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WRITERS
& MOUNTAINS |
"A STRANGE LAND AND |
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| Will Wallace Harney's one simple paragraph of his observations of the "native" Appalachians while he and his companion were traveling in southeastern Kentucky in 1869, was and is, one of the most defining and most quoted of the deprecating remarks made about the region known as the Southern Appalachians. Harney, born in 1832 in Indiana of Kentucky parents, returned to Louisville, Kentucky with his family when a young boy. There he was educated and it was there that he later taught school and eventually practiced law. He had a love of writing and for a time he was the editor of the Louisville Democrat and occasionally published poetry in some of the leading journals of the day. | |
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Harney 1873 |
WILL WALLACE HARNEY A STRANGE LAND AND A PECULIAR PEOPLE. "A nodule of amygdaloid, a coarse pebble enveloped in a whitish semi-crystalline paste, lies on the table before me. I know that a blow of the hammer will reveal the beauties of its crystal interior, but I do not crush it. It is more to me as it is—more than a letter plucked from the stone pages of time. Coarse and plain, it is an index to a chapter of life. In the occupations of a busy existence we forget how much we owe to the sweet emotional nature which, by mere chance association, retains the dearer part of the past fixed in memory, just as the graceful volutes of a fossil shell are preserved in the coarse matrix of a stony paste. In this way the nodule connects itself with my emotional life, and recalls the incidents of this sketch. We were journeying over the mountains in the autumn of 1869. Our camp was pitched in a valley of the ascending ridges of the Cumberland range, on the south-east border of Kentucky. At this point the interior valley forms the letter J, the road following the bend, and ascending at the foot of the perpendicular. It is nearly an hour since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow river fretting over shoals. The road we have followed hangs like a rope-ladder from the top of the hills, sagging down in the irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies apart in strands of sand. The twilight leans upon the opposite ridge, painting its undulations in inconceivably delicate shades of subdued color. Although the night is coming on, the clear-obscure of that dusk, like a limpid pool, reveals all beneath. A road ascending the southern hill cuts through a loamy crust a yellow line, which creeps upward, winding in and out, till nothing is seen of it but a break in the trees set clear against the sky. No art of engineer wrought these graceful bends: it is a wild mountain-pass, followed by the unwieldy buffalo in search of pasturage. Beyond, the mountain rises again precipitously, a ragged tree clinging here and there to the craggy shelves. Around and through the foliage, like a ribbon, the road winds to the top. A blue vapor covers it and the hills melting softly in the distance. At the base of the hills a little river winds and bends to the west through a low fertile bottom, the stem of the J, which is perhaps a mile in width. It turns again, its course marked by a growth of low water-oaks and beeches, following the irregular fold in the hills which has been described." "......... The natives of this region are characterized by marked peculiarities of the anatomical frame. The elongation of the bones, the contour of the facial angle, the relative proportion or disproportion of the extremities, the loose muscular attachment of the ligatures, and the harsh features were exemplified in the notable instance of the late President Lincoln. A like individuality appears in their idiom. It lacks the Doric breadth of the Virginian of the other slope, and is equally removed from the soft vowels and liquid intonation of the southern plain. It has verbal and phraseological peculiarities of its own. Bantering a Tennessee wife on her choice, she replied with a toss and a sparkle, "I-uns couldn't get shet of un less'n I-uns married un." "Have you'uns seed any stray shoats?" asked a passer: "I-uns's uses about here." "Critter" means an animal—"cretur," a fellow-creature. "Long sweet-'nin'" and "short sweet'nin'" are respectively syrup and sugar. The use of the indefinite substantive pronoun un (the French on), modified by the personals, used demonstratively, and of "done" and "gwine" as auxiliaries, is peculiar to the mountains, as well on the Wabash and Alleghany, I am told, as in Tennessee. The practice of dipping—by which is meant not baptism, but chewing snuff—prevails to a like extent. In farming they believe in the influence of the moon on all vegetation, and in pork-butchering and curing the same luminary is consulted. Leguminous plants must be set out in the light of the moon—tuberous, including potatoes, in the dark of that satellite. It is supposed to govern the weather by its dip, not indicate it by its appearance. The cup or crescent atilt is a wet moon—i.e., the month will be rainy. A change of the moon forebodes a change of the weather, and no meteorological statistics can shake their confidence in the superstition. They, of course, believe in the water-wizard and his forked wand; and their faith is extended to the discovery of mineral veins. While writing this I see the statement in a public journal that Richard Flannery of Cumberland county (Kentucky) uses an oval ball, of some material known only to himself, which he suspends between the forks of a short switch. As he walks, holding this extended, the indicator announces the metal by arbitrary vibrations. As his investigations are said to be attended with success, possibly the oval ball is highly magnetized, or contains a lode-stone whose delicate suspension is affected by the current magnetism, metallic veins being usually a magnetic centre. Any mass of soft iron in the position of the dipping-needle is sensibly magnetic, and a solution of continuity is thus indicated by the vibrations of the delicately poised instrument. Flaws in iron are detected with absolute certainty by this method. More probably, however, the whole procedure is pure, unadulterated humbug. In all such cases the failures are unrecorded, while the successes are noted, wondered at and published. By shooting arrows all day, even a blind man may hit the mark sometimes. During this journey it was a habit with me to relate to my invalid companion any fact or incident of the day's travel. She came to expect this, and would add incidents and observations of her own. In this way I was led to compile the following little narrative of feminine constancy and courage during the late war." Harney, Will Wallace, "A Strange Land and a Peculiar People," Lippincott's Magazine, 12: 429-38 (October 1873), p. 430 - 432 See also: Will Wallace Harney, The Spirit of the South. Boston, Massachusetts: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1909.
