F
Fresh fields lay before us that summer of 1885. We had left the rich, rolling plains of the Blue-grass Region in central Kentucky and set our faces towards the great Appalachian uplift on the south-eastern border of the State. There Cumberland Gap, that high-swung gate-way through the mountain, abides as a landmark of what Nature can do when she wishes to give an opportunity to the human race in its migrations and discoveries, without surrendering control of its liberty and its fate. It can never be too clearly understood by those who are wont to speak of "the Kentuckians" that this State has within its boundaries two entirely distinct elements of population—elements distinct in England before they came hither, distinct during more than a century of residence here, and distinct now in all that goes to constitute a separate community—occupations, manners and customs, dress, views of life, civilization. It is but a short distance from the blue-grass country to the eastern mountains; but in traversing it you detach yourself from all that you have ever experienced, and take up the history of English-speaking[232]men and women at the point it had reached a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago.
Leaving Lexington, then, which is in the midst of the blue-grass plateau, we were come to Burnside, where begin the navigable waters of the Cumberland River, and the foot-hills of the Cumberland Mountains.
Burnside is not merely a station, but a mountain watering-place. The water is mostly in the bed of the river. We had come hither to get horses and saddle-bags, but to no purpose. The hotel was a sort of transition point between the civilization we had left and the primitive society we were to enter. On the veranda were some distinctly modern and conventional red chairs; but a green and yellow gourd-vine, carefully trained so as to shut out the landscape, was a genuine bit of local color. Under the fine beeches in the yard was swung a hammock, but it was made of boards braced between ropes, and was covered with a weather-stained piece of tarpaulin. There were electric bells in the house that did not electrify; and near the front entrance three barrels of Irish potatoes, with the tops off, spoke for themselves in the absence of the bill of fare. After supper, the cook, a tall, blue-eyed, white fellow, walked into my room without explanation, and carried away his guitar, showing that he had been wont to set his sighs to music in that quarter of the premises. The moon hung in that part of the heavens,[233][234][235]and no doubt ogled him into many a midnight frenzy. Sitting under a beech-tree in the morning, I had watched a child from some city, dressed in white and wearing a blue ribbon around her goldenish hair, amuse herself by rolling old barrels (potato barrels probably, and she may have had a motive) down the hill-side and seeing them dashed to pieces on the railway track below. By-and-by some of the staves of one fell in, the child tumbled in also, and they all rolled over together. Upon the whole, it was an odd overlapping of two worlds. When the railway was first opened through this region a young man established a fruit store at one of the stations, and as part of his stock laid in a bunch of bananas. One day a mountaineer entered. Arrangements generally struck him with surprise, but everything else was soon forgotten in an adhesive contemplation of that mighty aggregation of fruit. Finally he turned away with this comment: "Damn me if them ain't the damnedest beansIever seen!"
OLD FERRY AT POINT BURNSIDE.OLD FERRY AT POINT BURNSIDE.
OLD FERRY AT POINT BURNSIDE.
The scenery around Burnside is beautiful, and the climate bracing. In the valleys was formerly a fine growth of walnut, but the principal timbers now are oak, ash, and sycamore, with yellow pine. I heard of a wonderful walnut tree formerly standing, by hiring vehicles to go and see which the owner of a livery-stable made three hundred and fifty dollars. Six hundred were offered for it on the spot. The hills are filled with the mountain limestone—that[236]Kentucky oolite of which the new Cotton Exchange in New York is built. Here was Burnside's depot of supplies during the war, and here passed the great road—made in part a corduroy road at his order—from Somerset, Kentucky, to Jacksborough, over which countless stores were taken from central Kentucky and regions farther north into Tennessee. Supplies were brought up the river in small steamboats or overland in wagons, and when the road grew impassable, pack-mules were used. Sad sights there were in those sad days: the carcasses of animals at short intervals from here to Knoxville, and now and then a mule sunk up to his body in mire, and abandoned, with his pack on, to die. Here were batteries planted and rifle-pits dug, the vestiges of which yet remain; but where the forest timbers were then cut down a vigorous new growth has long been reclaiming the earth to native wildness, and altogether the aspect of the place is peaceful and serene. Doves were flying in and out of the cornfields on the hill-sides; there were green stretches in the valleys where cattle were grazing; and these, together with a single limestone road that wound upward over a distant ridge, recalled the richer scenes of the blue-grass lands.
