THE WILLIAMS RIVER COUNTRY 



521 





name is simply "Edn, an' nothin' elst." 



Edn's first attempt in music was with a 

 fiddle made from a gourd. He progressed 

 until he secured a store-bought fiddle and 

 there is no disputing the fact that he can 

 draw exquisite harmonies from this. He has 

 composed several melodies, and has given 

 them names, the most notable one being 

 called " Hannah Gutting Fish!" He ex- 

 plained the music to me one time, and I 

 must confess that it seemed as real to me as 

 any high-grade composition. I recorded it, 

 one day when Edn came to my house, on a 

 blank wax gramaphone disc and have repro- 

 duced it often since, down to the resounding 

 patting of the violinist's foot on the floor. 

 A man from Pittsburgh told me it was very 

 fine and expressive, and that he believed it 

 to be an entirely new and original piece of 

 music. 



For fifty years the narrow valley of the 

 Williams, known as "the Meadows," has 

 been cleared, and about three miles on the 

 upper waters, and it is here that the best 

 fishing is obtained, early in the spring. This 

 little green valley, bordered by dense black 

 forests, an acre of which will sometimes 

 measure as much as ninety thousand feet of 

 timber, is the finest fishing place I know. 

 The stream enters these grass-lands from 

 the dark woods and at the foot of the Mead- 

 ows plunges into the Deadwater, where the 

 river lies sluggish and deep for two miles 

 without perceptible current . Then for twen- 

 ty miles the river runs through unbroken 

 forests. 



The old land grants speak of the Dead- 

 water as the Watering Ponds, and whenever 

 there came a drought in this jungle here was 

 where the wild things came to drink. 

 As it is, it is a great refuge for the fish, and 

 innumerable suckers come up in shoals 

 in the spring to spawn in the riffles above. 

 We call them pine suckers and they are 

 marked by a stripe of dull red down their 

 sides like rainbow trout. Some springs they 

 run by the thousands, and can be caught in 

 any way. One morning, needing some for 

 camp and to take home, I caught a mess of 

 large ones with my hands and ceased only 

 because I had t aken all that were needed. 



These pine suckers can only be taken at 

 the one time, just before spawning, and 

 that has had the effect of greatly depleting 



them. As to eating qualities, taken from 

 the cold waters they have no superior. 



Once we arrived at our camping place 

 about the first of May and proceeded to 

 pitch our tent near a clear pool in which a 

 dozen or so suckers lingered. Some one 

 remarked in a matter of fact way that we 

 might as well have them for dinner and 

 proceeded to calmly "hook" them out; 

 which greatly astonished a visiting sports- 

 man, who seemed to think that for certainty 

 it resembled digging potatoes. 



During the Civil War a command of 

 Confederate cavalry tried to make a short 

 cut through the mountains to get in Aver- 

 hilPs rear, and they came on these suckers 

 at the right time and feasted on them. 

 They had a mule battery and had to leave 

 their artillery cached in the woods on Yew 

 Mountain, at the foot of the Deadwater. 

 These big guns are there yet, never having 

 been located. 



The fact that this immense forest pre- 

 serve remains intact is due to the purchase of 

 the greater part of it by capitalists. Before 

 Virginia and West Virginia were divided, 

 what is now West Virginia was referred to 

 as the Western Waters, a most compre- 

 hensive and descriptive term. Here the 

 lands were for sale by the State at the price 

 of four and one-half cents an acre! They 

 had all been taken up after the Revolu- 

 tionary War, mostly by speculators, who 

 carried the titles to New York, Philadelphia, 

 London and Paris, to sell at an advance of 

 a cent or so an acre. One cent an acre 

 profit on five hundred thousand acres was 

 a big sum in those days. These titles were 

 abandoned and second entries made. 



About 1850 a farmer, a Southern colonel, 

 realizing the wonderful richness of the 

 Williams River country, began to acquire 

 it and entered the lands in blocks of twenty- 

 seven thousand acres and less. After his 







death his heirs, unwilling to pay taxes on 

 wild lands, decided to sell them. Before 

 doing so they sent two surveyors into the 

 woods to make a report. They reported 

 that the land was without value, because 

 the timber was too big to make it practical 

 to clear. The holders then were glad to sell 

 at forty-two cents an acre this heavily timb- 

 ered land underlaid with the best of coal. 

 One of the heirs proved contrary and he 



