192 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
When berries are ripe, she and the children have 
an ever-ready occupation. Particularly in huckle- 
berry season you will see little "gangs" of sunbon- 
neted women and children, with stained and happy 
faces, and stained hands and clothes, plodding along 
the dusty road carrying heavy pails of shining blue- 
black berries. And sometimes whole families go to 
the "huckleberry balds" on the mountains, where 
they stay several days, sleeping in their tented 
wagons. It is only in recent years that the people 
have taken to canning their berries, sugar being a 
luxury in the mountains. But lately there has come 
a substitute for sugar which is vaguely referred to as 
"powders," and what these mysterious powders are 
we discovered one day when into a country store in 
the mountains, where we had gone in search of some- 
thing to eat, came a little troop of women each with 
her tin pail full of berries and each demanding 
"powders" according to her needs. The clerk cast a 
critical eye over each pail of berries, then ladled out 
from a bottle a quantity of white powder sufficient 
in his estimation to cover the case. When the women 
had gone we asked him what the powder was. He 
said he did n't know, and rather reluctantly handed 
us the bottle, on which was the label printed in black 
letters — Salicylic Acid. It does not take much of 
this to preserve a jar of berries, though one should 
think that as a substitute for sugar it might be a 
little disappointing. However, any berries are better 
than none when winter comes, and there is no other 
fruit, excepting apples and peaches, which are dried 
