Chapter III: Introduction (2)

We arrived at Yellow Hill about 11 o’clock. Chief Smith resides in a comfortable house of four rooms, situated on top of an elevation in the midst of a plain of considerable extent. In an open yard near the house is a frame building used for a school-house, meeting-house, and council-house. We found Chief Smith in his residence, writing at a table covered with books, pamphlets, letters, and manuscripts. The room is neatly papered and comfortably furnished. The chief received us with cordiality. He was dressed in white starched shirt, with collar and cuffs, Prince Albert coat, well-fitting black pantaloons, and calf-skin boots shining like ebony. He is more than six feet tall, straight as a plumb line, and rather slender. His features are rough and prominent. His forehead is full but not high, and his thick, black hair, combed to perfect smoothness, hung down behind large protruding ears, almost to the coat collar. He has a deep, full-toned voice, and earnest, impressive manner. His wife is a white woman, and his daughters, bright, intelligent girls, have been well-educated. One of them was operating a sewing-machine, another writing for her father.

Under the present constitution the chief’s term of office is four years. His salary is $500 a year, and $4 a day additional when on business in Washington. No one but a Cherokee of more than 35 years of age is eligible to the chieftainship. There is an assistant chief who receives $250 yearly. He is one of the council, and in the absence of the chief performs his duties. There are in addition three executive advisers. The council consists of two delegates to every 100 persons. It is presided over by the chief, who has the veto power, but who is not at liberty to act in any matter of public policy without the authority of the council. Every male Indian over sixteen years old, and every white man who has an Indian wife, is allowed to vote. No one is eligible to office who has ever aided and abetted, or in any way joined the whites in defrauding the tribe; neither can any one hold office who denies the being of a God, or of a future state of rewards and punishments. There is general satisfaction with the present government, and Mr. Smith declares there is entire loyalty in all the settlements.

A public school is maintained, and even the old and middle-aged are better educated than the whites in many communities. The young are taught in both Cherokee and English. It is unfortunate that no public fund is provided for the advanced education of the more intelligent of them, that they might become teachers. Others should be placed in shops where they would become artisans. Finely engraved pipes, ornaments, and well made baskets show their capacity in this direction. Their industry at present is not commendable.

The christianization of the Cherokees was begun in 1801, by Moravian missionaries. It was easy to adapt their old faith to the new creed, and many were converted. Other churches have since taken up the work, Baptists deserving the most credit, and next to them the Methodists. They are naturally devout, and most of them are in regular communion with the church, thereby imposing marriage laws and other social regulations. Christianity has strengthened and solemnized the marriage tie, which in the prouder but more barbarous condition of the tribe was a very weak relation. Boys used to choose their wives at sixteen to eighteen years of age, live with them a few years and then abandon them and their families. It not unfrequently happened that after rioting with strange women for a period, they came back to their first choice, unless their places had been taken by others. Prostitution was common, though considered the most disgraceful of crimes, and punished by shearing the head. This punishment has been discontinued. Although there has been a healthy change in social morals there is room for improvement.

Rigid seriousness is a marked element of Indian character, and is written in unmistakable lines upon their faces. The Cherokee language is not capable of expressing a witticism, and anything like a joke is foreign to their nature. They have a great many so-called dances, but none of them, like the dance of the negro, is the effervescence of irrepressible joy. The Indian dances as a preparation for some coming event; he never celebrates. It seems to be a legacy of his heathen ideas of making sacrifice to the great spirit, apparently involving much painful labor. In the primitive days the whole tribe danced before making war, and the warriors danced before going into battle. It is still their custom to go through these melancholy perambulations before every contest of strength, such as a game of ball or a wrestling match. The funeral dance and the wedding dance are performed with the same stern immobility of features.

From Yellow Hill our party started to Qualla post-office, a collection of a half-dozen unattractive houses, inhabited by whites, but at one time the council house of the band. The Ocona Lufta crossed our path at the beginning. The purity of the stream seemed to forbid the intrusion of a dirty hoof, but there was no time to indulge sentiment. The ford is shallow, and angles down stream. My horse mistook a canoe landing, almost opposite, for his place of destination, his rider’s attention being absorbed in the blocks of many colored granite and transparent crystals of quartz, which form the bottom pavement. Three-fourths way across, the water was smooth and touched the horse’s neck. Another length, a plunge, and the horse was swimming; still the lustrous bottom shone with undiminished distinctness.

On our way through Quallatown to Soco creek, we passed numerous wayfarers carrying corn, fruit, baskets, and babies. One woman had a bushel of corn tied in a sack around her waist, a basket of apples on her head, and a baby in her arms. A slouchy man was walking at her side empty-handed and scolding, probably because she was unable to carry him. Under a peach tree before a cabin stood a witch-like squaw and half a dozen unattractive children. “Is this the Soco road?” was asked. “Satula” issued from her grim old mouth, and her finger pointed at the peaches.

“No, Soco; is this Soco?” nervously urged our companion, pointing up the stream.

“Uh,” she grunted out, and handed him one peach, from which we inferred that “soco” means “one.” A white woman in the vicinity confirmed our guess, and told us that “satula” is equivalent to the phrase “do you want it?”

