Part 14

Watauga is the highest county of the Appalachians. Few of its valleys dip below 3,000 feet above tide level, while a few peaks of its boundary chains lift to about 6,000. The spurs projecting into this highland basin are neither high nor abrupt, and the ascent from the interior to the crest of the great chains of the Blue Ridge, the Yellow mountain and the Stone and Iron, is at places so gradual as to be imperceptible. The bottoms along the Watagua river and its many branches, and along the New river and its branches in Watauga and Ashe counties, are well adapted to almost all the cereals, to vegetable roots, and to the hardier varieties of fruits. Ashe county bears a general resemblance to Watagua, but is about 1,000 feet lower, and consequently warmer. The climate of both counties is almost identical with the famous butter and cheese districts of central and western New York. Indeed, few sections of the eastern part of the United States are more inviting for stock raising and dairying. All the heavy mountain ranges of the southern Alleghanies furnish a large amount of wild vegetation nutritive for almost all kinds of domestic animals. The lofty tops are heavily sodded. Being cool and well watered, they are unsurpassed as pastures during at least seven months in the year. Stock in some localities has been known to subsist upon them during the entire year, but no prudent ranger will fail to provide for his cattle and horses at least three months’ feed and two months’ valley pasture. Sheep cannot with safety be turned out on the distant mountain range, but in most localities they will find abundant subsistance upon the nearer slopes. Almost anywhere on the luxurious uplands a goat would think himself in a paradise. A gentleman of large experience in the stock business in Ashe county informed the writer that most failures result from an attempt to keep larger herds than the valleys will sustain. Experience had taught him that it is never safe to multiply the number of horses and cattle beyond the number of acres of tillable valley land, while twice that number of sheep can be kept. The mountain slopes, however, now almost a waste of woodland, are fertile, and might be reduced, at small outlay, to valuable pastures, and thus the capacity of the country increased tenfold. These slopes are not, as in most mountain countries, rocky and broken by exposed ledges. To the very top there is a heavy covering of earth, surfaced by a black vegetable mold, which only needs the assistance of sunlight to bring forth grass in profusion. By simply grubbing out the undergrowth and deadening the large trees, the capacity for stock, of almost any locality of the trans-Blue Ridge portion of North Carolina, could be quadrupled. The price of valley land in Ashe, Alleghany and Watauga counties ranges from ten to fifteen dollars per acre. The mountains are purchasable at prices ranging from forty cents to three dollars per acre, the average price for any large tract being about one dollar.

The writer knows of only two large ventures having been made in sheep raising; one in Haywood county, and the other in Graham. They both resulted in total failure, due, however, wholly to the inexperience of the operators, or ignorance of the shepherds employed by them. In the first instance, inadequate valley pasturage had been provided, upon which to support a flock of about 500 sheep during the few cold months of the winter. The flock, through exposure and scanty feed, became so reduced in number, before the opening of an early spring, that its owner abandoned his project.

In Graham county, a northern gentleman having purchased the largest and one of the finest farms in that locality, discovering that the surrounding range was admirably adapted for sheep raising, on a large scale, shipped in a flock of 800 merino sheep. They were ill attended by ignorant shepherds, and all of them soon died.

Through care in the purchase of a valley farm, adjacent to fair upland, and bald, mountain-summit pastures, and in the matter of selecting competent hands, together with some personal attention to the business on the part of the operator, there is no reason why large profits might not flow from a venture in this line.

The remarks upon stock-raising in Watauga and Ashe counties, will apply in general to every other county of the intermontane division of the state, though, of course, some counties are more favored than others, and the natural conditions vary in detail in each. Yancey and Mitchell have large tracts adapted to this industry. The experiment of raising tobacco has been found successful in the lower and more sandy portions of Mitchell. This remunerative crop is no longer an experiment in Yancey, the soil and climate in the western part being well adapted to it.

The French Broad valley, from an agricultural point of view, is deserving of special attention. The territory embraced is divided into four counties--Madison, Buncombe, Henderson, and Transylvania.

I was riding with a friend one afternoon in September, through the cañon of the French Broad. We were occupying the steps to the back platform of the last car, feasting, for the twentieth

time, upon the ever-changing display of beauty. “This,” said my friend, interrupting the silence, “is all very impressive. No one, whose feelings have any communion with nature, can escape the charm of these bold precipices, robed with vines, and crowned with golden forest. These curves are the materialization of beauty. That surging, dashing, foaming, torrent, gradually eroding its channel deeper into the adamantine granite, is a grand demonstration of the superiority of force over matter. The great drawback to this valley is its poverty of useful productions. Western North Carolina, it strikes me, may be compared to a great picture or poem; we never fail to derive pleasure from it, yet there is nothing in it to make money out of, or even to furnish a respectable living. While the scenery here is all that can possibly be desired, and the climate is almost perfect, this country can never be anything more than it is now, except, perhaps, in the number and size of its summer hotels. It hasn’t the resources.”

