Sept. 22, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
449 
or ten days, keeping it all that time at a proper 
temperature for fermentation. This requires not 
only constant attention, but some skill as well, 
for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer 
in our mountain still-house. When done, the 
sugar of what is now “sour mash” has been 
converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The 
resulting liquid is technically called the “wash,” 
but blockaders call it “beer.” It is intoxicating, 
of course, but “sour enough to make a pig 
squeal.” 
This beer is then placed in the still, a vessel 
with a closed head, connected with a spiral tube, 
the worm. The latter is surrounded by a closed 
jacket through which cold water is constantly 
passing. A wood fire is built in the rude furnace 
under the still; the spirit rises in vapor, along 
with more or less steam; these vapors are con¬ 
densed in the cold worm and trickle down into 
the receiver. The product of this first distilla¬ 
tion (the “low wines” of the trade, the “sing¬ 
lings” of the blockader) is a weak and impure 
liquid, which must be redistilled at a lower tem¬ 
perature to rid it of water and rank oils. 
In moonshiners’ parlance, the liquor of sec¬ 
ond distillation is called the "doublings.” It is 
in watching and testing the doublings that an 
accomplished blockader shows his skill, for if 
distillation be not carried far enough, the re¬ 
sulting spirits will be rank, though weak, and if 
carried too far, nothing but pure alcohol will 
result. Regular distillers are assisted at this 
stage by scientific instruments by which the 
“proof” is tested; but the maker of “mountain 
dew” has no other instrument than a small vial, 
and his testing is done entirely by the “bead” 
of the liquor, the little iridescent bubbles that 
rise when the vial is tilted. When a mountain 
man is shown any brand of whiskey, whether a 
regular distillery product or not, he invariably 
tilts the bottle and levels it again, before tast¬ 
ing; if the bead rises and is persistent, well and 
good; if not, he is prepared to condemn the 
liquor at once. 
It is possible to make an inferior whiskey at 
one distillation, by running the singlings through 
a steam-chest, commonly known as a “thumpin’- 
cbist.” The advantage claimed is that “Hit 
allows you to make your whiskey afore the 
revenoo gits it; that’s all.” 
The final process is to run the liquor through 
a rude charcoal filter, to rid it of most of its 
fusel oil. This having been done, we have moon¬ 
shine whiskey, uncolored, limpid as water, and 
ready for immediate consumption. 
I fancy that some gentlemen will stare at the 
words here italicised; but I am stating facts. 
It is quite impracticable for a blockader to 
age his whiskey. In the first place, he is too 
poor to wait; in the second place, his product 
is very small, and the local demand is urgent; 
in the third place, he has enough trouble to con¬ 
ceal, or run away with, a mere copper still, to 
say nothing of barrels of stored whiskey. Cheer¬ 
fully he might “waive the quantum o’ the sin,” 
but he is quite alive to “the hazard o’ con¬ 
cealin’.” So, while the stuff is yet warm from 
the still, it is taken by confederates and quickly 
disposed of. There is no exaggeration in the 
answer a moonshiner once made to me when I 
asked him how old the best blockade liquor ever 
got to be: “If it ’d git to be a month old, it 
’d fool me!” 
They tell a story on a whilom neighbor of 
mine, the redoubtable Quill Rose, which, to 
those who know him, sounds like one of his 
own: “A slick-faced dude from Knoxville,” 
said Quill, “told me once that all good red- 
liquor was aged, and that if I’d age my block¬ 
ade it would bring a fancy price. Well, sir, I 
tried it; I kept some for three months—and, by 
godlings, it ain’t so.” 
To those assumed connoisseurs who, from 
time to time, have assured me that “genuine 
mountain dew is the purest and the best whiskey 
in the world.” I can only reply that their pleas¬ 
ure in its inhibition must be analogous to that 
of the little boy who hooks green apples and 
eats them, albeit he knows full well that his urn’s 
and all’s of appreciation will soon change to oh. 