Assured that we should find horses and saddlebags at Cumberland Falls, we left Burnside in the afternoon, and were soon set down at a station some fifteen miles farther along, where a hack conveyed[237]us to another of those mountain watering-places that are being opened up in various parts of eastern Kentucky for the enjoyment of a people that has never cared to frequent in large numbers the Atlantic seaboard.
"DAMN ME IF THEM AIN'T THE DAMNEDEST BEANS I EVER SEEN!""DAMN ME IF THEM AIN'T THE DAMNEDEST BEANS I EVER SEEN!"
"DAMN ME IF THEM AIN'T THE DAMNEDEST BEANS I EVER SEEN!"
As we drove on, the darkness was falling, and the scenery along the road grew wilder and grander. A terrific storm had swept over these heights, and the great trees lay uptorn and prostrate in every direction, or reeled and fell against each other like drunken giants—a scene of fearful elemental violence. On the summits one sees the tan-bark oak; lower down, the white oak; and[238]lower yet, fine specimens of yellow poplar; while from the valleys to the crests is a dense and varied undergrowth, save where the ground has been burned over, year after year, to kill it out and improve the grazing. Twenty miles to the south-east we had seen through the pale-tinted air the waving line of Jellico Mountains in Tennessee. Away to the north lay the Beaver Creek and the lower Cumberland, while in front of us rose the craggy, scowling face of Anvil Rock, commanding a view of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The utter silence and heart-oppressing repose of primeval nature was around us. The stark white and gray trunks of the immemorial forest dead linked us to an inviolable past. The air seemed to blow upon us from over regions illimitable and unexplored, and to be fraught with unutterable suggestions. The full-moon swung itself aloft over the sharp touchings of the green with spectral pallor; and the evening-star stood lustrous on the western horizon in depths of blue as cold as a sky of Landseer, except where brushed by tremulous shadows of rose on the verge of the sunlit world. A bat wheeled upward in fantastic curves out of his undiscovered glade. And the soft tinkle of a single cow-bell far below marked the invisible spot of some lonely human habitation. By-and-by we lost sight of the heavens altogether, so dense and interlaced the forest. The descent of the hack appeared to be into a steep abyss of gloom;[239]then all at once we broke from the edge of the woods into a flood of moonlight; at our feet were the whirling, foaming rapids of the river; in our ears was the roar of the cataract, where the bow-crowned mist rose and floated upward and away in long trailing shapes of ethereal lightness.
MOONRISE ON CUMBERLAND RIDGE.MOONRISE ON CUMBERLAND RIDGE.
MOONRISE ON CUMBERLAND RIDGE.
The Cumberland River throws itself over the rocks here with a fall of seventy feet, or a perpendicular descent of sixty-two, making a mimic but beautiful Niagara. Just below, at Eagle Falls, it drops over its precipice in a lawny cascade. The roar of the cataract, under favorable conditions, may be heard up and down stream a distance of ten or twelve miles. You will not find in mountainous Kentucky a more picturesque spot.
While here, we had occasion to extend our acquaintance with native types. Two young men came to the hotel, bringing a bag of small, hard peaches to sell. Slim, slab-sided, stomachless, and[240]serene, mild, and melancholy, they might have been lotos-eaters, only the suggestion of poetry was wanting. Their unutterable content came not from the lotus, but from their digestion. If they could sell their peaches, they would be happy; if not, they would be happy. What they could not sell, they could as well eat; and since no bargain was made on this occasion, they took chairs on the hotel veranda, opened the bag, and fell to. I talked with the Benjamin of his tribe:
"Is that a good 'coon dog?"
"A mighty good 'coon dog. I hain't never seed him whipped by a varmint yit."
"Are there many 'coons in this country?"
"Several 'coons."
"Is this a good year for 'coons?"
"A mighty good year for 'coons. The woods is full o' varmints."
"Do 'coons eat corn?"
"'Coons is bad as hogs on corn, when they git tuk to it."
"Are there many wild turkeys in this country?"
"Several wild turkeys."
"Have you ever caught many 'coons?"
"I've cotched high as five 'coons out o' one tree."
"Are there many foxes in this country?"
"Several foxes."
"What's the best way to cook a 'coon?"
"Ketch him and parbile him, and then put him in[241]cold water and soak him, and then put him in and bake him."
"Are there many hounds in this country?"
"Several hounds."
Here, among other discoveries, was a linguistic one—the use of "several" in the sense of a great many, probably an innumerable multitude, as in the case of the 'coons.
They hung around the hotel for hours, as beings utterly exempt from all the obligations and other phenomena of time.
"Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"
"Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?"
