-majestic floaters in the
high air--hovered about. This country was ravaged during the war by
Unionists and Confederates alternately, the impartial patriots as
they passed scooping in corn, bacon, and good horses, leaving the
farmers little to live on. Mr. Alexander's farm cost him forty
dollars an acre, and yields good crops of wheat and maize. This was
the first house on our journey where at breakfast we had grace before
meat, though there had been many tables that needed it more. From
the door the noble range of the Big Bald is in sight and not distant;
and our host said he had a shanty on it, to which he was accustomed
to go with his family for a month or six weeks in the summer and
enjoy a real primitive woods life.

Refreshed by this little touch of civilization, and with horses well
fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling,
rather unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt
ranges, which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed the
Nollechucky River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle
girth, broad, rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and
came to the little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a
hospitable old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat
of the hot day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one
pretty girl in a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the
currently received notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The
big parlor, with its photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell
and mineral, a piano and a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of
mahogany, recalled rural New England. Perhaps these refinements are
due to the Washington College (a school for both sexes), which is
near. We noted at the tables in this region a singular use of the
word fruit. When we were asked, Will you have some of the fruit?
and said Yes, we always got applesauce.

Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the
oldest town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity,
set picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight.
People from further South find this an agreeable summering place, and
a fair hotel, with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want
company. The Warren Institute for negroes has been flourishing here
ever since the war.

A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechu