Part 20

On reaching our abode, I was aware of the Forester coming across from the English garden, of which he has charge, followed by a young native. He walked up to me, and announced that they were come across to tidy up, and _black the boots_. Here was another shock, that we should be followed by the lumber of civilisation so closely! Will boots be blacked, I wonder, in the New Jerusalem? I was at first inclined to protest, while they made a collection, and set them out on the verandah, but the sight of the ladies’ neat little high-lows made me pause. These, at any rate, it seemed to me, _should_ be blacked, even in the Millennium. Next minute I was so tickled by a little interlude between the Forester and the native, that all idea of remonstrance vanished. The latter, contemplating the boots and blacking-pot and brushes--from under the shapeless piece of old felt, by way of hat, of the same mysterious colour as the ragged shirt and breeches, his only other garments--joined his hands behind his back, and said, in their slow way, “Look ’ere, Mr. Hill, ain’t this ’ere pay-day?” The drift was perfectly obvious. This citizen had no mind to turn shoe-black, and felt like discharging himself summarily. Mr. Hill, who was already busily sweeping the verandah, put down his broom, and after a short colloquy, which I did not quite catch, seized on a boot and brush, and began shining away with an artistic stroke worthy of one of the Shoeblack Brigade at the London Bridge Station. The native looked on for a minute, and then slowly unclasped his hands. Presently he picked up a boot and looked round it dubiously. I now took a hand myself. If there was one art which I learned to perfection at school, and still pride myself on, it is shining a boot. In a minute or two my boot was beginning “to soar and sing,” while the Forester’s was already a thing of beauty. The native, with a grunt, took up the spare brush, and began slowly rubbing. The victory was complete. He comes now and spends two hours every morning over his new accomplishment, evidently delighted with the opportunity it gives him for loafing and watching the habits of the strange occupants, for whom also he fetches many tin pails of water from the well, in a slow, vague manner. He has even volunteered to fix up the ladies’ room and fill their bath (an offer which has been declined, with thanks), but I doubt whether he will ever touch the point of a genuine “shine.”

They are a curious people, these natives, as the Forester (an Englishman, reared in Lord Denbigh’s garden at Newnham Paddocks, and thirty years out here) told me, as we walked off to examine the English garden, but I must keep his experiences and my own observation for separate treatment. The English garden is the most advanced, and, I think, the most important and interesting feature of this settlement. If young Englishmen of small means are to try their fortunes here, it is well that they should have trustworthy guidance at once as to what are the best crops to raise. With this view, Mr. Hill was placed, in the spring of this year, in charge of the only cleared space available. All the rest is beautiful, open forest-land. You can ride or drive almost anywhere under the trees, but there is no cultivated spot for many miles, except small patches here and there of carelessly sown maize and millet, and a rood or two of sweet potatoes. The Forester had a hard struggle to do anything with the garden at all this season. He was only put in command in May, six weeks at least too late. He could only obtain the occasional use of a team, and his duties in the forest and in grading and superintending the walks interfered with the garden. Manure was out of the question, except a little ashes, which he painfully gathered here and there from the reckless log-fires which abound in the woods. He calls his garden a failure for the year. But as half an acre which was wild forest-land in May is covered with water-melons and cantalupes, as the tomatoes hang in huge bunches, rotting on the vines for want of mouths enough to eat them, as the Lima beans are yielding at the rate of 250 bushels an acre, and as cabbages, sweet potatoes, beets, and squash are in equally prodigal abundance, the prospect of making a good living is beyond all question, for all who will set to work with a will.

In the afternoon, I inspected the hotel, nearly completed, on a knoll in the forest, between the English garden and this frame-house. It is a sightly building, with deep verandahs prettily latticed, from which one gets glimpses through the trees of magnificent ranges of blue forest-covered mountains. We have named it “The Tabard,” at the suggestion of one of our American members, who, being in England when the old Southwark hostelry from which the Canterbury Pilgrims started was broken up, and the materials sold by auction, to make room for a hop store, bought some of the old banisters, which he has reverently kept till now. They will be put up in the hall of the new Tabard, and marked with a brass plate and inscription, telling, I trust, to many generations of the place from which they came. The Tabard, when finished, as it will be in a few days, will lodge some fifty guests; and, in spite of the absence of alcoholic drinks, has every chance, if present indications can be trusted, of harbouring and sending out as cheery pilgrims as followed the Miller and the Host, and told their world-famous stories five hundred years ago.

