economic problem. Men do not make whiskey in
secret, at the peril of imprisonment or death, because they are outlaws
by nature nor from any other kind of depravity, but simply and solely
because it looks like "easy money to poor folks."

If I may voice my own opinion of a working remedy, it is this: Give the
mountaineers a lawful chance to make decent livings where they are. This
means, first of all, decent roads whereby to market their farm produce
without losing all profit in cost of transportation. The first problem
of Appalachia to-day is the very same problem as that of western
Pennsylvania in 1784.

CHAPTER IX

THE OUTLANDER AND THE NATIVE

Among the many letters that come to me from men who think of touring or
camping in Highland Dixie there are few but ask, "How are strangers
treated?"

This question, natural and prudent though it be, never fails to make me
smile, for I know so well the thoughts that lie back of it: "Suppose one
should blunder innocently upon a moonshine still--what would happen? If
a feud were raging in the land, how would a stranger fare? If one goes
alone into the mountains, does he run any risk of being robbed?"

Before I left the tame West and came into this wild East, I would have
asked a few questions myself, if I had known anyone to answer them. As
it was, I turned up rather abruptly in a backwoods settlement where the
"furriner" was more than a nine-days wonder. I bore no credentials; and
it was quite as well. If I had presented a letter from some clergyman or
from the President of the United States it would have been--just what I
was myself--a curiosity: as when the puppy discovers some weird and
marvelous new bug.

Everyone greeted me politely but with unfeigned interest. I was welcome
to sup and bed wherever I went. Moonshiners and man-slayers were as
affable as common folks. I dwelt alone for a long time, first in open
camp, afterwards in a secluded hut. Then I boarded with a native family.
Often I left my belongings to look out for themselves whilst I went away
on expeditions of days or weeks at a time. And nobody ever stole from me
so much as a fish-hook or a brass cartridge. So, in the retrospect, I
smile.

Does this mean, then, that Poe's characterization of the mountaineers is
out of date? Not at all. They are the same "fierce and uncouth race of
men" to-day that they were in his time. Homicide is so prevalent in the
districts that I personally am acquainted