You are on the village streets. A few shop lights gleam across the way, but there is no bustle before any of them, and you will imagine that the villagers, careful of their health, retire at sundown. Some of them certainly do, but it is no unusual thing to hear laughter on the hotel porch even as late as midnight, and no deaths or arrests chronicled the next morning. The hotel keeper, Cunningham, is a queer character. He is a good-natured landlord, an excellent story-teller, and a shrewd horse trader. The first two accomplishments are appreciated by travelers. The curiosity about the hotel porch is the chairs. They are too high for a short man to get into without climbing, and so large that he will feel lost in them. At sight of these great chairs ranged about the hotel door, the traveler will imagine that he has dropped into a colony of giants.
Franklin is a growing town. This is due to the fact of its being in the center of a farming and mining country. It is a market for grain, and in past years for the mica taken from several paying mines in the vicinity. It is 71 miles distant in a southwest course from Asheville, and about 30 miles from Clayton, the seat of Rabun county, Georgia. A fine brick court-house has lately been built in the village center.
From Franklin the State road toward the Nantihalas leads across hills and through valleys to the Savannah, whose meanderings it follows under heavy foliaged forests. The road from the eastern base of this range across the summit to the opposite base, winds through a lonely wilderness. It is the grandest highway of the mountains. At the commencement of the ascent stands a primitive toll-gate, one of the many obnoxious guardians to state roads. A quarter will be demanded before passage is permitted. The house of the toll-gate keeper is on one side. There is moss on its roof and green vines on its front. The skeleton of a venerable saw-mill, whose straight, perpendicular saw is allowed to rust through a great part of the time, stands on the opposite side below a beaver-like dam. The sound of crashing waters continually breaks the silence of the great woods.
The distance over the mountain is 12 miles, and but one house, a log cabin, empty and forlorn, almost hidden in a dark cove, is to be seen. The woods are as dense as those of the lowlands, and so well trimmed by nature, so fresh and green are they, so invigorating the air that circles through them, that one, if he ever felt like retiring to some vast wilderness, might well wish his lodge to be located here. All the mountains of the Nantihala range are exceedingly steep. To ascend this one, the road winds back and forth in zigzag trails, so that in reaching one point near the summit, you can clearly see three parallel roads below you. The view from the top of the pass is one never to be forgotten. Higher spurs of the Nantihalas shoot up in rugged magnificence across the gorge that falls away from the brow of the peak on which the highway winds. In spite of the rocky and perpendicular character of the slopes of these neighboring peaks, black wild forests cover them from bases to summits. Dazzling white spots on the front of the nearest mountain show where some enterprising miner had worked for mica. In one direction there is a valley view. It is toward the east. Its great depth renders one dizzy at the prospect. White specks on yellow clearings in the green basin mark the few farm houses. A streak of silver winds through it, vanishing before the eye strikes the bases of the Cowee mountains, which wall the background.
All along the lofty pass, the road is crossed by little sparkling streams pouring over the mossed rocks, under the birches and pines. By one of these roadside rivulets is an enchanting spot for a noonday lunch.
“Here twilight is and coolness: here is moss,
A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.
Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart
Be innocent, here, too, shalt thou refresh
Thy spirit, listening to some gentle sound,
Or passing gale, or hum of murmuring bees!”
The western slope is less precipitous than the eastern, and after a descent through an unbroken forest, the traveler arrives at Monday’s. The most direct course to Charlestown, Swain county, is down the river; but for the next ten or twelve miles the mountains so crowd the stream that no road is laid. A bridle-path winds through the forbidding fastnesses, occasionally in sight of the stream. From Brier Town, a scattered settlement, the falls of the river can be reached by a walk of four miles. These falls, on account of their inaccessibility, are seldom visited, except by the cattle herder and hunter. They pour over the lip of a ragged cliff in a wild gorge, hidden by lofty and precipitous mountains.
The State road crosses the river on a bridge just below the fork of the road to Hayesville, the county seat of Clay. A mill and several houses are clustered near the bridge; but a moment after passing them you ascend the Valley River mountains. It is a well graded road, through chestnut and oak woods, for five miles to the lowest dip in the mountains. There is no view to be had, except of one wild valley that presents no striking features, but in the utter loneliness brooding over it. Down the slope you go through one of the densest and most luxuriant forests of the mountain region. It is a tremendous labyrinth of monarch hemlocks and balsams, so heavily burdened with foliage that their greenness approaches blackness, and renders the air so cold that the traveler riding through them, even in the middle of the morning, shivers in his saddle. The laurel grows to twice its customary height, affording safe coverts for the bear and wolf. The ground is black. A stream flows along by and in the road, the only noisy occupant of the solitude visible and audible at all times.
Wild scenes appear as the base of the mountain is neared. As you advance under the shadows, around the foot of a steep ridge, bounded by a stream making mad music over the boulders, suddenly before you will tower a vine-mantled wall with top ragged with pines, cleaving the blue sky. Then, after lingering along the foot of this wall, as though loath to leave the cool greenness of its mossed rocks and woods, the road issues into a small circle of cleared land, where the ranges, drawing apart for a short distance, have allowed man to secure a foothold. In most of these confined dells it is, however, a feeble foothold; due, principally, to the indolence of the occupant. These homes are pictures of desolation;—a miserable log cabin with outside chimney crumbled to one-half its original height, and the end of the house blackened and charred from the flames and smoke poured upward along it; the roof heaped with stones to keep it in place; the door off its wooden hinges; the barn an unroofed ruin, and the clearing cultivated to the extent of one small patch of weed-strangled corn. The family who live in such a place will be alive, however, and outside as you go by. The man on the bench before the door will shout “howdy,” and continue smoking his pipe with as much complacency as if he had a hundred acres of golden wheat within his sight, a well filled granery, and cows weighing 1,200 instead of 500 pounds. From four to ten children, all about the same size, clustered along the fence, will excite wonder as to how they have lived so long.
Lazy men can be found in all countries; but no lazier specimen of humanity ever lived than one existing at present near the Tuckasege in Jackson county. We heard of him one night at a dilapidated farm-house of an ex-sheriff of that county. It can better be told in the exact words of the conversation through which we learned of the specimen’s existence; but, in order for you to fully appreciate it, it will be necessary to give an idea of the appearance of the house and its surroundings. The farm of level land was first owned by an enterprising farmer. The house, a large, log one, was built by him 40 years ago. It now consists of a main building of two stories, with a wing in the rear. It first struck us that the house had never been completed; for on riding toward it we found ourselves under a long roof extending from the main building. The loft and roof overhead were intact, and were supported by posts at the two corners out from the house. It was apparently a wing that had never been sided or floored.