Chapter VII: Introduction (6)

“Hit’s powerful keen, I’ll ’low,” returned Quil, “but hit’ll be warmer directly the sun done gits up. You cudn’t stand the drive no how, an’ yer chances wud be slim fer a shot. Ef ye want to keep yer breath, and the starch in yer biled shirt, ye’d better mind a stan’. Yeh! Ring; Yeh! Snap; Hi! boys.”

At the latter calls, three hounds came leaping around the corner of the cabin, joining the four which were already at our heels. It was a mongrel collection of half starved curs. Two of them, however, were full blooded deer dogs. Their keen noses, clear eyes, shapely heads, and lithe limbs, put us in high hopes of the successful result of the day’s hunt. By tying ropes around the necks of the two old deer dogs, Quil carried into execution his proposition to “yoke up” the leaders; and, forthwith, explained that, at the instant of springing the first deer, he would loosen one hound, whom three of the other dogs would follow. The next plain scent he would reserve for the remaining leader and two followers.

Some of the old hunters of the Smokies have reduced dog training to a fine art. They keep from three to eight hounds, who in a drive, hold themselves strictly to their master’s orders. None of them need to be “yoked,” or leashed, and simply at his word, when a scent is sprung, one hound so ordered will leave the pack and follow alone, and so on, giving each hound a separate trail. This plan of training the hounds does not prevail to as great an extent as it did a few years since when the game was more plenty.

Brushing through the wet weeds and rusty, standing stalks of blade-stripped corn, we climbed a rail fence and entered a faint trail along the laureled bank of a trout stream. This stream we crossed by leaping from rock to rock, while the hounds splashed through the cold waters. The forest we were in was gorgeous under the wizard influence of autumn; chestnut and beech burrs lay thick under foot, and the acorn mast was being fed upon by droves of fierce-looking, bristled hogs, running at large on the mountain.

The long blast of a horn, and a loud barking, arrested our attention, and soon after we were joined by a short, thick-set young man, whom Quil introduced as Ben Lester. He was the picture of a back-woods hunter. The rent in his homespun coat strapped around his waist, looked as though done by the claws of a black bear. His legs were short, and just sinewy enough to carry him up and down ridges for 40 miles per day. A good-natured, honest, and determined face, bristling with a brown moustache, and stubble beard, of a week’s growth, surmounted his broad shoulders. His hands were locked over the stock of a rifle as long as himself. The ram’s horn, that signaled us of his presence, hung at his side, and three well-fed, long-eared hounds, were standing close by him; one between his legs.

The plan for the hunt was as follows: Lester and the Rose brothers were to do the driving, taking in a wild section, lying far above and north of the Little Tennessee; we four city boys were to occupy drive-ways, and watch for, halt, and slay every deer that passed. Lester volunteered to show me to my proposed stand. He proved himself to be an intelligent and educated fellow, but of taciturn disposition. I succeeded in starting him, however, and it was this way he talked:

“November is the prime time for hunting deer, but this month is very good. You see, the deer, owing to the thinness of hair, are red in the summer. As the weather gets cooler, their hair grows longer, and their color gets blue. If you shoot a deer in the deep water before the middle of October, he’s liable to sink, and you lose him.”

“Why is that?”

“His hair is what buoys him up. He’d sink like a stone, in the summer or early fall.”

“Where are the most deer killed?”

“On the river. Sometimes they steer straight for the water. If the day is hot, they’re sure to get there in a short time. On cool days, they’ll sometimes race the hounds from morning till night; and then, as a last hope, with the pack on their heels, they’ll break for the river.

“Do the hounds follow by the ground scent?”

“No. The best hounds leap along snuffing at the bushes that the deer has brushed against.”

“When, where, and on what do they feed?”

“Here, I know, where the deer have become timid on account of so much driving, they doze in the day-time, and feed at night. The heavy woods along the upper streams afford excellent coverts for their day dreams. In summer picking is plenty; in winter they brouse on the scanty grass, the diminished mast, and the green but poisonous ivy.”

“Poisonous ivy?”

“Yes. It is singular, but it has no effect on them. It will kill everything else. Why, one buck, killed here several winters since, had been living on ivy, and every dog that fed on his entrails was taken with the blind staggers and nearly died.”

“What’s a slink?”

“A year-old deer. When past a year old, the male deer is called a spike-buck. It is said that, with every year, a prong is added to their antlers, but it’s a mistake. I never saw one with more than six prongs; and in these mountains there’s a certain deer, with short legs, known as the ‘duck-legged buck,’ that has been seen for the last fifteen years, and in some unaccountable manner, on every drive he has escaped. Now he has only six prongs.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“Yes; once five years ago, and again last fall.”

“Did you ever hear of a stone being found in a deer?”

“Yes, the mad stone. People believe it will cure snake-bite and hydrophobia. Here’s one. It was found in the paunch of a white deer that I shot this fall was a year ago; and, mind you, the deer with a mad-stone in him is twice as hard to kill as one of the ordinary kind.”

“A fact?”

“Yes. Five bullets were put in the buck that carried this.”

