A Certain Air Of Romance And Tradition Hangs About The French Broad
And The Warm Springs, Which The Visitor Must Possess Himself Of In
Order To Appreciate Either.
This was the great highway of trade and
travel.
At certain seasons there was an almost continuous procession
of herds of cattle and sheep passing to the Eastern markets, and of
trains of big wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered
by the Tennessee. Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters
in coach and four, with a great retinue of household servants, and
kept up for months that unique social life, a mixture of courtly
ceremony and entire freedom, the civilization which had the
drawing-room at one end and the negro-quarters at the other, - which has
passed away. It was a continuation into our own restless era of the
manners and the literature of George the Third, with the accompanying
humor and happy-go-lucky decadence of the negro slaves. On our way
down we saw on the river-bank, under the trees, the old hostelry,
Alexander's, still in decay, - an attractive tavern, that was formerly
one of the notable stopping-places on the river. Master, and fine
lady, and obsequious, larking darky, and lumbering coach, and throng
of pompous and gay life, have all disappeared. There was no room in
this valley for the old institutions and for the iron track.
"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
We, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."
This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
French Broad.
The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he
alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the
Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites,
known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of
minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock
is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign
substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and at the end of the
process it is as white and fine as the best bolted flour. This heavy
adulterant is shipped to the North in large quantities, - the manager
said he had recently an order for a hundred thousand dollars' worth
of it. What is the use of this powder? Well, it is of use to the
dealer who sells white lead for paint, to increase the weight of the
lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that it is mixed with powdered
sugar. The industry is profitable to those engaged in it.
It was impossible to get much information about our route into
Tennessee, except that we should go by Paint Rock, and cross Paint
Mountain.
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