Ashville, delightful for situation, on small hills that rise above
the French Broad below its confluence with the Swannanoa, is a sort of
fourteenth cousin to Saratoga. It has no springs, but lying 2250
feet above the sea and in a lovely valley, mountain girt, it has pure
atmosphere and an equable climate; and being both a summer and winter
resort, it has acquired a watering-place air. There are Southerners who
declare that it is too hot in summer, and that the complete circuit of
mountains shuts out any lively movement of air. But the scenery is so
charming and noble, the drives are so varied, the roads so unusually
passable for a Southern country, and the facilities for excursions so
good, that Asheville is a favorite resort.
Architecturally the place is not remarkable, but its surface is
so irregular, there are so many acclivities and deep valleys that
improvements can never obliterate, that it is perforce picturesque. It
is interesting also, if not pleasing, in its contrasts--the enterprise
of taste and money-making struggling with the laissez faire of the
South. The negro, I suppose, must be regarded as a conservative element;
he has not much inclination to change his clothes or his cabin, and his
swarming presence gives a ragged aspect to the new civilization. And
to say the truth, the new element of Southern smartness lacks the
trim thrift the North is familiar with; though the visitor who needs
relaxation is not disposed to quarrel with the easy-going terms on which
life is taken.
Asheville, it is needless to say, appeared very gay and stimulating to
the riders from the wilderness. The Professor, who does not even pretend
to patronize Nature, had his revenge as we strolled about the streets
(there is but one of much consideration), immensely entertained by the
picturesque contrasts. There was more life and amusement here in
five minutes, he declared, than in five days of what people called
scenery--the present rage for scenery, anyway, being only a fashion and
a modern invention. The Friend suspected from this penchant for the city
that the Professor must have been brought up in the country.
There was a kind of predetermined and willful gayety about Asheville
however, that is apt to be present in a watering-place, and gave to it
the melancholy tone that is always present in gay places. We fancied
that the lively movement in the streets had an air of unreality. A band
of musicians on the balcony of the Swannanoa were scraping and tooting
and twanging with a hired air, and on the opposite balcony of the Eagle
a rival band echoed and redoubled the perfunctory joyousness. The gayety
was contagious: the horses felt it; those that carried light burdens
of beauty minced and pranced, the pony in the dog-cart was inclined to
dash, the few passing equipages had an air of pleasure; and the people
of color, the comely waitress and the slouching corner-loafer, responded
to the animation of the festive strains. In the late afternoon the
streets were full of people, wagons, carriages, horsemen, all with a
holiday air, dashed with African color and humor--the irresponsibility
of the most insouciant and humorous race in the world, perhaps more
comical than humorous; a mixture of recent civilization and rudeness,
peculiar and amusing; a happy coming together, it seemed, of Southern
abandon and Northern wealth, though the North was little represented at
this season.
As evening came on, the streets, though wanting gas, were still more
animated; the shops were open, some very good ones, and the white
and black throng increasing, especially the black, for the negro is
preeminently a night bird. In the hotels dancing was promised--the
german was announced; on the galleries and in the corridors were
groups of young people, a little loud in manner and voice,--the young
gentleman, with his over-elaborate manner to ladies in bowing and
hat-lifting, and the blooming girls from the lesser Southern cities,
with the slight provincial note, and yet with the frank and engaging
cordiality which is as charming as it is characteristic. I do not know
what led the Professor to query if the Southern young women were not
superior to the Southern young men, but he is always asking questions
nobody can answer. At the Swannanoa were half a dozen bridal couples,
readily recognizable by the perfect air they had of having been
married a long time. How interesting such young voyagers are, and how
interesting they are to each other! Columbus never discovered such a
large world as they have to find out and possess each in the other.
Among the attractions of the evening it was difficult to choose. There
was a lawn-party advertised at Battery Point (where a fine hotel has
since been built) and we walked up to that round knob after dark. It is
a hill with a grove, which commands a charming view, and was fortified
during the war. We found it illuminated with Chinese lanterns; and
little tables set about under the trees, laden with cake and ice-cream,
offered a chance to the stranger to contribute money for the benefit
of the Presbyterian Church. I am afraid it was not a profitable
entertainment, for the men seemed to have business elsewhere, but the
ladies about the tables made charming groups in the lighted grove. Man
is a stupid animal at best, or he would not make it so difficult for the
womenkind to scrape together a little money for charitable purposes.