The drink question has reared its baleful head here, as it seems to do all over the world. The various works had gone on in peace till the last ten days, when two young natives toted over some barrels of whisky, and broached them in a shanty, on a small lot of no-man’s land in the woods, some two miles from hence. Since then there has been no peace for the manager. Happily the feeling of the community is vigorously temperate, so energetic measures are on foot to root out the pest. A wise state law enacts that no liquor store shall be permitted under heavy penalties within four miles of an incorporated school; so we are pushing on our school-house, and organising a board to govern it. Meantime, we have evidence of unlawful sale (in quantities less than a pint), and of encouraging gambling, by these pests, and hope to make an example of them at the next sitting of the county court. This incident has decided the question for us. If we are to have influence with the poor whites and blacks, we must be above suspicion ourselves. So no liquor will be procurable at the Tabard, and those who need it will have to import for themselves.

A bridle-path leads from the hotel down to the Clear Fork, one of the streams at the junction of which the town site is situate. The descent is about 200 feet, and the stream, when you get to it, from thirty feet to fifty feet wide,--a mountain stream, with deep pools and big boulders. Your columns are not the place for descriptions of scenery, so I will only say that these gorges of the Clear Fork and White Oak are as fine as any of their size that I know in Scotland, and not unlike in character, with this difference, that the chief underwood here consists of rhododendron (called laurel here), azalea, and a kind of magnolia I have not seen before, and of which I cannot get the name. I passed huge faggots of rhododendron, twelve feet and fourteen feet long, lying by the walks, which had been cleared away ruthlessly while grading them. They are three miles long and cost under £100, a judicious outlay, I think, even before an acre of land has been sold. They have been named the Lovers’ Walks, appropriately enough, for no more well-adapted place could possibly be found for that time-honoured business, especially in spring, when the whole gorges under the tall pines and white oak are one blaze of purple, yellow, and white blossom.

On my return to the plateau, my first day’s experiences came to an end in a way which no longer surprised me, after the boot-blacking and the Lovers’ Walks. I was hailed by one of “the boys,” who had been unable to obtain a mount, or had some business which kept him from exploring. He was in flannels, with racquet in hand, on his way to the lawn-tennis ground, to which he offered to pilot me. In a minute or two we came upon an open space, marked, I see on the plans, “Cricket Ground,” in which rose a fine, strong paling, enclosing a square of 150 feet, the uprights being six feet high, and close enough to keep, not only boys out, but tennis-balls in. Turf there was none, in our sense, within the enclosure, and what there must have once been as a substitute for turf had been carefully cleared off on space sufficient for one full-sized court, which was well marked out on the hard, sandy loam. A better ground I have rarely seen, except for the young sprouts of oak, and other scrub, which here and there were struggling up, in a last effort to assert their “ancient, solitary reign.” At any rate, then and there, upon that court, I saw two sets played in a style which would have done credit to a county match (the young lady, by the way, who played far from the worst game of the four, is the champion of her own county). This was the opening match, the racquets having only just arrived from England, though the court has been the object of tender solicitude for six weeks or more to the four Englishmen already resident here or near by. The Rugby Tennis Club consists to-day of seven members, five English and two native, and will probably reach two figures within a few days on the return of the boys. Meantime the effect of their first practice has been that they have resolved on putting a challenge in the Cincinnati and Chatanooga papers offering to play a match--best out of five sets--with any club in the United States. Such are infant communities, in these latitudes!

You may have been startled by the address at the head of this letter. It was adopted unanimously on our return in twilight from the tennis-ground, and application at once made to the State authorities for registration of the name and establishment of a post-office. It was sharp practice thus to steal a march on the three Etonians, still far away in the forest. Had they been present, possibly Thames might have prevailed over Avon.

A Forest Ride, Rugby, Tennessee.