Pause, and look at an “Indian maiden” by the road side. We did. Who, that has read Longfellow, and Cooper, and Irving, could pass without looking? She certainly could not have been the inspiration of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. She stands, in my recollection, with fishing rod in hand--about five feet tall, and 140 pounds in weight. Black, coarse, knotted hair hangs down her back to the waist. Under her low forehead is a pair of large, black eyes, which, unfortunately, are devoid of expression. Her cheek bones are wider than her forehead and almost touch the level of her eyes. A flat nose, straight mouth, and small ears, complete the physiognomy which showed no sign of thinking. Her neck is short and thick, and her shoulders broader than her broad hips. Her waist is almost manly. A gown of homespun, patched and dirty, half conceals her knees. With a glance at a large, but clumsy, pair of ankles, and flat feet, we pass on out of the Indian settlement along the rapids of Soco. We had not been approached by a beggar, or asked to buy a penny worth of anything during the whole day.

The scenery along the torrents of Soco creek, down the western slope of the Balsams, rivals in variety and picturesque effect that of any place in the Appalachians. There are no grand chasms, nor grand cascades. There is nothing, indeed, which calls for superlative adjectives, unless, possibly, we except the immensity of the trees, the unbroken carpeting of moss, and the perfect grace of tall ferns. There is, in the curves of the torrent, as it bounds over precipices and down rapids, compelling us to cross its noisy channel at least twenty times; in the conformation of the glens through which we rode; in the massiveness and towering height of the great chain, up whose side we were climbing; in the white fragments of rock, which reflect the sun light from the stream’s channel and the highway; in the rounded cliffs, so modest that they keep themselves perpetually robed in a seamless vesture of moss; in the ferns, the shrubs, the trees, in the absolute solitude and loneliness of the place,--there is something so complex in its effect upon the interested student of nature that he is unwearied by the two hours and a half required to make the ascent.

West Asheville in the Foreground.]

IN THE HAUNTS OF THE BLACK BEAR.

The bear, with shaggy hide
Red-stained from blood of slaughtered swine, at night
Slain by him on the mountain’s lower side,
Roused by the breaking light,
Comes growling to his lair.
Distant, the baying of an eager pack,
Like chiming bells, sweeps thro’ the chilly air
Above the scented track.

he black bear, native to North America, still exists in large numbers on the wildest ranges of the southern mountains. The work of extermination pursued by hunter and trapper proceed more slowly against him than against his fellow inhabitant of the wilderness--the deer, in which every faint halloo of mountaineer, or distant bay of the hounds, strikes terror; and whose superior fleetness of limb only serves to carry him to the open river--his slaughter ground.

Bruin’s usual haunts are in those melancholy forests which hood the heads of the Black, Smoky, and Balsam ranges, and deck a few summits of the Blue Ridge, resorted to either from liking, or to avoid his enemies; and it is only when pushed by hunger or when his tooth has become depraved by a bait of hog, taken during one of these starving periods, that he appears on the lower slopes or in the cultivated valleys. However, there are some localities, much lower than those mantled by the fir forests, where the black bear still roams. In some sections of the lower French Broad he is occasionally seen. The region of the Great Hog-back, Whiteside, Satoola, and Short-off, afford some sport in this line for the hunter; while among the Nantihalas frequent successful hunts are undertaken.

For bear-driving in the Black mountains, the best place for a stranger who really wishes to kill a bear, and who feels himself equal to so arduous a tramp, is “Big Tom” Wilson’s, on Cane river. To reach it, you take the stage from Asheville to Burnsville, and then ride or walk from the village 15 miles to the home of the old hunter. He is familiar with every part of the mountains. He it was that discovered the body of Professor Mitchell. Another good starting point would be from some cabin on the Toe river side, reaching it by leaving the main traveled road at a point, shown you by the native, between Burnsville and Bakersville. A start might be made on the Swannanoa side; but the guides close at the base of the mountains have become perverted by too much travel from abroad, and will show more anxiety about securing pay for their accommodations and services than interest in driving up a bear. Judging, however, from the number of traps set in the latter locality, one would form the idea that bears pay frequent visits to the cornfields.

For a drive in the Smoky mountains, read the sketch on deer hunting. The region of the Cataluche, 22 miles north of Waynesville, is an excellent place to visit. The log-cabin of Tyre McCall on the head-waters of the French Broad, and near Brevard, would afford fair headquarters for him who wished to rough it. Deer and bear roam on the Tennessee Bald within five miles of the cabin. Tyre is a horny-handed but hospitable host, and would hunt with you in earnest.

In the Nantihalas, Alexander Mundy’s is the point from which to start on a bear hunt. Further into the wilderness, on the far boundary of Graham county, rise the Santeelah and Tellico mountains. At Robbinsville information can be obtained regarding the best hunter with whom to remain for a week’s sport.

With this slight introduction, the writer proposes to convey to the reader some idea of what bear hunting in the heart of the Alleghanies is like; what one must expect to encounter, and what sort of friends he is likely to make on such expeditions. Besides the usual equipments carried by every hunter, it would be well to take a rubber blanket and have the guide carry an ax.

It was one night about the 1st of December that we were in camp; eight of us, huddled together under a low bark roof, and within three frail sides of like material. Around the camp lay seventeen dogs. The ground beneath us was cold and bare, except for a thin layer of ferns lately bundled in by some of the party. Before the front of the shelter, lay a great fire of heavy logs, heaped close enough for a long-legged sleeper to stick his feet in, while his head rested on the bolster log. The hot flames, fanned by a strong wind, leaped high and struggled up into the darkness. On long sticks, several of the group were toasting chunks of fat pork; others were attending to black tin pails of water boiling for coffee, while the remaining few were eating lunches already prepared. The wood crackled, and occasionally the unseasoned chestnut timber snapped, sending out showers of sparks. Around and within the circle of fire-light, stood the trees with stripped, gaunt limbs swaying in the wind. Above, clouds rolled darkly, concealing the face of the sky.

