Part 21
This part of Tennessea began to be inhabited in 1775, and the population is so much increased, that there is now computed to be about seventy thousand inhabitants, including three or four thousand negro slaves. In 1787 they attempted to form themselves into an independent state, under the name of the Franklin State; but this project was abandoned.[58] It is still very probable, and has already been in question, that East and West Tennessea will ultimately form two distinct states, which will each enlarge itself by a new addition of part of the territory belonging to the Cherokee Indians. The natives, it is true, will not hear the least mention of a cession being made, objecting that their tract of country is barely sufficient to furnish, by hunting, a subsistence for their families. However, sooner or later they will be obliged to yield. The division of Tennessea cannot be long before it takes place, whether under {249} the consideration of convenience, or the enterprising disposition of the Americans. It is commanded, on the one hand, by the boundaries that Nature herself has prescribed between the two countries, in separating them by the Cumberland Mountains; and on the other, by their commerce, which is wholly different, since Cumberland carries on its trade by the Ohio and Mississippi, while Holston does most by land with the seaports belonging to the Atlantic states, and has very little to do with New Orleans by the river Tennessea, and scarcely any with Cumberland and Kentucky. Under this consideration, Holston is, of all parts in the United States that are now inhabited, the most unfavourably situated, being on every side circumscribed by considerable tracts of country that produce the same provisions, and which are either more fertile or nearer to the borders of the sea.
What has been said relative to the manners of the inhabitants of Kentucky will apply, in a great measure to Tennessea, since they come, as the former {250} do, from North Carolina and Virginia: still the inhabitants of Tennessea do not yet enjoy that degree of independence which is remarked among those of Kentucky. They appear also not so religious, although, in the mean time, they are very strict observers of Sundays. We found but very few churches in Tennessea. Itinerant preachers wander, in summer, through the different countries, and preach in the woods, where the people collect together.
{251} CHAP. XXVIII
_Departure from Jonesborough for Morganton in North Carolina.-- Journey over Iron Mountains.--Sojourn on the mountains.-- Journey over the Blue Ridges and Linneville Mountains.-- Arrival at Morganton._
On the 21st of September 1802 I set out from Jonesborough to cross the Alleghanies for North Carolina. About nine miles from Jonesborough the road divides into two branches, which unite again fifty-six miles beyond the mountains. The left, which is principally for carriages, cuts through Yellow Mountain, and the other through Iron {252} Mountain. I took the latter, as I had been informed it was much the shortest. I only made nineteen miles that day, and put up at one Cayerd’s at the Limestone Cove, where I arrived benumbed with cold by the thick fog that reigns almost habitually in the vallies of these enormous mountains.
Seven miles on this side Cayerd’s plantation, the road, or rather the path, begins to be so little cut that one can scarce discern the track for plants of all kinds that cover the superficies of it; it is also encumbered by forests of _rhododendrum_, shrubs from eighteen to twenty feet in height, the branches of which, twisting and interwoven with each other, impede the traveller every moment, insomuch that he is obliged to use an axe to clear his way. The torrents that we had continually to cross added to the difficulty and danger of the journey, the horses being exposed to fall on account of the loose round flints, concealed by the ebullition of the waters with which the bottom of these torrents are filled.
I had the day following twenty-three miles to {253} make without meeting with the least kind of a plantation. After having made the most minute inquiry with regard to the path I had to take, I set out about eight o’clock in the morning from the Limestone Cove, and after a journey of three hours I reached the summit of the mountain, which I recognized by several trees with “_the road_” marked on each, and in the same direction to indicate the line of demarcation that separates the state of Tennessea from that of North Carolina. The distance from the Limestone Cove to the summit of the mountain is computed to be about two miles and a half, and three miles thence to the other side. The declivity of the two sides is very steep, insomuch that it is with great difficulty a person can sit upon his horse, and that half the time he is obliged to go on foot. Arrived at the bottom of the mountain, I had again, as the evening before, to cross through forests of _rhododendrum_, and a large torrent called Rocky Creek, the winding course of which cut the path in twelve or fifteen directions; every time I was obliged to alight, or go {254} up the torrent by walking into the middle for the space of ten or fifteen fathoms, in order to regain on the other bank the continuation of the path, which is very rarely opposite, and of which the entrance was frequently concealed by tufts of grass or branches of trees, which have time to grow and extend their foliage, since whole months elapse without its being passed by travellers. At length I happily arrived at the end of my journey. I then perceived the imprudence I had committed in having exposed myself without a guide in a road so little frequented, and where a person every moment runs the risk of losing himself on account of the sub-divisions of the road, that ultimately disappear, and which it would be impossible to find again, unless by being perfectly acquainted with the localities and disposition of the country, where obstacle upon obstacle oppose the journey of the traveller, and whose situation would in a short time become very critical from the want of provisions.