The guide bespoken the evening before had made arrangements for our ride of some eighteen miles—was it not forty?—to Williamsburg; and in the afternoon made his appearance with three horses. Of these one was a mule, with a strong leaning towards his father's family. Of the three saddles one was a side-saddle, and another was an army saddle with refugee stirrups. The three beasts wore among them some seven shoes. My own mincing jade had none. Her name must have been Helen of Troy (all horses are named in Kentucky), so long ago had her great beauty disappeared. She partook with me of the terror which her own movements inspired; and if there ever was a well-defined case in which the man should have carried the beast, this was the[242]one. While on her back I occasionally apologized for the injustice of riding her by handing her some sour apples, the like of which she appeared never to have tasted before, just as it was told me she had never known the luxury of wearing shoes. It is often true that the owner of a horse in this region is too poor or too mean to have it shod.
Our route from Cumberland Falls lay through what is called "Little Texas," in Whitley County—a wilderness some twenty miles square. I say route, because there was not always a road; but for the guide, there would not always have been a direction. Rough as the country appears to one riding through it on horseback, it is truly called "flat woods country;" and viewed from Jellico Mountains, whence the local elevations are of no account, it looks like one vast sweep of sloping, densely-wooded land. Here one may see noble specimens of yellow poplar in the deeper soil at the head of the ravines; pin-oak, and gum and willow, and the rarely beautiful wild-cucumber. Along the streams in the lowlands blooms the wild calacanthus, filling the air with fragrance, and here in season the wild camellia throws open its white and purple splendors.
It was not until we had passed out of "Little Texas" and reached Williamsburg, had gone thence to Barbourville, the county-seat of the adjoining county of Knox, and thence again into Bell County, that we stopped at an old way-side inn on the Wilderness[243][244][245]road from Kentucky through Cumberland Gap. Around us were the mountains—around us the mountaineers whom we wished to study.
CUMBERLAND FALLS.CUMBERLAND FALLS.
CUMBERLAND FALLS.
Straight, slim, angular, white bodies; average or even unusual stature, without great muscular robustness; features regular and colorless; unanimated but intelligent; in the men sometimes fierce; in the women often sad; among the latter occasional beauty of a pure Greek type; a manner shy and deferential, but kind and fearless; eyes with a slow, long look of mild inquiry, or of general listlessness, or of unconscious and unaccountable melancholy; the key of life a low minor strain, losing itself in reverie; voices monotonous in intonation; movements uninformed by nervousness—these are characteristics of the Kentucky mountaineers. Living to-day as their forefathers lived a hundred years ago; hearing little of the world, caring nothing for it; responding feebly to the influences of civilization near the highways of travel in and around the towns, and latterly along the lines of railway communication; but sure to live here, if uninvaded and unaroused, in the same condition for a hundred years to come; lacking the spirit of development from within; devoid of sympathy[246]with that boundless and ungovernable activity which is carrying the Saxon race in America from one state to another, whether better or worse. The origin of these people, the relation they sustain to the different population of the central Kentucky region—in fine, an account of them from the date of their settling in these mountains to the present time, when, as it seems, they are on the point of losing their isolation, and with it their distinctiveness—would imprison phases of life and character valuable alike to the special history of this country and to the general history of the human mind.
The land in these mountains is all claimed, but it is probably not all covered by actual patent. As evidence, a company has been formed to speculate in lands not secured by title. The old careless way of marking off boundaries by going from tree to tree, by partly surveying and partly guessing, explains the present uncertainty. Many own land by right of occupancy, there being no other claim. The great body of the people live on and cultivate little patches which they either own, or hold free, or pay rent for with a third of the crop. These not unfrequently get together and trade farms as they would horses, no deed being executed. There is among them a mobile element—squatters—who make a hill-side clearing and live on it as long as it remains productive; then they move elsewhere. This accounts for the presence throughout the country[247][248][249]of abandoned cabins, around which a new forest growth is springing up. Leaving out of consideration the few instances of substantial prosperity, the most of the people are abjectly poor, and they appear to have no sense of accumulation. The main crops raised are corn and potatoes. In the scant gardens will be seen patches of cotton, sorghum, and tobacco; flax also, though less than formerly. Many make insufficient preparation for winter, laying up no meat, but buying a piece of bacon now and then, and paying for it with work. In some regions the great problem of life is to raise two dollars and a half during the year for county taxes. Being pauper counties, they are exempt from State taxation. Jury fees are highly esteemed and much sought after. The manufacture of illicit mountain whiskey—"moonshine"—was formerly, as it is now, a considerable source of revenue; and a desperate sub-source of revenue from the same business has been the betrayal of its hidden places. There is nothing harder or more dangerous to find now in the mountains than a still.