But probably the women like this method of raising money better than the
direct one.
The evening gayety of the town was well distributed. When we descended
to the Court-House Square, a great crowd had collected, black, white,
and yellow, about a high platform, upon which four glaring torches
lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read might decipher this
legend on a standard at the back of the stage:
HAPPY JOHN.
ONE OF THE SLAVES OF WADE HAMPTON.
COME AND SEE HIM!
Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a “bright” yellow girl,
took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by his
audience. His face was blackened to the proper color of the stage-darky,
and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and coat striped
longitudinally according to Punch's idea of “Uncle Sam,” the coat a
swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a bell-crowned white
hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in
the audience amazingly. Mary, the “bright” woman (this is the universal
designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl,
who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert
manner of all traveling sawdust performers.
“Oh, yes,” exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, “Happy John was sure
enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking when
he's not blackened up.”
Happy John sustained the promise of his name by spontaneous gayety and
enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a ready, rude
wit, and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling of impudence,
deference, and patronage, commenting upon them generally, administering
advice and correction in a strain of humor that kept his hearers in a
pleased excitement. He handled the banjo and the guitar alternately,
and talked all the time when he was not singing. Mary (how much harder
featured and brazen a woman is in such a position than a man of the
same caliber!) sang, in an untutored treble, songs of sentiment, often
risque, in solo and in company with John, but with a cold, indifferent
air, in contrast to the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade.
The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touched
lightly the uncertainties of love, expressed in the falsetto pathetic
refrain:
“Mary's gone away wid de coon.”
All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of
darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing, the
laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene. The entertainment was
quite free, with a “collection” occasionally during the performance.
What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy
John of the “nigger” side of the black man as a means of low comedy,
and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color. They appeared to
appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves,
and Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and
exaggerating the “nigger” peculiarities. I presume none of them analyzed
the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay
so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction
of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this
light-hearted race's burlesque of itself.
A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the crowd
more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the yellow girl.
John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces into a saucer,
and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes, called for two small
darky volunteers from the audience to come up on the platform and devour
them. He offered a prize of fifteen cents to the one who should first
eat the contents of his dish, not using his hands, and hold up the
saucer empty in token of his victory. The cake was tempting, and the
fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple of boys in ragged shirts and
short trousers and a suspender apiece came up shamefacedly to enter for
the prize. Each one grasped his saucer in both hands, and with face over
the dish awaited the word “go,” which John gave, and started off the
contest with a banjo accompaniment. To pick up with the mouth the dry
cake and choke it down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they
went into the task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as
if they loved cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the
contestant to see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically
encouraging, and the crowd roaring. As the combat deepened and the
contestants strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into
spasms of laughter. The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up
his empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like
a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable to
speak. The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but said
that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten cents to
one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly increased
his popularity. And then he dismissed the assembly, saying that he had
promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not wish to run an
opposition to the political meeting going on in the courthouse.
The scene in the large court-room was less animated than that out-doors;
a half-dozen tallow dips, hung on the wall in sconces and stuck on the
judge's long desk, feebly illuminated the mixed crowd of black and white
who sat in, and on the backs of, the benches, and cast only a fitful
light upon the orator, who paced back and forth and pounded the rail.
