We had left behind the hotels of "perfect satisfaction," and expected to live on the country, trusting to the infrequent but remunerated hospitality of the widely scattered inhabitants.We were to dine at Ramsey's.Ramsey's had been recommended to us as a royal place of entertainment the best in all that region; and as the sun grew hot in the sandy valley, and the weariness of noon fell upon us, we magnified Ramsey's in our imagination,--the nobility of its situation, its cuisine, its inviting restfulness,--and half decided to pass the night there in the true abandon of plantation life.Long before we reached it, the Holston River which we followed had become the Laurel, a most lovely, rocky, winding stream, which we forded continually, for the valley became too narrow much of the way to accommodate a road and a river.Eagerly as we were looking out for it, we passed the great Ramsey's without knowing it, for it was the first of a little settlement of two houses and a saw-mill and barn.
It was a neat log house of two lower rooms and a summer kitchen, quite the best of the class that we saw, and the pleasant mistress of it made us welcome.Across the road and close, to the Laurel was the spring-house, the invariable adjunct to every well-to-do house in the region, and on the stony margin of the stream was set up the big caldron for the family washing; and here, paddling in the shallow stream, while dinner was preparing, we established an intimacy with the children and exchanged philosophical observations on life with the old negress who was dabbling the clothes.What impressed this woman was the inequality in life.She jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting shoes and tobacco.It was useless to point out to her that her alfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the happy lot of any one who could loiter all day by this laughing stream, undisturbed by debt or ambition.Everybody about the place was barefooted, except the mistress, including the comely daughter of eighteen, who served our dinner in the kitchen.The dinner was abundant, and though it seemed to us incongruous at the time, we were not twelve hours older when we looked back upon it with longing.On the table were hot biscuit, ham, pork, and green beans, apple-sauce, blackberry preserves, cucumbers, coffee, plenty of milk, honey, and apple and blackberry pie.Here we had our first experience, and Imay say new sensation, of "honey on pie." It has a cloying sound as it is written, but the handmaiden recommended it with enthusiasm, and we evidently fell in her esteem, as persons from an uncultivated society, when we declared our inexperience of "honey on pie." "Where be you from?" It turned out to be very good, and we have tried to introduce it in families since our return, with indifferent success.
There did not seem to be in this family much curiosity about the world at large, nor much stir of social life.The gayety of madame appeared to consist in an occasional visit to paw and maw and grandmaw, up the river a few miles, where she was raised.
Refreshed by the honey and fodder at Ramsey's, the pilgrims went gayly along the musical Laurel, in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun, which played upon the rapids and illumined all the woody way.
Inspired by the misapprehension of the colored philosopher and the dainties of the dinner, the Professor soliloquized:
"So am I as the rich, whose blessed key Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure, The which he will not every hour survey, For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, Since seldom coming, in the long year set, Like stones of wealth they thinly placed are, Or captain jewels in the carcanet."Five miles beyond Ramsey's the Tennessee line was crossed.The Laurel became more rocky, swift, full of rapids, and the valley narrowed down to the riverway, with standing room, however, for stately trees along the banks.The oaks, both black and white, were, as they had been all day, gigantic in size and splendid in foliage.
There is a certain dignity in riding in such stately company, and the travelers clattered along over the stony road under the impression of possible high adventure in a new world of such freshness.Nor was beauty wanting.The rhododendrons had, perhaps, a week ago reached their climax, and now began to strew the water and the ground with their brilliant petals, dashing all the way with color; but they were still matchlessly beautiful.Great banks of pink and white covered the steep hillsides; the bending stems, ten to twenty feet high, hung their rich clusters over the river; avenues of glory opened away in the glade of the stream; and at every turn of the winding way vistas glowing with the hues of romance wrenched exclamations of delight and wonder from the Shakespearean sonneteer and his humble Friend.In the deep recesses of the forest suddenly flamed to the view, like the splashes of splendor on the somber canvas of an old Venetian, these wonders of color,--the glowing summer-heart of the woods.
It was difficult to say, meantime, whether the road was laid out in the river, or the river in the road.In the few miles to Egger's (this was the destination of our great expectations for the night)the stream was crossed twenty-seven times,--or perhaps it would be more proper to say that the road was crossed twenty-seven times.
Where the road did not run in the river, its bed was washed out and as stony as the bed of the stream.This is a general and accurate description of all the roads in this region, which wind along and in the streams, through narrow valleys, shut in by low and steep hills.