Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1879 — OLD-TIME REMINISCENCES. [ARTICLE]

OLD-TIME REMINISCENCES.

Hunting and Fishing Among the Mountain Regions of North Carolina. BY W. W. The extensive mountain district at the youth comprised in certain portions of three or four States, beginning with Eastern Kentucky and going in a sort of circle, irregular enough in shape, to be sure, but taking in East Tennessee, the Western portion of North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia, however woll known by the events of the late war, were, as far as the average traveler was known there, almost—certain portions of them —a real terra incognita before the war; and undisturbed by any marked event from the time they were peopled by emigrants, principally from the older settlements of North Carolina and Virginia; they contain a population as peculiar in many respects, and as well wortiiy of study, as any known to the nationality. So rough was the eastern portion of Kentucky, for instance, before military roads were made a necessity to some extent there, that the traveler on horseback might ride almost from tiie mouth of Big Sandy, on the Ohio river, to Cumberland gup, without seeiug a wheeled vehicle; the carrying of goods being done, us intimated in another pluce, on the backs of horses, and the “ hauling” for the little farms or “ clearings” done on “slides or “lizards,” a rough kind of sled made to go, not on the snow or ice particularly, but on the ground ; while the firo-wood, which fortunately was always abundant and handy, was procured by hitching horses or oxen to logs or limbs of trees, and “by main strength and awkwardness” snaking them to the wood pile in front of the cabin. East Tennesseo and the other sections named, with larger valleys, more open land, and great rivers like New river, the Holston, French, Broad, and others \vliich made wide tracks of arable laud, had, of course, great leading stage roads in ample supply; but even East Tennessee and Western Virginia had, right adjacent to these great through routes, the most primitive of populations—people of very much the same stamp as those I have been describing as residents of the mountain districts of Kentucky. The valley of Clinch river, and the valleys that supplied the affluents of the Holston, French, Broad, Tennessee and Cumberland had populations kindred in character in many respects; and only by hunting expeditions, jaunts to medicinal springs, etc., was the traveler likely to be led very far into these districts, and so enabled to become acquainted with the people who had made them their home.

I remember striking such a section as this on a jaunt as an invalid, for the time being, in the very heart of the hill region, perhaps eighty miles north of Cumberland gap. I state only the fact when I record that in the family we sojourned with, in a remote and deep valloy, the boots of the party were literally a curiosity for their rarity, the family knowing of nothing in that line but "moccasins.” The older people had left Virginia as emigrants when children, and had never been twenty miles from home; and an amusing feature in the case was the “stuck-up ” knowledge of an old contraband, who had somehow broken from his moorings about Richmond to drift in there, and who prided himself upon knowing more about the conveniences and luxuries of civilization than his master and the family. With a mild and healthful climate, and generally a very rich soil in those narrow valleys, few portions of the Union have presented equal advantages for getting an easy and comfortable living, where a person’s ambition and wants were limited to tlie bare comforts, without the luxuries of life; for with the most scant, or next to none at all, means of transportation, and no market, even if they could get their little produce out of the country, they ■were obliged to content themselves with the few resources for , enjoyment immediately around them. On one occasion, I remember, I was on a hunting trip in the mountains of North Carolina, not far from the French Broad river, when a laughable and spasmodic attempt at unusual enterprise was initiated, or sought to be, by a sharp mountaineer, who took a notion to go into an “ Irish potato ” speculation. On a flat-boat jaunt down the Tennessee, of which the French Broad is a branch, he had discovered a market for potatoes somewhere in North Alabama, I believe. So, on his return home, having a very rich and suitable piece of laud for tho growth of potatoes in a sort of valley or crater high up in the hills, he determined to appropriate that for his purpose.