The temporary camp of a party of mountaineers on the hunt for Bruin, as viewed by night, presents a scene of unique interest. It is a shelter only for the time being; no one expects to return to it, for by the following night the hounds may be 20 miles away, and the drivers and standers toasting bear steaks in their cabins, or encamping on some distant height preparatory to resuming on the morrow the chase of a bruin who had through one day eluded their pursuit. The mountain straggler often sees by the trail which he follows, the ashes and scattered black brands of an extinguished fire, and the poles and birch bark of an abandoned camp. At this view he imagines he has some idea of a hunter’s camp; but it is like the conception of the taste of an oyster from a sight of the empty shell.

Situated as above described, we were improving an opportunity afforded for devouring the whole oyster. Our encampment was on Old Bald; not the famous shaking mountain, but of the Balsams, eight miles south of Waynesville. A few days previous, a denizen of Caney Fork, while crossing the mountain by the new dug road, came face to face with a black bear, gray about the nose and ears, and of enormous size, as he said. Did you ever hear a tale where the bear was not of size too large to swallow? The denizen of the valley had no fire-arms with him, so both, equally frightened, stood staring at each other, until the denizen of the mountain shuffled into the beech woods. This report considerably interested the Richland settlers. They laid their plans for an early hunt, and had them prematurely hatched by information brought in by the highest log-chopper on the creek, that his yard had been entered the last past night by some “varmint,” and a fine hundred-pound hog (otherwise known as a mountain shad) killed and eaten within the pig-pen. The log-chopper had followed the trail for some distance, but without avail.

That same afternoon our party climbed the mountain by an old bridle-path, arriving just before sunset at a place admirably suited for a camp. Two steep ridges, descending from the main mountain top, hold between them the channel of a sparkling brook. Its water is crystal in clearness and icy cold. The wood, principally beech, is green with casings of moss, and the cold rocks in the brook’s bed and on the slopes above it are covered with a like growth. Where the trail enters the water the ground is level on one bank, and here we decided to kindle our fire, and, as the air was quite chilly, bearing indications of a storm, to erect a light shelter.

Dry leaves and twigs make excellent tinder for a flint’s spark to settle and blaze in, and enough seasoned logs, bark, and limbs always lie scattered through this forest to afford campfires. Our’s was soon flaming. The loosened bark of a fallen beech furnished us the material for the roof and sides of a shelter, which we built up on four forked limbs driven into the ground and covered with long poles. It was secured against wind assaults by braces.

Near where we encamped, and below on the Beech Flats, stand trees as stately and magnificent as any ever touched by woodman’s ax. We noticed several cherries measuring four and a half feet through, and towering, straight as masts, 70 feet before shooting out a limb; poplars as erect and tall to their lower branches and of still greater diameter; chestnuts from 15 to 33 feet in circumference, and thousands of sound, lofty linns, ashes, buckeyes, oaks, and sugar maples. A few hemlocks considerably exceed 100 feet in height. A tree called the wahoo, grows here as well as on many of the ranges. It bears a white lily-shaped flower in the summer. Numerous cucumber trees are scattered on the slopes. These with the beech, water birch, black birch or mountain mahogany, black gum, red maple, and hickory, form the forests from the mountain bases to the line of the balsams. On the Beech Flats there is no underbrush, except where the rhododendron hedges the purling streams. In places the plain path, the stately trees, and the level or sloping ground, covered only with the mouldering leaves of autumn, form parks more magnificent than those kept in trim by other hands than nature’s.

The best hounds, known as the “leaders,” were fastened to poles stuck in the ground at the corners of our lodge. This was done to prevent them starting off during the night on the trail of a wolf, raccoon, or wildcat, thereby exhausting themselves for the contemplated bear hunt. The rest of the pack were either standing around, looking absently into the fire, or had already stretched themselves out in close proximity to it.

“The way them curs crawl up to the blaze,” said Wid Medford, “is a shore sign thet hits goin’ ter be cold nuff ter snow afore mornin’.”

No one disputed his assertion, and so, relative to this subject, he spun a story of how one of his hounds, one night many years since, had crept so close to the camp fire that all of his hair on one side was burnt off, and Wid awoke to detect the peculiar scent and to feel the first flakes of a snow storm that fell three feet deep before daylight. As though this story needed something to brace it up, Wid continued: “Whatever I talk of as facts, you kin count on as true as Scriptur.”

Israel Medford, nicknamed Wid, the master-hunter of the Balsam range, is a singular character, and a good representative of an old class of mountaineers, who, reared in the wilderness, still spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. He possesses a standard type of common sense; an abundance of native wit, unstrengthened by even the slightest “book-larnin’;” is a close observer, a perfect mimic, and a shrewd judge of character. His reputation as a talker is wide-spread; and, talking to the point, he commands the closest attention. His conversation abounds in similes; and, drawn as they are from his own observation, they are always striking. He is now sixty-five years old, and has been all his life a resident of Haywood county.

