j'UNE 14, 1002. j 
Forest and stream 
463 
river rushed at a tremendous pace, forty feet below. 
The bridge was fifty yards long and the path leading 
on to it was across a sloping rock worn so smooth by 
the feet of travelers that We were obliged to take off our 
boots in order to avoid sliding down into the river. A 
man doing so would have no chance of escape, for the 
rocks rise straight up from the water like walls for a 
long distance, and the current is so strong that no swim- 
mer could contend against it, 
During the whole of the march we had risen at day- 
break and, before starting, had taken some tea and the 
native cakes called chu patties. These are made by 
merely mixing flour and water, patting the dough be- 
tween the hands until it is as thin as a pancake, and 
baking it in a frying pan or on a piece of sheet iron. If 
eaten hot. with a little butter spread on them, they are 
digestible and pleasant in flavor. In subsequent years, 
circumstances obliged me to eat them for months at a 
time, and 1 liked thcnl better than ordinary baker's 
bread. On arriving at each fresh camping place we 
bathed in the river before taking the regular breakfast 
of the birds we had shot, together with more chu patties 
and tea or coffee. The water of the Billung, formed 
entirely of melted snow, was icy cold, and a group of 
villagers, men, women and children, always collected on 
the bank to see us bathe. One day I asked Jahtroo why 
they did so. He repied: "They say they never saw 
such people as the Sahibs; they are always washing." 
"But, Jahtroo," I remarked, '"how often do you wash?" 
He answered: "Sometimes once in three months, some- 
times once in six months, sometimes once in a year." • 
I was then able to account for a disagreeable smell I 
had often noticed during the journey, and attributed to 
an animal of the weasel or polecat tribe lurking in the 
rocks near us. All the hill peope avoid washing, and it 
is a safe plan to keep' as much as possible on the wind- 
ward side when traveling with them. The Hindoos of 
the plains, on the contrary, bathe daily as a religious 
duty. J. J. Meyrick. 
England. 
A Walk Down South, -XXXIIL 
A dull, threatening fog rested on the town and close 
to the surface of the water as my boat drove clear of 
the house-boat at which I had left my duffle during my 
stay in Chattanooga. It looked like rain and felt like 
it, but I was in hopes that the sky would lose its sombre 
shade before long, since it was then not yet 10 o'clock. 
But in this I was disappointed, for in less than an hour 
a heavy mist fell in intermittent showers. I was then 
at the foot of Lookout Mountain, a noble sight the great 
historic mass made. As I looked at the mountain, the 
steamer Avalon came along. Its wake did not seem 
fearsome till l.was in it, and then the way my little boat 
went dancing up and down was literally a caution. A 
few minutes later the bend at the Suck was in sight, and 
I went to an abandoned turtle-like house boat, to wait 
for the rain which was falling, to go by. Perhaps no 
other hour on the trip was so bad as that one there in 
the cabin, with the river dragging by, the roof leaking, 
the gloom of a low-hanging rain cloud all around and 
the rush of swift, tumbling waters only a few rods clown- 
stream through which I must pass before I reached the 
wide stream below. 
The rain ceased. The clouds lifted a little, and then 
I took down the tent Avhich I had spread under the 
leaky roof to keep me dry, loaded my boat, and went 
afloat to take the water as it came. The Suck was easy. 
But I drew a long breath after I was through the place, 
for the water was swift and rather roily just below the 
chute. I thought, that I was out of the worst of it, but 
a few minutes later I was at the Boiling Pot, the danger 
of which I did not know until I went in to it. Some- 
body' had told me to hug the left hand side as close as 
possible. This I did. The water darted down grade, as 
in the chute of the Suck; in the middle were white cap 
rollers, and on each side the whirl of great eddies. I 
went into the left hand one end on. The upstream rush 
of the eddy caught my boat, and it went round and 
around, but, fortunately, horizontally, instead of ver- 
tically. It was into one swirl out of another half a dozen 
times, then, all a-tremble, I sent the boat out into the 
midstream away from the contest of the eddy waters. 
For a while, the river seemed a Ionesomer place than 
ever. I even went ashore and at a house asked to stay 
over night, thinking to recover my nerve in the mean- 
time, but there wasn't an unoccupied bed in the house 
at night, the man said, so I went on again. I stopped 
again a mile or so below at Savannah Island. And 
there a kindly old man made me welcome. 
