Long Before We Reached The Ford We Thought We Would Like To Swap The Guide, Even At The, Risk Of Drowning.

The ford was passed, in due time, with no inconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast high to the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks and slippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to be commended.

There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossing a swift broad stream. It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream, while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.

The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited. Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped. The travelers endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land. Not much sold, he said. "There was one sale of a big piece last year; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know what he got for it."

All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one room, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only occasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like a cob house, that served for a stable. Not much cultivation, except now and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside, occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit. Here and there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned, or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were just beginning life. Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of the census of 1880) swarmed with children, and nearly all the women were thin and sickly.

In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now and then a horse. We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer, sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much pride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.

In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a letter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with patent-medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an evidence of culture that was worth noting. Mica was the rage. Every one with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the mineral fever. The impression was general that the mountain region of North Carolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral development, and the most extravagant expectations were entertained. Mica was the shining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also on the cards.

The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very pleasing.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 31 of 64
Words from 15930 to 16431 of 33318