Our Southern Highlanders Part 16

"I have heard of tooth-jumping," said I, "and reported it to dentists back home, but they laughed at me."

"Well, they needn't laugh; for it's so. Some men git to be as experienced at it as tooth-dentists are at pullin'. They cut around the gum, and then put the nail at jest sich an angle, slantin' downward for an upper tooth, or upwards for a lower one, and hit one lick."

"Will the tooth come at the first lick?"

"Ginerally. If it didn't, you might as well stick your head in a swarm o' bees and fergit who you are."

"Are back teeth extracted in that way?"

"Yes, sir; any kind of a tooth. I've burnt my holler teeth out with a red-hot wire."

"Good G.o.d!"

"Hit's so. The wire'd sizzle like fryin'."

"Kill the nerve?"

"No; but it'd sear the mar so it wouldn't be so sensitive."

"Didn't hurt, eh?"

"Hurt like h.e.l.l for a moment. I held the wire one time for Jim Bob Jimwright, who couldn't reach the spot for hisself. I _told_ him to hold his tongue back; but when I touched the holler he jumped and wropped his tongue agin the wire. The words that man used ain't fitty to tell."

Some of the ailments common in the mountains were new to me. For instance, "dew pizen," presumably the poison of some weed, which, dissolved in dew, enters the blood through a scratch or abrasion. As a woman described it, "Dew pizen comes like a risin', and laws-a-marcy how it does hurt! I stove a brier in my heel wunst, and then had to hunt cows every morning in the dew. My leg swelled up black to clar above the knee, and Dr. Stinchcomb lanced the place seven times. I lay on a pallet on the floor for over a month. My leg like to killed me. I've seed persons jest a lot o' sores all over, as big as my hand, from dew pizen."

A more mysterious disease is "milk-sick," which prevails in certain restricted districts, chiefly where the cattle graze in rich and deeply shaded coves. If not properly treated it is fatal both to the cow and to any human being who drinks her fresh milk or eats her b.u.t.ter. It is not transmitted by sour milk or by b.u.t.termilk. There is a characteristic fetor of the breath. It is said that milk from an infected cow will not foam and that silver is turned black by it. Mountaineers are divided in opinion as to whether this disease is of vegetable or of mineral origin; some think it is an efflorescence from gas that settles on plants. This much is certain: that it disappears from "milk-sick coves" when they are cleared of timber and the sunlight let in. The prevalent treatment is an emetic, followed by large doses of apple brandy and honey; then oil to open the bowels. Perhaps the extraordinary distaste for fresh milk and b.u.t.ter, or the universal suspicion of these foods that mountaineers evince in so many localities, may have sprung up from experience with "milk-sick" cows. I have not found this malady mentioned in any treatise on medicine; yet it has been known from our earliest frontier times.

Abraham Lincoln's mother died of it.

That the hill folk remain a rugged and hardy people in spite of unsanitary conditions so gross that I can barely hint at them, is due chiefly to their love of pure air and pure water. No mountain cabin needs a window to ventilate it: there are cracks and cat-holes everywhere, and, as I have said, the doors are always open except at night. "Tight houses," sheathed or plastered, are universally despised, partly from inherited shiftlessness, partly for less obvious reasons.

One of Miss MacGowan's characters fairly insulted the neighborhood by building a modern house. "Why lordy! Lookee hyer, Creed," remonstrated Doss Provine over a question of matching boards and battening joints, "ef you git yo' pen so almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh air. Man's bound to have ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open all the time like we-all do; but when you're a-holdin' co't and sech-like maybe you'll want to shet the do' sometimes--and then whar'll ye git breath to breathe?... All these here gla.s.s winders is blame foolishness to _me_. Ef ye need light, open the do'. Ef somebody comes that ye don't want in, you can shet it and put up a bar. But saw the walls full o' holes an' set in gla.s.s winders, an' any feller that's got a mind to can pick ye off with a rifle ball as easy as not whilst ye set by the fire of an evenin'."

When mountain people move to the lowlands and go to living in tight-framed houses, they soon deteriorate like Indians. It is of no use to teach them to ventilate by lowering windows from the top. That is some more "blame foolishness"--their adherence to old ways is stubborn, sullen, and perverse to a degree that others cannot comprehend. Then, too, in the lowlands, they simply cannot stand the water. As Emma Miles says: "No other advantages will ever make up for the lack of good water.

There is a strong prejudice against pumps; if a well must be dug, it is usually left open to the air, and the water is reached by means of a hooked pole which requires some skillful manipulation to prevent losing the bucket. Cisterns are considered filthy; water that has stood overnight is 'dead water,' hardly fit to wash one's face in. The mountaineer takes the same pride in his water supply as the rich man in his wine cellar, and is in this respect a connoisseur. None but the purest and coldest of freestone will satisfy him."

