Blue Ridge Country

4 6. Superstition 168 BIG SANDY RIVER l68 WATER WITCH 169 MARRYING ON HORSEBACK I* J2 DEATH CROWN 1* 7 7 A WHITE FEATHER 178 7. Legend 180 CROCKETT S HOLLOW 1 80 THE SILVER TOMAHAWK l86 BLACK CAT 189 THE DEER WOMAN AND THE FAWN 1Q4 GHOST OF DEVIL ANSE 1Q9 THE WINKING CORPSE 2Og THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN GABLES 205 8. Singing on the Mountain Side 210 OF LAND AND RIVER 2 1O FEUD 2l6 LEGEND 2 1 8 TRAGEDY 228 PATRIOT 239 9. Reclaiming the Wilderness 248 VANISHING FEUDIST 248 SILVER MOON TAVERN 250 BLOOMING STILLS 255 LEARNING 258 MOUNTAIN MEN 269 COAL 273 PUBLIC WORKS 274 BACK TO THE FARM 283 VALLEY OF PARKS gOl WHEN - SINGING COMES IN, FIGHTING GOES OUT 317 VANISHING TRAIL 337 Index 331. BLUE RIDGE COUNTRY 1. The Country and the People: THE LAND HIGH mountain walls and bridgeless streams ma rooned the people of the Blue Ridge for centuries, shut them off from the outside world so that they lost step with the onward march of civilization. A forgotten people until yesterday, unlettered, content to wrest a meager liv ing from the grudging soil, they built for themselves a nation within a nation. By their very isolation, they have preserved much of the best that is America. They have held safe and unchanged the simple beauty o the song of their fathers, the unsullied speech, the simple ideals and traditions, staunch religious faith, love of freedom, courage and fearlessness. Above all they have maintained a spirit of independence and self-reliance that is unsurpassed any where in these United States of America. They are a hardy race. The wilderness, the pure air, the rugged outdoor life have made them so: a people in whom the Anglo-Saxon strain has retained its purest line. , The Blue Ridge Country comprises much of Appa lachia, happily called from the great chain that runs along the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a well-watered region having numer ous streams and rivers throughout, being drained by the Cumberland and Tennessee as well as by smaller, though 3 Blue Ridge Country equally well-known, rivers Big Sandy in northeastern Kentucky, which flows into the Ohio, and the Yadkin in North Carolina, which eventually reaches the Atlantic Ocean.