The Heart of the Alleghanies; or, Western North Carolina

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler; Ben S. Grosscup

“Why them dogs is racin’ like deer. Thet proves thet the bar is fur ahead, an’ they’re close to the top o’ the ridge at Eli’s stan’. The bar must hev crossed thar. But Good Jim! why aint he shot? Come, lets git out o’ this.”

The three dogs tugged on ahead of us. We traveled through a windfall for a quarter of a mile, and then came into the stand to find it vacant, and the hounds baying on the slopes, towards the Richland. They had crossed the gap, hounds and hunters, too; for a moment after we heard the musical notes from a horn wound by some one in the lower wilderness. It was wound to tell the standers to pass around the heights to the lofty gaps between the Richland and the waters of the Pigeon.

As was afterwards related, the bear had passed through Eli’s stand, but Eli was not there on account of his mistaking and occupying for a drive-way a gully that ended in a precipice on either side of the ridge. He, with the other stander, soon joined us and we pushed along the trail, towards the summit of the Great Divide.

This mountain stands 6,425 feet above the sea, and is the loftiest of the Balsams. Among the Cherokees it is known as Younaguska, named in honor of an illustrious chief. Except when the king of winter, puffing his hollow cheeks, wraps the sharp summits in the pure white mantle of the snow, or locks them in frosted armor, the Great Divide with its black, unbroken forests of fir, ever rises an ebon mountain. Its fronts are gashed, on the east, south and north sides, by the headwaters of the Pigeon, Caney Fork and Richland. For the reason of the two last-mentioned streams springing here, the mountain is termed by some geographers the Caney Fork or the Richland Balsam mountain.

Three distinct spurs of mountains, forming portions of the great Balsam chain, lead away from it as from a hub. One, trending in a due west course, splits into various connected but distinct ranges; and, after leaping a low gap, culminates in a lofty cluster of balsam-crowned peaks, known as the Junaluska or Plott group, seven of which are over 6,000 feet in altitude. The spur towards the north terminates in Lickstone and its foot-hills; while the one bearing east, a long, massive black wall, holding six pinnacles in altitude above 6,000 feet, breaks into ranges terminating in the Cold mountain, Pisgah, and far to the south, the Great Hogback.

From this description the reader may have some conception, however faint, of the majesty of the Balsam range, the longest of the transverse chains between the Blue Ridge and the Smokies, and forming with its high valleys, numerous mountains and those lofty summits of the Great Smoky chain towards which it trends, the culminating region of the Alleghanies.

On the south brow of the Great Divide, only a few feet lower than the extreme summit, lies an open square expanse of about 20 acres embosomed in the black balsams. It has every feature peculiar to a clearing left for nature to train into its primitive wildness, but in all its abandonment the balsams have singularly failed to encroach upon it; and, as though restrained by sacred lines which they dare not pass, stand dense and sombre around its margin. Its gentle slope is covered thick with whortleberry bushes, in this instance, contrary to the nature of that shrub, springing from a rich, black soil. Only one small clump of trees, near the upper edge, mars the level surface of the shrubs. It is called the Judyculla old field, and the tradition held by the Indians is that it is one of the footprints of Satan, as he stepped, during a pre-historic walk, from mountain to mountain.

We were informed by mountaineers that flint arrow heads and broken pieces of pottery have been found in this old field, showing almost conclusively that some of the Cherokees themselves, or the nation that built the many mounds, laid the buried stone walls and worked the ancient mica mines, occupied it as an abiding place for years.

There are other bare spots on these mountains known as scalds, and like this old field, situated in the heart of fir forests. They are grown with matted ivy, poisonous hemlock and briers, but traces of the fire, that at recent date swept them of their timber, are to be seen. In a few years the wilderness will have reclaimed them; but the Judyculla old field will remain, as now, a mysterious vistage, which the mutilations of time cannot efface.

Through a dark aisle, leading from the summit of the Great Divide, we descended to the Brier Patch gap, and here one of our number was stationed, while the rest of us toiled up a nameless black spur, crossed it and dropped slowly down to Grassy gap. It was past noon, and while we listened to the low baying of the hounds in the depths, we munched at a snack of corn bread and boiled corned beef. In the meantime, Wid was examining the trail from one slope to the other. He would peer closely into every clump of briers, pulling them apart with his hands, and bend so low over the grasses along the path, that the black strip in his light colored trousers, hidden by his brown coat tails when he walked erect, would be exposed to view.