Chapter IX: Part 9

I take it I must have “written you frequent” (as they say here), at this time of year, in the last quarter-century on this theme, but, if you let me, should like to go back once more on the old lines. “Loafing as she should be taken” is likely, I fear, to become a lost art, though to my generation it is the one luxury. A country without good loafing-places is no longer a country for a self-respecting man in his second half-century. The rapid deterioration of our poor dear old England in this respect fills me with forebodings far more than the Irish Question, which we shall worry through on the lines so staunchly advocated by you. No fear of that, to my thinking; but, alas! great fear of our losing the power and the means of loafing. Time was when John Bull, in his own isle, was the best loafer in Christendom--(I may say in the world, the Turk and Otaheitan loafer doing nothing else, and he who does nothing but loaf loses the whole flavour of it)--and I can remember the time when at the seaside--for instance, Cromer, and inland, Betwys-y-Coed, Penygurd, and the like--the true loafer might be happy, gleaning “the harvest of a quiet eye,” and far from any one who wanted to go anywhere or do anything in particular. The railway has come to Cromer, and I hear that the guardian phalanx of Buxtons, Hoares, Gurneys, and Barclays, all good loafers in the last generation, have thrown up the sponge and gone with the stream. I was at Betwys and Penygurd last year, and at the former there were three or four long pleasure-vans meeting every train; at the latter, three parties came in, in a few hours, to do Snowdon and get back to dinner at Capel Curig or Bethgellert. Indeed, I was sore to mark that even Henry Owen, landlord and guide, once a good loafer, has succumbed., Over here it is still worse in the Atlantic States; but this is a big country, in which oases _must_ be left yet for many a long year for the loafer, of which this is one. It lies on a mountain plateau, seven miles from the station, to which a hack goes twice daily to meet the morning and evening mails (once too often, perhaps, for the highest enjoyment of the loafer); but otherwise the outer world, its fidgets and its businesses, no more concern us than they did Cooper’s jackdaw. I am conscious that regular work here must be done by some one, as daily meals at 7 A.M., and 12.30 and 6 P.M., never fail, with abundance of grapes and melons--the peaches, alas! were cut off by frosts when the trees were in blossom. But beyond this, and the presence of a young Englishman in the house, who, in blue shirt and trousers, tends and milks the cows, and puts in six or eight hours’ work a day at one thing or another in the neighbouring fields, there is nothing to remind one that this world doesn’t go on by itself, at any rate in these autumn days. Almost every cottage, or shanty, as they call these attractive wooden houses, has a deep verandah (from which you get a view, over the forest, of the southern range of mountains, with Pilot Knob for highest point), and, in the verandah, rocking-chairs and hammocks, in one or other of which a chatty host or hostess is almost sure to be found, enjoying air, view, rocking, and the indescribable depth of blue atmosphere which laps us all round. There is surely something very uplifting in finding the sky twice as far off as you know it at home. I felt this first on the Lower Danube and in Greece; but I doubt if Bulgarian or Greek heavens are as high as these. Every now and again, a merry group of young folk go by in waggon or on horseback; but even they are loafers, as they have no object in view beyond enjoying one another’s company, and possibly lunch or tea at the junction of the two mountain-streams, the only lion we have within a day’s journey. Their parents may be found for the most part in and round the hotel, for they are wise enough to let the young ones knock about very much as they please, while they take their own ease in the verandahs or shady grounds of “The Tabard.” That hostelry of historic name stands on an eminence next to this shanty, and my “loaf-brothers,” when I get any, are generally saunterers from amongst its guests, and the one who comes oftenest is perhaps the best loafer I have ever come across. He is a rancheman on the Rio Grande, and has been out here ever since he left Marlborough, some fourteen years ago. Since then I should think he has done as hard work as any man, in the long drives of 2000 miles which he used to make from Southern Texas up to Colorado or Kansas, before the railway came. Even now, I take it that for ten months in the year he covers more ground and exhausts more tissue than most men, which makes him such a model loafer when he gets away. Yesterday, for instance, he started after lunch from “The Tabard,” 300 yards off, under a sort of engagement, as definite as we make them, to spend the afternoon here. On the way he came across a hammock swinging unoccupied in the hotel grounds, and a volume of Pendennis, and only arrived here after supper, in the superb starlight (the moon is objectionably late in rising just now), to smoke a pipe before bed-time. His experience of Western life is as racy as a volume of Bret Harte. Take the following, for instance:--At a prairie-town not far from his ranche, as distances go in the West, there is a State Court of First Instance, presided over by one Roy Bean, J.P., who is also the owner of the principal grocery. Some cowboys had been drinking at the grocery one night, with the result that one of them remained on the floor, but with sense enough left to lie on the side of the pocket where he kept his dollars. In the morning, it appeared that he had been “rolled”--_Anglicè_, turned over and his pocket picked--whereupon a court was called to try a man on whom suspicion rested. Roy Bean sat on a barrel, swore in a jury, and then addressed the prisoner thus: “Now, you give that man his money back.” The culprit, who had sent for the lawyer of the place to defend him, hesitated for a moment, and then pulled out the money. “You treat this crowd,” were Roy’s next words; and while “drinks round” were handed to the delighted cowboys at the prisoner’s expense, Roy pulled out his watch and went on: “You’ve got just five minutes to clear out of this town, and if ever you come in again, we’ll hang you.” The culprit made off just as his lawyer came up, who remonstrated with Roy, explaining that the proper course would have been to have heard the charge, committed the prisoner, and sent him to the county town for trial. “And go off sixty miles, and hang round with the boys [witnesses] for you to pull the skunk through and touch the dollars!” said Roy scornfully; whereupon the lawyer disappeared in pursuit of his client and unpaid fee.