On the 23d I made twenty-two miles through a {255} country bestrewed with mountains, but not so lofty as that which I had just passed over, and arrived at the house of one Davenport, the owner of a charming plantation upon Doe river, a torrent about forty feet in breadth, and which empties itself into the Nolachuky. I had learnt the evening before, of the person with whom I had lodged, that it was at Davenport’s my father had resided, and that it was this man who served him as a guide across the mountains when on his travels to discover their productions. I was at that time very far from thinking that at the same time when this worthy man was entertaining me about his old travelling companion, I lost a beloved father, who died a victim of his zeal for the progress of natural history upon the coast of the island of Madagascar!
I staid a week at Davenport’s, in order to rest myself after a journey of six hundred miles that I had just made, and during this interval I travelled over the Blue Ridges that encompass his plantation. On the 2d of October 1802 I set out on my journey {256} again, and proceeded towards Morganton, a distance of thirty-five miles. About four miles from Doe river I re-passed the chain of the Blue Ridges. Its summit is obtained by a gentle declivity, which is much longer and more rapid on the eastern side, without being impracticable for carriages. The journey over this mountain is computed to be about four miles and a half.
About five miles from the Blue Ridges are the Linneville Mountains, not quite so lofty as the latter, but steeper, and more difficult to ascend. The road that cuts through them is encumbered westward with large, flat stones, which impede the traveller on his route. From the summit of these mountains, which is not overstocked with trees, we discovered an immense extent of mountainous country covered with forests, and at their base only three small places cleared, which form as many plantations, three or four miles distant from each other.
From the Linneville Mountains to Morganton it is computed to be twenty-five miles, where I arrived {257} on the 5th of October. In this interval the country is slightly mountainous, and the soil extremely bad; at the same time we did not find more than four or five plantations on the road. About a mile on this side the town we crossed the northern arm of the river Catabaw, in this part nearly fifty fathoms broad, although the source of this river is only fifty miles. The rains that had fallen in the mountains had produced a sudden increase of water, and the master of the ferry-boat conceiving it would not last long, had not thought proper to re-establish his boat, so that I was obliged to ford. One of his children pointed out to me the different directions that I had to take in order to avoid the immense cavities under water.
{258} CHAP. XXIX
_General observations upon this part of the Chain of the Alleghanies.--Salamander which is found in the torrents.-- Bear hunting._
IN Pennsylvania and Virginia the Alleghanies present themselves under the form of parallel furrows, but varying in their length. They are mostly near together, and form narrow vallies; but sometimes the interval that separates them is from twenty to thirty miles in length; again these spaces are filled with a multitude of hills of a lesser elevation, confusedly scattered, and in no wise affecting the direction of the principal chains. On the confines of North Carolina and Tennessea the Alleghanies are, {259} on the contrary, isolated mountains, and only contiguous by their base; they embrace also in diameter an extent of country less considerable, and which is not computed to be more than seventy miles. The furrow that bears more particularly the name of the Alleghany Ridge in Pennsylvania, and that of Blue Ridge in North Carolina, is the only one that, continuing uninterruptedly, divides the rivers that run into the Atlantic Ocean from those that swell the current of the Ohio. The height of this chain is still infinitely less than that of the neighbouring mountains. It is here that the Alleghanies, which cross the United States for the space of nine hundred miles, have the highest elevation. This is the opinion of most of the inhabitants, who, from the mountainous part of Pennsylvania and Virginia, have emigrated on the confines of North Carolina, and who know the respective heights of all these mountains. That of the first rank is called Grandfather Mountain, the next Iron Mountain, and thus in succession Yellow Mountain, Black Mountain, and Table {260} Mountain, which are all situate upon the western rivers. On the top of Yellow Mountain, the only one that is not stocked with trees, all the abovementioned may be seen.
We may again remark, in support of the preceding observation, that from the 10th to the 20th of September the cold is so keenly felt upon the mountains that the inhabitants are obliged to make a fire, which is not the case upon any of those in Virginia, although they are situated more northerly by several degrees: and besides I have since seen in my father’s notes that he had observed trees and shrubs upon the Yellow and Grandfather Mountains that he did not meet with again till he reached Low Canada.