“What is the extent of your knowledge of this country?” I inquired.

“Oh, merely what I’ve seen from the railroad line, but I suppose it’s pretty much all alike.”

My friend was mistaken, in supposing that the wealth of the Southern Alleghanies consists wholly in scenery and climate. He was also mistaken in supposing that railroad views had afforded him any considerable knowledge of the country.

Madison county, back of the river bluffs, is almost wholly a succession of hills, coves and narrow valleys, nine-tenths of it timbered with a heavy growth of hard and soft woods. The slopes are remarkable for fertility, there being small particles of lime percolated through the soil. The cultivated grasses grow rank, and the cereals yield satisfactory harvests. But owing to the limited area of the valleys, and the almost entire absence of level land, ordinary farming can never be carried on in Madison with remunerative results. Too much labor is required to cultivate an acre of the slopes for the ordinary return in wheat or corn. It is in tobacco that the Madison county farmer has found his Eldorado. I know of no industry which offers so much inducement to the poor laborer as the cultivation of this crop. There is no staple product which derives its value so exclusively from labor, or yields to that labor a larger return. A few figures will serve to illustrate. Uncleared land can be purchased at an average price of $3 per acre, in small tracts. About one-third of the purchase will be found adapted to tobacco, making the cost of tillable land $9 an acre. Basing our estimates upon the production of the last three years, a yield of $200 from each acre planted may be expected. In addition to such other small crops as are needed to yield food for his family, an industrious man and two small boys can clear, prepare the soil, and cultivate four and one-half acres a year, which, if properly cured, will bring in the market $900--money enough to pay for three hundred acres of land.

The sunny slopes are considered by planters best adapted to the crop. Sand and gravel is the needed composition of soil, and a forest growth of white pine indicates auspicious conditions. The east side of the French Broad has been found to have more good tobacco land than the west, but the ratio we have given is not too great for either side. The crop leaves the soil in excellent condition for wheat and grass after four years’ cultivation, though at the present prices of land, planters would find it economical to sow in wheat and seed to grass after two years’ cultivation in tobacco. The gross aggregate of the crop of 1882 in Madison county will probably be $250,000. W. W. Rollins, of Marshall, is extensively engaged in the business, the number of his tenant families being about sixty.

Up the river, into Buncombe county, the valleys widen, and the acreage of comparatively level land increases; the settlement becomes denser, and the proportion of cleared land to native forest, is greater than in any county west of the Blue Ridge.

The valleys of Hominy creek, Swannanoa, and Upper French Broad, contain several thousand acres which could be cultivated with improved machinery. The soil is of average fertility--well adapted to the cereals, grasses and tobacco--but in many localities its capacity has been lowered by use and abuse. Some valleys, naturally fertile, are almost wholly exhausted. There has been, however, marked improvement, both in farming methods and farming machinery, within the last five years.

Above Buncombe, in the French Broad valley, are Henderson and Transylvania counties, embraced within high mountain chains, and formed of a basin-like territory, which bears some evidence of having once been a lake. It is a surprise, to most people, to find, within a few miles of the crest of the Blue Ridge, a marsh of such extent as exists in Henderson county.

The French Broad changes its character at Asheville, below which place it is a torrent, and above a placid, almost immobile stream, rising to the slightly higher altitude of the upper valley, in terraces, rather than by gradual ascent. Its shallow channel is bordered by alluvial bottoms--deposits carried from the mountain slopes--varying in width from a few rods to five miles, making, with a background of mountains rising massively in the distance, a landscape of surpassing beauty. A conservative estimate places the number of acres of first bottom land along the upper valley of the French Broad and its tributaries at 20,000, and twice that number of acres could be cultivated with sulky plows and harvested with self-binding reapers. Cane creek, followed by the Henderson and Buncombe county line, drains considerable low land--at places near its mouth almost marshy. On the opposite side of the French Broad there is a wide expanse of alluvial land, cut by Mill’s river, and extending for a distance of two miles up that stream, where the valley becomes second bottom and slope.

Ochlawaha (Mud creek, locally named) emptying into the French Broad from the east, like its Florida namesake, is a lazy, sluggish stream. Its headsprings are in the crest of the Blue Ridge, all the way from the high Pinnacle and Hebron range to Sugarloaf and Bearwallow. The immediate basin of the stream from a short distance below Flat Rock, to its mouth, bears a unique character, being the only marsh in Western North Carolina. Its width varies from one fourth to two miles, and its length may be estimated at ten miles. A rank growth of vegetation is annually submerged. A soil of vegetable mold several feet in depth has been formed. Recent surveys show that the decline is sufficient to admit of perfect drainage, which would make this one of the most valuable agricultural and grazing tracts in the country.

