A Trip Through North Carolina
HENRY and myself felt that we must make a new departure. We had hunted and shot so much over Virginia during the last ten years, that we wanted change of scene. We had shot squirrels in the Southwest, turkeys in the Alleghanies, partridges in the valley, old hares and robins in the Piedmont, sora and rail in the lowlands, blackbirds and reed birds on the James, shufflers and mallard on the Potomac, deer in the pinelands, canvas-back and red-head on the Chesapeake, brant, black duck, snipe and curlew off the Virginia Capes, wild pigeons in the mast forest of Bald Mountains, pheasants in the highlands, woodcock on the Rappahannock bottoms; we had killed bull-bats, red-headed woodpeckers, and field larks in every county in the Old Dominion, and dropped our discharge shells in almost every precinct.
It was time to think of cruising in new seas; and then again the scarcity of game in our own State is alarming to the true sportsman. The interest taken in the full enforcement of the laws for the protection and preservation of game has died entirely out, from the fact that there is no law to enforce. The last Legislature, having run mad on politics and the election of State officers, had no time, they said, for any such trifles. So pot-hunters and scrub-shooters have played the old scratch with all kind of fur and feather, and where to shoot this fall and winter has become a serious problem.
It is no use to go to Cobb's Island for brandt and duck shooting. It is a thing of the past, and, to be candid, the cause and effect can briefly be told. The time was when royal sport could be had over the decoys, and a half a hundred brandt and black duck was a common bag for one tide, but good duck shooting, I fear, is forever gone at the Cobb's. It is now a famous oyster and clam station, and there are hundreds of men and scores of sloops and schooners that make the island their rendezvous; and every man of them has guns, and desiring to vary their menu with fresh meat, they kill the ducks in every conceivable way, and, of course, illegally. Their easiest and most practiced method is to shoot the ducks in the night time, and this unquestionably drives them off from their feeding grounds, never to return. Every year it grows worse, until these vandal clam-pickers and "oyster-snipes" have destroyed the finest shooting on the Atlantic coast.
I have been regularly to Cobb's Island for three winters, and with the most unsatisfactory results. I have frequently had to wait a whole week before I could go out shooting, for time, tide and sunshine have all to harmonize -- if either of the three is wanting, it is no use setting the decoys. Then the weary waiting on the bleak island; that is but a barren sand bank in the winter time with nothing to read, nothing to talk about, nothing to do but to meditate upon the sins of a misspent life; it is fearfully demoralizing, and one gets in the habit of a house dog, and yawns and sleeps in fitful slumber day and night.
Then every time you go out hunting, the guide charges you three dollars and takes half of your ducks. I have enough of duck shooting there -- it simply don't pay -- and after losing two or three weeks, and getting a few brant that cost me between five and ten dollars apiece, I have come to the conclusion to try my luck elsewhere. I hate to bid adieu to Cobb's Island, but in all truth it is time, money and temper utterly wasted; it is sad, but yet a frozen fact.
Hearing that there was fine shooting in Western North Carolina, a party of us determined to make a trip there, chiefly to shoot quail. But what point should we aim for? Neither Henry, Ned or myself had ever been in the State before, or rather, they had not, and my experience of North Carolina was a short visit, it is true, but so crowded with incident, that it will be a vivid memory as long as life lasts. It happened thus:
The scene was at Appomattox Court House; the time, a gloomy April morning in the spring of '65. Lee had sent in his flag of truce, and the news flew from lip to lip that the army of Northern Virginia was about to surrender. Surrender? A laugh of scorn and derision came from many who deemed our battalions invincible, whether combatted singly by overwhelming numbers, unlimited resources, starvation and wounds and death, or opposed by all. Surrender the grand old army of Northern Virginia, that incomparable body of infantry, as Swinton called them? It was as false as hell. Yet the whispers grew louder, and cheeks that never blanched before death, grew white to the lips now, and soon the news grew into a certainty. Many individual cavalrymen determined to break out of the surround and strike for Johnston's army in North Carolina. Sixteen in one squad charged through the line, and twelve, horsemen and steeds, went down; four escaped more or less wounded, and two horses gave out, and left but two cavalrymen, Jack R. and myself as reinforcements. We were both young boys, in a strange country, without a ration, both with flesh wounds, and riding the sorriest specters of horses ever seen.
"If we can cheat the buzzards," said Jack, driving his spur between the ribs of his skeleton steed, "we will make the trip sure."