It was to have been a joint discussion between the two presidential
electors running in that district, but, the Republican being absent, his
place was taken by a young man of the town. The Democratic orator took
advantage of the absence of his opponent to describe the discussion
of the night before, and to give a portrait of his adversary. He was
represented as a cross between a baboon and a jackass, who would be a
natural curiosity for Barnum. “I intend,” said the orator, “to put
him in a cage and exhibit him about the deestrict.” This political hit
called forth great applause. All his arguments were of this pointed
character, and they appeared to be unanswerable. The orator appeared
to prove that there wasn't a respectable man in the opposite party who
wasn't an office-holder, nor a white man of any kind in it who was not
an office-holder. If there were any issues or principles in the canvass,
he paid his audience the compliment of knowing all about them, for he
never alluded to any. In another state of society, such a speech of
personalities might have led to subsequent shootings, but no doubt his
adversary would pay him in the same coin when next they met, and
the exhibition seemed to be regarded down here as satisfactory and
enlightened political canvassing for votes. The speaker who replied,
opened his address with a noble tribute to woman (as the first speaker
had ended his), directed to a dozen of that sex who sat in the gloom of
a corner. The young man was moderate in his sarcasm, and attempted to
speak of national issues, but the crowd had small relish for that sort
of thing. At eleven o'clock, when we got away from the unsavory room
(more than half the candles had gone out), the orator was making slow
headway against the refished blackguardism of the evening. The german
was still “on” at the hotel when we ascended to our chamber, satisfied
that Asheville was a lively town.
The sojourner at Asheville can amuse himself very well by walking or
driving to the many picturesque points of view about the town; livery
stables abound, and the roads are good. The Beau-catcher Hill is always
attractive; and Connolly's, a private place a couple of miles from
town, is ideally situated, being on a slight elevation in the valley,
commanding the entire circuit of mountains, for it has the air of repose
which is so seldom experienced in the location of a dwelling in America
whence an extensive prospect is given. Or if the visitor is disinclined
to exertion, he may lounge in the rooms of the hospitable Asheville
Club; or he may sit on the sidewalk in front of the hotels, and talk
with the colonels and judges and generals and ex-members of Congress,
the talk generally drifting to the new commercial and industrial life
of the South, and only to politics as it affects these; and he will be
pleased, if the conversation takes a reminiscent turn, with the lack of
bitterness and the tone of friendliness. The negro problem is commonly
discussed philosophically and without heat, but there is always
discovered, underneath, the determination that the negro shall never
again get the legislative upper hand. And the gentleman from South
Carolina who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is
gone, and wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in
politics--such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would
do yourself. This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social
question, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much
friendly and agreeable conversation. It is that the Southern whites
misapprehend and make a scarecrow of “social equality.” When, during the
war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people of the
Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be stated
in the form of a question: “Do you want your daughter to marry a negro?”
Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and there has
come no change in the social conditions whatever. And there is no doubt
that the social conditions would remain exactly as they are at the South
if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which the Constitution tries
to give him. The most sensible view of this whole question was taken by
an intelligent colored man, whose brother was formerly a representative
in Congress. “Social equality,” he said in effect, “is a humbug. We do
not expect it, we do not want it. It does not exist among the blacks
themselves. We have our own social degrees, and choose our own
associates. We simply want the ordinary civil rights, under which we
can live and make our way in peace and amity. This is necessary to our
self-respect, and if we have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed
that the race can improve. I'll tell you what I mean. My wife is a
modest, intelligent woman, of good manners, and she is always neat,
and tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not
permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered into
one that is repellent, and is forced into company that any refined woman
would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly dressed woman, of known
disreputable character, whom my wife would be disgraced to know, and
she takes any place that money will buy. It is this sort of thing that
hurts.”
We took the eastern train one evening to Round Nob (Henry's Station),
some thirty miles, in order to see the wonderful railway that descends,
a distance of eight miles, from the summit of Swannanoa Gap (2657 feet
elevation) to Round Nob Hotel (1607 feet). The Swannanoa Summit is the
dividing line between the waters that flow to the Atlantic and those
that go to the Gulf of Mexico. This fact was impressed upon us by the
inhabitants, who derive a good deal of comfort from it. Such divides are
always matter of local pride. Unfortunately, perhaps, it was too dark
before we reached Henry's to enable us to see the road in all its loops
and parallels as it appears on the map, but we gained a better effect.
