In the three zones

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

However, my beat lay so well to the south of it, lurked so far up in the mountain alleyways and southern river-cañons, that I found much to study and more to see. The railway did little more than take me to the field of labor; the saddle or the wagon or the country stage must do the rest. My first trip was to the east of my dominions; my headquarters were at Knoxville, and from there I rode through some thousand miles of mountain and of cove; and different enough and remote enough it was from all that I had known before, and from all that might know me or look askance upon a travelling-merchant selling snuff by sample. But this was but a breather, as it were; and on my second journey I was ordered to replace my predecessor, Jerry Sullivan, at his headquarters in Chattanooga, and take entire charge of that country. Already I had contracted a prejudice for the slow and unconventional modes of travelling; and after I had seen Jerry Sullivan, a genial Irishman, and had formal delivery of his office, and he had gone back with evident delight to his beloved New York, and I had sat there alone a day or two, I thought that I would open out the business westward. And looking at the map, it occurred to me that the Tennessee River was the natural avenue to my domains in that direction. Luckily, I made the acquaintance of a young land-prospector, with romantic instincts like my own; and the second evening after this idea came to me he and I were seated in a wooden dug-out canoe, my parcels of samples and his instruments in the waist of the boat, drifting swiftly down the brown stream at sunset, under the lofty shadow of the Lookout Mountain.

The stream was shallow, and its waters so opaque that six inches looked like six fathoms, and it happened not rarely that we ran upon a sand-bar in full mid-stream; but a hard shove at the pole would send us off, usually sideways, careening in the swirl. When we were not aground our time was rapid—some six or seven miles an hour, with the current, and the pole, and paddle. The mountains came close around us, and the shores contracted; and pretty soon the railway took a plunge into a tunnel and disappeared. No house nor light was in sight when the moon came out. For some twenty miles or more we swung down the swift stream silently, in a country that seemed quite unsettled. And as the night made it still harder to make out the deeper places, it is not surprising that after one long, gradual grate upon a mid-channel sand-bank, we settled in a bed that all our efforts were insufficient to dislodge us from. And Arthur Coe, my companion, by way of making the best night of it possible, and the moon and the mild May weather falling in, drew out a banjo from his traps in the bow and made melodies not unpleasant to a man who lay silent in the stern, looking at the stars and smoking his pipe.

A fine range of trees lined the opposite shore and, beyond, the forest rolled up in mountain-shoulders to the sky; but not a sign of human life was visible. So that we both started when, at the end of some negro melody, the refrain was taken up by a lusty chorus, and rang far out over the murmuring Tennessee. And in a few moments a large gum canoe filled with joyous darkies came to us from the farther shore; and finding our trouble, nothing would do but they must pull us ashore and we spend the night with “Massa.” Which we did, and a kind and queer old pair of gentry we found them, him and his wife, living alone with a dozen of old freed slaves, some dozen miles from anywhere. The old, wide, one-story plantation house stood in a clearing facing the river (which used to be much more of a river, with many steamers and cotton-craft, “befo’ de wo’”); and we had quite a concert before we went to bed, with all the cigars and other accompaniment that we needed. There were no young people in the house, only old massa and missus and the old slaves; and we heard some story of death in battle from the latter, as we all sang a hymn together before we went to bed, and took one final glass of whiskey; and even the negroes were allowed a taste of something, for wetting their whistles they had blown so well.

Thus it was, almost every night; and the long days were spent in drifting down the river; and even Coe was in no hurry to get to the place where he was to survey his railway or prospect his town; and either the people were so lonely, or their good will was so great, that they gave orders for snuff in a way that was surprising. Only one thing struck us—the absence of young people; not only of young men, but of girls. Coe said he thought the people were too old to have any children; but what had become of the children they should have had twenty years ago? “War-time,” said Coe, as if that explained it.

So we got down into Georgia, and then into Northern Alabama; and the river wound so that we were two weeks on the way. Coe was to prospect near a town called Florence, or Tuscumbia; places that then we never had heard of.

That day, at dawn, we ran on Muscle Shoals. Fresh from a night under the wild-grape vines, blossoming fragrantly, with a sweetness troubling to the spirit, acrid, whereunder we had slept like one drugged with wine—we had got into our canoe at sunrise or before, and pushed out into the stream. It lay broad and still and shimmering—so broad that we ought to have noticed its two or three miles of surface could scarce cover but three or four inches of depth. But our eyelids were heavy with the wild grape—as if its breath had been some soul phantasm of what was to be its fruit—and so we paddled dreamily to the midstream and ran aground.

“I say!” said Coe. But there was nothing to be said, and there we hung, two miles from either shore, and the sun rose full up stream, and gilded us.

In all that inland lake was but a hand’s-depth of water, flowing swift and softly over sand and shells. We took to our poles; hard choosing it would be which way lay deepest; and, one at either end, “Now then!” from Coe; and we moved, or didn’t move, or for the most part spun around upon the grinding shells, and Coe fell out of the boat and splashed shallowly upon his back upon the sand.

So all that day we labored; and the sun grew hot, so that Coe at noon sought wading for the shore to some shelter in the wild grapes; but that, half a stone’s-throw from the white clay bank ran swiftly some two fathoms deep of river Tennessee. So he came back and swore, and I laughed; and we set at it again. Meantime the slow, deep-laden scows, each with an appetizing tent for shade, spun downward close under that vine-shaded bank and jeered at us.

Late in the afternoon, raw-handed from the poles and raw in visage from a straight-down sun, we got away. Still breathless, burning, we too swung down the smooth stream, narrower, though still a half-mile wide; here it ran in curves by bold cliff-points castellated into white, vine-garlanded turrets of the strangely worn and carven limestone. No Rhine could be so beautiful; for here all was unprofaned, silent, houseless, lined by neither road nor rail.