But let us pursue the river from the Cheowah mountain to the Little Tennessee. It is a distance of twelve miles, and not once do the road and stream part company. At Widow Nelson’s it is a white winding-sheet of rapids, as far as the eye can reach. A hundred yards by the house, and the mountains draw themselves together again. The road straggles around the foot of a cliff. The waters roar and splash beside it. Overhead, the foliage is of a brilliant green, and the sky usually a transparent blue. By the dilapidated dwelling of Widow Jarett you soon pass. There is a cleared tract of land here. Across the river, with its foot in the water, one of the Nantihala range towers 2,000 feet above the valley. You must lean back to look upward along its green face and see the edge of the summit. Up one steep ravine is a trail leading to Brier Town. It is termed the Cat’s Stairs. Your mule must be dragged by the bridle if you attempt the ascent.
Three miles down the stream, as you issue from the forest on the brow of a gentle declivity, a wild picture lies spread before the eyes. You are looking across a long pent-in vale. On one side the Anderson Roughs, lofty and impending, with steep ridges, one behind the other, descending to the river, reach away to where the blue sky dips in between them and the last visible perpendicular wall that frowns along the valley’s opposite border. The wildness of the scene is heightened instead of softened by the vision of Campbell’s lowly cabin in the center of the narrow corn-fields. You see the smoke above its blackened roof; several uncombed children tumbling in the sunshine; the rail fence close by its frail porch; and, beyond it, the limpid Nantihala, smooth and turbulent alternately, and filling the ears with its loud monotone. (See Frontispiece.)
“Buck” Campbell is a whole-souled fellow; his wife, a pleasant woman. If you have time, stop here. Excepting the good-natured bearing of the mountaineer and his wife, you will see nothing inviting about the place, until the table is set for supper, out in the open air, at one end of the cabin. The meal will be an appetizing one. Between each bite you take of a smoking piece of corn-dodger, you can look up at the shadowed front of the Anderson Roughs (for long since the western wall has intercepted the sunlight from pouring on it), and watch how the shadows thicken, while still the sky is bright and clear above. The signification of noon-day sun, as applied to the river, will strike you forcibly. Late in the morning and early in the evening the valley is in shade. There is but one room in the cabin, consequently you will all sleep together, and awake in the morning feeling that there is something in the humblest path of life to keep a man happy.