turn to orange, run to
molten gold and then blazing with scarlet resolve into darkness. The
village occupies the most elevated portion of the plateau. Two parallel
streets, crossed by four or five shorter ones, make up the general
ground-work of the town. Interspersed with vacant, weed-grown lots, the
dwellings and buildings, occupied by about 300 people, face on these
winding thoroughfares. A few locust trees border the rough, stony walks.
Apple and peach trees hang over thickly-planted gardens within the
unpainted long board fences before many of the houses.
The head-center for daily congregation seems to be the postoffice. Its
red-mud-splattered front and porch-posts whisper of a rainy season and
stamping horses to the tourist who stands on the hard level road. The
mosses on the porch roof also speak of dampness and age. Opposite the
post-office, in 1882, was still standing, intact and in use, the
county’s venerable hall of justice. To some it may appear a sarcasm to
use that title for it: still, justice is no less likely to preside in
pristine purity within battered, worm-eaten doors, above a tan-bark
floor, under a low ceiling, and surrounded by dingy walls, than within
frescoed ceilings, stone walls and chiseled columns!
“For Justice
All place a temple, and all season, summer!”
However, the court days for the old hall are past. A new and imposing
brick structure has just been erected at the north end of the village.
That an air of enterprise is circulating is evident. Numerous new
buildings, with fresh-painted or brick fronts have lately arisen in
place, making striking contrasts with the old rookeries of fifty years
existence standing here and there.
The village was named in honor of “Mad Anthony” Wayne in the long gone
years of its birth. Until the last half decade of years it has rested in
a quiet little less profound than that of the dreamy valleys around it.
Of late new energy has been infused into it. The world beyond the
mountain limits of this hidden hamlet is beginning to hear of it as a
summer resort. Acting upon this knowledge, the tourists with every
season now come trooping up from the low-lands. The grading, bridges,
and embankments for the railroad are all completed, and even before many
months Waynesville will have the cars within its corporate boundaries.
In all the mountain towns court-week is the marked event of the year.
There is a spring and fall term. As the counties increase in population,
the two terms are frequently lengthened into weeks. At such times the
village streets are packed with a mass of humanity. The court might well
be likened to a magnet, the limit to its attraction being the boundaries
of the county; and within that circle, during the periods of its
operation, having an irresistible, invisible power to draw every
citizen into the county-seat. They are all there at some interval of its
proceedings.
As a court-day in any one of the villages is typical of what is seen at
such times in all the others, the writer will use as an illustration one
which he spent in Waynesville. It was at the time of the fall term; the
month being October. On the Sunday preceding the opening Monday, the
honorable judge, having closed court in the neighboring county, drove
into the village. The usual number of lawyers from scattered villages
who go on the circuit soon came straggling in on horse-back not far in
his honor’s wake. Later in the evening and the next morning others of
the profession entered on foot, pursuing this method of traveling as
though desirous of saving a little money, or perhaps having none either
to save or spend. The days of the circuit are interesting ones for this
legal coterie. It has its jovial, crusty, bumptious, bashful, boyish,
and bald-headed members; old pettifoggers, young shysters, and the
brilliant and erudite real attorney. The active out-door exercise
enjoyed in following the court in his rounds tends to make the village
lawyer a good-natured fellow, and besides, even if his practice is poor,
he has no exorbitant office rent to worry him. He ought certainly to be
a healthy, contented specimen of humanity.
Even before all the shop-keepers had opened their doors and swung back
their shutters to exhibit newly stocked counters, the farming population
began pouring in. Now and then the broad hat of a man on foot would
appear above the crest of the hill; then would follow a strong team of
horses drawing a white-covered, Pennsylvania wagon; next, a slow-moving
ox team with hooped and canvassed vehicle. These tents on wheels would
disgorge into the street either a whole family or a crowd of men
evidently from the same neighborhood. On other occasions they (the
wagons) loaded with apples and possibly a barrel of hard cider, would
be longer in getting relieved of their contents. The Jerseys of
independent valley farmers came rattling in at a later hour. The general
way of coming to town, however, is in the saddle. Horses and mules, with
good, easy gait, are always in demand through this country, and the
number of them ranged along the street fences appears strange to the
Northerner.
That morning I saw on the street several Indians from the banks of Soco
creek twenty miles distant. They were not arrayed in the picturesque
pomp of the savage, but in the garb of civilization--home-spun coats and
pantaloons, muslin shirts, and black hats. One of them, mounted on a
stout little bay pony, was trying to sell his animal to some one in a
crowd of horse-traders. Ponies can be purchased of the Cherokees at
prices ranging from forty to seventy-five dollars. At present, however,
there are very few of the full-blooded stock in the reservation. The
other aborigines whom I chanced to see were, with moccasined feet,
threading their ways through the crowds of lighter-complexioned,
blue-clothed dwellers of the forests.
The strongest drink sold openly during court-week is cider. Several
wagons, holding barrels containing it, occupy stations close by the
court-house door. A supply of ginger cake is sold with the cider.