NATIVE TYPES.NATIVE TYPES.
NATIVE TYPES.
Formerly digging "sang," as they call ginseng, was a general occupation. For this China was a great market. It has nearly all been dug out except in the wildest parts of the country, where entire families may still be seen "out sangin'." They took it into the towns in bags, selling it at a dollar and ten cents—perhaps a dollar and a half—a pound.[250]This was mainly the labor of the women and the children, who went to work barefooted, amid briers and chestnut burs, copperheads and rattlesnakes. Indeed, the women prefer to go barefooted, finding shoes a trouble and constraint. It was a sad day for the people when the "sang" grew scarce. A few years ago one of the counties was nearly depopulated in consequence of a great exodus into Arkansas, whence had come the news that "sang" was plentiful. Not long since, during a season of scarcity in corn, a local store-keeper told the people of a county to go out and gather all the mandrake or "May-apple" root they could find. At first only the women and children went to work, the men holding back with ridicule. By-and-by they also took part, and that year some fifteen tons were gathered, at three cents a pound, and the whole country thus got its seed-corn. Wild ginger was another root formerly much dug; also to less extent "golden-seal" and "bloodroot." The sale of feathers from a few precarious geese helps to eke out subsistence. Their methods of agriculture—if methods they may be styled—are the most primitive. Ploughing is commonly done with a "bull-tongue," an implement hardly more than a sharpened stick with a metal rim; this is often drawn by an ox, or a half-yoke. But one may see women ploughing with two oxen. Traces are made of hickory or papaw, as also are bed-cords. Ropes are made of lynn bark. In some[251]counties there is not so much as a fanning-mill, grain being winnowed by pouring it from basket to basket, after having been threshed with a flail, which is a hickory withe some seven feet long. Their threshing-floor is a clean place on the ground, and they take up grain, gravel, and dirt together, not knowing, or not caring for, the use of a sieve.
INTERIOR OF A MOUNTAINEER'S HOME.INTERIOR OF A MOUNTAINEER'S HOME.
INTERIOR OF A MOUNTAINEER'S HOME.
The grain is ground at their homes in a hand tub-mill, or one made by setting the nether millstone in a bee-gum, or by cutting a hole in a puncheon-log[252]and sinking the stone into it. There are, however, other kinds of mills: the primitive little water-mill, which may be considered almost characteristic of this region; in a few places improved water-mills, and small steam-mills. It is the country of mills, farm-houses being furnished with one as with coffee-pot or spinning-wheel. A simpler way of preparing corn for bread than by even the hand-mill is used in the late summer and early autumn, while the grain is too hard for eating as roasting-ears, and too soft to be ground in a mill. On a board is tacked a piece of tin through which holes have been punched from the under side, and over this tin the ears are rubbed, producing a coarse meal, of which "gritted bread" is made. Much pleasure and much health they get from their "gritted bread," which is sweet and wholesome for a hungry man.
Where civilization has touched on the highways and the few improved mills have been erected, one may see women going to mill with their scant sacks of grain, riding on a jack, a jennet, or a bridled ox. But this is not so bad as in North Carolina, where, Europa like, they ride on bulls.
Aside from such occupations, the men have nothing to do—a little work in the spring, and nine months' rest. They love to meet at the country groceries and cross-roads, to shoot matches for beef, turkeys, or liquor, and to gamble. There is with[253]them a sort of annual succession of amusements. In its season they have the rage for pitching horseshoes, the richer ones using dollar pieces. In consequence of their abundant leisure, the loneliness of the mountains, and their bravery and vigor, quarrels are frequent and feuds deadly. Personal enmities soon serve to array entire families in an attitude of implacable hostility; and in the course of time relatives and friends take sides, and a war of extermination ensues. The special origins of these feuds are various: blood heated and temper lost under the influence of "moonshine;" reporting the places and manufacturers of this; local politics; the survival of resentments engendered during the Civil War. These, together with all causes that lie in the passions of the human heart and spring from the constitution of all human society, often make the remote and insulated life of these people turbulent, reckless, and distressing.
But while thus bitter and cruel towards each other, they present to strangers the aspect of a polite, kind, unoffending, and most hospitable race. They will divide with you shelter and warmth and food, however scant, and will put themselves to trouble for your convenience with an unreckoning, earnest friendliness and good-nature that is touching to the last degree. No sham, no pretence; a true friend, or an open enemy. Of late they have had much occasion to regard new-comers with distrust, which,[254]once aroused, is difficult to dispel; and now they will wish to know you and your business before treating you with that warmth which they are only too glad to show.