It occurs to one to ask how much of the litigation of England might be saved if Judges of First Instance might open with Roy’s formula: “Now, you give that man his money back.” I am bound to add that his practice is not without its seamy side. When the railway was making, two men came in from one of the gangs for a warrant. A brutal murder had been committed. Roy told his clerk (the boy in the grocery, he being no penman himself) to make out the paper, asking: “Wot’s the corpse’s name?” “Li Hung,” was the reply. “Hold on!” shouted Roy to his clerk; and then to the pursuers: “Ef you ken find anything in them books,” pointing to the two or three supplied by the State, “about killin’ a Chinaman, it ken go,” and the pursuers had to travel on to the next fount of justice.

Here is one more: my “loaf-brother” heard it himself as he was leaving Texas, and laughed at it nearly all the way up. A group of cowboys at the station were discussing the problem of how long the world would last if this drought went on, the prevailing sentiment being that they would rather it worruted through somehow. A cowboy down on his luck here struck in: “Wall, if the angel stood right thar,” pointing across the room, “ready to sound, and looked across at me, I’d jest say, ‘Gabe! toot your old horn!’”

Rugby, Tennessee.

I was roused at five or thereabouts on the morning after our arrival here by a visit from a big dog belonging to a native, not quite a mastiff, but more like that than anything else, who, seeing my window wide open, jumped in from the verandah, and came to the bed to give me goodmorning with tail and muzzle. I was glad to see him, having made friends the previous evening, when the decision of his dealings with the stray hogs who came to call on us from the neighbouring forest had won my heart; but as his size and attentions somewhat impeded my necessarily scanty ablutions, I had to motion him apologetically to the window when I turned out. He obeyed at once, jumped out, laid his muzzle on the sill, and solemnly, and, I thought, somewhat pityingly, watched my proceedings. Meantime, I heard sounds which announced the uprising of “the boys,” and in a few minutes several appeared in flannel shirts and trousers, bound for one of the two rivers which run close by, in gullies 200 feet below us. They had heard of a pool ten feet deep, and found it too; and a most delicious place it is, surrounded by great rocks, lying in a copse of rhododendrons, azaleas, and magnolias, which literally form the underwood of the pines and white oak along these gullies. The water is of a temperature which allows folk whose blood is not so hot as it used to be to lie for half an hour on its surface and play about without a sensation of chilliness. On this occasion, however, I preferred to let them do the exploring, and so at 6.15 went off to breakfast.

This is the regular hour for that meal here, dinner at twelve, and tea at six. There is really no difference between them, except that we get porridge at breakfast and a great abundance of vegetables at dinner. At all of them we have tea and fresh water for drink, plates of beef or mutton, apple sauce, rice, tomatoes, peach pies or puddings, and several kinds of bread. As the English garden furnishes unlimited water and other melons, and as the settlers--young English, who come in to see us--bring sacks of apples and peaches with them, and as, moreover, the most solvent of the boys invested at Cincinnati in a great square box full of tinned viands of all kinds, you may see at once that in this matter we are not genuine objects either for admiration or pity. I must confess here to a slight disappointment. Having arrived at an age myself when diet has become a matter of indifference, I was rather chuckling as we came along over the coming short-commons up here, when we got fairly loose in the woods, and the excellent discipline it would be for the boys, especially the Londoners, to discover that the human animal can be kept in rude health on a few daily crackers and apples, or a slap-jack and tough pork. And now, behold, we are actually still living amongst the flesh-pots, which I had fondly believed we had left in your Eastern Egypt; and I am bound to add, “the boys” seem as provokingly indifferent to them as if their beards were getting grizzled. One lives and learns, but I question whether these states are quite the place to bring home to our Anglo-Saxon race the fact that we are an overfed branch of the universal brotherhood. Tanner, I fear, has fasted in vain.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when there was a muster of cavalry. Every horse that could be spared or requisitioned was in demand for an exploring ride to the west, and soon every charger was bestrid by “a boy” in free-and-easy garments, and carrying a blanket for camping out. Away they went under the pines and oaks, a merry lot, headed by our geologist, who knows the forest by this time like a native, and whose shocking old straw blazed ahead in the morning sun like, shall we say, “the helmet of Navarre,” or Essex’s white hat and plumes before the Train Bands, as they crowned the ridge where Falkland fell and his monument now stands, at the battle of Newbury. Charles Kingsley’s lines came into my head, as I turned pensively to my table in the verandah to write to you:--

When all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, and round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog his day.

