ASHEVILLE 125 
the prophecy was fulfilled in spirit. Zebulon Baird, 
besides being a prophet and a legislator, was an 
enterprising business man, he and another man 
being the first merchants of Buncombe County. 
To be a merchant in Buncombe in those days, when 
produce had to be obtained, guarded, and carried 
on muleback, or over the new wagon-road, — which, 
judging from the conduct of wagon-roads in the 
mountains to-day, must often have been a feat in 
itself, — called for the same kind of courage and 
skill necessary to a general in an army. And that 
Zebulon Baird did not neglect the aesthetic needs of 
the human heart is proved by the fact that it was he 
who introduced the jew's-harp into the mountains, 
that dulcet instrument which has remained to this 
day enshrined in the hearts of the people. The life of 
the pioneer develops those quaint, humorous, or 
sterling characters that make easy the path of the 
novelist; and the imagination lingers with pleasure 
over the picture of George Swain, postmaster, who 
for twenty years, it is said, was never absent on 
arrival of the mail, and who distributed every letter 
with his own hands ! The Asheville Post-office, that 
in 1806 became the distributing centre for Tennessee, 
Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, prob- 
ably did not receive letters enough to overtax the 
powers of a strong man, and one can see the zealous 
postmaster eagerly awaiting the arrival of the mail 
that was to be consigned by him, and him alone, to 
the inhabitants of the, to him, known world. 
The sterling qualities of the postmaster were in- 
