The Nameless Valley, Virginia, June, 1848.
Since my last letter was written, my course of travel has led me
towards the fountain-head of the Holston river, whose broad and
highly cultivated valley is bounded on the northwest by the Clinch
Mountains, and on the southeast by the Iron Mountains. The
agricultural and mineral advantages of this valley are manifold, and
the towns and farms scattered along the stage-road all present a
thriving and agreeable appearance. Along the bed of the Holston
agates and cornelians are found in considerable abundance; and
though the scenery of its valley is merely beautiful, I know of no
district in the world where caves and caverns are found in such
great numbers. A zigzag tour along this valley alone will take the
traveller to at least one dozen caves, many of which are said to be
remarkably interesting. From my own observation, however, I know
nothing about them; and so long as I retain my passion for the
revealed productions of nature, I will leave the hidden ones to take
care of themselves.
On reaching the pleasant little village of Abingdon, in Washington
county, a friend informed me that I must not fail to visit the
salt-works of Smythe county. I did so, and the following is my
account of Saltville, which is the proper name for the place in
question: Its site was originally a salt-lick, to which immense
herds of elk, buffalo, and deer, were in the habit of resorting;
subsequently, the Indians applied the privilege to themselves, and
then an occasional hunter came here for his supplies; but the
regular business of transforming the water into salt did not
commence until the year 1790. Saltville is located at the head of a
valley near the base of the Clinch Mountains, and about one mile
from the Holston river. All the population of the place, numbering
perhaps three hundred inhabitants, are engaged in the manufacture of
salt. The water here is said to be the strongest and purest in the
world. When tested by a salometer, graded for saturation at
twenty-five degrees, it ranges from twenty to twenty-two degrees,
and twenty gallons of water will yield one bushel of salt, which
weighs fifty pounds, (and not fifty-six as at the North,) and is
sold at the rate of twenty cents per bushel, or one dollar and
twenty cents per barrel. The water is brought from a depth of two
hundred and twenty feet by means of three artesian wells, which keep
five furnaces or salt-blocks, of eighty-four kettles each, in
constant employment, and produce about two thousand bushels per day.
The water is raised by means of horse-power, and twenty-five teams
are constantly employed in supplying the furnaces with wood. The
salt manufactured here is acknowledged to be superior in quality to
that made on the Kanawha, in this State, or at Syracuse, in
New-York, but the Northern establishments are by far the most
extensive. The section of country supplied from this quarter is
chiefly composed of Tennessee and Alabama; generally speaking, there
is but one shipment made during the year, which is in the spring,
and by means of flat-boats built expressly for the purpose. A dozen
or two of these boats are always ready for business, and when the
Holston is swollen by a freshet they are loaded and manned at the
earliest possible moment, and away the singing boatmen go down the
wild, winding, and narrow but picturesque stream, to their desired
havens. The section of country supplied by the Kanawha is the
northwest and the extreme south, while Syracuse, Liverpool, and
Turk’s Island supply the Atlantic seaboard. The Saltville reservoir
of water seems to be inexhaustible, and it is supposed would give
active employment to at least a dozen new furnaces. As already
stated, the yielding wells are somewhat over two hundred feet deep;
but within a stone’s throw of these, other wells have been sunk to
the depth of four, five, and six hundred feet, without obtaining a
particle of the valuable liquid. The business of Saltville is
carried on by private enterprise altogether, and the principal
proprietor and director is a gentleman who comes from that noble
stock which has given to this country such men as Patrick Henry and
William H. Preston. I am at present the guest of this gentleman, and
therefore refrain from giving his name to the public; but as his
plantation is decidedly the most beautiful that I have seen in the
whole Southern country, I must be permitted to give a particular
description for the edification of my readers.
