| The Heart of the Alleghenies | |||
| Chapter 4 -With Rod and Line | |||
| WITH ROD AND LINE The Tow-head Angler -- The Brook Trout -- Points -- The Paragon Month for Fishing -- Artificial Ponds -- Trip to the Toe -- Anti-Liquor --Rattlesnakes -- Mitchell's Peak -- A ghost Story -- In Weird Out-lines --Burnsville -- Pigeon River -- Cataluche [Catalooche] -- Mount Starling and its Black Brothers -- Whipping the Stream -- Striking a Bargain --An Urchin's Ideas -- Swain County Trout Streams -- In Jackson and Macon -- A Grand Cataract -- Trout, Buck and Panther -- In the Northwest Counties. |
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| page 107 | "Show me a swift and amber colored stream, babbling down the mountain slope under dense, luxurious forests, and, between laureled [sic] banks, issuing with rapids and cascades into a primitive valley, and I will insure that in it swims, in countless numbers, the prized fish of the angler." Sir Henry Watton |  |
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| page 108 | "The best trout-fishing, like the best hunting, is to be found in the wildest sections. The advance of civilization lessens the sport as rapidly as it thins the herds of deer along the wooded margins of the streams." Isaak Walton |  |
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| page 109 | "The mountaineer's plan of frying it with its head on in butter and corn-meal is best for the palate. The color of the trout when cooked is generally salmon-yellow, but frequently it is white as the flesh of a bass." Brook Trout |  |
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| page 110 | "The best fishing I ever saw done was by a mountaineer, one day in early June, who used a green-winged, yellow-bodied, artificial fly with a stick-bait worm strung on the hook. As we followed down the current, at every cast of his line he pulled a speckled trout from the water." |  |
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| page 111 | "The deciduous forests of the valleys are again beautiful with their fresh foliage, destroying the contrast of the winter between their dun outlines and the green fronts of the higher pine groves, or the bodies of the giant hemlocks scattered in their midst." |  |
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| page 112 | "As has been described in the geographical sketch, in this volume, Western North Carolina is a mountainous expanse, measuring about 200 miles in length by an average breadth of mountain plateau of 30 miles, yet in all this area there is not one lake." Budding kalmia ; crimson-tipped daisy ; bob-white ; whip-por-whil [whippoorwill] ; |  |
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| page 113 | "A fortune could be made in fish culture in the Carolina mountains. The valley of Jamestown, six miles east of Cashier's Valley, is admirably suited for an enterprise of this kind." Blowing Rock ; Colonel Hampton ; Toxaway ; Little Tennessee |  |
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| page 114 | "Let him shout with all the strength of his lungs, no one will hear him or the deep, sepulchral echo that comes up from the black-wooded defiles." Blue Ridge; Black Mountains ; North Fork ; Toe River ; Nolechucky |  |
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| page 115 | "Natural death, the delusive hook, or larger fish that have been ousted from their own domains, are all the causes that can take the trout from his hereditary haunts." Black Mountain ; Swannanoa |  |
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| page 116 | "The mountaineers say that in one of the summer months the snakes undertake a pilgrimage, crossing the valleys from one peak to another." |  |
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| page 117 | "Close before the vision, appalling in its funereal coloring and immensity of height, rises the front of the Black mountain, the king of the Appalachians, arrayed in those forests which scorn to spring elsewhere but on the loftiest of ranges." Mt Mitchell ; Toe River ; Black Mountain ; Appalachians ; Swannanoa ; William Patton |  |
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| page 118 | "No two mornings will present the same panoply of cloud over the eastern mountainous horizon, the coloring will vary, the mists will cling in differing silver folds in the hollows of the hills, but changeless in its outlines will lie the soft purple mountain ocean." Mt Mitchell ; Yancy county ; Bowlen's Pyramid ; Smokies ; Toe River |  |
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| page 119 | [Illustration] A GLIMPSE OF THE TOE
"You can guess [the distance] as well as the guide, and most likely there will be no difference between his and your figures ; for his will be stretched by exaggeration, and yours by the tediousness of the descent." Toe River ; Walter Scott |