The stone he showed was smooth and red, as large as a man’s thumb, and with one flat, white side. The peculiar properties attributed to it are, in all probability, visionary. The idea of its being a life preserver for the deer which carries it, savors of superstition.

“Now,” said Lester, coming to a halt on the ridge; “here’s your stand. You must watch till you hear the dogs drop into that hollow, or cross the ridge above you. In such case, the deer has taken another drive-way, and it’s no use for you to wait any longer. Start on the minute, as fast as you can go it, down this ridge a quarter of a mile to a big, blasted chestnut; then turn sharp to the right, cross the hollow and follow another leading ridge till you strike the river. You know where the Long rock is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, make right for it, and stand there.”

He disappeared with his hounds, leaving me alone in a wooded, level expanse. It was then full morning, and the ground was well checkered with light and shadow. My seat was a mossy rock at the base of a beech tree, and with breech-loading shot-gun, cocked, and lying across my knees, I kept my eyes fixed on the depths of forest, and waited for the bark which would announce the opening of the chase.

Soon it came,--a loud, deep baying, floating, as it seemed, from a long distance, across steeps, over the trees, and gathering in volume. One of the deep-mouthed hounds had evidently snuffed something satisfactory in the dewy grasses or on the undergrowth. His baying had been reinforced by several pairs of lungs, and the drive was under full head-way. Now it would be faint, telling of a ravine, rhododendrons, and trees with low umbrageous branches; then would come a full burst of melody, as the noses of the pack gained the summit of a ridge, or swept through an open forest. But, all in all, it grew louder. It was still far above me, on the spurs of the Smokies, and seemed bearing across the long ridge on which I rested. Then again it turned, and, in all its glorious strength, swept below me, through the deep hollow. My excitement reached its climax just then, for suddenly there was a discord in the music, and every hound was yelping like mad.

“Yip, yip, yip!” they rang out.

The quick barks told a new story,--the hounds had sighted the game, and, for the moment, were close on its haunches. It was manifest that the drive-way I was on was not to be taken. The guide’s instructions for seeking the river were now to be followed. Starting on a quick pace through the woods, I traveled as directed, and was soon on the leading ridge. One rifle shot startled the forest as I ran; and, in the evening, at Daniel Lester’s pleasant fireside, by the Little Tennessee, Kenswick told the following story:

Jake Rose had selected for him an excellent stand; admonished him to keep his eyes peeled, his gun cocked, and not take the “buck-ague” if a deer shot by him. He heard the chorus, and watched and panted. Suddenly, under the branches of the wood, appeared a big, blue buck, making long leaps toward him. Just as he was about to pass within 20 steps, Kenswick jumped out from behind his tree, and yelled like a Cherokee. The buck stopped, as though turned to stone, in his tracks, and gazed in amazement at the noisy Kenswick, who already had his gun at his shoulder. He tried to draw a bead, but his hands shook so, that he could not cover the animal by a foot. The buck snuffed the air, made a leap, and was away as Kenswick, in utter despair, pulled the trigger, and sent a ball from his Remington whistling through the oak leaves.

“Why!” he exclaimed, in the excitement of telling it, “look at my arm.” He held it out as steady as a man taking sight in a duel. “Isn’t that steady? Now why the devil couldn’t I hold it that way then?”

“Buck ague,” answered Ben Lester, quietly; and then the old and young hunters, around that fireside, laughed uproariously.

The barking of the hounds, like my pace, stopped for a moment at the report of Kenswick’s gun. Ten minutes after, I was on the Long rock on the bank of the Little Tennessee. This stand merits a description, for from it probably more deer have been killed than at any other single point in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It is at the Narrows. Here, in the narrowest channel of its course, from below where it begins to merit the name of a river, this stream, of an average width of 150 yards, pours the whole drainage of the counties of Swain, Jackson, Macon, one-half of Graham and a small portion of Northern Georgia, between banks eighty-five feet apart. The waters are those of the rivers Tuckasege, Cullasaja, Nantihala, Ocona Lufta, and the large creeks Soco, Scott’s, Caney Fork, Stecoah, Forney, and Hazel, heading in the cross-chains of the Balsam, Cowee, Nantihala, and Valley River mountains, and on the southern slope of the Great Smoky.

For 100 yards the stream shoots along like a mill-race. Brown boulders, the size of horses, coaches and cabins, are piled at the edges of the current. At the entrance to the Narrows, a line of rocks forms a broken fall of several feet. Over it the waters are white, and the trees wet with spray. Above its roar, no rifle shot, or hound’s bay can be heard a few feet away. Long rock is a dark boulder projecting into the river, at its very narrowest point, 100 yards below, and in full sight of the white rapids. The hunter leaves the road, jumps and clambers over a succession of immense boulders, and at length seats himself on Long rock. The water, close at its edge, is forty feet deep. A steep mountain, following the river round every bend, showing square, mossed rocks under the heavy autumn-tinted forests on its front, rises close along the river’s opposite edge. A few sand-bars, below the stand, reach out from the mountain’s foot. There is one narrow band of sandy bank directly opposite the stand. Projecting boulders shield it from the rush of waters. On this sandy bank the deer, if frightened when swimming down mid-stream, will climb out, affording just the shot desired by the hunter. If not frightened, they will pass on to the smooth-water sand-bars below, and then, leaving the water, disappear up the mountain.

