Knoxville.—Commercial intelligence.—Trees that grow in the environs.—Converting some parts of the Meadows into Forests.—River Nolachuky.—Greensville.—Arrival at Jonesborough.
Knoxville, the seat of government belonging to the state of Tennessea, is situate upon the river Holston, in this part nearly a hundred and fifty fathoms broad. The houses that compose it are about two hundred in number, and chiefly built of wood. Although founded eighteen or twenty years ago, this little town does not yet possess any kind of establishment or manufactory, except two or three tan yards. Trade, notwithstanding, is brisker here than at Nasheville. The shops, though very few in {221} number, are in general better stocked. The tradespeople get their provisions by land from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond in Virginia; and they send in return, by the same way, the produce of the country, which they buy of the cultivators, or take in barter for their goods. Baltimore and Richmond are the towns with which this part of the country does most business. The price of conveyance from Baltimore is six or seven dollars per hundred weight. They reckon seven hundred miles from this town to Knoxville, six hundred and forty from Philadelphia, and four hundred and twenty from Richmond.
They send flour, cotton and lime to New Orleans by the river Tennessea; but this way is not so much frequented by the trade, the navigation of this river being very much encumbered in two different places by shallows interspersed with rocks. They reckon about six hundred miles from Knoxville to the embouchure of the Tennessea in the Ohio, and thirty-eight miles thence to that of the Ohio in the Mississippi.
{222} We alighted at Knoxville at the house of one Haynes, the sign of the General Washington, the best inn in the town. Travellers and their horses are accommodated there at the rate of five shillings per day; though this is rather dear for a country where the situation is by no means favourable to the sale of provisions, which they are obliged to send to more remote parts. The reason of things being so dear proceeds from the desire of growing rich in a short time, a general desire in the United States, where every man who exercises a profession or art wishes to get a great deal by it, and does not content himself with a moderate profit, as they do in Europe.
There is a newspaper printed at Knoxville[55] which comes out twice a week, and written and published by Mr. Roulstone, a fellow-countryman and friend of my travelling companion, Mr. Fisk. It is very remarkable that most of the emigrants from New England have an ascendancy over the others in point of morals, industry, and knowledge.
{223} On the 17th of September I took leave of Mr. Fisk, and proceeded towards Jonesborough, about a hundred miles from Knoxville, and situate at the foot of the lofty mountains that separate North Carolina from the state of Tennessea. On leaving Knoxville the soil is uneven, stony and very indifferent, of which it is an easy thing to judge by the quantity of pines, or pinus mitis, that are in the forests. We also found there an abundance of Chinquapin oaks, or quercus prinus Chinquapin, that seldom grow above three feet high, some of which were that year so loaded with acorns that they were bent to the ground. The sorel-tree, or andromeda arborea, is also very common. This tree, that rises about forty feet in the mountains, would be one of the most splendid ornaments for our gardens, on account of its opening clusters of white flowers. Its leaves are very acid, and many of the inhabitants prefer them to shumac for dyeing cottons.
I crossed the river Holston at Macby, about fifteen miles from Knoxville; here the soil grows better, {224} and the plantations are nearer together, although not immediately within sight of each other. At some distance from Macby the road, for the space of two miles, runs by the side of a copse, extremely full of young suckers, the highest of which was not above twenty feet. As I had never seen any part of a forest so composed before, I made an observation of it to the inhabitants of the country, who told me that this place was formerly part of a barren, or meadow, which had naturally clothed itself again with trees, that fifteen years since they had been totally destroyed by fire, in order to clear the land, which is a common practice in all the southern states. This example appears to demonstrate that the spacious meadows in Kentucky and Tennessea owe their birth to some great conflagration that has consumed the forests, and that they are kept up as meadows by the custom that is still practised of annually setting them on fire. In these conflagrations, when chance preserves any part from the ravages of the flame, for a certain number of years they are re-stocked with trees; but {225} as it is then extremely thick, the fire burns them completely down, and reduces them again to a sort of meadow. We may thence conclude, that in these parts of the country the meadows encroach continually upon the forests. The same has probably taken place in Upper Louisiana and New Mexico, which are only immense plains, burnt annually by the natives, and where there is not a tree to be found.
I stopped the first day at a place where most of the inhabitants are Quakers, who came fifteen or eighteen years since from Pennsylvania. The one with whom I lodged had an excellent plantation, and his log-house was divided into two rooms, which is very uncommon in that part of the country. Around the house magnificent apple-trees were planted, which, although produced from pips, bore fruit of an extraordinary size and luxuriance in taste, which proves how well this country is adapted for the culture of fruit trees. Here, as well as in Kentucky, they give the preference to the peach, on account of their {226} making brandy with it. At the same house where I stopped there were two emigrant families, forming together ten or twelve persons, who were going to settle in Tennessea. Their ragged clothes, and the miserable appearance of their children, who were bare-footed and in their shirts, was a plain indication of their poverty, a circumstance by no means uncommon in the United States. At the same time it is not in the western country that the riches of the inhabitants consist in specie; for I am persuaded that not one in ten of them are in possession of a single dollar; still each enjoys himself at home with the produce of his estate, and the money arising from the sale of a horse or a few cows is always more than sufficient to procure him the secondary articles that come from England.
The following day I passed by the iron-works, situate about thirty miles from Knoxville, where I stopped some time to get a sample of the native ore. The iron that proceeds from it they say is of an excellent quality. The road at this place divides into {227} two branches, both of which lead to Jonesborough; but as I wanted to survey the banks of the river Nolachuky, so renowned in that part of the country for their fertility, I took the right, although it was rather longer, and not so much frequented. About six or seven miles from the iron-works we found upon the road small rock crystals, two or three inches long, and beautifully transparent. The facets of the pyramids that terminate the two extremities of the prism are perfectly equal with respect to size, they are loose, and disseminated in a reddish kind of earth, and rather clayey. In less than ten minutes I picked up forty. Arrived on the boundaries of the river Nolachuky, I did not observe any species of trees or plants that I had not seen elsewhere, except a few poplars and horse-chesnuts, which bore a yellow blossom. Some of these poplars were five or six feet in diameter, perfectly straight, and free from branches for thirty or forty feet from the earth.
On the 21st I arrived at Greenville, which contains scarcely forty houses, constructed with square {228} beams something like the log-houses. They reckon twenty-five miles from this place to Jonesborough. In this space the country is slightly mountainous, the soil more adapted to the culture of corn than that of Indian wheat, and the plantations are situated upon the road, two or three miles distant from each other.
Jonesborough, the last town in Tennessea, is composed of about a hundred and fifty houses, built of wood, and disposed on both sides the road. Four or five respectable shops are established there, and the tradespeople who keep them have their goods from Richmond and Baltimore. All kinds of English-manufactured goods are as dear here as at Knoxville. A newspaper in folio is published at this town twice a week. Periodical sheets are the only works that have ever been printed in the towns or villages situate west of the Alleghanies.