History of Western North Carolina - Chapters 1-2



CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY

OUR LORDLY DOMAIN. Lying between the Blue Ridge on the East and the Iron,
Great Smoky and Unaka mountains on the West, is, in North Carolina, a
lordly domain. It varies in width from about forty miles at the Virginia
line to about seventy-five when it reaches Georgia on the Southerly side.
Running Northeast and Southwest it borders the State of Tennessee on the
West for about two hundred and thirty miles, following the meanderings of
the mountain tops, and embraces approximately eight thousand square miles.
Nowhere within that entire area is there a tract of level land one
thousand acres in extent; for the mountains are everywhere, except in
places where a limpid stream has, after ages of erosion, eaten out of the
hills a narrow valley. Between the Grandfather on the east and the Roan on
the west, the distance in a straight line is less than twenty miles, while
from Melrose mountain, just west of Tryon, to the corner of North
Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, is over one hundred and fifty miles.

THE APPALACHIANS. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the name
Alleghany is from the language of the Delaware Indians, and signifies a
fine or navigable river.(1) It is sometimes applied to the mountain ranges
in the eastern part of the United States, but the Appalachians, first
applied by De Soto to the whole system, is preferred by geographers.(2)

THE GRANDFATHER 'MOUNTAIN. The Blue Ridge reaches its culmination in this
hoary pile, with its five-peaked crown of archaean rocks, and nearly six
thousand feet of elevation.

Of this mountain the following lines were written in 1898:

TO THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN.(3)
Oldest of all terrestrial things-still holding Thy wrinkled forehead high;
Whose every seam, earth's history enfolding, Grim Science cloth defy
Teach me the lesson of the world-old story, Deep in thy bosom hid;
Read me thy riddles that were old and hoary Ere Sphinx and Pyramid!
Thou saw'st the birth of that abstraction Which men have christened Time;
Thou saw'st the dead world wake to life and action Far in thy early prime;
Thou caught'st the far faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space
first was hurled,
The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, This atom, called the World!
Gray was thy head ere Steam or Sail or Traffic Had waked the soul of Gain,
Or reed or string had made the air seraphic With Music's magic strain!
Thy cheek had kindled with the crimsoned blushes Of myriad sunset dyes
Ere Adam's race began, or, from the rushes, Came Moses, great and wise!
Thou saw'st the Flood, Mount Arrarat o'er-riding, That bore of old the Ark;
Thou saw'st the Star, the Eastern Magi guiding To manger, drear and dark.
Seething with heat, or glacial ices rending Thy gaunt and crumbling form;
Riven by frosts and lightning-bolts-contending In tempest and in storm
Thou still protesteth 'gainst the day impending, When, striving not in
vain,
Science, at last, from thee thy riddles rending, Shall make all secrets
plain!

THE PECULIARITIES OF THE MOUNTAINS. Until 1835 the mountains of New
Hampshire had been regarded as the loftiest of the Alleghanies; but at
that time the attention of John C. Calhoun had been drawn to the numerous
rivers which come from all sides of the North Carolina mountains and he
shrewdly reasoned that between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees
and 30', north latitude, would be found the highest plateau and mountains
of the Atlantic coast. The Blue Ridge is a true divide, all streams
flowing east and all flowing west having their sources east or west of
that divide. The Linville river seems to be an exception to this rule, but
its source is in Linville gap, which is the true divide, the Boone fork of
the Watauga rising only a few hundred feet away flowing west to the
Mississippi. There are two springs at Blowing Rock only a few feet apart,
one of which flows into the Yadkin, and thence into the Atlantic, while
the other goes into the New, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico; while the
Saddle Mountain Baptist church in Alleghany county is built so exactly on
the line that a drop of rain falling on one side of the roof goes into the
Atlantic, while another drop, falling on the opposite side ultimately gets
into the Gulf.

WHEN THE ALLEGHANIES WERE HIGHER THAN THE ALPS. What is by some called The
Portal is the depression between the Grandfather on the East and the Roan
mountain on the West. When it is remembered that the Gulf of Mexico once
extended further north than Cairo, Illinois, and that both the Ohio and
the Mississippi once emptied into that inland sea without having joined
their waters, it will be easy to understand why these mountains must have
been much higher than at present, as most of their surface soil has for
untold ages been slowly carried westward to form the eastern half of the
valley of the Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans. Thus, the Watauga
first finds its way westward, followed in the order named by the Doe, the
Toe, the Cane, the French Broad, the Pigeon, the Little Tennessee and last
by the Hiwassee. The most northerly section of this western rampart is
called the Stone mountains, and then follow the Iron, the Bald, the Great
Smoky, the Unaka, and last, the Frog mountains of Georgia. The Blue Ridge,
the transverse ranges and the western mountains contain over a score of
peaks higher than Mount Washington, while the general level of the plateau
between the Blue Ridge and the mountains which divide North Carolina from
Tennessee is over two thousand feet above sea level. Where most of these
streams break through the western barrier are veritable canons, sometimes
so narrow as to dispute the passage of wagon road, railroad and river. For
a quarter of a mile along the Toe, at Lost Cove, the railroad is built on
a concrete viaduct in the very bed of the river itself. The mountains are
wooded to their crests, except where those crests are covered by grass,
frequently forming velvety mountain meadows. The scenery is often grand
and inspiring. It is always beautiful; and Cowper sings:

"Scenes must be beautiful that, daily seen,
 Please daily, and whose novelty survives
 Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years."

THE ABORIGINES. This region was, of course, inhabited from time immemorial
by the Indians. The Catawbas held the country to the crest of the Blue
Ridge. To the west of that line, the Cherokees, a numerous and warlike
tribe, held sway to the Mississippi, though a renegade portion of that
tribe, known as the Chicamaugas, occupied the country around what is now
Chattanooga.' Old pottery, pipes, arrow- and spear-heads are found at
numerous places throughout these mountains; and only a few years ago Mr.
T. A. Low, a lawyer of Banner Elk, Avery county, "picked up quite a number
of arrow-heads in his garden, some of which were splendid specimens of
Mocha stone, or moss agate, evidently brought from Lake Superior regions,
as no stones of the kind are found in this part of the country." 5 None of
the towns of these Indians appear "to have been in the valleys of the
Swannanoa and the North Carolina part of the French Broad." Parties roamed
over the country. Since many of the arrowheads are defective or
unfinished, it would seem that they were made where found, as it is
unlikely that such unfinished stones would be carried about the country.
The inference is that many and large parties roamed through these
unsettled regions. Numbers of Indian mounds, stone hatchets, etc., are
found in several localities, but nothing has been found in these mounds
except Indian relics of the common type.(8)

AS ASHEVILLE ON AN OLD INDIAN BATTLE-GROUND? "There is an old tradition
that Asheville stands upon the site where, years before the white man
calve, was fought a great battle, between two tribes of aborigines,
probably the Cherokees and the Catawbas, who were inveterate enemies and
always at war. There is also a tradition that these lands were for a long
while neutral hunting grounds of these two tribes."(9)

INDIAN NAMES FOR FRENCH BROAD. According to Dr. Ramsey this stream was
called Agiqua throughout its entire length; but Zeigler & Grosscup tell us
that it was known as the Agiqua to the Over Mountain Cherokees [erati]
only as far as the lower valley; and to the Ottari or Valley Towns
Indians, as Tahkeeosteh from Asheville down; while above Asheville "it
took the name of Zillicoah." But they give no authority for these
statements.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME "FRENCH BROAD." Mr. Sondley(10) states that "as the
settlement from the east advanced towards the mountains, the Broad river
was found and named; and when the river, whose sources were on the
opposite or western side of the same mountains which gave rise to the
Broad river [on the east]-became known, that . . . its course traversed
the lands then claimed by the French, and this newfound western stream was
called the French Broad."

ORIGIN OF THE NAME "SWANNANOA." The same writer (Mr. Sondley), after
considering the claims of those who think Swannanoa means "beautiful", and
of those who thin; it is intended to imitate the wings of ravens when
flying rapidly, is of opinion that the name is but a corruption of Shawno,
or Shawnees, most of whom lived in Ohio territory, and he seems to think
that Savannah may also be a corruption of Shawno, which tribe may have
dwelt for a time on the Savannah river in remote times. He then quotes Mr.
James Mooney, "that the correct name of the Swannanoa gap through the Blue
Ridge, east of Asheville, is Suwali Nunnahi, or Suwali trail," that being
the pass through which ran the trail from the Cherokee to the Suwali, or
Ani-Suwali, living east of the mountains. He next quotes Lederer (p. 57)
to the effect that the Suwali were also called Sara, Sualty or Sasa, the
interchange of the Z and r being common in Indian dialects.

THE FIRST WHITE MEN. It is difficult to say who were the first white men
who passed across the Blue Ridge. There is no doubt, however, that there
are excavations at several places in these mountains which indicate that
white men carried on mining operations in years long since passed. This is
suggested by excavations and immense trees now growing from them, which
when cut down show rings to the number of several hundred. It is true that
these excavations may have been made by the Indians themselves, but it is
also possible that they may have been made by white men who were wandering
through the mountains in search of gold, silver or precious stones.
Roosevelt (Vol. i, 173-4) says that unnamed and unknown hunters and Indian
traders had from time to time pushed their way into the wilderness and had
been followed by others of whom we know little more than their names. Dr.
Thomas Walker of Virginia had found and named Cumberland river, mountains
and gap after the Duke of Cumberland in 1750, though he had been to the
Cumberland in 1748 (p. 175). John Sailing had been taken as a captive by
the Indians through Tennessee in 1730, and in that year Adair traded with
the Indians in what is now Tennessee. In 1756 and 1758 Forts Loudon and
Chissel were built on the headwaters of the Tennessee river, and in 1761
Wallen, a hunter, hunted near by . . . In 1766 James Smith and others
explored Tennessee, and a party from South Carolina were near the present
site of Nashville in 1767.

DE SOTO. It is considered by some as most probable that De Soto, on the
great expedition in which he discovered the Mississippi river, passed
through Western North Carolina in 1540.(11) In the course of their journey
they are said to have arrived at the head of the Broad or Pacolet river
and from there to have passed "through a country covered with fields of
maize of luxuriant growth," and during the next five days to have
"traversed a chain of easy mountains, covered with oak or mulberry trees,
with intervening valleys, rich in pasturage and irrigated by clear and
rapid streams. These mountains were twenty leagues across." They came at
last to "a grand and powerful river" and "a village at the end of a long
island, where pearl oysters were found." "Now, it would be impossible for
an army on the Broad or Pacolet river, within one day's march of the
mountains, to march westward for six days, five of which were through
mountains, and reach the sources of the Tennessee or any other river,
without passing through Western North Carolina."(12) But the Librarian of
Congress says: "There appears to be no authority for the statement that
this expedition [Hernando De Soto's] entered the present limits of North
Carolina. In the same letter he says that Don Luis de Velasco, "as viceroy
of New Spain, sent out an expedition in 1559 under command of Luna y
Arellano to establish a colony in Florida.(13) One of the latter's
lieutenant's appears to have led an expedition into northeastern Alabama
in 1560. Also, that the statement of Charles C. Jones, in his "Hernando De
Soto", (1880), that Luna's expedition penetrated into the Valley river in
Georgia and there mined for gold is questioned by Woodbury Lowery in his
"Spanish Settlements within the present limits of the United States" (New
York, 1901, p. 367)(14). There are unmistakable evidences of gold-mining
in Macon and Cherokee counties which, apparently, was done 300 years ago;
but by whom cannot now be definitely determined. However, there is no
Valley river in Georgia, and the probability is that the Valley river of
Cherokee county, N. C., which is very near the Georgia line, was at that
time supposed to be in the latter State.