The crest of the Blue Ridge, in Henderson county, is an undulating plateau, which will not be recognized by the traveler in crossing. The Saluda mountains, beyond Green river, are the boundary line of vision on the south. The general surface features of the central part of this pearl of counties will be best seen by a glance at the pictorial view from Dun Cragin, near Hendersonville.

Above the mouth of Ochlawaha the bottoms of French Broad gradually widen. The foot hills being the fartherest distance apart above the mouth of Little river, Boylston creek, Cathey’s creek, Davidson’s river, Little river and both forks of French Broad all have tempting valleys. It should be remarked that a large percentage of the land in these fair and fertile bottoms has been badly worn by much poor farming, but very little is worn out, so that there is yet not only hope but certainty of redemption by proper management. The expense of reinvigorating exhausted tracts is materially lightened by the presence of limestone outcrops.

As a grazing district the upper French Broad has advantages over any other section of equal extent, though there are elsewhere small localities which surpass any portion of it. These advantages are, extent of level tillable land for hay and grain, altitude which insures low temperature and healthfulness, and third, proximity to the best wild range in the Balsams and Blue Ridge. The scientific agriculturist will be able to draw conclusions from the following recapitulations of conditions: abundance of rain, perfect drainage, warm sun, cool breezes, and an alluvial soil with occasional outcrops of lime rock.

All the good grains produce well. Vegetables grow to a large size. Experiments in the culture of tobacco have been successful in the main, and the industry may become an important one. The population is more intelligent than in most rural districts. The one great thing needed is adequate and cheap transportation facilities. One railroad taps this territory at Hendersonville, but more are needed. There remain large tracts of unimproved lands which might be reduced to a state of cultivation. What is locally known as the Pink Beds, in the northwestern part of Transylvania, a dense forest plateau, is an absolute wilderness in which a lost traveler might wander for days before finding his way to a settlement. Among the spurs of the Balsam range and Blue Ridge, and in the valley of Green river there are many thousand acres of forest.

The Pigeon river in North Carolina is exclusively the property of Haywood county. Its water sheds are, on the west the main chain of the Balsam range, and on the south and east the Balsams and New-found mountains. The political division follows almost exactly this line. The principal tributaries of the Pigeon, each draining fine valleys, are, on the west Cataluche, Jonathan’s creek and Richland creek; on the east Fines creek. The main channel is divided by Cold mountain into two prongs. The valley of Pigeon throughout its whole length is wide and undulating, except where it cuts its way through the Smoky mountains into Tennessee. Below the junction of Richland creek the soil is a mixture of sand and gravel. Farther up it partakes more of a clayey character. The fertility of the mountains is evidenced by the great size and variety of the forest growth. The ranges being high, the coves are long, and give to the distant view from the valley a peculiarly pleasing effect. Good crops of corn, wheat, oats, buckwheat, etc., can be raised almost to the crest of the highest mountains. The Balsams furnish more wild range than any other chain. Haywood has for many years had the reputation of being the best wheat county in the transmontane portion of the state, and with proper cultivation has the capacity to sustain that reputation. The culture of tobacco in the northern and lower portion has been entirely successful, and will soon become an important element of industry.

Across the Balsam range into Jackson and Swain counties we recognize newer settlements. This fact partially accounts for sparcer population and less extensive tracts under cultivation. But a better reason is found in the more broken condition of the country and consequent narrowness of the valleys. Of the fertility of the mountains in Jackson there can be no doubt, for the trees are larger and of finer texture than of any other locality. Swain county differs from Jackson in having more river bottom land, a sandier soil, and a warmer climate. About one-third of its territory is a wilderness, unpenetrated except by hunters and herders. We refer to the great Smoky mountain chain and its southward spurs. The valley of the Tuckasege is not wide but embraces many valuable farms. There is nothing like a continuous stretch of bottom along its affluents. The Little Tennessee is bordered at places by wide and fertile alluvions. Swain county has the conditions of soil and climate requisite to the production of the very best quality of gold leaf tobacco. Having mild winters, the fertile slopes of the Cowee and Smoky ranges might be reduced to valuable pastures.