Our two lasses are, undoubtedly, queens out here. The thought occurs, are our swans--our visions, already so bright, of splendid crops, and simple life, to be raised and lived in this fairyland--to prove geese? I hope not. It would be the downfall of the last castle in Spain I am ever likely to build.

On reaching our abode, I was aware of the Forester coming across from the English garden, of which he has charge, followed by a young native. He walked up to me, and announced that they were come across to tidy up, and _black the boots_. Here was another shock, that we should be followed by the lumber of civilisation so closely! Will boots be blacked, I wonder, in the New Jerusalem? I was at first inclined to protest, while they made a collection, and set them out on the verandah, but the sight of the ladies’ neat little high-lows made me pause. These, at any rate, it seemed to me, _should_ be blacked, even in the Millennium. Next minute I was so tickled by a little interlude between the Forester and the native, that all idea of remonstrance vanished. The latter, contemplating the boots and blacking-pot and brushes--from under the shapeless piece of old felt, by way of hat, of the same mysterious colour as the ragged shirt and breeches, his only other garments--joined his hands behind his back, and said, in their slow way, “Look ’ere, Mr. Hill, ain’t this ’ere pay-day?” The drift was perfectly obvious. This citizen had no mind to turn shoe-black, and felt like discharging himself summarily. Mr. Hill, who was already busily sweeping the verandah, put down his broom, and after a short colloquy, which I did not quite catch, seized on a boot and brush, and began shining away with an artistic stroke worthy of one of the Shoeblack Brigade at the London Bridge Station. The native looked on for a minute, and then slowly unclasped his hands. Presently he picked up a boot and looked round it dubiously. I now took a hand myself. If there was one art which I learned to perfection at school, and still pride myself on, it is shining a boot. In a minute or two my boot was beginning “to soar and sing,” while the Forester’s was already a thing of beauty. The native, with a grunt, took up the spare brush, and began slowly rubbing. The victory was complete. He comes now and spends two hours every morning over his new accomplishment, evidently delighted with the opportunity it gives him for loafing and watching the habits of the strange occupants, for whom also he fetches many tin pails of water from the well, in a slow, vague manner. He has even volunteered to fix up the ladies’ room and fill their bath (an offer which has been declined, with thanks), but I doubt whether he will ever touch the point of a genuine “shine.”

They are a curious people, these natives, as the Forester (an Englishman, reared in Lord Denbigh’s garden at Newnham Paddocks, and thirty years out here) told me, as we walked off to examine the English garden, but I must keep his experiences and my own observation for separate treatment. The English garden is the most advanced, and, I think, the most important and interesting feature of this settlement. If young Englishmen of small means are to try their fortunes here, it is well that they should have trustworthy guidance at once as to what are the best crops to raise. With this view, Mr. Hill was placed, in the spring of this year, in charge of the only cleared space available. All the rest is beautiful, open forest-land. You can ride or drive almost anywhere under the trees, but there is no cultivated spot for many miles, except small patches here and there of carelessly sown maize and millet, and a rood or two of sweet potatoes. The Forester had a hard struggle to do anything with the garden at all this season. He was only put in command in May, six weeks at least too late. He could only obtain the occasional use of a team, and his duties in the forest and in grading and superintending the walks interfered with the garden. Manure was out of the question, except a little ashes, which he painfully gathered here and there from the reckless log-fires which abound in the woods. He calls his garden a failure for the year. But as half an acre which was wild forest-land in May is covered with water-melons and cantalupes, as the tomatoes hang in huge bunches, rotting on the vines for want of mouths enough to eat them, as the Lima beans are yielding at the rate of 250 bushels an acre, and as cabbages, sweet potatoes, beets, and squash are in equally prodigal abundance, the prospect of making a good living is beyond all question, for all who will set to work with a will.

In the afternoon, I inspected the hotel, nearly completed, on a knoll in the forest, between the English garden and this frame-house. It is a sightly building, with deep verandahs prettily latticed, from which one gets glimpses through the trees of magnificent ranges of blue forest-covered mountains. We have named it “The Tabard,” at the suggestion of one of our American members, who, being in England when the old Southwark hostelry from which the Canterbury Pilgrims started was broken up, and the materials sold by auction, to make room for a hop store, bought some of the old banisters, which he has reverently kept till now. They will be put up in the hall of the new Tabard, and marked with a brass plate and inscription, telling, I trust, to many generations of the place from which they came. The Tabard, when finished, as it will be in a few days, will lodge some fifty guests; and, in spite of the absence of alcoholic drinks, has every chance, if present indications can be trusted, of harbouring and sending out as cheery pilgrims as followed the Miller and the Host, and told their world-famous stories five hundred years ago.

