Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/208

 i86

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��the grain to slide into sacks tended and weighed by a young fellow of seventeen, who in old times would have been well on the way to "William and Mary's," or possibly Yale, it might even be Harvard, but who now was finding a way to go into business and make money.

Similar receptacles for live geese feathers filled an apartment, and were likewise empted of their fluffy contents. The funny part of the plucking of the geese, by the way, was illustrated many years ago in Harper's Magazine, by Porte Crayon (Gen. D. H. Strother of Virginia).

On a floor below we found all man- ner of dried fruits about to be shipped north, seeds in countless variety, of which one of the most costly was lobelia, its price at that time being six dollars per pound ; roots of all shapes ever devised, ginseng especially every where present ; honey in abundance ; hops, and the flowers of the white ever- lasting, from which Nodding women who dislike hops make yeasc where- with to leaven their bread.

Another room held furs from all things that wear it, a comical contrast being shown by an enormous black bear-skin from the corner of which was suspended the skin of the tiniest of all moles, its hands being left on, and giv- ing one a sudden painful sense of the helpless pathos of its morsel of life.

The cellar of the warehouse held a profusion of dairy produce, and all these things had been brought from the mountains in the most laborious manner.

If no wagon could come from "up Mulberry, " the surest footed mule in the neighborhood might have brought its load ; and where no mule could pass the hunter himself, in his fringed deerskins, the long rifle on his back, the pistol in his belt, and the knife in his boot-leg, might have brought to market the skin of the great bear he had fought and conquered.

" Can we ride to your place by the Purifoy Gap?" we asked an old hunt- er, one day. He hesitated a moment,

��then said, "Well, yer mought, ifyeran old rider and a moughty good un, and if yer horse war raised up yereabout." That meant that if he could do it we could try it. We asked, "How about Coffee Creek road?" "Thar, now thar's a moughty bad road ; you uns mustn't 'low to ride up Coffee Creek ; if yer do, yer'll never come down." So, not being the crows that fly. we did not go. But to Watauga, and across the mountains into East Ten- nessee, there runs an old turnpike road, and on this ancient friend one may travel as he will, if only he be not too much inclined to haste, and if he be strong of loin as well of heart, with an ever present faith that the all-wise Father will not withdraw him from this world until his work the:ein is done. So one may cheerily ride, he may camp on top the Black, he may come down by way of the little church of Valle Crucis, and worship there, fortu- nate if he happen on a Sunday of the kindly Bishop's ministration, and for- tunate, too, to see how his and his neighbors' ancestors went to church, since the good people here go to church in well appointed carriages, if may be; but, if needs must, mounted on a good horse or stout mule that can carry double or even treble, with soft lambs-wool for a seat, while, should a side-saddle not be available at the mo- ment, any sort of a saddle, or none at all, will serve the lithe mountain girl who can spring from the ground to the back of her steed.

Still coming down, one may stop at Fairview where he can see the springs of six rivers which flow respectively into the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico, and into the Atlantic ocean, while twenty-seven mountain peaks surround him closely, and there lies a little way from him Blowing Rock Gap, a thousand feet deep and wonderful to see.

Down the valley one may spend an evening that will make him dream he is in the salon of a modern Madame Recamier, although he is simply in the manor house of a Davenport, a Gor-

�� �