Letter XIX- The Mountains and Their People
Description
LETTER XIX.
Elizabethton, Tennessee, June, 1848.
The prominent circumstance attending my journey from the North Cove to this place was, that it brought me out of the great mountain wilderness of Georgia and North Carolina into a well-cultivated and more level country. For two months past have I spent my days on horseback, and the majority of my nights in the rudest of cabins; and as I am now to continue my journey in a stagecoach, it is meet that I should indite a general letter, descriptive of the region through which I have passed. In coming from Dahlonega to this place, I have travelled in a zigzag course upwards of four hundred miles, but the intervening distance, in a direct line, would not measure more than two hundred. The entire country is mountainous, and for the most part remains in its original state of nature. To the botanist and the geologist, this section of the Union is unquestionably the most interesting eastward of the Mississippi, for we have here nearly every variety of forest trees known in the land, as well as plants and flowers in the greatest abundance, while the mountains, which are of a primitive formation, abound in every known variety of minerals. That the scenery of this region is highly interesting, I hope my readers have already been convinced. More beautiful streams can nowhere be found on the face
of the earth. But, when we come to speak of lake scenery, the South must yield the palm to the North. Not a single sheet of water deserving the name of lake have I yet seen in this Southern land, and yet every mountain seems to be well supplied with the largest and the coldest of springs. I know not but this fact has been explained by our scientific men, but to me it is indeed a striking peculiarity. The valleys, too, of this region, are remarkably narrow, and the majority of them might with more propriety be called immense ravines. The skies, however, which canopy this Alpine land, appeared to me to be particularly blue, and as to the clouds which gather around the mountains at the sunset hour, they are gorgeous beyond compare.
With regard to climate, I know of no section of country that can be compared with the highlands of Georgia and North Carolina. It is but seldom that a foot of snow covers the earth even in the severest winters; and, though the days of midsummer are very warm, they are seldom sultry, and the nights are invariably sufficiently cool to make one or two blankets comfortable. Fevers and other diseases peculiar to the sea-side of the Alleghanies are hardly known among their inhabitants, and heretofore the majority of people have died of old age. I would not intimate that they are afflicted with an epidemic at the present time, but I do say that there are many households in this region, which have been rendered very desolate by the Mexican war. When our kingly President commanded the American people to leave the plough in the furrow and invade a neighboring republic, the mountaineers of Georgia and the Carolinas poured down into the valley almost without bidding their mothers, and wives, and sisters a final adieu; and the bones of at least one half of these brave men 'ere
now mouldering away on the desert sands of the far South.
Generally speaking, the soil of this country is fertile, yielding the best of corn, potatoes, and rye, but only an average quality of wheat, on account of the late frosts. In some of the more extensive valleys, the apple and the peach arrive at perfection; and while the former are manufactured into cider, out of the latter the mountaineers make a very palatable brandy. The principal revenue of the people, however, is derived from the business of raising cattle, which is practised to a considerable extent. The mountain ranges afford an abundance of the sweetest grazing food, and all that the farmer has to do in the autumn is to hunt up his stock, which have now become excessively fat, and drive them to the Charleston or Baltimore market. The only drawback to this business consists in the fact that the cattle in certain sections of the country are subject to what is called the milk sickness. This disease is supposed to be caused by a poisonous dew which gathers on the grass, and is said not only to have destroyed a great many cattle in other years, but frequently caused the death of entire families who may have partaken of the unwholesome milk. It is a dreaded disease, and principally fatal in the autumn. From the foregoing remarks it will be seen that a mountain farmer may be an agriculturist, and yet have an abundance of time to follow any other employment that he has a passion for; and the result of this fact is, that he is generally a faithful disciple of the immortal Nimrod.
All the cabins that I have visited have been ornamented by at least one gun, and more than one-half of the inhabitants have usually been hounds. That the mountaineers are
poor, is a matter of course, and the majority of their cabins are cheerless places indeed to harbor the human frame for life; but the people are distinguished for their hospitality, and always place before the stranger the choicest of their store. Bacon, game, and milk are their staple articles of food, and honey is their principal luxury. In religion, generally speaking, they are Methodists and Baptists, and are distinguished for their sobriety. They have but few opportunities of hearing good preaching, but I have never entered more than three or four cabins where I did not see a copy of the Bible. The limited knowledge they possess has come to them directly from Heaven as it were, and, from the necessity of the case, their children are growing up in the most deplorable ignorance. Whenever cue of these poor families happened to learn from my conversation that I was a resident of New-York, the interest with which they gazed upon me and listened to my every word, was both agreeable and painful. It made me happy to communicate what little I happened to know, but pained me to think upon their isolated and uncultivated manner of life. Give me the wilderness for a day or month, but for life I must be amid the haunts of refinement and civilization. As to the slave population of the mountain districts, it is so limited that I can hardly express an opinion with regard to their condition. Not more than one white man in ten (perhaps I ought to say twenty) is sufficiently wealthy to support a slave, and those who do possess them are in the habit of treating them as intelligent beings and in the most kindly manner. As I have found it to be the case on the seaboard, the slaves residing among the mountains are the happiest and most independent portion of the population;
and I have had many a one pilot me over the mountains who would not have exchanged places even with his master. They have a comfortable house and no debts to pay: every thing they need in the way of clothing and wholesome food is ever at their command, and they have free access to the churches and the Sunday schools of the land. What more do the poor of any country possess that can add to their temporal happiness ?
Another, and of course the most limited portion of the population occupying this mountain country, is what might be called the aristocracy or gentry. Generally speaking, they are descended from the best of families, and moderately wealthy. They are fond of good living, and their chief business is to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They esteem solid enjoyment more than display, and are far more intelligent (so far as books and the world are concerned) than the same class of people at the North. The majority of Southern gentlemen, I believe, would be glad to see the institution of slavery abolished, if it could be brought about without reducing them to beggary. But they hate a political Abolitionist as they do the very—Father of Lies; and for this want of affection I do not see that they deserve to be blamed. The height of a Southern man's ambition is to be a gentleman in every particular—in word, thought, and deed; and to be a perfect gentleman, in my opinion, is to be a Christian. And with regard to the much-talked-of hospitality of the wealthier classes in the South, I can only say that my own experience ought to make me very eloquent in their praise. Not only does the genuine feeling exist here, but a Southern gentleman gives such expression to his feeling by his home-like treatment of
you, that to be truly hospitable you might imagine had been the principal study of his life.
But the music of the "mellow horn" is ringing in my ear, and in an hour from this time I shall have thrown myself into a stagecoach, and be on my way up the long and broad valley of Virginia.