This heretofore nameless nook of the great world I have been
permitted to designate as _The Nameless Valley_, and if I succeed in
merely enumerating its charming features and associations, I feel
confident that my letter will be read with pleasure. It is the
centre of a domain comprising eight thousand acres of land, which
covers a multitude of hills that are all thrown in shadow at the
sunset hour by the Clinch Mountains. The valley in question is one
mile by three-quarters of a mile wide, and comprises exactly three
hundred and thirty-three acres of green meadow land, unbroken by a
single fence, but ornamented by about a dozen isolated trees,
composed of at least half a dozen varieties, and the valley is
watered by a tiny stream of the clearest water. It is completely
surrounded with cone-like hills, which are nearly all highly
cultivated half way up their sides, but crowned with a diadem of the
most luxuriant forest trees. A little back of the hills, skirting
the western side of the valley, are the picturesquely broken Clinch
Mountains, whose every outline, and cliff, and fissure, and ravine,
may be distinctly seen from the opposite side of the valley, where
the spacious and tastefully porticoed mansion of the proprietor is
located. Clustering immediately around this dwelling, but not so as
to interrupt the view, are a number of very large willows, poplars,
and elms, while the inclosed slope upon which it stands is covered
with luxuriant grass, here and there enlivened by a stack of roses
and other flowers. The numerous outhouses of the plantation are a
little back of the main building, and consist of neatly painted
cabins, occupied by the negroes belonging to the estate, and
numbering about one hundred souls; then come the stables, where no
less than seventy-five horses are daily supplied with food; then we
have a pasture on the hill side, where thirty or forty cows nightly
congregate to be milked, and give suck to their calves; and then we
have a mammoth spring, whose waters issue out of the mountain,
making only about a dozen leaps, throwing themselves upon the huge
wheel of an old mill, causing it to sing a kind of circling song
from earliest dawn to the twilight hour. In looking to the westward
from the spacious porticoes of the mansion, the eye falls upon only
two objects which are at all calculated to destroy the natural
solitude of the place, viz. a road which passes directly by the
house at the foot of the lawn, and one small white cottage situated
at the base of a hill on the opposite side of the valley. Instead of
detracting from the scene, however, these objects actually make it
more interesting, when the facts are remembered that in that cottage
did the proprietor of this great estate first see the light, and
that by its side are deposited the remains of five generations of
his ancestors; and as to the road, the people who travel it all
appear and move along just exactly as a poet would desire.
But to give my readers a more graphic idea of this truly delightful
valley, I will enumerate the living pictures which attracted my
attention from the book I was attempting to read on a single
afternoon. I was in a commanding corner of the porch, and had closed
the volume just as the sun was sinking behind the mountain. The sky
was of a soft silvery hue, and almost cloudless, and the entire
landscape was bathed in an exquisitely soft and delightful
atmosphere. Not a breeze was stirring in the valley, and the cool
shadows of the trees were twice as long as the trees themselves. The
first noise that broke the silence of the scene was a slow thumping
and creaking sound away down the road, and on casting my eyes in the
right direction I discovered a large wain, or covered wagon, drawn
by seven horses, and driven by a man who amused himself as he lazily
moved along, by snapping his whip at the harmless plants by the
road-side. I know not whence he came or whither he was going, but
twenty minutes must have flown before he passed out of my view. At
one time a flood of discord came to my ear from one of the huge
poplars in the yard, and I could see that there was a terrible
dispute going on between a lot of resident and stranger blackbirds;
and, after they had ceased their noise, I could hear the chirping of
the swallows, as they swooped after the insects, floating in the
sunbeams, far away over the green valley. And now I heard a laugh
and the sound of talking voices, and lo! a party of ten negroes, who
were returning from the fields where they had been cutting hay or
hoeing corn. The neighing and stamping of a steed now attracted my
attention, and I saw a superb blood horse attempting to get away
from a negro groom, who was leading him along the road. The mellow
tinkling of a bell and the lowing of cattle now came trembling on
the air, and presently, a herd of cows made their appearance,
returning home from the far-off hills with udders brimming full, and
kicking up a dust as they lounged along. Now the sun dropped behind
the hills, and one solitary night-hawk shot high up into the air, as
if he had gone to welcome the evening star, which presently made its
appearance from its blue watchtower; and, finally, a dozen women
came trooping from the cow-yard into the dairy house, with
well-filled milk-pails on their heads, and looking like a troop of
Egyptic water damsels. And then for one long hour did the spirits of
repose and twilight have complete possession of the valley, and no
sound fell upon my ear but the hum of insect wings.
