University of Virginia Library

THE
BLACKWATER CHRONICLE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

If the reader will take down the map of Virginia,
and look at Randolph county, he will find that the
Blackwater is a stream that makes down from the
north into the Cheat river, some few miles below
the point where that river is formed by the junction
of the Dry fork, the Laurel fork, and the Glade
fork—the Shavers, or Great fork, falling in some
miles below: all rising and running along the western
side of the Backbone of the Alleganies.

The country embraced by these head-waters of
the Cheat river is called "The Canaan"—a wilderness
of broken and rugged mountains—its streams
falling through deep clefts, or leaping down in great
cataracts, into the Cheat, that sweeps the base of
the Backbone.

It is to the Blackwater, one among the largest of
these streams of the Canaan, that we purpose to
take the reader. If, therefore, his fancy urges him
to the venture, let him come with us. All he has
to do is to set himself down in his easy-chair, and
lend us his ears. By the magic of this scroll we
shall take him.

This Blackwater (it should be called Amberwater),
and north source of the Cheat, rises high up on
the western slope of the Backbone, directly across
from the Fairfax stone—where the head-spring of
the Potomac has its source on this the eastern side
of the mountain; and it is supposed that these headwaters
of the two rivers are not more than some
half a mile (or mile at most) apart. The Backbone,
following a general course from north to south, here
turns at almost a right-angle, and takes across to
the eastward some fifteen miles, when it regains its
former southerly direction, thus forming a zigzag
in its course. At the point where it first makes the
bend to the east, a large spur—apparently the Backbone
itself—keeps straight to the south, and butts
down on the Cheat, at the distance of some ten or
twelve miles. Between this large spur and the
point where the Backbone bends to the south again,
is contained the cove of mountains which is called
the Canaan. This region of country is in the very
highest range of the Alleganies, lying in the main
some three thousand feet above the level of the sea.

Until a few years past, the whole of the district
embraced by the head-waters of the Potomac and
the Cheat was as remote and inaccessible as any
part of the long range of the Alleganies. But some
few years ago, the state of Virginia constructed a
graded road from Winchester to Parkersburg, which
passes over the Backbone through the Potomac limits;
and consequently this portion of the district
has become opened out somewhat to the knowledge
of the world, and has since been settled to a considerable
extent. The Baltimore and Ohio railroad
also passes near here—at a distance from the headwaters
of the Potomac varying from ten to twenty
miles. The railroad will bring all this region within
a day's travel of the seaboard; and as the country
lies about the head of the Maryland glades—in
themselves a source of attraction—and contains
within its range many tracts of land of great fertility
and beauty, it is not irrational to suppose that it
will be cleared out and settled with rapidity.

As it is, there is a good settlement around here
already—the result, in the main, of the construction
of the Northwestern road. Long, however, before
this road was made, there was a Mr. Smith who
pitched his tent in these wilds some fifty years or
more ago, I am informed, and cleared out and improved
a handsome estate for himself, lying along
the Maryland shore of the Potomac, and containing
some fifteen hundred acres of fine land of varied

hill and dale. The Smiths are now gone, and the
estate has passed into other hands. In the older
times a tavern was kept here, for the accommodation
of the few people who crossed these mountains.
But when the northwestern road came by, the marvels
of a good highway were made manifest in the
increased travel, that soon became too great for the
capabilities of the once-unfriended inn. About this
period, a gentleman from the city of Washington,
journeying this way to escape the heats of the seaboard,
was so taken with the pleasant temperature
of the air and the wild beauty of the mountains,
that he bought the place—impelled somewhat
thereto, no doubt, by the trout in the streams and
the deer in the forests. Under his rule a new house
was erected, large enough to hold a goodly company.
This is the house—fair enough to look upon
in its outside array, and comfortable enough within
—that now stands imposing, not far away from the
old one, on the brow of a lofty hill overlooking the
Potomac. "Winston" the place is called—so called
because the eighty-seventh milestone from Winchester
is won when you reach its door. Edward Towers
keeps it—or did, when the Blackwater expedition
won the stone. Here, for some years past, many
of our citizens, of both Virginia and Maryland,
have been in the habit of resorting in the summer
and fall months, to fish for trout, hunt the deer,
shoot pheasants, wild turkeys, woodcock in their
season, and enjoy the invigorating atmosphere of a
country whose level is so high above the sea.