We reached Johnston after a few days' steady riding and the General told us to go back to Virginia, give ourselves up, and return to our homes. We turned on the back track and aimed for Tarboro, a beautiful little town in North Carolina, nestling cosily on the banks of the Roanoke River. When within a few miles of the place, what a sight met our eyes! A whole division wagon train that had left Petersburg before the evacuation, filled and jammed with supplies, had tried in vain to reach Lee, and finding him environed by Sheridan's troopers, turned the caravan's head toward Johnston, and had traversed a good deal of the way, when they learned that the bottom had fallen out of the whole thing. Nor was this all. Two six-gun batteries and a regiment of infantry guarded the train. The guns were brand new and had never been fired. They were beautiful rifle pieces, fresh from the English foundries, that had run the blockade by way of Nassau. The caissons were bright and clean as new paint could make them, and the guns gleamed like gold.
A sad council of war by old comrades, that had come together by chance, was held in the recesses of the North Carolina piny woods. There was no officer higher than the Major, a young Virginian named Slaughter, who commanded the provision train.
The discussion was brief, for there was only one side to be argued. Lee had surrendered; Johnston was about to lay down his arms; Kirby Smith and Dick Taylor had an army in Louisiana, nearly a thousand miles away, so all chances of reaching him was futile; President Davis and his Cabinet were fugitives, and the Confederate government dissolved; there was but one course to follow, and that was for every man to disperse to his home.
A few hot-blooded, scatter-brained soldiers urged that a guerilla warfare should be inaugurated; but such a proposition was voted down by all the veterans present, who knew what a guerilla warfare really meant.
No time was lost. The meeting broke up, each man selected a mule or a horse, and mounting, rode away in twos and threes. Old comrades looked with lingering glances into each other's eyes, and their hands met in firm, warm, cordial pressure for the last time, and turning their faces --
"Some toward the setting sun have gone,
And some to the setting moon" --
they disappeared in the tortuous road, never to meet again in this world. In an hour the scene so full of a bustling life was almost deserted. There in the road stood the twelve guns with the appurtenances all complete and the chests filled with ammunition. They were the property of any who chose to claim them. Any enterprising farmer who chose had only to jump on a mule and bear away with him to his country home the finest rifled guns in the world and he could celebrate the Fourth of July, Christmas, or his mother-in-law's birthday, or his tin wedding, as he minded to, in fine style. And then what splendid adornments to his grounds would be twelve brass and steel cannons encircling his mansion, and pointing their grim muzzles to every point of the compass. Ah me! I have often wished I had yanked two of those guns away quietly; nobody would have missed them and they would have been like Mrs. Toodles's door-plate, a handy thing to have about the house.
But more than that; there in the pine woods was a train of wagons a mile long, and over a couple of hundred mules left, like the guns, for somebody to help themselves. Owing to a false report the officers thought that Sheridan's cavalry were but a few miles off, but the half a dozen scouts who remained all day by the wagons found out that there was not a blue coat within twenty miles.
A few of us built our fires and remained over night with the train, looting the wagons and drinking some blockade whisky, the meanest I ever swallowed. The next morning we debated whether we should spike the guns and burn the wagons, but as the country people began to arrive we told them to help themselves, and then loading one of the field pieces under direction of an old artilleryman who had been transferred to the cavalry, we touched her off. The sound echoed and re-echoed through the vast pine forest and then died away in the far distance. Mounting our horses we struck for Virginia.
I claim that our small body of a half a dozen scouts were the final executors of the effects of the Confederacy, and we fired the last gun and the last salute of the war.
At the St. Claire, in Richmond, we met Mr. Mercer Slaughter, the genial ticket agent of the Danville Railroad. We confined our intention of seeking some hunting ground in North Carlina, for the reason that sportsmen were overcrowding the Old Dominion.
"Why don't you go to Western North Carolina?" he asked. "I hear that partridges abound out that section. Take a ticket to Gastonia, about two hundred and fifty miles from here, on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, and you will strike the finest game preserves in the country."
"All right," we said, "and we will start to-morrow night."
The train leaves the depot at 11:35 P. M. and reaches Danville, Va., at seven the next morning. We got a splendid breakfast here at the depot, such a rare thing in this section that the event ought to be chronicled, for during the space of ten days we never ate another palatable meal at a public house, and how we lived and suffered and fed on cold victuals and greasy food will be told further on. North Carolinians don't seem to know how to keep a hotel, or if they do, they take particular pains to hide that accomplishment from strangers.