The hotel, when we first sighted it, all its windows blazing with light,
was at the bottom of a well. Beside it--it was sufficiently light to see
that--a column of water sprang straight into the air to the height, as
we learned afterwards from two official sources, of 225 and 265 feet;
and the information was added that it is the highest fountain in the
world. This stout column, stiff as a flagstaff, with its feathery head
of mist gleaming like silver in the failing light, had the most charming
effect. We passed out of sight of hotel and fountain, but were conscious
of being--whirled on a circular descending grade, and very soon they
were in sight again. Again and again they disappeared and came to view,
now on one side and now on the other, until our train seemed to be
bewitched, making frantic efforts by dodgings and turnings, now through
tunnels and now over high pieces of trestle, to escape the inevitable
attraction that was gravitating it down to the hospitable lights at the
bottom of the well. When we climbed back up the road in the morning, we
had an opportunity to see the marvelous engineering, but there is little
else to see, the view being nearly always very limited.
The hotel at the bottom of the ravine, on the side of Round Nob, offers
little in the way of prospect, but it is a picturesque place, and we
could understand why it was full of visitors when we came to the table.
It was probably the best-kept house of entertainment in the State,
and being in the midst of the Black Hills, it offers good chances for
fishing and mountain climbing.
In the morning the fountain, which is, of course, artificial, refused
to play, the rain in the night having washed in debris which clogged the
conduit. But it soon freed itself and sent up for a long time, like
a sulky geyser, mud and foul water. When it got freedom and tolerable
clearness, we noted that the water went up in pulsations, which were
marked at short distances by the water falling off, giving the column
the appearance of a spine. The summit, always beating the air in efforts
to rise higher, fell over in a veil of mist.
There are certain excursions that the sojourner at Asheville must make.
He must ride forty-five miles south through Henderson and Transylvania
to Caesar's Head, on the South Carolina border, where the mountain
system abruptly breaks down into the vast southern plain; where the
observer, standing on the edge of the precipice, has behind him and
before him the greatest contrast that nature can offer. He must also
take the rail to Waynesville, and visit the much-frequented White
Sulphur Springs, among the Balsam Mountains, and penetrate the Great
Smoky range by way of Quallatown, and make the acquaintance of the
remnant of Cherokee Indians living on the north slope of Cheoah
Mountain. The Professor could have made it a matter of personal merit
that he escaped all these encounters with wild and picturesque nature,
if his horse had not been too disabled for such long jaunts. It is only
necessary, however, to explain to the public that the travelers are not
gormandizers of scenery, and were willing to leave some portions of the
State to the curiosity of future excursionists.
But so much was said about Hickory Nut Gap that a visit to it could not
be evaded. The Gap is about twenty-four miles southeast of Asheville. In
the opinion of a well-informed colonel, who urged us to make the trip,
it is the finest piece of scenery it this region. We were brought up on
the precept “get the best,” and it was with high anticipations that we
set out about eleven o'clock one warm, foggy morning. We followed a very
good road through a broken, pleasant country, gradually growing wilder
and less cultivated. There was heavy rain most of the day on the hills,
and occasionally a shower swept across our path. The conspicuous object
toward which we traveled all the morning was a shapely conical hill at
the beginning of the Gap.
At three o'clock we stopped at the Widow Sherrill's for dinner. Her
house, only about a mile from the summit, is most picturesquely situated
on a rough slope, giving a wide valley and mountain view. The house
is old rambling, many-roomed, with wide galleries on two sides. If
one wanted a retired retreat for a few days, with good air and fair
entertainment, this could be commended. It is an excellent fruit region;
apples especially are sound and of good flavor. That may be said of all
this part of the State. The climate is adapted to apples, as the hilly
part of New England is. I fancy the fruit ripens slowly, as it does in
New England, and is not subject to quick decay like much of that grown
in the West. But the grape also can be grown in all this mountain
region. Nothing but lack of enterprise prevents any farmer from enjoying
abundance of fruit. The industry carried on at the moment at the Widow
Sherrill's was the artificial drying of apples for the market. The
apples are pared, cored, and sliced in spirals, by machinery, and
dried on tin sheets in a patented machine. The industry appears to be a
profitable one hereabouts, and is about the only one that calls in the
aid of invention.
