and with horses well
fed, we rode on next morning towards Jonesboro, over a rolling, rather
unpicturesque country, but ennobled by the Big Bald and Butt ranges,
which we had on our right all day. At noon we crossed the Nollechucky
River at a ford where the water was up to the saddle girth, broad,
rapid, muddy, and with a treacherous stony bottom, and came to the
little hamlet of Boylesville, with a flour-mill, and a hospitable
old-fashioned house, where we found shelter from the heat of the hot
day, and where the daughters of the house, especially one pretty girl in
a short skirt and jaunty cap, contradicted the currently received
notion that this world is a weary pilgrimage. The big parlor, with its
photographs and stereoscope, and bits of shell and mineral, a piano and
a melodeon, and a coveted old sideboard of mahogany, recalled rural New
England. Perhaps these refinements are due to the Washington College (a
school for both sexes), which is near. We noted at the tables in this
region a singular use of the word fruit. When we were asked, Will you
have some of the fruit? and said Yes, we always got applesauce.

Ten miles more in the late afternoon brought us to Jonesboro, the oldest
town in the State, a pretty place, with a flavor of antiquity, set
picturesquely on hills, with the great mountains in sight. People from
further South find this an agreeable summering place, and a fair hotel,
with odd galleries in front and rear, did not want company. The Warren
Institute for negroes has been flourishing here ever since the war.

A ride of twenty miles next day carried us to Union. Before noon we
forded the Watauga, a stream not so large as the Nollechucky, and were
entertained at the big brick house of Mr. Devault, a prosperous and
hospitable farmer. This is a rich country. We had met in the morning
wagon-loads of watermelons and muskmelons, on the way to Jonesboro, and
Mr. Devault set abundance of these refreshing fruits before us as we
lounged on the porch before dinner.

It was here that we made the acquaintance of a colored woman, a
withered, bent old pensioner of the house, whose industry (she excelled
any modern patent apple-parer) was unabated, although she was by her own
confession (a woman, we believe, never owns her age till she has passed
this point) and the testimony of others a hundred years old. But age
had not impaired the brightness of her eyes, nor the limberness of her
tongue, nor her shrewd good sens