The drive-way, for which Long rock is a stand, comes down to the river a few yards above the fall described. There are no rapids on the Tennessee, but what can be swum by the deer. In many instances, to cool his body and baffle the hounds, he keeps the center of the stream for a mile or more, sometimes stopping in the water for hours before resuming his course. The hounds, when the deer is in sight, follow him in the water, and generally succeed in drowning him before he reaches the bank.

A deer in the water can be easily managed, but, as seen by the following anecdote, there is considerable danger in venturing in after one. Still living in the Smoky Mountain section of the Tennessee, is an old hunter, by name, Brit Mayner. In the days when his limbs were more supple, he was brave, even to foolhardiness, and, on one occasion, as told by a participant in the hunt, he came near losing his life. A deer had been run to the river, and in mid-stream was surrounded by the hounds. Through the great strength and endurance of the deer, the hounds were kept in the water until Mayner, becoming impatient, decided to settle the fight by his own hand. He divested and swam out. At his first pass at the deer, the hounds took umbrage, and fiercely attacked him. It was deer and dogs against man. All were in earnest, and it was only by his expertness as a swimmer that Mayner escaped being drowned.

That morning I reached the river, and covered the stand. The sun’s rays, striking the open water, were bright and warm. Only a slight breeze was blowing, and the frostiness of the air had disappeared. There was no shadow over the rock; and, sweating from my rapid run, to make myself comfortable I threw off my coat, vest and shoes.

A position on the deer stand, when one must keep his eyes on the running water, is most tiresome, even for a few hours. The hunter on Long rock can, however, study his surroundings without much imperiling his reputation as a sportsman; for, unless he turned his back entirely on the upper stream, it would be impossible for a deer to reach his point unnoticed. The white rapids, the mountains around the distant bend, the rich-colored wooded slopes on both sides, the sound of waves dashing against the banks, and the swash of water among the piles of rock, has, in all, something to make him a dreamer, and pass the hours away uncounted.

An hour passed, and then I noticed a dark object amid the white foam of the rapids. A moment later it was in the smooth, swift-flowing waters, and bearing down the center of the current. My blood jumped in my veins as I saw plainly the outline of the object. There was the nose, the eyes, the ears, and, above all, a pair of branching antlers, making up the blue head of what was undoubtedly a magnificent buck.

When he was within 50 yards of Long rock, I jumped to my feet, hallooed at the top of my voice, took off my hat and waved it aloft. The buck saw me. I dropped my hat and leveled my gun. He tried to turn and stem the current, but it was too strong, and bore him to the sand-bank, directly opposite my stand. What a shot he would have made in the water! His feet touched bottom, and then his blue neck and shoulders appeared, but not before the report of my gun rang out. True, my hand trembled, but, with a fair bead on his head, I had made the shot. Through the smoke, I saw him make several spasmodic efforts to draw his body out of the water, and then, still struggling, he fell back with a splash.

As I stood there, in my stocking feet, and feeling a few inches taller, I had no doubt that the deer was dead, but I was all at once startled by the danger I was in of losing him. The current before the sand-bank kept moving his body, and I saw plainly that in a few minutes it might drift him into swifter waters, where he might sink. To lose the game, at any hazard, was out of the question. In a twinkling, my pantaloons and shirt were off, besides the clothes of which I had previously denuded myself, and a second after, I had plunged head-first into the Tennessee.

The current bore me down stream like an arrow, but an accomplishment, picked up in truant days, came in good stead, and with a few, strong strokes, I reached and climbed out on a sand-bar, at some distance below where I had made the plunge. As I rose to my feet, I was dumb-founded to see an antlered head rise from behind the rocks where lay the supposed slaughtered deer. Then the whole blue form of a buck appeared in view, and leaped from sight, up the rocks, and under the trees on the mountain’s steep front. The sight chilled me more than the waters of the Tennessee. It was the very buck I had shot.

I hurried up the bank, clambered over the cold rocks, and reached the sand-bar where my game had fallen. It was bare! I could not convince myself of its being a dream, for there were the imprints of the hoofs. I picked up the shattered prong of an antler. It had been cut off by a charge of buckshot. The mystery of the fall and subsequent disappearance was explained. My shot had hit one of his antlers and simply stunned him for a moment. Just then a voice rang from the rocks across the river:

“Are ye taking a swim?”

“No, just cooling off,” I answered.

It was Ben Lester who spoke, and with him was Sanford and the dogs.

“Where is the deer that came this way? What luck have you had? Why aint you here watching?” yelled Sanford.

I did not stop to answer his volley of questions, but plunged into the river, and reached the opposite bank. Then, dressing myself, I explained.

“Well,” said Lester, as I finished, “no more could have been expected.”

“Why?” I asked rather indignantly; for, although I fully realized that I had proved myself a miserable shot, I did not like being accused of it in terms like these.

“No one could have done any better,” he answered.

“No better?”

“Not a bit. It was the duck-legged buck!”

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling like a drowning man sighting a buoy; for here lay the shadow of an excuse for my failure.