That night as he sat cross-legged close to the fire, turning in the flames a stick with a slice of fat pork on it, with his broad-brimmed hat thrown on the ground, fully exposing his thick, straight, gray locks, and clear, ruddy, hatchet-shaped face, bare but for a red mustache, lighted up with youthful animation, he kept shaking the index finger of his right hand, while in his talk he jumped from one subject to another with as much alacrity as his bow legs might carry him over the mountains.

“What I don’t know about these mountings,” said he, directing his keen blue eyes upon one member of the group, “haint of enny profit to man or devil. Why, I’ve fit bars from the Dark Ridge kentry to the headwaters of the French Broad. I’ve brogued it through every briar patch an’ laurel thicket, an’ haint I bin with Guyot, Sandoz, Grand Pierre, and Clingman over every peak from hyar to the South Caroliny an’ Georgy lines? Say?”

“What do you mean by ‘brogued it’?” was asked.

“Crawled, thets what hit means; just as you’d hev to do ef you perused every pint o’ the mountings; ef you went through Hell’s Half Acre; ef you slid down the Shinies, or clim the Chimbleys.”

“Hit’s rough thar,” remarked a broad-shouldered, heavy-mustached young fellow, named Allen.

“Rough?” resumed Wid, “wal, I reckon hit is.”

“But a man can git in rough places right on this slope, can’t he?” some one inquired.

“In course,” remarked another hunter, “Wid, you cum powerful nigh peeterin’ out nigh hyar, wunct, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Wid, now devoting his attention partly to a boiling pot of coffee, “Thet day war a tough un. Hit war a hot summer day. We,--thet is, Bill Massey who’s awmost blind now, Bill Allen who gin up huntin’ long ye’rs ago, my brother El, me, an’ sev’ral others,--we started a bar on the Jackson county line nigh Scotts creek in the mornin’. We driv till arter-noon, an’ in the chase I got below hyar. I heered the dogs up on Ole Bald, an’ abearin’ down the ridge-top I was on. Powerful soon I seed the bar comin’ on a dog-trot under the trees. He war a master brute!”

“How big, Wid?”

“Four-hunderd an’ fifty pound, net. Thinks me to myself, ‘Gun fust, knife next’; fer, you see, I war clean played out with the heat and long run, an’ I war in favor o’ bringin’ the thing to a close; so I brought my ole flint-lock to my shoul’er. This is the very gun I hed then,” and he tapped the battered stock of a six-foot, black-barreled, flint-lock rifle.

“I wouldn’t hev your cap arrangements. This kind never misses fire; an’ rain never teches hit, fer this ’ere kiver, ter put over the pan, keeps hit as dry as a tarripin hull.”

“Go on with the story,” exclaimed an interested auditor.

“Jist tend ter brilin’ your bacon, Jonas, an’ let me travel ter suit my own legs. I fetched my gun to my shoul’er an’ fired. The brute never stopped, but I knowed I’d hit him, for I hed a dead sight on his head; an’, like blockade whisky, a ball outer thet black bore allus goes to the spot. He’s a thick-skulled varmint, I thought. I dropped my gun, an’ pulled my knife. On he cum. He didn’t pay no more tenshun to me then ef I’d bin a rock. I drew back a step, an’ as he brashed by me, I bent over him, grabbin’ the ha’r o’ his neck with one hand, an’ staubed him deep in the side with the knife in the other. Thet’s all I knowed for hours.”

“Did you faint?” some one asked.

“Faint?” sneered Wid, sticking out his square chin and showing his teeth. “You ass! You don’t reckon I faint, do you? Women faint. I fell dead! You see all the blood in me jumped over my heart into my head, an’ ov course hit finished me fer a time.”

“A dead faint,” was suggested.

“I don’t like thet word, stranger. But, the boys an’ dogs cum on me a second arter. Bill Allen cut my veins an’ in a short time I cum round, but I war sick fer a week.”

“How about the bear?”

“Hit lay dead by the branch below, staubed clean through the heart.”

Before the story ended, a noise like thunder came rolling to us through the forests. Owing to the strange time of the year for a thunder storm, we were slow in realizing that one was brooding, but repeated peals and long rumbling echoes, preceded by vivid flashes of light in the northern sky, soon convinced us of this fact. The wind changed, grew stronger, and soughed dismally through the trees. Rain began pattering on the bark roof: it came in slight showers, ceasing with each gust and flaw, then descending in torrents. The fire grew fiercer under these attempts to smother it, and with the shifting of the wind, much to our discomfiture, smoke and sparks were driven under the roof. Occasionally, a strong blast would make us draw up our feet as the flames, leveled to the ground, whirled in on us.

The situation became unendurable, and in a lull of the storm we crawled out in the open air; tore down our camp, and changed it around with its back wall towards the wind. This occupied but a few minutes, and we were soon ensconced again. It was a wretched night. We lay tight together, like spoons, the six middle men being well protected from cold, but not from leaks in the roof. The two end men fared less comfortably with one side exposed. No one slept unless it was the gray-headed Medford, hardened by 1001 nights of like experience. The rain ceased before morning, but the temperature was considerably below the freezing point, and icicles had formed on the end of the roof fartherest from the fire. All night we had shifted and changed our positions, and the gray light of dawn found us in the ashes, seemingly close enough to the fire to blister our faces, suffering in martyr-like submission with smoke in our eyes and backs cold.

