292 Singing Valleys 



who had been sympathizers with the Stuart cause came out to 

 Carolina, these too moved westward into the Black Swan's 

 Land of Eden. 



It was truly the land of "corn likker." The steeply sloping 

 fields, many of them three to four thousand feet above sea 

 level, would grow corn and little else. Before the rich humus 

 in the top soil was eroded, the returns per acre were ex- 

 orbitant. But there were no roads by which the grain could 

 be carted to market. And no carts to take it in. There were 

 only rude trails which could be ridden on a horse, with saddle- 

 bags; or walked, with a tow sack slung over one's shoulder. 



Roots of the wild ginseng were toted that way to be traded 

 at the nearest country store for gunpowder, salt and calico. 

 Ginseng brought fabulous prices in China. All sorts of magical 

 properties were ascribed to it. The Black Swan took to chewing 

 a bit of it on the trail for the enthusiasm it gave him. "It 

 chears the Heart even of a man that has a bad Wife/' he 

 wrote. But four bushels of corn were all that a horse, or a 

 mule, could carry on the mountain trails. That amount of 

 grain was not worth the trip to the trader's store. But the 

 same pack animal could carry two eight-gallon kegs of 

 "corn likker," slung one from each side of the saddle. Sixteen 

 gallons of whiskey represented eight bushels of corn. At 

 twenty-five cents the gallon, the trip over the mountains paid. 



It was not moral depravity which made the Scotch-Irish 

 settlers in the Back Woods whiskey distillers, but economics. 

 And it is economics, not lawlessness, which has made them 

 and their descendants rebel against the excise on spirits when- 

 ever this has been imposed heavily, and take to "blockading." 



When corn sells at twenty-five to forty cents the bushel, a 

 man quickly sees the advantage in distilling two bushels of 

 corn into four gallons of whiskey which, thanks to the high 

 price of the legally distilled product, are tradable at any coun- 

 try store in the mountains for four dollars worth of groceries. 



During the Revolution, and after it, there were farmers 