The women do most of the work. From the few sheep, running wild, which the farm may own, they take the wool, which is carded, reeled, spun, and woven into fabrics by their own hands and on their rude implements. One or two spinning-wheels will be found in every house. Cotton from their little patches they clean by using a primitive hand cotton-gin. Flax, much spun formerly, is now less used. It is surprising to see from what appliances they will bring forth exquisite fabrics: garments for personal wear, bedclothes, and the like. When they can afford it they make carpets.
They have, as a rule, luxuriant hair. In some counties one is struck by the purity of the Saxon type, and their faces in early life are often handsome. But one hears that in certain localities they are prone to lose their teeth, and that after the age of thirty-five it is a rare thing to see a woman whose teeth are not partly or wholly wanting. The reason is not apparent. They appear passionately fond of dress, and array themselves in gay colors and in jewelry (pinchbeck), if their worldly estate justifies the extravagance. Oftener, if young, they have a modest, shy air, as if conscious that their garb is not decorous. Whether married or unmarried, they[255][256][257]show much natural diffidence. It is told that in remoter districts of the mountains they are not allowed to sit at the table with the male members of the household, but serve them as in ancient societies. Commonly, in going to church, the men ride and carry the children, while the women walk. Dancing in some regions is hardly known, but in others is a favorite amusement, and in its movements men and women show grace. The mountain preachers oppose it as a sin.
MOUNTAIN COURTSHIP.MOUNTAIN COURTSHIP.
MOUNTAIN COURTSHIP.
Marriages take place early. They are a fecund race. I asked them time and again to fix upon the average number of children to a family, and they gave as the result seven. In case of parental opposition to wedlock, the lovers run off. There is among the people a low standard of morality in their domestic relations, the delicate privacies of home life having little appreciation where so many persons, without regard to age or sex, are crowded together within very limited quarters.
The dwellings—often mere cabins with a single room—are built of rough-hewn logs, chinked or daubed, though not always. Often there is a puncheon floor and no chamber roof. One of these mountaineers, called into court to testify as to the household goods of a defendant neighbor, gave in as the inventory, a string of pumpkins, a skillet without a handle, and "a wild Bill." "A wild Bill" is a bed made by boring auger-holes into a log, driving sticks[258]into these, and overlaying them with hickory bark and sedge-grass—a favorite couch. The low chimneys, made usually of laths daubed, are so low that the saying, inelegant though true, is current, that you may sit by the fire inside and spit out over the top. The cracks in the walls are often large enough to give ingress and egress to child or dog. Even cellars are little known, potatoes sometimes being kept during winter in a hole dug under the hearthstone. More frequently a trap-door is made through the plank flooring in the middle of the room, and in a hole beneath are put potatoes, and, in case of wealth, jellies and preserves. Despite the wretchedness of their habitations and the rigors of mountain climate, they do not suffer with cold, and one may see them out in snow knee-deep clad in low brogans, and nothing heavier than a jeans coat and hunting-shirt.
The customary beverage is coffee, bitter and black, not having been roasted but burnt. All drink it, from the youngest up. Another beverage is "mountain tea," which is made from the sweet-scented golden-rod and from winter-green—the New England checkerberry. These decoctions they mollify with home-made sorghum molasses, which they call "long sweetening," or with sugar, which by contrast is known as "short sweetening."
Of home government there is little or none, boys especially setting aside at will parental authority;[259]but a sort of traditional sense of duty and decorum restrains them by its silent power, and moulds them into respect. Children while quite young are often plump to roundness, but soon grow thin and white and meagre like the parents. There is little desire for knowledge or education. The mountain schools have sometimes less than half a dozen pupils during the few months they are in session. A gentleman who wanted a coal bank opened, engaged for the work a man passing along the road. Some days later he learned that his workman was a schoolteacher, who, in consideration of the seventy-five cents a day, had dismissed his academy.[260]
A FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.A FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.
A FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.
Many, allured by rumors from the West, have migrated thither, but nearly all come back, from love of the mountains, from indisposition to cope with the rush and vigor and enterprise of frontier life. Theirs, they say, is a good lazy man's home.