While our dinner was preparing, we studied the well-known pictures of
“Jane” and “Eliza,” the photographs of Confederate boys, who had
never returned from the war, and the relations, whom the traveling
photographers always like to pillory in melancholy couples, and some
stray volumes of the Sunday-school Union. Madame Sherrill, who carries
on the farm since the death of her husband, is a woman of strong and
liberal mind, who informed us that she got small comfort in the churches
in the neighborhood, and gave us, in fact, a discouraging account of the
unvital piety of the region.
The descent from the summit of the Gap to Judge Logan's, nine miles, is
rapid, and the road is wild and occasionally picturesque, following
the Broad River, a small stream when we first overtook it, but roaring,
rocky, and muddy, owing to frequent rains, and now and then tumbling
down in rapids. The noisy stream made the ride animated, and an
occasional cabin, a poor farmhouse, a mill, a schoolhouse, a store
with an assemblage of lean horses tied to the hitching rails, gave the
Professor opportunity for remarks upon the value of life under such
circumstances.
The valley which we followed down probably owes its celebrity to
the uncommon phenomena of occasional naked rocks and precipices. The
inclosing mountains are from 3000 to 4000 feet high, and generally
wooded. I do not think that the ravine would be famous in a country
where exposed ledges and buttressing walls of rock are common. It is
only by comparison with the local scenery that this is remarkable. About
a mile above judge Logan's we caught sight, through the trees, of the
famous waterfall. From the top of the high ridge on the right, a nearly
perpendicular cascade pours over the ledge of rocks and is lost in the
forest. We could see nearly the whole of it, at a great height above us,
on the opposite side of the river, and it would require an hour's stiff
climb to reach its foot. From where we viewed it, it seemed a slender
and not very important, but certainly a very beautiful cascade, a band
of silver in the mass of green foliage. The fall is said to be 1400
feet. Our colonel insists that it is a thousand. It may be, but the
valley where we stood is at least at an elevation of 1300 feet; we could
not believe that the ridge over which the water pours is much higher
than 3000 feet, and the length of the fall certainly did not appear
to be a quarter of the height of the mountain from our point of
observation. But we had no desire to belittle this pretty cascade,
especially when we found that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated
from the 1400 as a personal grievance. Mr. Logan once performed the
functions of local judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around
the premises now in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact
that his wife is postmistress. His house of entertainment is at the
bottom of the valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a
long stay, although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
which we had been for a month. The Judge himself was reticent, as became
a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster prospectus,
sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and Logan, in which
the Professor read, with shaking knees, this sentence: “Sure to be the
greatest and hottest [campaign and civil battle] ever known in this
world. The thunder of the supreme struggle and its reverberations will
shake the continents for months, and will be felt from Pole to Pole.”
For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in. There
was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
mosquitoes besides. Had there not been other travelers staying here, we
should have felt still more uneasy. The house faced Bald Mountain, 4000
feet high, a hill that had a very bad reputation some years ago, and
was visited by newspaper reporters. This is, in fact, the famous Shaking
Mountain. For a long time it had a habit of trembling, as if in an
earthquake spasm, but with a shivering motion very different from that
produced by an earthquake. The only good that came of it was that it
frightened all the “moonshiners,” and caused them to join the church. It
is not reported what became of the church afterwards. It is believed now
that the trembling was caused by the cracking of a great ledge on the
mountain, which slowly parted asunder. Bald Mountain is the scene of
Mrs. Burnett's delightful story of “Louisiana,” and of the play of
“Esmeralda.” A rock is pointed out toward the summit, which the beholder
is asked to see resembles a hut, and which is called “Esmeralda's
Cottage.” But this attractive maiden has departed, and we did
not discover any woman in the region who remotely answers to her
description.
In the morning we rode a mile and a half through the woods and followed
up a small stream to see the celebrated pools, one of which the Judge
said was two hundred feet deep, and another bottomless. These pools, not
round, but on one side circular excavations, some twenty feet across,
worn in the rock by pebbles, are very good specimens, and perhaps
remarkable specimens, of “pot-holes.” They are, however, regarded here
as one of the wonders of the world. On the way to them we saw beautiful
wild trumpet-creepers in blossom, festooning the trees.