The house was far up the side hill it seemed to me, 
but the water had been over the front fence only a few 
feet below the porch level. The reason Eck McNabb. 
the old man. had purchased that house, was because of 
the opportunities to get drift wood at it. The founda- 
tion of the house was a nub of rock, a sort of cape, and 
when high water came, the drift stuff swept around the 
bend and as it bore to the left, lodged against the rock. 
"I get all my firewood right there," he said. "I tell 
you it is quite a sight to stand here and see all the drift 
coming at the house. It looks like it would tear us up." 
I did not fully appreciate the mearrng of "drift" then. 
In the morning, the river showed that it was rising by 
the surge on its surface, and an eager kind of swirl, when 
a jet of water thrown from the bottom came boiling to 
the surface. And there were fragments of stuff, bits of 
stick and bark, scattered along the surface in a way that 
was an unread promise. 
Fried eggs and air-dried and salted pork, biscuit and 
coffee was the supper. "We don't have no cream yere, 
nor swect'nin', nuther," the man explained, but one 
would not have missed them, with such a food supply. 
There was a difference between the country cooked 
meals and those of the city that I had just left. The talk, 
too, ran in channels closer to nature, than at the lodg- 
ing house. Up on the mountain behind the house, the 
man said, the skeleton of an Indian had been found a 
few years back. On either side of it were pots of 
earthen ware, and several of these were sold at Chat- 
tanooga for five dollars. The people in that section 
were of novel habits of thought. The old man wished 
to know if I had any faith in the art of finding gold and 
silver by means of divining rods, and if I thought the 
Indians hadn't, hid lots of money somewhere, and what 
did I think of the luck of those who had found large 
fortunes that had been hidden in pots? Perhaps the 
purchase of that house because of the drift which the 
river brought to it was significant of the trend of the 
minds thereabouts — there, was a large hope of unearned 
wealth in their thought. 
Before I came away I was asked to read a letter which 
had come from a neighbor who had moved to Texas. 
The neighbor had cleared $r,ooo from his cotton alone 
in the previous year. None of the family could read. 
They were thinking what to say in answer to the letter. 
That would take some time, and then a neighbor would 
write the answer for them. They asked if I had come 
more than a hundred miles, and thought that such places 
as New York were more "than a hundred miles away." 
and Mussel Shoals was also "'bout a hundred miles 
away." A hundred miles was, to them, a vast distance. 
My night's rest was a fine one, and it was with good 
heart that I started on in the morning. A mile or so 
below was a coal landing. I stopped there and got a 
quart of molasses, some crackers and had a little talk 
with a man who had been a passenger on the Forrest on 
the trip down stream. I partially satisfied his curiosity 
and went on down stream. The wind was raising some, 
and I had to run to the bank to eat my lunch of potted 
ham, bread and molasses. I ran among the willows that 
lined the stream bank, for the water was about their 
trunks. Soon after starting on half a mile below the 
mines, near which I ate, I went ashore to look for relics, 
but found only bits of pottery, and baked shells. 
Ducks now began to appear in numbers. Every few 
hundred yards a bunch would get up. Miles down stream 
1 stopped at Pryor's Landing, where there was a wagon, 
several mules, some boys, a negro and four white men. 
A river tramp, I now found myself an object of suspi- 
cion. Not that anything was said — they minded their 
own business — but it was hard to get a direct reply to 
any sort of question as to distances, towns, hotels and 
stopping places — there was nothing to be learned there. 
But I did gather that there was a ferry called Hale's 
to the left of Oate's Island, a mile or less down stream. 
I went for it. As I cleared the landing a flock of geese 
came along, and at the head of the island there were 
half a dozen bunches of mallards. 
There was a man at the ferry, who told me that "I could 
get to stay with him." I ran my boat in among the trees 
and made fast. Then sat down to wait for the Forrest, 
which was due. The steamboat came along and having 
only one passenger to land, the ferryman ran out to get 
him. Mate McKee had a wave of the hands for me, as 
did several of the roustabouts. They were soon gone. 
Then we went up to the house on the side hill out of 
reach of the water. The wind had been against me all 
day, and that supper of fried pork, pot stewed beef, milk 
and coffee, wheat biscuit and cornbread was something 
to please and to appreciate. In the morning, soon after 
day-break, I started on, after looking at a cave spring 
house in which milk and butter were cooled in summer. 
There were three distinct spoutings of water in a space 
of a couple of square yards, all walled in. This reminded 
me that not far away as Nick o' Jack Cave, and that 
during the day I would reach it. 