Whiskey can be procured at the drug store, but only on prescription. To
the uninitiated it is a mystery where so many prescriptions come from;
but perhaps a certain judge from a lower county, who some time since
presided in this court, might rise and explain. The judge in question
was exhausted from travel, and badly under the weather. Upon his arrival
in the village he dispatched a negro to the drug store for a bottle of
this singularly accredited panacea for all evils. The druggist refused
to comply with the request, sending back word that he was obliged in all
cases to conform to the requirements of the law, and that his honor
should consult a physician. Later in the day the judge himself appeared
at the drug store, and taking a package of paper from his pocket, cooly
counted off sixteen prescriptions. Said he:
“I have consulted my physician. You may fill one of these now; hang the
others on your hook, and fill them as I send my order.”
Whether the judge called for them all during the time he presided on
that bench, is no part of the story.
In the practice before the bar of the tribunal there is no marked
difference between the proceedings of the mountain county court and
those of the courts of other states practicing under the code. It has a
peculiar but beneficent feature, however, in the rapidity with which
cases are disposed of. One great end of justice, too frequently
neglected--that wrongs shall be promptly righted--is hereby secured. A
false and irreversible judgment of the court occurring, as may be, upon
too hasty examination of a case, is no worse for the litigant than the
trial of the heart between hope and despair for long, weary years before
a decision is rendered, even though that decision be just.
I witnessed one murder case disposed of in two days, when, anywhere in
the North, the same trial would have occupied as many weeks. The call of
the crier from an upstairs window announced that the court was open.
During the course of the morning I went in. Seats arranged on a scale
ascending from the lawyers’ tables to the rear wall were crowded to
overflowing. The single aisle was filled so that one could hardly elbow
one’s way in. The crowd changed considerably in its make-up during the
morning session; for uninterested auditors were continually sliding out
of one of the handy windows and others crawling in to fill the
vacancies. Some wormed their way out through the aisle.
In regular routine, cases were called, facts stated by attorneys, usual
examination and brow-beating of witnesses, wrangling of counsel,
hammering for order by the sheriff, the old practitioner’s quiet and
plausible argument to the drowsy jury, the spread-eagle burst of oratory
on the part of the fresh blossomed sprig of the law, the charge of the
judge (which, in truth, is generally the settlement of the whole
proceeding), and then the departure of the twelve confused peers to a
house on a back street, or a vacant lot near by, where, on a pile of
lumber, they resolve the abstruse questions involved and bring in a
verdict according to the facts.(?) Judgment pronounced forthwith, or
suspended on motion.
At 12 o’clock the court adjourned, and the crier appearing at the front
door gave vent in high-strung monotone to the following: “Hear ye! hear
ye! This honorable court is now adjourned.” Here he took breath and went
on again: “The good people of Haywood will take notice that at 2 o’clock
the Honorable General Clingman will address them on the issues of the
day!”
This sounded queer to a stranger; court adjourning to give way for a
political speech. A number of elections were to take place in November.
It was fit that the people should be prepared to cast their ballots with
discretion. In accordance with this view, during that fall term of
court, the respective candidates of either party for the offices of
solicitor, representative, senator, and state offices were given the
afternoons of the session to enlighten the populace with their wisdom on
state and municipal affairs, and sway them with their eloquence. With
the afternoon speeches, ended the court day.
The White Sulphur Spring Hotel is three-quarters of a mile from the
village. It was by the stage line that we approached it in the summer of
1882. The mail-bags had been flung down to the good-natured-looking
post-master, and several passengers distributed at the hotels on the
village street, when we turned down a hill toward Richland creek, first
passing several plain dwellings and two churches. One of the churches
(the Episcopal) is a well-built little house of worship. The creek must
be forded, and then follows a delightful stretch of road along its
banks, until, after swinging around several corners, rattling over
rivulet bridges, speeding by a house or two on knolls in fields, we
passed through a frame gate into the grounds of the Sulphur Spring.
The grounds are naturally adapted for a summer resort. A grand forest,
principally of oaks, covers about eight acres of level ground, through
which, with green sward on either hand, winds the road toward the hotel.
The hotel is a large farmhouse, remodeled and added to until its
original proportions and design are lost. Near it, at the foot of a low
wooded hill, is a line of cottages connected with the main structure
simply by a graveled walk, which also leads to the sulphur spring
bubbling up in a stone basin within a small summer-house. There is a
comfortable, healthy air about the hotel and its surroundings.
Close in the rear of the resort buildings rises a line of mountains,
lofty in height, but forming only the foot-hills to the Junaluska group.
The highest pinnacle of the foot-hill range is Mount Maria, so named in
honor of the wife of Major W. W. Stringfield, the proprietor of the
Spring property. From the wide porches of the hotel sublime mountain
prospects can be obtained. A smooth, cultivated valley, a mile or more
in length, by a half-mile wide, fills the foreground to these views.