After an all day travel through an inexpressibly dreary looking country we arrived at Gastonia, a little village in its infancy and dirt, in Lincoln county. We got out and looked around, and the scene appeard so uninviting that Henry positively refused to stop.
"I'll die of the blues if I remain here" he said. "I feel them creeping over me now."
Upon inquiry we found that twenty-one miles away was a town of some eight hundred inhabitants, called Lincolnton, which we could reach by a narrow-guage railroad that left late in the evening. Transferring our traps, we were soon bumping along at the lively rate of twenty miles an hour and just after dusk reached the depot.
An ancient Jersey wagon drawn by a steed that had been young once in the memory of man, was to be our conveyance. Piling on our traps, we stared for town, a mile distant, a darkey going in front and lighting the way with a lantern. Tho old horse fell down eleven times between the depot and the hotel by actual count. Arriving at Lincolnton hotel, the only hostelry in the place, we got some cold bread and bones for supper, and retired to rest, and in the agonies of indigestion dreamed that a darkey had caught us in a hollow tree and we were changed into a 'possum and the son of Africa was heaping rocks upon us.
The next morning we looked around us and strolled up and down the streets and alleys. Lincolnton is an antique village of the old Dutch type, and reminds one of the mouldy, mildewed cathedral towns that tourists stumble across sometimes in England. It stretches out a mile or more on each side of the road. Each house is a distinctive mark in itself, and its individuality is marked. Wide spreading trees at irregular intervals border each sidewalk and furnish grateful shade when the Lincolntonian smokes and dozes the sleepy, languid, sensuous hours of the day away. After dinner everything and everybody slumbers. The burghers tilt back the cane-bottom chairs, and, resting against the gnarled trunks, sink into dreamland, their pipes, dropped from nerveless hands, lie smoking or charring on the sward beneath. The house dogs lie at length in the sunshine, their fore paws covering their face to keep away the buzzing blue-bottle flies. The village cows in the land of Nod chew their cud in contented silence. The very town hogs, lying in their wallows, are sound asleep and in swinish forgetfulness dream. The very crows, winging their way over the village, seem to breathe the slumbrous air and would drop on the limbs of the nearest sycamore tree and rest content until the low sun warned them it was time to go to roost.
"Oh, if I only had a farm here," sighed Ned.
"You wouldn't live in such a spot six weeks unless you had a client to pick or a jury to spout to," responded Henry impatiently.
Then we all took drinks and waited and rested for an hour.
"Come along, gentlemen," responded Charley Cobb, "we will never get any birds if we remain here."
We moved on, and passing through a small field the dogs scattered, and suddenly the unusual sight was presented of three separate dogs standing at a separate point in full sight of each other. A hurried consultation ensued, and dispositions were made to attack. Fearing that the dogs might not stand staunch if they heard the guns, we determined to strike them, as Napoleon did the Russians at Borodino -- all at once. Ned took one flock, Reid the second, and Charley Cobb and myself the third. With guns on the cock we advanced like skirmishers feeling for the enemy's position. The dogs stood each fast, but trembling with suppressed excitement. Just as Charley and myself closed in on them there came the noise of two tremendous reports that sounded like the firing of mortars. Then the two barrels of Reid's guns went off and our flock rose. Charley killed his brace of birds handsomely. I missed the first bird and got the other. Marking the covey where they lit, we turned to rejoin our friends. Reid was close by with one bird. We could not see Ned until close up to him, and then found him sitting on the ground, with his gun beside him, rubbing his shoulder.
"What is the matter, Ned?" we cried in a breath.
"Nothing, except this cursed gun brought in a cross action and filed a cross bill. I have enough of it. I don't want to shoot a gun that knocks the breath out of my body every time I pull the trigger."
"It isn't the gun's fault," we said, "it is the large load you put in it. Reduce the charge and an infant could shoot it."
We loaded up and for the space of an hour the sound of rapid firing was heard on every side. The coverts and the fields were full of birds, and the dogs were standing all the time. It was hot work, though, with the sun burning up the earth. The mercury was somewhere up in the hundreds. Two of the dogs, being setters, were completely played out; and stretched themselves in a branch near by, and panted and gasped as if their breath was near gone. We counted our game. Charley had eighteen, we came next with twelve, Henry had eight, Ned had a handful of feathers that he claimed to have knocked out of his bird, and had crippled a hare that had somehow gotten away.
