Part 19

It was dusk a few minutes after, but the roar of the river continued; the scents of summer filled the air; the trees bowed in luxuriant greenness over the road; the chirping of insects made musical the valley; the mountains rose gloomy and magnificent in the twilight.

The famous Bald mountain forms the north wall of the valley. Its sterile face is distinctly visible from the hotel porch. Caves similar to Bat cave are high on its front. In 1874, Bald mountain pushed itself into prominence by shaking its eastern end with an earthquake-like rumble, that rattled plates on pantry-shelves in the cabins of the valleys, shook windows to pieces in their sashes, and even startled the quiet inhabitants of Rutherfordton, 17 miles away. Since then rumblings have occasionally been heard, and some people say they have seen smoke rising in the atmosphere. There is an idea, wide-spread, that the mountain is an extinct volcano. As evidence of a crater, they point to a fissure about half a mile long, six feet wide in some places, and of unmeasured depth. This fissure, bordered with trees, extends across the eastern end of the peak. But the crater idea is effectually choked up by the fact that the crack is of recent appearance. The crack widens every year, and, as it widens, stones are dislodged from the mountain steeps. Their thundering falls from the heights may explain the rumbling, and their clouds of dust account for what appears to be smoke. The widening of the crack is possibly due to the gradual upheaval of the mountain.

The region of the gap is famous for sensational stories. In 1811, when known as Chimney Rock pass, a superstitious tale of a spectre cavalry fight, occurring here, was widely published in the newspapers of the day. The alleged witnesses of the spectacle were an old man and his wife living in the gap before Chimney Rock fall. So much interest was created in Rutherfordton by its recital, that a public meeting was held and a delegation, headed by Generals Miller and Walton, with a magistrate and clerk, visited the old couple and took their affidavits, to this effect: For several evenings, while shadows filled the pass and sunlight still lingered on the mountain summits, they had seen, from their doorway, two bodies of cavalry advance toward each other across the sky. They heard the charge sounded, and saw them meet in conflict, with flashing swords, groans, shouts of victory, and then disappear. Three more settlers testified as witnesses of the same vision. They were all believed trustworthy, but evidently deluded by some natural phenomenon. Giving credence to the tale, explanations were advanced, but none are satisfactory.

It is a half-day’s ride of unmarked interest from the bank of Broad river across the Bald mountains to the Catawba. The road is an old mail route to Marion, McDowell county. The air was hot and sultry in the middle of the day, when, after crossing the Bald mountains, I traveled over the foot-hills through woods of scrubby oaks and pines. The road was white, dry, and dusty. The branches of the impoverished trees, hanging with a melancholy droop, seemed panting with heat, and craving the presence of a breeze. Hawks circled overhead, and on a rail fence, visible at one break in the forest, a line of crows was roosting, with their glossy black plumage reflecting the sunlight. Their cawing heightened the effect of the scene. A ride alone through such scenery, and under such influences, tells upon one’s strength and spirits. After winding through a beautiful valley, and a moment later fording the Mill fork of Catawba river, I found myself in the little village of Old Fort. Its houses line a wide street, running parallel with the Western North Carolina railroad, and range along several short cross streets. A wooded hill rises back of it. During the Revolutionary war, and after, a fort with a strong stockade, enclosing a spring, stood on the bank of the stream. There were no battles fought here, but many depredations by Cherokees occurred, in which several people were killed in the vicinity. It is from this fort that the town takes its name.

About an hour before sunset, on that August day, I left Old Fort, by way of a well-traveled road, for Pleasant Gardens. There is many a level stretch for a gallop along this road, and I improved the opportunities afforded for a rapid push on my journey. Through the country I went, with the fields on my right, and the woods of the hills on my left; past large, pleasant-looking farm houses in the midst of ancestral orchards and wide-spreading farm lands. The streams are clear, but slow and smooth-flowing. The number of persimmon trees and hollies along the roadside mark a difference between the woods of this section and those of the higher counties.