The valley of the Tennessee and its branches placed Macon first of the counties west of the Balsam range in population and wealth. With the assistance of its valuable mineral deposits, it will probably be able to maintain its position. Above Franklin wide bottoms stretch from both sides of the Little Tennessee, exposing several thousand acres of level surface, with a soil of gravel and vegetable loam, washed from the neighboring slopes and higher altitudes of Northern Georgia. The ascent of the Cullasaja to the crest of the Blue Ridge is very gradual until an undulating plateau of several miles length and varying width is reached. On this plateau is the village and settlement of Highlands. If you reach it from Franklin, and doubt that you are on the top of a mountain range 3,700 feet high, express yourself to any resident and in fifteen minutes he will have you looking over a precipice of 1,100 feet, while far below you in the blue distance waves the upper plain of South Carolina. The climate of the Macon highlands is cool and bracing. The showers, which are at all seasons numerous, are, however, warm, the clouds coming from the heated low lands farther south. Wheat and oats produce well, and corn yields a fair harvest. But the most promising hope of this section, agriculturally speaking, lies in dairying and stock raising. Land is cheap, and both indigenous and cultivated grasses grow luxuriantly.

At Franklin the traveler will certainly hear of the Ellijay, whose valley is a competing candidate for admiration, with the princely peaks which hide it in their evening shadows. There are some substantial improvements in the valley of Burningtown creek. The best wild range, in Macon county, is in the Nantihala mountains. I was shown a five-year-old horse which was born in the mountains, and had “never received a mouthful of grain or cured roughness.” Many farmers leave their cattle out to range all winter. Sheep raising would be profitable, if carried on extensively enough to afford the employment of a shepherd. It must not be inferred, from what has been repeatedly said pf wild range, grazing, and stock-raising, that the mountain slopes, which comprise two-thirds of the surface of the intermontane country, are covered with a sod of indigenous grasses. They are rather marked by the absence of grasses, as all deep-shaded forests are. It is on the treeless tops that cattle subsist and fatten, the tufts under the trees being only occasional, except where a fallen tree or cliff has made an opening for heat and light to enter. There are among the trees, however, abundance of herbs and shrubs upon which sheep and goats would subsist.

Of Clay, Graham, and Cherokee counties, little need be said. All the trans-Balsam counties bear a general family likeness. The valley of the Cheowah, near Robbinsville, is the most attractive part of Graham. The valley of Hiawassee, with its tributaries, Nottelley and Valley river, belongs to the sixth natural division of Western North Carolina. There is, in both Cherokee and Clay counties, a large percentage of level land. Speculators have invested largely in the former, mainly on account of the iron and marble deposits which lie exposed.

Taken altogether, the best results, agriculturally, are to be obtained from the cultivation of the grasses, vegetables, and tobacco. The cereals can never be produced with profit beyond the narrow limit of home demand.

The subject of horticulture is, in North Carolina, an important one. Vegetables, grains, and grasses, of the same variety, flourish in a wide range of territory, but fruits are tender darlings of climate. In regard to temperature, the heart of the Alleghanies is a peninsula of the northern north temperate zone projecting into the southern. While this fact has been known, and its advantages appreciated for more than half a century, there has been inexplicable tardiness in utilizing it. How much longer will the great South continue to buy, in the markets of the North, what can be produced more cheaply and of better quality in her own highland valleys? The piedmont region is adapted to a great variety of semi-temperate fruits. The persimmon, grape, plum, and thorned berries, are found, wild, abundantly everywhere. We know of no instance in which the cultivated varieties of these fruits have failed, when properly planted and attended. The peaches raised in the shade of the Blue Ridge are of unexcelled flavor. They will stand comparison with the best Delaware productions. Apples and pears may be classed among the piedmont fruits, but the former are of better flavor on the higher altitudes. Grapes grow large and mature thoroughly in the cool dry month of September. The vines seem large and healthy.

It is only in the lower valleys that peaches of good size and flavor can be raised. The plumb, that most difficult of all fruits to protect from destruction by insects, grows on the slopes to full ripeness. Experiment with cultivated grapes has been limited, but the luxuriance and variety of the wild vines, indicate a soil and climate favorable to this industry. The nativity of the Catawba is traced to this highland region, and is still found, side by side with the fox and blue wine grape. There is nothing more beautiful in rural scenery, than these luxuriant vines, winding and entwining among the branches of a spreading tree, until they have completely smothered it in their tendril grasp.

The apple finds a congenial home among these southern mountains. In flavor, and perfection of development, this fruit will compare with the choicest production of Michigan. The trees grow large and healthy; there are fewer, than in most sections, of those destructive insects which burrow the wood and sting the fruit. The winters are never cold enough to freeze the buds, and frost need not be looked for after the blossoming season, making the crop much more reliable than at the North. Abundance of moisture gives the fruit full size, and the autumns being cool and long, the ripening process is slow and natural. The whole mountain country is adapted to apple orchards. At present, the upper French Broad valley--Henderson and Transylvania--excel all other sections, both in quality and quantity. Tons of apples are annually wasted, which, if carried to the market at reasonable cost of transportation, would furnish no inconsiderable revenue.