We went into camp until evening brought a cooler atmosphere. Selecting a shady spot in a grove of trees we stretched ourselves on the green sward, and lighting our cigars enjoyed the burning of that weed that Raleigh describes as good for "ye mind as ye body."
For several hours we loitered in this charming spot. Afar off the clear outlines of the mountains marked the various chains that ziz-zagged through the State, and a small creek rippled near, making a rhythmatic murmur that lulled one's senses to a perfect repose.
Ned grew poetical. "It was such a spot as this that Tennyson must have composed his 'Brook.' It would stir the soul of a savage. Yes, here is the spot."
"I'm done with town after this." he continued. "I will buy a small place and build my cot and live amid beautiful nature, and leave the world and its cities, with all of its snares and pitfalls, behind me."
"A sort of 'Vicar of Wakefield,' eh, Ned?" we put it.
"No," he responded, "not exactly that, but I mean to lead the life of a Virginia farmer How happy it must be to have your cows, churn your own butter, raise your own mutton; have your own horses, plant your grain, raise your fruits and vegetables. Oh, its the happiest life in the world!"
Henry Reid grunted, or rather he gave a disdainful sniff. "Oh, that's very pretty in theory," he said, "but I have tried it. I know; I have been there. The cows dry up, you have to buy your own butter half of the time, your sheep are bound to die of the scab or some such disease, the horses are always ailing and generally kick the bucket, your grain is ruined by the drought, the bugs destroy the young vegetables, and the catbirds eat up all the fruit, and you have a never-ending fight against all creation. Farming! Not any in mine, if you please."
"That's because you did not take naturally to an agriculturist's life," responded Ned. "I do. I admire the profession that numbered among its votaries a Washington, a Jefferson, a Madison. No, the man who don't love the country is without a soul; he is fit for stratagems, treasons and spoils."
"Well, old man," answered Henry, "have your own way about it, but come on, the rest are ready."
The dogs as well as their masters, refreshed by their hour's rest, sprung to their work with a vim, and in a few minutes we were all scattered in the woods and brush.
Suddenly we heard Ned's voice in excited tones cry, "Come here, boys, come here!" We hurried to the spot.
"There," said Ned, pointing to a brush of briars in the bottom of a dry ditch, "there is the strangest animal I ever saw."
"What was it like?" we inquired.
"It was as large as a dog almost and about the color of one. He jumped down there before I could shoot, and he is in there now, you bet."
"It must be a 'coon," said Charley, "or a 'possum," I hazarded, "or a groundhog," cried Henry, who said as he got to the bottom of the chasm, "I'll find out in a minute." We bent over the brink eagerly and watched him as he threw away the pine brush. All at once the animal, with a snarl, jumped aside, and in a second gave us a dose of his quality.
Oh, my countrymen! Evil was the day and cursed the hour when we stirred up that P. C. Shades of the ancient city of Cologne, with its seventy-nine distinct stenches! what a fetid odor. All bad smells that entered our nose since boyhood, concentrated and condensed into one foul funk, could not match in a stinking offensiveness the scent of that foul Mustela putorius. The first sensation is one of deadly nausea, followed by a blindness and dizziness that lasts for some minutes. Then comes an utter, abhorrent disgust of everything, everybody, with the whole globe thrown in.
Every one of us caught it, and we all struck, by instinct for an open field, where the smell could have free space to diffuse, and not be cramped or smothered by the bushes or woods.
After a half hour spent in profanity, there was another council of war. This time there was mutiny in the ranks, and each one wanted to do a different thing. Henry desired to kill himself, but was persuaded not; Charley wanted to strip and lie in the creek all night; Ned longed to blow his brains out, while the darkey, who was the only one untouched, stood a hundred yards off, with his nose in his hand, and halloed to us to take off our garments and bury them under the water, and wait until he returned from the village with a full supply of clothes, both inner and outer, for us.
His advice was sound -- in fact, it was the only thing we could do. The darkey went off like a shot, and we proceeded to follow instruction. Down in the deepest pools we buried our apparel, by placing rocks on them, only taking from the pockets our watches and money, which were affected strongly by the all-powerful perfume.
There we stood, a quartette of miserable-looking wretches -- an antique group without the Greek pose.
Henry Reid would have his joke. Ned's figure caught his eye, crouched at the foot of a gigantic tree.
"I say, Ned," he commenced, "how sweet, fair and fresh is the country."
"Curse the country!" growled that individual.
"How Arcadianly delicate," went on Henry. "See the brawling streamlet that dances so brightly; it hides our clothes, 'tis true, but then it sparkles like a diamond."
