Part 20

I crossed the river Holston at Macby, about fifteen miles from Knoxville; here the soil grows better, {224} and the plantations are nearer together, although not immediately within sight of each other. At some distance from Macby the road, for the space of two miles, runs by the side of a copse, extremely full of young suckers, the highest of which was not above twenty feet. As I had never seen any part of a forest so composed before, I made an observation of it to the inhabitants of the country, who told me that this place was formerly part of a barren, or meadow, which had naturally clothed itself again with trees, that fifteen years since they had been totally destroyed by fire, in order to clear the land, which is a common practice in all the southern states. This example appears to demonstrate that the spacious meadows in Kentucky and Tennessea owe their birth to some great conflagration that has consumed the forests, and that they are kept up as meadows by the custom that is still practised of annually setting them on fire. In these conflagrations, when chance preserves any part from the ravages of the flame, for a certain number of years they are re-stocked with trees; but {225} as it is then extremely thick, the fire burns them completely down, and reduces them again to a sort of meadow. We may thence conclude, that in these parts of the country the meadows encroach continually upon the forests. The same has probably taken place in Upper Louisiana and New Mexico, which are only immense plains, burnt annually by the natives, and where there is not a tree to be found.

I stopped the first day at a place where most of the inhabitants are Quakers, who came fifteen or eighteen years since from Pennsylvania. The one with whom I lodged had an excellent plantation, and his log-house was divided into two rooms, which is very uncommon in that part of the country. Around the house magnificent apple-trees were planted, which, although produced from pips, bore fruit of an extraordinary size and luxuriance in taste, which proves how well this country is adapted for the culture of fruit trees. Here, as well as in Kentucky, they give the preference to the peach, on account of their {226} making brandy with it. At the same house where I stopped there were two emigrant families, forming together ten or twelve persons, who were going to settle in Tennessea. Their ragged clothes, and the miserable appearance of their children, who were bare-footed and in their shirts, was a plain indication of their poverty, a circumstance by no means uncommon in the United States. At the same time it is not in the western country that the riches of the inhabitants consist in specie; for I am persuaded that not one in ten of them are in possession of a single dollar; still each enjoys himself at home with the produce of his estate, and the money arising from the sale of a horse or a few cows is always more than sufficient to procure him the secondary articles that come from England.

The following day I passed by the iron-works, situate about thirty miles from Knoxville, where I stopped some time to get a sample of the native ore. The iron that proceeds from it they say is of an excellent quality. The road at this place divides into {227} two branches, both of which lead to Jonesborough; but as I wanted to survey the banks of the river Nolachuky, so renowned in that part of the country for their fertility, I took the right, although it was rather longer, and not so much frequented. About six or seven miles from the iron-works we found upon the road small rock crystals, two or three inches long, and beautifully transparent. The facets of the pyramids that terminate the two extremities of the prism are perfectly equal with respect to size, they are loose, and disseminated in a reddish kind of earth, and rather clayey. In less than ten minutes I picked up forty. Arrived on the boundaries of the river Nolachuky, I did not observe any species of trees or plants that I had not seen elsewhere, except a few poplars and horse-chesnuts, which bore a yellow blossom. Some of these poplars were five or six feet in diameter, perfectly straight, and free from branches for thirty or forty feet from the earth.

On the 21st I arrived at Greenville, which contains scarcely forty houses, constructed with square {228} beams something like the log-houses. They reckon twenty-five miles from this place to Jonesborough. In this space the country is slightly mountainous, the soil more adapted to the culture of corn than that of Indian wheat, and the plantations are situated upon the road, two or three miles distant from each other.

Jonesborough, the last town in Tennessea, is composed of about a hundred and fifty houses, built of wood, and disposed on both sides the road. Four or five respectable shops are established there, and the tradespeople who keep them have their goods from Richmond and Baltimore. All kinds of English-manufactured goods are as dear here as at Knoxville. A newspaper in folio is published at this town twice a week. Periodical sheets are the only works that have ever been printed in the towns or villages situate west of the Alleghanies.

{229} CHAP. XXV

_General observations on the State of Tennessea.--Rivers Cumberland and Tennessea.--What is meant by East Tennessea or Holston, and West Tennessea or Cumberland.--First settlements in West Tennessea.--Trees natives of that country._

The state of Tennessea is situated between 35 and 36 deg. 30 min. latitude, and 80 and 90 deg. 30 min. longitude. It is bounded north by Kentucky, south by the territories belonging to the Indian Cherokees and Chactaws, west by the Ohio, and east by the Alleghany Mountains, which separate it from Virginia and North Carolina. Its extent in breadth is nearly a hundred and three miles {230} by three hundred and sixty in length. Prior to the year 1796, the epoch of its being admitted into the Union, this country comprised a part of North Carolina. The two principal rivers are the Cumberland and Tennessea, which flow into the Ohio eleven miles distant from each other, and are separated by the chain of mountains in Cumberland.