I never saw a man with a good appetite for breakfast after a night of wakefulness beside a camp fire. After a long tramp, you can eat the roughest food with relish, but there is nothing tempting about hot coffee without sugar and cream, dry cornbread and fat meat, in the ashes, on a cold, raw morning before the stars have paled in the sky. However, on the unpleasant prospect of seven hours elapsing before another snack, on this occasion we did stuff down some solid food, and drank copiously of the coffee.

At this time an artist, seated at some distance up the brook, would have seen a spectacle of striking interest for the subject of a painting. In the center of his canvas he would have placed a huge fire with blaze, ten feet high; behind it, half hidden by smoke and flame, the outlines of a rude shelter; around it, their rugged features brightly lighted up, a group of shivering mountaineers, some wrapped to their hat rims in blankets, others with closely buttoned coats, and all squatting on the ground or standing leaning on their rifles; the dogs in all imaginable postures, either crouched close to the fire, or, outside the human circle, struggling for the possession of a dry crust; the great, mossed trunks of trees springing from the ferny rocks and slopes on which moved fantastic shadows. He could have shown the stillness of the air by the straightness of the column of ascending smoke, and the winter chill by the gaunt branches encased in ice. But the sounds of camp life--striking characteristics of the scene--would have eluded him. No brush could have conveyed to the canvas the snarling of the dogs, the laugh of a strong-lunged hunter, or Wid’s startling imitation of the hoot of the owl, awakening the echoes of the gorges and responses from the night-bird just repairing to his roost.

We ascended Old Bald by a trail termed the “winds.” It was icy underfoot, and some of the party had severe falls before we issued, from the dwarf beeches, upon the bare backbone of the range. Although no breeze was stirring that morning on the north side of the mountain, a bitter, winter blast was sweeping the summit. It cut through our clothing like wizard, sharp-edged knives that left no traces except the tingling skin. This blast had chased off every cloud, leaving clear, indigo-blue depths for the sun, just lifting over Cold Spring mountain, to ride through. As we reached the bare, culminating point of the narrow ridge between Old Bald and Lone Balsam, the sun had cleared himself from the mountain tops; and, red and round, doubly increased in size, he was shedding his splendor on a scene unsurpassed in beauty and wild sublimity. The night rain, turning to sleet on the summits of the mountains, had encased the black balsam forests, covering the Spruce Ridge and Great Divide, in armors of ice. They glistened like hills and pinnacles of silver in the sunlight. Below the edges of these iced forests, stood the deciduous trees of the mountains, brown and bare. No traces of the storm clung to them. The hemlocks along the head-prongs of the Richland were green and dark under the shadows of the steep declivities. No clouds were clinging to the streams through the valleys, and visible in all the glory of the frosty morn, lay the vale of the Richland, with its stream winding through it like an endless silver ribbon. The white houses of Waynesville were shining in the sunlight pouring through the gap towards the Pigeon. No smoke was circling above their roofs. The quiet of night apparently still pervaded the street. High, and far behind it, rose the mystic, purple heights of the Newfound.

On the side towards the south the scene was different. Mountains are here rolled so closely together that the valleys between them are hidden from sight. There are no pleasant vales, dotted with clearings or animated by a single column of cabin smoke. No evergreens are to be seen beyond the slope of the Balsams. That December morning the vast ranges looked black and bare under the cutting wind, and far off, 30 miles on a bee-line through space, rose Whiteside and its neighboring peaks, veritably white from snow mantling their summits.

Medford had been right in his prediction; snow had fallen, but not in our immediate vicinity. Before noon, as we had good reasons to believe, the wintry character of the scene would be changed under the influence of the sun in an unclouded sky. As we descended into the low gap between Lone Balsam and the next pinnacle of the Balsams, Ickes, who had started in advance, came out in sight, on the ridge top, at a point some distance below us. Just at the moment he appeared, a turkey rose, like a buzzard, out of the winter grass near him, and was about to make good its flight for the iced forests beyond, when his gun came to his shoulder, a flash and a report succeeded, and the great bird whirled and fell straight downward into the firs. The mountaineers yelled with delight. Shot-guns being little used in this section, shooting on the wing is an almost unheard of art. Not one of those bear hunters had ever seen a shot of like nature, and the unostentatious young sportsman was raised to a high notch in their estimation. When we reached him, he had already descended into the grove and returned with his game. It was somewhat bruised, and feathers considerably ruffled from falling through tree-tops upon a rocky ground.

A mountain turkey is no small game. This one was a magnificent specimen; a royal turkey-gobbler, that by stretching his brilliant neck would have stood four feet high. Stripped of his green and blue bronzed plumage, and prepared for the oven, he weighed 24 pounds. In the neighborhood of Waynesville I have bought the same birds about Christmas time for 50 cents a piece, and the hunter, who, with heavy rifle, had ranged the cold mountain top before day-break, and then brought his game eight miles down the winding trail, felt satisfied with this sum (all he had asked) as compensation for his labor and skill as a sportsman. Perhaps he weighed the fun of killing the bird on his side of the scales.

