This
Country Is Settled By Genuine Americans, Who Have The Aboriginal
Primitive Traits Of The Universal Yankee Nation.
The front porch in
the morning resembled a carpenter's shop; it was literally covered
with the whittlings of the row of natives who had spent the evening
there in the sedative occupation of whittling.
We took that morning a forest road to Valle Crusis, seven miles,
through noble growths of oaks, chestnuts, hemlocks, rhododendrons, - a
charming wood road, leading to a place that, as usual, did not keep
the promise of its name. Valle Crusis has a blacksmith shop and a
dirty, flyblown store. While the Professor consulted the blacksmith
about a loose shoe, the Friend carried his weariness of life without
provisions up to a white house on the hill, and negotiated for boiled
milk. This house was occupied by flies. They must have numbered
millions, settled in black swarms, covering tables, beds, walls, the
veranda; the kitchen was simply a hive of them. The only book in
sight, Whewell's - "Elements of Morality," seemed to attract flies.
Query, Why should this have such a different effect from Porter's? A
white house, - a pleasant-looking house at a distance, - amiable,
kindly people in it, - why should we have arrived there on its dirty
day? Alas! if we had been starving, Valle Crusis had nothing to
offer us.
So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the
Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and
passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape,
and the only outcropping of rock we had seen:
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