USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 9
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And she said I will give it a mountain, a mountain where mountains are not wont to be ; a mountain, too, rich in precious inner treasures as well as in charms attractive to the eye. And as she spake, Behold ! Earth heaved and the Pine Mountain uprose in modest grandeur and beauty, adorned as to its umbrageous sides and fertile, close clinging valleys and breezy cerulean summits, not only with pines, but with other trees also unnumerable. Far down to the South, it uprose in lonely loveliness and isolation, further down, and nearer to the sea, by more than one hundred miles, than any other mountain, or mountain knob, or outlier. And at its Eastern end, nature allowed a. little river, the first that turned away from the Atlantic slope and went to woo the blue waters of the Gulf, to pierce its yet unharden-
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
ed mass, and to seek the sea in a straight, onward course through its disrupted sides. But as the young mountain grew towards the West, it grew also compact and rock- ribbed. It swelled out larger and towered up higher, and at length after stretching away for some fifty miles, became too strong for even the mighty Chattahoochee, child of the eternal Alleghanies, forcing the impetuous river to bend conquered around its Western base, and to go fretting, foam- ing, writhing, tumbling over many a mile of rocky, unre- lenting rapids down to where Columbus sits in long waiting at the foot of those first falls and all their vast water power. But mourn not, fair Coweta,* daughter of the ever-roaring, soul-attuning waters ! Nor let thy firm heart fail thee un- der the trying fortunes that have been thy lot ! How often does time justify bright dreams whose fulfillment has been long deferred ! And mav it not be in coming years when haply redundant capital flowing thither from afar shall become wedded by ties tight and strong to hungry labor in our new-ordered South as already in other lands, that those who shall then roam the green earth shall see thy long river staircase, from Columbus to West Point, one climbing street of pallatian mills, from whose lofty windows toward that street's upper end, the caged operatives will often look out and regale their eyes and hearts with the ever fresh aerial beauty of the Pine Mountain. Most probably, however, ere that great specta- cle shall present itself, it will have for its forerunner, another hardly less inspiring, though of a very different sort. Around that mountain with its naturally fine circum- jacent lands, its gushing wealth of pure healthful waters, and its delicious, salubrious climate, it has occurred to me that earlier perhaps than any where else in the old cotton belt proper of the State, there will be more and more seen a white population in full, manly, working harmony with the new condition of things with which the Southern people have to grapple; a white population that will know no
*Indian name of the site of Columbus and the Falls of the Chattahoochee.
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
shrinking from rough, hard, rural toil, from daily labor in the field throughout the day, throughout the year, under summer and autumnal, as well as under wintry and vernal suns ; a population, consequently, which will be freed from dependence on the negro; and under whose superior indus- try and management, that fair region will be made to re- spond fully to its great natural advantages and to become a fit ornate setting to the central mountain gem which it en- circles.
Of the various routes, two on the Eastern side of Flint river and five between the Flint and Chattahoochee, by which I had occasion to cross the Pine Mountain in old times when it was yet an interesting novelty, most of them being at points of great depression, such as the roads usually seek, presented no very striking views or other in- teresting features of scenery ; and indeed the very sight of the mountain itself was hidden from the approaching traveler in those days, by the thick tall forests which every- where environed it, so that the first notice of being near it . was the actual climbing of its sides. I must, however, make an exception, here, of the direct route between Hamilton and LaGrange, which was first opened some forty-five or six years ago, to supersede the old roundabout way by King's Gap. This new road struck the mountain some few miles north-west from Hamilton, and by a gentle sidling ascent, rose gradually above the continually expanding campaign below, of which the rider on horseback caught glimpses larger and larger through the surrounding trees, which grew thinner and freer from undergrowth as he ascended. Thus he was well prepared, by the time he reached the crest of the mountain, to turn his horse's head to the South and stand at gaze. It was but for a few moments, however, that he would thus stand, for quickly he saw that he was at the most depressed point of that narrow crest and that it stretched away westwardly by a rapid, smooth ascent over a bare, gravelly surface, with a thin growth of mountain oaks inviting the horseman by its openness. After follow-
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
ing this ascent for a few hundred yards, again he stood at gaze, and was satisfied not to stir another step. A fair, vast, uniform scene, which the axe had not yet perceptibly marred, was embraced at once by the eye, above all blue, below all green, the intermediate ether filled from Heaven to Earth with a profusion of intense summer sunlight, one single ray of which would suffice to illuminate the World .* Away beyond Flint river on the East and beyond the Chat- tahoochee on the West, the hills rose to meet the kiss of the bending skies. Not so toward the South, not so towards the fierce clime beneath which the great American Mediter- ranean rolls. There the green earth declined lower and lower in the distance and sank away more and more in love- ly maiden withdrawal from the stooping Heavens, which at length when the strained eye could reach no further, de- scended curtain-like to the low-lying emerald expanse, shut- ting out from view all beyond.
