. Highways and byways of the South. ue until the forest budsgot a good start and the cows could be turned out inthe woods to browse. As yet the twigs were bare ofleafage, and the swelling buds had not thrown off theirscales. The only trees that looked really springlikewere the occasional maples, or sugar trees, as theyare called. These had tasselled out in light greenbloom. You cn git good sugar from them trees,Andy informed me. We made twenty-five poundsof sugar-tree sugar this year. Evergreens were almost entirely lacking on theheights, and the predominant trees were chestnuts —enormous, big
. Highways and byways of the South. ue until the forest budsgot a good start and the cows could be turned out inthe woods to browse. As yet the twigs were bare ofleafage, and the swelling buds had not thrown off theirscales. The only trees that looked really springlikewere the occasional maples, or sugar trees, as theyare called. These had tasselled out in light greenbloom. You cn git good sugar from them trees,Andy informed me. We made twenty-five poundsof sugar-tree sugar this year. Evergreens were almost entirely lacking on theheights, and the predominant trees were chestnuts —enormous, big-armed, and patriarchal and seeminglyas ancient as the summits on which they grew. Iwent with Andy in his quest for roughness, and in themidst of the chestnut woods on one of the loftierslopes we stopped to speak with a man who wasgetting some new land ready for the plough. Thesettlers wife and little girl were helping him by pick-ing up the smaller rubbish while he rolled the logsout of the way. Most of the trees were yet stand-. Pioneer Homemakers IT.*:/ ;nKARY TlLDwN (->->>- :iO^- I ?^ In the Tennessee Mountains 143 ing; but they were dead and bare, for they had beengirdled. The log-house in which the family lived had beenrecently built and close by it was the hole, still unfilled,whence had been dug the mud used to daub thechimney and fill in the chinks between the logs. Theoutbuildings were only half finished and everythingwas raw and new. The family were in fact genuinepioneers, carving out a home in the wilderness in justthe same way as had the earliest settlers of colonialdays. I asked if the little girl went to school, and themother replied : Yes, and she was the least one ofem all. Shes only five year old, and some of thebig ones was nineteen or twenty. Hyar, Mary, gitdown off that thar stump and say yore speech — thatone yo spoke at the exhibition, last day. Shes mem-orized I dont know how many speeches. So the little girl came down from the stump andher
Size: 1311px × 1907px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1904