The river Cumberland, known to the French Canadians by the name of the river Shavanon, derives its source in Kentucky, amidst the mountains that separate it from Virginia. Its course is about four hundred and fifty miles. It is navigable, in winter and spring, for three hundred and fifty miles from its _embouchure_; but in summer, not above fifty miles from Nasheville. The river Tennessea, named by the French Canadians the Cherokee River, is the most considerable of all those that empty themselves into the Ohio. It begins at West Point, where it is formed by the junction of the rivers Clinch and Holston, which derive their source in that part of the Alleghany Mountains situated in Virginia, each of {231} which are more than a hundred fathoms broad at their _embouchure_. Both are navigable to an immense distance, and particularly the Holston, which is so for two hundred miles. The river French Broad, one of the principal branches of the Holston, receives its waters from the Nolachuky, is about twenty fathoms broad, and is navigable in the spring. Thus the Tennessea, with the Holston, has, in the whole, a navigable course for near eight hundred miles: but this navigation is interrupted six months in the year by the muscle shoals, a kind of shallows interspersed with rocks, which are met with in its bed two hundred miles from its _embouchure_ in the Ohio. From West Point the borders of this great river are yet almost entirely uninhabited. The signification of the name of Tennessea, which it bears, is unknown to the Cherokees and Chactaws that occupied this country before the whites. Mr. Fisk, who has had several conversations with these Indians, never heard any precise account; in consequence of which it is most likely that this name has {232} been given to it by the nation that the Cherokees succeeded.[56]

The Cumberland Mountains are but a continuation of Laurel Mountain, which itself is one of the principal links of the Alleghanies. These mountains, on the confines of Virginia, incline more toward the west, and by the direction which they take, cut obliquely in two the state of Tennessea, which, in consequence, divides East and West Tennessea into two parts, both primitively known by the names of the Holston and Cumberland settlements, and which afford each a different aspect, both by the nature of the country, and by the productions that grow there.

West Tennessea comprises two-thirds of this state. The greater part of it reposes upon a bank of chalky substance of the same nature, the beds of which are horizontal. The stratum of vegetable earth with which it is covered appears generally not so thick as in Kentucky, and participates less of the clayey nature. It is usually, in point of colour, of {233} a dark brown, without the least mixture of stony substances. The forests that cover the country clearly indicate how favourable the soil is for vegetation, as most of the trees acquire a very large diameter. Iron mines are also as scarce there as in Kentucky; and provided any new ones were discovered, they would have been worked immediately, since the iron that is imported from Pennsylvania is at such an enormous price.

The secondary rivers which in this part of Tennessea run into Cumberland are almost completely dry during the summer; and it is probable enough, that when the population grows more numerous, and the plantations are formed farther from their banks, the want of water will be more severely felt in this part than in Kentucky. There are, notwithstanding, several large rivulets or creeks that issue from excavations that are found at the foot of the mountains, in different parts of the country: at the same time it has been remarked that these kind of sources never fail, although the water is not so deep in summer. {234} Just at the mouth of these subterraneous passages they are sometimes accompanied with a current of air strong enough to extinguish a light. I observed this particularly myself at the spring of the rivulet called Dixon’s Spring, and of another situated about four miles from Nasheville.

It was in 1780 that the whites first made the attempt to travel over the Cumberland Mountains, and to settle in the environs of Nasheville; but the emigrants were not very numerous there till the year 1789. They had to support, for several years, a bloody war against the Indian Cherokees, and till 1795 the settlements at Holston and Kentucky communicated with those in Cumberland by caravans, for the sake of travelling in safety over so extensive a tract of uninhabited country that separated them; but for these five or six years past, since peace has been made with the natives, the communications formed between the countries are perfectly established; and although not much frequented, they travel there with as much safety as in any other part of the Atlantic states.

{235} This country having been populated after that of Kentucky, every measure was taken at the commencement to avoid the great confusion that exists concerning the right of property in the latter state; at the same time the titles are looked upon as more valid, and not so subject to dispute. This reason, the extraordinary fertility of the soil, and a more healthy climate, are such great inducements to the emigrants of the Atlantic states, that most of them prefer settling in West Tennessea than in Kentucky. They reckon there, at present, thirty thousand inhabitants, and five or six thousand negro slaves.