Their customs respecting the dead are interesting. When a husband dies his funeral sermon is not preached, but the death of the wife is awaited, and vice versa. Then a preacher is sent for, friend and neighbor called in, and the respect is paid both together. Often two or three preachers are summoned, and each delivers a sermon. More peculiar is the custom of having the services for one person repeated; so that the dead get their funerals preached several times, months and years after their burial. I heard of the pitiful story of two sisters who had their mother's funeral preached once every summer as long as they lived. You may engage the women in mournful conversation respecting the dead, but hardly the men. In strange contrast with this regard for ceremonial observances is their neglect of the graves of their beloved, which they do not seem at all to visit when once closed, or to decorate with those symbols of affection which are the common indications of bereavement.
Nothing that I have ever seen is so lonely, so touching in its neglect and wild, irreparable solitude, as one of these mountain graveyards. On some knoll under a clump of trees, or along some hill-side[261]where dense oak-trees make a mid-day gloom, you walk amid the unknown, undistinguishable dead. Which was father and which mother, where are lover and stricken sweetheart, whether this is the dust of laughing babe or crooning grandam, you will never know: no foot-stones, no head-stones;[262]sometimes a few rough rails laid around, as you would make a little pen for swine. In places, however, one sees a picket-fence put up, or a sort of shed built over.
A MOUNTAINEER DAME.A MOUNTAINEER DAME.
A MOUNTAINEER DAME.
Traditions and folk-lore among them are evanescent, and vary widely in different localities. It appears that in part they are sprung from the early hunters who came into the mountains when game was abundant, sport unfailing, living cheap. Among them now are still-hunters, who know the haunts of bear and deer, needing no dogs. They even now prefer wild meat—even "'possum" and "'coon" and ground-hog—to any other. In Bell County I spent the day in the house of a woman eighty years old, who was a lingering representative of a nearly extinct type. She had never been out of the neighborhood of her birth, knew the mountains like a garden, had whipped men in single-handed encounter, brought down many a deer and wild turkey with her own rifle, and now, infirm, had but to sit in her cabin door and send her trained dogs into the depths of the forests to discover the wished-for game. A fiercer woman I never looked on.[263]
Our course now lay direct towards Cumberland Gap, some twenty miles southward. Our road ran along the bank of the Cumberland River to the ford, the immemorial crossing-place of early travel—and a beautiful spot—thence to Pineville, situated in that narrow opening in Pine Mountain where the river cuts it, and thence through the valley of Yellow Creek to the wonderful pass. The scenery in this region is one succession of densely wooded mountains, blue-tinted air, small cultivated tracts in the fertile valleys, and lovely watercourses.
Along the first part of our route the river slips crystal-clear over its rocky bed, and beneath the lone green pendent branches of the trees that crowd the banks. At the famous ford it was only two or three feet deep at the time of our crossing. This is a historic point. Here was one of the oldest settlements in the country; here the Federal army destroyed the houses and fences during the Civil War; and here Zollikoffer came to protect the Kentucky gate that opens into East Tennessee. At Pineville, just beyond, we did not remain long. For some reasons not clearly understood by travellers, a dead-line had been drawn through the midst of the town, and[264]not knowing on which side we were entitled to stand, we hastened on to a place where we might occupy neutral ground.
The situation is strikingly picturesque: the mountain looks as if cleft sheer and fallen apart, the peaks on each side rising almost perpendicularly, with massive overhanging crests wooded to the summits, but showing gray rifts of the inexhaustible limestone. The river when lowest is here at an elevation of nine hundred and sixty feet, and the peaks leap to the height of twenty-two hundred. Here in the future will most probably pass a railroad, and be a populous town, for here is the only opening through Pine Mountain from "the brakes" of Sandy to the Tennessee line, and tributary to the watercourses that centre here are some five hundred thousand acres of timber land.
The ride from Pineville to the Gap, fourteen miles southward, is most beautiful. Yellow Creek becomes in local pronunciation "Yaller Crick." One cannot be long in eastern Kentucky without being struck by the number and character of the names given to the watercourses, which were the natural avenues of migratory travel. Few of the mountains have names. What a history is shut up in these names! Cutshin Creek, where some pioneer, they say, damaged those useful members; but more probably where grows a low greenbrier which cuts the shins and riddles the pantaloons. These pioneers had humor.[265]They named one creek "Troublesome," for reasons apparent to him who goes there; another, "No Worse Creek," on equally good grounds; another, "Defeated Creek;" and a great many, "Lost Creek." In one part of the country it is possible for one to enter "Hell fur Sartain," and get out at "Kingdom Come." Near by are "Upper Devil" and "Lower Devil." One day we went to a mountain meeting which was held in "a school-house and church-house"[266]on "Stinking Creek." One might suppose they would have worshipped in a more fragrant locality; but the stream is very beautiful, and not malodorous. It received its name from its former canebrakes and deer licks, which made game abundant. Great numbers were killed for choice bits of venison and hides. Then there are "Ten-mile Creek" and "Sixteen-mile Creek," meaning to clinch the distance by name; and what is philologically interesting, one finds numerous "TraceForks," originally "TrailForks."
