Part 19

And the big work has not only been done, but done well and permanently. The engineering difficulties must have been very great; the cuttings and tunnels had to be made through hard rock, and the bridges over streams which have cut for themselves channels hundreds of feet deep. We crossed the Kentucky river, on (I believe) the highest railway bridge in the world, 283 feet above the water; and rushed from a tunnel in the limestone rock right on to the bridge which spans the north fork of the Cumberland river, 170 feet below. The lightness of the ironwork on which these bridges rest startles one at first, but experience has shown them to be safe, and the tests to which they have been put on this line would have tried most seriously the strength of far more massive structures. But it is only in its bridges that the Cincinnati Southern Railway has a light appearance. The building of the line has a solid and permanent look, justifying, I should think, the very considerable sum per mile which has been spent on it above the ordinary cost in this country. And by the only test which an amateur is as well able to apply as an expert, that of writing on a journey, I can testify that it is as smoothly laid as the average of our leading English lines. For the last fifty miles we ran almost entirely through forests, which are, however, falling rapidly all along the side of the line, and yielding place to corn-fields in the rich bottoms, wherever any reasonably level ground bordered the water-courses, up which we could glance as we hurried past. I was surprised, and, I need not say, greatly pleased, to see the apparently excellent terms on which the white and coloured people were, even in the Kuklux regions through which we came. A Northern express man, our companion at this point, denounced it as the most lawless in the United States. About one hundred homicides, he declared, had taken place in the last year, and no conviction had been obtained, the juries looking on such things as regrettable accidents. This may be so, but I can, at any rate, testify, from careful observation of the mixed gangs of workmen on the road, and the groups gathered at the numerous stations, to the familiar and apparently friendly footing on which the races met. As for the decrease of the blacks, it must be in other regions than those traversed by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, for the cabins we passed in the clearings and round the stations swarmed with small urchins, clad in single garments, the most comic little figures of fun, generally, that one had ever seen, as they stood staring and signalling to the train. There is something to me so provocative of mirth in the race, and I have found them generally such kindly folk, that I regret their absence from this same Alpine settlement,--a regret not shared, doubtless, by the few householders, to whom their constant small peculations must be very trying.

About five we stopped at the station from which this place is reached, and turning out on the platform were greeted by four or five young Englishmen, who had preceded us, on one errand or another, every one of whom was well known to me in ordinary life, but whom for the first moment I did not recognise. I had seen them last clothed in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of our much-vaunted civilisation, and behold, here was a group which I can compare to nothing likely to be familiar to your readers, unless it be the company of the _Danites_, as they have been playing in London. Broad-brimmed straw or felt hats, the latter very battered and worse for wear; dark-blue jerseys, or flannel shirts of varying hue; breeches and gaiters, or long boots, were the prevailing, I think I may say the universal costume, varied according to the taste of the wearer with bits of bright colour laid on in handkerchief at neck or waist. And tastes varied deliciously, two of the party showing really a fine feeling for the part, and one, our geologist, 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, and a mighty Etonian and Cantab, in brains as well as bulk, turning out, with an heroic scorn of all adornment, in woefully battered nether-garment and gaiters, and a felt which a tramp would have looked at several times before picking it out of the gutter. There was a light buggy for passengers and a mule waggon for luggage by the platform; but how were nine men, not to mention the manager and driver, both standing over 6 feet, and the latter as big at least as our geologist, to get through the intervening miles of forest tracks in time for tea up here? Fancy our delight when a chorus of “Will you ride or drive?” arose, and out of the neighbouring bushes the Danites led forth nine saddle-horses, bearing the comfortable half-Mexican saddles with wooden stirrups in use here. Our choice was quickly made, and throwing coats and waistcoats into the waggon, which the manager good-naturedly got into himself, surrendering his horse for the time, we joined the cavalcade in our shirts.