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Port Crayon 1874 |
DAVID HUNTER STROTHER THE MOUNTAINS Strother hailed from the eastern panhandle of West Virginia and was one of the earliest Southern Appalachian writers who published in national magazines before the Civil War. He is perhaps best known, however, for his illustrations that often accompanied his local color and travel writing. He wrote under the pen name of "Porte Crayon," and generated a large reading audience. In 1853 he traveled to the mountains of western North Carolina where he sketched images of the people and their way of life. One book, published after the Civil War, The Mountains, captures the essence of mountain life in drawings and in text. While the graphic word picture drawn by Will Wallace Harney was based on the southeast region of Kentucky, the following writer even more graphically contributed to the stereotypes of mountain life and particularly of the western North Carolina mountains. Strother's observations taken in his travels in the mountains of West Virginia are clearly instrumental in developing the body of literature that rapidly shaped the perceptions of readers across the country about the mountain regions of the Appalachians. This was a strange and somewhat "peculiar" place, these mountains, and Strother's sketches and his tales confirmed these "realities."
" 'Montani semper liberi' is ‘the motto of a new
State, in accordance with the popular and poetic belief that Liberty finds
her favorite abode in mountainous countries, although history would seem
to teach us that civil liberty has been generally better understood and
maintained by the educated and enlightened populations of great commercial
cities. Nevertheless, as man always absorbs and reflects (chameleon-like)
somewhat of the local color of his surroundings, we may readily perceive
in the sights, sounds, and very smells of this rugged wilderness
suggestions of a rude, instinctive independence, an individuality fiercely
impatient of external “A ride for the red deer’s speed, Without rivalry, he knows little either of envy or
ambition; with nothing, he is rich in the independence arising from few
and simple wants. Ignorant of Latin grammar, in his life he realizes the
wisdom of Seneca: [See also: Eby, C.D., ed. The Old South Illustrated by Porte Crayon
; Eby, C.D. Porte Crayon: The Life of David Hunter Strother,
Writer of the Old South.] |
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| King 1874 |
EDWARD KING THE GREAT SOUTH: AMONG THE MOUNTAINS King, like Porte Crayon, traveled throughout western North Carolina as a keen observer of life in the mountains, but unlike Porte Crayon, he seems to have left most of bias at home and clearly opens himself to the people, the geography and the excitement of the travel. One must read very closely to discern any deprecating remarks toward the people of the region and often the remark is in-keeping with his views on humankind in general. His rendition of the vernacular language of the region is sparingly introduced and generally used to set the tone of the conversation, not to call attention to difference, of to make fun of the dialect. He describes a countryside of many social, economic and racial strata, and does so in a balanced manner that though objective, is not detached. "We were about to enter upon that vast elevated region which forms
the southern division of the Appalachian mountain system, and
constitutes the culminating point in the Atlantic barrier of the
American continent. We stood at the gate of the lands through which runs
the chain of the Iron, Smoky, and Unaka mountains, separating North
Carolina from Eastern Tennessee. Beyond the blue line of hills faintly
discerned in the rainy twilight from the windows of our little room lay
the grand table-land, two thousand feet above the heated air of cities
and the contagion of civilization; and there a score of mountain peaks
reached up six thousand feet into the crystal atmosphere ; torrents ran
impetuously down their steep sides into noble valleys; there was the
solitude of the cañon, the charm of
the dizzy climb along the precipice brink, the shade of the forests
