taineer's irreverence, his whimsical
fancies, and his scorn of sentimentalism, it must be said that his
descriptive terms are usually apposite and sometimes felicitous. Often
he is poetically imaginative, occasionally romantic, and generally
picturesque. Roan Mountain, Grandfather, the Lone Bald, Craggy Dome,
the Black Brothers, Hairy Bear, the Balsam Cone, Sunset Mountain, the
Little Snowbird, are names that linger lovingly in one's memory.

The writer recalls with pleasure not only the features but the mere
titles of that superb landscape that he shared with the wild creatures
and a few woodsmen when living far up on the divide of the Great Smoky
Mountains. Immediately below his cabin were the Defeat and Desolation
branches of Bone Valley, with Hazel Creek meandering to the Little
Tennessee. Cheoah, Tululah, Santeetlah, the Tuckaseegee, and the
Nantahala (Valley of the Noonday Sun) flowed through gorges overlooked
by the Wauchecha, the Yalaka and the Cowee ranges, Tellico, Wahyah, the
Standing Indian and the Tusquitee.[10] Sonorous names, these, which our
pioneers had the good sense to adopt from the aborigines.

To the east were Cold Spring Knob, the Miry Ridge, Siler's Bald,
Clingman's Dome, and the great peaks at the head of Okona Lufty. On the
west rose Brier Knob, Laurel Top, Thunderhead, Blockhouse, the
Fodder-stack, and various "balds" of the Unakas guarding Hiwassee. To
the northward were Cade's Cove and the vale of Tuckaleechee, with
Chilhowee in the near distance, and the Appalachian Valley stretching
beyond our ramparts to where the far Cumberlands marked an ever-blue
horizon.

What matter that the plenteous roughs about us were branded with rude or
opprobrious names? Rip Shin Thicket, Dog-hobble Ridge, the Rough Arm,
Bear-wallow, Woolly Ridge, Roaring Fork, Huggins's Hell, the Devil's
Racepath, his Den, his Courthouse, and other playgrounds of Old
Nick--they, too, were well and fitly named.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAW OF THE WILDERNESS

It is only a town-dreamed allegory that represents Nature as a fond
mother suckling her young upon her breast. Those who have lived
literally close to wild Nature know her for a tyrant, void of pity and
of mercy, from whom nothing can be wrung without toil and the risk of
death.

To all pioneer men--to their women and children, too--life has been one
long, hard, cruel war against elemental powers. Nothing else than
warlike arts, nothing short of warlike hazards,