THE ROUNDHEADS of THE SOUTH. Towards this primeval wilderness three
streams of white people began to converge as early as 1730.(15) They were
Irish Presbyterians, Scotch Saxons, Scotch Celts, French Huguenots,
Milesian Irish, Germans, Hollanders and even Swedes. "The western border
of our country was then formed by the great barrier-chains of the
Alleghanies, which ran north and south from Pennsylvania through Maryland,
Virginia and the Carolinas." Georgia was then too weak and small to
contribute much to the backwoods stock; the frontier was still in the low
country. It was difficult to cross the mountains from east to west, but
easy to follow the valleys between the ranges. By 1730 emigrants were
fairly swarming across the Atlantic, most of them landing at Philadelphia,
while a less number went to Charleston. Those who went to Philadelphia
passed west to Fort Pitt or started southwestward, towards the mountains
of North Carolina and Virginia. Their brethren pushed into the interior
from Charleston. These streams met in the foothills on the east of the
Blue Ridge and settled around Pittsburg and the headwaters of the Great
Kanawha, the Holston and the Cumberland. Predominent among them were the
Presbyterian Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin.
They were in the West what the Puritans were in the Northeast, and more
than the Cavaliers were in the South. They formed the kernel of the
American stock who were the pioneers in the march westward. They were the
Protestants of the Protestants; they detested and despised the Catholics,
and regarded the Episcopalians with a more sullen, but scarcely less
intense, hatred. They had as little kinship with the Cavalier as with the
Quaker; they were separated by a wide gulf from the aristocratic planter
communities that flourished in the tidewater regions of Virginia and the
Carolinas. They deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own Bible,
and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy. For
generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been
fundamentally democratic. The creed of the backwoodsman who had a creed at
all was Presbyterianism; for the Episcopacy of the tidewater lands
obtained no foothold in the mountains, and the Methodists and Baptists had
but just begun to appear in the West when the Revolution broke out. Thus
they became the outposts of civilization; the vanguard of the army of
fighting settlers, who with axe and rifle won their way from the
Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. "They have been rightly
called the Roundheads of the South, the same men who, before any others,
declared for American independence, as witness the Mecklenburg
Declaration."(16) "They felt that they were thus dispossessing the
Canaanites, and were thus working the Lord's will in preparing the land
for a people which they believed was more truly His chosen people than was
that nation which Joshua led across the Jordan."(17)

A NEW ENGLANDER'S ESTIMATE. In her "Carolina Mountains," (Houghton,
Mifflin Co., 1913) Miss Margaret W. Morley, of New England, but who has
resided about a dozen years in these mountains (Ch. 14) says that although
North Carolina was originally settled "from almost all the nations of
Europe," our mountain population, in "the course of time, became
homogenious"; that many had come to "found a family," and "formed the
'quality' of the mountains"; while others, "at different times drifted in
from the eastern lowlands as well as down from the North." Indeed, the
early records of Ashe county, show many a name which has since become
famous in New York, Ohio and New England-such as Day, Choate, Dana,
Cornell, Storie and Vanderpool. Continuing, Miss Morley says (p. 140):
"Most of the writers tell us rather loosely that the Southern mountains
were originally peopled with refuges of one sort and another, among whom
were criminals exported to the New World from England, which, they might
as well add, was the case with the whole of the newly discovered
continent, America being then the open door of refuge for the world's
oppressed ...but we can find no evidence that these malefactors, many of
them 'indentured servants', sent over for the use of the colonists, made a
practice of coming to the mountains when their term of servitude expired.
The truth is, the same people who occupied Virginia and the eastern part
of the Carolinas, peopled the western mountains, English predominating,
and in course of time there drifted down from Virginia large numbers of
Scotch-Irish, who, after the events of 1730, fled in such numbers to the
New World, and good Scotch Highlanders, who came after 1745. In fact, so
many of these staunch Northerners came to the North Carolina mountains
that they have given the dominant note to the character of the
mountaineers, remembering which may help the puzzled stranger to
understand the peculiarities of the people he finds here today. . . The
rapid growth of slavery, no doubt, discouraged many, who, unable to
succeed in the Slave-States, were crowded to the mountains, or else became
the "Poor White" of the South, who must not be for a moment confounded
with the "Mountain White," the latter having brought some of the best
blood of his nation to these blue heights. He brought into the mountains
and there nourished, the stern virtues of his race, including the
strictest honesty, an old-fashioned self-respect, and an old-fashioned
speech, all of which he yet retains, as well as a certain pride, which
causes him to flare up instantly at any suspicion of being treated with
condescension. . . She gives the names of Hampton, Rogers, McClure,
Morgan, Rhodes, Foster and Bradley as indicative of the English, Scotch
and Irish descent of our people-names that "are crowned with honor out in
the big world." It is also a wellknown fact that Andrew Jackson, Abraham
Lincoln, Admiral Farragut and Cyrus T. McCormick came from the same stock
of people. She adds, very justly: "Bad blood there was among them, as well
as good, and brave men as well as weak ones. The brave as well as the bad
blood sometimes worked out its destiny in Vendetta and "moonshining,"
although there never existed in the North Carolina mountains the extensive
and bloody feuds that distinguish the annals of Virginia and Kentucky."
(P. 144).

THE MOONSHINER, she declares, (p. 201) is "a product of conditions
resulting from the Civil War, before which time the moutnaineer converted
his grain into whiskey, just as the New Englander converted his apples
into cider. The act of distilling was not a crime, and became so only
because it was an evasion of the revenue laws . . . . At the beginning of
the Civil War for the sake of revenue a very heavy tax was placed on all
distilled alcoholic liquors. After the war was over the tax was not
removed, and this is the grievance of the mountaineer, who says that the
tax should have been removed; that it is unjust and oppressive, and that
he has a right to do as he pleases with his own corn, and to evade the law
which interferes with his personal freedom." But, she adds: "Within the
past few years the moonshiner, along with many time-honored customs, has
been rapidly vanishing."

AN APPRECIATION. Such just, truthful, generous and sympathetic words as
the above, especially when found eminating from a New Englander, will be
highly appreciated by every resident of the Carolina mountains, as we are
accustomed to little else than misrepresentations and abuse by many of the
writers from Miss Morley's former home. Her descriptions of our flowers,
our gems, our manners and customs, our scenery, our climate and the
character of our people will win for her a warm place in the affections of
all our people. "The Carolina Mountains" is by far the best book that has
ever been written about our section and our people. The few lapses into
which she has been betrayed by incorrect information will be gladly
overlooked in view of the fact that she has been so just, so kind and so
truthful in the estimate she has placed upon our virtues and our section.

POOR COMFORT. Very little comfort is to be derived from the fact that some
writers claim ("The Child That Toileth Not," p. 13) that a spirit of fun
or a "great sense of humor" among the mountain people induces them to
mislead strangers who profess to believe that in some sections of the
mountains our people have never even heard of Santa Claus or Jesus Christ;
by pretending that they do not themselves know anything of either. Indeed,
a story comes from Aquone to the effect that a stranger from New England
who was there to fish in the Nantahala river once told his guide, a noted
wag, that he had heard that some of the mountain people had not heard of
God or Jesus Christ. Pretending to think that the visitor was referring to
a man, the guide asked if his questioner did not mean Mike Crise, a
timberjack who had worked on that river a dozen years before, and when the
stranger replied that he meant Jesus of Bethlehem, the wag, with a
perfectly straight face, answered: "That's the very pint Mike came from"
meaning Bethlehem, Pa. Therefore, when we read in "The Carolina Mountains
(p. 117) that "The mountaineer, it may be said in passing, sells his
molasses by the bushel," and (p. 220) that "Under the Smoky mountain we
heard of a sect of 'Barkers,' who, the people said, in their religious
frenzy, run and bark up a tree in the belief that Christ is there," we are
driven to the conclusion that Miss Morley, the author, was a victim of
this same irresistible "sense of humor."

(1. Letter of R. D. W. Connor, Secretary N. C. Hist. Corn., January 31,
1912)

(2. Zeigler & Grosscup, p. 9)

(3. This mountain is said to be among the oldest geological formations on
earth, the Laurentian only being senior to it)

(4. Roosevelt, Vol. III, 111-112)

(5. T. A. Low, Esq)

(6. "Asheville's Centenary")
(7. Ibid)
(8. Ibid)
(9. Ibid)
(10. Ibid)

(11. Zeigler & Grosscup, p. 222)

(12. "Asheville's Centenary")

(13. His letter to J. P. A., 1912)
(14. Ibid)

(15. Roosevelt, Vol. I. p. 137. This entire chapter (ch. 55, Vol. I), from
which the following excerpts have been taken at random, contains the
finest tribute in the language to the pioneers of the South)
(16. Ibid., 214)
(17. Ibid)



CHAPTER II.
BOUNDARIES

A DIGRESSION. The purpose of this history is to relate facts concerning
that part of North Carolina which lies between the Blue Ridge and the
Tennessee line; but as there has never been any connected account of the
boundary lines between North Carolina and its adjoining sisters, a
digression from the main purpose in order to tell that story should be
pardoned.

UNFOUNDED TRADITIONS. It is said that the reason the Ducktown copper mines
of Tennessee were lost to North Carolina was due to the fact that the
commissioners of North Carolina and Tennessee ran out of spirituous
liquors when they reached the high peak just north of the Hiwassee river,
and instead of continuing the line in a general southwestwardly course,
crossing the tops of the Big and Little Frog mountains, they struck due
south to the Georgia line and a still-house. The same story is told as to
the location of Asheville, the old Steam Saw Mill place on the Buncombe
Turnpike about three miles south of Asheville, at Dr. Hardy's former
residence, being its chief rival; but when it is recalled that two Indian
trails crossed at Asheville, and the legislature had selected a man from
Burke as an umpire of the dispute, it will be found that grave doubts may
arise as to the truth of the whiskey tradition.(1) It was the jagged
boundary between North and South Carolina and the stories attributing the
same to the influence of whiskey that called forth the following just and
sober reflections:

ABSTEMIOUS OR CAPABLE IN STRONG DRINK? Hon. W. L. Saunders, who edited the
Colonial Records, remarks in Vol. v, p. xxxviii, that "there is usually a
substantial, sensible, sober reason for any marked variation from the
general direction of an important boundary line, plain enough when the
facts are known; but the habit of the country is to attribute such
variations to a supposed superior capacity of the commissioners and
surveyors on the other side for resisting the power of strong drink. Upon
this theory, judging from practical results, North Carolina in her
boundary surveys, and they have been many, seems to have been unusually
fortunate in having men who were either abstemious or very capable in the
matter of strong drink; for, so far as now appears, in no instance have we
been overreached."(2)

A SANCTUARY FOR CRIMINALS. Prior to the settlement of these boundary
disputes grants had been issued by each colony to lands in the territory
in controversy; which, according to Governor Dobbs, "was the creation of a
kind of sanctuary allowed to criminals and vagabonds by their pretending,
as it served their purpose, that they belonged to either province."(3)
"But," adds Mr. W. L. Saunders, "who can help a feeling of sympathy for
those reckless free-lances to whom constraint from either province was
irksome? After men breathe North Carolina air for a time, a very little
government will go a long way with them. Certainly the men who publicly
'damned the King and his peace' in 1762 were fast ripening for the 20th of
May, 1775."(4)

THE FIRST GRANT OF CAROLINA. Charles the Second's grant of Carolina in
1584 embraced only the land between the mouth of the St. Johns river in
Florida to a line just north of Albemarle Sound; but he had intended to
give all land south of the settlements in Virginia. This left a strip of
land between the Province of Carolina and the Virginia settlements.(5) In
1665 the King added a narrow strip of land to those already granted. This
strip lay just north of Albemarle Sound, and its northern boundary would
of course be the boundary line between Carolina and Virginia. It was about
fifteen miles wide, and had on it "hundreds of families," which neither
colony wished to lose.(6)

THE FIRST SURVEY. In 1709, both colonies appointed commissioners to settle
this boundary. North Carolina appointed Moseley and John Lawson; but
Lawson left his deputy, Colonel Win. Maine, to act for him. In 1710 these
commissioners met Philip Ludwell and Nathaniel Harrison, commissioners
from Virginia, but our commissioners insisted that the surveying
instruments used by the Virginians were not to be trusted, and the meeting
broke up without having accomplished anything except the charge from the
Virginians that Moseley did not want the line run because he was trading
in disputed lands.(8) When the commissioners from these two colonies did
meet in March 1728, it was found that our commissioners had been right in
1710 as to the inaccuracy of the Virginia instruments, and the Virginians
frankly admitted it.(9)

NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA BOUNDARY. On the 27th of February, 1728,
William Byrd, Will Dandridge, and Richard Fitzwilliam, as commissioners
from Virginia, met Edward Moseley, C. Gale, Will Little and J. Lovick, as
commissioners from North Carolina, at Corotuck Inlet, and began the survey
on the 27th day of March, and continued it till the weather got "warm
enough to give life and vigor to the rattlesnakes" in the beginning of
April, when they stopped till September 20, when the survey was renewed;
and after going a certain distance beyond their own inhabitants the North
Carolina commissioners refused to proceed further, and protested against
the Virginia commissioners proceeding further with it.(11) In this they
were joined by Fitzwilliam of Virginia. This protest was in writing and
was delivered October 6, when they had proceeded 170 miles to the southern
branch of the Roanoke river "and near 50 miles without inhabitants," which
they thought would be far enough for a long time. To this the two
remaining Virginia commissioners, Byrd and Dandridge, sent a written
answer, to the effect that their order was to run the line "as far towards
the mountains as they could;" they thought they should go as far as
possible so that "His Majesty's subjects may as soon as possible extend
themselves to that natural barrier, as they are certain to do in a few
years;" and thought it strange that the North Carolina commissioners
should stop "within two or three days after Mr. Mayo had entered with them
near 2,000 acres within five miles of the place where they left off."