Once when I was staying in a lumber camp on the Tennessee side, near the top of Smoky, my friend Bob and I tramped down to the nearest town, ten miles, for supplies. We did not start until after dinner and intended to spend the night at a hotel. It was a sultry day and we arrived very thirsty. Bob took some ice-water into his mouth, and instantly spat it out, exclaiming: "Be d.a.m.ned if I'll stay here; that ain't fit to drink; I'm goin' back." And back he would have gone, ten miles up a hard grade, at night, if someone had not shown us a spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by Arthur Keith

A misty veil of falling water]

A little colony of our Hazel Creek people took a notion to try the Georgia cotton mills. They nearly died there from homesickness, tight houses, and "bad water." All but one family returned as soon as they possibly could. While trying to save enough money to get away one old man said; "I lied to my G.o.d when I left the mountains and kem to these devilish cotton mills. Ef only He'd turn me into a varmint I'd run back to-night! Boys, I dream I'm in torment; an' when I wake up I lay thar an' think o' the spring branch runnin' over the root o' that thar poplar; an' I say, could I git me one drink o' that water I'd be content to lay me down and die!"

Poor old John! In his country there are a hundred spring branches running over poplar roots; but "_that thar_ poplar": we knew the very one he meant. It was by the roadside. The brooklet came from a disused still-house hidden in laurel and hemlock so dense that direct sunlight never penetrated the glen. Cold and sparkling and crystal clear, the gushing water enticed every wayfarer to bend and drink, whether he was thirsty or no. John is back in his own land now, and doubtless often goes to drink of that veritable fountain of youth.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAND OF DO WITHOUT

Homespun jeans and linsey used to be the universal garb of the mountain people. Nowadays you will seldom find them, except in far-back places.

Shoddy "store clothes" are cheaper and easier to get. And this is a sorry change, for the old-time material was sound and enduring, the direct product of hard personal toil, and so it was prized and taken care of; whereas such stuff as a backwoodsman can buy in his crossroads store is flimsy, soon loses shape and breaks down his own pride of personal appearance. Our average hillsman now goes about in a dirty blue shirt, wapsy and ragged trousers toggled up with a nail or two, thick socks sagging untidily over rusty brogans, and a huge, black, floppy hat that desecrates the landscape. Presently his hatband disappears, to be replaced with a groundhog thong, woven in and out of knife slits, like a shoestring.

When he comes home he "hangs his hat on the floor" until his wife picks it up. He never brushes it. In time that battered old headpiece becomes as pliant to its owner's whim, as expressive of his mood, as a clown's cap in the circus. Commonly it is a symbol of shiftlessness and unconcern. A touch, and it becomes a banner of defiance to law and order. To meet on some lonesome road at night a horseman enveloped to the heels in a black slicker and topped with one of those prodigious funnels that conceals his features like a cowl, is to face the Ku Klux or the Spanish Inquisition.

When your young mountaineer is properly filled up on corn liquor and feels like challenging the world, the flesh, and the devil, he pins up the front of his hat with a thorn, sticks a sprig of balsam or cedar in the thong for an aigrette, and then gallops forth with bottle and pistol to tilt against whatsoever may dare oppose him. And on the gray dawn of the morning after you may find _that hat_ lying wilted in a corner, as crumpled, spiritless and forlorn as--its owner, upon whom we charitably drop the curtain.

I doubt, though, if anywhere in this wide world mere personal appearance is more deceitful than among our mountaineers. The slovenly lout whom you shrink from approaching against the wind is one of the most independent and self-satisfied fellows on earth, as quick to resent alms as to return a blow. And it is wonderful what soap and clean clothes will do! About the worst specimen of tatter-demalion that I ever saw outside of trampdom used to come into town every week, always with a loaded Winchester on his shoulder. He may have washed his face now and then, but there was no sign that he ever combed his mane. I took him for one of those defectives alluded to in a previous chapter; but no, I was told he was "n.o.body's fool." The rifle, it was explained, never left his hand when he was abroad: they said that a feud was brewing "over on 'Larky," and that this man was "in the bilin'." Well, it boiled over, and the person in question killed two men in front of his own door.

When the prisoner was brought into court I could not recognize him. A bath, the barber, and a new store suit had transformed him into a right good-looking fellow--anything but a tramp, anything but a desperado. He bore himself throughout that grilling ordeal like the downright man he was, made out a clear case of self-defense, was set at liberty and--promptly reverted to a condition in which he is recognizable once more.

The women of the back country usually go bareheaded around home and often barefooted, too, as did the daughters of Highland chiefs a century or two ago, and for the same reason: simply that they feel better so.

When "visit-in" or expecting visitors their extremities are clad. They make their own dresses and the style seems never to change. When traveling horseback they use a man's saddle and ride astride in their ordinary skirts with an ingenuity of "tucking up" that is beyond my understanding (as no doubt it should be). Often one sees a man and a woman riding a-pillion, in which case the lady perches sidewise, of course.

