762 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 13, 1913. 
Tramping in North Carolina Mountains 
By FRED A. OLDS 
Raleigh, N. C., Sept. 4, 1912. 
HE writer has returned from another long- 
tramp in 'the North Carolina mountains, 
in a part of that wonderful region where 
tourists have as yet never gone; where a railway 
is unknown as far as eyesight is concerned to 
more than a third of the people, and where 
primitive hospitality and low cost of living are 
the rule and not the exception. 
The tramp was made in khaki clothing, just 
a shirt and trousers, and no underwear; tolerably 
heavy shoes, medium weight socks, canvas leg¬ 
gings and light cap. The pack, weighing sixteen 
pounds, was rolled in a strip of white oilcloth 
two yards long and laced with corset strings, 
which are white and strong. In this pack was 
carried a rain coat, another khaki suit, a heavy 
flannel shirt, an extra pair of shoes, socks, hand¬ 
kerchiefs, towels and brushes, safety razor, and 
some other little needful things; the whole weight 
being carried diagonally across the body, the pack 
lying snugly across one shoulder and arching 
out from the body, so as not to restrict breathing. 
A good field glass and a kodak, taking pictures 
of post-card size, completed the equipment, the 
glass and kodak weighing some five pounds. In 
this simple rig it is no trouble to walk, and the 
pack can be shifted from one shoulder to another 
every five or fen miles. The plan adopted was to 
spend the night at some farm house, or perhaps 
hotel in the tiny towns, for in the three counties 
of Alleghany, Ashe and Watauga there is not a 
town with a population of more than 200 and only 
one has ever had a charter; in fact, in all that 
region there is very little crime, and least of all 
theft, and it is a land of unlocked doors, for hon¬ 
esty prevails. 
After an early breakfast, the walk was al¬ 
ways begun, and the wanderings were sometimes 
along the highways, sometimes over mountain 
trails and by all sorts of short-cuts. The place 
where the long tramp began was Thurmond, rail¬ 
head at present of a new railway, exactly at the 
base of the Blue Ridge, its elevation being 1,500 
feet, while that of the Crest of the Ridge, hardly 
three miles away in an air-line, is 3,380 feet. 
Along the road to the Crest some charming scen¬ 
ery was observed and on reaching the top, which 
is the point known as Roaring Gap, a view not 
to be forgotten was obtained of the low country. 
In the latter region there had been weeks of dry 
weather and heat, but on the mountain top there 
had been all the summer an abundance of rain 
and cool weather, with two frosts, and on the 
13th of August -the rhododendron was blooming 
vigorously and beautifully and nature wore the 
aspect usual at the height of spring-time. It was 
almost like a change from one world to. another, 
and when at night the temperature went down to 
54 degrees there was an added joy. In the night, 
with the cool breeze pouring over the mountain 
top, one could see fifty-five miles away the glit¬ 
tering electric lights at Winston-Salem, to the 
southeast, and those at Statesville, the same dis¬ 
tance away to the southwest, while directly south¬ 
ward were those of Elkin and eastward those of 
Mount Airy, the latter th.irty-two miles distant. 
The mountain is shaped"there very much like 
an orange, so that, standing at the crest one looks 
over the vast curve of the side toward the south 
and east, and down upon what seems like infinity. 
In the shimmering haze the lesser peaks below 
look like hills, and to the northward Virginia is 
very near and between there is a high country, 
full of swift streams as clear as springs, many 
of them containing brook trout. There is a world 
of fruit and the cheapness of everything to eat 
is astonishing. Immense cherry trees of the 
blackheart variety are features of the landscape. 
These grow wild everywhere and are used for 
shade trees in two of the towns, namely Jeffer¬ 
son and Boone. 
Up in that country walking was found to be 
a pure delight, so dry was the air and so bracing 
the temperature, and though the perspiration to¬ 
ward midday made itself felt a few minutes rest 
in the steady breeze anywhere in the shade dis¬ 
sipated it all. Every day a light breakfast was 
eaten and on the tramp the beautiful springs, 
almost always objects of special pride to the peo¬ 
ple, whose well built and often very attractive 
houses dot the highways, were visited. Frequent¬ 
ly, when the question was asked if the spring 
water could be had, the reply would be in this 
wise: “Wouldn't you rather have milk?” There 
it was, just below the spring, in the well-kept 
spring-house; in big crocks, cool, delicious and 
clean, and all for nothing. At lunch time that 
meal was invariably eaten out of doors, and its 
components were butter, milk, either sweet or 
buttermilk, and no end of either; honey, which 
the bees had generally made from chestnut flow¬ 
ers or those of buckwheat, and cornbread, baked 
in large squares, over two inches thick, always 
from home-grown and carefully selected corn. 