There are few more interesting experiences than a ride through these southern forests. The scrub is so low and thin, that you can almost always see away for long distances amongst pine, white oak, and chestnut trees; and every now and then at ridges where the timber is thin, or where a clump of trees has been ruthlessly “girdled,” and the bare, gaunt skeletons only remain standing, you may catch glimpses of mountain ranges of different shades of blue and green, stretching far away to the horizon. You can’t live many days up here without getting to love the trees even more, I think, than we do in well-kempt England; and this outrage of “girdling,” as they call it--stripping the bark from the lower part of the trunk, so that the trees wither and die as they stand--strikes one as a kind of household cruelty, as if a man should cut off or disfigure all his wife’s hair. If he wants a tree for lumber or firewood, very good. He should have it. But he should cut it down like a man, and take it clean away for some reasonable use, not leave it as a scarecrow to bear witness of his recklessness and laziness. Happily not much mischief of this kind has been done yet in the neighbourhood of Rugby, and a stop will now be put to the wretched practice. There is another, too, almost as ghastly, but which, no doubt, has more to be said for it. At least half of the largest pines alongside of the sandy tracts which do duty for roads have a long, gaping wound in their sides, about a yard from the ground. This was the native way of collecting turpentine, which oozed down and accumulated at the bottom of the gash; but I rejoice to say it no longer pays, and the custom is in disuse. It must be suppressed altogether, but carefully and gently. It seems that if not persisted in too long, the poor, dear, long-suffering trees will close up their wounds, and not be much the worse: so I trust that many of the scored pines, springing forty or fifty feet into the air before throwing out a branch, which I passed in sorrow and anger on my first long ride, may yet outlive those who outraged them. Having got rid of my spleen, excited by these two diabolic customs, I can return to our ride, which had otherwise nothing but delight in it.

The manager, an invaluable guest from New York, a doctor, who had served on the Sanitary Commission through the war, and I, formed the party. The manager drove the light buggy, which held one of us also, and the handbags 3 while the other rode by the side, where the road allowed, or before or behind, as the fancy seized him. We were bound for a solitary guest-house in the forest, some seventeen miles away, in the neighbourhood of a cave and waterfall which even here have a reputation, and are sometimes visited. We allowed three and a half hours for the journey, and it took all the time. About five miles an hour on wheels is all you can reckon on, for the country roads, sandy tracts about ten feet broad, are just left to take care of themselves, and wherever there is a sufficient declivity to give the rain a chance of washing all the surface off them, are just a heap of boulders of different sizes. But, after all, five miles an hour is as fast as you care to go, for the play of the sunlight amongst the varied foliage, and the new flora and fauna, keep you constantly interested and amused. I never regretted so much my ignorance of botany, for I counted some fourteen sorts of flowers in bloom, of which golden-rod and Michaelmas-daisy were the only ones I was quite sure I knew,--and by the way, the daisy of Parnassus, of which I found a single flower growing by a spring. The rest were like home flowers, but yet not identical with them--at least, I think not--and the doubt whether one had ever seen them before or not was provoking. The birds--few in number--were all strangers to me; buzzards, of which we saw five at one time, quite within shot, and several kinds of hawk and woodpecker, were the most common; but at one point, quite a number of what looked like very big swifts, but without the dash in their flight of our bird, and with wings more like curlews’, were skimming over the tree-tops..1 only heard one note, and that rather sweet, a cat-bird’s, the doctor thought; but he was almost as much a stranger in these woods as I. Happily, however, he was an old acquaintance of that delightful insect, the “tumble-bug,” to which he introduced me on a sandy bit of road. The gentleman in question took no notice of me, but went on rolling his lump of accumulated dirt three times his own size backwards with his hind legs, as if his life depended on it. Presently his lump came right up against a stone and stopped dead. It was a “caution” to see that bug strain to push it farther, but it wouldn’t budge, all he could do. Then he stopped for a moment or two, and evidently made up his small mind that something must be wrong behind, for no bug could have pushed harder than he. So he quitted hold with his hind legs, and turned round to take a good look at the situation, in order, I suppose, to see what must be done next. At any rate, he presently caught hold again on a different side, and so steered successfully past the obstacle. There were a number of them working about, some single and some in pairs, and so full of humour are their doings that I should have liked to watch for hours.