On turning to the North, the contrast was very striking. Whereas to the South the country sloped away in a long, interminable, inclined plain till it reached the sea, on the Northern side it rose rapidly as it receded, the rivers and all their tributary streams running downward toward the mountain. Hence the prospect in that direction was soon shut in and bore no comparison with the view on the South- ern side.
* I should not have thought of using this very strong expression, but for my vivid recollection of the total eclipse of the sun in November, 1834. I stood watching for the instant of entire obscuration. It lasted but for a moment. The very next moment a single ray shot from the sun to the earth through the darkness, fine as the finest thread, intensely luminous and visible throughout the whole ninety-five millions of miles of length. It literally illuminated the world, for it fell on every eye and alighted ou every object. The next instant a pencil of rays shot out, but it only created a greater not a more positive or striking illumination. To not more than one in many millions of men, is it given ever to see a total eclipse of the sun ; partly because it is a thing that so rarely oceurs, partly because when it does occur, it is visible on so small a por- tion of the earth's surface. Well is the Astronomical Author of the American Almanac for the year 1834, justified in pronouncing it "the most magnificent and sublime of the phenomena of nature, compared with which Niagara sinks into mediocrity."
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
But what was done by nature for the Pine Mountain was not all external. Deep within its bowels she is and ever has been busy in mysterious workings. There she has established her wonderful hidden laboratories: At the chief- est of which no chymic hand save her own mixes and medi- cates the inimitable waters of the Meriwether Warm Springs, bursting in a lavish, chrystal sluice from the Mountain's Northern side. No fires but of her kindling have kept them through ages at the same exact happy temperature, delicious and healthful for bathing, and it is said, too, medicinal for drinking. Had such waters been found in any of the moun- tains around ancient Rome, marble acqueducts would have conveyed them to imperial palaces, marble bathing apart- ments would have welcomed them as they came gushing. There is nothing elsewhere, I have often heard it said, com- parable to the delicate, exquisite luxury they afford. Cer- tainly my own experience tallies with this belief, nor can I conceive of anything superior. But then they are the only Warm Springs that I have ever visited. The climate is worthy of the waters and the site and scenery worthy of both. In Ante Bellum times it was a place of great resort, thronged by the best company, and so it will be again if ever there shall be again money and means at the South for pleasuring, and if our people shall be wise and Southern enough to spend their means within their own borders, and thus help towards adding the adornments and attractions of art to the beauties and blessings by which nature appeals to us to stay at home and cherish our own household gods. How much better would this be on the part of the fortunate, prosperous few among us than gadding abroad to empty their pockets and air themselves, their silks and felts at the North to the annual contemptious admiration of our con- querors, robbers, oppressors there "that some of the rebels should have some money left yet for summer flaunting and show after all." To your tents, oh ! Israel! To your own sum- mer resorts if a summering you go, even though you should have nothing there better than tents or log cabins to shelter
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
you ! The matrons and maidens of the South whom the war left poor but heroines and patriots forever, stand ready to settle this point aright for you. To their husbands, fathers, brothers they exclaim, if we have money to spend, let it be spent here at home where it will help to sustain and cheer our own stricken Southern land.
But hereabouts and not far off are to be seen other kindred displays of nature's liberality to the Pine Mountain. Mind- ful of the Southern liver, often a prey to malaria, she has considerately imbedded some where in the mountain some- what or muchwhat of brimstone and taught her purest wa- ters to percolate there and to tarry long enough to become impregned with its virtues and then a little way off to the North to bubble up in the White Sulphur Spring-a resort dear in former times to the hepatic and to staid, quiet people.
