Refreshed By This Little Touch Of Civilization, And With Horses Well
Fed, We Rode On Next Morning Towards Jonesboro, Over A Rolling,
Rather Unpicturesque Country, But Ennobled By The Big Bald And Butt
Ranges, Which We Had On Our Right All Day.
At noon we crossed the
Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle
girth,
Broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and
came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a
hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat
of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one
pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the
currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The
big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell
and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of
mahogany, recalled rural New England. Perhaps these refinements are
due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is
near. We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the
word fruit. When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the
oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,
set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and
a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want
company. The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here
ever since the war.
A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and
were entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous
and hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in the
morning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to
Jonesboro, and Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits
before us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.
It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she
excelled any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she
was by her own confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age
till she has passed this point) and the testimony of others a hundred
years old. But age had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor
the limberness of her tongue, nor her shrewd good sense. She talked
freely about the want of decency and morality in the young colored
folks of the present day. It was n't so when she was a girl. Long,
long time ago, she and her husband had been sold at sheriff's sale
and separated, and she never had another husband. Not that she
blamed her master so much he could n't help it; he got in debt. And
she expounded her philosophy about the rich, and the danger they are
in. The great trouble is that when a person is rich, he can borrow
money so easy, and he keeps drawin' it out of the bank and pilin' up
the debt, like rails on top of one another, till it needs a ladder to
get on to the pile, and then it all comes down in a heap, and the man
has to begin on the bottom rail again. If she'd to live her life
over again, she'd lay up money; never cared much about it till now.
The thrifty, shrewd old woman still walked about a good deal, and
kept her eye on the neighborhood. Going out that morning she had
seen some fence up the road that needed mending, and she told Mr.
Devault that she didn't like such shiftlessness; she didn't know as
white folks was much better than colored folks. Slavery? Yes,
slavery was pretty bad - she had seen five hundred niggers in
handcuffs, all together in a field, sold to be sent South.
About six miles from here is a beech grove of historical interest,
worth a visit if we could have spared the time. In it is the large
beech (six and a half feet around six feet from the ground) on which
Daniel Boone shot a bear, when he was a rover in this region. He
himself cut an inscription on the tree recording his prowess, and it
is still distinctly legible:
D. BOONE CILT A BAR ON THIS TREE, 1760.
This tree is a place of pilgrimage, and names of people from all
parts of the country are cut on it, until there is scarcely room for
any more records of such devotion. The grove is ancient looking, the
trees are gnarled and moss-grown. Hundreds of people go there, and
the trees are carved all over with their immortal names.
A pleasant ride over a rich rolling country, with an occasional strip
of forest, brought us to Union in the evening, with no other
adventure than the meeting of a steam threshing-machine in the road,
with steam up, clattering along. The devil himself could not invent
any machine calculated to act on the nerves of a horse like this.
Jack took one look and then dashed into the woods, scraping off his
rider's hat but did not succeed in getting rid of his burden or
knocking down any trees.
Union, on the railway, is the forlornest of little villages, with
some three hundred inhabitants and a forlorn hotel, kept by an
ex-stage-driver. The village, which lies on the Holston, has no
drinking-water in it nor enterprise enough to bring it in; not a well
nor a spring in its limits; and for drinking-water everybody crosses
the river to a spring on the other side. A considerable part of the
labor of the town is fetching water over the bridge.
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