448 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 22, 1906. 
The Mountain Moonshiner. 
II.—Ways that are Dark. 
The terms moonshining and moonshiner are 
seldom used in the Carolina mountains. Here, 
an illicit distiller is called a “blockader,” his 
business is “blockading,” and the product is 
“blockade whiskey,” or simply plain “blockade.” 
There are, or used to be, two kinds of block- 
aders, big and little. The big blockader makes 
unlicensed whiskey on a fairly large scale. He 
may have several stills, operating alternately 
in different places, so as to avert suspicion. In 
any case, the still is large and the output is 
quite profitable. The owner himself may not 
actively engage in the work, but merely furnish 
the capital and hire confederates to do the dis¬ 
tilling for him, so that personally he may shun 
the appearance of evil. These big fellows are 
rare, if, indeed, they be not quite extinct. In 
past times they were the ones who sought col¬ 
lusion with the small-fry of Government official¬ 
dom, or, failing in that, instructed their minions 
to "kill on sight.” 
The little moonshiner is a more interesting 
character, if for no other reason than that he 
fights fair, according to his code, and single- 
handed against tremendous odds. He is inno¬ 
cent of graft. There is nothing between him and 
the whole power of the Federal Government, 
except his own wits and a well-worn Winchester 
or muzzleloader. He is very poor; he is very 
ignorant; he has no friends at court; his ap¬ 
paratus is crude in the extreme, and its output 
is miserably small. This man is usually a good 
enough citizen in other ways, of decent stand¬ 
ing in his own community, and a right good fel¬ 
low toward all the world, save revenue officers. 
Although a criminal in the eyes of the law, he 
is soundly convinced 'that the law is unjust, and 
that he is only exercising his natural rights. 
Such a man, as President Frost has pointed out, 
suffers none of the moral degradation that comes 
from violating his conscience; his self-respect 
is whole. 
In describing the process of making whiskey 
in the mountain stills, I shall confine myself to 
the operations of the little moonshiner, because 
they illustrate the surprising shiftiness of our 
backwoodsmen. Every man in the big woods 
is a jack-of-all-trades. His skill in extemporiz¬ 
ing utensils, and even crude machines, out of 
the trees that grow around him, is of no mean 
order. As good cider as ever I drank was made 
in a hollowed log fitted with a press-block and 
operated by a handspike. It took but half a 
day’s work to make this cider press, and the 
only tools used in its construction were an ax, 
a mattock in lieu of adze, an auger, and a jack¬ 
knife. 
It takes two or three men to run a still. It 
is possible for one man to do the work, on so 
small a scale as is usually practiced, but it 
would be a hard task for him; then, too, there 
are few mountaineers who could individually 
furnish the capital, pitifully small enough though 
it be. So three men. let us say, will “chip in” 
five or ten dollars apiece, and purchase a sec¬ 
ond-hand still, if such is procurable, otherwise 
a new one, and that is all the apparatus they 
have to pay money for. If they should be too 
poor even to go to this expense, they will make 
a retort by inverting a half-barrel or an old 
wooden churn over a soap-kettle, and then all 
they have to <juy is a piece of copper tubing for 
the worm. 
I11 choosing a location for their clandestine 
work, the first essential is running water. This 
can be found in almost any gulch; yet, out of a 
hundred known spring-branches, only one or- 
two may be suitable for the business, most of 
them being too public. In a country where 
cattle and hogs run wild, and where a good 
part of every farmer’s time is taken in keeping 
track of his stock, there is no place so secret 
but that it is liable to be visited at any time, 
even though it be in the depths of the great 
forest, several miles from any human habitation. 
Moreover, cattle, and especially hogs, are pas¬ 
sionately fond of still-slop, and can scent it a 
great distance, so that no still can long remain 
unknown to them.* Consequently the still must 
be placed several miles away from the residence 
of any one who might be liable to turn informer. 
Although nearly all the mountain people are in¬ 
dulgent in the matter of blockading, yet personal 
rivalries and family jealousies are rife among 
them, and it is not uncommon for them to in¬ 
form against their enemies in the neighborhood 
Of course, it would not do to set up a still 
near a common trail—at least in the far-back 
settlements. Our mountaineers habitually notice 
every track they pass, whether of beast or man, 
and “read the sign” with Indian-like facility. 
Often one of my companions would stop, as 
though shot, and point with his toe to the fresh 
imprint of a human foot in the dust or mud of a 
public road, exclaiming: “Now, I wonder who 
that feller was! ’Twa’n’t (so-and-so), for he 
bain’t got no square-headed hob-nails; ’twa’n’t 
(such-a-one), ’cause he wouldn't be hyar at this 
time o’ day”; and so he would go on, figuring 
bv a process of elimination that is extremely 
cunning, until some such conclusion as this was 
reached, “That’s some stranger goin’ over to 
Little River [across the line in Tennessee], and 
he's footin’ hit as if the devil was atter him— 
I’ll bet he’s stobbed somebody and is runnin’ 
from the sheriff!” Nor is the incident closed 
with that; our mountaineer will inquire of neigh¬ 
bors and passersby until he gets a description 
of the wayfarer, and then he will pass the word 
along. 