"Confound the river!" snapped Ned.
Then an utter silence fell upon the crowd, and not until the boy appeared did we utter a word. We donned our raiment, and, upon the advice of Charley, placed our watches and money from the old suits in keeping of the darkey. Yet even with this precaution there was a certain indefinite sickly smell in the air that seemed to cling to our persons.
Just as we were about to start for the village Ned inquired how long the clothes would have to soak before the smell was out.
"About six months," was the reply.
"Great Scott!" he moaned. "I borrowed that suit from Frank Brackett, and it cost sixty dollars if it cost a cent, and I will have to pay for it. I'm done for!"
"Never mind, Ned," we said, consolingly; "you will have better luck next time."
"Next time will not come for this individual," he said, savagely; "I am going to leave to-morrow."
"What!" said Henry, "leave this beautiful Arcadian country that you were in love with?"
"I never want to see the country again," he replied.
"What! give up your dream of a farmer's life?"
"I would rather crack rocks on an avenue in the city than farm the finest freehold in the State."
"Surely, Mr. Burke," spoke up Charley Cobb, "you are not going to give up the fine shooting for such an accident?"
"You may designate it as an accident," he replied, "but I call it a fearful calamity. Beside, I have not had any fine shooting. My shoulder is black and blue, the skin is worn off my heel, and I am so lame I cannot walk; and those confounded birds fly so fast that before I can get aim at them they are out of sight. Then, again, I have no desire to meet another infernal cat."
"These are very rare in this section," said Charley Cobb. "It is the first I have seen for several years around here, and I am hunting over these grounds all of the time."
"It would be just my luck to stir up one on every hunt," answered the lawyer. "No, I have had enough with plenty left over. I am going home to-morrow, and I never want to lay my eyes on the country again as long as I live."
We marched sadly back to town, and at the nearest drug store Ned bought a bottle of cologne with which he drenched himself, and thus overcame by one odor the scent of another. The next day he returned home, accompanied by Reid, who was summoned back to his bank by a telegram.
A few days' hunt around Lincolnton in company with Charley Cobb convinced me of the great abundance of partridges (quail) in Western North Carolina. The birds abound, and in such quantities as I never saw in Virginia. There are but few sportsmen in the whole section, and the quail have nothing to prevent their multiplying. A noticeable fact this season is the scarcity of hawks. I did not see but one the whole time I was shooting. Now what I call a profusion of game is this: The coveys are numerous and rarely counting under fifty birds, and they can be found on every hand. To give an instance, Mr. N. F. Cobb, Charley's brother, who is an enthusiastic and accomplished sportsman, tells me that he often finds as many as twenty coveys in one day's hunt. Speaking by the card, from my own observation, I found more game in Western North Carolina than I ever did in the most favored localities of Virginia. From Charlotte, North Carolina, clear to the great French Broad, is a region that will give the most exacting huntsman a perfect satisfaction. Those desiring information may write to Charles Cobb, Lincolnton, N. C., who will cheerfully give them all necessary points.
There is one serious drawback to sportsmen going to North Carolina on the Virginia Midland and Richmond & Danville route, and that is the enormous charge for carrying dogs. The Chesapeake and Ohio road makes no charge on dogs.
To parties visiting North Carolina I would advise them to go from Washington to Richmond by the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad, then to North Carolina by any route that is the cheapest, thus avoiding the heavy tax that the Virginia Midland lays upon the dogs. The Richmond and Danville is the shortest and quickest route.
I cannot conscientiously advice any brother sportsmen to go to the only hotel in Lincolnton, unless, indeed, he has the dyspepsia and cannot eat, or has a stomach like an ostrich and can fill up on slop and wittles. There are several private families and around the town where tourists and sportsmen can get board at a moderate price, and Mr. Cobb can, I presume, engage quarters for them.
Well, I have had my say, and like Captain Jack Bunsby, "what I says I stands to." I can only repeat, if you want splendid partridge shooting on real game preserves, where nine coveys out of ten have never been shot at, go to Western North Carolina, take your own dogs and ammunition and liquids; get in with the people, avoid hotels as you would a leper house, obtain board at some private house where there is a cheerful host, pretty daughters and accomodating son to show the bearings, and you will have as much sport during the months of November and December as your ardent soul could wish.
I have written a long letter, but like Gratanio, I can exclaim, "Beshrew my soul, but what I tellist is the truth."
CHASSEUR.
VIRGINIA, October, 1882.