The stream that originates in Hickory Nut Gap is the westernmost
branch of several forks of the Broad, which unite to the southeast in
Rutherford County, flow to Columbia, and reach the Atlantic through the
channel of the Santee. It is not to be confounded with the French Broad,
which originates among the hills of Transylvania, runs northward past
Asheville, and finds its way to the Tennessee through the Warm Springs
Gap in the Bald Mountains. As the French claimed ownership of all the
affluents of the Mississippi, this latter was called the French Broad.
It was a great relief the next morning, on our return, to rise out of
the lifeless atmosphere of the Gap into the invigorating air at the
Widow Sherrill's, whose country-seat is three hundred feet higher than
Asheville. It was a day of heavy showers, and apparently of leisure to
the scattered population; at every store and mill was a congregation of
loafers, who had hitched their scrawny horses and mules to the fences,
and had the professional air of the idler and gossip the world over. The
vehicles met on the road were a variety of the prairie schooner, long
wagons with a top of hoops over which is stretched a cotton cloth. The
wagons are without seats, and the canvas is too low to admit of sitting
upright, if there were. The occupants crawl in at either end, sit or
lie on the bottom of the wagon, and jolt along in shiftless
uncomfortableness.
Riding down the French Broad was one of the original objects of our
journey. Travelers with the same intention may be warned that the route
on horseback is impracticable. The distance to the Warm Springs is
thirty-seven miles; to Marshall, more than halfway, the road is clear,
as it runs on the opposite side of the river from the railway, and the
valley is something more than river and rails. But below Marshall the
valley contracts, and the rails are laid a good portion of the way in
the old stage road. One can walk the track, but to ride a horse over its
sleepers and culverts and occasional bridges, and dodge the trains,
is neither safe nor agreeable. We sent our horses round--the messenger
taking the risk of leading them, between trains, over the last six or
eight miles,--and took the train.
The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river
all the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low,
monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a
pretty turn and “reach,” with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on
either side. The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of rocks,
with an occasional little island covered with low bushes. The rock seems
to be a clay formation, rotten and colored. As we approach Warm Springs
the scenery becomes a little bolder, and we emerge into the open space
about the Springs through a narrower defile, guarded by rocks that are
really picturesque in color and splintered decay, one of them being
known, of course, as the “Lover's Leap,” a name common in every part
of the modern or ancient world where there is a settlement near a
precipice, with always the same legend attached to it.
There is a little village at Warm Springs, but the hotel--since burned
and rebuilt--(which may be briefly described as a palatial shanty)
stands by itself close to the river, which is here a deep, rapid, turbid
stream. A bridge once connected it with the road on the opposite bank,
but it was carried away three or four years ago, and its ragged butments
stand as a monument of procrastination, while the stream is crossed by
means of a flatboat and a cable. In front of the hotel, on the slight
slope to the river, is a meager grove of locusts. The famous spring,
close to-the stream, is marked only by a rough box of wood and an
iron pipe, and the water, which has a temperature of about one hundred
degrees, runs to a shabby bath-house below, in which is a pool for
bathing. The bath is very agreeable, the tepid water being singularly
soft and pleasant. It has a slightly sulphurous taste. Its good effects
are much certified. The grounds, which might be very pretty with care,
are ill-kept and slatternly, strewn with debris, as if everything was
left to the easy-going nature of the servants. The main house is
of brick, with verandas and galleries all round, and a colonnade
of thirteen huge brick and stucco columns, in honor of the thirteen
States,--a relic of post-Revolutionary times, when the house was the
resort of Southern fashion and romance. These columns have stood through
one fire, and perhaps the recent one, which swept away the rest of
the structure. The house is extended in a long wooden edifice, with
galleries and outside stairs, the whole front being nearly seven hundred
feet long. In a rear building is a vast, barrack-like dining-room, with
a noble ball-room above, for dancing is the important occupation of
visitors.