People up there grow almost everything they eat, 
and as one farmer smilingly remarked, “Nothing- 
set before you has ever traveled on a railroad ex¬ 
cept the sugar and the coffee.” After such a 
lunch as that described there is no heaviness of 
the stomach, and as the afternoon comes along 
the springs come into request again. Beautiful 
swing bridges, suspended by wire cables high 
above the streams, are features of a journey 
through the three counties of Alleghany, Ashe 
and Watauga, but at some places there are what 
a farmer spoke of as a “shirt-tail ford;” that is 
one so deep that one's trousers have to be re¬ 
moved in order to make the trip. Of course 
bridges can be found at some other point, but 
sometimes time is saved by tackling one of these 
fords, of which there are several on the New 
River. 
The writer found this New River to be a 
wonderfully fine stream for bass fishing, and this 
holds good all the way from the Virginia line to 
Blowing Rock. This river has several prongs, 
or branches, but perhaps the most important one 
has its head near Blowing Rock, and in an “Old 
Town” canoe two men were making their way 
as iar as they could to the head-spring of the 
stream, fishing as they went. All the way along 
the water is perfectly clear and runs swiftly, 
without any falls'of moment. There is simply 
a steady rush, over a fairly wide and very even 
bottom, rocky all the way. The bass are taken 
with minnows and some large catches have been 
made during the season. One way to get at this 
stream is by way of the Norfolk & Western Rail¬ 
way and some of its branches, and from stations 
at Galax and Troutdale, Va. The stream is well 
worth looking after by fishermen. It runs near 
Jefferson'and is there very showy and impres¬ 
sive. 
Sawdust, particularly from chestnut wood 
and hemlock, has spoiled some of the smaller 
mountain streams, and a number of the lumber¬ 
men have a great fashion of putting their mills 
directly upon streams. In one case the discolora¬ 
tion was observed for a dozen miles, due to the 
tannic acid in the sawdust. Yet many streams 
are virgin and rush and roar through forests 
where the axe has not yet been laid. The writer 
found vast areas of mountain land yet untouched 
by the lumberman or the farmer, but in some 
places there had been devastation by the saw mill 
and the inevitable fire which follows it, and also 
farms on too steep hill sides, where anything 
except cover-crops bring about erosion, though 
the land has in general a wonderful way of hold¬ 
ing on to remarkably steep slopes. 
Living is certainly cheap in the region trav¬ 
ersed, and in the little towns the rates at the 
hotels are no more than a dollar a day. The 
genial people along the country-side are glad to 
see people from “down the country” and certainly 
make them welcome. Mile after mile there were 
views of the wonderfully fine meadows, where 
the hay is cut only once a year, in August, when 
its average height is something over two feet, and 
the writer carries in mind visions of thousands 
upon thousands of hay-stacks. Very frequently 
a woman was on top of these, setting down the 
hay which was passed up to her on the extremely 
long wooden forks used by the men and boys. It 
is a land where everybody works, old and young, 
where the labor is entirely white, since there are 
so few negroes that they are a curiosity, and 
where there is not one foreigner. It is just as 
distinctively and purely American as it was a 
hundred years ago. 
By devious ways the route led not only 
through the counties of Ashe, Alleghany and Wa¬ 
tauga but also into high Burke, in Caldwell, 
Mitchell and Yancey, with peeps into Virginia 
and Tennessee. At Linville Falls, Frank 
Bicknell, so well known to Forest and Stream 
readers, lives, in his dainty little cottage, snowy 
white, which sits like a swan on a cliff above 
the beautiful falls, amid green grass, wonderfully 
fine, and lofty mountain trees, heather and rho¬ 
dodendron. Mr. Bicknell not long ago fell from 
his porch and nearly fractured some ribs. He 
looks after some 14,000 acres of land there, in¬ 
cluding that in a wild gorge or canyon of the 
Linville River, which drops some 2,000 feet into 
the lower country and is the only stream which 
breaks through the mighty walls of the Blue 
Ridge, flowing into the Catawba River and thence 
into the Atlantic Ocean; all the other streams 
flowing into the Mississippi and so into the Gulf 
of Mexico. 
The rainbow trout fishing in the gorge of the 
Linville has for years been considered the best 
in this country, and such experts as Admiral 
Rodgers, U. S. Navy, considered it the best, 
It is a wild place and there are risky spots, where 
only the most daring'can go. Of course there are 
trout above the Falls and all the way up the 
stream to Grandfather Mountain, where there are 
the parent springs. We went to the top of Grand¬ 
father and got one of the finest views in all the 
mountain country. Really the view is finer than 
that of Mt. Mitchell, though the latter is nearly 
1,000 feet higher. By the way, the exact height 
of Mt. Mitchell has just been determined and it 
is 6,888 feet, this taking the place of the old 
figure, 6,711. 
At Alta Pass a great work is in progress, name¬ 
ly the beginning of the “Crest of the Blue Ridge 
highway,” which is to be easily the most interest¬ 
ing and striking road east of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. The writer enjoyed very much being with 
the engineers and construction force and seeing 
(Continued on page 747.) 
