Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1909-09-07
AMERICAN MOUNTAiNEERS.
Especially the Mountain Whites in the
South.

rake the conditions Oh country ire |
anywhere and intensity them many |
degrees and you will have mountain
life as it passes on oday in the pine |
scented atmosphere of the Blue Ridge |
and the great Smoky mountains. The
mountaineer is a colonial survival,
with all the pride and self-reSpect
which belong to landhoder; and his
lack of worldly superhuities, rather
than otherwise, contributes to his no.
BILE independence of spirit.
But all this must be found out by
sympathetic approaches, for our
mountain friend is reserved shy, not
to say suspicious and often appears at
q great disadvantage in his first con-
tact with 'furriners.'
TO begin then, with the pioneer con-
ditions, we have remoteness from mar
kets and a corresponding shift in farm
activities, many of the old-fashioned
household manufacturers-soap, sOr
Shum, molasses dong sWeeteninO, and
the beautiful products of the firesida
| Notwithstanding. Ready money
| is scarce and to be got mainly from
| forest products where there arc
! streams to float the logs, and from
cattle-a crop that can. walk to mar
| ket
Such a community in the Appalach
! ion mountains, as one the old New
| York or Ohio frontier, naturally rearS
large families and has much intensi-
fled family life and family feeling. Pa
rents and children, brothers and sis
tiers, are much shut into their own
society and the feeling of the clan
| Of no .,rtiG oio NJ
conventions of life are quite powerless
| to assert themselves in these isolated
valleys.
| The fight with nature is still of n
| primitive order. A tree is an enemy.
We find great Observation-Disclosures
where the trees have been girdled and
left standing in CHASTITY nakedness so
that the little bull tongue pillow may
scratch the soil between them and the
sun shine in to mature the crop.
Much skill is shown in pIoughing in
such fashion as not to leave the soil
unduy exposed to, the washing of the
heavy southern torrents. The fight
| with briers and bushes is a hard one
and you may see the whole family
afield-father, mother, boys and girls
not to be pitied but rather congratu-
lated on q toll at once so sociable and
| so healthful.
Out of this intense family feeling
grows the feud. In a sparse popula-
| ton the government fails to inspire
either confidence or dread, and when
a man is killed by some drunken bully
the impulse is strong for the next of
| kin to take justice into their own
| hands.
| The antiquarian finds endless inter-
| est in the British survivals which are
readily traced when one begins an in
teligent search. Here is the pattern
| IN a bed kiver, which you have seen,
perhaps in English tapestry, ana
which must have been transmitted
| from mother to daughter for two or
more centuries. Here is a snatch of
song that you will not easily find in a
book, but which harils back to circum-
stances Of English town life quite 70
mote from the experience of the sing
er.
| Prof Shaler of Harvard. once found
d man in Wise county. Virginia. hunt
ing with an English crossbow. OIL
course he owned a rifle as WELL bnt
powder was hard to get ana he had
not lost the tradition of the art by
which the famous eros show had been
made among his British forobcars We
| say British, because the Scotch AMI
| English strains arc everywhere ming
| led in the mountains
The traveller stopping at lonely
| cottage may hear the mother quiet an
lnruly child by saying: Behave now,
son, or Clavers will get you," 1t is
doubtful whether the woman knows
anything of the bogy she thus con-
jures up to have the wretch in order.
house, the Scotch rough rider, who
harried the Covennanters in ancient
days.
One OF the most important things TO
learn about life in the mountains is
| that Appalachian America contains all
grades of society. They are clad much
| alike and all are sufficiently primitive
to the gaze of an outsider but the dis
| tinctionS are real and keenly felt.
Every county has its electromagnetic
select families that hold themselves
quite apart from the common when it
comes to marriages and higher social
functions. Far below the land owners
are renters. The mountains have their
share of idleness and of crime but the
| vices of the mountains are largely OF
the Homeric type, which are really less
corrupting than the sins of a more ar
l