OLD CORN-MILL AT PINEVILLE.OLD CORN-MILL AT PINEVILLE.
OLD CORN-MILL AT PINEVILLE.
Bell County and the Yellow Creek Valley serve to illustrate the incalculable mineral and timber resources of eastern Kentucky. Our road at times cut through forests of magnificent timbers—oak (black and white), walnut (black and white), poplar, maple, and chestnut, beech, lynn, gum, dogwood, and elm. Here are some of the finest coal-fields in the world, the one on Clear Creek being fourteen feet thick. Here are pure cannel-coals and coking-coals. At no other point in the Mississippi Valley are iron ores suitable for steel-making purposes so close to fuel so cheap. With an eastern coal-field of 10,000 square miles, with an area equally large covered with a virgin growth of the finest economic timbers, with watercourses feasible and convenient, it cannot be long before eastern Kentucky will be opened up to great industries. Enterprise has already turned hither, and the distinctiveness of the[267]mountaineer race already begins to disappear. The two futures before them are, to be swept out of these mountains by the in-rushing spirit of contending industries, or to be aroused, civilized, and developed.
Long before you come in sight of the great Gap, the idea of it dominates the mind. While yet some miles away it looms up, 1675 feet in elevation, some half a mile across from crest to crest, the pinnacle on the left towering to the height of 2500 feet.
It was late in the afternoon when our tired horses began the long, winding, rocky climb from the valley to the brow of the pass. As we stood in the passway, amid the deepening shadows of the twilight and the solemn repose of the mighty landscape, the Gap seemed to be crowded with two invisible and countless pageants of human life, the one passing in, the other passing out; and the air grew thick with unheard utterances—primeval sounds, undistinguishable and strange, of creatures nameless and never seen by man; the wild rush and whoop of retreating and pursuing tribes; the slow steps of watchful pioneers; the wail of dying children and the songs of homeless women; the muffled tread of routed and broken armies—all the sounds of surprise and delight, victory and defeat, hunger and pain, and weariness and despair, that the human heart can utter. Here passed the first of the white race who led the way into the valley of the Cumberland; here[268]passed that small band of fearless men who gave the Gap its name; here passed the "Long Hunters;" here rushed the armies of the Civil War; here has passed the wave of westerly emigration, whose force has spent itself only on the Pacific slopes; and here in the long future must flow backward and forward the wealth of the North and the South.[269]
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The writer has been publishing during the last few years a series of articles on Kentucky. With this article the series will be brought to a close. Hitherto he has written of nature in the Blue-grass Region and of certain aspects of life; but as he comes to take leave of his theme, he finds his attention fixed upon that great mountain wall which lies along the southeastern edge of the State. At various points of this wall are now beginning to be enacted new scenes in the history of Kentucky; and what during a hundred years has been an inaccessible background, is becoming the fore-front of a civilization which will not only change the life of the State within, but advance it to a commanding position in national economic affairs.
But it should not be lost sight of that in writing this article, as in writing all the others, it is with the human problem in Kentucky that he is solely concerned. He will seem to be dealing with commercial activities for their own sake. He will write of coals and ores and timbers, of ovens and tunnels and mines; but if the reader will bear with[272]him to the end, he will learn that these are dealt with only for the sake of looking beyond them at the results which they bring on: town-making in various stages, the massing and distributing of wealth, the movements of population, the dislodgment of isolated customs—on the whole, results that lie in the domain of the human problem in its deepest phases.
Consider for a moment, then, what this great wall is, and what influence it has had over the history of Kentucky and upon the institutions and characteristics of its people.
You may begin at the western frontier of Kentucky on the Mississippi River, about five hundred miles away, and travel steadily eastward across the billowy plateau of the State, going up and up all the time until you come to its base, and above its base it rises to the height of some three thousand feet. For miles before you reach it you discover that it is defended by a zone of almost inaccessible hills with steep slopes, forests difficult to penetrate, and narrow jagged gorges; and further defended by a single sharp wall-like ridge, having an elevation of about twenty-two hundred feet, and lying nearly parallel with it, at a distance of about twenty miles. Or, if you should attempt to reach this wall from the south, you would discover that from that side also it is hardly less hostile to approach. Hence it has stood in its virgin wilderness, a vast isolating[273]and isolated barrier, fierce, beautiful, storm-racked, serene; in winter, brown and gray, with its naked woods and rifts of stone, or mantled in white; in summer, green, or of all greens from darkest to palest, and touched with all shades of bloom; in autumn, colored like the sunset clouds; curtained all the year by exquisite health-giving atmospheres, lifting itself all the year towards lovely, changing skies.
