University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

Our driver finding the roads worse than his expectation,
now contrary to the solemn league and covenant between
us, refused to proceed another step towards Glenville
without additional pay. While the controversy was tending
upward in pitch and intensity, (for a very liberal price
had been already paid,) Dr. Sylvan said,

“Come, driver, don't leave the strangers this way. I
consider the price Mr. Carlton has already paid you to be
very fair, and that you are bound to go on with him to
Glenville—but here—(action to word)—here I'll pay
you a dollar, rather than this lady should not see her
mother to-night.” Of course Mr. C. never allowed that
dollar to be paid—yet such was the generous spirit of the
man! Alas! that politics should ever have made him lost
to some friends! and for what? ay! for what?—the good
of the people! Ay! yes—and times come, when politicians
sacrifice first their friends and then cut their own
throats, for that ignis fatuns, and are laughed at!

It was noon, and the roads less bad, and sometimes almost
good, we were, for awhile, in hopes of seeing our
friends in a few hours. The day, too, was pleasant; and
on the dry ridges being free from great perils, we began to
enjoy the wildness of the primitive world. And what
grander than the column-like trees ascending, many
twenty, many thirty, and some even forty feet, with scarce
a branch to destroy the symmetry! Unable, from their
number, to send out lateral branches, like stalks of grain
they had all grown straight up, hastening, as in a race, each

to out-top its neighbour, till their high heads afforded a shelter
to squirrels, far beyond the sprinkling of a shot-gun,
and almost beyond the reach of the rifle! The timber in
the Purchase was only trunk and top! Yet where a hurricane
had passed, and, by destroying a part, allowed room
for the others to grow, there plainly could be seen how
such could “toss giant branches”—branches in amplitude
and strength greater than the trunks, or rather slim bodies
of puny trees in modern groves and parks!

But here comes our first snake story. In answer to some
query about snakes, our landlord at Woodville had replied
that “there was a smart sprinkle of rattlesnake on Red
Run, and that it was a powerful nice day to sun themselves.”
We were now drawing near to the dragon district,
and began to experience that vibratory sensation
belonging to snake terror, when lo! a crackling and rustling
of leaves and sticks on our left—and there, sure enough,
was a living snake! It was not, indeed, a rattlesnake, but
a very fierce, large, and partly erect, black one, with a skin
as shiney as if just polished with patent blacking, a mouth
wide open and astonishingly active tongue! Several feet
of head and neck were visible, but how many of body and
tail were concealed can never be told except by Algebra;
for when with curiosity still stronger than fear, the driver
and myself got out for a nearer inspection, not only did her
ladyship increase her vengeful hissing but she was joined
in that unpleasent music by some half dozen concealed performers;
and then our new and yet long acquaintance,
instead of vanishing, as had been supposed on our nearer
approach, darted head foremost at us, and believe me reader,
in the true western style, like “greased lightning.”
Had a boa made that attack, our retreat could not have
been more abrupt and speedy—we pitched and tumbled into
our wagon—and on looking round, our queen snake was
leisurely retiring, attended by more of her subjects than we

even dared to shake a stick at. Some of these were appaently
infant black snakes; for the protection of which we
then conjectured the dam(?) snake had endeavoured to intimidate
us—in which attempt she had very reasonable
success.

Every noise now by bird or squirrel seemed serpentish;
and every perfume of wild flower or blossom, was like cucumbers,
the odour of which resembles the fragrance of a
rattlesnake; and every crooked dark stick in the leaves or
twisting vines was a formidable reptile. At length, however,
we had exhausted our snake stories, conquered our
apprehensions, and gliding into other topics, had reached a
point in the forest where was to be sought the path leading
off to Glenville.

Reader, do not, when we speak of roads and paths, figure
a lane between fences; such trammel on the liberty of
travellers, and the freedom of cattle would be intolerable.
No, a road authorised by law is achieved by levelling the
trees between given points, and thus making an avenue in
the woods from twenty to thirty feet wide: the small
stumps being often removed, but all a size larger left, only
(theoretically) dressed down so as to permit wagons to pass
over without striking the axle—if they can. This delicate
performance of wagons is called—straddling, and is done
by rough ones without fear; other vehicles utterly refuse
to straddle. As to saplings, such are cut off by one or
more oblique blows, some six or eight inches from the
ground, the remaining stumps thus conveniently sharpened,
and thre tening to impale whoever may be pitched on to
them from horse or carriage.

