A noticeable feature of these mountains is their smooth, bald summits; not a sterile baldness like that of ranges higher or in more rigorous climates, but only bald as far as concerns the growth of trees and underwood. Atmospheric forces have played their parts on the pinnacles. What once must have been sharp crowns of rock, have, with time, storm, and frost, become rounded hillocks. Due, perhaps to the sweeping winds, the dense balsam forests—the characteristic tree of the loftier heights of the Smoky, Black, Balsam and Blue Ridge—stop around the brows of the extreme tops, leaving, oftentimes, perfectly level tracts of treeless land, in some instances of 1,000 acres in extent. The soil is a black loam. A heavy sward, green, even in winter, covers these meadows. On them, around occasionally exposed surfaces of rock, the scarlet, blossom-bearing rhododendron, and clumps of heather, similar to that on the Scottish hills, are found. Every spring, thousands of cattle, branded, and sometimes hung with bells, are turned out on these upland pastures. It is an unequalled grazing land. Water wells forth even from the extreme higher edges of the forests, and on every slope are crystal streams.
The same striking difference, between the slopes of the Blue Ridge, is seen in the Great Smoky mountains. On the Tennessee side, the soil is sterile, in comparison with the North Carolina side. Bare, rocky faces are exposed to a stronger sun-light; the streams flow through slaty channels, heaped with gigantic boulders, and a sultry air pervades at the mountains’ base; still, flourishing forests cover the winding hollows, secluded coves, and even the craggy heights. One notable mountain cluster, the Chimneys, terminate in sharp, thin spurs of rock, differing in this particular from all the peaks of the Alleghanies south.
The North Carolina side is a luxuriant wilderness, where, not content with spreading overhead an unbroken roof of branches, brilliant with a foliage like that of tropical forests, Nature has carpeted the ground with mosses and grasses, and planted in vast tracts impenetrable tangles of the rhododendron and kalmia. These tangles are locally called “Hells,” with a proper noun possessive in remembrance of poor unfortunates lost in their mazes. There is no better timbered country in the United States. The wild cherry, of large growth, is found here in abundance, and other hard woods of a temperate clime attain majestic heights. The arrowy balsam shoots up to 150 feet, and the mast-like cucumber tree dangles it red fruit high above the common forest top.
The valleys are cleared and filled with the pleasant homes of hardy mountaineers. These farms, to the careless observer, appear to be the only marks of civilized life on the Smokies; but high above the main traveled roads, amid vast forest solitudes, beside small mountain streams, and in rich coves under sheltering ridges, are located many quiet cabins with no approach except by trail ways and known only to the tax-collector and cattle-herder.
Some of these trails, or poorly-worked roads lead the unsuspecting tourist into thickly-settled localities. Such a surprise awaits him if, at the cañon of the Cataluche, he leaves the highway leading from Haywood county to Knoxville. It is the most picturesque valley of the Great Smoky range. The mountains are timbered, but precipitous; the narrow, level lands between are fertile; farm houses look upon a rambling road, and a creek, noted as a prolific trout stream, runs a devious course through hemlock forests, around romantic cliffs, and between laureled banks.
But, to the observer from Clingman’s Dome, the clearings on the slopes of the Smokies are hidden from the eye. On all sides stretch wild, black forests, funereal in their aspect, wakened only by the cry of the raven, or the tinkle of the bell of some animal lost in their labyrinths. The great wildernesses of the deciduous trees lie below, mantling the ridges and hollows. In vain the eye endeavors to mark their limit: it is blanked by the misty purple into which the green resolves itself. Here, for the bear, deer, wolf, and panther, appears the natural home. Nowhere is there a more perfect roaming ground for these animals; but the hound, rifle, and trap, brought into active use by the Indians and mountaineers, have greatly thinned out the game; still, no better hunting is to be found east of the Mississippi.
Swain county, along the Graham county line, appeared the least inhabited section; and when, in the early part of October, we contemplated a deer drive, the above information regarding the skirts of the Great Smokies tended to drift us down the Little Tennessee. Our approach lay from that point in Haywood county which was then the terminus of the Western North Carolina Railroad, via Waynesville, Webster, and Charleston. We were mounted on stout horses, and were dressed in a manner anything but conspicuous; still, a party of four men, each with a Remington rifle or a breech-loading shot-gun, strapped for easy carrying across his back, forms a cavalcade of striking interest to denizens of mountain ways and the citizens of quiet villages.
Had we paid any attention to the opinion that, in the wilderness, we would be taken for revenue officers, and, as such, shot on sight by blockaders, we would have ridden uneasily. There is bravery in numbers, and then we knew better than to give countenance to such fears. Blockading, or “moonshining” as it is sometimes called, because the distiller works by the light of the moon, is not as prevalent in these mountains as is generally supposed; and, besides, it is growing less with every year. That an unobstrusive stranger stands in danger of being shot down by a blockader on suspicion of any kind, is a bug bear, in spite of its prevalence, almost too absurd for consideration. For the commission of a crime of this nature, it would take a strange combination of circumstances: a distiller with a murderous cast of mind; a tourist representing himself to be a United States officer, and the presence of an illicit still. Now, the blockader, like the majority of drinking men, is a good-natured fellow, who, while he deems himself a citizen of the United States, confounds natural with civil liberty, and believes he has the right to manufacture, drink and sell whisky in whatever manner he pleases so long as he does not interfere with the private rights of his neighbors. The tourist is generally a voluble fellow, anxious to make friends as he travels, and showing stronger inclination to have his bottle filled than to burst copper boilers or smash any barrels of mash. The still is hidden in retreats where a stranger would be as likely to stumble upon it as he would to finding the philosopher’s stone.
The tourist, traveling the lonely mountain highways, need have no fears as to the safety of his person or his pocket. It is true that murder cases are often on the county dockets, but these are the results of heated blood, and not of cupidity. Honesty is a strong trait of the mountain people.
Charleston, the county-seat of Swain,—a pleasant little village, whose existence dates only from the formation of the county in 1871,—is situated by the Tuckasege river, and at the foot of Rich mountain. It is in the midst of a new country. The two most conspicuous buildings, standing directly opposite each other at one end of the village street, are the new and old court-houses. The former is a substantial brick structure, likened by a wag, who draws his comparisons from homely observations, to the giant hopper of a mill, turned upside down. The old, frame court-house has its upper story used as a grand jury room, and its lower floor, as formerly, holds the jail. The dark interior of the “cage,” used for petty misdoers, can be seen under the front outside stairs, through a door with barred window. An apartment fitted up for the jailer is on the same floor, and, by a spiked, open slit, about six inches by two feet in dimensions, is connected with the “dungeon.” For its peculiar purposes this dungeon is built on a most approved pattern. It is a log room within a log room, the space between the log walls being filled up with rocks. It is wholly inside the frame building. Besides the opening where the jailer may occasionally peek in, is another one, similar to that described, where a few pale rays of daylight or moonlight, as the case may be, can, by struggling, filter through clapboards, two log walls, spikes, and rocks, to the gloomy interior. A pad-locked trap-door in the floor above is the only entrance. The daily rations for ye solitary culprit, like all our blessings, come from above—through the trap-door. Here, suspected unfortunates of a desperate stripe awaiting trial, and convicted criminals, biding their day of departure for the penitentiary or gallows, are confined in dismal twilight, and in turn are raised by a summons from above, and a ladder cautiously lowered through the opening in the floor. This invitation to clamber is always responded to with alacrity by the occupant below. As Swain county is particularly fortunate in having few crimes committed within its borders which call for capital or very vindictory and exemplary punishment, the dungeon is seldom put in use.