FORD ON THE CUMBERLAND.
A few weeks ago I reached the same spot as the sun was rising, having come thither from Pineville by rail. As I stepped from the train I saw that the shadowy valley of my remembrance had been incredibly transformed. Some idea of the plan of the new town may be understood from the fact that Cumberland Avenue and Peterborough Avenue, intersecting each other near the central point of it, are, when completed, to be severally three and a half or four and a half miles long. There are twenty avenues and thirty streets in all, ranging from a hundred feet to sixty feet wide. So long and broad and level are the thoroughfares that the plan, as projected, suggests comparison with Louisville. The valley site itself contains some six thousand available acres.
It should be understood that the company owns property on the Tennessee side of the gap, and that at the foot of the valley, where a magnificent spring gushes out, with various other mineral springs near by—chalybeate and sulphur—it is proposed to establish a hotel, sanitarium, and casino which shall equal in sumptuousness the most noted European spas.
As I stood one day in this valley, which has already begun to put on the air of civilization, with its hotel and railway station and mills and pretty hometeads, [300] I saw a sight which seemed to me a complete epitome of the past and present tendencies there at work—a summing up of the past and a prophecy of the future. Creeping slowly past the station—so slowly that one knows not what to compare it to unless it be the minute-hand on the dial of a clock—creeping slowly along the Wilderness Road towards the ascent of Cumberland Gap, there came a mountain wagon, faded and old, with its dirty ragged canvas hanging motionless, and drawn by a yoke of mountain oxen which seemed to be moving in their sleep. On the seat in front, with a faded shovel-hat capping his mass of coarse tangled hair, and wearing but two other garments—a faded shirt and faded breeches—sat a faded, pinched, and meagre mountain boy. The rope with which he drove his yoke had dropped between his clasped knees. He had forgotten it; there was no need to remember it. His starved white face was kindled into an expression of passionate hunger and excitement. In one dirty claw-like hand he grasped a small paper bag, into the open mouth of which he had thrust the other hand, as a miser might thrust his into a bag of gold. He had just bought, with a few cents, some sweetmeat of civilization which he was about for the first time to taste. I sat and watched him move away and begin the ascent to the pass. Slowly, slowly, winding now this way and now that across the face of the mountain, now hidden, now in sight, [301] they went—sleeping oxen, crawling wagon, starved mountain child. At length, as they were about disappearing through the gap, they passed behind a column of the white steam from a saw-mill that was puffing a short distance in front of me; and, hidden in that steam, they disappeared. It was the last of the mountaineers passing away before the breath of civilization.
IV
Suppose now that you stand on the south side of the great wall of the Cumberland Mountain at Cumberland Gap. You have come through the splendid tunnel beneath, or you have crawled over the summit in the ancient way; but you stand at the base on the Tennessee side in the celebrated Powell's River Valley.
Turn to the left and follow up this valley, keeping the mountain on your left. You are not the first to take this course: the line of human ants used to creep down it in order to climb over the wall at the gap. Mark how inaccessible this wall is at every other point. Mark, also, that as you go two little black parallel iron threads follow you—a railroad, one of the greatest systems of the South. All along the mountain slope overhanging the railroad, iron ore; beyond the mountain crest, timbers and coals. [302] Observe, likewise, the features of the land: water abundant, clear, and cold; fields heavy with corn and oats; an ever-changing panorama of beautiful pictures. The farther you go the more rich and prosperous the land, the kinder the soil to grains and gardens and orchards; bearing its burden of timbers—walnut, chestnut, oak, and mighty beeches; lifting to the eye in the near distance cultivated hillsides and fat meadows; stretching away into green and shadowy valley glades; tuneful with swift, crystal streams—a land of lovely views.
Remember well this valley, lying along the base of the mountain wall. It has long been known as the granary of south-west Virginia and east Tennessee; but in time, in the development of civilization throughout the Appalachian region, it is expected to become the seat of a dense pastoral population, supplying the dense industrial population of new mining and manufacturing towns with milk, butter, eggs, and fruit and vegetables. But for the contiguity of such agricultural districts to the centres of ores and coals, it would perhaps be impossible to establish in these remote spots the cities necessary to develop and transport their wealth.
Follow this valley up for a distance of sixty miles from Cumberland Gap and there pause, for you come to the head of the valley, and you have reached another pass in the mountain wall. You have passed out of Tennessee into Virginia, a short distance from [303] the Kentucky border, and the mountain wall is no longer called the Cumberland: twenty miles southwest of where you now are that mountain divided, sending forth this southern prong, called Stone Mountain, and sending the rest of itself between the State line of Kentucky and Virginia, under the name of the Big Black Mountain. Understand, also, the general bearings of the spot at which you have arrived. It is in that same Alleghany system of mountains—the richest metalliferous region in the world—the northern section of which long ago made Pittsburgh; the southern section of which has since created Birmingham; and the middle section of which, where you now are, is claimed by expert testimony, covering a long period of years and coming from different and wholly uninterested authorities, to be the richest of the three.
This mountain pass not being in Kentucky, it might be asked why in a series of articles on Kentucky it should deserve a place. The answer is plain: not because a Kentuckian selected it as the site of a hoped for city, or because Kentuckians have largely developed it, or because Kentuckians largely own it, and have stamped upon it a certain excellent social tone; but for the reason that if the idea of its development is carried out, it will gather towards itself a vast net-work of railways from eastern Kentucky, the Atlantic seaboard, the South, and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, which will profoundly [304] affect the inner life of Kentucky, and change its relations to different parts of the Union.