“Of course. I saw him leave you. I’ll bet my last dollar that he has inside of him a mad-stone as big as your fist!” Then shaking his head, and talking half aloud to himself; “Strange, strange, strange! Fifteen years old, and still alive!”

I did not attempt to scatter his superstition by telling that in reality I had hit the buck, and that it was wholly due to my poor marksmanship that he escaped. Sanford then told how he had topped a doe at his stand and killed her,--the only game secured that day. In the afternoon the Rose brothers brought it with our horses, as we had directed, to the house of Daniel Lester.

Lester’s is an unpretentious, double log house, situated in the center of a tract of cultivated hill-side land on the north or east bank of the Little Tennessee, thirty-three miles from Charleston, North Carolina, and three miles from the Tennessee state line. It is approached by a good wagon-road from Charleston, or from Marysville, Tennessee, the head of the nearest railroad. The view from the door-way is of exquisite beauty, especially towards evening when the wine-red October sun is sinking amid the clouds beyond the mountain summits at the far end of the river, and pours a dying glory over the scene. Daniel Lester is a man of prominence in the county. His is a North Carolinian hospitality, and we will always hold in pleasant remembrance our short stay at his humble dwelling.

The most pleasant time of the hunt is the evening of the hunt, when darkness has fallen, all the party is within the same doors, a rousing fire roars and leaps in the great, open chimney, and flings its light in every face, the faucet of the cider-barrel is turned at intervals, chestnuts are bursting on the hot hearth-stones, and after every man in his turn has recounted his day’s experience, the oldest hunter of the group tells his most thrilling “varmint” stories, till the flames die down to glowing coals, and midnight proclaims the end of the day in which we were after the antlers.

NATURAL RESOURCES.

“I’d kind o’ like to have a cot
Fixed on some sunny slope; a spot,
Five acres, more or less,
With maples, cedars, cherry-trees,
And poplars whitening in the breeze.”

hat clever humorist, Mark Twain, represents himself as once patriotically telling the Secretary of the Treasury, that his annual report was too dry, too statistical; that he ought to get some jokes into it, wood cuts, at least; people read the almanac for the fun, etc. The humorist’s idea is not new. It was unintentionally put into practice by a much respected old geographer, who wrote the statistical treatise on the earth’s surface, which occupied many long hours of our pleasure loving youth, in obstinate efforts at memorizing. That venerable book contained, with wood cuts and all, probably the most successful joke in school literature. We remember this sentence: “The staple productions of North Carolina are tar, pitch, resin, and turpentine.” The picture represented a gloomy forest, a rude still, and a group of dirty men. A crowd of later writers of school geographies have thought this canard on a great state, with varied industries, too good to be lost, but remembering that every ounce of fiction, to be palatable, must contain a drachm of truth, added lumber. It has now been stereotyped, “pitch, tar, turpentine, and lumber.” If anyone has been fooled by the books of his youth, six hours travel from the coast westward, during which he will see broad fields of corn and plantations of cotton and tobacco, will lead him to an appreciation of the “tar-heel joke.” North Carolina does lead all the states in the production of resin and turpentine, but that industry does not employ one-thirtieth of her active capital, nor constitute one-fifteenth of her gross production. Her lumber resources constitute a real and important source of wealth and will receive some attention in this sketch.

The state of North Carolina could probably get along without the rest of the world more comfortably than any territory of equal size in the western hemisphere. With its eastern border dipping into the tropical gulf stream and its western border projecting more than a mile skyward, the state possesses a climate almost continental in its range. An old poet describing the spread-eagle breadth of his country said that it stretched

“From Maine’s dark pines and crags of snow
To where Magnolian breezes blow.”

From a climatical and botanical point of view North Carolina is as large as the country described by the poet’s couplet. But it is not the whole state we propose to discuss. That subject is too long for the prescribed brevity of our paper, which will permit us to do but partial justice to the particular section included in the scope of this volume. We begin with agriculture, the most varied of the three divisions of productive industry.

The line of 800 feet altitude follows the general direction of the Blue Ridge, and crosses the counties of Gaston, Lincoln, Catawba, Iredell, Davie, Forsyth, and Stokes. The best cotton lands of the State lie east of this line, but cotton is successfully raised in all the counties we have named. There was a time when planters chose cotton lands with the greatest regard for soil and climate, but experience has greatly increased the cotton producing area, which, by the aid of improved fertilizers, may be still further enlarged. The crop, without the aid of artificial stimulants, can not be profitably raised in North Carolina above the line of 800 feet altitude. It has been cultivated for more than home consumption only within the last few years. Most planters have realized profitable returns, though the probabilities are that it is not the most remunerative crop.