Lord’s upon the stool of repentance. While it 
is no doubt true, as experts affirm, that no 
patent distillery product ever equals that of the 
crude and primitive pot-still, when the latter is 
properly aged, yet I doubt if a thousand-dollar 
prize could produce, in all our mountains, one 
single keg of blockade whiskey that has been 
aged. 
As for purity, probably most moonshine whis¬ 
key is quite pure; but every blockader knows how 
to adulterate, and when one of them does stoop 
to such tricks, he will stop at no halfway meas¬ 
ures. Some add alkali (ordinary washing lye, 
or lye that they make themselves from wood 
ashes), both to increase the yield and to give 
the liquor an artificial bead, and then prime this 
abominable fluid with pepper, ginger, tobacco, 
or anything else that will make it sting. Even 
buckeyes, which are poisonous themselves, are 
sometimes used to give the drink a soapy bead. 
Such beverages are known in the mountains 
by the expressive terms “pop-skull” and “bum- 
blings” (because they “make a bumbly noise in 
a feller’s head v ). It may be needless to say that 
some of these decoctions are so toxic that their 
continued used would have fatal results. Even 
a small dose of such stuff is enough to change 
a normally good-hearted fellow into a raging 
fiend who will shoot or stab without provocation. 
However, liquor of any kind is scarce in the 
mountains, notwithstanding the moonshining, 
and it must be a vile brand of “stump-water,” 
indeed, that will draw from a native any com¬ 
ment more severe than this: “Wall, that smells 
as though it had the vim about hit, and it holds 
its bead; but [critically] it has leetle farewell to 
it like creosut.” 
Taking them by and large, the mountain 
people are indeed an abstemious race. In drink¬ 
ing, as in everything else, this is the Land of 
Do Without. Not that they have any com¬ 
punctions about drinking; their ideas on this, as 
on other matters of conduct, being those uni¬ 
versally current in the eighteenth century. Men, 
women and children drink whiskey in family 
coficert—I have seen undiluted spirits drunk, a 
spoonful at a time, by a child that was still at 
the breast, and she never batted an eye—-but 
there are few mountaineers who see it twice a 
month, and they will cheerfully do without. 
Some one who knows this peoole has said of 
them that “they make more moonshine, and 
drink less of it, that any other people in the 
land.” I ascribe this largely to the terrific 
effects of a debauch with the raw and poisonous 
stuff that is generally all they can get to cele¬ 
brate with, and to the often bloody outcome of 
their occasional excesses. The mountain man 
sober is a well-meaning, good-natured fellow; 
but the mountain man drunk is one of the most 
dangerous creatures in the world, for he knows 
nothing of fisticuffs, and is always armed with 
at least a knife. 
To put all this in a nutshell: I affirm that the 
widespread notion that mountain whiskey is a 
particularly wholesome drink; as alcoholic 
liquors go, is itself the veriest moonshine in this 
whole business. 
Blockade liquor sells to the consumer at from 
two to three dollars a gallon, varying with the 
price of corn. The average yield is only two 
gallons to the bushel. Two and a half gal¬ 
lons is all that can be got out of a bushel of 
corn by blockaders’ methods, unless the stuff 
is adulterated. With corn selling at from 
seventy-five cents to a dollar a bushel, as it did 
in our settlement throughout the past year, and 
taking into account that the average sales of a 
little moonshiner's still probably do not exceed 
a gallon a day, it will be seen that there is no 
fortune in this mysterious trade. Even after 
the liquor is made, it must be peddlec bout by 
the most laborious secret methods, a man per¬ 
haps traveling four five miles at night, over the 
roughest of mountain trails, and without a 
lantern, to sell a single gallon. Paltry, indeed, 
is the stake for which the moonshiner’s risks are 
run. 
>jc :jc sfc jfs 4^ 
One day there came a ripple of excitement in 
our settlement. A blockader had shot at Jack 
Coburn, and a posse had arrested the would-be 
assassin—so flew the rumor, and it proved to be 
true. 