BYRD AND DANDRIDGE CONTINUE ALONE. The North Carolina commissioners,
accompanied by Fitzwilliam of Virginia, left on October 8th; but Byrd and
Dandridge continued alone, crossing Matrimony creek, "so called from being
a little noisy," and saw a little mountain five miles to the northwest
"which we named the Wart."(12)

On the 25th of October they came in plain sight of the mountains, and on
the 26th, they reached a rivulet which "the traders say is a branch of the
Cape Fear." Here they stopped. This was Peters creek in what is now Stokes
County.(13) It was on this trip that Mr. Byrd discovered extraordinary
virtues in bear meat. This point was(14) on the northern boundary of that
part of old Surry which is now Stokes county.

THE "BREAK" IN THE LINE ACCOUNTED FOR. A glance at the map will show a
break in the line between Virginia and North Carolina where it crosses the
Chowan river. This is thus accounted for:(15) Governors Eden of North
Carolina and Spottswood of Virginia met at Nansemond and agreed to set the
compass on the north shore of Currituck river or inlet and run due west;
and if it "cutt [sic] Chowan river between the mouths of Nottoway and
Wiccons creeks, it shall Continue on the same course towards the
mountains;" but it "cutts Chowan river to the southward of Wiccons creek,
it shall continue up the middle of Chowan river to the mouth of Wiccons
creek, and from thence run due west." It did this; and the survey of 1728
was not an attempt to ascertain and mark the parallel of 36 degrees 30',
but "an attempt to run a line between certain natural objects . . .
regardless of that line and agreed upon as a compromise by the governors
of the two States."(16)

THE REAL MILK IN THE COCOANUT. Thus, so far as the Colonial Records show,
ended the first survey of the dividing line between this State and
Virginia, which one of the Virginia commissioners has immortalized by his
matchless account, which, however, was not given to the world until 1901,
when it was most attractively published by Doubleday, Page & Co., after
careful editing by John Spencer Bassett. But Col. Byrd does not content
himself in his "Writings" with the insinuation that the North Carolina
commissioners and Mr. Mayo had lost interest immediately after having
entered 2,000 acres of land within five miles of the end of their survey.
He goes further and charges (p. 126) that, including Mr. Fitzwilliam, one
of the Virginia commissioners, "they had stuck by us as long as our good
liquor lasted, and were so kind to us as to drink our good Journey to the
Mountains in the last Bottle we had left!" He also insinuates that
Fitzwilliam left because he was also a judge of the Williamsburg,
Virginia, court, and hoped to draw double pay while Byrd and Dandridge
continued to run the line after his return. But in this he exultantly
records the fact that Fitzwilliam utterly failed.

THE NINETY-MILE EXTENSION IN 1749. In October, 1749, the line between
North Carolina and Virginia was extended from Peters creek, where it had
ended in 1728-which point is now in Stokes county-ninety miles to the
westward to Steep Rock creek, crossing "a large branch of the Mississippi
[New River], which runs between the ledges of the mountains" as Governor
Johnston remarked-"and nobody ever drempt of before." William Churton and
Daniel Weldon were the commissioners on the part of North Carolina, and
Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson on the part of Virginia. "It so happens,
however, that no record of this survey has been preserved, and we are
today without evidence, save from tradition, to ascertain the location of
our boundary for ninety miles."(17)

This extension carried the line to within about two miles east of the
Holston river; and we know from the statute of 1779 providing for its
further extension from that point upon the latitude of 36 degrees 30' that
it had been run considerably south of that latitude from Peters creek to
Pond mountain, from which point it had, apparently without rhyme or
reason, been run in a northeastwardly direction to the top of White Top
mountain,' about three miles north of its former course, and from there
carried to Steep Rock creek, near the Holston river, in a due west course.
The proverbial still-house, said to have been on White Top, is also said
to have caused this aberration; but the probability is that the
commissioners had a more substantial reason than that.

THE LAST EXTENSION OF THIS LINE. In 1779 North Carolina passed an act(19)
reciting that as "the inhabitants of this State and of the Commonwealth of
Virginia have settled themselves further westwardly than the boundary
between the two States hath hitherto been extended, it becomes expedient
in order to prevent disputes among such settlers that the same should be
now further extended and marked." To that end Orandates-improperly spelled
in the Revised Statutes of 1837, Vol. ii, p. 82, "Oroondates"-Davie, John
Williams Caswell, James Kerr, William Bailey Smith and Richard Henderson
should be the commissioners on the part of North Carolina to meet similar
commissioners from Virginia to still further extend it. But it was
expressly provided that they should begin where the commissioners of 1749
had left off, and first ascertain if it be in latitude 36 degrees 30',
"and if it be found to be truly in" that latitude, then they were "to run
from thence due west to the Tennessee or the Ohio river; or if it be found
not truly in that latitude, then to run from said place, due north or due
south, into the said latitude, and thence due west to the said Tennessee
or Ohio river, correcting the said course at due intervals by astronomical
observations." (Colonial Records. Vol. iv, p. 13)

THE LINE RUN IN 1780. Richard Henderson was appointed on the part of North
Carolina, and Dr. Thomas Walker on that of Virginia, to run this line, and
they began their task in the spring of 1780; and on the last day of March
of that year Col. Richard Henderson met the Donelson party on its way from
the Watauga settlements to settle at the French Lick, in the bend of the
Cumberland. (Roosevelt, Vol. III, p. 242) But nine years before, in 1771,
Anthony Bledsoe, one of the new-comers to the Watauga settlement, being a
practical surveyor, and not being certain that that settlement was wholly
within the borders of Virginia, extended the line of 1749 from its end
near the Holston river far enough to the west to satisfy himself that the
new settlement on the Watauga was in North Carolina.(21)

DISPUTED CAROLINA BOUNDARY LINES. From the Prefatory Notes to Volume V,
Colonial Records, p. 35, etc., it appears that the dispute between the two
Carolinas as to boundary lines began in 1720 "when the purpose to erect a
third Province in Carolina,(22) with Savannah for its northern boundary,"
began to assume definite shape, but nothing was done till January 8, 1829-
30, when a line was agreed on "to begin 30 miles southwest of the Cape
Fear river, and to be run at that parallel distance the whole course of
said river;" and in the following June Governor Johnson of South Carolina
recommended that it run from a point 30 miles southwest of the source of
the Cape Fear, shall be continued "due west as far as the South Sea,"
unless the "Waccamaw river lyes [sic] within 30 miles of the Cape Fear
river," in which case that river should be the boundary. This was accepted
by North Carolina until it was discovered that the "Cape Fear rose very
close to the Virginia border,"(23) and would not have "permitted any
extension on the part of North Carolina to the westward." Meanwhile, both
provinces claimed land on the north side of the Waccamaw river." In 1732
Gov. Burrington [of North Carolina] published a proclamation in Timothy's
Southern Gazette, declaring the lands lying on the north side of the
Waccamaw river to be within the Province of North Carolina, to which Gov.
Johnson [of South Carolina] replied by a similar proclamation claiming the
same land to belong to South Carolina; and also claiming that when they
[the two governors] had met before the Board of Trade in London to settle
this matter in 1829-30, Barrington had "insisted that the Waccamaw should
be the boundary from its mouth to its head," while South Carolina had
contended that "the line should run 30 miles distant from the mouth of the
Cape Fear river on the southwest side thereof, as set forth in the
instructions, and that the Board had agreed thereto, unless the mouth of
the Waccamaw river was within 30 miles of the Cape Fear river; in which
case both Governor Barrington and himself had agreed that the Waccamaw
river should be the boundary." The omission of the word "mouth" in the
last part of the instructions Governor Johnson thought "only a mistake in
wording it."(25)

THE LINE PARTIALLY RUN IN 1735. In consequence of this dispute
commissioners were appointed by both colonies, who were to meet on the 23d
of April, 1735, and run a due west line from the Cape Fear along the sea
coast for thirty miles, and from thence proceed northwest to the 35th
degree north latitude, and if the line touched the Pee Dee river before
reaching the 35th degree, then they were to make an offset at five miles
distant from the Pee Dee and proceed up that river till they reached that
latitude; and from thence they were to proceed due west until they came to
Catawba town; but if the town should be to the northward of the line,
"they were to make an offset around the town so as to leave it in the
South government." They began to run the line in "May, 1735, and proceeded
thirty miles west from Cape Fear . . . and then went northwest to the
country road and set up stakes there for the mearing(26) or boundary of
the two provinces, when they separated, agreeing to return on the 18th of
the following September." In September the line was run northwest about 70
miles, the South Carolina commissioners not arriving till October. These
followed the line run by the North Carolina commissioners about 40 miles,
and finding it correct, refused to run it further because they had not
been paid for their services. A deputy surveyor, however, took the
latitude of the Pee Dee at the 35th parallel and set up a mark, which was
from that date deemed to be the mearing or boundary at that place.

LINE EXTENDED IN 1737 AND IN 1764. In 1737 the line was extended in the
same direction 22 miles to a stake in a meadow supposed to be at the point
of intersection with the 35th parallel of north latitude.(27) In 1764 the
line was extended from the stake due west 62 miles, intersecting the
Charleston road from distance of 61 miles.

THE "LINE of 1772." In 1772, after making the required offsets so as to
leave the Catawba Indians in South Carolina in pursuance of the agreement
of 1735, the line was "extended in a due west course from the confluence
of the north and south forks of the Catawba river to Tryon mountain." But
North Carolina refused to agree to this line, insisting that "the parallel
of 35 of north latitude having been made the boundary by the agreement of
1735, it could not be changed without their consent . . . . The reasons
that controlled the commissioners in recommending this course . . . were
that the observations of their own astronomer, President Caldwell of the
University, showed there was a palpable error in running the line from the
Pee Dee to the Salisbury road, that line not being upon the 35th parallel,
but some 12 miles to the South of it, and that "the line of 1772" was just
about far enough north of the 35th parallel to rectify the error, by
allowing South Carolina to gain on the west of the Catawba river
substantially what she had lost through misapprehension on the east of
it." North Carolina in 1813 "agreed that the line of 1772" should be
recognized as a part of the boundary.(29) "The zigzag shape of the line as
it runs from the southwest corner of Union county to the Catawba river is
due to the offsets already referred to, and which were necessary to throw
the reservation of Catawba Indians into the Province of South Carolina."

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN BOUNDARIES. The peace of 1783 with Great Britain did
nothing more to secure our western limits than to confirm us in the
control of the territory already in our possession; for while the Great
Lakes were recognized as our northern boundary, Great Britain failed to
formally admit that boundary till the ratification of the Jay treaty, on
the ground that we had failed to fulfill certain promises; and while she
had likewise consented to recognize the 31st parallel as our southern
boundary, it had been secretly agreed between America and Great Britain
that, if she recovered West Florida from Spain, the boundary should run a
hundred miles further north than the 31st parallel. For this land, drained
by the Gulf rivers, had not been England's to grant, as it had been
conquered and was then held by Spain. Nor was it actually given up to us
until it was acquired by Pinckney's masterly diplomacy. (Roosevelt, Vol.
III, p. 283 et seq)

FRANCE'S DUPLICITY. The reasons for these reservations were that while
France had been our ally in the Revolutionary war, Spain was also the ally
of France both before and after the close of that conflict; and our
commissioners had been instructed by Congress to "take no steps without
the knowledge and advice of France." It was now the interest of France to
act in the interest of Spain more than in that of America for two reasons,
the first of which was that she wished to keep Gibralter, and the second,
that she wished to keep us dependent on her as long as she could. Spain,
however, was quite as hostile to us as England had been, and predicted the
future expansion of the United States at the expense of Florida, Louisiana
and Mexico. Therefore, she tried to hem in our growth by giving us the
Alleghanies as our western boundary. The French court, therefore, proposed
that we should content ourselves with so much of the transAlleghany
territory as lay around the head waters of the Tennessee and between the
Cumberland and Ohio, all of which was already settled; "and the proposal
showed how important the French court deemed the fact of actual
settlement." But John Jay, supported by Adams, disregarded the
instructions of Congress and negotiated a separate treaty as to
boundaries, and gave us the Mississippi as our western boundary, but
leaving to England the free navigation of the Mississippi. (Roosevelt,
Vol. III, p. 284)

