The Cumberland Mountains 
ought to see our gold mines. I agreed to stay 
and went to the mines. Gold is found in small 
quantities throughout the Alleghanies, and 
many farmers work at mining a few weeks or 
months every year when their time is not more 
valuable for other pursuits. In this neighbor- 
hood miners are earning from half a dollar to 
two dollars a day. There are several large 
quartz mills not far from here. Common labor 
is worth ten dollars a month. 
September 17. Spent the day in botanizing, 
blacksmithing, and examining a grist mill. 
Grist mills, in the less settled parts of Tennes- 
see and North Carolina, are remarkably simple 
affairs. A small stone, that a man might carry 
under his arm, is fastened to the vertical shaft 
of a little home-made, boyish-looking, back- 
action water-wheel, which, with a hopper and 
a box to receive the meal, is the whole affair. 
The walls of the mill are of undressed poles cut 
from seedling trees and there is no floor, as 
lumber is dear. No dam is built. The water is 
conveyed along some hillside until sufficient 
[35 ] 