Coburn was a northern man who, years ago, 
opened a little store on the edge of the wilder¬ 
ness, bought timber land, and finally rose to 
comparative affluence. With ready wit he 
adapted himself to the ways of the mountain¬ 
eers and gained ascendancy among them. Once 
in a while an emergency would arise in which it 
was necessary either to fight or to back down, 
and in these contests a certain art that Jack had 
acquired in Michigan lumber camps proved the 
undoing of more than one mountain tough, at 
the same time winning the respect of the de¬ 
feated party no less than that of the spectators. 
He was what a mountaineer described to me as 
“a practiced knocker.” This phrase, far from 
meaning what it would on the Bowery, was in¬ 
terpreted to me as denoting “a master hand in 
a knock-fight.” Pugilism, as distinguished from 
shooting or stabbing, was an unknown - art in 
the mountains until Jack introduced it. 
Coburn had several tenants, among whom was 
a character whom we will call Edwards. In 
leasing a farm to Edwards, Coburn had ex¬ 
pressly stipulated that there was to be no moon- 
shining on the premises. But. by and by, there 
was reason to suspect that Edwards was vio¬ 
lating this part of the compact. Coburn did not 
send for a revenue officer; he merely set forth 
on a little still-hunt of his own. Before start¬ 
ing, he picked up a revolver and was about to 
stick it in his pocket, but, on second thought, he 
concluded that no red-headed man should be 
trusted with a loaded gun, even in such a case 
as this; so he thrust the weapon back into its 
drawer, and strode away, with nothing but his 
two big fists to enforce a seizure. 
Coburn searched long and diligently, but could 
find no sign of a still. Finally, when he was 
about to give it up, his curiosity was aroused by 
the particularly dense browse in the top of an 
enormous hemlock that had recently been felled. 
Pushing his way forward, he discovered a neat 
little copper still installed in the treetop itself. 
He picked up the contraband utensil, and 
marched away with it. 
Meantime, Edwards bad not been asleep. 
When Coburn came in sight of the farmhouse 
humped under his bulky burden, the enraged 
moonshiner seized a shotgun and ran toward 
him, breathing death and destruction Jack, 
however, trudged along about his business. 
Edwards, seeing that no bluff would work, fired; 
but the range was too great for his birdshot 
even to pepper holes through the copper still. 
Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot. 
It did not hurt Coburn’s skin, but it ruffled his 
dignity. In this case it was out of the Ques¬ 
tion to pommel the blackguard tor he had 
swiftly reloaded his gun. So Coburn ran off 
with the still, carried it home, sought out our 
magistrate, Brooks, and forthwith swore out a 
W Brooks (who, by the way, is also our teamster 
veterinarian, tooth-puller and accoucheur) did 
not fuss over any law books. Moonshining 
itself may be only a peccadillo, a venial sin- 
let the Government skm its own skunks—out 
when a man has promised not to moonshine, 
and then goes and does it. why that, by Jeremy, 
is a breach of contract! Straightway the magis¬ 
trate hastened to the post-office, and swore in, 
as a posse comitatus, the first four men that e 
111 Now, when four men are picked up at random 
in our township, it is safe to assume that at 
least two of them have been moonshiners them¬ 
selves and know how this sort of thing should 
be done. At any rate, the posse wasted no 
time in discussion. They went straight after 
that malefactor, got him, and. within an hour 
after the shot was fired, he was drummed out ot 
the county for good and forever. . h 
But Edwards had a son who was a trifle brasn 
This son armed himself, and offered show of 
battle. He fired two or three shots with his 
Winchester (wisely over the posse s heads) and 
then took to the tall timber. Dodging from tree 
to tree, he led the impromptu officers such a 
dance up the mountainside that, by the time they 
had corralled him, they were plumb overhet. 
They set that impetuous young man on a sharp- 
spined little jackass, strapped his feet under the 
animal’s belly, and their. clnei (my hunting 
partner, he was) drove him. that same night, 
twenty-five miles over a horrible mountain trail, 