where "The chain of the Smoky Mountain which we had traversed extends for about sixty-five miles, from the deep gorge through which the French Broad River flows at “Paint Rock” to the outlet of the Little Tennessee; and Professor Guyot, who is authority upon theAppalachian system, calls it the master chain of the whole Alleghany region. The dominant peaks in this line of mountains north of Road Gap are Mount Guyot, 6636 feet high; Mounts Alexander, Henry, South, and Laurel Peaks, the True Brother, Thunder, Thermometer, Raven’s, and Tricolor Knobs, and the Pillar Head of the straight fork of the Oconaluftee river. South of Road Gap rise the peaks known as “Clingman’s Dome,” 666o feet high; Mounts Buckley, Love, Collins, and a dozen others, more than five thousand feet high. Each of these rises to six thousand feet elevation above mean-tide water, and many of them overtop Mount Washington, the monarch of the East, by several hundred feet. Seen from a distance, these mountains seem always bathed in a mellow haze, like that distinguishing the atmosphere of Indian summer. The gap through which we passed was at an elevation of at least five thousand feet; beneath us were vast canons, from which came up the roar of the creeks. We looked down upon the tops of mighty forests, and now and then, descending, caught a glimpse of the symmetrical Catalouche Mountain, fading away into distant blue. There are no gaps in the Smoky range which fall below the level of five thousand feet, until Forney Ridge is passed; and there is a surprising number of peaks and domes rising higher than six thousand feet. Once having traversed the barriers created by this vast upheaval of ancient rocks, one enters the mountainous region comprised between the Blue Ridge and the chain of the Iron, Smoky, and Unaka peaks. This region properly begins at the bifurcation of the two chains in Virginia, and extends across North Carolina and into Georgia for a hundred and eight miles. The chain of the Blue Ridge to the eastward is fragmentary, and the gaps are only from two to three thousand feet high. All the interior region between the Blue Ridge and the Smoky is filled with spurs and chains, of which, perhaps, the most noticeable is the great Balsam, whose highest point, called the Richland Balsam, or Caney Creek Balsam Divide reaches the height of 6425 feet. Into this cluster of highlands, extending to the extreme western boundary of North Carolina, we now daily made our way. This day’s journey was but a succession of grand panoramic views of gorge and height. Descending, we rode for several miles along a path cut out of the mountain’s steep side ; and hundreds of feet below us saw the tops of tall pines and spruces. Not a human habitation was to be seen; there was no sign of life save when a ruffled grouse or a rabbit sprang across the track. Now we came into a valley, through which a wide creek flowed rapidly, finding its outlet between two hills towering thousands of feet above us, andthere, at a rude cabin, stopped to feed our weary horses, and to partake of the milk, the honey, and the corn-bread set before us; to lie on the turf beside the cool stream, and to drink in at every pore the delicious inspiration of the pure mountain air; then we climbed along the side of shaggy “Catalouche” until, late in the afternoon, we came to 'Bennett’s.'
View of the Catalouche valley from Bennett's. Imagine a little frame house set on a shelf on the road, so that its inmates can look for miles down a deep straight valley, through which flows a river between banks fringed with dense foliage, and by rocks over which pines lean and straggle in wildest confusion. At the far end of this river valley looms up a mountain peak, so high, so beautiful, that one’s soul is lifted at very sight of it. As our little company drew rein at the edge of the steep bank leading to the caPion, there was a universal cry of delight. Bennett’s folks called to us at that moment, “Won’t you ‘light,’ strangers, ‘n come in ?“ And we sat long in the little porch, gazing at Oconoluftee’s height, and the Balsam Mountains, dimly shadowed beyond the point where the valley was lost in the breast of the hills. The grandeur of the sentinel mountain, standing alone at the end of the chasm; the reflections of high rocks and mighty tree-trunks in the far away stream; the dizzy precipices which overhung the rarely frequented valley, lent a charm which carried its terror with it." p. 522
"On a bright Sunday we descended towards the course of
the Tuckaseege, and a violent storm delayed us at a lowly cabin, near
the path by which now and then a visitor penetrates to Tuckaseege
cataract. According to the custom of the country, we hastily carried our
saddles into the porch and sat down on them to talk with the residents.
The tall, lean, sickly farmer, clad in a homespun pair of trowsers and a
flax shirt, with the omnipresent gray slouched hat, minus rim, drawn
down over his forehead, courteously greeted us, and volunteered to
direct us to the falls, though he 'was powerful afeard of snakes.'
Buttermilk and biscuit were served; we conversed |
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