INCHOATE RIGHTS ONLY UNDER COLONIAL CHARTERS. "In settling the claims to
the western territory, much stress was laid on the old colonial charters;
but underneath all the verbiage it was practically admitted that these
charters conferred merely inchoate rights, which became complete only
after conquest and settlement. The States themselves had already by their
actions shown that they admitted this to be the case. Thus, North
Carolina, when by the creation of Washington county-now the State of
Tennessee,-she rounded out her boundaries, specified them as running to
the Mississippi. As a matter of fact the royal grant, under which alone
she could claim the land in question, extended to the Pacific; and the
only difference between her rights to the regions east and west of the
river was that her people were settling in one, and could not settle in
the other." (Roosevelt, Vol. iii, p. 285)

WESTERN LANDS AN OBSTACLE. One of the chief objections to the adoption of
the Articles of Confederation, which Congress formulated and submitted to
the States November 15, 1777, by some of the States was that each State
had considered that upon the Declaration of Independence it was possessed
of all the British lands which at any time had been included within its
boundary; and Virginia, having in 1778, captured a few British forts
northwest of the Ohio, created out of that territory the "County of
Illinois," and treated it as her property. Other States, having small
claims to western territory, insisted that, as the western territory had
been secured by a war in which all the States had joined, all those lands
should be reserved to reward the soldiers of the Continental army and to
secure the debt of the United States. Maryland, whose boundaries could not
be construed to include much of the western land, refused to ratify the
articles unless the claim of Virginia should be disallowed. It was
proposed by Virginia and Connecticut to close the union or confederacy
without Maryland, and Virginia even opened a land office for the sale of
her western lands; but without effect on Maryland. At this juncture, New
York, which had less to gain from western territory than the other
claimants, ceded her claims to the United States; and Virginia on January
2, 1781, agreed to do likewise. Thereupon Maryland ratified the articles,
and on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation were duly put into
force. From that date Congress was acting under a written charter or
constitution. (Hart, Sec. 45)

CESSION OF WESTERN TERRITORY. When, at the close of the Revolution, it
became necessary that Congress take steps to carry out the pledge it had
given (October 10, 1780) to see that such western lands should be disposed
of for the common benefit, and formed into distinct republican States
under the Union, it urged the States to cede their western territory to it
to be devoted to the payment of the soldiers and the payment of the
national debt. The northern tier of States soon afterwards ceded their
territory, with certain reservations; but the process of cession went on
more slowly and less satisfactorily in the southern States. Virginia
retained both jurisdiction and land in Kentucky, while North Carolina, in
1790, granted "jurisdiction over what is now Tennessee," but every acre of
land had already been granted by the State. (Hart, Sec. 52). This,
however, is not strictly true, much Tennessee land not having been granted
then.

THE CAROLINAS AGREE TO EXTEND "THE LINE OF 1772." In 1803 the Legislature
of North Carolina passed an act (Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol. II, p. 82) for the
appointment of three commissioners to meet other commissioners from South
Carolina, to fix and establish permanently the boundary line between these
two States "as far as the eastern boundary of the territory ceded by the
State of North Carolina to the United States. This act was amended in
1804, giving "the governor for the time being and his successor full power
and authoriy to enter into any compact or agreement that he may deem most
advisable" with the South Carolina and Georgia authorities for the
settlement of the "boundary lines between these States and North
Carolina." But this act seems only to have caused confusion and
necessitated the passage of another act in 1806 declaring that the act of
1804 should "not be construed to extend or have any relation to the State
of Georgia." (Rev. Stat. 1837, p. 84)

COMMISSIONERS MEET IN COLUMBIA IN 1808. Commissioners of the States of
North and South Carolina, however, met in Columbia, S. C., on the 11th of
July, 1808, and among other things agreed to extend the line between the
two States from the end of the line which had been run in 1772 "a direct
course to that point in the ridge of mountains which divides the eastern
from the western waters where the 35 degrees of North latitude shall be
found to strike it nearest the termination of said line of 1772, thence
along the top of said ridge to the western extremity of the State of South
Carolina. It being understood that the said State of South Carolina does
not mean by this arrangement to interfere with claims which the United
States, or those holding under the act of cession to the United States,
may have to lands which may lie, if any there be, between the top of the
said ridge and the said 35 degrees of north latitude."

AGREEMENT OF SEPTEMBER, 1813.(31) But, although the commissioners from the
two States met at the designated point on the 20th of July, 1813, they
found that they could not agree as to the "practicability of fixing a
boundary line according to the agreement of 1808," and entered into
another agreement "at McKinney's, on Toxaway river, on the fourth day of
September, 1813," by which they recommended that their respective States
agree that the commissioners should start at the termination of the line
of 1772 "and rim a line due west to the ridge dividing the waters of the
north fork of the Pacolet river from the waters of the north fork of
Saluda river; thence along the said ridge to the ridge that divides the
Saluda waters from those of Green river; thence along the said ridge to
where the same joins the main ridge which divides the eastern from the
western waters, and thence along the said ridge to that part of it which
is intersected by the Cherokee boundary line run in the year 1797; from
the center of the said ridge at the point of intersection the line shall
extend in a direct course to the eastern bank of Chatooga river, where the
35 degrees of north latitude has been found to strike it, and where a rock
has been marked by the aforesaid commissioners with the following
inscription, viz.: lat. 35 degrees, 1813. It being understood and agreed
that the said lines shall be so run as to leave all the waters of Saluda
river within the State of South Carolina; but shall in no part run north
of a course due west from the termination of the line of 1772." The
commissioners who made the foregoing agreement were, on the part of North
Carolina, John Steele, Montfort Stokes, and Robert Burton, and on the part
of South Carolina Joseph Blythe, Henry Middleton, and John Blasingame.
(Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol. ii, p. 86).

COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED IN 1814. Pursuant to the above provisional
articles of agreement North Carolina in 1814 appointed General Thomas
Love, General Montfort Stokes and Col. John Patton commissioners to meet
other commissioners from South Carolina to run and mark the boundary line
between the two States in accordance with the recommendation of the
commissioners who had met and agreed, "at McKinney's, on Toxaway river, on
the 4th of September, 1813." (Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol. ii, p. 87).

AROUND HEAD SPRINGS OF SALUDA RIVER.(32) But these commissioners met and
found, "by observations and actual experiments that a course due west from
the termination of the line of 1772 would not strike the point of the
ridge dividing the waters of the north fork of Pacolet river from the
waters of the north fork of Saluda river in the manner contemplated, . . .
and finding also that running a line on top of the said ridge so as to
leave all the waters of Saluda river within the State of South Carolina
would (in one place) run a little north of a course due west from the
termination of the said line of 1772," agreed to run and mark a line "on
the ridge around the head springs of the north fork of Saluda river," and
recommended that such line be accepted by the two States.

TERMINATION OF 1772 LINE STARTING POINT OF 1815 LINE. Therefore the
Legislature of North Carolina passed an act (Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol. ii, p.
89) fixing this line as "beginning on a stone set up at the termination of
the line of 1772" and marked "N. C. and S. C. September fifteenth,
eighteen hundred and fifteen," running thence west four miles and ninety
poles to a stone marked N. C. and S. C., thence south 25 degrees west 118
poles to the top of the ridge dividing the waters 6f the north fork of the
Pacolet river from the north fork of the Saluda river . . . thence to the
ridge that divides the Saluda waters from those of Green river and thence
along that ridge to its junction with the Blue Ridge, and thence along the
Blue Ridge to the line surveyed in 1797, where a stone is set up marked N.
C. and S. C. 1813; and from this stone "a direct line south 68y4 degrees
west 20 miles and 11 poles to the 35 degrees of north latitude at the rock
in the east bank of the Chatooga river, marked latitude 35 AD: 1813, in
all a distance of 74 miles and 189 poles."

CONFIRMATION OF BOUNDARY LINES. In 1807 the North Carolina Legislature
passed an act (Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol. ii, p. 90) which "fully ratified and
confirmed" these two agreements, and another act (Rev. Stat. Vol. ii, p.
92) reciting that these two sets of commissioners "in conformity with
these articles of agreement" had "run and marked in part the boundary line
between the said States." This act further recites that the North Carolina
commissioners "have reported the running and marking of said boundary line
as follows:

"To commence at Ellicott's rock, and run due west on the 35 degrees of
north latitude, and marked as follows: The trees on each side of the line
with three chops, the fore and aft trees with a blaze on the east and west
side, the mile trees with the number of miles from Ellicott's rock, on the
east side of the tree, and a cross on the east and west side; whereupon
the line was commenced under the superintendance of the undersigned
commissioners jointly: Timothy Tyrrell, Esquire, surveyor on the part of
the commissioners of the State of Georgia, and Robert Love, surveyor on
the part of the commissioners of the State of North Carolina-upon which
latitude the undersigned caused the line to be extended just thirty miles
due west, marking and measuring as above described, in a conspicuous
manner throughout; in addition thereto they caused at the end of the first
eleven miles after first crossing the Blue Ridge, a rock to be set up,
descriptive of the line, engraved thereon upon the north side, September
25, 1819, N. C., and upon the south side 35 degree N. L. G.; then after
crossing the river Cowee or Tennessee, at the end of sixteen miles, near
the road running up and down the said river, a locust post marked thus, on
the South side Ca. October 14, 1819; and on the north side, 35 degree N.
L. N. C., and then at the end of twenty-one miles and three quarters, the
second crossing of the Blue Ridge, a rock engraved on the North side 35
degree N. L. N. C., and on the south side Ga. 12th Oct., 1819; then on the
rock at the end of the thirty miles, engraved thereon, upon the north side
N. C. N. L. 35 degrees, which stands on the north side of a mountain, the
waters of which fall into Shooting Creek, a branch of the Hiwassee, due
north of the eastern point of the boundary line, between the States of
Georgia and Tennessee, commonly called Montgomery's line, just six hundred
and sixty-one yards."

The Legislature then enacted "That the said boundary line, as described in
the said report, be, and the same is hereby fully established, ratified
and confirmed forever, as the boundary line between the States of North
Carolina and Georgia."

The last section of the act confirming the survey of the line from the Big
Pigeon to the Georgia line, as run and marked by the commissioners of
North Carolina and Tennessee in 1821, (Rev. Stat. 1837, Vol ii, p. 97)
provides "that a line run and known by the name of Montgomery's line,
beginning six hundred and sixty-one yards due south of the termination of
the line run by the commissioners on the hart of this State and the State
of Georgia, in the year one thousand eight hundred and nineteen ending on
a creek near the waters of Shooting Creek, waters of Hiwassee, then along
Montgomery's line till it strikes the line run by commissioners on the
part of North Carolina and Tennessee in 1821, to a square post marked on
the east side N. C. 1821, and on the west side Tenn. 1821, and on the
south side should to be the dividing line between North Carolina and
Georgia, so soon as the above line shall be ratified on the part of the
State of Georgia."


ORIGIN OF THE WALTON WAR. "North Carolina claimed for her southern
boundary the 35th degree of north latitude. The line of this parallel,
however, was at that time supposed to run about twelve miles north of what
was subsequently ascertained to be its true location. Between this
supposed line of 35 degrees north latitude and the northernmost boundary
of Georgia, as settled upon by a convention between that State and South
Carolina in 1787, there intervened a tract of country of about twelve
miles in width, from north to south, and extending from east to west, from
the top of the main ridge of mountains which divides the eastern from the
western waters to the Mississippi river. This tract remained, as was
supposed, within the chartered limits of South Carolina, and in the year
1787 was ceded by that State to the United States, subject to the Indian
right of occupancy. When the Indian title to the country therein described
was ceded to the United States by the treaty of 1798 with the Cherokees,
the eastern portion of this 12-mile tract fell within the limits of such
cession. On its eastern extremity near the head-waters of the French Broad
river, immediately at the foot of the main Blue Ridge Mountains, had been
located, for a number of years prior to the treaty, a settlement of about
fifty families of whites, who, by its ratification became occupants of the
public domain of the United States, but who were outside of the
territorial jurisdiction of any State. These settlers petitioned Congress
to retrocede the tract of country upon which they resided to South
Carolina, in order that they might be brought within the protection of the
laws of that State. A resolution was reported in the House of
Representatives from the committee to whom the subject had been referred,
favoring such a course, but Congress took no effective action on the
subject, and when the State boundaries came finally to be adjusted in that
region the tract in question was found to be within the limits of North
Carolina."(34)

THE WALTON WAR. That there should have been great confusion and
uncertainty as to the exact boundary- lines between the States in their
earlier history is but natural, especially in the case where the corners
of three States come together, and still more especially when they come
together in an inaccessible mountainous region, such as characterized the
cornerstone between Georgia, South and North Carolina. And that renegades
and other lawless adventurers should take advantage of such a condition is
still more natural. It is, therefore, not surprising to read in "The Heart
of the Alleghanies," (p. 224-5) that: "In early times, criminals and
refugees from justice made the fastnesses of the wilderness hiding places.
Their stay, in most cases, was short, seclusion furnishing their
profession a barren field for operation. A few, however, remained, either
adopting the wild, free life of the chase, or preying upon the property of
the community."

