Elizabethton, Tennessee, June, 1848.
The prominent circumstance attending my journey from the North Cove
to this place was, that it brought me out of the great mountain
wilderness of Georgia and North Carolina into a well-cultivated and
more level country. For two months past have I spent my days on
horseback, and the majority of my nights in the rudest of cabins;
and as I am now to continue my journey in a stagecoach, it is meet
that I should indite a general letter, descriptive of the region
through which I have passed. In coming from Dahlonega to this place,
I have travelled in a zigzag course upwards of four hundred miles,
but the intervening distance, in a direct line, would not measure
more than two hundred. The entire country is mountainous, and for
the most part remains in its original state of nature. To the
botanist and the geologist, this section of the Union is
unquestionably the most interesting eastward of the Mississippi, for
we have here nearly every variety of forest trees known in the land,
as well as plants and flowers in the greatest abundance, while the
mountains, which are of a primitive formation, abound in every known
variety of minerals. That the scenery of this region is highly
interesting, I hope my readers have already been convinced. More
beautiful streams can nowhere be found on the face of the earth.
But, when we come to speak of lake scenery, the South must yield the
palm to the North. Not a single sheet of water deserving the name of
lake have I yet seen in this Southern land, and yet every mountain
seems to be well supplied with the largest and the coldest of
springs. I know not but this fact has been explained by our
scientific men, but to me it is indeed a striking peculiarity. The
valleys, too, of this region, are remarkably narrow, and the
majority of them might with more propriety be called immense
ravines. The skies, however, which canopy this Alpine land, appeared
to me to be particularly blue, and as to the clouds which gather
around the mountains at the sunset hour, they are gorgeous beyond
compare.
With regard to climate, I know of no section of country that can be
compared with the highlands of Georgia and North Carolina. It is but
seldom that a foot of snow covers the earth even in the severest
winters; and, though the days of midsummer are very warm, they are
seldom sultry, and the nights are invariably sufficiently cool to
make one or two blankets comfortable. Fevers and other diseases
peculiar to the sea-side of the Alleghanies are hardly known among
their inhabitants, and heretofore the majority of people have died
of old age. I would not intimate that they are afflicted with an
epidemic at the present time, but I do say that there are many
households in this region, which have been rendered very desolate by
the Mexican war. When our _kingly_ President commanded the American
people to leave the plough in the furrow and invade a neighboring
republic, the mountaineers of Georgia and the Carolinas poured down
into the valley almost without bidding their mothers, and wives, and
sisters a final adieu; and the bones of at least one half of these
brave men are now mouldering away on the desert sands of the far
South.
Generally speaking, the soil of this country is fertile, yielding
the best of corn, potatoes, and rye, but only an average quality of
wheat, on account of the late frosts. In some of the more extensive
valleys, the apple and the peach arrive at perfection; and while the
former are manufactured into cider, out of the latter the
mountaineers make a very palatable brandy. The principal revenue of
the people, however, is derived from the business of raising cattle,
which is practised to a considerable extent. The mountain ranges
afford an abundance of the sweetest grazing food, and all that the
farmer has to do in the autumn is to hunt up his stock, which have
now become excessively fat, and drive them to the Charleston or
Baltimore market. The only drawback to this business consists in the
fact that the cattle in certain sections of the country are subject
to what is called the milk sickness. This disease is supposed to be
caused by a poisonous dew which gathers on the grass, and is said
not only to have destroyed a great many cattle in other years, but
frequently caused the death of entire families who may have partaken
of the unwholesome milk. It is a dreaded disease, and principally
fatal in the autumn. From the foregoing remarks it will be seen that
a mountain farmer may be an agriculturist, and yet have an abundance
of time to follow any other employment that he has a passion for;
and the result of this fact is, that he is generally a faithful
disciple of the immortal Nimrod.
All the cabins that I have visited have been ornamented by at least
one gun, and more than one-half of the inhabitants have usually been
hounds. That the mountaineers are poor, is a matter of course, and
the majority of their cabins are cheerless places indeed to harbor
the human frame for life; but the people are distinguished for their
hospitality, and always place before the stranger the choicest of
their store. Bacon, game, and milk are their staple articles of
food, and honey is their principal luxury. In religion, generally
speaking, they are Methodists and Baptists, and are distinguished
for their sobriety. They have but few opportunities of hearing good
preaching, but I have never entered more than three or four cabins
where I did not see a copy of the Bible. The limited knowledge they
possess has come to them directly from Heaven as it were, and, from
the necessity of the case, their children are growing up in the most
deplorable ignorance. Whenever one of these poor families happened
to learn from my conversation that I was a resident of New-York, the
interest with which they gazed upon me and listened to my every
word, was both agreeable and painful. It made me happy to
communicate what little I happened to know, but pained me to think
upon their isolated and uncultivated manner of life. Give me the
wilderness for a day or month, but for life I must be amid the
haunts of refinement and civilization. As to the slave population of
the mountain districts, it is so limited that I can hardly express
an opinion with regard to their condition. Not more than one white
man in ten (perhaps I ought to say twenty) is sufficiently wealthy
to support a slave, and those who do possess them are in the habit
of treating them as intelligent beings and in the most kindly
manner. As I have found it to be the case on the sea-board, the
slaves residing among the mountains are the happiest and most
independent portion of the population; and I have had many a one
pilot me over the mountains who would not have exchanged places even
with his master. They have a comfortable house and no debts to pay:
every thing they need in the way of clothing and wholesome food is
ever at their command, and they have free access to the churches and
the Sunday schools of the land. What more do the poor of any country
possess that can add to their temporal happiness?
Another, and of course the most limited portion of the population
occupying this mountain country, is what might be called the
aristocracy or gentry. Generally speaking, they are descended from
the best of families, and moderately wealthy. They are fond of good
living, and their chief business is to make themselves as
comfortable as possible. They esteem solid enjoyment more than
display, and are far more intelligent (so far as books and the world
are concerned) than the same class of people at the North. The
majority of Southern gentlemen, I believe, would be glad to see the
institution of slavery abolished, if it could be brought about
without reducing them to beggary. But they hate a _political_
Abolitionist as they do the very—_Father of Lies_; and for this want
of affection I do not see that they deserve to be blamed. The height
of a Southern man’s ambition is to be a gentleman in every
particular—in word, thought, and deed; and to be a perfect
gentleman, in my opinion, is to be a Christian. And with regard to
the much-talked-of hospitality of the wealthier classes in the
South, I can only say that my own experience ought to make me very
eloquent in their praise. Not only does the genuine feeling exist
here, but a Southern gentleman gives such expression to his feeling
by his home-like treatment of you, that to be truly hospitable you
might imagine had been the principal study of his life.
But the music of the “mellow horn” is ringing in my ear, and in an
hour from this time I shall have thrown myself into a stagecoach,
and be on my way up the long and broad valley of Virginia.