The situation is very pretty, and the establishment has a
picturesqueness of its own. Even the ugly little brick structure near
the bath-house imposes upon one as Wade Hampton's cottage. No doubt
we liked the place better than if it had been smart, and enjoyed the
neglige condition, and the easy terms on which life is taken there.
There was a sense of abundance in the sight of fowls tiptoeing about the
verandas, and to meet a chicken in the parlor was a sort of guarantee
that we should meet him later on in the dining-room. There was nothing
incongruous in the presence of pigs, turkeys, and chickens on the
grounds; they went along with the good-natured negro-service and the
general hospitality; and we had a mental rest in the thought that all
the gates would have been off the hinges, if there had been any gates.
The guests were very well treated indeed, and were put under no sort of
restraint by discipline. The long colonnade made an admirable promenade
and lounging-place and point of observation. It was interesting to watch
the groups under the locusts, to see the management of the ferry, the
mounting and dismounting of the riding-parties, and to study the colors
on the steep hill opposite, halfway up which was a neat cottage and
flower-garden. The type of people was very pleasantly Southern. Colonels
and politicians stand in groups and tell stories, which are followed by
explosions of laughter; retire occasionally into the saloon, and come
forth reminded of more stories, and all lift their hats elaborately and
suspend the narratives when a lady goes past. A company of soldiers from
Richmond had pitched its tents near the hotel, and in the evening the
ball-room was enlivened with uniforms. Among the graceful dancers--and
every one danced well, and with spirit was pointed out the young widow
of a son of Andrew Johnson, whose pretty cottage overlooks the village.
But the Professor, to whom this information was communicated, doubted
whether here it was not a greater distinction to be the daughter of the
owner of this region than to be connected with a President of the United
States.
A certain air of romance and tradition hangs about the French Broad and
the Warm Springs, which the visitor must possess himself of in order to
appreciate either. This was the great highway of trade and travel. At
certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession of herds of
cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of trains of big
wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered by the Tennessee.
Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters in coach and four,
with a great retinue of household servants, and kept up for months that
unique social life, a mixture of courtly ceremony and entire freedom,
the civilization which had the drawing-room at one end and the
negro-quarters at the other,--which has passed away. It was a
continuation into our own restless era of the manners and the literature
of George the Third, with the accompanying humor and happy-go-lucky
decadence of the negro slaves. On our way down we saw on the river-bank,
under the trees, the old hostelry, Alexander's, still in decay,--an
attractive tavern, that was formerly one of the notable stopping-places
on the river. Master, and fine lady, and obsequious, larking darky,
and lumbering coach, and throng of pompous and gay life, have all
disappeared. There was no room in this valley for the old institutions
and for the iron track.
“When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
We, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.”
This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
French Broad.
The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone
who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs
a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as
heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not
its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed,
sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and
subjected to acids, and at the end of the process it is as white and
fine as the best bolted flour. This heavy adulterant is shipped to the
North in large quantities,--the manager said he had recently an order
for a hundred thousand dollars' worth of it. What is the use of this
powder? Well, it is of use to the dealer who sells white lead for paint,
to increase the weight of the lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that
it is mixed with powdered sugar. The industry is profitable to those
engaged in it.
It was impossible to get much information about our route into
Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross
Paint Mountain. Late one morning,--a late start is inevitable
here,--accompanied by a cavalcade, we crossed the river by the rope
ferry, and trotted down the pretty road, elevated above the stream
and tree-shaded, offering always charming glimpses of swift water and
overhanging foliage (the railway obligingly taking the other side of the
river), to Paint Rock,--six miles. This Paint Rock is a naked precipice
by the roadside, perhaps sixty feet high, which has a large local
reputation. It is said that its face shows painting done by the Indians,
and hieroglyphics which nobody can read. On this bold, crumbling cliff,
innumerable visitors have written their names. We stared at it a good
while to discover the paint and hieroglyphics, but could see nothing
except iron stains. Round the corner is a farmhouse and place of call
for visitors, a neat cottage, with a display of shells and minerals and
flower-pots; and here we turned north crossed the little stream called
Paint River, the only clear water we had seen in a month, passed into
the State of Tennessee, and by a gentle ascent climbed Paint Mountain.