A lighter-hearted party has seldom scrambled through the Tennessee mountain roads on to this plateau. We were led by a second Etonian, also 6 ft. 2 in. in his stockings, whose Panama straw hat and white corduroys gleamed like a beacon through the deep shadows cast by the tall pine trees and white oaks. The geologist brought up the rear, and between rode the rest of us--all public schoolmen, I think, another Etonian, two from Rugby, one Harrow, one Wellington--through deep gullies, through four streams, in one of which I nearly came to grief, from not following my leader; but my gallant little nag picked himself up like a goat from his floundering amongst the boulders, and so up through more open ground till we reached this city of the future, and in the dusk saw the bright gleam of light under the verandahs of two sightly wooden houses. In one of these, the temporary restaurant, we were seated in a few minutes at an excellent tea (cold beef and mutton, tomatoes, rice, cold apple-tart, maple syrup, etc.); and during the meal the news passed round that the hotel being as yet unfurnished and every other place filled with workpeople, we must all (except the geologist and the Wellingtonian, who had a room over the office) pack away in the next cottage, which had been with difficulty reserved for us. If it had been a question of men only, no one would have given it a thought; but our party had now been swollen by two young ladies, who had hurried down by an earlier train to see their brother and brother-in-law, settlers on the plateau, and by another young Englishman who had accompanied them. A puzzle, you will allow, when you hear a description of our tenement. It is a four-roomed timber house, of moderate size, three rooms on the ground floor, and one long loft upstairs. You enter through the verandah on a common room, 20 ft. long by 14 ft. broad, opening out of which are two chambers, 14 ft. by 10 ft. One of these was, of course, at once appropriated to the ladies. The second, in spite of my remonstrances, was devoted to me, as the Nestor of the party, and on entering it I found an excellent bed (which had been made by two of the Etonians), and a great basin full of wild-flowers on the table. There were four small beds in the loft, for which the seven drew lots, and two of the losers spread rugs on the floor of the common room, and the third swung a hammock in the verandah. Up drove the mule waggon with luggage, and the way in which big and little boxes were dealt with and distributed filled me with respect and admiration for the rising generation. The house is ringing behind me with silvery and bass laughter, and jokes as to the shortness of accommodation in the matter of washing appliances, while I sit here writing in the verandah, the light from my lamp throwing out into strong relief the stems of the nearest trees. Above, the vault is blue beyond all description, and studded with stars as bright as though they were all Venuses. The katydids are making delightful music in the trees, and the summer lightning is playing over the Western heaven; while a gentle breeze, cool and refreshing as if it came straight off a Western sea, is just lifting, every now and then, the corner of my paper. Were I young again,--but as I am not likely to be that, I refrain from bootless castle-building, and shall turn in, leaving windows wide open for the katydid’s chirp and the divine breeze to enter freely, and wishing as good rest as they have all so well earned to my crowded neighbours in this enchanted solitude.

Rugby, Tennessee, 10th September 1880.

I take it I must have “written you frequent” (as they say here), at this time of year, in the last quarter-century on this theme, but, if you let me, should like to go back once more on the old lines. “Loafing as she should be taken” is likely, I fear, to become a lost art, though to my generation it is the one luxury. A country without good loafing-places is no longer a country for a self-respecting man in his second half-century. The rapid deterioration of our poor dear old England in this respect fills me with forebodings far more than the Irish Question, which we shall worry through on the lines so staunchly advocated by you. No fear of that, to my thinking; but, alas! great fear of our losing the power and the means of loafing. Time was when John Bull, in his own isle, was the best loafer in Christendom--(I may say in the world, the Turk and Otaheitan loafer doing nothing else, and he who does nothing but loaf loses the whole flavour of it)--and I can remember the time when at the seaside--for instance, Cromer, and inland, Betwys-y-Coed, Penygurd, and the like--the true loafer might be happy, gleaning “the harvest of a quiet eye,” and far from any one who wanted to go anywhere or do anything in particular. The railway has come to Cromer, and I hear that the guardian phalanx of Buxtons, Hoares, Gurneys, and Barclays, all good loafers in the last generation, have thrown up the sponge and gone with the stream. I was at Betwys and Penygurd last year, and at the former there were three or four long pleasure-vans meeting every train; at the latter, three parties came in, in a few hours, to do Snowdon and get back to dinner at Capel Curig or Bethgellert. Indeed, I was sore to mark that even Henry Owen, landlord and guide, once a good loafer, has succumbed., Over here it is still worse in the Atlantic States; but this is a big country, in which oases _must_ be left yet for many a long year for the loafer, of which this is one. It lies on a mountain plateau, seven miles from the station, to which a hack goes twice daily to meet the morning and evening mails (once too often, perhaps, for the highest enjoyment of the loafer); but otherwise the outer world, its fidgets and its businesses, no more concern us than they did Cooper’s jackdaw. I am conscious that regular work here must be done by some one, as daily meals at 7 A.M., and 12.30 and 6 P.M., never fail, with abundance of grapes and melons--the peaches, alas! were cut off by frosts when the trees were in blossom. But beyond this, and the presence of a young Englishman in the house, who, in blue shirt and trousers, tends and milks the cows, and puts in six or eight hours’ work a day at one thing or another in the neighbouring fields, there is nothing to remind one that this world doesn’t go on by itself, at any rate in these autumn days. Almost every cottage, or shanty, as they call these attractive wooden houses, has a deep verandah (from which you get a view, over the forest, of the southern range of mountains, with Pilot Knob for highest point), and, in the verandah, rocking-chairs and hammocks, in one or other of which a chatty host or hostess is almost sure to be found, enjoying air, view, rocking, and the indescribable depth of blue atmosphere which laps us all round. There is surely something very uplifting in finding the sky twice as far off as you know it at home. I felt this first on the Lower Danube and in Greece; but I doubt if Bulgarian or Greek heavens are as high as these. Every now and again, a merry group of young folk go by in waggon or on horseback; but even they are loafers, as they have no object in view beyond enjoying one another’s company, and possibly lunch or tea at the junction of the two mountain-streams, the only lion we have within a day’s journey. Their parents may be found for the most