On one side usually, some times on both, of large stumps
was a hole from one to two feet deep. Where the stumps
followed in a serrated series, the wheels, but only of
straddling wagons, performed the most exhilarating see-saw,
with the most astonishing alternations of plunge,

creak, and splash, till the uproar of a single team would
fill a circle completely of half a mile radius! Indeed,
nothing so enlivened the wilderness! When vehicles
refused to straddle, driving became a work of the most
laborious skill in the perpetual windings among holes
and stumps that was then necessary; or when that was
too perilous, it became a matter of taste and fancy to choose
among the dozen extemporaneous roads inviting from the
right and left. Hercules himself would have been puzzled
to select sometimes, where all offered equal inducements,
or equal hindrances. These auxiliary ways have themselves
other helps, and these even other subsidiaries, so
that a person not a woodsman, after an agreeable ride of
some hours discovers often that a very long lane has no turn,
but a very unexpected end, and leads exactly—no where.

We, of course were chock full of instructions and with
all our windings and turnings still kept our eye steadily on
the—blazes. The blaze is a longitudinal cut on trees at
convenient intervals made by cutting off the bark with
an axe or hatchet: three blazes in a perpendicular line on
the same tree indicating a legislative road, the single blaze,
a settlement or neighbourhood road. Hence, if desirous to
escape smoky blazes, we willingly kept on through this
sort; although unlike the smoky blazes, this sort is of use
only in the day time.

Well,—(to come back)—we began to look through the
legal blazes to espy a corner tree cut and notched in a peculiar
way, at which turning off, we should discover a
single blaze leading to Glenville—when—could it be possible!—up
that very tree was coiling an enormous and
frightful serpent!

“Obstupuri! steteruntque comæ! et vox faucibus hæsit!”
—in spite of which all of us spoke out, and Mrs. Carlton
really screamed. Of course we halted; and it being seen
that cutting across was prevented by a ravine, it was at last
concluded that Mr. C. be a committee to reconnoitre, while

the others should remain in the dearborne—a retreat from
snakes equal to covering up in bed or shutting one's eyes in
danger. Accordingly, on went capital I with a slow and
cautious step, an eye to the rear as well as to the fore, and
flourishing in my hands a very long pole to intimidate his
snakeship before it came to blows, or running away on one or
both sides—but the scaly rascal budged neither head nor
tail, and yet seemed to swell larger and larger, as we, i. e.
I and the pole advanced—till, strange! now his very form
was changing yet remaining—when all at once inspired
with a seeming phrenzy, I threw away my pole and dashing
headlong on the serpent I seized him by the tail—

“Oh!—Mr. Carlton!”—

Precisely as my own wife cried out at first; but as I
maintained the hold and the enormous reptile still remained
inflexibly bent around the tree, on came at last our friends,
wagon and all; and soon all capable of laughing, were joined
in the merriment on finding our frightful enemy subsiding
into the mere form of a snake very ingeniously
wrought with a hatchet into the corner tree and blackened
with charcoal! That indeed was “notching in a peculiar
way,” as Dr. Sylvan had said; and true enough as he said
also, “we should be sure enough to see it.”

I may as well add here that some years after as I rode
in company with a lady near this very spot, and I had just
ended the story for her entertainment, we both were no
little startled to see a veritable serpent enacting that same
part on a different tree indeed, and propriâ personâ—i. e. in
his own skin. How he could adhere almost perpendicularly
to the smooth bark of a large beech I know not—yet
there and thus the reptile was about eight feet from the
ground and ten below any branch! On passing I administered
him a smart switch on the tail with my riding whip:
a compliment he returned by detaching his head from the
bark, and fiercely hissing forth his acknowledgments. Our

amusements, you perceive, reader, are masculine in a country
of men: and yet we play in civilized places with very
sleek and cunning snakes—ay, that hiss and bite too!