Some little side-branch is chosen that runs 
through a gully, so choked with laurel and briers 
and rhododendron as to be quite impassable, 
save by such worming and crawling as must 
make a great noise. Doubtless a faint cattle- 
trail follows the backbone of the ridge above 
it, and this is the workers’ ordinary highway in 
going to and fro; but the descent from ridge 
to gully is seldom made twice over the same 
course, lest a trail be printed direct to the still- 
house. 
This house is sometimes inclosed with logs, 
but oftener it is no more than a shed, built low, 
so as to be well screened by the undergrowth. 
A great hemlock tree may be felled in such position 
as to help the masking, so long as its top re¬ 
mains green, which will be about a year. Back 
far enough from the still-house to remain in 
dark shadow when the furnace is going, there 
is built a sort of nest for the workmen, barely 
high enough to sit up in, roofed with bark and 
thatched all over with browse. Here many, a 
dismal hour of night is passed when there is 
*It is a curious fact that horses despise the stuff. A 
celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years 
he rode a horse which was in the habit of drinking a 
mouthful from every stream that he forded; but if there 
was the least taint of still-slop in the water, he would 
whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer 
then had only to follow up the stream, and he would 
infallibly find a still. 
nothing to do but waif on the “cooking.” Now 
and then a man crawls on all fours to the 
furnace and pitches in a few billets of wood, 
keeping low at the time, so as to offer as small 
a target as possible in the flare of the fire. Such 
precaution is especially needed when the num¬ 
ber of confederates is too small for efficient 
picketing. Around the little plot where the still- 
shed and lair are hidden, laurel may be cut in 
such way as to make a cheval-de-frise, sharp 
stubs being entangled with branches, so that 
a quick charge through them would be out of 
the question. Two or three days’ work, at most, 
will build the still-house and equip it ready for 
business, without so much as a shingle being 
brought from outside. 
After the blockaders have established their 
still, the next thing is to make arrangements 
with some miller who will jeapordize himself by 
grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that 
corn which has been forced to sprout is a prime 
essential in the making of moonshine whiskey, 
and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn 
is an offense against the law of the United 
States no less than its distillation. Now, to 
any one living in a well-settled country, where 
there is, perhaps, only one mill to every hundred 
farms, and it is visited daily by men from all 
over the township, the finding of an accessory 
in the person of a miller would seem a most 
hopeless project. But when you travel in our 
southern mountains, one of the first things 
that will strike you is that about every third 
or fourth farmer has a tiny tub-mill of his own. 
Tiny is indeed the word, for there are few of 
these mills that can grind more than a bushel or 
two of corn in a day; some have a capacity of 
only half a bushel in ten hours -of steady grind¬ 
ing. Red grains of corn being harder than 
white ones, it is a humorous saying in the moun¬ 
tains that “a red grain in the gryste [grist] will 
stop the mill.” The appurtenances of such a 
mill, even to the very buhr-stones themselves, 
are fashioned on the spot. How primitive such 
a meal-grinder may be is shown by the fact that 
a neighbor of mine recently offered a new mill, 
complete, for sale at six dollars. A few nails, 
and a country-made iron rynd and spindle, were 
the only things in it that he had not made him¬ 
self, from the raw materials. 
In making spirits from corn, the first step is 
to convert the starch of the grain into sugar. 
Regular distillers do this in a few hours by 
using malt, but at the little blockade still a 
slower process is used, for malt is hard to get. 
The unground corn is placed in a vessel that 
has a small hole in the bottom, warm water 
is poured over the corn, and a hot cloth is 
placed over the top. As water percolates out 
through the hole, the vessel is replenished with 
more of the warm fluid. This is continued for 
two or three days and nights until the corn 
has put forth sprouts a couple of inches long. 
The diastase in the germinating seeds has the 
same chemical effect as malt—the starch is 
changed to sugar. 
The sprouted corn is then dried and ground 
into meal. This sweet meal is then made into 
a mush with boiling water, and is let stand two 
or three days. The “sweet mush” thus made is 
then broken up, and a little rye malt, similarly 
prepared in the meantime, is added to it, if rye 
is procurable. Fermentation begins at once. 
In large distilleries, yeast is added to hasten 
fermentation, and the mash can then be used in 
three or four days; the blockader, however, hav¬ 
ing no yeast, must let his mash stand for eight 