WALTON COUNTY. Such a community existed at the commencement of the last
century on the head waters of the French Broad river in what are now
Jackson and Transylvania counties. Some even claimed that this territory
belonged to South Carolina. But Georgia, about December, 1803, created a
county within this territory and called it Walton county. Georgia
naturally attempted to exercise jurisdiction over what it really believed
was its own territory, and North Carolina as naturally resisted such
attempts. Consequently, there were "great dissentions, . . . the said
dissentions having produced many riots, affrays, assaults, batteries,
woundings and imprisonments."

THE NORTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA LINE. On January 13, 1806, Georgia
presented a memorial to the House of Representatives of Congress,
complaining that North Carolina was claiming lands lying within the State
of Georgia, and asking that Congress interpose and cause the 35th degree
of north latitude to be ascertained and the line between the two States
plainly marked.

THE TWELVE MILES "ORPHAN" STRIP. This was referred to a committee which,
on February 12th, reported that "between the latitude of 35 degrees north,
which is the southern boundary claimed by North Carolina, and the northern
boundary of Georgia, as settled by a convention between that State and
South Carolina, intervenes a tract of country supposed to be about twelve
miles wide, from north to south, and extending in length from the western
boundary of Georgia, at Nicajack, on the Tennessee, to his northeastern
limits at Tugalo, and was consequently within the limits of South
Carolina, and in the year 1887 it was ceded to the United States, who
[sic] accepted the cession." This territory remained in the possession of
the United States until 1802 when it was ceded to the State of Georgia,
when the estimated number of settlers on it was 800. It was not known
where these settlers came from; but the land had belonged to the Cherokees
until 1798 when a part of it was purchased by the whites by treaty held at
Tellico.(35)

WALTON COUNTY, GEORGIA. At the earnest entreaty of these inhabitants
Georgia in 1803 formed the inhabited part of this territory into Walton
county and appointed commissioners to meet corresponding commissioners to
be appointed by North Carolina to ascertain and mark the line. But
Congress took no definite action on this report.

A SURVEY AGREED UPON. The two States, in 1807, came to an agreement as to
the basis of a survey. In a letter dated at Louisville, Ga., December 10,
1806, Gov. Jared Irwin to Gov. Nathaniel Alexander of North Carolina,
enclosed sundry resolutions adopted by the legislature of Georgia, and
announced that that body had appointed Thomas P. Carnes, Thomas Flournoy
and William Barnett as commissioners to ascertain the 35th' of north
latitude "and plainly mark the dividing line between the States of North
Carolina and Georgia." On January 1, 1807, Gov. Alexander enclosed to Gov.
Irwin a copy of an act of the legislature passed at the preceding session
assenting to the proposition of Georgia and appointing John Steele, John
Moore and James Welbourne commissioners on the part of North Carolina. It
was subsequently agreed that the commissioners from both States should
meet at Asheville June 15, 1807; Rev. Joseph Caldwell, president of the
North Carolina University, was the scientist for North Carolina, while Mr.
J. Meigs represented Georgia in that capacity.

THE RECORD. In the minute docket of the county court of Buncombe, pp. 104
and 363, the proceedings of these commissioners are set forth in full,
showing that Thomas Flournoy, one of the Georgia commissioners, did not
attend but that on the 18th of June, 1807, the others met at Buncombe
court house and agreed on a basis of procedure, the most important point
being that the 35th parallel was to be first ascertained; after which it
was to be marked and agreed on as the line. This they proceeded to do,
with the result that on the 27th of June, at Douthard's gap on the summit
of the Blue Ridge, they signed a supplemental agreement to the effect that
they had discovered by repeated astronomical observations that the 35th
degree of north latitude is not to be found on any part of said ridge east
of the line established by the general government as the temporary
boundary between the white people and the Indians, and having no authority
to proceed over that boundary "in order to ascertain and mark that
degree," they agreed that Georgia had no right to claim any part of the
territory north or west of the Blue Ridge and east or south of the present
temporary line between the whites and Indians; and would recommend to the
Georgia Legislature that it repeal the act which had established the
county of Walton on North Carolina soil. Both sets of commissioners then
agreed to recommend amnesty for all who had been guilty of violating the
laws of either State under the assumption that it had no jurisdiction over
that territory.

Following is the story as to how they had reached this agreement

THE "ASTONISHMENT" OF THE GEORGIANS.(36) These scientists made their first
observations at the house of Mr. Amos Justice, which they supposed to be
on or near the dividing line of 35 degrees north latitude, but discovered
that it was "22 miles within old Buncombe," which astonished them; for Mr.
Sturges, the Surveyor General of Georgia, had previously ascertained this
meridian to be at the junction of Davidson's and Little rivers. But, said
the Georgia commissioners in their report to their governor, they were
"accompanied by an artist [sic] appointed by the government [of the United
States] whose talents and integrity we have no reason to doubt," whose
observations accorded very nearly with their own; they "were under the
necessity of suspending our astonishment and proceeding on the duty
assigned us."

SUPPLEMENTARY AGREEMENT AT CAESAR'S HEAD. When they got to the junction of
Davidson and Little rivers and found that they were still 17 minutes north
of the 35th meridian, they "proceeded to Caesar's Head, a place on the
Blue Ridge about 12 horizontal miles directly south and in the vicinity of
Douthet's Gap, which was from 2' 57" to 4' 54" north of the 35th parallel.
They then signed the supplementary agreement of June 27.

GEORGIA'S SPORTING BLOOD. On December 28, 1808, Gov. Irwin of Georgia
wrote to Governor Stone of North Carolina, asking for the appointment of a
new commission on the part of North Carolina to meet one already appointed
by the legislature of Georgia; but Gov. Stone declined in a communication
of March 21, 1809, in which he states that it "does not readily occur to
us on what basis the adjustment is to rest, if not upon that where it now
stands-the plighted faith of two States to abide by the determination of
commissioners mutually chosen for the purpose of making the adjustment
those commissioners actually made". On December 7, 1807, North Carolina
had adopted and ratified the joint report of the commissioners of the two
States and on December 18 "passed an act of amnesty for offenders within
the disputed territory."(37)

GEORGIA IS SNUBBED.(37) But Georgia sent still another petition to
Congress by way of appeal, and its legislature on December 5, 1807, "put
forth an earnest protest against the decision arrived at by their own
commissioners." But although on April 26, 1810, Mr. Bibb of Georgia, asked
the United States to appoint some person to run the dividing line, and it
was referred to a select committee on the 27th of the following December,
that committee never reported. Georgia must have become reconciled,
however, for in 1819 its legislature refused relief to certain citizens
who had claimed land in this disputed territory.

CONTOUR MAP AND 35TH PARALLEL. The late Captain W. A. Curtis, for a long
time editor of the Franklin Press, said, in "A Brief History of Macon
County," (1905) p. 23, 11 that "it has long been accepted as a fact that
the southern boundary of Macon and Clay counties, constituting the State
line between North Carolina and Georgia, is located on the 35th parallel
of north latitude. This is either a mistake or else the latest
topographical charts are incorrect. According to the charts a straight
line starts from the top of Indian Camp mountain on the southern boundary
of Translyvania county, 6 3/4 miles north of the 35th parallel, and dips
somewhat south of west until it reaches the Endicott (Ellicut) Rock at the
corner of South Carolina exactly on the 35th parallel, and, instead of
turning due west at this place, it continues on a straight line for about
twenty miles, or to 83 1/2 degrees west longitude, which is near the top
of the Ridge Pole, close by the southwest corner of Macon county; then it
turns due west, running parallel with the 35th, and about one mile south
of it, on towards Alabama. One peculiarity of this survey is that Estatoa,
or Mud Creek Falls, which has long been considered as being in Georgia,
are, according to the map, in North Carolina. Mud creek crosses the State
line a few yards above the falls into North Carolina, and at about half
way between the falls and the Tennessee river passes back into Georgia.
But, by examining some old records belonging to the State Library at
Raleigh in 1881, I am convinced that the line between the States of
Georgia and North Carolina has never been correctly surveyed."

THE NORTH CAROLINA AND TENNESSEE BOUNDARY. By the Cessions Act, Revised
Statutes, 1837, Vol. ii, p. 171, North Carolina authorized one or both
United States Senators or any two members of Congress to execute a deed or
deeds to the United States of America of the lands west of a line
beginning on the extreme height of the Stone mountain, at the place where
the Virginia line intersects it, running thence along the extreme height
of the said mountain to the place where Watauga river breaks through it,
thence a direct course to the top of the Yellow Mountain, where Bright's
road crosses the same, thence along the ridge of said mountains between
the waters of Doe river and the waters of Rock creek to the place where
the road crosses the Iron mountain, from thence along the extreme height
of said mountain, to where Nolechucky river runs through the same, thence
to the top of the Bald mountain, thence along the extreme height of the
said mountain to the Painted Rock, on French Broad river, thence along the
highest ridge of the said mountain to the place where it is called the
Great Iron or Smoky mountain, thence along the extreme height of said
mountain to the place where it is called Unicoy or Unaka mountain, between
the Indian towns of Cowee and Old Chota, thence along the main ridge of
the said mountain to the southern boundary of this State."

The 10th section provided that, "this act shall not prevent the people now
residing south of French Broad, between the rivers Tennessee and Pigeon,
from entering their pre-emptions on that tract should an office be opened
for that purpose under an act of the present general assembly."

TO PAY DEBTS AND ESTABLISH HARMONY. The reasons for making this cession
are set out in the act itself and are to the effect that Congress has
"repeatedly and earnestly recommended to the respective States . . .
claiming or owning vacant western territory," to make cession to part of
the same, as a further means "of paying the debts and establishing the
harmony of the United States;" "and the inhabitants of the said western
territory being also desirious that such cession should be made, in order
to obtain a more ample protection than they have heretofore received." The
act also provides that neither the land nor the inhabitants of the ceded
territory shall be estimated in ascertaining North Carolina's proportion
of the common expense occasioned by the war for independence. Also that in
case the lands laid off by North Carolina for the "officers and soldiers
of the Continental line" shall not "contain a sufficient quantity of lands
fit for cultivation to make good the quota intended by law for each such
make up the deficiency out of lands of the ceded territory." Having been
admonished by the claim of the citizens of Watauga that until Congress
should accept the ceded territory they would be in a state "of political
orphanage," the legislature, later in the session of 1784, had been
careful to pass another act. by which North Carolina retained jurisdiction
and sovereignty over the land west of the mountains, and continued in
force all existing North Carolina laws, "until the same shall be repealed
or otherwise altered by the legislative authority of said territory." The
act ordering the survey is ch. 461, Potter's Revisal, p. 816, Laws 1796.

THE FIRST TENNESSEE BOUNDARY SURVEY. From the narratives of David Vance
and Robert Henry of the battles of Kings Mountain(39) and Cowan's Ford, as
well as from the dairy of John Strother, can be gathered a fine account of
the survey from Virginia to the Painted Rock on the French Broad and the
Stone on the Cataloochee Turnpike. The survey began on the 20th of May and
ended Friday the 28th of June, 1799. The original of Strother's diary is
filed in the suit of the Virginia, Tennessee & Carolina Steel and Iron
Company vs. Newman, in the United States court at Asheville, N. C. The
actual survey began May 22d, "at a sugar-tree and beech on Pond mountain,
so called from two small ponds on it."

Both trees are now gone, and a stone four feet by two feet by sixteen
inches in thickness, is buried in the ground where they stood, with a
simple cross, east and west, chiseled upon it. Its upper surface is level
with the ground, and it was placed there in 1899 or 1900 by a Mr. Buchanan
of the United States coast survey. Marion Miller and John and Alfred
Bivins assisted him. Mr. Miller still lives within a mile and a half of
the corner rock. Strother's party set out from Asheville May 12, and
reached Capt. Robert Walls on New River, where Strother arrived on the
17th, and met with Major Mussendine Mathews, of whom Judge David Schenck
says'  degrees that he "represented Iredell county in the House of Commons
from 1789 to 1802 continuously. He was either a Tory or a Cynic, it
seems." They were awaiting the arrival of Col. David Vance and Gen. Joseph
McDowell, but as they did not come, Strother went to the house of a Mr.
Elsburg on the 18th.