The Glenville road was a mere path marked by a single
blaze, which we very pertinaciously followed although it
lighted us along a very circuitous route. In theory, the
shortest line between two points is the straight line; it is
not so in practice out there: at least it is not prudent to be
so mathematically correct in the neighbourhood paths of a
New Purchase. More than once especially when going by
the moss and the sun, and even with experienced woodsmen,
the mathematical travelling has occasioned our being
lost for hours, sometimes for days. Hence our backwoods
axiom—“the longest is the shortest.”

Notice here, a neighbourhood road does not imply necessarily
much proximity of neighbours. I have travelled all
day long upon a neighbourhood or settlement road and seen
neither neighbours nor neighbours' cabins. Such road
leads sometimes not to a settlement in actû—(i. e. under
the axe)—but to a settlement in posse—(i. e. among the
possums)—viz. a paper settlement—a speculator's settlement.
And even along an inhabited path, “neighbour” in the
Purchase was to be interpreted scripturally, and I rejoice
to say, was extended to comprise the Samaritans. Indeed,
out there, we were very kind to neighbours—whenever
we could find them: circumstances there created a
kindness and a hospitality wholly unknown in here.

And now we reached the two story log house at the entrance
of the bottom of “Big Shiney,” and where was to
be encountered “the most powerful slashy land.” That
the said slashy land was no better than it should be, may be
inferred from the fact, that it occupied us from half past
three P. M. until seven o'clock precisely in the evening to
do three miles—a speed less considerably than that of
birds and even than that of steam cars.

The river was still swollen and turbulent from recent

rains, and although within its banks, it had barely retired
from its overflowings. And now a glorious sunset was
there, far away in the grand solitudes, where century after
century the god of day had gone down while his last beams
were pouring the rich mellow haze of evening over the
distant homes of the East! Gay birds were warbling
farewell songs with distinct and thrilling articulation, while
some darting from bank to bank seemed rays of sunlight
winged and glancing over the waters—such was their plumage!
And squirrels without fear raced and sported on
hoary and patriarchal trees so inclined towards the river,
that from opposite banks they united their umbrageous tops
in green and flowery arches above its bosom! It did seem
as if for once we had surprised nature's self in her wild,
unpruned, rich, varied, luxurious negligence; and were beholding
the sun, not coming from his chamber a strong man
rejoicing to run a race, but a glorious bridegroom retiring
to the bridal chamber of his spouse!

On the far bank was a small wigwam hut, and below in
the water was tied a clumsy scow; but who was to ferry
us over was not instantly apparent, our shoutings simple
and compound being answered only by Echo, senior and
junior. At last rose in answer the voice of an invisible
wood-nymph, and that was followed shortly by the appearance
among the bushes of the hamadryad in the shape of
an athletic woman with a red head; who girding up her
loins—(anglicè, pinning up her petticoat)—stepped barefooted
and bareheaded into the boat, her little boy at the
moment casting loose the grape vine rope—its fastening.
She then poled, or “set up stream” about 100 yards, and afterwards,
by a large oar on a pivot at an end of the scow, she
kept the boat nearly at right angles with the banks until the
current brought the ferrywoman as diagonally correct to
where we stool, as if all had been in a fashionable school
on a black board.

Alas! all this was nearly as unromantic as mathematics

themselves; for our heroine was not at all like the lady of
the lake or any other lady made to paddle a skiff in poetry
or painting. She worked a scow to admiration, better truly
than the most poetic creature could have done—but then an
ugly shapeless clumsy scow! and a hearty, red-headed
woman in bare legs and Elssler petticoats!—what had such
to do with the sunset and the birds? Poetry, therefore,
being sufficiently cooled down, we embarked; and while
the good hearted, and honest woman insisted she needed
no aid, both Mr. C. and the driver helped to navigate her
boat. It seemed, then, our ferrywoman had never heard
our shouts, telling us we had not “larn'd to holler;” and
that having accidentally caught sight of our wagon, she
“know'd we wanted over and so had hollored naterally.”
And the way she could lift up the voice made crag and
cliff and forest far and wide speak with a dozen tongues!
Ay, reader, and we ourselves finallylearned to sing out
“O-o-o-o-ver!” till the rebellowing of the woods brought
the ferry person to the scow, even if at work in the clearing
hundreds of yards behind his cabin. This wondrous
art cannot be taught on paper; nor by question and answer,
like other equally valuable matters now a days: but buy this
book, and then we will add when you visit us, this important
lesson in Wildwood Elocution, gratis.