We got to our journey’s end about dusk, a five-roomed, single-storied, wooden house, built on supports, so as to keep it off the ground. We went up four steps to the verandah, where we sat while our hostess, a small, thin New Englander, probably seventy or upwards, but as brisk as a bee, bustled about to get supper. The table was laid in the middle room, which opened on the kitchen at the back, where we could see the stove, and hear our hostess’s discourse. She boiled us two of her fine white chickens admirably, and served with hot bread, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and several preserves, of which I can speak with special praise of the huckleberry, which grows, she said, in great abundance all round. _The boys_, we heard, had been there to breakfast, after sleeping out, and not having had a square meal since they started. Luckily for us, her white chickens are a very numerous as well as beautiful family, or we should have fared badly. She and her husband supped after us, and then came and sat with us in the balcony, and talked away on all manner of topics, as if the chances of discourse were few, and to be made the most of. They had lived at Jamestown, close by, a village of some eight or ten houses, all through the war, through which the Confederate cavalry had passed again and again. They had never molested her or hers in any way, but had a fancy for poultry, which might have proved fatal to her white family, but for her Yankee wit. She and her husband managed to fix up a false floor in one of their rooms in which they fed the roosters, so whenever a picket came in sight, her call would bring the whole family out of the woods and clearing into the refuge, where they remained peacefully amongst corn-cobs till the danger had passed. She had nothing but good to say of her native neighbours, except that they could make nothing of the country. The Lord had done all He could for it, she summed up, and Boston must take hold of the balance. We heard the owls all night, as well as the katydids, but they only seemed to emphasise the forest stillness. The old lady’s beds, to which we retired at ten, after our long gossip in the balcony, were sweet and clean, and I escaped perfectly scatheless, a rare experience, I was assured, in these forest shanties. I was bound, however, to admit, in answer to our hostess’s searching inquiries, that I had seen, and slain, though not felt, an insect suspiciously like a British B flat.

The cave which we sought out after breakfast was well worth any trouble to find. We had to leave the buggy and horses hitched up and scramble down a glen, where presently, through a tangle of great rhododendron bushes, we came on a rock, with the little iron-stained stream just below us, and opposite, at the top of a slope of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, was the cave, like a long black eye under a red eyebrow, glaring at us. I could detect no figure in the sandstone rock (the eyebrow), which hung over it for its whole length. The cave is said to run back more than 300 feet, but we did not test it. There would be good sitting-room for 300 or 400 people along the front, and so obviously fitted for a conventicle, that I could not help peopling it with fugitive slaves, and fancying a black Moses preaching to them of their coming Exodus, with the rhododendrons in bloom behind. Maidenhair grow in tufts about the damp floor, and a creeping fern, with a bright red berry, the name of which the doctor told me, but I have forgotten, on the damp, red walls. What the nook must be when the rhododendrons are all ablaze with blossom, I hope some day to see.

We had heard of a fine spring somewhere in this part of the forest, and in aid of our search for it presently took up a boy whom we found loafing round a small clearing. He was bare-headed and bare-footed, and wore an old, brown, ragged shirt turned up to the elbows, and old, brown, ragged trousers turned up to the knees. I was riding, and in answer to my invitation he stepped on a stump and vaulted up behind me. He never touched me, as most boys would have done, but sat up behind with perfect ease and balance as we rode along, a young centaur. We soon got intimate, and I found he had never been out of the forest, was fourteen, and still at (occasional) school. He could read a little, but couldn’t write. I told him to tell his master, from me, that he ought to be ashamed of himself, which he promised to do with great glee; also, but not so readily, to consider a proposal I made him, that if he would write to the manager within six months to ask for it, he should be paid $1. I found that he knew nothing of the flowers or butterflies, of which some dozen different kinds crossed our path. He just reckoned they were all butterflies, as indeed they were. He knew, however, a good deal about the trees and shrubs, and more about the forest beasts. Had seen several deer only yesterday, and an old opossum with nine young, a number which took the doctor’s breath away. There were lots of foxes in the woods, but he did not see them so often. His face lighted up when he was promised $2 for the first opossum he would tame and bring across to Rugby. After guiding us to the spring, and hunting out an old wooden cup amongst the bushes, he went off cheerily through the bushes, with two quarter-dollar bits in his pocket, an interesting young wild man. Will he ever bring the opossum?

We got back without further incident (except flushing quite a number of quail, which must be lovely shooting in these woods), and found the boys at home, and hard at lawn-tennis and well-digging. The hogs are becoming an object of their decided animosity, and having heard of a Yankee notion, a sort of tweezers, which ring a hog by one motion, in a second, they are going to get it, and then to catch and ring every grunter who shows his nose near the asylum. Out of this there should come some fun, shortly.

The Natives, Rugby, Tennessee.