The drink question has reared its baleful head here, as it seems to do all over the world. The various works had gone on in peace till the last ten days, when two young natives toted over some barrels of whisky, and broached them in a shanty, on a small lot of no-man’s land in the woods, some two miles from hence. Since then there has been no peace for the manager. Happily the feeling of the community is vigorously temperate, so energetic measures are on foot to root out the pest. A wise state law enacts that no liquor store shall be permitted under heavy penalties within four miles of an incorporated school; so we are pushing on our school-house, and organising a board to govern it. Meantime, we have evidence of unlawful sale (in quantities less than a pint), and of encouraging gambling, by these pests, and hope to make an example of them at the next sitting of the county court. This incident has decided the question for us. If we are to have influence with the poor whites and blacks, we must be above suspicion ourselves. So no liquor will be procurable at the Tabard, and those who need it will have to import for themselves.

A bridle-path leads from the hotel down to the Clear Fork, one of the streams at the junction of which the town site is situate. The descent is about 200 feet, and the stream, when you get to it, from thirty feet to fifty feet wide,--a mountain stream, with deep pools and big boulders. Your columns are not the place for descriptions of scenery, so I will only say that these gorges of the Clear Fork and White Oak are as fine as any of their size that I know in Scotland, and not unlike in character, with this difference, that the chief underwood here consists of rhododendron (called laurel here), azalea, and a kind of magnolia I have not seen before, and of which I cannot get the name. I passed huge faggots of rhododendron, twelve feet and fourteen feet long, lying by the walks, which had been cleared away ruthlessly while grading them. They are three miles long and cost under £100, a judicious outlay, I think, even before an acre of land has been sold. They have been named the Lovers’ Walks, appropriately enough, for no more well-adapted place could possibly be found for that time-honoured business, especially in spring, when the whole gorges under the tall pines and white oak are one blaze of purple, yellow, and white blossom.

On my return to the plateau, my first day’s experiences came to an end in a way which no longer surprised me, after the boot-blacking and the Lovers’ Walks. I was hailed by one of “the boys,” who had been unable to obtain a mount, or had some business which kept him from exploring. He was in flannels, with racquet in hand, on his way to the lawn-tennis ground, to which he offered to pilot me. In a minute or two we came upon an open space, marked, I see on the plans, “Cricket Ground,” in which rose a fine, strong paling, enclosing a square of 150 feet, the uprights being six feet high, and close enough to keep, not only boys out, but tennis-balls in. Turf there was none, in our sense, within the enclosure, and what there must have once been as a substitute for turf had been carefully cleared off on space sufficient for one full-sized court, which was well marked out on the hard, sandy loam. A better ground I have rarely seen, except for the young sprouts of oak, and other scrub, which here and there were struggling up, in a last effort to assert their “ancient, solitary reign.” At any rate, then and there, upon that court, I saw two sets played in a style which would have done credit to a county match (the young lady, by the way, who played far from the worst game of the four, is the champion of her own county). This was the opening match, the racquets having only just arrived from England, though the court has been the object of tender solicitude for six weeks or more to the four Englishmen already resident here or near by. The Rugby Tennis Club consists to-day of seven members, five English and two native, and will probably reach two figures within a few days on the return of the boys. Meantime the effect of their first practice has been that they have resolved on putting a challenge in the Cincinnati and Chatanooga papers offering to play a match--best out of five sets--with any club in the United States. Such are infant communities, in these latitudes!

You may have been startled by the address at the head of this letter. It was adopted unanimously on our return in twilight from the tennis-ground, and application at once made to the State authorities for registration of the name and establishment of a post-office. It was sharp practice thus to steal a march on the three Etonians, still far away in the forest. Had they been present, possibly Thames might have prevailed over Avon.

A Forest Ride, Rugby, Tennessee.

There are few more interesting experiences than a ride through these southern forests. The scrub is so low and thin, that you can almost always see away for long distances amongst pine, white oak, and chestnut trees; and every now and then at ridges where the timber is thin, or where a clump of trees has been ruthlessly “girdled,” and the bare, gaunt skeletons only remain standing, you may catch glimpses of mountain ranges of different shades of blue and green, stretching far away to the horizon. You can’t live many days up here without getting to love the trees even more, I think, than we do in well-kempt England; and this outrage of “girdling,” as they call it--stripping the bark from the lower part of the trunk, so that the trees wither and die as they stand--strikes one as a kind of household cruelty, as if a man should cut off or disfigure all his wife’s hair. If he wants a tree for lumber or firewood, very good. He should have it. But he should cut it down like a man, and take it clean away for some reasonable use, not leave it as a scarecrow to bear witness of his recklessness and laziness. Happily not much mischief of this kind has been done yet in the neighbourhood of Rugby, and a stop will now be put to the wretched practice. There is another, too, almost as ghastly, but which, no doubt, has more to be said for it. At least half of the largest pines alongside of the sandy tracts which do duty for roads have a long, gaping wound in their sides, about a yard from the ground. This was the native way of collecting turpentine, which oozed down and accumulated at the bottom of the gash; but I rejoice to say it no longer pays, and the custom is in disuse. It must be suppressed altogether, but carefully and gently. It seems that if not persisted in too long, the poor, dear, long-suffering trees will close up their wounds, and not be much the worse: so I trust that many of the scored pines, springing forty or fifty feet into the air before throwing out a branch, which I passed in sorrow and anger on my first long ride, may yet outlive those who outraged them. Having got rid of my spleen, excited by these two diabolic customs, I can return to our ride, which had otherwise nothing but delight in it.