If I were disposed to startle the reader, after the manner of impressionistic writers who strive after effect at any cost, I could fill a book with oddities observed in the mountains, and that without exaggeration by commission or omission. Let one or two anecdotes suffice; and then we will get back to our averages again. I took down the following incident verbatim (save for proper names) from lips that I know to be truthful. It is introduced here as a specimen of vivid offhand description in few words:

"There was a fam'ly on Pick-Yer-Flint that was named Higgins, and another named the McBees. They married through and through till the whole gineration nigh run out; though what helped was that they'd fly mad sometimes and kill one another like fools. They had great big heads and mottly faces--ears as big as sheepskins. Well, when they dressed up to come to church the men--grown men--'d have shirts made of this common domestic, with the letters _AAA_ on their backs; and them barefooted, and some without hats, but with three yards of red ribbon around their necks. The sleeves of their shirts looked like a whole web of cloth jest sewed up together; and them sleeves'd git full o' wind, and that red ribbon a-flyin'--O my la!

"There was lots o' leetle boys of 'em that kem only in their shirt-tails. There was cracks between the logs that a dog could jump through, and them leetle fellers 'd git 'em a crack and grin in at us all through the sarmon. 'T ain't no manner o' use to ax me what the tex'

was that day!"

I may explain that it still is common in many districts of the mountain country for small boys to go about through the summer in a single abbreviated garment and that they are called "shirt-tail boys."

Some of the expedients that mountain girls invent to make themselves attractive are bizarre in the extreme. Without invading the sanct.i.ties of toilet, I will cite one instance that is interesting from a scientific viewpoint. They told me that a certain blue-eyed girl thought that black eyes were "purtier" and that she actually changed her eyes to jet black whenever she went to "meetin'" or other public gathering.

While I could see how the trick might be worked, it seemed utterly absurd that an unschooled maid of the wilderness could acquire either the knowledge or the means to accomplish such change. Well, one day I was called to treat a sick baby. While waiting for the medicine to react I chanced to mention this tale as it had been told me. The father, who had blue eyes, solemnly a.s.sured me that there was "no lie about it," and said he would convince me in a few minutes.

He stepped to the garden and plucked a leaf of jimson weed. His wife crushed the leaf and instilled a drop of its juice into one of his eyes.

I took out my watch. One side of the eyeball reddened slightly. The man said "hit smarts a leetle--not much." Within fifteen minutes the pupil had expanded like a cat's eye in the dark, leaving a rim of blue iris so thin as to be quite unnoticeable without close inspection. The eye consequently was jet black and its expression utterly changed. My host said it did not affect his vision materially, save that "things glimmer a bit." I met him again the next day and he still was an odd-looking creature indeed, with one eye a light blue and the other an absolute black. The thing puzzled me until I recalled that the Latin name of jimson weed is _Datura stramonium_; then, in a flash, it came to me that stramonium is a powerful mydriatic.

If our man killer, hitherto mentioned, had had blue or gray eyes and had not chosen to stand trial, then, with a cake of soap and a new suit and a jimson leaf he might have made himself over so that his own mother would not have known him. These simple facts are offered gratis to writers of detective tales, whose stock of disguises nowadays is so threadbare and (pardon me) so absurd.

The mountain home of to-day is the log cabin of the American pioneer--not such a lodge as well-to-do people affect in Adirondack "camps" (which cost more than framed structures of similar size), but a pen that can be erected by four "corner men" in one day and is finished by the owner at his leisure. The commonest type is a single large room, with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank door, a big stone chimney at one end, a single sash for a window at the other, and a seven or eight-foot lean-to at the rear for kitchen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: An Average Mountain Cabin]

Some of the early settlers, who had first choice of land, took pains in building their houses, squaring the logs like bridge timbers, joining them closely, smoothing their puncheons with an adze almost as truly as if they were planed, and using mortar instead of clay in laying chimney and hearth. But such houses nowadays are rare. If a man can afford so much effort as all that he will build a framed dwelling. If not, he will content himself with such a cabin as I have described. If he prospers he may add a duplicate of it alongside and cover the whole with one roof, leaving a ten or twelve-foot entry between.

In Carolina they seldom build a house of round logs, but rather hew the inner and outer faces flat, out of a curious notion that this adds an appearance of finish to the structure. If only they would turn the logs over, so that the flat faces joined, leaving at least the outside in the natural round, the house would need hardly any c.h.i.n.king and the effect would be far more pleasing to good taste. As it is they merely notch the logs at the corners, leaving wide s.p.a.ces to be filled up with splits, rocks, mud--anything to keep out the weather. As a matter of fact, few houses ever are thoroughly c.h.i.n.ked and he who would take pains to make a workmanlike job of c.h.i.n.king would be ridiculed as "fussin' around like an old granny-woman." n.o.body but a tenderfoot feels drafts, you know.

It is hard to keep such a dwelling clean, even if the family be small.

The whole structure being built of green timber throughout, soon shrinks, checks, warps and sags, so that there cannot be a square joint, a neat fit, a perpendicular face, or a level place anywhere about it.