It was after one of my easy gallops, that, bursting from a twilight wood, I beheld lying before me a valley scene of striking beauty. A broad and level tract of farming land, covered with meadows, corn and pea-fields, stretched away from the forested skirts of the hill-sides. From my point of observation not a house dotting the expanse could be seen, and not even the sound of running water (a marked feature of the higher valleys) disturbed the evening stillness. A cool pleasant breeze was stirring, but it scarcely rustled the leaves overhead. The dark outlines of Mackey’s mountains filled the foreground, making a broken horizon for the blue sky. On the right lay low hills. On the left the summits of a lofty line of peaks, behind which the sun was sinking, were crowned with clouds of flame, while the scattered cat-tails held all the tints and lustre of mother of pearl. That night I stopped in Pleasant Gardens, one of the richest and most beautiful valleys to be found in any land. It is miles in extent. John S. Brown was my hospitable and entertaining host. The large, frame house and surroundings vividly reminded me of my native state. Everything showed evidence of thrift and neatness, and withal a certain ancestral air, one that only appears with age, overhung the approach to, and portals of, the mansion. It was built a century ago, but many additions and repairs have been made since the original log-raising. Osage-orange hedges line the path to it under the cluster of noble trees. On the left as you approach, only a few feet from the house’s foundations, flows Buck creek with swift, clear waters: a trout stream in a day before civilization had cleared its banks.

Under a clouded sky I mounted my horse on the third morning of my journey, and set out from Pleasant Gardens. The fording of a stream is of so frequent occurrence in a trip through the Carolina mountains, that one is apt to have a confused recollection of any one river or creek that he crosses, although few are devoid of beauty or wildness. Those of the Catawba, as it flows through McDowell county, have lost the characteristics of the mountain ford. Boulders and out-cropping ledges of rock are absent; the rush and roar of crystal waters have given place to a smooth and less transparent flow, or noiseless, dimpled surface; the banks are of crumbling soil, and, instead of rhododendrons and pines, alders and willows fringe the waters’ edges.

The great valleys of the Catawba are covered principally with unfenced fields of corn. The road leads through rustling acres, where one’s horse, guided with slack rein by absent-minded rider, can, as he walks along, break a green ear of corn from the standing stalk, without stretching his neck over a fence. To prevent cattle from running at large through these thickly-planted lands, gates are swung across the roads at the division fence of each plantation, and from necessity, the traveler must open them to ride through; and then, from moral obligation, he must shut them behind him. The farm-houses are home-like in appearance. They denote prosperity, happiness and culture in the families inhabiting them. Many are of antique architecture, and set back on level lawns, under ornamental trees and flourishing orchards.

Toward the middle of the morning, the sharp outlines of the Linville mountains showed themselves in the east, and after an abrupt turn from the Bakersville road, I struck the North fork of the Catawba, and rode twelve miles along its picturesque course. Its waters have a peculiar, clear, green hue, and speak of speckled trout in their depths and shaded rapids. Without a guide, I could have followed up the North fork, under the shadows of Humpback mountain, and, by a trail, have crossed the ridge to the Linville falls; but by this route the wild scenery of the Linville cañon is lost. Bryson Magee was my guide to the Burke county road along the summit of Bynum’s bluff. Just after a slight shower, he overtook me as he was returning from a day’s work for a North Fork farmer. He had an open, tanned countenance, fringed by a brown beard, and capped by a head of long hair, hidden under the typical mountain hat--a black, slouch felt, with a hole for ventilation in the center of the crown and minus the band. An unbleached, linen shirt, crossed by “galluses” which held his homespun pantaloons in place, covered his body. He wore shoes and walked leisurely.

“Is there anyone on this road who can guide me up Bynum’s bluff?” I asked him, after returning his “howdy.”

“Why, some niggers live nigh hyar who could do hit, but they’re all at work two mile below.”

“Any one else I could get?”

“Not a soul, except--”

“Who?” I asked.