Nor was she unthoughtful of those who, victims of no malady, might merely wish to spend a summer vacation in relaxation and gaiety, and laying up a stock of fine health for the future. Behold for these, in a sweet valley to the South, the famed Chaly beate Spring renowned for its tonic properties. Where lie the great subterranean iron ore beds from which the generous fountain distills and draws its strengthi, none can tell, save that they are deep hidden in the mountain's hard bosom, safe there from the miner's pick and the vagrant enterprise of searchers after "Mineral Rich- es." And none need fear as long as that mountain shall stand, that these its happily ferruginated waters will ever fail, or lose aught of their health giving efficacy.
Nature's rich dowry to the Pine Mountain is yet further augmented by another mineral spring which it has never been my fortune to visit, but which from all I have ever heard, ought not to be forgotten in an inventory of its wealth. It is the Oak Mountain Spring, so called from a neighboring spur or projection of that name from the main mountain range. Owing, it is said, to the neglect of the owner of the land to make or promote the making of provis- ion for the entertainment and accomodation of visitors, this
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
spring has hitherto been little known, being frequented only by those who are willing and able to erect accommodations and provide in all respects for themselves. And yet in spite of this drawback, its waters have acquired a high reputation with the few that know them, foreshadowing a wide celeb- rity and a thronged patronage whenever they shall fall under a propitions management. They have never been an- alyzed, and consequently their qualities are vouched for by no chemical tests, and the warm praises and satisfactory ex- perience of all who have ever given them a trial must be accepted for the presentas the only certificates of their merit.
Cross we now Flint river from the West, and two or three miles from its Eastern bank, in what was forty years ago a wild sequestered glen of the mountain, close by the side of a little rivulet, we encounter the greatest natural cu- riosity of all, the greatest not only in this region, but the greatest and most interesting it has ever happened to me to see in Georgia or anywhere else. It is the Thundering Spring, a boiling, uprushing column, six feet in diameter. of purest water and finest sand intermixed. The column on reaching the top of its deep cylindrical well overflows in a ceaseless flood on the side next to the rivulet and runs into it. So forceful is its upward rush that no dead or living thing, animal or vegetable, nothing lighter than stone or metal, can conquer it and go down. It is a wondrous Na- ture's bath, the bather being doubly laved, water-washed and sand-washed at the same time, treated over his whole body to an exquisite, healthful cutaneous friction far sur- passing all the appliances of hygene or "adulteries of art ;" -bobbing perpendicularly up and down in the water mean- while, incapable and fearless of sinking. Upon first leap- ing into it, a man goes straight down under the water for an instant, and then pops straight back up to the surface again, like a submerged cork, and there floats at ease breast high out of the water, gamboling mermaid-like as long as he pleases. No bottom up to the time of my visit had ever been found to this unparagoned well, nor had it ever
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THE PINE MOUNTAIN.
been at all ascertained that it had any other or more solid bottom than the seemingly inexhaustible and consequently interminably deep, loose, quicksands which it was forever bringing to the top and discharging along with its waters into the adjoining rivulet.
Of course, the hydrostatic principle which caused and perpetuates this spring in all its up-shooting vehemence is simple and obvious. But where shall we look for such an- other exemplification of that principle ? Not certainly on the Atlantic side of North America. Nor have I ever heard of its match anywhere in the great trans-montane "unknown" of the Pacific slope. I can recall nothing of which I ever heard or read that is a match for it except the Geysers of Iceland, and they are beyond doubt an over match.
It is a thing that strikes the contemplative mind at once curiously and pleasantly that Nature should have passed by all the greater mountains and reserved this wonder of hers for one so petty and unimportant in comparison as the Pine Mountain. Some where in its upper strata she saw fit to construct in preference to all other places, her mighty reser- voirs and to keep them perpetually filled with that ponder- ous mass of waters whose downward pressure forcing them along through some narrow, strong-walled subterranean passage, they came at last against the quicksands of this spot, where their further underground course being arrested by unknown obstacles, they burst their way suddenly and violently through the loose, overlying sands up to the Earth's surface and to the light of the sun and the wonder- ing eyes of men.
The name of Thundering Spring is supposed to have been bestowed by the Indians whose exquisite sense of hearing doubtless caught sometimes the sound of the surging wa- ters as they raved and boiled in their sandy depths. But its thunders have now long been silent or at least unheard, unable to penetrate and awaken the dull ear of Civilization.