The manager, an invaluable guest from New York, a doctor, who had served on the Sanitary Commission through the war, and I, formed the party. The manager drove the light buggy, which held one of us also, and the handbags 3 while the other rode by the side, where the road allowed, or before or behind, as the fancy seized him. We were bound for a solitary guest-house in the forest, some seventeen miles away, in the neighbourhood of a cave and waterfall which even here have a reputation, and are sometimes visited. We allowed three and a half hours for the journey, and it took all the time. About five miles an hour on wheels is all you can reckon on, for the country roads, sandy tracts about ten feet broad, are just left to take care of themselves, and wherever there is a sufficient declivity to give the rain a chance of washing all the surface off them, are just a heap of boulders of different sizes. But, after all, five miles an hour is as fast as you care to go, for the play of the sunlight amongst the varied foliage, and the new flora and fauna, keep you constantly interested and amused. I never regretted so much my ignorance of botany, for I counted some fourteen sorts of flowers in bloom, of which golden-rod and Michaelmas-daisy were the only ones I was quite sure I knew,--and by the way, the daisy of Parnassus, of which I found a single flower growing by a spring. The rest were like home flowers, but yet not identical with them--at least, I think not--and the doubt whether one had ever seen them before or not was provoking. The birds--few in number--were all strangers to me; buzzards, of which we saw five at one time, quite within shot, and several kinds of hawk and woodpecker, were the most common; but at one point, quite a number of what looked like very big swifts, but without the dash in their flight of our bird, and with wings more like curlews’, were skimming over the tree-tops..1 only heard one note, and that rather sweet, a cat-bird’s, the doctor thought; but he was almost as much a stranger in these woods as I. Happily, however, he was an old acquaintance of that delightful insect, the “tumble-bug,” to which he introduced me on a sandy bit of road. The gentleman in question took no notice of me, but went on rolling his lump of accumulated dirt three times his own size backwards with his hind legs, as if his life depended on it. Presently his lump came right up against a stone and stopped dead. It was a “caution” to see that bug strain to push it farther, but it wouldn’t budge, all he could do. Then he stopped for a moment or two, and evidently made up his small mind that something must be wrong behind, for no bug could have pushed harder than he. So he quitted hold with his hind legs, and turned round to take a good look at the situation, in order, I suppose, to see what must be done next. At any rate, he presently caught hold again on a different side, and so steered successfully past the obstacle. There were a number of them working about, some single and some in pairs, and so full of humour are their doings that I should have liked to watch for hours.

We got to our journey’s end about dusk, a five-roomed, single-storied, wooden house, built on supports, so as to keep it off the ground. We went up four steps to the verandah, where we sat while our hostess, a small, thin New Englander, probably seventy or upwards, but as brisk as a bee, bustled about to get supper. The table was laid in the middle room, which opened on the kitchen at the back, where we could see the stove, and hear our hostess’s discourse. She boiled us two of her fine white chickens admirably, and served with hot bread, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and several preserves, of which I can speak with special praise of the huckleberry, which grows, she said, in great abundance all round. _The boys_, we heard, had been there to breakfast, after sleeping out, and not having had a square meal since they started. Luckily for us, her white chickens are a very numerous as well as beautiful family, or we should have fared badly. She and her husband supped after us, and then came and sat with us in the balcony, and talked away on all manner of topics, as if the chances of discourse were few, and to be made the most of. They had lived at Jamestown, close by, a village of some eight or ten houses, all through the war, through which the Confederate cavalry had passed again and again. They had never molested her or hers in any way, but had a fancy for poultry, which might have proved fatal to her white family, but for her Yankee wit. She and her husband managed to fix up a false floor in one of their rooms in which they fed the roosters, so whenever a picket came in sight, her call would bring the whole family out of the woods and clearing into the refuge, where they remained peacefully amongst corn-cobs till the danger had passed. She had nothing but good to say of her native neighbours, except that they could make nothing of the country. The Lord had done all He could for it, she summed up, and Boston must take hold of the balance. We heard the owls all night, as well as the katydids, but they only seemed to emphasise the forest stillness. The old lady’s beds, to which we retired at ten, after our long gossip in the balcony, were sweet and clean, and I escaped perfectly scatheless, a rare experience, I was assured, in these forest shanties. I was bound, however, to admit, in answer to our hostess’s searching inquiries, that I had seen, and slain, though not felt, an insect suspiciously like a British B flat.

