An old mountaineer, famous as a narrator of bear and fish stories, was particularly fond of telling one relating to pheasant shooting. One autumn day, having already marked the forest locality from which the drum of a pheasant resounded every morning, he crept near with his rifle. The bird had just jumped in place and was drumming within his sight. He took deliberate aim and fired. On running to the log he discovered a red fox struggling in his death throes on the opposite side of the log, and in his mouth a dead pheasant. Reynard, as the mountaineer explained, marking the frequented log, had secreted himself close beside it, and, while the mountaineer was aiming, was preparing to seize the bird, and did so at the moment the trigger was pulled.
The heavy thunder of the falls swept through the forest, increasing as I advanced. The path diverged at one point, and, taking the right hand trail, by means of the roots of the laurel, I descended a cliff’s face in cool, dismal shade. At the bottom, I came out on a black ledge of rock, close to the river. A stupendous fall was before; stern walls of a rocky cañon, 100 feet high, around me, and a blue sky smiling above. I climbed a stair-way of moist rocks, and walked along the path on the cliff’s front to a point directly before the fall’s face. The great volume of the Linville river, formed from drainage for fifteen miles back to the water-shed of the Blue Ridge, here at the gap between Jonas’ Ridge and the Linville mountains, has cut asunder a massive wall, leaving high perpendicular cliffs towering over its surface, and then, with a tremendous leap, pours its current down through space, fifty feet, into the bottom of the cañon. It seems to burst from a dark cavern in the mountain’s center. A pool, sixty feet across, looking like the surface of a lake with dark waves white-capped, spreads in a circle at the base of the cliffs. After recovering from the dizziness of its plunge, the river, leaving the piny walls on either side, rushes along in view for a short distance, and then disappears around the corner of a green promontory.
If one, in retracing one’s steps, takes the left hand trail at the point of divergence, and follows it to the edge of the cliffs, a magnificent downward view will be obtained, both of the foot of the cataract, and above, where its waters race in serpentine course, increased in velocity by the plunges over smaller falls only a few yards up the gorge.
A wilder solitude, a more picturesque confusion of crags, waters, woods, and mountain heights, can scarcely be found. But even here, man once fitted for himself a dwelling-place; for plainly visible across the tops of the trees, was a little cabin on a small, sloping clearing. No smoke curled upward from its weather-worn roof; its doors had been torn away and chimney leveled. A few cows pastured before it.
After dinner I left Franklin’s to ride over a good road up the Linville river. The afternoon passed without any occurrences or scenes of marked interest, and the sun was slowly sinking toward a mountain-rimmed horizon when, making a last inquiry in regard to my route, I entered a wilderness, unbroken by human habitation for nearly five miles. It was a great, green-lined way. Linns, birches, and hemlocks met over-head, rendering dark the shadows. Under this forest, grow in richest luxuriance dark hedges of rhododendron, too dense for easy penetration, and reaching up to the lower branches of the trees. It was late in season for their flowers, still many of them were white and purple with bloom. So deep and luxuriant was the foliage of the forest and its undergrowth, and so cold the waters of the stream that crossed and recrossed or occupied the road-bed itself, that the air was chilly at the hour in which I rode, and must be so even at noon-day.
The shade continued to deepen, and the chilliness of the air increased; still, in spite of the apparent great distance I had covered, no house presented itself, and in only one place did the branches of the trees separate themselves sufficiently to see out. Then, far beyond, I saw the black summit of the Grandfather. That was all. The waters of the stream are of a rich, Rhine-wine color. At one point that day, I noticed, attached to a fence above the stream, a board bearing the words, “No fishing allowed on this land.” This is the only posted warning against angling that I have seen, or know of, in the mountains.
In that twilight hour the stream seemed to sing a doleful refrain over the smooth boulders and gnarled ivy roots. An owl hooted from its hidden perch in a mossed pine; and a scared rabbit, interrupted in its evening meal on an apple dropped by some lonely wayfarer, fled across the road, and disappeared in the gloom of the thickets. A more dismal woodland for a twilight ride could not well be imagined in the possibilities of nature. It would naturally be more dismal to the unfamiliar traveler, tired with a long day’s ride, and despairing of reaching a farm-house before the approach of a cloudy night.
Suddenly the forest on one side opened, and a clearing of dead, girdled trees, with brush fires blazing here and there among the white, standing trunks, lay before me. Further on was a meadow and a small house, from whose chimney a wreath of smoke was ascending straight to the zenith. Over the house and farm loomed the rock-crowned summit of the Peak of the Blue Ridge. An unshapely ledge cropped from the mountain’s top.
I was now on the summit of one of the gaps of the Blue Ridge, at an elevation of 4,100 feet. On one side down a gradual descent through the wilderness described, flow the waters of the Linville on the way to the Atlantic; on the other, close on the dividing line, wells up the spring forming the Watauga, whose waters mingle with the Mississippi. A short mile below this point, down the Watauga side, is Calloway’s, at the foot of the Grandfather, as the sign-board directly before the gate will tell the man who stops to read it. In the dusk, I dismounted here, tossed my horse’s bridle to a barefooted boy, and then lugged my saddle-bags to the porch before the unpainted front of a new addition on an old house. I was well received and seated.
Beside the road, before the house, was presented that evening a scene that merits description. It was the camp of a family who, having abandoned one home, was seeking another. An open fire blazed on the ground. Its light shone on a white covered, rickety wagon, at whose rear end were feeding, out of a box strapped there, a mule and a horse. The mule was all ears; the horse all ribs, backbone, and neck, plainly appearing through a drum-tight hide. Around the fire was a squalid group consisting of a man, woman, and four small boys. The man and boys were barefooted, and wore nothing but hats, breeches, and shirts. The woman had on a tattered gown, and had her pinched features concealed within a dark bonnet. At that moment they were drinking coffee in turns from a single tin cup, and eating corn bread. The pinched features, straggling hair, and sallow, almost beardless face of the man, made his a visage of stolid apathy. At intervals, a gust, sweeping down the narrow valley, would lay low the flames and whirl the smoke in a circle, enveloping the group, and awakening a loud coughing from the woman. My supper was not ready until after I had seen the last one of the family crawl after the others into the wagon for the night.