THE PARTY GATHERS. Col. Vance and Major B. Collins arrived on the 19th,
and they all went to Captain Isaac Weaver's. They were General Joseph
McDowell, Col. David Vance, Major Mussendine Mathews commissioners; John
Strother and Robert Henry, surveyors; Messers. B. Collins, James Hawkins,
George Penland, Robert Logan, cc Davidson, and J. Matthews, chain-bearers
and markers; Major James Neely, commissary; two pack-horse men and a
pilot. They camped that night on Stag creek. On the night of the 23d of
May they camped "at a very bad place" in a low gap at the head of Laurel
Fork of New river and Laurel Fork of Holston at the head of a branch,
"after having passed through extreme rough ground and some bad laurel
thickets." Through that laurel thicket, built since the runs from Hemlock
postoffice, where there is now a narrow gauge lumber railroad and an
extract plant, to Laurel Bloornery, in Tennessee. A small hotel now stands
half on the North Carolina and half on the Tennessee side of the line
those men then ran, and the gap is called "Cut Laurel" gap because it is
literally cut through the laurel for a mile or more.(41) Thousands of
gallons of blockade whiskey used to be carried through that gap when there
was nothing but a trail there. It is called by Mr. Strother a low gap, but
it is one of the highest in the mountains. On the 28th they went to a Mr.
Miller's and got a young man to act as a pilot. Strother went from
Miller's A road now runs "to Cove creek, where I got a Mr. Curtis and met
the company in a low gap between the waters of Cove creek and Roan's creek
where the road crosses the same," on Wednesday night, the 29th.

CROSSED BOONE'S TRAIL. This, in all probability, is the gap through which
Daniel Boone and his party had passed in 1769 on their way to Kentucky. It
is between Zionville, N. C. and Trade, Tenn., and the gap is so low that
one is not conscious of passing over the top of a high mountain. Tradition
says that an Indian trail went through the same gap, and traces of it are
still visible to the north of the present turnpike. The young man who had
been employed as a pilot at Mr. Miller's house on the 28th was found on
the 29th not to be a "woodsman and of course he was discharged." On June
1st they came to the "Wattogo" river, where they killed a bear, "very
poor," upon which and "some bacon stewed together, with some good tea and
Johnny cake we made a Sabbath morning breakfast fit for a European Lord."
There is a tradition among the people living near the falls of the Watauga
at the State line, that the line between the peak to the north of the
falls and the Yellow mountain was not actually run and marked; but the
field notes of both Strother and Henry show that the line was both run and
marked all the way. The reason the line was run from the peak north of the
Watauga to the bald of the Yellow was because the act required it to be
run in precisely that way; the language being "to the place where Watauga
river breaks through it [the mountain], thence a direct course to the top
of the Yellow Mountain where Bright's road crosses the same." As it is
impossible to see the Yellow from the river at the falls where the river
breaks through, it was necessary to get the course from the top of the
peak north of the river.

RATTLEBUGS. On Saturday, June 1st, they came upon "a very large
rattlebug," which they "attempted to kill, but it was too souple in the
heels for us." On the night of May 31st they had had "severe lightning and
some hard slaps [sic] of thunder."

LAUREL AND IVY. There are some who, nowadays, contend that ivy and laurel
did not grow in these mountains while the Indians occupied them, and cite
as proof that it is almost impossible to find a laurel log with rings
indicating more than a hundred years of growth. But Bishop Spangenburg
mentions having encountered laurel on what is supposed to have been the
Grandfather mountain in 1752, and John Strother, in his diary of the
survey between Virginia and North Carolina in 1799, repeatedly mentions
it, both before and after crossing the ridge which divides the waters of
Nollechucky from those of the French Broad. What are now known as the
"ivory Slicks," is a tunnel cut through the otherwise impenetrable ivy on
the slope between the Hang Over and Dave Orr's cabins on Slick Rock, south
of the Little Tennessee.

TWO WAGON ROADS ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS. Even at that early date there seem
to have been two roads crossing the mountains into Tennessee, for the very
next call of the statute is "thence along the ridge of said mountain
between the waters of Doe river and the waters of Rock creek to the place
where the road crosses the Iron mountain." Bright used to live at the Crab
Orchard, long known as Avery's Quarters, about a mile above Plum Tree, and
where W. W. Avery now lives. On the 5th of June Major Neely "turned off
the line today and went to Doe river settlements for a fresh supply of
provisions," and was to meet them at the Yellow mountain, where on that
day the trees were "just creeping out of their winter garb," and where
"the lightning and thunder were so severe that they were truly alarming."
From "the yellow spot" on the Yellow, whither they had gone to take
observations, but were prevented by the storm, "we went back and continued
the line on to a low gap at the head of Roaring or Sugar creek of Towe
[sic] river and a creek of Doe river at the road leading from Morganton to
Jonesborough, where we encamped as wet as we could be." This fixes the
main road between North Carolina and the Watauga settlement, which had
been finished in 1772, and over which Andrew Jackson was to pass in the
spring of 1788.(43) Robert Henry mentions a Gideon Lewis as one of the
guides from White Top mountain, and it is remarkable that a direct
descendant of his and having his name is now living at Taylor's Valley,
near Konarok, Va., and that several others now live near Solitude or
Ashland, N. C.

WAS THIS EVER "No Man's LAND"? When the surveying party came to the Yellow
they found that the compass had been deflected when it had been sighted
from the peak just north of Watauga Falls, caused doubtless by the
proximity to the Cranberry Iron mountain, of whose existence apparently
they then had no knowledge. Of late years some have supposed that the
"territory between the Iron mountain and the Blue Ridge, after the act of
cession, was left out of any county from 1792 or 1793 till 1818 or 1822,
and was without any local government till it was annexed to Burke county."
L. D. Lowe, Esq., in the Watauga Democrat of July 3d, 1913, gave the
following explanation: "It is quite true that there was no local
government, but it was not for the reason that this part of the territory
was not claimed by Burke county; but it was because the lands had been
granted to a few, and there were only a limited number of people within
the territory to be governed, Hence there was very little attention paid
to it." In previous articles in the same paper he had shown that "the
reason this territory had not been settled at an earlier date" was because
"the State had been paid for more than three hundred thousand acres
embraced within the boundaries of six grants," but had failed to refer to
the fact that "these grants or some of them had especially excepted
certain other grants within their boundaries-for example, certain grants
to Waightstill Avery, Reuben White, John Dobson and others. Within the
past twenty-five years it has been clearly demonstrated that some of the
Cathcart grants run with the Tennessee line for 14 miles."

HOME COMFORTS. "Mr. Hawkins and myself went down to Sugar creek to a Mr.
Currey's, where we got a good supper and a bed to sleep in," continues the
diary. Evidently the food in the camp had about given out, for we hear
nothing more of meals "fit for a European Lord;" but, instead, of the
comforts of good Mr. Currey's bed and board. Here too they "took breakfast
with Mrs. Currey, got our clothes washed and went to camp, where Major
Neely met us with a fresh supply of provisions. It rained all day- [and]
of course we are still at our camp at the head of Sugar creek."

PLEASANT BEECH FLATS. The next day they crossed "high spur of the Roan
mountain to a low gap therein where we encamped at a pleasant Beech flat
and good spring."

Any one who has never seen one of these "pleasant beech flats" would
scarcely realize what they are like. As one ascends any of the higher
mountains of North Carolina, the size of all the trees perceptibly
diminish, especially near the six thousand feet line, to be succeeded,
generally, on the less precipitous slopes, by miniature beech trees,
perfect in shape, but resembling the so-called dwarftrees of the Japanese.
They really seem to be toy trees.

JOHN STROTHER's FLOWERS of RHETORIC. It was here that they "spent the
Sabbath day in taking observations from the high spur we crossed, in
gathering the fir oil of the Balsam of Pine which is found on the
mountain, in collecting a root said to be an excellent preventative
against the bite of a rattlesnake, and in visioning the wonderful scene
this conspicuous situation affords. There is no shrubbery grows on the
tops of this mountain for several miles, say, and the wind has such a
power on the top of this mountain that the ground is blowed in deep holes
all over the northwest sides. The prospect from the Roan mountain is more
conspicuous [extensive?] than from any other part of the Appelatchan
mountains."

CLOUDLAND. A modern prospectus of the large and comfortable hostelry,
called the Cloudland hotel, which has crowned this magnificent mountain
for more than thirty years, the result of the ardor and enterprise of Gen.
John H. Wilder of Chattanooga, Tenn., could not state the charms of this
most charming resort, now become the sure refuge of hundreds of sufferers
from that scourge of late summer and early autumn and known as hay fever,
more invitingly.

UNSURPASSED VIEW. Of the magnificence of this view a later chronicler has
this to say: "That view from the Roan eclipses everything I have ever seen
in the White, Green, Catskill and Virginia mountains." This is a statement
put into the mouth of a Philadelphia lawyer in 1882 by the authors of "The
Heart of the Alleghanies," p. 253.

MOUNTAIN MOONSHINE. On Monday they "proceeded on between the head of Rock
creek and Doe river, and encamped in a low gap between these two streams.
The next day they went five or six miles to the foot of the Iron mountain
to a place they called Strother's Camp, where they had some good songs,
"then raped [wrapped] ourselves up in our blankets and slep sound till
this morning." Here "Cols. Vance and Neely went to the Limestone
settlements for a pilot, returned to us on the line at two o'clock with a
Mr. Collier as pilot and two gallons whiskey, we stop, drank our own
health and proceeded on the line. Ascended a steep spur of the Unaker
mountain, got into a bad laurel thicket, cut our way some distance. Night
came on, we turned off and camped at a very bad place, it being a steep
laurelly hollow," but the whiskey had such miraculous powers that it made
the place "tolerably comfortable."

BAD LUCK ON THE THIRTEENTH. On Thursday the 13th, if they were
superstitious, the expected bad luck happened; for here they were informed
that for the next two or three days' march the pack-horses could not
proceed on the linethat is, could not follow the extreme height of the
mountain crest. This was a calamity indeed; but what was the result? How
did these men meet it? We read how:

BETWEEN HOLLOW POPLAR AND GREASY COVE. "Myself [John Strother] together
with the chain-bearers and markers packed our provisions on our backs and
proceeded on with the line, the horses and rest of the company was
conducted round by the pilot a different route. We continued the line
through a bad laurel thicket to the top of the Unaker mountain and along
the same about three miles and camped at a bad laurelly branch." On
Friday, however, they came "to the path crossing [the Unaker mountain]
from Hollow Poplar to the Greasy Cove and met our company. It rained hard.
We encamped on the top of the mountain half a mile from water and had an
uncomfortable evening."

DEVIL'S CREEK AND LOST COVE. It seems that the information Mr. Collier had
given "respecting the Unaker mountain was false," and Mr. Strother
prevailed upon the commissioners to discharge him on Saturday the 15th of
June. They then crossed the Nolechucky "where it breaks through the Unaker
or Iron mountain." Here it is that that matchless piece of modern railroad
engineering, the C. C. &. O. R. R., disputes with the "Chucky" its
dominion of the canon and transports from its exhaustless coal mines in
Virginia hundreds of tons of the finest coal to its terminus on the
Atlantic coast.

ROBERT HENRY MEETS HIS FATE. Here, too, it being again found
"impracticable to take horses from this place on the line to the Bald
mountain, Mr. Henry, the chain-bearers and markers, took provisions on
their backs [and] proceeded on the line and the horses went round by the
Greasy Cove and met the rest of the company on Sunday on the top of the
Bald mountain, where we tarried till Tuesday morning."

"TARRYING" IN THE GREASY COVE. One cannot help wondering why they
"tarried" here so long; but no one who has ever visited that "Greasy Cove"
and shared the hospitality of its denizens need long remain without
venturing a guess; for it is a pleasant place to be, with the "red banks
of Chucky" still crumbling in the bend of the river and the ravens
croaking from their cliffs among the fastnesses of the Devil's Looking
Glass looming near. The C. C. & O. have their immense shops here now,
covering almost a hundred acres of land.

VANCE'S CAMP. From the Bald mountain, now in Yancey county, it seems that
Col. Love became their pilot; and five or six miles further on in "a low
gap between the head of Indian creek and the waters of the south fork of
Laurel, we encamped and called it Vance's Camp." The richness of the
mountains is noted.

THE GRIER BALD. This Bald is sometimes called the Grier Bald from the fact
that David Grier, a hermit, lived upon it for thirty-two years.(45) Grier
was a native of South Carolina who, because one of the daughters of Col.
David Vance refused to marry him, built himself a log house here in 1802,
just three years after Colonel Vance had passed the spot, and it is
probable Grier first heard of it through this gentleman. In a quarrel over
his land he killed a man named Holland Higgins and was acquitted on the
ground of insanity "and returned home to meet his death at the hands of
one of Holland's friends."