The cave which we sought out after breakfast was well worth any trouble to find. We had to leave the buggy and horses hitched up and scramble down a glen, where presently, through a tangle of great rhododendron bushes, we came on a rock, with the little iron-stained stream just below us, and opposite, at the top of a slope of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, was the cave, like a long black eye under a red eyebrow, glaring at us. I could detect no figure in the sandstone rock (the eyebrow), which hung over it for its whole length. The cave is said to run back more than 300 feet, but we did not test it. There would be good sitting-room for 300 or 400 people along the front, and so obviously fitted for a conventicle, that I could not help peopling it with fugitive slaves, and fancying a black Moses preaching to them of their coming Exodus, with the rhododendrons in bloom behind. Maidenhair grow in tufts about the damp floor, and a creeping fern, with a bright red berry, the name of which the doctor told me, but I have forgotten, on the damp, red walls. What the nook must be when the rhododendrons are all ablaze with blossom, I hope some day to see.

We had heard of a fine spring somewhere in this part of the forest, and in aid of our search for it presently took up a boy whom we found loafing round a small clearing. He was bare-headed and bare-footed, and wore an old, brown, ragged shirt turned up to the elbows, and old, brown, ragged trousers turned up to the knees. I was riding, and in answer to my invitation he stepped on a stump and vaulted up behind me. He never touched me, as most boys would have done, but sat up behind with perfect ease and balance as we rode along, a young centaur. We soon got intimate, and I found he had never been out of the forest, was fourteen, and still at (occasional) school. He could read a little, but couldn’t write. I told him to tell his master, from me, that he ought to be ashamed of himself, which he promised to do with great glee; also, but not so readily, to consider a proposal I made him, that if he would write to the manager within six months to ask for it, he should be paid $1. I found that he knew nothing of the flowers or butterflies, of which some dozen different kinds crossed our path. He just reckoned they were all butterflies, as indeed they were. He knew, however, a good deal about the trees and shrubs, and more about the forest beasts. Had seen several deer only yesterday, and an old opossum with nine young, a number which took the doctor’s breath away. There were lots of foxes in the woods, but he did not see them so often. His face lighted up when he was promised $2 for the first opossum he would tame and bring across to Rugby. After guiding us to the spring, and hunting out an old wooden cup amongst the bushes, he went off cheerily through the bushes, with two quarter-dollar bits in his pocket, an interesting young wild man. Will he ever bring the opossum?

We got back without further incident (except flushing quite a number of quail, which must be lovely shooting in these woods), and found the boys at home, and hard at lawn-tennis and well-digging. The hogs are becoming an object of their decided animosity, and having heard of a Yankee notion, a sort of tweezers, which ring a hog by one motion, in a second, they are going to get it, and then to catch and ring every grunter who shows his nose near the asylum. Out of this there should come some fun, shortly.

The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee.