As the only ideas given concerning the height of the Alleghanies are the result of observations taken in Virginia, we see, according to that short exposition, that we have but an inaccurate account; this induced me to point out the highest mountains where their true elevation might be ascertained. They are about three hundred and sixty miles from Charleston, in {261} South Carolina, and five hundred and fifty from Philadelphia.
The mineral kingdom is very little diversified in these mountains. The mines which have hitherto been found are chiefly those of iron. They are worked with success, and the iron which they derive from it is of an excellent quality.
In the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia the land, frequently dry and flinty, is of an indifferent nature. Here, on the contrary, the soil far from being flinty, is perpetually moist, and very fertile. We may judge of it by the vegetable strength of the trees, among which we observed the red and black oak, the sugar-maple, the ash, the yellow-blossomed chesnut, or the _magnolia acuminata_ and _auriculata_, and the common chesnut, which grows to a prodigious height. The side of these mountains that looks north is sometimes covered exclusively with the _kalmia latifolia_, or calico-tree, from twelve to fifteen feet high. They frequently occupy spaces of from two to three hundred acres, {262} which at a distance affords the aspect of a charming meadow. It is well known that this shrub excels every other in point of blossom.
In the great woods the superficies of the soil is covered with a species of wild peas, that rises about three feet from the earth, and serves as excellent fodder for the cattle. They prefer this pasturage to any other, and whenever they are driven from it they pine away, or make their escape to get to it again.
These mountains begin to be populated rapidly. The salubrity of the air, the excellence of the water, and more especially the pasturage of these wild peas for the cattle, are so many causes that induce new inhabitants to settle there.
Estates of the first class are sold at the rate of two dollars, and the taxes are not more than a half-penny per acre. Indian corn, wheat, rye, oats, and peach trees, are the sole objects of culture.
In the torrents we found a species of salamander, called by the inhabitants the mountain alligator; {263} many of which are upwards of two feet in length.[59] It was in Doe river that my father caught the one which is described in _The New Dictionary of Natural History_, published by Deterville.
The inhabitants of these mountains are famed for being excellent hunters. Towards the middle of autumn most of them go in pursuit of bears, of which they sell the skins, and the flesh, which is very good, serves them in a great measure for food during that season. They prefer it to all other kinds of meat, and look upon it as the only thing they can eat without being indisposed by it. They make also of their hind legs the most delicious hams. In autumn and winter the bears grow excessively fat; some of them weigh upward of four hundred weight. Their grease is consumed in the country instead of oil. They hunt them with great dogs, which, without going near them, bark, teaze, and oblige them to climb up a tree, when the hunter kills them with a carabine. A beautiful skin sells for a dollar and a half or two dollars. The black bear of North {264} America lives chiefly on roots, acorns and chesnuts. In order to procure a greater quantity of them, he gets up into the trees, and as his weight does not permit him to climb to any height, he breaks off the branch where he has observed the most fruit by hugging it with one of his fore paws. I have seen branches of such a diameter that these animals must be endowed with an uncommon strength to have been able to break them by setting about it in this manner. In the summer, when they are most exposed to want victuals, they fall upon pigs, and sometimes even upon men.
{265} CHAP. XXX
_Morganton.--Departure for Charleston.--Lincolnton.--Chester.-- Winesborough.--Columbia.--Aspect of the Country on the Road.-- Agriculture, &c. &c._
Morganton, the principal town of the county of Burke, contains about fifty houses built of wood, and almost all inhabited by tradesmen. One warehouse only, supported by a commercial house at Charleston, is established in this little town, where the inhabitants, for twenty miles round, come and purchase mercery and jewellery goods from England, or give in exchange a part of their produce, which consists chiefly of dried hams, butter, tallow, {266} bear and stag skins, and ginseng, which they bring from the mountains.
From Morganton to Charleston it is computed to be two hundred and eighty-five miles. There are several roads to it, which do not vary in point of distance above twenty miles. Travellers take that where they think of finding the best houses for accommodation: I took the one that leads through Lincolnton, Chester, and Columbia. The distance from Morganton to Lincolnton is forty-five miles. For the whole of this space the soil is extremely bad, and the plantations, straggling five or six miles from each other, have but a middling appearance. The woods are in a great measure composed of different kinds of oaks, and the surface of the ground is covered with grass, intermixed with plants.