Present tendencies indicate that tobacco will become the chief staple agricultural product of Western North Carolina. The value of a crop, especially where transportation is high, does not depend so much on the number of pounds as on the price of each pound. This is why North Carolina has the advantage of all other tobacco producing states. It can easily be shown that the piedmont and transmontane table lands have advantages over the other sections of the state in which they are included. While the crop of Ohio, which produces a heavy dark leaf, weighs more than double the crop of North Carolina, yet where estimates are made upon the basis of market value the latter state will be found to stand first. The heavy leaves of dark soils contain a large percentage of nitrogen and are charged with nicotine, rendering them unpleasant to the taste and smell, and injurious to the health. Not only is the bright yellow leaf of the Southern Alleghanies singularly free of these unpleasant and unhealthful properties, but the golden beauty of its color gives it a value far above any American tobacco. “It is an undeniable fact,” says Colonel Cameron in his _Sketch_, “that North Carolina is the producer of tobacco, unequalled even in Virginia; and yet, owing to the course trade has taken, she is deprived of her due credit both in quality and quantity. Until within a few years, when she has built up some interior markets, Virginia had absorbed her fame as well as her products.”

It is the experience of planters, that a soil composed of sand mixed with clay and gravel, is most favorable to the production of the gold leaf. The conditions of climate are: cool nights, copious rainfall in summer, and a dry September. These climatic conditions are more perfectly filled in Western North Carolina than anywhere in the country. So far as relates to soil, there are portions of every county, with the possible exception of Watauga, which is too elevated, admirably adapted to the crop. We will briefly speak of localities, beginning with the piedmont belt, which consists of an irregular plain, sloping from the foot of the Blue Ridge toward the southeast. The surface is undulating and well drained, but even and easily cultivated; except where the South mountain chain, and its projecting spurs, have made precipitous slopes. The prevailing timber is yellow pine, post oak, and hickory, and in the valleys and on the foot-hills, poplar, white oak, elm, and other hardwoods abound. Large areas are yet in native forest, and smaller tracts are covered with what is known as old field growth--scrub oak and pines. There is too much of that desolation called “old field” to make the landscape attractive to the tourist. Any who are interested in agriculture, and those departments of business based upon it, should survey with care the piedmont belt of counties.

The valleys of the Broad, Catawba, and Yadkin, offer for all kinds of husbandry an inviting field. The soil is composed of a mixture of sand and loam, with an impervious clay sub-soil. The climatic conditions are equally auspicious. Abundance of rain, low humidity, cool nights, temperate days, and equable seasons, contribute alike to the luxuriance of plants and the health of animals. The headwater valleys of the three rivers we have named, resemble each other in all essential particulars. The uplands, which constitute the water-sheds, have in their soil a larger percentage of clay, and are consequently less desirable than the bottoms, yet with care and intelligent cultivation, grasses could be grown with profit. The yield of corn, wheat, and oats, will compare favorably with any other locality in the South. It is by no means extravagant to say that soil of the more favored localities has, for cereals, double its present capacity. Though the region has been settled for a century, no attempt, except on the part of a few individuals, has been made to reduce agriculture to the basis of an economic science. The native population has been tardy in taking hold of tobacco culture, the most remunerative of all crops. It was indeed left to immigrants to experiment, and prove the adaptability of the soil and climate to the plant. The experimental period is now passed, and but a few years remain till the surplus lands are purchased by progressive planters. Prices have already increased. Farms which five years ago begged purchasers at three to five dollars per acre, now sell readily at from eight to twenty. The only danger to a further increase is the disposition, common to the human race, to kill the goose which lays the golden egg. A great many localities in Western North Carolina are already suffering from this ruinous policy. Immigration is needed, both for the good of the country and the advancement of values, but people are not disposed to leave all the associations and security of home, without some strong inducement. The many tempting inducements which Western North Carolina offers, in various fields of enterprise, will quickly and surely be destroyed by a sudden and radical advance of prices. This remark applies to the timber and mineral tracts, as well as agricultural lands.

The growth of the new town of Hickory furnishes an illustration of what a little leaven of industry will do in one of these old and rather dead communities. Prior to 1867 there had been nothing more than a country tavern at the present site of the town. The completion to, and long rest at, that point of the Western North Carolina railroad, brought into existence a small hamlet, which was incorporated as “Hickory Tavern.” But a little more than ten years ago, a new air began to blow, which set things astir, and has been keeping them astir ever since. In 1870, the township had a population of 1,591, the village existing only in a scattered street and a name; in 1880, the enumeration showed a population of 3,071, and the village, itself, has a population of not less than 1,400. Its trade is larger than that of any town between Salisbury and Asheville, commanding, by its location, several counties. Tobacco, which can always be relied upon for a cash return, has been the main instrument in stimulating general industry. Business being of a productive character--that is, converting raw material into merchantable goods--is upon a safe and substantial basis. There are two warehouses for the sale of leaf tobacco, four tobacco factories, several saw-mills, planing-and shingle-mills, etc., the Piedmont wagon factory, and an iron foundry. The healthfulness of the climate attracts all the people during summer which two hotels and a number of private boarding-houses can accommodate. St. Joseph’s Academy of the Blue Ridge, a Catholic seminary of some celebrity, is located in the village. There is also a flourishing Protestant institution for women, known as Claremont College; a third institution of learning, is Highland school; the three, together with the public school, giving the place unusual educational advantages. The railroad depot stands in the center of the spacious public square, around which most of the mercantile business is done. The railroad cannot be said to have been built through the town, the town has been built around the railroad station. The business

Property of Hon. J. L. Henry.]

buildings are mostly of brick, and substantial, while the residences show thrift and taste on the part of their owners.