Well, he went into the undertaking with a will, and the result was an enormous crop, which he proposed to dig and market. He had already built the flat-boat which was to transport them, and the next thing was to get them to the landing on the river. Going up there with some hands, he turned out some hundreds of bushels of noble tubers, stacked them about, covered with potato vines—for the nights were frosty, it being in the fall—and, this work all complete, he proceeded to get his ox wagon to the place 'to transport them down the side of the mountain. To his dismay he hadn’t reckoned up the engineering difficulties at all. Loading his huge wagon heavily, for it was not to go up but down hill, down it went, sure enough, with a vengeance. The first go-off, and with all hands at the wheels and holding back, and the best blows and yells he could rain upon the poor oxen from the front, there was no going slow. But he undertook to describe it himself. He was a rough old chap, and he told us, garnishing his story with some expletives which I shall not put in here: “Why, sir, I hitched a small tree to each hind wheel of the wagon as a drag, after taking out half the load, and I started ’em agin, sir! But I may swear, sir, they slid fifty yards at a single shoot, and toward a deep ravine, sir, ef they’d gone pver, ftli

landed in kingdom come! The end of it was, sir, that I had to give it up — raised the finest potatoes you ever saw on that cussed mountain, and then had to leave them thar, sir, to rot —yes, sir, to rot!” That the “Old Major”—as he was termed— did not overstate the case was true enough, for a friend told me that he himself, on a hunting expedition in the vicinity of this remarkable potato patch that same season, saw the crop rotting there, since it was impossible to get it down unless a man carried them in a basket or in his pockets, and that wouldn’t pay, especially when the enterprise included the climbing of the tremendous mountain as well as its descent. The occasion which took me to the vicinity of the potato speculator’s place was a deer and bear hunt, to be carried out on the very summit of the mountain range which traverses the western part of North and South Carolina, ending with Stone mountain, a remarkable spur in Georgia. In climbing to the top of the mountain ridge, upon this occasion, we went up “Boone’s Trail” —his usual pathway in and out of North Carolina—a very rocky,-irregular pass, which proved so* steep that it was all our horses could do to get up it at all; and at times in danger of falling over backward as they reared and plunged in the worst places; our only chance was to hold on to manes and saddle-pommels to keep from sliding off over the crupper. Our saddles were kept on for this mountain climbing by passing one of the two girths forward and around the horse’s breast, and, compelled to make slow work of it, we let the animals have it all their own way. And yet there was a fascination and a pleasure in this wild mountain climbing which enables any one who has tried it to account easily enough for the passion exhibited by Boone anddiis men for it. At every landing place or slight plateau, as ridge after ridge was reached, there was spread out before our delighted vision a new and glorious expanse of hill and valley, such as somehow for the time being made the works of civilization tame in comparison. Magnificent forests and far-off rolling rivers, like the French Broad and Holston, with range upon range of blue mountains fading into gray against the distant horizon, were among the surprises awaiting us; and, looking upon these as Boon looked upon them, and familiar, too, with the beautiful and rich valleys of Kentucky, it seemed no wonder that those brave and Avide-awake adventurers and lovers of the chase could ill brook a tamer life in the older settlements of Virginia and the Carolinas. We had been out two or three days with varying “luck,” in one case coming plump on a huge black bear, but without getting him, and seeing besides plenty of “bear signs” where they had turned over rotten logs to get the grubs which generally abounded under them, when one morning, while on the very top of the ridge, waiting for the hounds to drive the deer to the “stands” or gaps wliero several of us were posted to receive them, Ave discovered that the mountain was on fire and the flames coming up the sides of it before a fierce wind, at almost horse-race speed. We at once secured our horses— they had been hitched out on one side until the expected deer should have passed —and for a little while the chances of entire safety looked squally enough. The woods were very dry, the ground

