"Picked up what you could find, corn, bacon, horses?""That's about so.Did n't make much difference which side was round, the country got cleaned out.""Plunder seems to have been the object?"
"Which?"
"You got a living out of the farmers?"
"You bet."
Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain marauder--on the right side.His attachment to the word "which"prevented any lively flow of conversation, and there seemed to be only two trains of ideas running in his mind: one was the subject of horses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were coming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring to excite our alarm.He returned to the ford from every other conversational excursion, and after every silence.
I do' know's there 's any great danger; not if you know the ford.
Folks is carried away there.The Toe gits up sudden.There's been right smart rain lately.
If you're afraid, you can git set over in a dugout, and I'll take your horses across.Mebbe you're used to fording? It's a pretty bad ford for them as don't know it.But you'll get along if you mind your eye.There's some rocks you'll have to look out for.But you'll be all right if you follow me."Not being very successful in raising an interest in the dangers of his ford, although he could not forego indulging a malicious pleasure in trying to make the strangers uncomfortable, he finally turned his attention to a trade."This hoss of mine," he said, "is just the kind of brute-beast you want for this country.Your hosses is too heavy.How'll you swap for that one o' yourn?" The reiterated assertion that the horses were not ours, that they were hired, made little impression on him.All the way to Burnsville he kept referring to the subject of a trade.The instinct of "swap" was strong in him.When we met a yoke of steers, he turned round and bantered the owner for a trade.Our saddles took his fancy.They were of the army pattern, and he allowed that one of them would just suit him.He rode a small flat English pad, across which was flung the United States mail pouch, apparently empty.He dwelt upon the fact that his saddle was new and ours were old, and the advantages that would accrue to us from the exchange.He did n't care if they had been through the war, as they had, for he fancied an army saddle.
The Friend answered for himself that the saddle he rode belonged to a distinguished Union general, and had a bullet in it that was put there by a careless Confederate in the first battle of Bull Run, and the owner would not part with it for money.But the mail-rider said he did n't mind that.He would n't mind swapping his new saddle for my old one and the rubber coat and leggings.Long before we reached the ford we thought we would like to swap the guide, even at the, risk of drowning.The ford was passed, in due time, with no inconvenience save that of wet feet, for the stream was breast high to the horses; but being broad and swift and full of sunken rocks and slippery stones, and the crossing tortuous, it is not a ford to be commended.There is a curious delusion that a rider has in crossing a swift broad stream.It is that he is rapidly drifting up-stream, while in fact the tendency of the horse is to go with the current.
The road in the afternoon was not unpicturesque, owing to the streams and the ever noble forests, but the prospect was always very limited.
Agriculturally, the country was mostly undeveloped.The travelers endeavored to get from the rider an estimate of the price of land.
Not much sold, he said."There was one sale of a big piece last year; the owner enthorited Big Tom Wilson to sell it, but I d'know what he got for it,"All the way along, the habitations were small log cabins, with one room, chinked with mud, and these were far between; and only occasionally thereby a similar log structure, unchinked, laid up like a cob house, that served for a stable.Not much cultivation, except now and then a little patch of poor corn on a steep hillside, occasionally a few apple-trees, and a peach-tree without fruit.Here and there was a house that had been half finished and then abandoned, or a shanty in which a couple of young married people were just beginning life.Generally the cabins (confirming the accuracy of the census of 1880 swarmed with children, and nearly all the women were thin and sickly.
In the day's ride we did not see a wheeled vehicle, and only now and then a horse.We met on the road small sleds, drawn by a steer, sometimes by a cow, on which a bag of grist was being hauled to the mill, and boys mounted on steers gave us good-evening with as much pride as if they were bestriding fiery horses.
In a house of the better class, which was a post-house, and where the rider and the woman of the house had a long consultation over a letter to be registered, we found the rooms decorated with patent-medicine pictures, which were often framed in strips of mica, an evidence of culture that was worth noting.Mica was the rage.Every one with whom we talked, except the rider, had more or less the mineral fever.The impression was general that the mountain region of North Carolina was entering upon a career of wonderful mineral development, and the most extravagant expectations were entertained.
Mica was the shining object of most "prospecting," but gold was also on the cards.
The country about Burnsville is not only mildly picturesque, but very pleasing.Burnsville, the county-seat of Yancey, at an elevation of 2840 feet, is more like a New England village than any hitherto seen.
Most of the houses stand about a square, which contains the shabby court-house; around it are two small churches, a jail, an inviting tavern) with a long veranda, and a couple of stores.On an overlooking hill is the seminary.Mica mining is the exciting industry, but it is agriculturally a good country.The tavern had recently been enlarged to meet the new demands for entertainment) and is a roomy structure, fresh with paint and only partially organized.