With a few exceptions the various species of trees and shrubs that form the mass of the forests are the same as those that I observed in the most fertile parts of Kentucky. The _gleditsia triacanthos_ is still more common there.[57] Of this wood the Indians made their bows, before they adopted the use of fire-arms.

We found particularly, in these forests, a tree which, by the shape of its fruit and the disposition of its leaves, appears to have great affinity with the {236} _sophora japonica_, the wood of which is used by the Chinese for dyeing yellow. My father, who discovered this tree in 1796, thought that it might be employed for the same use, and become an important object of traffic for the country. He imparted his conjectures to Mr. Blount, then governor of this state, and his letter was inserted in the Gazette at Knoxville on the 15th of March 1796. Several persons in the country having a great desire to know whether it were possible to fix the beautiful yellow which the wood of this tree communicated to the water by the simple infusion, cold, I profited by my stay at Nasheville to send twenty pounds of it to New York, the half of which was remitted to Dr. Mitchell, professor of chemistry, and the other addressed to Paris, to the Board of Agriculture, attached to the Minister of the Interior, in order to verify the degree of utility that might be derived from it. This tree very seldom rises above forty feet, and grows, in preference, on the knobs, species of little hills, where the soil is very rich. Several of the inhabitants have {237} remarked that there is not in the country a single species of tree that produces so great an abundance of sap. The quantity that it supplies exceeds even that of the sugar maple, although the latter is twice its bulk. The epoch of my stay at Nasheville being that when the seeds of this tree were ripe, I gathered a small quantity of them, which I brought over with me, and which have all come up. Several of the plants are at the present moment ten or fifteen inches high. It is very probable that this tree may be reared in France, and that it will endure the cold of our winters, and more so, as, according to what I have been told, the winters are as severe in Tennessea as in any parts of France.

West Tennessea is not so salubrious as Holston and Kentucky. A warmer and damper climate is the cause of intermittent fevers being more common there. Emigrants, for the first year of their settling there, and even travellers, are, during that season, subject to an exanthemetic affection similar to the itch. This malady, with which I began to be attacked {238} before I reached Fort Blount, yielded to a cooling regimen, and repeated bathings in the rivers Cumberland and Roaring. This disorder is very appropriately called in the country the Tennessean itch.

{239} CHAP. XXVI

_Different kinds of produce of West Tennessea.--Domestic manufactories for cottons encouraged by the legislature of this state.--Mode of letting out estates by some of the emigrants._

WEST Tennessea, or Cumberland, being situated under a more southerly latitude than Kentucky, is particularly favourable to the growth of cotton; in consequence of which the inhabitants give themselves up almost entirely to it, and cultivate but little more corn, hemp, and tobacco than what is necessary for their own consumption.

The soil, which is fat and clayey, appears to be a recent dissolving of vegetable substances, and seems, {240} till now, less adapted for the culture of corn than that of Indian wheat. The harvests of this grain are as plentiful as in Kentucky; the blades run up ten or twelve feet high; and the ears, which grow six or seven feet from the earth, are from nine to ten inches in length, and proportionate in size. It is cultivated in the same manner as in other parts of the western country.

The crows, which are a true plague in the Atlantic states, where they ravage, at three different periods, the fields of Indian wheat, which are obliged to be sown again as many times, have not yet made their appearance in Tennessea; but it is very probable that this visit is only deferred, as they do, annually, great damage in Kentucky.

I must also observe here that the grey European rats have not yet penetrated into Cumberland, though they are very numerous in other parts of the country, particularly in those settlements belonging to the whites.

The culture of cotton, infinitely more lucrative {241} than that of corn and tobacco, is, as before observed, the most adhered to in West Tennessea. There is scarcely a single emigrant but what begins to plant his estate with it the third year after his settling in the country. Those who have no negroes cultivate it with the plough, nearly in the same manner as Indian wheat, taking particular care to weed and throw new earth upon it several times in the course of the season. Others lay out their fields in parallel furrows, made with the hoe, from twelve to fifteen inches high. It is computed that one man, who employs himself with this alone, is sufficient to cultivate eight or nine acres, but not to gather in the harvest. A man and a woman, with two or three children, may, notwithstanding, cultivate four acres with the greatest ease, independent of the Indian wheat necessary for their subsistence; and calculating upon a harvest of three hundred and fifty pounds weight per acre, which is very moderate according to the extreme fertility of the soil, they will have, in four acres, a produce of fourteen hundred pounds of {242} cotton. Valuing it at the rate of eighteen dollars per hundred weight, the lowest price to which it had fallen at the epoch of the last peace, when I was in the country, gives two hundred and fifty-two dollars; from which deducting forty dollars for the expenses of culture, they will have a net produce of two hundred and twelve dollars; while the same number of acres, planted with Indian wheat, or sown with corn, would only yield at the rate of fifty bushels per acre; and twenty-five bushels of corn, about fifty dollars, reckoning the Indian wheat at thirteen pence, and the corn at two shillings and two pence per bushel; under the supposition that they can sell it at that price, which is not always the case. This light sketch demonstrates with what facility a poor family may acquire speedily, in West Tennessea, a certain degree of independence, particularly after having been settled five or six years, as they procure the means of purchasing one or two negroes, and of annually increasing their number.