## part in and round the hotel, for they are wise enough to let the young

ones knock about very much as they please, while they take their own ease in the verandahs or shady grounds of “The Tabard.” That hostelry of historic name stands on an eminence next to this shanty, and my “loaf-brothers,” when I get any, are generally saunterers from amongst its guests, and the one who comes oftenest is perhaps the best loafer I have ever come across. He is a rancheman on the Rio Grande, and has been out here ever since he left Marlborough, some fourteen years ago. Since then I should think he has done as hard work as any man, in the long drives of 2000 miles which he used to make from Southern Texas up to Colorado or Kansas, before the railway came. Even now, I take it that for ten months in the year he covers more ground and exhausts more tissue than most men, which makes him such a model loafer when he gets away. Yesterday, for instance, he started after lunch from “The Tabard,” 300 yards off, under a sort of engagement, as definite as we make them, to spend the afternoon here. On the way he came across a hammock swinging unoccupied in the hotel grounds, and a volume of Pendennis, and only arrived here after supper, in the superb starlight (the moon is objectionably late in rising just now), to smoke a pipe before bed-time. His experience of Western life is as racy as a volume of Bret Harte. Take the following, for instance:--At a prairie-town not far from his ranche, as distances go in the West, there is a State Court of First Instance, presided over by one Roy Bean, J.P., who is also the owner of the principal grocery. Some cowboys had been drinking at the grocery one night, with the result that one of them remained on the floor, but with sense enough left to lie on the side of the pocket where he kept his dollars. In the morning, it appeared that he had been “rolled”--_Anglicè_, turned over and his pocket picked--whereupon a court was called to try a man on whom suspicion rested. Roy Bean sat on a barrel, swore in a jury, and then addressed the prisoner thus: “Now, you give that man his money back.” The culprit, who had sent for the lawyer of the place to defend him, hesitated for a moment, and then pulled out the money. “You treat this crowd,” were Roy’s next words; and while “drinks round” were handed to the delighted cowboys at the prisoner’s expense, Roy pulled out his watch and went on: “You’ve got just five minutes to clear out of this town, and if ever you come in again, we’ll hang you.” The culprit made off just as his lawyer came up, who remonstrated with Roy, explaining that the proper course would have been to have heard the charge, committed the prisoner, and sent him to the county town for trial. “And go off sixty miles, and hang round with the boys [witnesses] for you to pull the skunk through and touch the dollars!” said Roy scornfully; whereupon the lawyer disappeared in pursuit of his client and unpaid fee.

It occurs to one to ask how much of the litigation of England might be saved if Judges of First Instance might open with Roy’s formula: “Now, you give that man his money back.” I am bound to add that his practice is not without its seamy side. When the railway was making, two men came in from one of the gangs for a warrant. A brutal murder had been committed. Roy told his clerk (the boy in the grocery, he being no penman himself) to make out the paper, asking: “Wot’s the corpse’s name?” “Li Hung,” was the reply. “Hold on!” shouted Roy to his clerk; and then to the pursuers: “Ef you ken find anything in them books,” pointing to the two or three supplied by the State, “about killin’ a Chinaman, it ken go,” and the pursuers had to travel on to the next fount of justice.

