Of arrant cranks and doubters,
Whose forte is flinging wretched jeers,
It richly merits hearty cheers
From true petroleum-shouters.
DR. W. GODFREY HUNTER.
Accompanied by Dr. W. G. Hunter, and a native as guide, it was my good fortune to visit this memorable locality in 1877. The start was from Burksville, Cumberland county, the doctor’s home and my headquarters for a twelvemonth. At Albany, Clinton county, sure-footed mules, the only animals that could be ridden safely through the rough country, took the place of our horses. Soon the last signs of civilization disappeared and we plunged into the thick woods, a crooked, tortuous trail pointing the way. Hills, rocks, ravines, fallen trees and mountain-streams by turns impeded our progress, as we rode in Indian file for thirty miles. Birds twittered and snakes hissed at the invasion of their solitudes. Several times the path touched the line of Beatty’s forgotten road and once a ruined cabin, with three grave-like mounds in a corner of the small clearing, met our gaze. The guide explained how, twenty years before, the poor family tenanting the wretched hovel had been poisoned by eating some kind of berries, the parents and their only child dying alone and unattended. No human eye beheld their struggles, no soft hand cooled the fevered brows of the sufferers whose lives went out in that desolate waste.
“Oh God! How hard it is to die alone!”
Provisions in our saddle-bags, a clear brook and evergreen boughs supplied us with food, drink and an open-air bed. Next morning we traversed a broad plateau, ending abruptly at the top of a precipitous bluff a hundred feet high. Beneath us lay a stretch of bottom-land, with the Big South Fork on its east side and the Cumberland Mountains rearing their bold crests five miles away. In the center of a patch of cleared ground stood a shanty, built of poles and roofed with split slabs of oak. From an open space in one end smoke escaped freely, showing that the place was inhabited. Tethering the mules and throwing the saddles upon the grass, we crawled down a slope formed by the collapse of a portion of the bluff. A shot from my revolver—everybody carried a pistol—shattered the atmosphere and brought the inmates to the side of the dwelling. The father, mother, a child in arms and two boys entering their teens watched our approach. As we drew nigh they scampered into the shanty and took refuge under a queer structure of rails, straw and blankets that did duty as a bed for the household! A blanket hung over the space cut for a door. Drawing this aside, the frightened family could be seen crouching on the bare soil, for the abode had neither door, window, floor nor chinking between the logs. It was quite unfit to shelter a decent porker. Not a chair, table, stove, looking-glass, bureau or any of the articles of furniture deemed necessary for modern comfort was in sight! A bench hewn out of timber with an axe, two metal-pots, some tin-dishes and knives and forks composed the domestic outfit! Yet it was “home” to the squalid beings huddled in the dark, damp, musty angle farthest from the intruders who had dropped in upon them as unexpectedly as a Peary meteor.