The open forest road, with the murmur of the stream below, was
delightfully exhilarating, and as we rose the prospect opened,--the
lovely valley below, Bald Mountains behind us, and the Butt Mountains
rising as we came over the ridge.
Nobody on the way, none of the frowzy women or unintelligent men, knew
anything of the route, or could give us any information of the country
beyond. But as we descended in Tennessee the country and the farms
decidedly improved,--apple-trees and a grapevine now and then.
A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed
to receive hospitality. We passed by an old farm building to a new
two-storied, gayly painted house on a hill. We were deceived by
appearances. The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to
offer us except some buttermilk. Why should anybody be obliged to feed
roving strangers? As to our horses, the young woman with a baby in her
arms declared,
“We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get
something at the other house.”
“Roughness,” we found out at the other house, meant hay in this region.
We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and for our own
dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a few sonnets.
On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve miles farther,
through a rolling, good farming country, offering little for comment,
in search of a night's lodging with one of the brothers Snap. But one
brother declined our company on the plea that his wife was sick, and the
other because his wife lived in Greenville, and we found ourselves
as dusk came on without shelter in a tavernless land. Between the two
refusals we enjoyed the most picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at
the crossing of Camp Creek, a swift little stream, that swirled round
under the ledge of bold rocks before the ford. This we learned was a
favorite camp-meeting ground. Mary was calling the cattle home at the
farm of the second Snap. It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and
we were inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the
cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this
pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and
intelligent farming. Mr. Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with plenty
of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity), who owes
his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas. He was a Unionist
during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his county (Greene) has
been Republican. We had been riding all the afternoon through good land,
and encountering a better class of farmers. Peach-trees abounded (though
this was an off year for fruit), and apples and grapes throve. It is
a land of honey and of milk. The persimmon flourishes; and,
sign of abundance generally, we believe, great flocks of
turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the high air--hovered about.
This country was ravaged during the war by Unionists and Confederates
alternately, the impartial patriots as they passed scooping in corn,
bacon, and good horses, leaving the farmers little to live on. Mr.
Alexander's farm cost him forty dollars an acre, and yields good crops
of wheat and maize. This was the first house on our journey where at
breakfast we had grace before meat, though there had been many tables
that needed it more. From the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in
sight and not distant; and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which
he was accustomed to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the
summer and enjoy a real primitive woods life.
Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling, rather
unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt ranges,
which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed the Nollechucky
River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle girth, broad,
rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and came to the
little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a hospitable
old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat of the hot
day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one pretty girl in
a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the currently received
notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The big parlor, with its
photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell and mineral, a piano and
a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of mahogany, recalled rural New
England. Perhaps these refinements are due to the Washington College (a
school for both sexes), which is near. We noted at the tables in this
region a singular use of the word fruit. When we were asked, Will you
have some of the fruit? and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the oldest
town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity, set
picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight. People from
further South find this an agreeable summering place, and a fair hotel,
with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want company. The Warren
Institute for negroes has been flourishing here ever since the war.
A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and were
entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous and
hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in the morning
wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to Jonesboro, and
Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits before us as we
lounged on the porch before dinner.
It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she excelled
any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she was by her own
confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age till she has passed
this point) and the testimony of others a hundred years old. But age
had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor the limberness of her
tongue, nor her shrewd good sense. She talked freely about the want of
decency and morality in the young colored folks of the present day. It
was n't so when she was a girl. Long, long time ago, she and her husband
had been sold at sheriff's sale and separated, and she never had another
husband. Not that she blamed her master so much he could n't help it;
he got in debt. And she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the
danger they are in. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he
can borrow money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and
pilin' up the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a
ladder to get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and
the man has to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her life
over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now. The
thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and kept her
eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she had seen some fence
up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr. Devault that she
didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as white folks was much
better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes, slavery was pretty bad--she had
seen five hundred niggers in handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to
be sent South.
About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest, worth
a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the large beech (six
and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which Daniel Boone
shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. He himself cut
an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it is still
distinctly legible: