o grazing, rather than to
agriculture. As it stands, the best pasturage is high up in the
mountains, where there are "balds" covered with succulent wild grass
that resembles Kentucky bluegrass. Clearing and sowing would extend such
areas indefinitely. The cattle forage for themselves through eight or
nine months of the year, running wild like the razorbacks, and the only
attention given them is when the herdsmen go out to salt them or to mark
the calves. Nearly all the beasts are scrub stock. Jerseys, and other
blooded cattle thrive in the valleys, where there are no free ranges,
but the backwoodsman does not want "critters that haffter be gentled and
hand-fed." The result is that many families go without milk a great part
of the year, and seldom indeed taste butter or beef.

The truth is that mountain beef, being fed nothing but grass and browse,
with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive through
winter, is blue-fleshed, watery, and tough. If properly reared, the
quality would be as good as any. Almost any of our farmers could have
had a pasture near home and could have grown hay, but not one in ten
would take the trouble. His cattle were only for export--let the buyer
fatten them! It should be understood that nobody had any provision for
taking care of fresh meat when the weather was not frosty.

On those rare occasions when somebody killed a beef, he had to travel
all over the neighborhood to dispose of it in small portions. The
carcass was cut up in the same way as a hog, and all parts except the
cheap "bilin' pieces" were sold at the same price: ten cents a pound, or
whatever they would bring on the spot. The butchering was done with an
axe and a jackknife. The meat was either sliced thin and fried to a
crackling, or cut in chunks and boiled furiously just long enough to fit
it for boot-heels. What the butcher mangled, the cook damned.

Few sheep were raised in our settlement, and these only for their wool.
The untamed Smokies were no place for such defenseless creatures. Sheep
will not, cannot, run wild. They are wholly dependent on the fostering
hand of man and perish without his shepherding. Curiously enough, our
mountaineer knows little or nothing about the goat--an animal perfectly
adapted to the free range of the Smokies. I am convinced that goats
would be more profitable to the small farmers of the wild mountains than
cattle. Goats do not graze, but browse upon the shrubbery, of which
th