Shelby is the second town in size in the piedmont belt, having a population of 990 in 1880. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of First Broad river, and is surrounded by good lands. An experienced planter ranks Cleveland county, of which it is the capital town, first in the belt in adaptation to the culture of tobacco. Shelby is likely to be visited by all who review the historic field on Kings mountain. There is near the town, one of the oldest health and pleasure resorts in the state.

Rutherford and Polk counties, drained by the Broad river, on the west and northwest, are elevated to the summit of the Blue Ridge, and are cut by its projecting spurs, and by the straggling chain of the South mountains. Their southern portions are level, and contain many acres of good land.

The valley of the Catawba, in Burke and McDowell, is unexcelled in the piedmont region for corn, wheat, oats, and vegetables. The soil is a clay loam, mixed with sand. The sub-soil is an impervious clay, which prevents the filtration of applied fertilizers. Better improvements than are found in most localities bespeak thrift. The trade of the upper Catawba, and its tributaries, goes to Morganton and Marion. Alexander, Caldwell, and Wilkes, are fast taking high rank as tobacco producing counties, though it is probable Catawba will maintain the lead in this industry.

A few words to the intending immigrant may not be amiss. It is not wise to select “old field land,” with a view to raising it to a good state of cultivation. Most of those footprints of desolation are beyond recovery. Those which are not, it will not pay to attempt to recover as long as soils less worn remain purchasable at reasonable figures. A Philadelphia colony made the experiment, against which we warn, in Burke county, near Morgantown, a few years since. Like most Northerners who come south, they brought with them the ideas of northern farm life, and the methods of northern agriculture. With characteristic egotism, they never, for a moment, doubted their ability to build up what the native had allowed to run down and abandon as worthless. They purchased, at a round price, a large tract of old fields, built comfortable frame houses, and furnished them expensively. But much use and abuse had exhausted the clay of its substance, and, in spite of deep ploughing and careful seeding, it yielded no harvest. Their furniture was sold at a sacrifice, and they returned, to Pennsylvania, disheartened. If they had selected the best lands, instead of the worst, and been content to live economically, as poor people must live, the result might have been different. The folly which has made old fields, makes trying to resuscitate them none the less foolish, though buyers are frequently made to believe the contrary. The question naturally comes up: why are there so many of these ugly blots, marked by scrubby pines, upon the face of an otherwise fair landscape? The answer is, indifferent farming, resulting, in a great many cases, from the ownership of too much land. There was no object in saving manures, and ploughing deep, when the next tract lay in virgin soil, awaiting the axe, plough, and hoe. The writer remarked to a farmer, in Burke county, that his corn looked yellow and inquired the reason.

“Waal,” said he, “I gin hit up. I’ve worked that thar patch in corn now nigh onto forty year, and hits gin worster and worster every year. I reckon hits the seasons.”

To an intelligent planter in Catawba, I explained my inability to understand how soil, originally good, could be made so absolutely unproductive.

Evidently taking my question to imply some doubt as to the virginal fertility of which he had been telling me, he pointed significantly to an adjoining field, where a woman was plowing, or, more properly speaking, stirring the weeds with a little bull-tongue plow, drawn by a fresh cow, while the calf, following after, with difficulty, kept in the half made furrow. “You see what kind of work that is,” said my friend, “but in spite of it, they will harvest 15 bushels of wheat to the acre.” When, a little further along, I saw a wooden-toothed harrow in the fence corner, I was ready to give nature considerable credit.

During the same ride, while crossing a sand ridge, we came where some men were making a clearing. The prevailing growth, standing close together, was a species of pine, uniformly about one foot stumpage, and reaching, mast-like, to the altitude of sixty feet. Between these were scrub oaks four to six inches in diameter, making the thicket so dense that to ride a horse through it would have been difficult.

“It strikes me,” said I, “as rather a strange fact, that those pines are all the same size. What species are they?”

“Those,” replied my friend, “are what we call old field pine. You asked me back there how land could be so completely worn out; here we have an example. That piece of land was cleared, may be, 100 years ago. It was then worked in corn, corn, nothing but corn, for may be twenty years, or more; not a drop of anything put on. It was then completely worked out, and turned public to grow up in timber again. Now it has been shaded and catching leaves for many a year, and has got some nutriment on top. They will work it in corn or wheat till there’s no substance left. The bottom was all taken out by the first working, and there will be nothing left to make a growth of trees a second time. When they get it worked out this time, it’s gone forever; over here on this side is a specimen. That field was cleared a second time ten years ago; now you see it won’t hardly raise Japan clover, and never will.”

“Don’t you try to sell these old fields, and old field forests, to men who come in here from abroad to make purchases?” I inquired.

“Well, it’s natural for us to get something out of this waste when we get the chance. But you’ve traveled in these parts, and seen large bodies of good land to be bought at low figures, and you may say that anybody that comes here will be treated right.”

“Suppose,” said I, “that on these better tracts Yankee methods should be adopted--after every few years of cultivation, seed the land down to grass, which feed to stock in barns; feed your corn fodder steamed, and use your wheat and oats straw for stable bedding. In that way almost all the vegetation taken off the soil is returned in a decomposed and enriched form.”

