trains of big
wagons wending their way to the inviting lands watered by the Tennessee.
Here came in the summer-time the Southern planters in coach and four,
with a great retinue of household servants, and kept up for months that
unique social life, a mixture of courtly ceremony and entire freedom,
the civilization which had the drawing-room at one end and the
negro-quarters at the other,--which has passed away. It was a
continuation into our own restless era of the manners and the literature
of George the Third, with the accompanying humor and happy-go-lucky
decadence of the negro slaves. On our way down we saw on the river-bank,
under the trees, the old hostelry, Alexander's, still in decay,--an
attractive tavern, that was formerly one of the notable stopping-places
on the river. Master, and fine lady, and obsequious, larking darky,
and lumbering coach, and throng of pompous and gay life, have all
disappeared. There was no room in this valley for the old institutions
and for the iron track.

"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
We, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."

This perverted use of noble verse was all the response the Friend got
in his attempt to drop into the sentimental vein over the past of the
French Broad.

The reader must not think there is no enterprise in this sedative and
idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone
who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs
a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as
heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not
its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed,
sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and
subjected to acids, and at the end of the process it is as white and
fine as the best bolted flour. This heavy adulterant is shipped to the
North in large quantities,--the manager said he had recently an order
for a hundred thousand dollars' worth of it. What is the use of this
powder? Well, it is of use to the dealer who sells white lead for paint,
to increase the weight of the lead, and it is the belief hereabouts that
it is mixed with powdered sugar. The industry is profitable to those
engaged in it.

It was impossible