several inches deep in leaves, and the roaring and crackling of the flames and falling limbs was at times appalling; but there was a ludicrous aspect in the case, after all. The fire had driven in the chief huntsman—a tall man mounted on a mule—and the hounds; and they made their appearance on the mountain top at a time when the excitement was at its height. The patron of the hunt— as he might well be termed—a friend who had gotten it up, and who was too corpulent and unwieldy to run, or even to risk much of a gallop over ground like that, was—as well he might be—thoroughly alarmed; and, standing by his horse quite beaten out as the dense smoke came in waves around the party, he declared he “should die if he couldn’t get a drink of water.” Driven by dire necessity of the case, and anxious to serve my friend in his extremity, this is how I accomplished it. As there was not a drinking cup or vessel of any kind up there, everything in the way cf lunch appurtenances having been left far off at another point, I at once borrowed the “hunting horn” of the tall contraband who led the hounds, and, remembering a moist place in a small ravine not far of£ down I went to it, and after digging with my hands in the moist ground for a few moments I was rewarded by seeing about a pint of muddy though cold water trickle into the place. Then stopping the small end of the horn with my finger, I succeeded in scooping it up and carrying tho water to my distressed friend on the mountain side, and he tossed it off without hesitation, declaring it was “tho best drink he’d ever had in his life!” This, for a gentleman who lived luxuriously at home, himself—for he was a planter of large means in one of the broad valleys below—was something to note; for, beyond a doubt, that hunting horn had done duty at that contraband’s lips any time, perhaps, for years, before it was selected to serve as a drinking horn for his master.

We got safely out from the flames at last, by selecting a bald spur of the mountain close by, known to one of the party, and staying there until the fire went roaring past us; but the hunt was at an end for that time, for the fire had driven all the game out of that section of the mountain district, and we were forced to postpone it to a further opportunity. While on the subject of deer hunting, I must tell the story of another “deerdrive ” which was not a failure. Let me say in advance, however, that in the whole region I am dealing with deer will always abound more or less, if some legislation can be had to protect them a portion of the year; and provided, also, they are not hunted too persistently and industriously with hounds. So long as, the sport could be confined to “ stifl hunting ” quietly moving through the hills with a rifle to take one’s chances the deer would have some opportunity to escape a wholesale slaughter. But a good pack of hounds can soon clear out any section, for they scour the most inaccessible places—inaccessible readily to the hunter by himself—so that driving the d eer to their regular pathways through gaps in the hills and crossing places along the rivers, they are there made victims to the clumsiest hunters boys oftentimes, armed with an old musket, as likely as anyway, loaded with a heavy charge of buck-shot which scatters just widely enough to allow hardly anything within fair range to escape. On the occasion in question, I was one of a party who had projected a “drive” at the river crossing high up the French Broad, and the day selected for the sport found us, after a very early start, quietly waiting at our posts, our horses tied a little ways off in the bushes at places selected with reference to their helping somewhat to serve in turning the game towards the points where we were waiting for them. The drive was to be from the opposite side, and it wasn’t so late in the season but that the mosquitoes were a annoyance as J gat there listening,

after an hour or so, to the “opening” of a fine pack of hounds who were winding among the hills; bnt at last I was so terribly plagued that I began entering, in my own mind, upon a regular discussion whether Buch sport would “pay,” when suddenly the noise of the hounds seemed to sweep around the point of a ridge on the other side of the river, and directly a fine buck made his appearance on the bank, and, plunging in, took to the water, there pretty deep, and made straight for the place where I was ensconsed behind an old log, waiting for just such a customer. Gallantly he breasted the stream. In his eagerness, or because his feet might touch a ledge occasionally, he would rise half out of the water; and, waiting until he was within a half dozen rods of the bank, I blazed away, knd over he tumbled in the water just as the honnds made their appearance, with loud barks and yells, on the opposite bank. Meantime my associates in the hunt had had three shots at two does, who crossed further doAvn the shore, saving one of them; bnt the grand success was the magnificent buck, which, “saddlebagsed ” across the shoulders of a male in front of a contraband along, enabled us, apart from the doe which the shooter of it carried on his own horse, to approach the plantation, whence the hunt set out, in triumph; since, of all things, no one likes to return from a hnnt, especially, to be taunted Avith want of success. Deer seem citable of real attachment to one. At one of my places of sojourn for a few weeks, I became quite interested in watching the ways and capers of a couple of pet deer, a doe and buck, quite grown and remarkably tame. Not being much occupied, while awaiting the results of some surveys, I spent a portion of the time in becoming better acquainted with these denizens of the woods. By always keeping a little loose corn in my pockets and feeding them a few grains occasionally, they soon became fast friends of mine, and, when I took a book and walked out from the house to the shade of the forest, they would go along, too ; sometimes surrounded by a pack of a half-dozen hounds whom they paid no attention to, unless to playfully threaten them as they capered on their way. Indeed, they became so docile to me that I could handle them as I pleased, and, if I sat doAvn to read, they would come and lie down by me, and stay there or browse about until I was ready to return. Well, I never kneAv their prowess, at least that of the male, until one day, a boy about 15 years of age, a stranger, happened to cross his pathway, and commenced plaguing him. At once he put on a most ferocious appearance, his hair all bristling and turning forwards, and his eyes rolling in rage and fierceness _ terrible to look at, despite his light limbs and generally light appear-, ance. I at once warned the boy to leave; but he only laughed at the warning, until the buck had gotten close to him; and then he turned to run, too late. With a tremendous spring the buck’s head caught the retreating lad, and must have hoisted and throAvn him ten feet aAvay ; and, just as he was preparing to stamp him with his sharp hoofs, I caught him and pulled him aside, until the boy made his escape. For a moment the enraged deer did not seem to know whether to assail me or not; but finally his attachment for me prevailed, and he gradually got over his rage.

