“I drinks three and four cups to a meal. Hits powerful stimilation;” and then he rolled his dark, deep-sunken eyes at us over the rim of his saucer as he tipped the contents into the cavity under his moustache. Evidently he drank coffee as a substitute for unattainable blockade. Our host had no valuable information to impart; so, soon after supper we retired to a room set apart for us, and sank away for a sound night’s sleep in a high bed of suffocating feathers.
After our breakfast the next morning we went out on the porch. We supposed Picklesimer, too, had finished his repast, but were deceived. A minute after, he followed us with a full cup of steaming coffee which he placed on the window-sill, as it was too hot to hold steadily in his fingers, and interlarded his remarks with swallows of the liquid. His charges were one dollar apiece for our lodging, fare, and the stabling and feed for our horses. We then shook hands and departed. For days his short figure, with a steam-wreathing coffee-cup in hand, was before my eyes, and in my ears the words:
“I drinks hit fer stimilation.”
Horse cove lies in the extreme southern part of Jackson county, and within only three or four miles of the Georgia line. Its name is about as euphonious as Little Dutch creek, and is applied to this charming valley landscape for no other reason than that a man’s horse was once lost in it. Black Rock, with bold, stony, treeless front, looms up on one border, and on another, Satoola, with precipitous slope, wood-covered, forms a sheltering wall for the 600 acres of fertile, level land below. A hotel keeps open-doors in summer within the cove. The picturesqueness is heightened by the sight of an elegant and substantial residence, strangely but romantically situated, on the very brow of Black Rock. It is the property of Mr. Ravenel, a wealthy Charlestonian.
Through Horse cove there is a road leading to Walhalla, South Carolina, the nearest railroad depot, twenty-five miles away. It is a decidedly interesting route to be pursued by a tourist. You will follow the Chatooga river, into Rabun county, Georgia, along a picturesque course of falls and rapids, by primitive saw-mills, unworked and decaying, through a wild and cheerless tract of uncultivated mountain country, where miserable farm-houses, and none others, but seldom show themselves, and where the unbroken solitude breeds blockade whisky stills, in its many dark ravines and pine forests. It would bother any officer, in penetrating this section, to definitely ascertain when his feet were on North Carolina, Georgia, or South Carolina soil.
The road, however, which we wish to take the traveler over, leads up the Blue Ridge, in zigzag course, through the forested aisles of Black Rock. Three miles and a half is the distance from its base to the hamlet of Highlands. The engineering of the road is so perfect that, in spite of the precipitousness of the mountain, the ascent is gradual. Let the man on horse-back pay particular attention to his saddle-blankets while ascending or descending a mountain. If he wishes to keep under him a horse with a sound back, he will have to dismount every few minutes, unbuckle the girth, and slip the blankets in place. Among the worst of uncomfortable situations for the horseman, is that of being a hundred miles from his destination with a sore-backed saddle animal, which will kick or kneel at every attempt to mount. Imagine yourself, at every stopping-place, morning and noon, leading that horse to a fence upon which you, in the manner of a decrepit old fossil, are obliged to climb, to throw yourself with one leap into the saddle. The rosy-cheeked mountaineer’s daughter will most assuredly laugh at you, and ascribe to inactivity the fact of your inability to mount from the ground. A sorry figure! In every mountain stream forded, your steed will kneel to let the water lave his back. No chance for dreaming on your part. But worst of all, how disagreeable must a man’s sensations be, over the knowledge of the sufferings of the animal under him. Get down and walk would be my advice.
A word more on the subject of saddles and the beasts they cover. If it is a mule, see that you have a crupper on him. In descending a mountain it is impossible to keep a saddle, without the restraint of a crupper, from running against a mule’s ears. At such times, if you have objections to straddling a narrow neck which need not necessarily be kept stiff, you must walk. A breast-strap is often a valuable piece of harness to have with you for either horse or mule.
On gaining the gap of the mountain the traveler will find himself on a lofty table-land of the Blue Ridge, about 4,000 feet above ocean level. Whiteside, Satoola, Fodderstack, Black Rock, and Short-off support it on their shoulders, while their massive heads rise but little above the level. From the center of the plateau, such of these mountains as are visible appear insignificant hills when compared with their stupendous fronts and azure-lancing summits as seen from the contiguous valleys at the base of the Blue Ridge. This table-land contains 7,000 acres of rich land, shaded by forests of hard-wood trees and the sharp pyramidal-foliaged pines. The streams that drain it are of the color of topaz, except where sleepless mills have dammed the waters, and, giving them depth without apparent motion, have left dark, reflecting expanses, unrippled except when, at your approach, the plunging bull-frog leaves his widening rings, or a startled muskrat betrays by a silvery wake his flight to a sequestered home among the roots of the stream-ward-leaning hemlock.
In the most elevated portion of the center of the plateau is situated a thriving hamlet of one hundred or more people; a colony, strictly speaking, above the clouds, and appropriately called Highlands. It was founded in 1874 by Mr. Kelsey and Mr. Hutchinson, men of the same enterprising and enthusiastic mould that all founders of towns in primitive countries are cast in. Our first sojourn at Highlands was with Mr. Kelsey in 1877. Only a few dwellings and as many green clearings were to be seen; still, with an arder which to us seemed savoring of monomania, the projector had already laid out by means of stakes, streets of an incipient city, and talked as though the imaginary avenues of the forests were already lined with peaceful homes and shadowed by the walls and spires of churches. His aspirations are being slowly realized. The village, with a nucleus of men of the spirit of its founders, is rapidly assuming respectable proportions. Along the principal thoroughfare and parallel side streets are many pleasant dwellings, culminating with one of the cross streets in headquarters comprising a good hotel kept by a genial landlord, several stores, the post-office, two churches, and a school-house which is kept open for full and regular terms. A wide-awake newspaper, on a sound financial basis, made its first issue in January, 1883.
The farming lands surrounding the village are being settled principally by northern families. A railroad at no distant day will penetrate this plateau. A practicable route has been surveyed along the summit of the Blue Ridge from where the Rabun Gap Short Line crosses at the lowest gap in the range. A subscription list, in the form of enforceable contracts wherein each signer has bound himself to grade ready for the ties and rails certain sections of the route, has been completed. The prospects for the coming of the iron horse are of an encouraging character. The most convenient route to reach Highlands for the traveler who has not already entered the mountains for the summer, is from Walhalla, South Carolina, distant twenty-eight miles, on the Blue Ridge railroad.