The species of cotton which they cultivate here is {243} somewhat more esteemed than that described by the name of green-seed cotton, in which there is a trifling distinction in point of colour.

The cottons that are manufactured in West Tennessea are exceedingly fine, and superior in quality to those I saw in the course of my travels. The legislature of this state, appreciating the advantage of encouraging this kind of industry, and of diminishing, by that means, the importation of English goods of the same nature, has given, for these two years past, a premium of ten dollars to the female inhabitant who, in every county, presents the best manufactured piece; for in this part, as well as in Kentucky, the higher circles wear, in summer time, as much from patriotism as from economy, dresses made of the cottons manufactured in the country. At the same time they are convinced that it is the only means of preserving the little specie that is in the country, and of preventing its going to England.

The price of the best land does not yet exceed five dollars per acre in the environs of Nasheville, and {244} thirty or forty miles from the town they are not even worth three dollars. They can at that price purchase a plantation completely formed, composed of two to three hundred acres, of which fifteen to twenty are cleared, and a log-house. The taxes in this state are also not so high as in Kentucky.

Among the emigrants that arrive annually from the eastern country at Tennessea there are always some who have not the means of purchasing estates; still there is no difficulty in procuring them at a certain rent; for the speculators who possess many thousand acres are very happy to get tenants for their land, as it induces others to come and settle in the environs; since the speculation of estates in Kentucky and Tennessea is so profitable to the owners, who reside upon the spot, and who, on the arrival of the emigrants, know how to give directions in cultivation, which speedily enhances the value of their possessions.

The conditions imposed upon the renter are to clear and inclose eight or nine acres, to build a log-house, and to pay to the owner eight or ten bushels {245} of Indian wheat for every acre cleared. These contracts are kept up for seven or eight years. The second year after the price of two hundred acres of land belonging to a new settlement of this kind increases nearly thirty per cent.; and this estate is purchased in preference by a new emigrant, who is sure of gathering corn enough for the supplies of his family and cattle.

In this state they are not so famed for rearing horses as in Kentucky; yet the greatest care is taken to improve their breed, by rearing them with those of the latter state, whence they send for the finest mare foals that can be procured.

Although this country abounds with saline springs, none are yet worked, as the scarcity of hands would render the salt dearer than what is imported from the salt-pits of St. Genevieve, which supply all Cumberland. It is sold at two dollars per bushel, about sixty pounds weight.

{246} CHAP. XXVII

_East Tennessea, or Holston.--Agriculture.--Population.--Commerce._

East Tennessea, or Holston, is situated between the loftiest of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains. It comprises, in length, an extent of nearly a hundred and forty miles, and differs chiefly from West Tennessea in point of the earth’s being not so chalky, and better watered by the small rivers issuing from the adjacent mountains, which cross it in every part. The best land is upon their borders. The remainder of the territory, almost everywhere interspersed with hills, is of a middling quality, and produces nothing but white, red, black, chincapin, {247} and mountain oaks, &c. intermixed with pines; and, as we have before observed, except the _quercus macrocarpa_, the rest never grow, even in the most fertile places.

Indian wheat forms here also one of the principal branches of agriculture; but it very seldom comes up above seven or eight feet high, and a produce of thirty bushels per acre passes for an extraordinary harvest. The nature of the soil, somewhat gravelly, appears more adapted for the culture of wheat, rye, and oats; in consequence of which it is more adhered to than in Cumberland. That of cotton is little noticed, on account of the cold weather, which sets in very early. One may judge, according to this, that Holston is in every point inferior in fertility to Cumberland and Kentucky.

To consume the superfluity of their corn the inhabitants rear a great number of cattle, which they take four or five hundred miles to the seaports belonging to the southern states. They lose very few of these animals by the way, although they have to {248} cross several rivers, and travel through an uninterrupted forest, with this disadvantage, of the cattle being extremely wild.