Here is one more: my “loaf-brother” heard it himself as he was leaving Texas, and laughed at it nearly all the way up. A group of cowboys at the station were discussing the problem of how long the world would last if this drought went on, the prevailing sentiment being that they would rather it worruted through somehow. A cowboy down on his luck here struck in: “Wall, if the angel stood right thar,” pointing across the room, “ready to sound, and looked across at me, I’d jest say, ‘Gabe! toot your old horn!’”

Rugby, Tennessee.

I was roused at five or thereabouts on the morning after our arrival here by a visit from a big dog belonging to a native, not quite a mastiff, but more like that than anything else, who, seeing my window wide open, jumped in from the verandah, and came to the bed to give me goodmorning with tail and muzzle. I was glad to see him, having made friends the previous evening, when the decision of his dealings with the stray hogs who came to call on us from the neighbouring forest had won my heart; but as his size and attentions somewhat impeded my necessarily scanty ablutions, I had to motion him apologetically to the window when I turned out. He obeyed at once, jumped out, laid his muzzle on the sill, and solemnly, and, I thought, somewhat pityingly, watched my proceedings. Meantime, I heard sounds which announced the uprising of “the boys,” and in a few minutes several appeared in flannel shirts and trousers, bound for one of the two rivers which run close by, in gullies 200 feet below us. They had heard of a pool ten feet deep, and found it too; and a most delicious place it is, surrounded by great rocks, lying in a copse of rhododendrons, azaleas, and magnolias, which literally form the underwood of the pines and white oak along these gullies. The water is of a temperature which allows folk whose blood is not so hot as it used to be to lie for half an hour on its surface and play about without a sensation of chilliness. On this occasion, however, I preferred to let them do the exploring, and so at 6.15 went off to breakfast.

This is the regular hour for that meal here, dinner at twelve, and tea at six. There is really no difference between them, except that we get porridge at breakfast and a great abundance of vegetables at dinner. At all of them we have tea and fresh water for drink, plates of beef or mutton, apple sauce, rice, tomatoes, peach pies or puddings, and several kinds of bread. As the English garden furnishes unlimited water and other melons, and as the settlers--young English, who come in to see us--bring sacks of apples and peaches with them, and as, moreover, the most solvent of the boys invested at Cincinnati in a great square box full of tinned viands of all kinds, you may see at once that in this matter we are not genuine objects either for admiration or pity. I must confess here to a slight disappointment. Having arrived at an age myself when diet has become a matter of indifference, I was rather chuckling as we came along over the coming short-commons up here, when we got fairly loose in the woods, and the excellent discipline it would be for the boys, especially the Londoners, to discover that the human animal can be kept in rude health on a few daily crackers and apples, or a slap-jack and tough pork. And now, behold, we are actually still living amongst the flesh-pots, which I had fondly believed we had left in your Eastern Egypt; and I am bound to add, “the boys” seem as provokingly indifferent to them as if their beards were getting grizzled. One lives and learns, but I question whether these states are quite the place to bring home to our Anglo-Saxon race the fact that we are an overfed branch of the universal brotherhood. Tanner, I fear, has fasted in vain.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when there was a muster of cavalry. Every horse that could be spared or requisitioned was in demand for an exploring ride to the west, and soon every charger was bestrid by “a boy” in free-and-easy garments, and carrying a blanket for camping out. Away they went under the pines and oaks, a merry lot, headed by our geologist, who knows the forest by this time like a native, and whose shocking old straw blazed ahead in the morning sun like, shall we say, “the helmet of Navarre,” or Essex’s white hat and plumes before the Train Bands, as they crowned the ridge where Falkland fell and his monument now stands, at the battle of Newbury. Charles Kingsley’s lines came into my head, as I turned pensively to my table in the verandah to write to you:--

When all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, and round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog his day.

Our two lasses are, undoubtedly, queens out here. The thought occurs, are our swans--our visions, already so bright, of splendid crops, and simple life, to be raised and lived in this fairyland--to prove geese? I hope not. It would be the downfall of the last castle in Spain I am ever likely to build.