Lincolnton, the principal town of the county of Lincoln, is formed by the junction of forty houses, surrounded by the woods like all the small towns of the interior. Two or three large shops, that do the same kind of business as that at Morganton, are established {267} there. The tradesmen who keep them send the produce of their country to Charleston, but they find it sometimes answers their purpose better to stock themselves with goods from Philadelphia, although farther by six hundred miles. Some expedite them by sea to Carolina, whence they go by land to Lincolnton. The freight, a little higher from England to Charleston, and the enormous advance which the merchants lay on their goods, appear the only motives that make them give the preference to those of Philadelphia.
At Lincolnton they print a newspaper in folio, that comes out twice a week. The price of subscription is two dollars per year; but the printer, who is his own editor, takes, by way of payment, for the ease of his country subscribers, flour, rye, wax, &c. at the market price. The advertisements inserted for the inhabitants of the country are generally the surest profit to the printers. The foreign news is extracted from the papers that are published at the sea ports. The federal government, of which the constant aim is {268} to propagate among the people instruction, the knowledge of the laws, grants the editors of periodical papers, throughout the whole extent of the United States, the right to receive, free of postage, the newspapers that they wish to exchange among themselves, or those which are addressed to them.
The county of Lincoln is populated, in a great measure, by Germans from Pennsylvania. Their plantations are kept in the greatest order, and their lands well cultivated. Almost all have negro slaves, and there reigns much more independance among them than in the families of English origin. One may form a correct idea of the industry of some of them by the appearance of the plantation where I stopped, situated upon a branch of the Catabaw River. In eight hundred acres, of which it is composed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat, and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the present state of the agriculture of this part of the country. Independant of this, he has built in his yard several {269} machines, that the same current of water puts in motion; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery to make peach brandy, and a small forge, where the inhabitants of the country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at certain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the direction of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the family.
The whole of my landlord’s taxes, assessed upon his landed property, and these different kinds of industry, did not amount annually to more than seven dollars; whilst under the presidency of J. Adams they had increased to fifty; at the same time his memory is not held in great veneration in Upper Carolina and the Western States, where the political opinion is strongly pronounced in the sense of opposition, and where nobody durst confess himself publicly attached to the federal party.
{270} In all the towns that I travelled through every tanner has his tan mill, which does not cost him above ten dollars to erect. The bark is put into a wooden arch, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter, the edges of which are about fifteen inches high, and it is crushed under the weight of a wheel, about one foot thick, which is turned by a horse, and fixed similar to a cyder-press. For this purpose they generally make use of an old mill-stone, or a wooden wheel, formed by several pieces joined together, and furnished in its circumference with three rows of teeth, also made of wood, about two inches long and twelve or fifteen wide.
From Lincolnton to Chester court house in the state of South Carolina, it is computed to be about seventy miles. For the whole of this space the earth is light and of an inferior quality to that situated between Morganton and Lincolnton, although the mass of the forests is composed of various species of oaks; in the mean time the pines are in such abundance there, that for several miles the ground is covered {271} with nothing else. Plantations are so little increased there, that we scarcely saw twenty where they cultivate cotton or Indian wheat. We passed by several that had been deserted by the owners as not sufficiently productive: for the inhabitants of Georgia and the two Carolinas, who plant nothing but rice, choose frequently rather to make new clearings than to keep their land in a state of producing annually, by regular tillage, as they do in Europe, and even in New England and Pennsylvania. The considerable extent of this country, compared with the trifling population, gives rise to these changes which take place after fifteen or twenty successive harvests.
Chester contains about thirty houses, built of wood; among the number are two inns and two respectable shops. In the principal county towns of the Western and Southern States, they have neither fairs nor markets. The inhabitants sell the produce of their culture to shopkeepers settled in the small towns, or what is more usual in the south, they convey them in waggons to the sea ports.
{272} From Chester the country grows worse in every respect. The traveller no longer meets reception at plantations; he is obliged to put up at inns, where he is badly accommodated both in point of board and lodging, and pays dearer than in any other part of the United States. The reputation of these inns is esteemed according to the quantity and different kinds of spirits that they sell, among which French brandies hold always the first rank, although they are often mixed with water for the third or fourth time.
They reckon fifty-five miles from Chester to Columbia; twenty-five miles on this side we passed through Winesborough, composed of about a hundred and fifty houses. This place is one of the oldest inhabited in Carolina, and several planters of the low country go and spend the summer and autumn there. Fifteen miles on this side Winesborough the _pine barrens_ begin, and thence to the sea side the country is one continued forest composed of pines.