“Wal, stranger--I reckon you’s a furriner--I kin do hit, but I’m powerful tired: worked all day.”

When we arrived at his log cabin, he had definitely determined to go. It was then four o’clock, and clouds were driving thick and dark across the sky. We tied the saddle-bags to the saddle, and then began the ascent. Bryson led my horse; I walked on behind.

Before we had proceeded 100 yards, a light rain began falling. This did not deter us, for Bryson, like all the denizens of the coves, was callous to dampness, heat, and cold, and as for myself, a rubber coat came in play. The flinty ground was set with whortleberry bushes--a true indicator of sterility. These berries were ripe, and we gathered them, as we tramped along the trail, while the clouds grew heavier around us, and the rain swept in blinding sheets through the scrubby forest. There was no thunder to add variety to the storm, only the moan of the wind, and the sound of tree tops swaying in the gusts. The water poured in streams from my hat, and my legs, to the knees, were soaked from contact with wet bushes; but gradually it cleared over-head, and when we reached the main road, on the summit of the ridge, the clouds had parted, and through their rifts the sun, still an hour high, poured a burning glory over the dripping forests.

Looking southward in the direction the guide pointed, a mighty, rock-topped mountain, lifting itself into the sunlight above the fog, was visible. It appeared like a stone wall rising from the ocean. Squared off in sharp outlines, without trees or lesser visible vegetation on its level summit, it presents a striking contrast to the other peaks of the Alleghanies south. It is the Table Rock mountain, 3,918 feet in altitude. Hawk-bill, a peak named from its top being crowned with a tilted ledge of moss-mantled rock, resembling the beak of a hawk, stood before me as I turned toward the left. Its altitude is 4,090 feet. Both these peaks are accessible for climbers, and are much visited by tourists curious to examine the character of their rock formation.

“We jist hit it,” broke forth the guide, “a minute more an’ we wouldn’t seen ’em. See, the fog’s crawlin’ up, slow but shore.”

It was as he had said. The massed vapors in the low sunk vales were being driven upward, and a moment later they had enfolded Table Rock and Hawk-bill, and were creeping through the woods around us. I now handed him fifty cents, the price for a day’s common labor through that section, and, shaking hands, we separated. It was five miles to the nearest house, and lacked only one hour of sunset. Three miles had been passed over, when a sound, as of some distant waterfall, struck on my ears. It was a soft, steady, liquid murmur. Halting my horse, I sat in the saddle and listened, then dismounted, tied, and walking through the weeds a few steps, reached some broken rocks at the edge of a precipice. Clinging to a tree, I leaned over and looked below through perpendicular space over 1,000 feet. I shouted from the sensations created by the wonderful wildness of the scene.

At first sight down into a cañon, that seemed almost fathomless, I saw an inky, black band stretched through the depths, with surface streaked with silver. It was the Linville river, but distance rendered its waters motionless to the vision. A thin mist lent an indescribable weirdness to the scene, and seemed veiling some mighty mystery in its folds. “Wrapping the tall pines, dwindled as to shrubs in dizziness of distance,” it was being shaken from its foothold by varying breezes, broken into separate sheets of vapor, and pushed upward along the perpendicular walls. It curled and twisted weirdly through the tangled pines, filling black rents in the opposite mountain’s face, shielding a ragged, red cliff here and there, but at every movement mounting toward the cañon’s rim. Soon the profile faces on the upper cliffs jutted out in clear air; the brick-like fronts of rock, in pine settings across the chasm became plainly visible; the lower forests stood free; the dark river, sweeping in an acute angle, within stone drop below, tossed upward its eternal echo; the mists had clustered in thick clouds on the summit of an unknown peak, and then all grew dusky with the approach of night.

