Our Southern Highlanders Part 27

The great need of our mountaineers to-day is trained leaders of their own. The future of Appalachia lies mostly in the hands of those resolute native boys and girls who win the education fitting them for such leadership. Here is where the nation at large is summoned by a solemn duty. And it should act quickly, because commercialism exploits and debauches quickly. But the schools needed here are not ordinary graded schools. They should be vocational schools that will turn out good farmers, good mechanics, good housewives. Meantime let a model farm be established in every mountain county showing how to get the most out of mountain land. Such object lessons would speedily work an economic revolution. It is an economic problem, fundamentally, that the mountaineer has to face.

THE END

Footnotes:

[1] A friend of mine on the U. S. Geological Survey tested with his clinometer a mountain cornfield that sloped at an angle of fifty degrees.

[2] Average annual rainfall of New York City, 44 inches; of Glencoe, in the Scotch Highlands, nearly 130 inches.

[3] _Gant-lot_: a fenced enclosure into which cattle are driven after cutting them out from those of other owners. So called because the mountain cattle run wild, feeding only on gra.s.s and browse, and "they couldn't travel well to market when filled up on green stuff: so they're penned up to git _gant_ and nimble."

[4] Pure bluff of mine, at that time; but it was good policy to a.s.sume perfect confidence.

[5] This was in 1904. There are no dispensaries in North Carolina now.

[6] It is a curious fact that most horses despise the stuff. A celebrated revenue officer told me that for several years he rode a horse which was in the habit of drinking a mouthful from every stream that he forded; but if there was the least taint of still-slop in the water, he would whisk his nose about and refuse to drink. The officer then had only to follow up the stream, and he would infallibly find a still.

[7] Ellwood Wilson, Sr., in the _Sewanee Review_.

[8] In mountain dialect such words as settlement, government, studyment (reverie) are accented on the last syllable, or drawled with equal stress throughout.

[9] So also in the lowland South. An extraordinary affectation of propriety appeared in a dispatch to the _Atlanta Const.i.tution_ of October 29, 1912, which reported that an exhibitor of cattle at the State fair had been seriously horned by a _male cow_.

[10] p.r.o.nounced Chee-_o_-ah, Chil-_how_-ee, Cow-_ee_, Cul-lo-_whee_, High-_wah_-see, Nan-tah-_hay_-lah, O-_ko_-na, _Luf_-ty, San-_teet_-lah, _Tel_-li-co, Tuck-a-_lee_-chee, Tuck-a-_see_-gee, Tuh-_loo_-lah, Tus-_quit_-ee, Wah-_yah_ (explosively on last syllable), _Wau_-ke-chah, Yah-_lah_-kah (commonly Ah-lar-ka or _'Lar_-ky by the settlers), You-_nay_-kah.