When all is said and sung, there is nothing so interesting as the man and woman who dwell on any corner of the earth; so, before giving you any further details of our surroundings, or doings, or prospects, let me introduce you to our neighbours, so far as I have as yet the pleasure of their acquaintance. And I am glad at once to acknowledge that it _is_ a pleasure, notwithstanding all the talk we have heard of “mean whites,” “poor, white trash,” and the like, in novels, travels, and newspapers. It may possibly be that we have been fortunate, and that our neighbours here are no fair specimens of the “poor whites” of the South. This, and the next three counties, are in the north-western corner of Tennessee, bordering on Kentucky. They are entirely mountain land. There are very few negroes in them, and they were strongly Unionist during the war. At present, they are Republican, almost to a man. There is not one Democratic official in this county, and I am told that only three votes were cast for the Democratic candidates at the last State elections. They are overwhelmed by the vote of western and central Tennessee, which carries the State with the solid South; but here Union men can speak their minds freely, and cover their walls with pictures in coloured broad-sheet of the heroes of the war,--Lincoln, Governor Brownlow, Grant and his captains. They are poor almost to a man, and live in log-huts and cabins which, at home, could scarcely be rivalled out of Ireland. Within ten miles of this place there are possibly half a dozen (I have seen two) which are equal in accommodation and comfort to those of good farmers in England. The best of these belongs to our nearest neighbour, with whom a party of us dined, at noon, the orthodox hour in the mountains, some weeks since. He is a wiry man, of middle height, probably fifty-five years of age, upright, with finely cut features, and an eye that looks you right in the face. He has been on his farm twenty years, and has cleared some fifty acres, which grow corn, millet, and vegetables, and he has a fine apple orchard. We should call his farming very slovenly, but it produces abundance for his needs. He sat at the head of his table like an old nobleman, very quiet and courteous, but quite ready to speak on any subject, and especially of the five years of the war through which he carried his life in his hand, but never flinched for an hour from his faith. His wife, a slight, elderly person, whose regular features showed that she must have been very good-looking, did not sit down with us, but stood at the bottom of the table, dispensing her good things. Our drink was tea and cold spring water; our viands, chickens, ducks, a stew, ham, with a profusion of vegetables, apple and huckleberry tarts, and several preserves, one of which (some kind of cherry, very common here) was of a lovely gold colour, and of a flavour which would make the fortune of a London pastry-cook; a profusion of water-melons and apples finished our repast; and no one need ask a better,--but I am bound to add that our hostess has the name for giving the best square meal to be had in the four counties. It would be as fair to take this as an average specimen of the well-to-do farmers’ fare here, as that of a nobleman with a French cook of the gentry at home. Our host is a keen sportsman, and showed us his flint-lock rifle, six feet long, and weighing 16 lbs.! He carries a forked stick as a rest, and, we were assured, gets on his game about as quickly as if it were a handy Westley-Richards, and seldom misses a running deer. The vast majority of these mountaineers are in very different circumstances. Most, but not all of them, own a log cabin and minute patch of corn round it, probably also a few pigs and chickens, but seem to have no desire to make any effort at further clearing, and quite content to live from hand to mouth. They cannot do that without hiring themselves out when they get a chance, but are most uncertain and exasperating labourers. In the first place, though able, to stand great fatigue in hunting and perfectly indifferent to weather, they are not physically so strong as average English or Northern men. Then they are never to be relied on for a job. As soon as one of them has earned three or four dollars, he will probably want a hunt, and go off for it then and there, spend a dollar on powder and shot, and these on squirrels and opossums, whose skins may possibly bring him in ten cents as his week’s earnings. It is useless to remonstrate, unless you have an agreement in writing. An Englishman who came here lately, to found some manufactures, left in sheer despair and disgust, saying he had found at last a place where no one seemed to care for money. I do not say that this is true, but they certainly seem to prefer loafing and hunting to dollars, and are often too lazy, or unable, to count, holding out their small change and telling you to take what you want. Temperate as a rule, they are sadly weak when wild-cat whisky or “moonshine,” as the favourite illicit beverage of the mountains is called, crosses their path. This is the great trouble on pay nights at all the works which are starting in this district. The inevitable booth soon appears, with the usual accompaniment of cards and dice, and probably a third of your men are thenceforth without a dime and utterly unfit for work on Mondays, if you are lucky enough to escape dangerous rows amongst the drinkers. The State laws give summary methods of suppressing the nuisance, but they are hard to work, and though public sentiment is vehemently hostile to whisky, the temptation proves in nine cases out of ten too strong. The mountaineers are in the main well-grown men, though slight, shockingly badly clothed, and sallow from chewing tobacco; suspicious in all dealings at first, but hospitable, making everything they have in the house, including their own beds, free to a stranger, and generally refusing payment for lodging or food. They are also very honest, crimes against property (though not against the person) being of very rare occurrence. The other day, a Northern gentleman visiting here expressed his fears to a native farmer, who, after inquiring whether there were any prisons and police in New England, what these were for, and whether his interrogator had locks to his doors and his safes, and bars to his window-shutters, remarked, “Wal, I’ve lived here man and boy for forty year, and never had a bolt to my house, or corn-loft, or smoke-house, and I’ll give you a dollar for every lock you can find in Scott county.” The cattle, sheep, and hogs wander perfectly unguarded through the forest, and I have not yet heard of a single instance of a stolen beast.

There is a rough water-mill on a creek close by, called Back’s Mill, which was run by the owner for years--until he sold it a few months ago--on the following system. He put the running gear and stones up, and above the latter a wooden box, with the charge for grinding meal marked outside. He visited the mill once a fortnight, looked to the machinery, and took away whatever coin was in the box. Folks brought their corn down the steep bank if they chose, ground it at their leisure, and then, if they were honest, put the fee in the box; if not, they went off with their meal, and a consciousness that they were rogues. I presume Buck found his plan answer, as he pursued it up to the date of sale.

In short, sir, I have been driven to the conclusion, in spite of all traditional leanings the other way, that the Lord has much people in these mountains, as I think a young English deacon, lately ordained by the Bishop of Tennessee, will find, who passed here yesterday on a buggy, with his young wife and child, and two boxes and ten dollars of the goods of this world, on his way to open a church mission in a neighbouring county. I heard yesterday a story which should give him hope as to the female portion, at any rate, of his possible flock. They are dreadful slatterns, without an inkling of the great Palmerstonian truth that dirt is matter in its _wrong_ place. A mountain girl, however, who had, strange to say, taken the fancy to go as housemaid in a Knoxville family, gave out that she had been converted, and, upon doubts being expressed and questions asked as to the grounds on which she based the assurance, replied that she knew it was all right, because now she swept underneath the rugs.