We now reached the edge of the great forests of the balsam firs,--forests which mantle nearly every peak above 6,000 feet in altitude in North Carolina. The balsam is one of the most beautiful of evergreens. When transplanted, as it is occasionally, to the valleys of this region, it forms an ornamental tree of marked appearance, with its dark green, almost black, foliage, its straight, tapering trunk and symmetrical body. In the rich dark soil in some of the lofty mountain gaps it attains to a height of 150 feet, and in certain localities growing so thickly together as to render it almost impossible for the hunters to follow the bear through its forests. It is of two sorts, differing in many particulars, and termed the black and white or male and female balsams. Every grove is composed of both black and white balsams, and no single tree is widely separated from its opposite sex. The black balsam has a rougher bark, more ragged limbs, and darker foliage than the white. The latter is more ornamental, with its straight-shooting branches and smooth trunk; it bears blisters containing an aromatic resinous substance of peculiar medicinal properties. A high price is paid for this balsam of firs, but it seems that the price is not in proportion to the amount of time and labor necessary to be expended in puncturing the blisters for their contents, for very little of it is procured by the mountaineers. It covers every high pinnacle of the Balsam mountains. On some slopes, however, extending only a few hundred yards down from the top before blending, and disappearing into the deciduous forests; but on other slopes, like those descending to the west prongs of the Pigeon, it reaches downward for miles from the summit of the mountains, forming the wildest of wooded landscapes.

Although the observer, from the outer edge of this sombre wood-line, fails to see any foliage but that of the balsam, when he enters the shadows he discovers a number of trees and shrubs, peculiar to the firs forests of the extreme mountain heights. Of the trees indigenous to the valleys, the wild cherry and hawthorn appear to be the only species growing here. The most ornamental of the trees of the firs forests is the Peruvian, with its smooth, slender trunk, and great branches of brilliant red berries, which appear in the early fall and hang until the severest frosts. Its bark and berries taste like the kernel of a peach-pit, and are frequently mixed by the mountaineers in their whisky, as a bitters having the flavor of peach brandy. Here also spring the service tree, with its red, eatable berry, ripe in August; the balsam haw, with its pleasant tasting black fruit; the Shawnee haw; the Peru tree; the small Indian arrow wood; and thick in some of the most darkly shaded localities, hedges of the balsam whortle-berry, a peculiar species of that bush, bearing in October a jet black berry, juicy and palatable, but lacking the sweetness of the common whortle-berry, which is also found on heights above 6,000 feet in altitude.

Scattered near these hedges, are great thickets of blackberry bushes. It is a fortunate thing for the hunters obliged to break through them (sometimes for hundreds of yards), that they are singularly free from briers. While the berries are ripe in July in the valleys, these are green, and it is not until September and October that they become mature. The bears grow fat in such gardens. Peruvian berries are a great delicacy for them. That day, on the Spruce Ridge, Wid Medford called my attention to a small tree of this kind, no more than four inches through at the base, with branches broken on its top about 15 feet from the ground. Deep scratches of an animal’s claws were visible in the bark. It had been climbed by a bear a month since; and a good-sized bear at that, judging from the distance he had reached from where his claws had left their imprint to the highest broken branch. The wonder was how so heavy an animal had climbed a tree so slender.

In this connection, I had with the old hunter an interesting talk containing considerable information concerning the habits of the black bear. Whatever Wid Medford says on natural history can be accepted as truth gained by him through long years of experience, close observation, retained by a good memory, and imparted, as such matters would be, without any incentive for exaggeration. His quaint vernacular being the most fitting medium for the conveyance of the sense of his remarks, it is not necessary to clothe it in the king’s English.

“Wid,” I asked, “do bears sleep all winter?”

“Thet calls fer more o’ an answer than a shake or nod o’ the head. Bears go inter winter quarters ’tween Christmas an’ New Ye’r. The ole he bats fast his eyes an’ never shuffles out till about the fust o’ May. The bearing she has cubs in Feb’ry, an’ then she comes out fer water an’ goes back till April fust, when she mosies out fer good.”

“What are their winter quarters?”

“Caves, holler trees, or bray-sheaps cut by them and piled high ’ginst a log. When they git it high nuff, they dig a tunnel from the furder side o’ the log, an’ then crawl through an’ under the brashe.”

“Do they quarter together?”

“No, sar’ee; every one alone.”

“What is their condition when they come out?”

“Fat as seals.”

“That would be the best time to kill them, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’d hev to be quick about it.”

“Why?”

“In jist a few days they grow ez lean ez a two-acre farmyer’s hoss, arter corn hez been a dollar an’ a half a bushel fer three month, an’ roughness can’t be got fer love or money. Jist figger to yerself the weight of an animal under sich sarcumstances. The fust thing they eat is grasses, weeds, an’ green stuff fer a physic, an’ hit has a powerful effec’ on runnin’ ’em down to skin an’ bone. They’re mighty tender-footed tho’ when the daylight fust hits ’em sq’ar in the eyes, an’ hit don’t take long fer the dogs ter git ’em ter stan’ an’ fight.”

“How are their hides in April and May?”

“Fine; the ha’r is thick, long, an’ black; but they soon begin ter shed, an’ hit’s not till cold weather agin thet they make fit skins fer tannin’.”

“What do they sell at?”

“Three dollars is a fa’r price fer a prime hide.”

It is a fact worth mentioning, that these same hides are sold at $10, and even as high as $15 in the cities.

“Now,” I inquired with considerable interest, “will a black bear attack a man?”

