208 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
they gilded by romance outside the story-books and 
newspapers. Those frightful blood feuds that have 
given such notoriety to certain districts in Kentucky 
and Virginia, and which were sometimes though not 
always connected with moonshining, are unknown 
here. 
That the day of the moonshiner is passing is well 
illustrated by the fact that when the road was sur- 
veyed up Tryon Mountain a few years ago, not less 
than half a dozen moonshine stills were routed on 
the little streams adorning that dignified eminence, 
while to-day there is probably not a single still on 
the mountain. Only the remains of the stills were 
found, of course, for by the time the surveyors got 
there the watchful owners had taken away the cop- 
per retorts and whatever else was valuable. 
Six little stills gone off Tryon Mountain at that 
time undoubtedly meant six little stills set up else- 
where in the mountains near, for not unless the re- 
tort was found and destroyed, and he too poor to 
buy another, did the owner of a still abandon his 
occupation. To the young and active mountaineer 
there was for long an irresistible fascination about 
moonshining. In it he found combined, as it were, 
the excitements of war with the reward of industry. 
It was his Wall Street with a spice of personal dan- 
ger thrown in. When he was caught and put in jail 
he was terribly ashamed, not of being in jail, but of 
getting caught. It was something of a shock when 
one first came to the mountains to have a woman 
tell you her husband was in jail as frankly and with 