When one gets on stories of quaint and ready replies in these parts, one “slops over on both shoulders.” Here are a couple which are current in connection with the war, upon which, naturally enough, the whole mind of the people is still dwelling, being as much occupied with it as with their other paramount subject, the immediate future development of the unbounded resources of these States, which have been really opened for the first time by that terrible agency. An active Secessionist leader in a neighbouring county, in one of his stump speeches before the war, had announced that the Southerners, and especially Tennessee mountain men, could whip the white-livered Yanks with pop-guns. Not long since, having been amnestied and reconstructed again to a point when he saw his way to running for a State office, he was reminded of this saying at the beginning of his canvas. “Wal, yes,” he said, “he owned to that and stood by it still, only those mean cusses [the Yanks] wouldn’t fight that way.”

The other is of very different stamp, and will hold its own with many world-wide stories of graceful compliments to former enemies by kings and other big-wigs. General Wilder, one of the most successful and gallant of the Northern corps commanders in the war, has established himself in this State, with whose climate and resources he became so familiar in the campaign which ended under Look-out Mountain, and has built up a great iron industry at Chatanooga, in full sight of the battlefields from which 14,000 bodies of Union soldiers were carried to the national cemetery. Early in his Southern career he met one of the most famous of the Southern corps commanders (Forrest, I believe, but am not sure as to the name), who, on being introduced, said, “General, I have long wished to know you, because you have behaved to me in a way for which I reckon you owe me an apology, as between gentlemen.”

Wilder replied in astonishment that to his knowledge they had never met before, but that he was quite ready to do all that an honourable man ought. “Well now, General,” said the other, “you remember such and such a fight (naming it)? By night you had taken every gun I had, and I consider that quite an ungentlemanly advantage to take, anyhow.” By the way, no man bears more frank testimony to the gallantry of the Southern soldiers than General Wilder, or admits more frankly the odds which the superior equipment of the Federals threw against the Confederate armies. His corps, mounted infantry, armed with repeating rifles, were equal, he thinks, to at least three times their numbers of as good soldiers as themselves with the ordinary Southern arms. There are few pleasanter things to a hearty well-wisher, who has not been in America for ten years, than the change which has taken place in public sentiment, indicated by such frank admissions as the one just referred to. In 1870, any expression of admiration for the gallantry of the South, or of respect or appreciation of such men as Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, or Johnson, was received either silently, or with strong disapproval. How it is quite the other way, so far as I have seen as yet, and I cannot but hope that the last scars of the mighty struggle are healing up rapidly and thoroughly, and that the old sectional hatred and scorn lie six feet under ground, in the national cemeteries:--

No more shall the war-cry sever,

Or the inland rivers run red;

We have buried our anger for ever,

In the sacred graves of the dead.

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the Judgment Day;

Love and tears for the blue!

Tears and love for the gray!

No man can live for a few weeks on these Cumberland Mountains, without responding with a hearty “Amen!”

Our Forester, Rugby, Tennessee.

Nothing would satisfy our Forester but that some of us should ride over with him, some nine miles through the forest, to see Glades, the farm upon which he has been for the last eight years. He led the way, on his yellow mare, an animal who had nearly given us sore trouble here. The head stableman turned all the horses out one day for a short run, and she being amongst them, and loving her old home best, went off straight for Glades through the woods, with every hoof after her. Luckily, Alfred, the Forester’s son, was there, and guessing what was the matter, just rode her back, all the rest following. The ride was lovely, glorious peeps of distant blue ranges, and the forest just breaking out all over into golds, and vermilions, and purples, and russets. We only passed two small farms on the way, both ramshackle, and so the treat of coming suddenly on some one hundred acres cleared, drained, with large, though rough, farm buildings, and bearing the look of being cared for, was indescribably pleasant. Mrs. Hill and her son Alfred received us, both worthy of the head of the house; more I cannot say. They run the farm in his absence with scarcely any help, Alfred having also to attend to a grist and saw mill in the neighbouring creek. There were a fine mare and filly in the yard, as tame as pet dogs, coming and shoving their noses into your pockets and coaxing you for apples. The hogs are good Berkshire breed, the sheep Cotswolds. The cows (it is the only place where we have had cream on the mountains), Alderney or shorthorns. The house is a large log-cabin, one big room, with a deep, open fireplace, with a great pine-log smouldering at the back across plain iron dogs, a big hearth in front, on which pitch-pine chips are thrown when you feel inclined for a blaze. The room is carpeted and hung with photographs and prints, a rifle and shot gun, and implements of one kind or another. A small collection of books, mostly theological, and founded on two big Bibles, two rocking and half a dozen other chairs, a table, and two beds in the corners furthest from the fire, complete the furniture of the room, which opens on one side on a deep verandah, and on the other on a lean-to, which serves for kitchen and diningroom, and ends in a small, spare bedroom. A loft above, into which the family disappeared at night, completes the accommodation. I need not dwell on our supper, which included tender mutton, chickens, apple-tart, custard pudding, and all manner of vegetables and cakes. Mrs. Hill is as notable a cook as her husband is a forester. After supper we drew round the big fireplace, and soon prevailed on our host to give us a sketch of his life, by way of encouragement to his three young countrymen who sat round, and are going to try their fortunes in these mountains:--