. Premature
darkness was accompanied with torrents of rain, through which we
followed our now uncertain guides. At last the light of the cabin we
were seeking gleamed humidly through the trees. Most of the family fled
into the outhouses at our approach, some of them not reappearing until
we were disposed for sleep in a half-circle before the fire. The last
arrivals were two tall women in homespun dresses and calico sunbonnets.
They slid timidly in at the door, with averted faces, and then with a
rush and a bounce covered themselves out of sight in a bed, where they
had probably been sleeping in the same clothing when we approached the
house. Here we learned that a cavalcade of four hundred Texan Rangers
had advanced into Tennessee by the roads on the day before. Our guides,
familiar with the movements of these dreaded troopers, calculated that
with the day's delay enforced by the state of the river a blow would
have been struck and the marauders would be in full retreat before we
should arrive on the ground. We passed that day concealed in a stable,
and as soon as it was sufficiently dark we proceeded in a body to the
bank of the river, attended by a man and a horse. The stream was narrow,
but the current was full and swift. The horse breasted the flood with
difficulty, but he bore us all across one at a time, seated behind the
farmer.

We had now left behind us the last settlement, and before us lay only
wild and uninhabited mountains. The trail we traveled was an Indian path
extending for nearly seventy miles through an uninhabited wilderness.
Instead of crossing the ridges it follows the trend of the range,
winding for the most part along the crests of the divides. The
occasional traveler, having once mounted to its level, pursues his
solitary way with little climbing.

Early in the morning of the fourth day our little party was assembled
upon the last mountain overlooking the open country of East Tennessee.
Some of us had been wandering in the mountains for the whole winter. We
were returning to a half-forgotten world of farms and fences, roads and
railways. Below us stretched the Tellico River away toward the line of
towns marking the course of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. One
of the guides who had ventured down to the nearest house returned with
information that the four hundred Texan Rangers had burned the depot at
Philadelphia Station the day before, but were now thought to be out of
the country. We