A scene is sublime, according to its power to awaken the sense of fear; the more startling, the more sublime. The view of Linville cañon from the Bynum’s Bluff road possesses, in the writer’s opinion, more of the elements of sublimity than any other landscape in North Carolina. The region of the Linville is one of scenery grandly wild and picturesque. The only region that approaches it in wildness and sublimity--being somewhat similar in the perpendicularity of its mountains and the clearness of its stream, but contrasting by the fertility of its soil and luxuriance of its forests--is the Nantihala River valley.

The Linville range is a spur of the Blue Ridge, separated from the latter by the North Fork valley. It trends south, and for a distance is the dividing line between Burke and McDowell. Its highest altitude is about 4,000 feet. Jonas’ Ridge runs parallel with it on the east, and between them, through a narrow gorge, over 1,000 feet deep, flows Linville river. The rocks of these mountains are sandstones and quartzites. The soil is scanty and sterile, and the forests scrubby. The falls are distant from Marion on the Western North Carolina railroad, about twenty-five miles, and reached as the writer has described. From Morgantown, on the same railroad, they can be reached by a day’s ride in conveyance over the highway on the summit of the mountains. Hickory is also a point from which to start, and one frequently taken by tourists.

That night I dried my clothes at T. C. Franklin’s fireside, one mile from the falls of the Linville. Around the crackling logs (this was in August) was a small party, such as is often collected at mountain wayside farm-houses. Steaming their clothes with me at the broad hearth, were two Philadelphia lawyers. A few days previous, closing their musty tomes, filing away their legal documents, and reconciling importunate clients with fair promises, they had locked their doors to silence, dust and cobwebs, and started southward. In Virginia they each bought a horse, and equipped like myself, they were doing the mountains. It was not only their first visit to Western North Carolina, but their first trial in that mode of traveling; and, like all innocents abroad, they had gathered some interesting matters from personal experience. While the good-wife rattled away at the plates on a table just cleared by us of everything in the shape of food, in spite of the steady patter of rain on the roof, warmed by the glowing fire, and growing enthusiastic over mutual praise of the mountain scenery, we drifted into the following conversation:

“That view from the Roan eclipses everything I have ever seen in the White, Green, Catskill and Virginia mountains; but I would not ascend it again for all the views from Maine to Florida, if I had the same experience to pass through,” said one, whose black hair, eyes, beard and dark complexion gave him a brigand appearance.

“No,” returned his pleasant, fair-faced companion, “You know the peril of your being abroad nights. Some one else, less timid, might actually shoot you.”

“Were you in danger of being shot?” I asked.

“Yes; shot for a highwayman,” answered he of the open countenance, and then he laughed.

“How so?”

“Oh! Hal’s joking about the shooting business. I was taken for a robber; that’s a fact; but what I mean by an unpleasant experience was our being lost on the Roan.”

“I intend to ascend the Roan. Is the way hard to find?” I spoke to the dark-visaged man.

“It is from the Tennessee side. We took that route, with explicit directions how to reach the hotel on the summit. It was only fifteen miles distant from our stopping-place, but it rained, and a dark morning gave us a late start. From Cranberry to the foot of the Roan we pursued a trail way, and a tangled pursuit it was. At the base of the mountain we wound ourselves up in a net-work of log roads that, cut by the lumbermen, branched out in every direction, crossing and recrossing each other in the great woods. Extricating ourselves from this, we climbed the mountain, arriving on the ridge about sunset. Just before gaining the ridge, we met a party of four tourists on foot, whom we saluted and left behind. A painted gate led us astray, and we followed the ridge leading to the Little Roan. We retraced our steps in the rain and darkness, and took shelter near the delusive gate in an empty but comfortable cabin, erected evidently for lost wayfarers. I went out after we had started a fire, and found the party of four men seated on a log in the rain at some distance from the cabin. I invited them to return with me, but they declined. I said nothing more, considering them _non compos mentis_.”

“A singular party. Did you discover any reason for their refusal?”

“Yes,” began the one addressed as Hal, “Mat’s face, dress, and figure frightened them; and, as they told the landlord in the morning, in spite of their being well armed, they preferred an all night’s roost in the rain to falling into the clutches of a highwayman.”