“Hit ’pends on sarcumstances. He wouldn’t tech the illest human, ’les he war cornered an’ hed to fight his way out, or he war wounded, or hit war an ole she with cubs. In sich cases, look out, I say! I memorize one time thet I war in a tight box. Hit war down on Pigeon, whar the laurel is too thick fer a covey o’ patridges ter riz from. Thar war one straight trail an’ I war in it. My gun war empty. I heered the dogs a-comin’ an’ knowed without axin’ thet the bar war afore ’em. I never hed no objections ter meetin’ a varmint in a squar, stan’-up fight,--his nails agin my knife, ye know; so without wunct thinkin’ on gittin’ outer the way, I retched fer my sticker. The tarnal thing war gone, an’ thar war me without a weepin’ big enuff to skin a boomer. I run along lookin’ at the laurel on both sides, but thar warn’t a place in it fer a man ter git even one leg in. Ticklish? You’re sound thar! I didn’t know what the devil ter do, an’ I got all in a sweat, an’ drawin’ nigher, nigher, up the windin’ trail I heerd the varmint comin’. Wal, I drapped on my elbows an’ knees squar across the narrer path, so narrer thet I hed ter hump myself up. I kinder squinted out one side, to see the percession, ye know. Hit cum: a big monster brute, with a loose tongue hangin’ out, an’ red eyes. He war trottin’ like a stage-hoss. He never stopped, even to sniff me, but puttin’ his paws on my back, as tho’ I war a log, he jist leaped over me an’ war out o’ sight in a jerk. The dogs war clus on his heels, a snappin’ away, an’ every one o’ ’em jumped over me as kerless like as him, an’ raced along without ever stoppin’ ter lick ther master’s han’.”

“Do you like hunting?” I asked, as he finished.

“Good law!”

That was his sole answer, but with the astounded look on his face, it expressed everything.

“Wid, your life has been one long, rough experience. If you had it to live over again, knowing as much as you do now, how would you live?”

As though the question was one he had thought over again and again, without hesitating a moment, he laid his hand on my shoulder and said:

“I’d git me a neat woman, an’ go to the wildest kentry in creation, an’ hunt from the day I was big nuff to tote a rifle-gun, ontil ole age an’ roomaticks fastened on me.”

Just after shooting the wild turkey we prepared to separate. The hounds were all leashed with ropes and fresh bark straps. Four of the hunters held them in check. This was done to prevent them starting on the track of a wild cat or wolf. The Judyculla drive was the first one to be undertaken. It is a wild, tumbled forest of balsams, matted laurels and briers, on the south slope of the Spruce Ridge. When a bear is started in the valleys, or on the slopes above it, he always climbs the mountain, crossing through one of its lowest gaps, and then plunges down the rugged heights into the wilderness lying on the opposite side.

The stands for the Judyculla drive are on the backbone between the Spruce Ridge and the Great Divide. Through some one of them Bruin always passes on his way to the waters of Richland creek. The drivers with fourteen dogs now descended the ridge, and four of us, designated as standers, with three dogs, entered the forest of balsams. The three dogs were to be held in check by one of the standers, and only to be loosened to take up the fresh trail when Bruin should cross, as he might, through one of the mountain gaps. At fifteen steps one seems to be in the heart of the woods. The light, so strongly shed on the open meadows beyond the outskirts, is lost; the thickly set trees intercept it and one’s sight from detecting that an open expanse lies so near.

The transition from the broad daylight of the meadows to the darkness of the fir forests is not always as sudden. The approach from the Cold Spring mountain side is entirely different. For the first few square rods the trees--straight, beautiful evergreens--are set widely apart. A green, closely-cut sward, soft for the foot, covers the rounded mountain side. The few rocks lying here are so green and thick-grown with moss and lichens that they appear like artificial mounds. Over all broods a slumberous silence, unbroken but for the march of the forces of the storm, the tinkling bells of lost cattle, the voice of an occasional hunter, the singing of the mountain boomer, or the howl of wolves. It seems like a vast cemetery.

Although in December, a luxuriant greenness mantled everything, except where beds of ferns had found root and then faded with the approach of autumn, or the yellow leaves of the few scattered hard wood trees lay under foot. The rich, black soil was well grown with that species of grass that dies during the summer and springs up heavy and green in the fall. Mosses, with stems and leaves like diminutive ferns, covered every ledge of rock and crag, and formed for the trail a carpet soft and springy. This trail is as crooked as a rail fence, and as hard to follow as it would be to follow closely the convolutions of a rail fence, where every corner had been used as a receptacle for gathered rocks, and left for nature to plant with the hazel and blackberry. It was hard enough to crawl up and down the moss-mantled rocks and cliffs, and over or under an occasional giant balsam that, yellow with age, had fallen from its own feebleness; but, along the narrow backbone approaching the Great Divide, a recent hurricane had spread such devastation in its path as to render walking many times more difficult.

For two miles, along this sharp ridge, nearly every other tree had been whirled by the storm from its footing. They not only covered the path with their trunks bristling with straight branches; but, instead of being cut off short, the wind had torn them up by the roots, lifting thereby all the soil from the black rocks, and leaving great holes for us to descend into, cross and then ascend it was a continual crawl and climb for this distance.

There were only three stands, and Wid and I, with the three dogs, occupied one of these. It was a rather low dip in the ridge. We seated ourselves on a pile of rocks, upholstered with mosses, making an easy and luxurious couch. A gentle hollow sloped down toward where lay the tangles of the Judyculla drive. A dense, black forest surrounded us. Where the hollow reached the center line of the ridge it sunk down on the other side rather abruptly toward the Richland. This was the wildest front of the mountain. At one point near the stand an observer can look down into what is called the Gulfs. The name is appropriate. It is an abyss as black as night. Its depth is fully 2,000, possibly 2,500 feet. No stream can be seen. It is one great, impenetrable wilderness.