The ride to this place over the Northwestern road
is exquisitely delightful, and withal as easy as a
ride can well be. You travel over a graded slate
road—the perfection of a summer highway—engineered
skilfully, and at but a low grade, through
the gorges and defiles of these fine mountains, and,
when crossing any of them, seeming to have been
carried over purposely at those points where the
scenery is of the grandest or most beautiful character.
Take it altogether, for the excellence of the
road, and the varied combinations of scenery that
are ever presenting themselves to view, there is no
route across the mountains anywhere that excels it.
With a pair of good horses in a light carriage, you
can speed along all the way as if you were taking
an evening drive about your home, even though
your home be where the roads are the best in the
land. And then, what exhilaration of spirit is felt
by you as you roll smoothly along at the rate of
some ten miles an hour, your horses scarcely stretching
a trace—seeming merely to keep out of the
way of the wheels!—on one side of you a deep
gorge, a thousand feet down, dark with hemlocks
and firs, where a mountain-stream breaks its way to
the sea; above you, high-towering peaks and overhanging
cliffs, where the oak or stately fir has cast
anchor, and held on for ages in defiance of all the

storms of the Alleganies; while before you, afar off,
glittering in the sunshine, are seen in glimpses the
green fields and meadows of some fair, luxuriant
valley; and the whole horizon bounded by lofty
mountains that seem to defy all approach, but which
you at length wind your way through by some concealed
cleft, the bed of a stream, with scarcely any
more of obstruction than a bowling-green would
present to your glowing wheels.

There are but few things more agreeably exciting
to the spirits than a rapid drive through the country
on a good road. There are some who will not
assent to this proposition; but they are not to be
deferred to in these matters of fastness, and do not
understand the philosophy of the human soul. "The
power of agitation upon the spirits," says Dr. Johnson,
"is well known. Every man has felt his heart
lightened by a rapid drive or a gallop on a swift
horse." This might be only a little closet philosophy
of the sturdy old despot of letters, maintained
in theory but belied in practice, like our famous
doctrine of state-rights here in Virginia; but we
have it on record that the rough old viking of our
English literature considered it one of the prime felicities
of his life to ride in a stage-coach, even at
the rate of speed attainable in his day. If one of
the soundest moral philosophers that any age or
country has produced can be sh wn as both theoretically
and practically enforcing the happiness of

rapid motion—at least to the extent that could be
achieved by an English stage-coach, and over the
comparatively rude thoroughfares leading out of
London a hundred years ago—ante Agamemnona,
that is, before M`Adam—how much more delightful
must be the agitation of your spirits, and the
consequent lightening of your heart, when the atmosphere
you breathe, as you drive smoothly along
behind a pair of untiring thoroughbreds, is the very
purest, and the scenes around you are among the
grandest or most beautiful of a whole continent!
And all this too, recollect, with a splendid craving
all over you—feeling it even at your finger-ends—
everywhere—for food: visions of venison-steaks,
and hot rolls, and fresh summer butter, made where
the meadows are "with daisies pied," floating
through your crowded and hunger-enraptured brain
—and with the certainty, too, all the while in your
mind, that you can not apparently kill this craving
for the time being with anything in the shape of a
breakfast, dinner, supper, or what not, but it will
be all powerful again upon you in some three or
four hours!—an appetite seemingly endowed with
the quality of the phœnix, that out of its own ashes
renews itself—

not surpassed by anything of the sort that we have

on record—not by Sancho Panza's, nor by Rittmaster
Dugald Dalgetty's, nor yet that of the mighty
heroes of the Iliad—aptly to describe which the
genius of Homer was only equal, when the divine
old bard sings of it as the sacred rage of hunger.

If any mortal of these sated days would wish
fully to appreciate what this Homeric rage is, let
him take this ride to the Alleganies; and though
he should be of a nobler spirit than Esau, yet will
he in his inmost soul commiserate that poor devil
for having sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.