“Well, that’s so” said Mat, nodding his head and smiling; “However, we were lucky in finding the cabin before they did. Had they got there first, they would have barred the door against us, and, perhaps, warned us away with a few pistol shots.”

Our social ring was at this point broken up by a party who seemed too much preoccupied with themselves to join us, and so we separated for the night. The party in question consisted of two newly married couples. The knots had been tied in Morganton, a few days previous, and they were then on their bridal tour. They drove up in the rain, unharnessed and tied their horses under the dripping trees (for the stable was full), and came in upon us.

On the next morning, under a clear sky, I wound my way on foot under the limbs of kalmia and rhododendrons to the Linville falls. It is a wild approach. Over the hedges tower ancient hemlocks with mossed trunks. The blue-jay screamed through the forest, and around the boles of the trees and along the branches, squirrels, known as mountain boomers, chased each other, halting in their scampers to look down on the disturber of the solitude. Once, a brilliant-breasted pheasant, roused by my footsteps, from a bed of fern-crested rocks, sprung in air close before me, and with a startled whirr, sailed up a shaded ravine. A sportsman, with a shot-gun, could easily have winged the bird in its flight, thereby securing a valuable trophy for the taxidermist. The cock pheasant of the mountains has not a shabby feather on his body: They are found in many sections of the mountains, but not in great numbers. The hollow drum-like sound caused by beating their wings against their bodies, is in most instances their death tattoo. At its sound from the neighboring cove, the hunter takes down his rifle, creeps near the favorite log, and generally makes a dead shot.

An old mountaineer, famous as a narrator of bear and fish stories, was particularly fond of telling one relating to pheasant shooting. One autumn day, having already marked the forest locality from which the drum of a pheasant resounded every morning, he crept near with his rifle. The bird had just jumped in place and was drumming within his sight. He took deliberate aim and fired. On running to the log he discovered a red fox struggling in his death throes on the opposite side of the log, and in his mouth a dead pheasant. Reynard, as the mountaineer explained, marking the frequented log, had secreted himself close beside it, and, while the mountaineer was aiming, was preparing to seize the bird, and did so at the moment the trigger was pulled.

The heavy thunder of the falls swept through the forest, increasing as I advanced. The path diverged at one point, and, taking the right hand trail, by means of the roots of the laurel, I descended a cliff’s face in cool, dismal shade. At the bottom, I came out on a black ledge of rock, close to the river. A stupendous fall was before; stern walls of a rocky cañon, 100 feet high, around me, and a blue sky smiling above. I climbed a stair-way of moist rocks, and walked along the path on the cliff’s front to a point directly before the fall’s face. The great volume of the Linville river, formed from drainage for fifteen miles back to the water-shed of the Blue Ridge, here at the gap between Jonas’ Ridge and the Linville mountains, has cut asunder a massive wall, leaving high perpendicular cliffs towering over its surface, and then, with a tremendous leap, pours its current down through space, fifty feet, into the bottom of the cañon. It seems to burst from a dark cavern in the mountain’s center. A pool, sixty feet across, looking like the surface of a lake with dark waves white-capped, spreads in a circle at the base of the cliffs. After recovering from the dizziness of its plunge, the river, leaving the piny walls on either side, rushes along in view for a short distance, and then disappears around the corner of a green promontory.

If one, in retracing one’s steps, takes the left hand trail at the point of divergence, and follows it to the edge of the cliffs, a magnificent downward view will be obtained, both of the foot of the cataract, and above, where its waters race in serpentine course, increased in velocity by the plunges over smaller falls only a few yards up the gorge.

A wilder solitude, a more picturesque confusion of crags, waters, woods, and mountain heights, can scarcely be found. But even here, man once fitted for himself a dwelling-place; for plainly visible across the tops of the trees, was a little cabin on a small, sloping clearing. No smoke curled upward from its weather-worn roof; its doors had been torn away and chimney leveled. A few cows pastured before it.