BOONE'S COVE. On Wednesday the 19th of June, after having suffered
severely the previous night from gnats, they went to "Boone's Cove,
between the waters of Laurel and Indian creeks," while on the 20th they
had to pass over steep and rocky and brushy knobs, with water scarce and a
considerable distance from the line. All day Friday their horses suffered
from want of water and food, part of the way being impassable for horses;
while on Saturday it took them "four hours and 23 minutes" to cut their
way one and one-fourth miles to the top of the mountain, where, after
getting through the laurel, they "came into an open flat on top of Beech
mountain where we camped till Monday at a good spring and excellent range
for our horses."

A RECRUIT of BACON. On Monday, the 24th of June, their provisions began to
fail them again, but they proceeded on the line six miles and "crossed the
road leading from Barnett's Station to the Brushy Cove and encamped in a
low gap between the 'eaters of Paint creek and Laurel river."(46) They had
a wet evening here; but as they "suped on venison stewed with a recruit of
bacon Major Neely brought in this day from the Brushy Cove settlement," we
may hope their lot was not altogether desolate; for it is possible that
this enterprising commissary, Major Neely, might have brought them
something besides that "recruit of bacon"; for it will be recalled that on
a former occasion he went for a pilot and returned not only with a pilot
but with two gallons of a liquid that "had such marvelous powers" that it
made a very "bad place" "tolerably comfortable."

BARNETT'S STATION. At any rate, they knew they were nearing the end of
their long and arduous journey, for they had now reached the waters of
Paint creek, which they must have known was in the neighborhood of the
"Painted Rock," their destination. The Barnett Station referred to above
was probably Barnard's old stock stand on the French Broad river, five or
six miles below Marshall.

OFF THE TRACK FOR AWHILE. After losing their way on the 25th and "having a
very uncomfortable time of it" on Paint creek, they got on the "right
ridge from the place we got off of it and proceeded on the line five miles
and encamped between the waters of F. B. R. [French Broad river] and Paint
creek."

"HASEY" AND "ANCTOOUS." Thursday 27. This morning is cloudy and hasey. The
Commissioners being anctoous to get on to the Painted Rock started us
early"; but they took a wrong ridge again and had to return and spend an
uncomfortable evening.

DROPPING THE PLUMMET FROM PAINT ROCK. However, on Friday; the 28th day of
June, 1799, they reached the Painted Rock at last and measured its height,
finding it to be "107 feet three inches high from the top to the base,"
that "it rather projects out," and that "the face of the rock bears but
few traces of its having formerly been painted, owing to its being smoked
by pine knots and other wood from a place at its base where travellers
have frequently camped. In the year 1790 it was not much smoked, the
pictures of some humans, wild beasts, fish and fowls were to be seen
plainly made with red paint, some of them 20 and 30 feet from its base."

ANIMAL PICTURES HAVE DISAPPEARED. How much more satisfactory this last
sentence would have been if he had only added: "I saw them." For, as the
rock appears today, the red paint seems to be nothing more or less than
the oxidation of the iron in the exposed surfaces, while all trace of
"some humans, wild beasts," etc., mentioned by him have entirely
disappeared.

THE REAL "PAINTED ROCK." However, he leaves us in no doubt that they had
reached the real Painted Rock called for by the Act of Cession, ceding
"certain lands therein described"; for he goes on to say that, while "some
gentlemen of Tennessee wish to construe as the painted rock referred to"
another rock in the French Broad river "about seven miles higher up on the
opposite or S. W. side in a very obscure place," that "it is to be
observed that there is no rock on French Broad river that ever was known
as the painted rock but the one first described, which has, ever since the
River F. Broad was explored by white men, been a place of Publick
Notoriety."

SURPASSES A "BEST SELLER" OF TO-DAY. This is the next to the concluding
sentence in this quaint and charming narrative-a narrative that one
hundred and fifteen years after it was penned can still be read with more
interest than many of the so-called "best sellers" of the present day.

"We then went up to the Warm Springs where we spent the evening in
conviviality and friendship. "

THE LONELINESS OF BACHELORHOOD. But it is in the very last sentence that
one begins to suspect that John Strother was at that time a bachelor, for
we read:

"Saturday, 29th. The Company set out for home to which place I wish them a
safe arrival and happy reception, as for myself I stay at the springs to
get clear of the fatigue of the Tour."

One wonders whose bright eyes made his "fatigue" so much greater than that
of the others and kept him so long at the springs.

TO THE "BIG PIGEON." The line from the Painted Rock to the Big pigeon was
run a few weeks later on by the same commissioners and surveyors; but we
have no narrative Of the trip, which, doubtless, was without incident,
though the way, probably, was rough and rugged.

SECOND TENNESSEE BOUNDARY SURVEY. North Carolina having acquired by the
treaty of February 27, 1819, all lands from the mouth of the Hiwassee "to
the first hill which closes in on said river, about two miles above
Hiwassee Old Town; thence along the ridge which divides the waters of the
Hiwassee and Little Tellico to the Tennessee river at Talassee; thence
along the main channel to the junction of the Cowee and Nanteyalee; thence
along the ridge in the fork of said river to the top of the Blue Ridge;
thence along the Blue Ridge to the Unicoy Turnpike road; thence by
straight line to the nearest main source of the Chastatee; thence along
its main channel to the Chattahoochee, etc.," it became necessary to
complete its boundary line from the Big Pigeon at the Cataloochee turnpike
southwest to the Georgia line. To that end it passed, in 1819 (2 R. S. N.
C., 1832), an act under which James Mebane, Montford Stokes and Robert
Love were appointed commissioners for North Carolina for the purpose of
running and marking said line. These commissioners met Alexander Smith,
Isaac Allen and Simeon Perry, commissioners representing Tennessee, at
Newport, Tenn., at the mouth of the Big Pidgeon, July 16, 1821; and,
starting from the stone in the Cataloochee turnpike road which had been
set up by the commissioners of 1799, they ran in a southwestwardly course
to the Bald Rock on the summit of the Great iron or Smoky mountain, and
continued along the main top thereof to the Little Tennessee river. The
notes of W. Davenport's field book give as detailed an account of the
progress of these commissioners and surveyors as did John Strother's in
1799; but as they met no one between these two points there was little to
relate. The same or another party might follow the same route to-day and
they would meet no one. But Mr. Davenport does not call the starting point
a "turnpike." He calls it a "track," which was quite as much as it could
lay claim to, the present turnpike having been built from Jonathan's creek
up Cove creek, across the Hannah gap, passing the Carr place and up the
Little Cataloochee, through Mount Sterling gap, as late as the fifties.(48)
At twenty miles from the starting point they were on "the top of an
extreme high pinnacle in view of Sevierville." At 22 miles they were at
the Porter gap, from which, in 1853, Eli Arrington of Waynesville carried
on his shoulders W. W. Rhinehart, dying of milk-sick, three miles down the
Bradley fork of Ocona Luftee to a big poplar, where Rhinehart died. Near
here, although they did not know it then, an alum cave was one clay to be
discovered, out of which, in the lean years of the Southern Confederacy,
Col. William H. Thomas and his Indians were to dig for alum, copperas,
saltpeter and a little magnesia to be used in the hospitals of this
beleaguered land, in default of standard medicines which had been made
contraband of war.

ARNOLD GUYOT AND S. B. BUCKLEY. Here, too, Arnold Guyot, the distinguished
professor of geology and physical geography of Princeton college, came in
1859, following Prof. S. B. Buckley, and made a series of barometric
measurements, not alone of the Great Smoky mountain chain, but also of
that little known and rugged group of peaks wholly in Tennessee, known as
the Bull Head mountains.

DOUBTFUL OF A ROAD EVER CROSSING THE SMOKIES. Surveyor Davenport noted a
low gap through which "if there ever is a wagon road through the Big Smoky
mountain, it must go through this gap." Well, during the Civil War, Col.
Thomas, with his "sappers and miners," composed of Cherokee Indians and
Union men of East Tennessee, did make a so-called wagon road through this
gap, now called Collins gap; and through it, in January, 1864, General
Robert B. Vance carried a section of artillery, dragging the dismounted
cannon, not on skids, but over the bare stones, only to be captured
himself with a large part of his command at Causbey creek two days later.
But no other vehicle has ever passed that frightful road, save only the
front wheels of a wagon, as it is dangerous even to walk over its
precipitous and rockribbed course. No other road has ever been attempted,
and this one has been abandoned, except by horsemen and footmen, for
years. Not even a wagon track is visible. On the 7th of August they came
at the 31st mile to Meigs' Post. At the 34th mile they came in view of
Brasstown; and next day, at the 45th mile, they reached the head of Little
river, and must have been in plain view of Tuckaleechee Cove and near
Thunderhead mountain both immortalized by hiss Mary N Murfree (Charles
Egbert Craddock) in her stories of the Tennessee mountains. On the 11th
they were at the head of Abram's creek, which flows through Cade's Cove
into the Little Tennessee at that gem of all mountain coves, the Harden
farm at Talassee ford. On the 13th they came to a "red oak . . . at
Equeneetly path to Cade's cove." This is only a trail, and is at the head
of one of the prongs of Eagle creek and not far from where Jake and Quil
Rose, two famous mountaineers, lived in the days of blockade stills. Of
course they did not still any! On this same unlucky 13th, they came to the
top of a bald spot in sight of Talassee Old Town, at the 57th mile. This
is the Harden farm spoken of above, and is a tract of about 500 acres of
level and fertile land. On the 16th they passed over Parsons and Gregory
Balds. On this day also they crossed the Little Tennessee river "to a
large white pine on the south side of the river at the mouth of a large
creek, 65th mile." From there on to the Hiwassee turnpike the boundary
line is in dispute, the case being now before the Supreme Court of the
United States. One of the marks still visible is that made on the 19th, at
the 86th mile, "a holly tree . . . near the head of middle fork of Tellico
river." They were then close to what has since been known as State Ridge,
on which in July, 1892, William Hall, standing on the North Carolina side
of the line, was to shoot and kill Andrew Bryson; and if these surveyors
had not done their work 'yell, Hall might have suffered severely; for, all
unconsciously, this man was to invoke the same law Carson and Vance and
other noted duellists had relied on, when they "fought across the State
line."(49) Zim. Roberts, who lives under the Devil's Looking Glass, says
that a healthy white oak tree, under which Hall was standing when he fired
at Bryson, began to die immediately and is now quite dead. On the 20th of
August they were at "the 89th mile, at the head of Beaver Dam" creek of
Cherokee county, N. C., and not far from the Devil's Looking Glass," an
ugly cliff of rock, where the ridge comes to an abrupt and almost
perpendicular end. On that day, at the 93d mile, they came to "the trading
path leading from the Valley Towns to the Overhill settlements," reaching
the 95th mile on that path before they paused.

THAT SAHARA-LIKE THIRST. On the 24th, at the 96th mile, they were on the
top of the Unicoy mountain, and on the same day they reached "the hickory
and rock at the wagon road, the 101st mile, at the end of the Unicoy
mountain." It was here that tradition says that the Sahara-like thirst
overtook the party; as from the 101st mile post their course was "due
south 15 miles and 220 poles to a post oak post on the Georgia line, at 23
poles west of the 72d mile from the Nick-a-jack Old Town on the Tennessee
river."

TRYON'S BOUNDARY LINE. "In the spring and early summer of 1767 there were
fresh outbreaks on the part of the Indians. Governor Tryon had run a
boundary-line between the back settlements of the Carolinas and the
Cherokee huntting-grounds. But hunters and traders would persist in
wandering to the west of this line and sometimes they were killed."(50)

INDIAN BOUNDARY LINES. Almost as important as the State lines were the
Indian boundary lines; but most of them were natural boundaries and have
given but little trouble. There was one notable exception, however, and
that is the MEIGS AND FREEMAN LINE. According to the map of the "Former
Territorial Limits of the Cherokee Indians," accompanying the Fifth Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84, there were three lines run to
establish the boundary between the Cherokees and the ceded territory under
the treaty of October 2, 1798; the first of which was run by Captain
Butler in 1798, and extending from "Meigs' post on the Great Stone
mountain to a fork of the Keowee river in South Carolina known as Little
river. But, according to the text(51) the line was not run till the summer
of 1799, and is described as "extending from Great Iron mountain in a
southeasterly direction to the point where the most southerly branch of
Little river crossed the divisional line to Tugaloo river." However,
"owing to the unfortunate destruction of official records by fire, in the
year 1800, it is impossible to ascertain all the details concerning this
survey, but it was executed on the theory that the "Little River" named in
the treaty was one of the northermost branches of Keowee river."(52)

RETURN J. MEIGS AND THOMAS FREEMAN. But, "this survey seems not to have
been accepted by the War Department, for on the 3d of June, 1802,
instructions were issued by the Secretary of War to Return J. Meigs, as
commissioner, to superintend the execution of the survey of this same
portion of the boundary. Mr. Thomas Freeman was appointed surveyor."(53)
"There were three streams of that name in that vicinity. Two of these were
branches of the French Broad and the other of the Keowee."