And next, of fishing: The French Broad and Holston both present fine chances for one well up to the sport, and who will take the trouble to go a< it properly. A species of large bass is there to be found in the “riffles,”places where the water rushes swiftly through and past ledges of rock, and these fish bite ravenously"; but, to take them to advantage, a canoe or skiff should be anchored far above them, in the middle of the stream, for the clear, and in many cases shallow, water, enables them to take the alarm from a long distance, so that a good “ fishing reel” and plenty of line to drop down 100 yards or so seems almost indispensable to success. As they run savagely when hooked, they require not a little care, particularly where the bottom is rocky and uneven, to secure them; but, after all, this greatly enhances the excitement of the sport, in fact, makes it really worth having, as every sportsman knows.

As for other modes of fishing, I remember on one occasion being intrapped into a night expedition for spearing or “ gigging ” fish; the mode adopted being to carry torches and wade! Not quite as hardy as my rural associates, I, however, “took to the water kindly enough,” as one ©f them expressed it, and, for a couple of hours or so early in the night, I had no special reason to complain. The depth was pretty uniform—a couple of feet or so, with a nice, gravelly bottom—in the part of the river we had selected lor the sport, and I was getting along pretty well until the exercise and the increasing cold of the night had the effect of making me excessively hungry, and soon I began to shiver. ‘ I did not like to betray my condition to my tougher companions, as they were in no hurry to give up tho sport and go home, so I determined “not to show the white feather,” come what might. But an unlucky step on a slippery, round bowlder at length suddenly sent my heels up, and I fell so flat in the water, went so completely under, that my hat floated on the surface over .my head, and that completely finished my fishing. Amidst the uproarious laughter of the “chawbacons,” as I mentally termed them—for I was mad—l proceeded to the shore, and, setting fire with my torch to an immense pile of driftwood on the bank, I stood there and steamed in my wet clothing to my heart’s content. My hunger, however, got ravenous. In the excitement of anticipating the sport, I had left the farmhouse with hardly a taste of supper; and now I turned to, if possible, to supply deficiencies. While my companions kept on fishing, I proceeded to dress a couple of the finest fish in my basket—for we had had good luck, sure enough; and then, putting one of them on the end of a sharpened pole, I did my best to roast it at the great log-fire. It was at last done “to a turn;” but finally, hungry as I was, I couldn’t swallow a bit of it,for it had no salt; and I didn’t realize till then how civilization and its habits spoils one for really “roughing it.” Fortunately, about this time, the toughest of the fishermen gave in to a cold fog which settled down upon the river, and a three-miles’ walk along mountain paths’! thought, hungry and cold as I w‘as, would fairly finish me. But it didn’t. A fierce attack on some cold “corn dodgers,” bacon and cold coffee, before a great log fire, completely squared accounts, but that—l may say —was the last time that I could be induced to wade after fish.