“Generally speaking,” said my companion, “I have little faith in Yankee ways in the South. I used to have a plantation in the low country, and have seen lots of those fellows come down with nickel-plated harness and steel plows. Most of them would begin to cultivate our friendship by telling us we didn’t know anything about our business. But we noticed that they all had to come to our ways, or sell out. The idea of Northern newspapers, that our plantations before the war were not worked systemically, is a mistake. Still I think your idea of farming in this elevated country is correct. You see here, with the exception of long, rigid winters, the climate is essentially northern, owing to our elevation. Every experiment at improved farming has been successful, though very few have been made.”

We were reminded by this of a story told by General Clingman, of Asheville, at the expense of an intelligent citizen of Buncombe county, whose residence was on Beetree creek, a branch of the Swanannoa. “As the surface of the stream was almost level with the surface of the ground, my fellow-citizen,” says Clingman, “being of good intellect and general reading, saw on reflection that he could with little trouble utilize its waters. He constructed his stable just as near to it as possible, and then cut a slight ditch to the stream, and with the aid of a hastily made gate of boards, he could at will let the water into his stable. When, therefore, his stable became rather full of manure, he had only to turn his horses on the pasture for a day, raise his little gate, and in a few minutes the stream of water was carrying everything away, and left the stable much cleaner than it would have been had he used a mattock and spade. His neighbors all admired his ingenuity in being able to devise such a labor-saving operation.”

Watauga is the highest county of the Appalachians. Few of its valleys dip below 3,000 feet above tide level, while a few peaks of its boundary chains lift to about 6,000. The spurs projecting into this highland basin are neither high nor abrupt, and the ascent from the interior to the crest of the great chains of the Blue Ridge, the Yellow mountain and the Stone and Iron, is at places so gradual as to be imperceptible. The bottoms along the Watagua river and its many branches, and along the New river and its branches in Watauga and Ashe counties, are well adapted to almost all the cereals, to vegetable roots, and to the hardier varieties of fruits. Ashe county bears a general resemblance to Watagua, but is about 1,000 feet lower, and consequently warmer. The climate of both counties is almost identical with the famous butter and cheese districts of central and western New York. Indeed, few sections of the eastern part of the United States are more inviting for stock raising and dairying. All the heavy mountain ranges of the southern Alleghanies furnish a large amount of wild vegetation nutritive for almost all kinds of domestic animals. The lofty tops are heavily sodded. Being cool and well watered, they are unsurpassed as pastures during at least seven months in the year. Stock in some localities has been known to subsist upon them during the entire year, but no prudent ranger will fail to provide for his cattle and horses at least three months’ feed and two months’ valley pasture. Sheep cannot with safety be turned out on the distant mountain range, but in most localities they will find abundant subsistance upon the nearer slopes. Almost anywhere on the luxurious uplands a goat would think himself in a paradise. A gentleman of large experience in the stock business in Ashe county informed the writer that most failures result from an attempt to keep larger herds than the valleys will sustain. Experience had taught him that it is never safe to multiply the number of horses and cattle beyond the number of acres of tillable valley land, while twice that number of sheep can be kept. The mountain slopes, however, now almost a waste of woodland, are fertile, and might be reduced, at small outlay, to valuable pastures, and thus the capacity of the country increased tenfold. These slopes are not, as in most mountain countries, rocky and broken by exposed ledges. To the very top there is a heavy covering of earth, surfaced by a black vegetable mold, which only needs the assistance of sunlight to bring forth grass in profusion. By simply grubbing out the undergrowth and deadening the large trees, the capacity for stock, of almost any locality of the trans-Blue Ridge portion of North Carolina, could be quadrupled. The price of valley land in Ashe, Alleghany and Watauga counties ranges from ten to fifteen dollars per acre. The mountains are purchasable at prices ranging from forty cents to three dollars per acre, the average price for any large tract being about one dollar.

The writer knows of only two large ventures having been made in sheep raising; one in Haywood county, and the other in Graham. They both resulted in total failure, due, however, wholly to the inexperience of the operators, or ignorance of the shepherds employed by them. In the first instance, inadequate valley pasturage had been provided, upon which to support a flock of about 500 sheep during the few cold months of the winter. The flock, through exposure and scanty feed, became so reduced in number, before the opening of an early spring, that its owner abandoned his project.

In Graham county, a northern gentleman having purchased the largest and one of the finest farms in that locality, discovering that the surrounding range was admirably adapted for sheep raising, on a large scale, shipped in a flock of 800 merino sheep. They were ill attended by ignorant shepherds, and all of them soon died.

Through care in the purchase of a valley farm, adjacent to fair upland, and bald, mountain-summit pastures, and in the matter of selecting competent hands, together with some personal attention to the business on the part of the operator, there is no reason why large profits might not flow from a venture in this line.

The remarks upon stock-raising in Watauga and Ashe counties, will apply in general to every other county of the intermontane division of the state, though, of course, some counties are more favored than others, and the natural conditions vary in detail in each. Yancey and Mitchell have large tracts adapted to this industry. The experiment of raising tobacco has been found successful in the lower and more sandy portions of Mitchell. This remunerative crop is no longer an experiment in Yancey, the soil and climate in the western part being well adapted to it.