But I was intending to mention the curiosities of the Nameless
Valley. Foremost among these I would rank a small cave, on the south
side, in which are deposited a curious collection of human bones.
Many of them are very large, while others, which were evidently
full-grown, are exceedingly small. Among the female skulls I noticed
one of a female that seemed to be perfectly beautiful, but small
enough to have belonged to a child. The most curious specimen,
however, found in this cave, is the skull of a man. It is entirely
without a forehead, very narrow across the eyes, full and regularly
rounded behind, and from the lower part of the ears are two bony
projections, nearly two inches in length, which must have presented
a truly terrible appearance when covered with flesh. The animal
organs of this skull are remarkably full, and it is also greatly
deficient in all the intellectual faculties. Another curiosity in
this valley is a bed of plaster which lies in the immediate vicinity
of a bed of slate, with a granite and limestone strata only a short
distance off, the whole constituting a geological conglomeration
that I never heard of before. But what is still more remarkable is
the fact, that within this plaster bed was found the remains of an
unknown animal, which must have been a mammoth indeed. A grinder
tooth belonging to this monster I have seen and examined. It has a
blackish appearance, measures about ten inches in length, weighs
four pounds and a half, and was found only three feet from the
surface. This tooth, as well as the skull already mentioned, were
discovered by the proprietor of the valley, and, I am glad to learn,
are about to be deposited by him in the National Museum at
Washington. But another attractive feature in the Nameless Valley
consists of a kind of Indian Herculaneum, where, deeply imbedded in
sand and clay, are the remains of a town, whence have been brought
to light a great variety of earthen vessels and curious utensils.
Upon this spot, also, many shells have been found, which are said
never to have been seen excepting on the shore of the Pacific. But
all these things should be described by the antiquarian, and I only
mention them for the purpose of letting the world know that there is
literally no end to the wonders of our beautiful land.
I did think of sketching a few of the many charming views which
present themselves from the hills surrounding the Nameless Valley,
but I am not exactly in the mood just now, and I will leave them “in
their glory alone.” Connected with a precipice on one of them,
however, I have this incident to relate. For an hour or more had I
been watching the evolutions of a superb bald-headed eagle above the
valley, when, to my surprise, he suddenly became excited, and darted
down with intense swiftness towards the summit of the cliff alluded
to, and disappeared among the trees. A piercing shriek followed this
movement, and I anticipated a combat between the eagle and a pair of
fishhawks which I knew had a nest upon the cliff. In less than five
minutes after this assault, the eagle again made his appearance, but
uttered not a sound, and, having flown to the opposite side of the
valley, commenced performing a circle, in the most graceful manner
imaginable. Presently the two hawks also made their appearance high
above their rocky home, and proceeded to imitate the movements of
the eagle. At first the two parties seemed to be indifferent to each
other, but on observing them more closely it was evident that they
were gradually approaching each other, and that their several
circles were rapidly lessening. On reaching an elevation of perhaps
five thousand feet, they finally interfered with each other, and,
having joined issue, a regular battle commenced, and as they
ascended, the screams of the hawks gradually became inaudible, and
in a short time the three royal birds were entirely lost to view in
the blue zenith.
Before closing this letter, I wish to inform my readers of a natural
curiosity lying between the Clinch and Cumberland Mountains, and
distant from this place only about a day’s journey. I allude to what
is called the Natural Tunnel. It is in Scott county, and consists of
a subterranean channel through a ragged limestone hill, the entire
bed of which is watered by a running stream about twenty feet wide.
The cavern is four hundred and fifty feet long, from sixty to eighty
feet in height, about seventy in width, and of a serpentine form. On
either side of the hill through which this tunnel passes are
perpendicular cliffs, some of which are three hundred feet high and
exceedingly picturesque. The gloomy aspect of this tunnel, even at
mid-day, is very imposing; for when standing near the centre neither
of its outlets can be seen, and it requires hardly an effort of the
fancy for a man to deem himself for ever entombed within the bowels
of the earth.