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KING'S GAP. KING'S TRAILS.
1
CHAPTER V.
KING'S GAP-KING'S TRAILS.
King's Gap in the Pine Mountain, a few miles above Hamilton in Harris county, on the road to Greenville, is the last memento now remaining of a set of Indian Trails of that name that in Indian times perforated in various directions the upper part of the region between the Flint and Chatta- hoochee and, I feel certain, also of a much larger scope of the Creek Territory to the East, South and West. I first visited the country North of the Pine Mountain, in the Spring of 1827, when the Indians had just left and civilized settlement was just beginning. Carried by business, I cross- ed Flint river at Gray's ferry not much above the Mountain and took what had been King's Trail, but which by that time had been widened into a rude wagon road by the new settlers having chopped away a few bushes along its sides. It conducted me to a place called Weavers, the temporary seat of Justice for Troup county, which originally extended from river to river. Having delivered to the newly elected but yet uncommissioned Clerk of the Superior Court, my client's Informations against sundry lots of land charged to have been fraudulently drawn in the then recent Land Lot- tery, I enquired how I could get to Bullsboro, the just chosen judicial site of Coweta county, where I had similar business. Nobody could tell. Luckily the newly elected sheriff' arrived at this juncture to learn whether his commis- sion had yet come from Milledgeville. He told me there
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KING'S GAP. KING'S TRAILS.
was no road to Bullsboro and that my best way would be to go home with him, on the Western side of the county, and to take a trail the next morning that ran up the Chattahoochee. I thanked him and went with him, resuming the same King's Trail by which I had come from Flint river and which struck the Chattahoochee at what is now West Point. Nor did it stop there, for seven years afterwards, in 1834, when the Indians were yet in the Alabama part of their country, I traveled along the continuation of this same trail, a lone horseman, from West Point to Tallasee at the foot of the first falls of the Tallapossa river, from whence the trail still continued, passing through Tuckabatchee, the Creek Capital and famed seat of the Big Warrior, and extending from thence to the old French Fort Toulouse, afterwards Fort Jackson, and also to Little Talasee, the still more famous seat of the renowned McGillivray.
The next morning my Sheriff-Host refusing everything but my thanks for his hospitality, told me I had nothing to do but to take another King's trail which he directed me how to find at no great distance from his house, and to follow it up the river some twenty or twenty-five miles, when I must begin to look out for some route striking into the interior of the county of Coweta. He knew there was such a route, but not how far off it was. I soon found myself in this second King's Trail ascending the country, and as I jogged along in the little, narrow, well defined path, just wide enough for a single footman or horseman, and along which no bush had ever been cut away, no wheel had ever rolled, King's Trail began to be a study to me, and I began to wonder what great Indian trader, of whom I had never heard, was great enough to have given his name not to one Indian trail only, but to two.
At first I could not help feeling some misgiving as to the persistent continuity of my little path, and dreaded lest it might give out or in the phrase of the new settlers "take a sapling" and leave me alone in the trackless woods ; and once indeed, when the day was pretty far advanced, it seemed
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KING'S GAP. KING'S TRAILS.
to divide, and both tracks were so dim that I was in doubt which to take. But clinging almost instinctively to the Western or river side, I soon found myself riding along the bank of a considerable water course which I felt no pleasure at the prospect of having to ford. While this anx- iety was yet strong upon me, suddenly the trail plunged into a piece of rich bottom land, evidently an old Indian clearing, now, however, grown up into a very dense thicket of young trees and clustering vines which overarched and darkened the narrow way. But still the little path contin- ued distinct and unobstructed, and when I was expecting every moment to come where I should be obliged to risk fording the stream, behold ! I began to ascend a hill, and it grew lighter and lighter and soon I was on a clear open hill-top with the shining waters of the Chattahoochee, flash- ing in the sunlight before me and a plain open road invit- ing me, leading eastwardly from the river. Few contrasts have I ever encountered in my life more thrilling and joyous than the almost instantaneous transition from that dark thicket to this bright scene. It was Grayson's Landing, on which I stood, as I not long afterwards learned-a place much noted in old times as a crossing in the Indian trade .* It took its name from Grayson, a Scotchman, who was a great Indian trader eighty or ninety years ago, and whose name sometimes occurs in the American State papers on In- dian Affairs. He trafficked and traveled and livedamong the Indians until becoming rich and attached to them, he ended by taking an Indian wife and settling down permanently in the Indian country at the Hillabee towns, some distance to the West or South-west from this point on the Chattahoo- chee. At these towns it was, if I remember aright, that Col. Willet unexpectedly first met McGillivray in his great Mission as Washington's confidential agent in 1790. It
*Grayson's Landing is now, I have heard, not quite so noted a crossing as in old Indian times, though it is still a crossing, under the name of Philpot's Ferry, in Heard County, just below the mouth of New River, which is the identical river, then certainly entirely new to me, that I so much dreaded to ford in the spring of 1827,
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KING'S GAP. KING'S TRAILS.