Some portions of it are covered with corn, and in the meadows are
generally grazing a hundred head of cattle. A pleasant pastoral air
pervades this foreground picture set in the emerald frame of the
forests. And then in the distance is discerned the green front of Mount
Serbal, and beyond it the black summits of the Richland Balsam
mountains. Just across the creek, which flows outside the grounds, lies
the prepared railroad bed. It is only a minute’s walk from it to the
hotel.
Of all country roads for quiet rambles or delightful horseback rides,
there are none in the mountains to excel the one up Richland creek, from
the White Sulphur Spring, to the base of Old Bald. The forests all along
the stream are cool and refreshing. Where the road comes down to its
fords under the concealing chestnuts and oaks, long foot-logs reach from
bank to bank. The old mill at one of these fords presents a picture for
the artist--the brilliant beech that rustles around it; the crystal
race; the roar in the flume; the piles of old logs and scattered timber;
and the open, dingy front of the structure itself.
On crossing the state road, the Richland creek road enters a large,
unfenced forest, where nearly every evening, in spring, summer, or fall,
teamsters, who are either farmers or root buyers, encamp for the night.
Their Pennsylvania wagons are like great white-covered scows strangely
mounted on wheels. At night, with the light of camp fires thrown on
them, they are spectral in their whiteness. Often, in the darkness of
the forest, while on our way from the village to our temporary home in
the country, we have suddenly run upon these encampments after their
fires have smouldered, and only been awakened to a knowledge of their
presence by the sharp barking of wakeful dogs.
One particular night, well worth remembering, I was returning on foot
from Waynesville after a late wait there for the irregular evening mail.
It was cloudy and quite dark, even where the state road, which I was
trudging over, runs between open fields. On branching into the Richland
creek road and into the forest just mentioned, the change to still
deeper darkness would have made it difficult for me to avoid stumbling
over the rocks that here and there are scattered on the way, and even to
keep clear of tree boles, if the bright light of a high fire had not
[Illustration: THE MACON HIGHLANDS.]
illuminated the outer margin of the wood. Under a gigantic poplar two
large white wagons were visible, and between them was the fire. A group
of men was seated near it. At my approach two dogs sprang up growling
from the scattered hay where the horses were feeding, but at the warning
yell of some one who was evidently their master, they became quiet
again. The group consisted of four men seated on the end boards taken
from the wagons, and laid on the ground. They were playing cards, and
having a good time. I was about to pass on, but recognizing the face and
voice of one member of the party, I stepped up to them, and was in turn
recognized by him.
“Wal, glad to see you,” said he, dropping the pack of cards he was
dealing, and jumping to his feet.
“Howdy!” exclaimed the others in turn as I spoke to each. “Why, what are
you skulking round the woods so late at night for?” continued the first
speaker.
He was a good-natured and intelligent young man, by name Upson, whom I
had met once before in an adjoining county at a country store, where he
was exchanging dry-goods and tinware for ginseng, Solomon’s snake roots,
herbs and mica. I answered his question, and upon urgent invitation
seated myself by the fire. Two of the party were going to Asheville to
attend Federal court. The elderly man and owner of one wagon was
journeying in company with the young trader and his wagon to the
Asheville market. The interrupted game of seven-up was never resumed. In
the course of conversation Upson spoke of mica mining, and after stating
that he was a Georgian, and had been in the mountains only a few years,
he related a thrilling story, which I will give as nearly as possible in
his own words, and call it
THE HAUNTED CABIN.
On one of the highest ridges of the Nantihala mountains, twenty-five
miles from Franklin, Tabal and I had been out prospecting for mica for
several days. With a blanket apiece, a pick, a spade and a quantity of
provisions we had left the valley, intending to open a spot on the
mountain, where mica had been discovered cropping out. All the afternoon
of the 26th of February, and all day of the 27th, we worked at the
surface mica, and had followed a promising vein of the mineral for
several feet into the crumbling rock. The weather had been fine, and the
night of the last mentioned date came on with fair and clear skies.
Wrapped in our blankets, we slept by a roaring fire, under a shelving
rock, in a thicket of black firs. By morning the weather had changed; a
cold wet wind was sighing through the pines; the sky was overcast with
dull heavy clouds, and the last day of February bid fair to end in a
snow storm.
Tabal was rather uneasy, and wished to start for the settlement
immediately; but with a nicely sorted-out pile of mica at our feet, and
a solid block twelve inches square shining from the bottom of the
excavation, I insisted on remaining until there was a decided change for
the better or worse; so, after our morning repast, we went steadily to
work again.
We did not notice the increasing coldness of the wind, and were only
awakened to a sense of our dangerous position, when snow began to fall.
To be caught on a mountain summit over 6,000 feet high in a snow storm
was something little to be desired; and, with that idea, Tabal threw
down his pick and proposed starting with haste for the settlement.
Affairs did look threatening, and I concluded that his proposition was
not to be despised. Hiding our tools and mica, with our blankets over
our shoulders, we struck out on the trail for the valley.