Our Southern Highlanders. Horace Kephart
is extraordinarily numerous and persistent—a daily curse, even on top of Smoky. I imagine this is due to the wet climate, as in Ireland. Minute gnats (the “punkies” or “no-see-ums” of the North) are also offensively present in trout-fishing time. And every cabin is alive with fleas. A hundred nights I have anointed myself with citronella from head to foot, and outsmelt a cheap barber-shop, to escape their plague. In a tent, and without dogs, one can be immune.
In most years there are very few chiggers, except on pine ridges. They are worse along rivers than in the mountains. The ticks of this country are not numerous, and seldom fasten on man.
The climate of the Carolina mountains is pleasantly cool in summer. Even at low altitudes (1,600 to 2,000 feet) the nights generally are refreshing. It may be hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. The air is drier (less relative humidity) than in the lowlands, notwithstanding that there is greater rainfall here than elsewhere in the United States outside of Florida and the Puget Sound country. The annual rainfall varies a great deal according to locality, being least at Asheville (42 inches) and greatest on the southeastern slope of the Blue Ridge, where as much as 105 inches has been recorded in a year. The average rainfall of the whole region is 73 inches a year.[2]
In general the mornings are apt to be lowery, with fogs hanging low until, say, 9 o’clock, so that one cannot predict weather for the day. Heavy dews remain on the bushes until about the same hour.
The winters are short. What Northerners would call cold weather is not expected until Christmas, and generally it is gone by the end of February. Snow sometimes falls on the higher mountains by the first of October, and the last snow may linger there until April (exceptionally it falls in May). Tornadoes are unknown here, but sometimes a hurricane will sweep the upper ranges. On April 19, 1900, a blizzard from the northwest struck the Smokies. In twenty minutes everything was frozen. At Siler’s Meadow seventeen cattle climbed upon each other for warmth and froze to death in a solid hecatomb. A herdsman who was out at the time, and narrowly escaped a similar fate, assured me that “that was the beatenest snowstorm ever I seen.” In the valleys there may be a few days in January and February when the mercury drops to zero or a few degrees lower. On the high peaks, of course, the winter cold often is intense, and on the sunless north side of Clingman there are overhangs or crevices where a little ice may be found the year around.
The old copper mine
Undoubtedly there is vast mineral wealth hidden in the Carolina mountains. A greater variety of minerals has been found here than in any other State save Colorado. But, for the present, it is a hard country to prospect in, owing to the thick covering of the forest floor. Not only is the underbrush very dense, but beneath it there generally is a thick stratum of clay overlaying the rocks, even on steep slopes. Gold has been found in numberless places, but finely disseminated. I do not know a locality in the mountains proper where a working vein has been discovered. At my cabin I did just enough panning to get a notion that if I could stand working in icy water ten hours a day I might average a dollar in yellow dust by it. The adjacent copper mine carries considerable gold. Silver and lead are not common, so far as known, but there are many good copper and iron properties. Gems are mined profitably in several of the western counties. The corundum, mica, talc, and monazite are, I believe, unexcelled in the United States. Building stone is abundant, and there is fine marble in various places. Kaolin is shipped out in considerable quantities. The rocks chiefly are gneisses, granites, metamorphosed marbles, quartzites, and slates, all of them far too old to bear fossils or coal.
CHAPTER IV
A BEAR HUNT IN THE SMOKIES
“Git up, pup! you’ve scrouged right in hyur in front of the fire. You Dred! what makes you so blamed contentious?”
Little John shoved both dogs into a corner, and strove to scrape some coals from under a beech forestick that glowed almost hot enough to melt brass.
“This is the wust coggled-up fire I ever seed, to fry by. Bill, hand me some Old Ned from that suggin o’ mine.”
A bearded hunchback reached his long arm to a sack that hung under our rifles, drew out a chuck of salt pork, and began slicing it with his jackknife. On inquiry I learned that “Old Ned” is merely slang for fat pork, but that “suggin” or “sujjit” (the u pronounced like oo in look) is true mountain dialect for a pouch, valise, or carryall, its etymology being something to puzzle over.
Four dogs growled at each other under a long bunk of poles and hay that spanned one side of our cabin. The fire glared out upon the middle of an unfloored and windowless room. Deep shadows clung to the walls and benches, charitably concealing much dirt and disorder left by previous occupants, much litter of our own contributing.
At last we were on a saddle of the divide, a mile above sea-level, in a hut built years ago for temporary lodgment of cattle-men herding on the grassy “balds” of the Smokies. A sagging clapboard roof covered its two rooms and the open space between them that we called our “entry.” The State line between North Carolina and Tennessee ran through this uninclosed hallway. The Carolina room had a puncheon floor and a clapboard table, also better bunks than its mate; but there had risen a stiff southerly gale that made the chimney smoke so abominably that we were forced to take quarters in the neighbor State.
Granville lifted the lid from a big Dutch oven and reported “Bread’s done.”
There was a flash in the frying-pan, a curse and a puff from Little John. The coffee-pot boiled over. We gathered about the hewn benches that served for tables, and sat à la Turc upon the ground. For some time there was no sound but the gale without and the munching of ravenous men.
“If this wind ’ll only cease afore mornin’, we’ll git us a bear to-morrow.”
A powerful gust struck the cabin, by way of answer; a great roaring surged up from the gulf of Defeat, from Desolation, and from the other forks of Bone Valley—clamor of ten thousand trees struggling with the blast.
“Hit’s gittin’ wusser.”
“Any danger of this roost being blown off the mountain?” I inquired.
“Hit’s stood hyur twenty year through all the storms; I reckon it can stand one more night of it.”
“A man couldn’t walk upright, outside the cabin,” I asserted, thinking of the St. Louis tornado, in which I had lain flat on my belly, clinging to an iron post.
The hunchback turned to me with a grave face. “I’ve seed hit blow, here on top o’ Smoky, till a hoss couldn’t stand up agin it. You’ll spy, to-morrow, whar several trees has been wind-throwed and busted to kindlin’.”
I recalled that several, in the South, means many—“a good many,” as our own tongues phrase it.
“Oh, shucks! Bill Cope,” put in “Doc” Jones, “whut do you-uns know about windstorms? Now, I’ve hed some experiencin’ up hyur that’ll do to tell about. You remember the big storm three year ago, come grass, when the cattle all huddled up a-top o’ each other and friz in one pile, solid.”
Bill grunted an affirmative.
“Wal, sir, I was a-herdin’, over at the Spencer Place, and was out on Thunderhead when the wind sprung up. Thar come one turrible vyg’rous blow that jest nacherally lifted the ground. I went up in the sky, my coat ripped off, and I went a-sailin’ end-over-end.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. About half an hour later, I lit spang