EXPEDIENCY GOVERNED. "If the line should be run to the lower of these two
branches of the French Broad, it would leave more than one hundred white
families of white settlers within the Indian territory. If it were run to
the branch of the Keowee river, it would leave ten or twelve Indian
villages within the State of North Carolina." It was, therefore,
determined by Commissioner Meigs to accept the upper branch of the French
Broad as the true intent and meaning of the treaty, and the line was run
accordingly; whereby "not a single white settlement was cut off or
intersected, and but five Indian families were left on the Carolina side
of the line."

LOCATION of THE MEIGS POST." In a footnote (p. 181-2) Commissioner Meigs
refers to the plat and field-notes of Surveyor Freeman, but the author
declares that they cannot be found among the Indian office records.(54)
Also that there is "much difficulty in ascertaining the exact point of
departure of the 'Meigs Line' from the great Iron Mountains." In the
report of the Tennessee and North Carolina boundary commissioners in 1821
it is stated to be "31 1/2 miles by the source of the mountain ridge in a
general southwesterly course from the crossing of Cataloochee turnpike; 9
1/2 miles in a similar direction from Porter's gap; 21 1/2 miles in a
northeasterly direction from the crossing of Equovetley Path, and 33 1/2
miles in a like course from the crossing of Tennessee river." . . . It was
stated to the author by Gen. R. N. Hood, of Knoxville, Tenn., that there
is a tradition that "Meigs Post" was found some years since about 1 1/2
miles southwest of Indian gap. A map of the survey of Qualla Boundary, by
M. S. Temple, in 1876, shows a portion of the continuation of "Meigs Line
as passing about 1 1/2 miles east of Quallatown." Surveyor Temple mentions
it as running "south 50 degrees east (formerly south 52 1/2 degrees
east)." Aleigs' Post should have stood at the eastern end of the Hawkins
Line which had been run by Col. Benj. Hawkins and Gen. Andrew Pickens in
August, 1797, pursuant to the treaty of July 2, 1791, commencing 1000
yards above South West Point (now Kingston) and running south 76 degrees
east to the Great Iron Mountain.(55) "From this point the line continued
in the same course until it reached the Hopewell treaty line of 1785, and
was called the "Pickens line."(56) The Hopewell treaty line ran from a
point west of the Blue Ridge and about 12 miles east of Hendersonville,
crossed the Swannanoa river just east of Asheville, and went on to
McNamee's camp on the Nollechucky river, three miles southeast of
Greenville, Tenn. "The supposition is that as the commissioners were
provided with two surveyors, they separated, Col. Hawkins, with Mr.
Whitner as surveyor, running the line from Clinch river to the Great Iron
Mountains, and Gen. Pickens, with Col. Kilpatrick as surveyor, locating
the remainder of it. This statement is verified so far as Gen. Pickens is
concerned by his own written statement."(57)

COL. STRINGFIELD FOLLOWS THE LINE. George H. Smathers, Esq., an attorney
of Waynesville, says there is a tradition that the Meigs and Freeman posts
were really posts set up along this line, and not marks made on living
trees; but Col. W. W. Stringfield of the same place writes that he
measured nine and one half miles southwestwardly of Porter's gap "and
found Meigs' post, a torn down stone pile on the top of a smooth mountain
. . . . Meigs' and Freeman's line was as well marked as any line I ever
saw; I traced this line south 52 degrees east, from Scott's creek to the
top of Tennessee mountain, between Haywood and Transylvania counties, a
few miles south of and in full view of the Blue Ridge or South Carolina
line . . . I found a great many old marks, evidently made when the line
was first run in 1802. 1 became quite familiar with this line in later
years, and ran numerous lines in and around the same in the sale of the
Love "Speculation" lands . . . . Many of these old marked trees can still
be found all through Jackson county, on the waters of Scott's creek, Cane
or Wurry-hut, Caney Fork, Cold or Tennessee creek, and others."(58) When
he was running the line he was told by Chief Smith of the Cherokees,
Wesley Enloe, then over 80 years old, Dr. Mingus, then 92 years old, Eph.
Connor and others, that he was on the Meigs line.

RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS. "He was the firstborn son of his parents, who gave
him the somewhat peculiar name Return Jonathan to commemorate a romantic
incident in their own courtship, when his mother, a young Quakeress called
back her lover as he was mounting his horse to leave the house forever
after what he had supposed was a final refusal. The name has been handed
down through five generations."(59)

TREATY of 1761.(60) The French having secured the active sympathy of the
Cherokees in their war with Great Britain, Governor Littleton of South
Carolina, marched against the Indians and defeated them, and in 1760,
concluded a treaty with them, under which the Cherokees agreed to kill or
imprison every Frenchman who should come into their country during the
war. But as the Cherokees still continued hostile South Carolina sent Col.
Grant, who conquered them in 1761, and concluded a treaty by which "the
boundaries between the Indians and the settlements were declared to be the
sources of the great rivers flowing into the Atlantic ocean." As the Blue
Ridge is an unbroken watershed south of the Potomac river, this made that
mountain range the true eastern boundary of the Indians. This treaty
remained in force till the treaty of 1772 and the purchase of 1775 to the
northern part of that boundary, or the land lying west of the Blue Ridge
and north of the Nollechucky river. It remained in force as to all land
west and south of that territory till 1785 (November 28), called the
treaty of Hopewell.

TREATY of 1772 AND PURCHASE of 1775. The Virginia authorities in the early
part of 1772 concluded a treaty with the Cherokees whereby a boundary line
was fixed between them, which was to run west from White Top mountain,
which left those settlers on the Watauga river within the Indian limits,
whereupon, as a measure of temporary relief, they leased for a period of
eight years all the country on the waters of the Watauga river.
"Subsequently in 1775 (March 19) they secured a deed in fee simple
therefor," . . . and it embraced all the land on "the waters of the
Watauga, Holston, and Great Canaway (sic] or New river." This tract began
"on the south or southwest of the Holston river six miles above Long
Island in that river; thence a direct line in nearly a south course to the
ridge dividing the waters of Watauga from the 'eaters of Nonachuckeh
(Nollechucky or Toe) and along the ridge in a southeasterly direction to
the Blue Ridge or line dividing North Carolina from the Cherokee lands;
thence along the Blue Ridge to the Virginia line and west along such line
to the Holston river; thence down the Holston to the beginning, including
all waters of the Watauga, part of the waters of Holston, and the head
branches of the New river or Great Canaway, agreeable to the aforesaid
boundaries."(61)

TREATY OF HOPEWELL 1785. Hopewell is on the Keowee river, fifteen miles
above its junction with the Tugaloo. It was here that the treaty that was
to move the boundary line west of the Blue Ridge was made. This line began
six miles southeast of Greenville, Tenn., where Camp or McNamee's creek
empties into the Nollechucky river; and ran thence a southeast course "to
Rutherford's War Trace," ten or twelve miles west of the Swannanoa
settlement. This "War Trace" was the route followed by Gen. Griffith
Rutherford, when, in the summer of 1776, he marched 2,400 men through the
Swannanoa gap, passed over the French Broad at a place still known as the
"War Ford"; continued up the valley of Hominy creek, leaving Pisgah
mountain to the left, and crossing Pigeon river a little below the mouth
of East Fork; thence through the mountains to Richland creek, above the
present town of Waynesville, etc. From the point where the line struck the
War Trace it was to go "to the South Carolina Indian boundary." Thus, the
line probably ran just east of Marshall,. Asheville and Hendersonville to
the South Carolina line, though its exact location was rendered
"unnecessary by reason of the ratification in February, 1792, of the
Cherokee treaty concluded July 2, 1791, wherein the Indian boundary line
was withdrawn a considerable distance to the west."(62)

NORTH CAROLINA'S INDIAN RESERVATION. Meantime, however, North Carolina
being a sovereign State, bound to the Confederation of the Union only by
the loose articles of confederation, in 1883, set apart an Indian
reservation of its own; which ran from the mouth of the Big Pigeon to its
source and thence along the ridge between it and the waters of the
Tuckaseigee (Code N. C., Vol. ii, sec. 2346) to the South Carolina line.
This, however, does not seem to have been supported by any treaty. The
State had simply moved the Indian boundary line twenty miles westward to
the Pigeon river at Canton.

TREATIES of 1791 AND 1792. The treaty of 1791 was not satisfactory to the
Indians and another treaty supplemental thereto was made February 17,
1792, which in its turn was followed by one of January 21, 1795, and
another of October 2, 1798. They all call for what was afterwards run and
called the Meigs and Freeman line, treated fully under that head.(63)

TREATY OF FEBRUARY 27, 1819. This treaty cedes all land from the point
where the Hiwassee river empties into the Tennessee, thence along the
first ridge which closes in on said river, two miles above Hiwassee Old
Town; thence along the ridge which divides the waters of Hiwassee and
Little Tellico to the Tennessee river at Talassee; thence along the main
channel to the junction of the Nanteyalee; thence along the ridge in the
fork of said river to the top of the Blue Ridge; thence along the Blue
Ridge to the Unicoy Turnpike, etc. This moved the line twenty miles west
of what is now Franklin.(64)

TREATY OF NEW ECHOTA, DECEMBER 29, 1835. By this treaty the Cherokees gave
up all their lands east of the Mississippi river, and all claims for
spoliation for $5,000,000, and the 7,000,000 acres of land west of the
Mississippi river, guaranteed them by the treaties of 1828 and 1833. This
was the treaty for their removal, treated in the chapter on the Eastern
Band.(65)

THE RAINBOW COUNTRY. During the year 1898 while Judge H. G. Ewart was
acting as District Judge of the U. S. Court at Asheville, some citizens of
New Jersey obtained a judgment against the heirs of the late Messer Fain
of Cherokee county for certain land in the disputed territory, known as
the Rainbow Country because of its shape. The sheriff of Monroe county,
Tennessee, armed with a writ of possession from the Tennessee court,
entered the house occupied by one of Fain's sons and took possession. Fain
had him arrested for assault and trespass, and he sued out a writ of
habeas corpus before Judge Ewart, who decided the case in favor of Fain;
but the sheriff appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th
circuit, and .Judge Ewart was reversed. Thereupon Fain sued out a writ of
certiorari before the Supreme Court of the United States; but after the
writ had been granted Fain decided not to pay for the printing of the
large record, and the case was dismissed for want of prosecution. This was
one of the forerunners to litigation with Tennessee.

RECENT BOUNDARY DISPUTES. There is now pending before the Supreme Court of
the United States a controversy between the State of Tennessee and the
State of North Carolina over what is known as the "Rainbow" country at the
head of Tellico creek, Cherokee county. Tennessee claims that the line
should have followed the main top of the Unaka mountains instead of
leaving the main ridge and crossing one prong of Tellico creek which rises
west of the range. This is probably what should have been done if the
commissioners who ran the line in 1821 had followed the text of the
statute literally; but they left the main top and crossed this prong of
Tellico creek, and their report and fieldnotes, showing that this had been
done were returned to their respective States and the line as run and
marked was adopted by Tennessee as well as by North Carolina.(66)

LOST COVE BOUNDARY LINE. In 1887, Gov. Scales, under the law providing for
the appointment of a commission to meet another from Tennessee to
determine at what point on the Nollechucky river the State line crosses,
appointed Captain James M. Gudger for North Carolina, J. R. Neal being his
surveyor; but there was a disagreement from the outset between the North
Carolina and the Tennessee commissioners. The latter insisted on going
south from the high peak north of the Nollechucky river, which brought
them to the deep hole at the mouth of lost Cove creek, at least three
quarters of a mile east of the point at which the line run for the North
Carolina commissioner reached the same stream, which was a few hundred
yards below the mouth of Devil's creek. The North Carolina commissioner
claimed to have the original field-notes of the surveyors, and followed
them strictly. Neither side would yield to the other, and the line remains
as it was originally run in 1799. The notes followed by Captain Gudger
were deposited by him with his report With the Secretary of State at
Raleigh. (See Pub. Doc. 1887, and Dagger v. McKesson, 100 N. C., p. 1)

MACON COUNTY LINE. The legislature of North Carolina provided for a survey
between Macon County, N. C., and Rabun county, Ga., in 1879, from
Elliquet's Rock, the corner of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia,
to the "Locust Stake", and as much further as the line was in dispute L
Howard of Macon county was the Commissioner for North Carolina. (Ch. 387,
Laws 1883)

TENNESSEE LINE BETWEEN CHEROKEE AND GRAHAM. The line between these two
counties and Tennessee was ordered located by the county surveyors of the
counties named according to the calls of the act of 1821. (See Ch. 202,
Pub. L. 1897., p. 343)

[Notes for this chapter currently not available]