The army marched along Doe River, driving their beef cattle with them, and camped that night at the "Resting-Place," under Shelving Rock, beyond Crab Orchard. Next morning they started late, and went up the pass between Roan and Yellow mountains. The table-land on the top was deep in snow. [Footnote: Diary of Ensign Robert Campbell.] Here two tories who were in Sevier's band deserted and fled to warn Ferguson; and the troops, on learning of the desertion, abandoned their purpose of following the direct route, and turned to the left, taking a more northerly trail. It was of so difficult a character that Shelby afterwards described it as "the worst route ever followed by an army of horsemen." [Footnote: Shelby MS.] That afternoon they partly descended the east side of the range, camping in Elk Hollow, near Roaring Run. The following day they went down through the ravines and across the spurs by a stony and precipitous path, in the midst of magnificent scenery, and camped at the mouth of Grassy Creek. On the 29th they crossed the Blue Ridge at Gillespie's Gap, and saw afar off, in the mountain coves and rich valleys of the upper Catawba, the advanced settlements of the Carolina pioneers,--for hitherto they had gone through an uninhabited waste. The mountaineers, fresh from their bleak and rugged hills, gazed with delight on the soft and fertile beauty of the landscape. That night they camped on the North Fork of the Catawba, and next day they went down the river to Quaker Meadows, McDowell's home.
At this point they were joined by three hundred and fifty North Carolina militia from the counties of Wilkes and Surrey, who were creeping along through the woods hoping to fall in with some party going to harass the enemy. [Footnote: Shelby MS. Autobiography. See also Gates MSS. Letter of Wm. Davidson, Sept. 14, 1780. Davidson had foreseen that there would be a fight between the western militia and Ferguson, and he had sent word to his militia subordinates to join any force--as McDowell's--that might go against the British leader. The alarm caused by the latter had prevented the militia from joining Davidson himself.] They were under Col. Benjamin Cleavland, a mighty hunter and Indian fighter, and an adventurous wanderer in the wilderness. He was an uneducated backwoodsman, famous for his great size, and his skill with the rifle, no less than for the curious mixture of courage, rough good humor, and brutality in his character. He bore a ferocious hatred to the royalists, and in the course of the vindictive civil war carried on between the whigs and tories in North Carolina he suffered much. In return he persecuted his public and private foes with ruthless ferocity, hanging and mutilating any tories against whom the neighboring whigs chose to bear evidence. As the fortunes of the war veered about he himself received many injuries. His goods were destroyed, and his friends and relations were killed or had their ears cropped off. Such deeds often repeated roused to a fury of revenge his fierce and passionate nature, to which every principle of self-control was foreign. He had no hope of redress, save in his own strength and courage, and on every favorable opportunity he hastened to take more than ample vengeance. Admitting all the wrongs he suffered, it still remains true that many of his acts of brutality were past excuse. His wife was a worthy helpmeet. Once, in his absence, a tory horse-thief was brought to their home, and after some discussion the captors, Cleavland's sons, turned to their mother, who was placidly going on with her ordinary domestic avocations, to know what they should do with the prisoner. Taking from her mouth the corn-cob pipe she had been smoking, she coolly sentenced him to be hung, and hung he was without further delay or scruple. [Footnote: Draper, 448.] Yet Cleavland was a good friend and neighbor, devoted to his country, and also a staunch Presbyterian. [Footnote: Allaire's Diary, entry for October 29th.]
