week of 5/15/02
 
 
 

Muir’s 1000-mile walk lead through WNC
By George Ellison

Some of America’s finest explorers and natural scientists have made their way to Western North Carolina. Just a few that come readily to mind: botanists William Bartram, Andre Michaux, John Fraser, Asa Gray, and Charles Sprague Sargent; geologists Arnold Guyot and Arthur Keith; and ornithologist William Brewster. But no one — not even Bartram — rivals John Muir in regard to name recognition. As the prime founder of the Sierra Club, he is no doubt this country’s most influential conservationist. His writings and actions sharpened this nation’s perceptions of the natural world and educated us in regard to the importance of protecting our natural heritage.

Born in 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland, Muir attended the local schools until 1849, when his family emigrated to the United States and settled in Wisconsin. Muir senior is reputed to have been a harsh disciplinarian who worked his family from dawn to dusk. But in his free time his son became a loving and close observer of the natural word.

In 1860, Muir entered the University of Wisconsin, where he made excellent grades; nevertheless, after three years he left Madison to travel through northern United States and Canada. Then, in 1867, while working at a carriage parts shop, Muir suffered a blinding eye injury that effectively changed the course of his life.

When he subsequently regained his sight, the young man resolved to turn his attention fulltime to the “University of the Wilderness.” He initiated his forthcoming years of wanderlust with a little stroll from Indianapolis, Ind., where he was then residing, to the Gulf of Mexico. Traveling light, all he carried was a small bag that contained “a comb, brush, towel, soap, a change of underclothing, a copy of Burns’ poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and a small New Testament.”

The second chapter of Muir’s A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1916) is titled “The Cumberland Mountains.” Therein, one finds his account of a brief crossing of the far southwestern tip of North Carolina (this writer’s additions to Muir’s text are in pointed brackets):

“September 18. Up the mountain on the state line. The scenery is far grander than any I ever before beheld. The view extends from the Cumberland Mountains on the north far into Georgia and North Carolina to the south, an area of about five thousand square miles. Such an ocean of wooded, waving, swelling mountain beauty and grandeur is not to be described. Countless forest-clad hills, side by side in rows and groups, seemed to be enjoying the rich sunshine and remaining motionless only because they were so eagerly absorbing it. All were united by curves and slopes of inimitable softness and beauty. Oh, these forest gardens of our Father! What perfection, what divinity, in their architecture! What simplicity and mysterious complexity of detail! Who shall read the teaching of these sylvan pages, the glad brotherhood of rills that sing in the valleys, and all the happy creatures that dwell in them under the tender keeping of a Father’s care?

“September 19. Received another solemn warning of dangers on my way through the mountains. Was told by my worthy entertainer of a wondrous gap in the mountains which he advised me to see. ‘It is called Track Gap,’ said he, ‘from the great number of tracks in the rocks. Bird tracks, bar tracks, hoss tracks, men tracks, all in the solid rock as if it had been mud.’ This site is now the Track Rock Gap Archaeological Area located just south of Blairsville, Ga. Bidding farewell to my worthy mountaineer and all his comfortable wonders, I pursued my way to the South.

“As I was leaving, he repeated the warnings of danger ahead, saying that there were a good many people living like wild beasts on whatever they could steal, and that murders were sometimes committed for four or five dollars, and even less. While stopping with him I noticed that a man came regularly after dark to the house for his supper. He was armed with a gun, a pistol, and a long knife. My host told me that this man was at feud with one of his neighbors, and that they were prepared to shoot one another at sight. That neither of them could do any regular work or sleep in the same place two nights in succession. That they visited houses only for food, and as soon as the one that I saw had got his supper he went out and slept in the woods, without of course making a fire. His enemy did the same.

“My entertainer told me that he was trying to make peace between these two men, because they both were good men, and if they would agree to stop their quarrel, they could then both go to work. Most of the food in this house was coffee without sugar, corn bread, and sometimes bacon. But the coffee was the greatest luxury which these people knew. The only way of obtaining it was by seizing skins, or, in particular, ‘sang,’ that is ginseng, which found a market in far-off China.

“My path all to-day led me along the leafy banks of the Hiwassee, a most impressive mountain river. Its channel is very rough, as it crosses the edges of upturned rock strata, some of them standing at right angles, or glancing off obliquely to right and left. Thus a multitude of short, resounding cataracts are produced, and the river is restrained from the headlong speed due to its volume and the inclination of its bed.

“All the larger streams of uncultivated countries are mysteriously charming and beautiful, whether flowing in mountains or through swamps and plains. Their channels are interestingly sculptured, far more so than the grandest architectural works of man. The finest of the forests are usually found along their banks, and in the multitude of falls and rapids the wilderness finds a voice. Such a river is the Hiwassee, with its surface broken to a thousand sparkling gems, and its forest walls vine-draped and flowery as Eden. And how fine the songs it sings!

“In Murphy I was hailed by the sheriff who could not determine by my colors and rigging to what country or craft I belonged. Since the war, every other stranger in these lonely parts is supposed to be a criminal, and all are objects of curiosity or apprehensive concern. After a few minutes’ conversation with this chief man of Murphy I was pronounced harmless, and invited to his house, where for the first time since leaving home I found a house decked with flowers and vines, clean within and without, and stamped with the comforts of culture and refinement in all its arrangements. Striking contrast to the uncouth transitionist establishments from the wigwams of savages to the clumsy but clean log castle of the thrifty pioneer.

“September 20. All day among the groves and gorges of Murphy with Mr. Beale. Was shown the site of Camp Butler where General Scott had his headquarters when he removed the Cherokee Indians to a new home in the West. Found a number of rare and strange plants on the rocky banks of the river Hiwassee. In the afternoon, from the summit of a commanding ridge, I obtained a magnificent view of blue, softly curved mountain scenery. Among the trees I saw Iiex “holly” for the first time. Mr. Beale informed me that the paleness of most of the women in his neighborhood, and the mountains in general hereabouts, was caused chiefly by smoking and by what is called ‘dipping.’ I had never even heard of dipping. The term simply describes the application of snuff to the gum by means of a small swab.”

On that rather mundane note, Muir departed WNC. In closing, however, the Smoky Mountain News can herewith add a footnote to the voluminous and ever-growing body of Muir scholarship. According to Margaret Walker Freel’s Our Heritage: The People of Cherokee County, North Carolina, 1540-1955 (Asheville, N.C.: Miller Printing Co., 1956), pp. 254-255, the sheriff Muir encountered was one William Beale, a native of Yorkshire, England, who had attended Oxford University. Beale moved with his large family to Murphy in 1855 and “served as sheriff of Murphy during the War Between the States. He had been naturalized, but there was feeling that he was in sympathy with the North, and at times he had to go to the mountains for safety. He taught at Mt. Pleasant Academy, Murphy. He afterward taught in Macon County, 50 miles away, and walked home Friday evening and back on Sunday afternoons. He was a mineralogist, and had a collection of stones, fossils, etc. Beal was a surveyor, and had the first transit ever brought to the county. He had the first wagon with manufactured wheels, and the first lamp which burned kerosene oil. The Beals had a store, and people brought little gold nuggets, instead of money, which were weighed on a pair of little scales.”

Such was the background of the local man who befriended John Muir in September 1867 during his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf.

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com