A ride of eight miles brought us to Waddle's, hungry and disposed to receive hospitality.We passed by an old farm building to a new two-storied, gayly painted house on a hill.We were deceived by appearances.The new house, with a new couple in it, had nothing to offer us except some buttermilk.Why should anybody be obliged to feed roving strangers? As to our horses, the young woman with a baby in her arms declared,"We've got nothing for stock but roughness; perhaps you can get something at the other house.""Roughness," we found out at the other house, meant hay in this region.We procured for the horses a light meal of green oats, and for our own dinner we drank at the brook and the Professor produced a few sonnets.On this sustaining repast we fared on nearly twelve miles farther, through a rolling, good farming country, offering little for comment, in search of a night's lodging with one of the brothers Snap.But one brother declined our company on the plea that his wife was sick, and the other because his wife lived in Greenville, and we found ourselves as dusk came on without shelter in a tavernless land.Between the two refusals we enjoyed the most picturesque bit of scenery of the day, at the crossing of Camp Creek, a swift little stream, that swirled round under the ledge of bold rocks before the ford.This we learned was a favorite camp-meeting ground.Mary was calling the cattle home at the farm of the second Snap.It was a very peaceful scene of rural life, and we were inclined to tarry, but Mary, instead of calling us home with the cattle, advised us to ride on to Alexander's before it got dark.
It is proper to say that at Alexander's we began to see what this pleasant and fruitful country might be, and will be, with thrift and intelligent farming.Mr.Alexander is a well-to-do farmer, with plenty of cattle and good barns (always an evidence of prosperity), who owes his success to industry and an open mind to new ideas.He was a Unionist during the war, and is a Democrat now, though his county (Greene) has been Republican.We had been riding all the afternoon through good land, and encountering a better class of farmers.Peach-trees abounded (though this was an off year for fruit), and apples and grapes throve.It is a land of honey and of milk.The persimmon flourishes; and, sign of abundance generally, we believe, great flocks of turkey-buzzards--majestic floaters in the high air--hovered about.This country was ravaged during the war by Unionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots as they passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving the farmers little to live on.Mr.Alexander's farm cost him forty dollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize.This was the first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace before meat, though there had been many tables that needed it more.From the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomed to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer and enjoy a real primitive woods life.
Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling, rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt ranges, which we had on our right all day.At noon we crossed the Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle girth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage.The big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of mahogany, recalled rural New England.Perhaps these refinements are due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is near.We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the word fruit.When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
and said Yes, we always got applesauce.
Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity, set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want company.The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here ever since the war.
A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union.Before noon we forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and were entertained at the big brick house of Mr.Devault, a prosperous and hospitable farmer.This is a rich country.We had met in the morning wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to Jonesboro, and Mr.Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits before us as we lounged on the porch before dinner.