Understand the position of this natural fortress-line with regard to the area of Kentucky. That area has somewhat the shape of an enormous flat foot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-off ankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this huge foot rests solidly on Tennessee, the Ohio River trickles across the ankle and over the top, the big toe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River, and the long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia, never having been ceded by that State. Between the Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is piled up this immense, bony, grisly mass of the Cumberland Mountain, extending some three hundred miles north-east and south-west.
It was through this heel that Kentucky had to be peopled. The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of travelling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants—the strongest in body, the strongest in will—succeeded in getting over and[274]establishing their colony in the country far beyond. Luckily there was an enormous depression in the wall, or they might never have scaled it. During about half a century this depression was the difficult, exhausting entrance-point through which the State received the largest part of its people, the furniture of their homes, and the implements of their civilization; so that from the very outset that people represented the most striking instance of a survival of the fittest that may be observed in the founding of any American commonwealth. The feeblest of the ants could not climb the wall; the idlest of them would not. Observe, too, that, once on the other side, it was as hard to get back as it had been to get over. That is, the Cumberland Mountain kept the little ultramontane society isolated. Being isolated, it was kept pure-blooded. Being isolated, it developed the spirit and virtues engendered by isolation. Hence those traits for which Kentuckians were once, and still think themselves, distinguished—passion for self-government, passion for personal independence, bravery, fortitude, hospitality. On account of this mountain barrier the entire civilization of the State has had a one-sided development. It has become known for pasturage and agriculture, whiskey, hemp, tobacco, and fine stock. On account of it the great streams of colonization flowing from the North towards the South, and flowing from the Atlantic seaboard towards the West, have divided[275]and passed around Kentucky as waters divide and pass around an island, uniting again on the farther side. It has done the like for the highways of commerce, so that the North has become woven to the South and the East woven to the West by a connecting tissue of railroads, dropping Kentucky out as though it had no vital connection, as though it were not a controlling point of connection, for the four sections of the country. Thus keeping out railroads, it has kept out manufactures, kept out commerce, kept out industrial cities. For three-quarters of a century generations of young Kentuckians have had to seek pursuits of this character in other quarters, thus establishing a constant draining away from the State of its resolute, vigorous manhood. Restricting the Kentuckians who have remained to an agricultural type of life, it has brought upon them a reputation for lack of enterprise. More than all this has that great barrier wall done for the history of Kentucky. For, within a hundred years, the only thing to take possession of it, slowly, sluggishly overspreading the region of its foot-hills, its vales and fertile slopes—the only thing to take possession of it and to claim it has been a race of mountaineers, an idle, shiftless, ignorant, lawless population, whose increasing numbers, pauperism, and lawlessness, whose family feuds and clan-like vendettas, have for years been steadily gaining for Kentucky the reputation for having one of[276]the worst backwoods populations on the continent, or, for that matter, in the world.
But for the presence of this wall the history of the State, indeed the history of the United States, would have been profoundly different. Long ago, in virtue of its position, Kentucky would have knit together, instead of holding apart, the North and the South. The campaigns and the results of the Civil War would have been changed; the Civil War might never have taken place. But standing as it has stood, it has left Kentucky, near the close of the first century of its existence as a State, with a reputation somewhat like the shape of its territory—unsymmetric, mutilated, and with certain parts missing.
But now consider this wall of the Cumberland Mountain from another point of view. If you should stand on the crest at any point where it forms the boundary of Kentucky; or south of it, where it extends into Tennessee; or north of it, where it extends into Virginia—if you should stand thus and look northward, you would look out upon a vast area of coal. For many years now it has been known that the coal-measure rocks of eastern Kentucky comprise about a fourth of the area of the State, and are not exceeded in value by those of any other State. It has been known that this buried solar force exceeds that of Great Britain. Later it has become known that the Kentucky portion of the great Appalachian coal-field contains the largest[277]area of rich cannel-coals yet discovered, these having been traced in sixteen counties, and some of them excelling by test the famous cannel-coal of Great Britain; later it has become known that here is to be found the largest area of coking-coal yet discovered, the main coal—discovered a few years ago, and named the "Elkhorn"—having been traced over sixteen hundred square miles, and equalling American standard coke in excellence.