The bear-hunters are the only men familiar with these headwaters of the Richland. At the foot of the steep, funereal wall lies one spot known as Hell’s Half-acre. Did you ever notice, in places along the bank of a wide woodland river, after a spring flood, the great piles of huge drift-logs, sometimes covering an entire field, and heaped as high as a house? Hell’s Half-acre is like one of these fields. It is wind and time, however, which bring the trees, loosened from their hold on the dizzy heights and craggy slopes, thundering down into this pit.

The “Chimbleys and Shinies,” as called by the mountaineers, form another feature of the region of the Gulfs. The former are walls of rock, either bare or overgrown with wild vines and ivy. They take their name from their resemblance to chimneys as the fogs curl up their faces and away from their tops. The Shinies are sloping ledges of rock, bare like the Chimneys, or covered with great thick plats of shrubs, like the poisonous hemlock, the rhododendron, and kalmia. Water usually trickles over their faces. In winter it freezes, making surfaces that, seen from a distance, dazzle the eye.

The trees began to drip as we sat there, and the air grew warm. With this warmth a little life was awakened in the sober and melancholy forest. A few snow-birds twittered in the balsams; the malicious blue-jay screamed overhead, and robins, now and then, flew through the open space. The most curious noise of these forests is that of the boomer, a small red squirrel, native to the Alleghanies. He haunts the hemlock-spruce, and the firs, and unlike the gray squirrel, the presence of man seems to make him all the more noisy. Perched, at what he evidently deems a safe distance, amid the lugubrious evergreen foliage of stately balsams, he sings away like the shuttle of a sewing-machine. The unfamiliar traveler would insist that it was a bird thus rendering vocal the forest.

Wid had been silent for several minutes. Suddenly he laid his hand softly on my knee, and without saying a word pointed to the dogs. They lay at our feet, with ropes round their necks held by the old hunter. Three noses were slightly elevated in the air, and the folds of six long ears turned back. A moment they were this way, then, as a slight breeze came to us from the south, they jumped to their feet, as though electrified, and began whining.

“Thar’s suthin’ in the wind,” whispered Wid. “I reckon hits the music o’ the pack. Sh----! Listen!”

A minute passed, in which Wid kicked the dogs a dozen times to quiet them, and then we heard a faint bell-like tinkle. The likening of the baying of a pack of hounds to the tinkling of bells is as true in fact as it is beautiful in simile. There is every intonation of bells of all descriptions, changing with distance and location. It was a mellow, golden chiming at the beginning; then it grew stronger, stronger, until it swung through the air like the deep resonant tones of church bells. Did you ever hear it sweeping up a mountain side? It would light with animation the eyes of a man who had never pulled a trigger; but how about the hunter who hears it? He feels all the inspiration of the music, but mingled with it are thoughts of a practical nature, and a sportsman’s kindling ardor to see the “varmint” that rings the bells.

It steadily grew louder, coming with every echo right up the wooded slope.

“They’re on the trail now, shore,” remarked Wid, “an hit-’ll keep the bar hoppin’ ter climb this ’ere mounting without whoppin’ some o’ ’em off. I reckon I’d better unlimber my gun.”

Suiting the action to the word, the old hunter laid his flintlock rifle across his knees, and with deliberation fixed the priming anew in the pan. As he did so, he kept talking; “Hark sharp, an’ you kin hear my slut’s voice like a cow-bell. She’s the hound fer ye tho’. Her legs are short, her tail stubby an’ her hide yaller, but thar’s no pearter hound in the kentry.”

“Are they likely to wind and overtake the bear coming up the mountain?” I asked.

“Yes, sar; a dog travels the faster comin’ up hill, but when wunst the varmint turns ter go down hill, the pack mought ez well try ter ketch a locomotion an’ keers. I’ve heered tell thet them things go sixty mile an hour. Wal, a bar is trumps goin’ down hill. They don’t stop fer nuthin’. They go down pricipises head-fust, rollin’ an’ jumpin’. Now a dog hez to pick his way in sich places.”

We waited; the baying was bearing towards the east below us. Then it seemed ascending. An expression of astonishment spread over Wid’s face. “Hits cur’ous!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“Why them dogs is racin’ like deer. Thet proves thet the bar is fur ahead, an’ they’re close to the top o’ the ridge at Eli’s stan’. The bar must hev crossed thar. But Good Jim! why aint he shot? Come, lets git out o’ this.”

The three dogs tugged on ahead of us. We traveled through a windfall for a quarter of a mile, and then came into the stand to find it vacant, and the hounds baying on the slopes, towards the Richland. They had crossed the gap, hounds and hunters, too; for a moment after we heard the musical notes from a horn wound by some one in the lower wilderness. It was wound to tell the standers to pass around the heights to the lofty gaps between the Richland and the waters of the Pigeon.

As was afterwards related, the bear had passed through Eli’s stand, but Eli was not there on account of his mistaking and occupying for a drive-way a gully that ended in a precipice on either side of the ridge. He, with the other stander, soon joined us and we pushed along the trail, towards the summit of the Great Divide.