He was a good-natured and intelligent young man, by name Upson, whom I had met once before in an adjoining county at a country store, where he was exchanging dry-goods and tinware for ginseng, Solomon’s snake roots, herbs and mica. I answered his question, and upon urgent invitation seated myself by the fire. Two of the party were going to Asheville to attend Federal court. The elderly man and owner of one wagon was journeying in company with the young trader and his wagon to the Asheville market. The interrupted game of seven-up was never resumed. In the course of conversation Upson spoke of mica mining, and after stating that he was a Georgian, and had been in the mountains only a few years, he related a thrilling story, which I will give as nearly as possible in his own words, and call it
THE HAUNTED CABIN.
On one of the highest ridges of the Nantihala mountains, twenty-five miles from Franklin, Tabal and I had been out prospecting for mica for several days. With a blanket apiece, a pick, a spade and a quantity of provisions we had left the valley, intending to open a spot on the mountain, where mica had been discovered cropping out. All the afternoon of the 26th of February, and all day of the 27th, we worked at the surface mica, and had followed a promising vein of the mineral for several feet into the crumbling rock. The weather had been fine, and the night of the last mentioned date came on with fair and clear skies. Wrapped in our blankets, we slept by a roaring fire, under a shelving rock, in a thicket of black firs. By morning the weather had changed; a cold wet wind was sighing through the pines; the sky was overcast with dull heavy clouds, and the last day of February bid fair to end in a snow storm.
Tabal was rather uneasy, and wished to start for the settlement immediately; but with a nicely sorted-out pile of mica at our feet, and a solid block twelve inches square shining from the bottom of the excavation, I insisted on remaining until there was a decided change for the better or worse; so, after our morning repast, we went steadily to work again.
We did not notice the increasing coldness of the wind, and were only awakened to a sense of our dangerous position, when snow began to fall. To be caught on a mountain summit over 6,000 feet high in a snow storm was something little to be desired; and, with that idea, Tabal threw down his pick and proposed starting with haste for the settlement. Affairs did look threatening, and I concluded that his proposition was not to be despised. Hiding our tools and mica, with our blankets over our shoulders, we struck out on the trail for the valley.
The snow fell thicker and faster around us; and at the end of our first mile it was an inch deep. The way-worn path beneath our feet was of the same appearance as the forest slopes, all seeming one open wilderness, with nothing but occasional blazes on the scrub-oak tree trunks to mark the path of descent. Tabal needed nothing of the kind to find his way. So familiar is he with the whole range that, in the darkest night he could reach the valley without a wandering footstep. After two hours of slow travel the snow lay shoe-mouth deep, and the bitter wind, as it swept across the ridges, chilled and buffeted us, until, half frozen, with wet and benumbed feet, exhausted by ten miles of wading, and bruised by falls and slides, I felt my strength giving way. It was then half-past four by my watch; the snow was a foot in depth, and still falling.
“Only three mile further,” said my companion, when he noticed how I was lagging in my pace, “and we’ll fetch up at Ramear’s cabin. Cheer up, man, an’ in a few minutes we’ll be all right, I ’low.”
With this encouragement I quickened my footsteps and struggled on. Another mile had been slowly reeled out behind us; we had left the ridge and were in a hollow or cove, when a cabin suddenly appeared before us.
The place was one of the wildest and dreariest of the mountains. On one side rose a forest of balsams; with somber foliage covered with the white mantle of the storm; almost perpendicularly upward it trended. Tangled laurel spread over the bottom land, and interwoven with the ivy, hedged the banks of a stream fresh from its sources. On the other side a rocky bluff, crowned with snow and clad in evergreen vines, loomed up like the crumbling wall of some ancient castle, with its summit lost in the veil of the falling snow.
The cabin was jammed into a niche of this wall some twenty feet above the path we were following. It was a log hut of the humblest pretensions, tottering from age and decay on its rock foundation. In the shadow of the precipice, most gloomy it appeared, with its snow-burdened roof, moss-grown front, rough-plastered log chimney, and doorless entrance opening into a black interior. It looked to have been deserted a score or more of years, and its surroundings, unkept by the hand of man, by Nature were again being trained into primitive wildness. A cataract came pouring down by the cabin’s site. A regular ascent of steps led up to it through the laurel.