The French Broad valley, from an agricultural point of view, is deserving of special attention. The territory embraced is divided into four counties--Madison, Buncombe, Henderson, and Transylvania.

I was riding with a friend one afternoon in September, through the cañon of the French Broad. We were occupying the steps to the back platform of the last car, feasting, for the twentieth

time, upon the ever-changing display of beauty. “This,” said my friend, interrupting the silence, “is all very impressive. No one, whose feelings have any communion with nature, can escape the charm of these bold precipices, robed with vines, and crowned with golden forest. These curves are the materialization of beauty. That surging, dashing, foaming, torrent, gradually eroding its channel deeper into the adamantine granite, is a grand demonstration of the superiority of force over matter. The great drawback to this valley is its poverty of useful productions. Western North Carolina, it strikes me, may be compared to a great picture or poem; we never fail to derive pleasure from it, yet there is nothing in it to make money out of, or even to furnish a respectable living. While the scenery here is all that can possibly be desired, and the climate is almost perfect, this country can never be anything more than it is now, except, perhaps, in the number and size of its summer hotels. It hasn’t the resources.”

“What is the extent of your knowledge of this country?” I inquired.

“Oh, merely what I’ve seen from the railroad line, but I suppose it’s pretty much all alike.”

My friend was mistaken, in supposing that the wealth of the Southern Alleghanies consists wholly in scenery and climate. He was also mistaken in supposing that railroad views had afforded him any considerable knowledge of the country.

Madison county, back of the river bluffs, is almost wholly a succession of hills, coves and narrow valleys, nine-tenths of it timbered with a heavy growth of hard and soft woods. The slopes are remarkable for fertility, there being small particles of lime percolated through the soil. The cultivated grasses grow rank, and the cereals yield satisfactory harvests. But owing to the limited area of the valleys, and the almost entire absence of level land, ordinary farming can never be carried on in Madison with remunerative results. Too much labor is required to cultivate an acre of the slopes for the ordinary return in wheat or corn. It is in tobacco that the Madison county farmer has found his Eldorado. I know of no industry which offers so much inducement to the poor laborer as the cultivation of this crop. There is no staple product which derives its value so exclusively from labor, or yields to that labor a larger return. A few figures will serve to illustrate. Uncleared land can be purchased at an average price of $3 per acre, in small tracts. About one-third of the purchase will be found adapted to tobacco, making the cost of tillable land $9 an acre. Basing our estimates upon the production of the last three years, a yield of $200 from each acre planted may be expected. In addition to such other small crops as are needed to yield food for his family, an industrious man and two small boys can clear, prepare the soil, and cultivate four and one-half acres a year, which, if properly cured, will bring in the market $900--money enough to pay for three hundred acres of land.

The sunny slopes are considered by planters best adapted to the crop. Sand and gravel is the needed composition of soil, and a forest growth of white pine indicates auspicious conditions. The east side of the French Broad has been found to have more good tobacco land than the west, but the ratio we have given is not too great for either side. The crop leaves the soil in excellent condition for wheat and grass after four years’ cultivation, though at the present prices of land, planters would find it economical to sow in wheat and seed to grass after two years’ cultivation in tobacco. The gross aggregate of the crop of 1882 in Madison county will probably be $250,000. W. W. Rollins, of Marshall, is extensively engaged in the business, the number of his tenant families being about sixty.

Up the river, into Buncombe county, the valleys widen, and the acreage of comparatively level land increases; the settlement becomes denser, and the proportion of cleared land to native forest, is greater than in any county west of the Blue Ridge.

The valleys of Hominy creek, Swannanoa, and Upper French Broad, contain several thousand acres which could be cultivated with improved machinery. The soil is of average fertility--well adapted to the cereals, grasses and tobacco--but in many localities its capacity has been lowered by use and abuse. Some valleys, naturally fertile, are almost wholly exhausted. There has been, however, marked improvement, both in farming methods and farming machinery, within the last five years.

Above Buncombe, in the French Broad valley, are Henderson and Transylvania counties, embraced within high mountain chains, and formed of a basin-like territory, which bears some evidence of having once been a lake. It is a surprise, to most people, to find, within a few miles of the crest of the Blue Ridge, a marsh of such extent as exists in Henderson county.

The French Broad changes its character at Asheville, below which place it is a torrent, and above a placid, almost immobile stream, rising to the slightly higher altitude of the upper valley, in terraces, rather than by gradual ascent. Its shallow channel is bordered by alluvial bottoms--deposits carried from the mountain slopes--varying in width from a few rods to five miles, making, with a background of mountains rising massively in the distance, a landscape of surpassing beauty. A conservative estimate places the number of acres of first bottom land along the upper valley of the French Broad and its tributaries at 20,000, and twice that number of acres could be cultivated with sulky plows and harvested with self-binding reapers. Cane creek, followed by the Henderson and Buncombe county line, drains considerable low land--at places near its mouth almost marshy. On the opposite side of the French Broad there is a wide expanse of alluvial land, cut by Mill’s river, and extending for a distance of two miles up that stream, where the valley becomes second bottom and slope.