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| page 120 | "One ghost has no known grave; the other's lies beside the stream in an umbrageous dale high up in the mountains." Daniel Scott ; Nolechucky [Nolichucky] ; Toe River |  |
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| page 121 | "The old man showed no liking for outside associations, and scarcely ever appeared at the cabins of the settlers far below him." Daniel Smith |  |
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| page 122 | ""At night, when the moon bathes in golden light the dark forests, the straggler professes often to have seen him...the stooped figure of the old angler and his blithe, bare-foot companion." Daniel Smith ; Cane River ; Black Mountains ; Toe River ; Mt Mitchell ; Burnsville ; Pigeon river ; Waynesville |  |
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| page 123 | "The valley views are extremely picturesque ; for you are amid some of the loftiest mountains of the system." Cold Mountain ; Pisgah mountain ; Balsams ; Blue Ridge ; Saluda ; Swannanoa ; Craggy mountain ; Iron mountain ; Newfound mountain ; Asheville ; Pigeon river |  |
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| page 124 | "Besides the trout-fishing, there is enough in this region to allure into it not only the angler, and hunter, but the painter and poet." Jonathan's creek ; Pigeon river ; Cataluche ; Cove Creek mountain ; Mount Starling |  |
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| page 125 | "Without moving from a line of smooth, deep-flowing pools, we secured a mess of forty trout before it became too dark to cast our lines." Cataluche |  |
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| page 126 | "You must be as quick in your movements as the fish in his, or you will lose him." |  |
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| page 127 | "It is an outrage that nets are used in some of the trout streams. Hundreds of fish are frequently killed in a few hours by this un-sportsman-like practice." |  |
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| page 128 | [Illustration] ON THE CATALUCHE
"The valley was resonant with the roar of the river." Cataluche [Catalooche] river ... Whip-poor-wills whistled their shrillest that June night, and the air was ablaze with millions of fireflies. A grand scene was revealed when the round, yellow moon came creeping up from behind the ragged ridge that walls the eastern bank of Cataluche [Catalooche]. The pines along the summit of the ridge, stood out like black skeletons. A light, almost as bright as day, flooded the shut-in valley, casting dark shadows on the stony ground under the giant forest trees, silvering their tall tops, and whitening the bare, mast-like pines, standing girdled in the fields of sprouting corn. The valley was resonant with the roar of the river. A refreshing evening breeze swept the porch of the old farm-house, carrying with it a sleepy influence which knocked the props out from under the drowsy eye-lids of our party, and caused one after another to steal away to bed." |
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| page 129 | "The Rhine wine colored waters lay dark
in this picturesque basin; and from them were lifted trout after trout,
beguiled by the treacherous fly."
Cataluche ; Great Smokies ; Ocona Lufta ; Tuckasege river |
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| page 130 | "The mail man, mounted on a cadaverous
horse, with leather mailbags upon his saddle, is apt to meet the
tourist...he travels on time and is loath to stop and talk."
Forney Creek ; Nantihala ; Tuckasege ; Scotts creek ; Dark Ridge creek |
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| page 131 | "It is said that on certain evenings, when that dead quiet, prophetic of a storm, dwells in the valley, the dull roar of the falls can be heard eight miles down the river." Webster ; Cullowhee |  |
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| page 132 | "The frowning cliffs, primeval pines, gigantic boulders, and the vista of blue sky sighted through the canon, form a picture of striking sublimity." Cullasaja ; Silas McDowell ; Highlands ; Franklin |  |
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| page 133 | "Thinking it was best to wait for the moon to rise, they placed the deer on a large, flat rock in mid stream, and then laid down beside it to sleep until that time." Cullasaja |  |
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| page 134 | "In the morning and evenings, the woods are filled with melodious birds. Logging camps are numerous...the solitudes resounding with the crash of falling timbers." Toxaway ; Isakk Walton ; Chatooga ; French Broad ; Elk river ; Mitchell county ; Watauga county ; Ashe county ; North Fork ; New river |  |
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| page 135 | [Illustration] OCHLAWAHA VALLEY, FROM DUN CRAGIN |  |
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| page 136 | [Blank page] | ||