The people of East Tennessee took more interest, perhaps, in common-school education, than the inhabitants of other parts of the State; but that was not much. The school-fund went but a little way toward the support of schools. There were scattered throughout the country log school-houses capable of accommodating fifty pupils each. The tuition varied from two dollars and a half to three dollars a scholar. The teachers were supported by neighborhood subscriptions. But education was regarded by the poor as a luxury which they could not afford; and even the middling class was apt to consider their money and their children's labor of more importance than book-learning. The war, and the waste of the school-fund, had for four years put an end to schools, and I found the new generation growing up in ignorance.

The school-houses serve as meeting-houses. There are few churches beside. Outside of the larger towns, scarce a spire points its finger towards heaven. This is true not only of Tennessee, but of the whole South. It is one of the peculiarities of the country which strike the Northern traveller unpleasantly. The village green, with the neat white-steepled edifice. standing upon it, distinguishable from all other buildings, is no feature of the Southern landscape. You may travel thousands of miles and not meet with it.

Yet the East Tennesseeans are a church-going people. No especial form of meeting-house, any more than form of worship, is necessary to the exercise of that divine faculty by which man communes with his Maker. The Holy Spirit enters as readily the log-hut, where two or three are gathered together, as the great temples where multitudes assemble.

The Methodist Church predominates in East Tennessee. The United Brethren, who admit to their communion no rumseller, rum-drinker, nor slaveholder, have a powerful influence. They were much persecuted in the South before the war, as was natural in a country where the prejudice in favor of rum and slavery was so strong; but of late, in East Tennessee, they have grown in strength and popularity.

Farming is behind the age. Mowers and reapers, which

HORSES AND MULES.

245

might be employed to fine advantage on the beautiful smooth meadows and grain-fields of East Tennessee, have scarcely come into use at all. In Greene County I heard of but three. Manures are wasted. It is customary to rotate crops, until even rotation must cease, giving place to a usurpation of weeds and broom-sedge. A favorite method of improving land is to "clover" it; that is, to plough in crops of clover and grass. Farming utensils are nearly all brought from the North; and there is a great need for home manufactures here also. The farmers generally work mules and mares. The mares are kept chiefly for breeding mules. For which purpose likewise every neighborhood, if not every farm, has its "jack."

The further my observations extended, the more strongly I was convinced that mules were an indispensable substitute for horses in the South. Animals there do not receive the cherishing care they get at the North; and the rough, careless treatment which I saw almost universally shown to beasts of burden, not only by the negroes, but also by the whites, can be endured by nothing less hardy than the mule. This valuable creature, besides possessing the advantages I have elsewhere alluded to, is recommended for his brave appetite, which slights no part of the product of a hill of corn, but sturdily masters stalk, cob, and shucks.

Animals are driven, both at ploughing and teaming, by one rein, which is attached to the middle of the bridle-rein on the neck of the "lead" horse or mule, as the "near" or left-hand beast is called. The driver gives two little jerks for gee, and a steady pull for haw. This is the custom throughout the South.

I found horses cheap in Tennessee. A farmer said to me, “A hundred and a half will buy our best animal. This is not because horses are plenty, but because money is scarce. Formerly we used to take large droves of our stock to Georgia and the Carolinas; but that market is closed now, there is no money there." Several weeks afterwards, in one of the middle counties of South Carolina, I met this very man, who told me he had come into the State with eleven horses, and sold them

all at good prices. There had been more money hoarded, and more cotton reserved to be exchanged for money, in parts of the South than was at first supposed.

Tennessee and Kentucky are the two great mule-breeding States. East Tennessee takes first rank among the grazing sections of the South and West. Wild grass abounds in the uncultivated districts. Interminable forests on the mountain sides are carpeted with it. The woods are kept open and free from undergrowth by fires; and this native grass springs up and covers the ground. The mountains are full of deer which feed upon it. Many a beautiful range of thousands of acres is also afforded the farmers' stock, which is sent in vast numbers to occupy this wild, free, unfenced pasturage. Neighbors club together to make up a herd of four or five hundred head of cattle, enough to render profitable the employment of a herdsman. Farmers have but little hay to provide for the winter season. The climate is such that there is no month in the year during which cattle cannot gain at least a partial subsistence by grazing. This I account one of the great advantages of the country.

One of the great disadvantages is the want of a market. I saw a farmer in Jefferson County who had five thousand bushels of corn, for which he could find no sale near home; and the cost of transportation was too great to think of taking it out of the State. Said he, "We find it for our interest to feed our farm-produce into stock, and drive it."

I was told there was "a heap of thin, poor soil in East Tennessee." The ordinary land produces fifteen bushels of wheat, and thirty-five of corn to the acre. The lands on the river bottoms are incomparably better. Prices range from eight and ten to eighty and a hundred dollars per acre, according to the situation and quality. There are farms to be had in every section; it can scarcely be said that they are for sale, there being no sale for them. Such is the distress for money among holders of real estate, that land can be had in some of the most desirable locations almost at the buyer's own price. It is claimed that before the war the wheat of East Tennessee

MANUFACTURING FACILITIES.

247

commanded the highest market-prices in Richmond and New York, as having that fine, enduring quality wheat derives only from good limestone soils. Fruits abound, - apples, peaches, pears, plums; and both climate and soil are admirably adapted to the grape. The country is well watered, and its climate is mild and salubrious. Manufacturing facilities are abundant. There are forests and coal-mines, lead, zinc, iron, copper, marble, and unimproved water-power to any extent.

Farmers told me they were paying the freedmen from eight to fifteen dollars a month, and boarding them. They said, "We can afford to pay more than Virginians can, because we farm it better." They laughed at the Virginians' shiftless methods. Yet a few were beginning to learn that even they were not perfect in the business. One who had visited Iowa, where he saw men plough out two rows of corn at a time, and mow and reap with machinery, one hand doing the work of four or five men, said he had concluded that they in Tennessee did n't know anything.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

IN AND ABOUT CHATTANOOGA.

Two hundred and fifty miles from Knoxville, lying within a coil of the serpentine Tennessee, on its south bank, surrounded by mountains, is the town of Chattanooga. Here the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad connects with the Nashville and Chattanooga, and with the Western and Atlantic, making the place an important centre of railroad commu nications. The river is navigable for steamboats during eight months of the year. Here are shipped the principal exports of East Tennessee and of Southern Middle Tennessee. Hence the military importance of the place, and its historical in

terest.

Although embosomed amid strikingly bold and grand sce nery, Chattanooga is anything but a lovely town. On the east, but a few miles, distant, is Missionary Ridge,1 a range of forest-covered mountains rising from the river and sweeping away southward into Georgia. On the southwest is Lookout Mountain, with rugged, precipitous front overlooking the river and the town. Between this mountain and Missionary Ridge lies Chattanooga Valley. Rising steeply from the edge of the town, within the curve of the river which encloses it on the north and west, is Cameron Hill, a sort of miniature copy of Lookout. A miniature only by comparison; for it is a little mountain by itself: a peaked bluff, its summit flanked by forts, and crowned by a battery of a single huge gun.

If you visit Chattanooga, climb, as I did, this hill the first fair morning after your arrival. Away on the south are the mountains of Georgia; on the north, those of Tennessee.

1 Or Mission Ridge; named from an Indian mission formerly located in this vicinity