But happy we! the ferrywoman could tell us all about
the Glenville settlement! and then, unhappy we!—in her
directions, which were sufficiently ample, she, like many
other instructors, took for granted that we knew well the
elements and data of which we were profoundly ignorant:
—said she, “Well I allow you can't scarcely miss the
path to the tan house—little Jim here's bin thare many a
time—and 'cos the nabers go thare all round the settlemints
Howsoever keep rite strate along the bottim till
you come to the bio—(bayou)—then sort a turn to the left,
but not quite—'cos the path goes to the rite like—but you

can't cross thare now—well, strate on is Sam Little's
clerein, till you come to the Ingin grave—and after that the
path's a sort a blind—but then it ain't more nor a mile to
ole man Sturgisses, and he lives rite fornence the tan house
over the run.”

Of course, reader, the above and most other directions
and speeches in this book like the above, are the filtered
condensation of our own translation: the full vernacular
you could not understand and perhaps might not relish.
But interrogation only rendered our labyrinthical direction
more implicated; and so, not wishing to seem less sagacious
than little Jim, off we splashed for the bayou, and
here we succeeded so well in “a sort-er turn to the left but
not quite,” that we soon lost sight of all roads, paths, and
blazes; and then we, hearing the sound of an axe still more
to the left, travelled that direction by ear, through a wonderous
wilderness of spice-wood, papaw, and twenty unknown
bushes, briers, and weeds, till we fell suddenly into
a clearing, supposed to be our neighbour's, Sam Little's.

Happily it proved to be Squire Brushwood's. For Sam
Little's, it seems, was nothing save a clearing destitute of
any cabin; while Brushwood's was adorned with a double
cabin and all sorts of out-houses: and but for the lucky
loss of our blaze, we should here be recording a night in
the woods, to us then as deplorable as the prophet's
lodging, thus poetically lamented in some ancient version:

Whereas, now we were comfortably shedded and had more
corn-bread and bacon than we could devour. And instead
of being alone, our wife had, in addition to us and the
driver, a guard in her bed-room, or rather around her very
bed, a guard of four other men—the squire, the squire's two
sons, and a journeyman chopper, whose axe had invited
and guided us to the clearing; add women and girls too
numerous to mention—so that Mrs. Carlton never felt the
least lonesome the livelong night.

How getting to bed was managed could not be told, as
Mrs. C. made an extemporary screen by hanging something—“what”—oh!
a utility on a rope or grape vine
stretched near our quarters: only no one went out to see
about the weather, and from first to last a very animated
talk went on in voices of opposite genders, and even amid
the creaking of ricketty bedsteads and after the dying of the
fire light. Great adroitness is acquired by women-bodies
especially in going to repose amidst company. For instance,
we were at Major Billy Westland's, in Woodville,
once in company with several male magnates, when the
major's lady withdrew from our circle at the fire, as for
some domestic duty; but on my accidentally looking around,
three minutes after, lo! there was a night-cap peering
above the “kiver-lid,” and Mrs. Major Billy Westland's
head in it!

Men-folks oversleeping themselves often find, on opening
their eyes, the girls fixing the table for breakfast;
and then they contrive to put on their indispensables under
the cover and in bed. Hence, on one memorable occasion,
when we were at a wedding, our groom having overslept
the early morn, made this covert arrangement with his
inexpressibles, and then most courageously thrust out
among us his invested limbs. But woful ingenuity!—just
then was entering at the opposite door, our groom's brother,
a gawkey young gentleman, with a green gosling
countenance, who seeing first the pantalooned limbs, suddenly
exclaimed in utter amazement at such conduct:—

“Hey! if our Jess did'nt sleep in his breeches!”

Reader!—good night! we are sleepy.