The water had raised only a few inches during the 
night, against four feet of the day before, but the current 
was swift, and a fast run was likely for the day. Lint 1 
left the water a few hundred yards down on the far side, 
and sneaked back long enough to shoot a mallard duck 
which was one of a flock of half a dozen, convenient to 
some cane and tree thickets. There were many ducks 
on all sides, die-dappers, mallard and black ones, but I 
was hurried now and anxious to make the mouth of the 
river, so I hunted but little. My rifle was not suited for 
that kind of work, but with a sixteen-gauge shotgun, 
many a wing shot could have been taken. 
This morning — February 26— was One of the most 
beautiful I ever saw. The broad, oily surface of the 
river, clear reflections, great hills, rocky cliffs, the green 
of cane brakes under the purple of the leafless forest, 
combined with the diffused sunlight — a misty stillness, 
as it were — and the distant flocks of ducks to give wake- 
fulness to the scene — it was worth a thousand miles of 
hardship to get to such a day as that. But there were 
going to be more such days as that in the near future, 
with a sharp contrast to vivify their effect. 
At 10 o'clock I left the river at Shellmound to go 
across the bottom to Nick o' Jack Cave, named after an 
old Indian chief who lived there back in the days of the 
Revolution. Later, robber bands dwelt there and held 
up the flatboats to get the riches and liquors necessary 
for their life. Now the flocks of sheep that range the 
ridge find shelter in it from inclement .weather. The 
opening is a right angle triangle, the right angle being 
in the upper. right hand side. At the lower right side a 
stream of water several feet wide and several inches deep 
issues forth — the color bluish like that of most lime 
water, as if stained with milk. The top of the entrance 
was a horizontal slab of rock, fifteen feet thick and 
about a hundred feet across, I* thought, while the drop 
from the top of the water was nearly thirty feet. Only 
a little way back, the gloom was intense, but I did not 
go far into it. It was too like climbing along the face of 
a mountain upside down. Around the entrance I picked 
up some arrow tips and bits of flint. 
I went to the boat and paddled down the creek, up 
which I had run, and after buying some grub at the 
Shellmound store, and admired the artistic effect of the 
lemon yellow of the railroad station, the watering tank, 
etc., started down stream with the boat choosing its own 
course, usually broadside to the current. In the mid- 
stream there was no sense of motion, and along the bank, 
the rustle of the water and the passing of the trees alone 
told of moving. Though one goes faster in midstream, 
it was so deadly dreary and lonesome there that I kept 
close to the shore for the company of the rustling 
water and the life in the trees. Sometimes I could see 
a bird, which was company. Often I went ashore, once 
to climb a large mound, of which there are many along 
the river. After a while I came to South Pittsburg, an 
aggregation of iron furnaces, lovely in the distance. A 
little later I reached Long Island. On a mound was 
built a house in which a family lives, secure from almost 
any rise of the waters. A mile below on the same island 
I stopped at a renter's home, I thought only for a night. 
Corn bread and pork scraps and sweet milk constituted 
my next five meals, save a shy at the duck (boiled to 
pieces, but not par boiled). Low-hanging, rain-weep- 
ing clouds, a shanty, swept by every chilling breeze, 
babies that cried or laughed alternately, a man who told 
of crop failure and hard times, a woman who — but rip 
matter. Half sick with a cold. I was in no mood to see 
the cheerful side of things. Save when I slept, the hours 
dragged by till thirty-six were gone, then on Friday 
morning, in spite of a gale, of wind. I went away. For- 
tunately the river was narrow there, and I was able to 
get to the lee or western bank. At the railroad bridge 
I left the river to get some eatables at Bridgeport, then 
started on again. 
Till 10 o'clock, I kept to the right hand bank, but it 
was slow going, for the river bore more and more to the 
west, from'whence the wind came. My boat dived and 
reared, and tossed more and more. I liked the sport, 
but after a while I noticed that the bow was rising higher 
than the level of my eyes on the waves. That was along 
the lee bank, and as just ahead there was another sweep 
to the west, where the wind had full play, I ran into the 
land, took my duffle up to the bottom level, and with my 
canvas duffle cover wrapped around me, sat down to 
watch the play of the wind. A steamer was driven to the 
bank on the far side of the river, but it was so far away 
that it was no comfort to me, I sat there for hours, 
then took my rifle and hunted for more hours along the 
oak ridges back from the river half a mile. My first day 
in Alabama was not a comfortable one, though it was 
interesting. Back at the boat I found that the water 
was rising very rapidly, and that when I finally did get 
THE BILLUNG SUSPENSION BRIDGE. 