was also through these same towns and along the trading route that led from them to the river at Grayson's Landing, and from thence onward by the way of the Stone Mountain to the Savannah river, keeping all the while within the In- dian Territory, (for Georgia and the Creeks were then at war) that Col. Willet soon after escorted the great ambassa- dorial cavalcade of Creek Chiefs to New York, headed by McGillivray himself, the Sovereign Chief.
As I paused for a while on the beautiful overlooking hill that sloped down to the river bank, gazing around and breathing freer, I little thought on what historic ground I was standing, or that the Eastwardly road, the sight of which was still making my heart leap, was only a very modern widening of still another King's Trail-a fact I learned sub- sequently. It had been wrought into a wagon road during the previous winter by the hauling of corn and provisions from the not very remote old settlements to be floated down the Chattahoochee from this point for the supply of the new settlers on both sides of the river.
My faithful steed felt not less than myself the inspiring change from the petty trail he had been threading all the day through the woods to the bright open track that now solicited him, and he sprang forward with rapid, elastic steps that brought me a little after nightfall to my destina- tion, rude but hospitable Bullboro, some two or three miles North of the beaten road along which I had been pushing hard during the afternoon. My business was quickly des- patched the next morning, and again in the saddle, two more days of lonely, meditative travel found me at my new home at Forsyth and at the end of my tour, but not at the end of its fascinating effect. My mind still remained under a charm, as it were, and most especially did that ubiquitous King's Trail pursue and haunt me, demanding solution of the name it bore, demanding to whom, great among the Indians in trade or in any other way, that name had ever belonged that it should have become the favorite designation of so many of their important trails. But nobody did I ever
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KING'S GAP. KING'S TRAILS.
encounter who was able to enlighten my ignorance or aid my enquiries or in the slightest degree appease my curiosity. To all which add, that soon afterwards I had occasion to make another trip to the new country, which revealed to me still another, a fourth King's Trail, the one deflecting from the Gray's ferry route, through the Pine Mountain at King's Gap, and passing from thence down to where Columbus now stands. And thus the interest of the curious question which had beset me was intensated and increased. It per- sued me more and more and wrought itself finally into my sleeping as well as my waking hours.
I dreamed that I was in the saddle again, and that I had already been there a long time, wending along yet another King's Trail, one tending downward in its course towards the Atlantic wave and Orient Sun. Already I was far gone on my journey, far down on the ridge which divides the waters which prefer the Gulf from those which go into the Ocean. The pine forests were already thickening with their gloom the dim dubious twilight that enveloped me, sacred ever to dreams. Methought I was drawing near the land of Tallassee so dear of old to the Indian heart, and remember ed not that neither there, nor where I actually was, nor along the Atlantic Coast nor in the high uplands through which my long darksome ride had stretched, were the In- dians any longer to be found. It was not night, it was not day. No stars were out, there was no sun, no moon, and yet the sky looked blue through the sombre air. The great- er beasts were all in their lairs and no large living thing was astir save me and my horse. But the owl's hootings and the whippoorwill's night-long, monotonous lament sere- naded me on my way, and ever and anon the leather-winged bat flitted before me, saluting, whilst the tall, heavy topt trees glowred solemnly over the sleeping, semi-nocturnal scene. The further I went the more I fell in love with my dear, unfailing little path, it was so single, so unerringly true and right and safe. Calm was my faith that it would not desert me nor lead me into evil or peril, though I was
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