r. At this rate
it would have broken us to have tarried with old man Tatem (perhaps
he is not old, but that is the name he goes by) over night.

It was a hot afternoon, and it needed some courage to mount and climb
the sandy hill leading us away from the corn-crib of Tatem. But we
entered almost immediately into fine stretches of forest, and rode
under the shade of great oaks. The way, which began by the New
River, soon led us over the hills to the higher levels of Watauga
County. So far on our journey we had been hemmed in by low hills,
and without any distant or mountain outlooks. The excessive heat
seemed out of place at the elevation of over two thousand feet, on
which we were traveling. Boone, the county seat of Watauga County,
was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and the
trend of the roads had notified us that everything in this region
tends towards Boone as a center of interest. The simple ingenuity of
some of the guide-boards impressed us. If, on coming to a fork, the
traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,

To BOONE 10 M.
If he was to go to the left, it read,
.M 01 ENOOB oT

A short ride of nine miles, on an ascending road, through an open,
unfenced forest region, brought us long before sundown to this
capital. When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders
over gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns,
the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3250 feet above
Albemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highest
village east of the Rocky Mountains. The Professor said that it
might be so, but it was a God-forsaken place. Its inhabitants
numbered perhaps two hundred and fifty, a few of them colored. It
had a gaunt, shaky court-house and jail, a store or two, and two
taverns. The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges and
lawyers and their clients during the session of the court. The court
is the only excitement and the only amusement. It is the event from
which other events date. Everybody in the county knows exactly when
court sits, and when court breaks. During the session the whole
county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children. They camp
there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them,
perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the
neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit. To be fond of
lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new
conditions.