| The Heart of the Alleghenies | |||
| Chapter 5 -After the Antlers | |||
| AFTER THE ANTLERS The Heart of the Smokies -- Clingman's Dome -- Prospect from the Summit -- Mounted Sportsmen -- A Mountain Bug-Bear -- Charleston -- The Dungeon -- A Village Store-keeper -- Beautiful River Bends -- At the Roses' -- A Typical Mountain Cabin -- Quil's Wolf story -- A Quick Toilet -- The Footprints of Autumn -- Knowledge From Experience -- The Ridge Stand -- Buck Ague -- On Long Rock A Superb Shot -- The Buck Vanishes -- Acquitted Through Superstition -- The Hunter's Hearthstone |
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| page 137 | [Illustration] [BUCK DEER HEAD]
"The Smokey Chain, whose summit bears the long boundary line of North Carolina and Tennessee...is known as the Great Smoky Mountains." Great Smoky Mountains ; Big Pigeon |
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| page 138 | "A noticeable feature of these mountains is their smooth, balk summits; not a sterile baldness..but only bald as far as concerns the growth of trees and underwood." Clingman's dome ; Mt Washington ; French Broad ; Holston ; Blue Ridge ; Balsam ; Cowee ; Nantihala ; Cherokee Nation ; Ocona Lufta |  |
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| page 139 | "The soil is a black loam. A heavy sward, green, even in winter, covers these meadows." Great Smoky Mountains ; Chimneys ; Blue Ridge ; Balsam ; Black Mts ; Scottish hills |  |
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| page 140 | "The valleys are cleared and filled with the pleasant homes of hardy mountaineers." Clingman's Dome ; Haywood ; Cataluche |  |
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| page 141 | "Had we paid any attention to the opinion that, in the wilderness, we would have be taken for revenue officers, and, as such, shot on sight by blockaders..." Swain county ; Haywood county ; Western North Carolina railroad |  |
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| page 142 | "Honesty is a strong trait of the mountain people." Charleston (Swain County) ; Rich mountain ; Tuckasege [Tuckasegee] river |  |
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| page 143 | "As Swain county is particularly fortunate in having few crimes...the dungeon is seldom put to use." Charleston, NC |  |
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| page 144 | "The levelest and oftentimes the only accessible way for a road is close along the streams." Little Tennessee ; French Broad ; Charleston NC |  |
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| page 145 | [Illustration] ON THE LITTLE TENNESSEE
"The mountains so encroach on the river...houses are consequently far apart, in some places five miles of road being devoid of a clearing." Eagle creek ; Ecanetle gap ; Tuckasege ; Albert Welsh |
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| page 146 | "In the center stood a double log house, with a mud-daubed stone chimney at each low gable, above which flying sparks made visible a column of smoke." |  |
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| page 147 | "No framed pictures adorned the smoky logs, but plastered...an assortment of startling illustrations cut from Harper's Weeklies, Police Gazettes, and almanacs, of dates before the war." Harper's Weekly ; Police Gazette |  |
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| page 148 | "Thus recognizing no authority, they live in a pure state of natural liberty." Rose Brothers |  |
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| page 149 | "Getting scarce ; every man on the Smokies owns dogs, and they're [deer] being hounded to death." |  |
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| page 150 | "There I was straddled on that varmint's back, and my fingers in the hair of his neck." |  |
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| page 151 | "Conversation lagged, and hanging our coats for screens over the backs of chairs, we jumped upon and sank from sight into the feather beds." |  |
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| page 152 | "'I reckon we'll have a adram [drink] before breakfast,' said he, with a jolly twinkle in his eye, and smack of his lips, as he poured out a glass of liquor as clear as crystal, and handed it around." |  |
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| page 153 | "The skies are intensely blue, seldom streaked with clouds, and the rain-fall is the least of the year." |  |
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| page 154 | "The cattle, turned out in the spring to pasture on the bald mountains, are in splendid condition, and no more tender and juicy steaks ever graced a table than those cut from the hind quarters of one of those steers." Bald mountains |  |
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| page 155 | "Some of the old hunters of the Smokies have reduced dog training to a fine art." |  |
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| page 156 | "If you shoot a deer in the deep water before the middle of October, he's liable to sink, and you lose him." Little Tennessee ; Ben Lester |  |
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| page 157 | "One buck, killed here several winters since, had been living on ivy, and every dog that fed on his entrails was taken with the blind staggers and nearly died." poisonous ivy |  |
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| page 158 | "The stone he showed was smooth and red...the idea of its being a life preserver for the deer which carries it, savors of superstition." Mad Stones |  |
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| page 159 | "My excitement reached its climax just then, for suddenly there was a discord in the music, and every hound was yelping like mad." |  |
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| page 160 | "The buck snuffed the air, made a leap, and was away as Kenswick, in utter despair, pulled the trigger, and sent a ball from his Remington whistling through the oak leaves." Little Tennessee ; Tuckasege, Cullasaja ; Nantihala ; Ocona Lufta ; Soco, Scott's, Caney Fork, Stecoah, Forney and Hazel creeks ; Valley River mountains ; the Narrows |  |
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| page 161 | "A deer in the water can be easily managed, but...there is considerable danger in venturing in after one." Long Rock ; Little Tennessee ; Brit Mayner |  |
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| page 162 | "There was the nose, the eyes, the ears, and, above all, a pair of branching antlers, making up the blue head of what was undoubtedly a magnificent buck." |  |
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| page 163 | "I had no doubt the dear was dead, but I was all at once startled by the danger I was in of losing him." |  |
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| page 164 | "I did not attempt to scatter his superstition by telling that in reality I had hit the buck, and that it was wholly due to my poor marksmanship that he escaped." |  |
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| page 165 | "The most pleasant time of the hunt is the evening of the hunt, when darkness has fallen." Little Tennessee ; Charleston NC |  |
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