The central region of the United States,
embracing the district of East Tennessee
and the adjacent mountain counties of
Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, is
less known to Americans generally than the
remotest nooks of Florida, or the North
West Territory. At a distance from the
great routes of travel, without navigable
rivers, presenting on every side a frowning
barrier of wild and savage mountains, heaped
in continuous and inextricable confusion
over its whole surface, a portion of it, too,
still in the hands of its aboriginal possessors,[1]
it has repelled, rather than invited, visitation,

p018-024 [figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

and retains an air of solitude and seclusion,
which will vanish only when the engineer has
tracked its glens and gorges with paths of
iron, and flying locomotives thunder along its
ridges. When that period shall have arrived,
it will perhaps be discovered, that no part
of the United States offers greater attractions
to the lovers of the picturesque and the
wonderful, that none opens a grander display
of scenery, or richer exchequer of curiosities.
Then, too, perhaps—if the bursting of the
world into his sequestered valley should
arouse some sleepy Tennessean from inglorious
inactivity, infuse into his breast a little
pride of country, a little shame that a clime
so fair and beneficent should want a historian,
that a state so powerful and distinguished
should have produced no son able or
willing to write the records of her days of
trial and adventure—it will be found that
no part of the country possesses a greater
or more interesting fund even of legendary
and historic incident. The sparklings of the
lost Pleiad of American states—the little republic
of Frankland, that scintillated a moment
on that ridgy horizon, and then was
extinguished for ever—and the campaigns of
the gallant Sevier, are worthy to be chroni

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

cled with the strangest vicissitudes, and the
bravest achievements, of that eventful era.

The `rarities'—as the old geographers
would have termed them—of this mountain
land, comprise waterfalls—the Tuccoa and
the Falling Water, for example—with others,
perhaps, as grand and as lovely—whirlpools
and sinking rivers, cliffs, and caverns; and
the still more interesting memorials of antiquity—
the mounds and fortifications; the
painted cliffs; the rocks on which the eye, or
the imagination, traces the foot-prints of
shodden horses, and even the tracks of wheeled
carriages; the graveyards of pygmies and
giants, whence have been dug so many thousand
bones of manikins of two feet in stature,
and Patagonians of eight;[2] the axes and

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

other implements of copper, brass, iron,
silver; the coins; the walled wells; the old
gold mines, with furnaces and crucibles; the
yellow-haired mummies; and other vestiges
of the unknown and perished races of men
that once possessed, it would seem, the whole
Mississippi Valley.

Of these relics many are found in the
caves, which, besides the above-mentioned
yellow-haired mummies and Cyclopean skeletons,
(for the big bones are usually, though
not exclusively, found in caverns,) are, in
some cases, reported to possess still more
astonishing monuments of the primeval
world—petrified men—stony warriors and
hunters of the days of Nimrod, who, with dog
and spear, chased the megalonix into his hole,
and there perished with him; or antediluvian
gold-miners that plied their trade in these
darksome retreats, and, in unholy passion,
“forgot themselves to marble,” or were transformed
by the demons of the mine into their
own effigies.

Such wild stories, frequently revived, and

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

passing from mouth to mouth with various
additions or diminutions, though regarded as
novelties, I suspect, must, in some way or
other, owe their origin to one common source,
to some fragmentary hint or distorted reminiscence
of the ancient, veritable, but now
almost forgotten legend of Merry the Miner—
a wight of whose adventures I have been
at the pains to inquire and record every particular
that is now remembered.

Of the birthplace and early adventures of
this remarkable personage nothing is known;
even his “given” name has been lost, his surname
only surviving, with the suffix that supplies
the place of the lost portion. He first
appeared, at a very early day, in one of the
extreme eastern counties of Tennessee, a settler
like others, as it seemed; for he had a wife
and family, with whom he seated himself, or
perhaps squatted, upon a farm that might,
though none of the richest, have yielded him
a comfortable subsistence, had he taken the
pains to cultivate it.

But Merry, it soon appeared, had other
thoughts and objects; for, having completed a
rude cabin sufficient to shelter his children,
cleared for them a few acres of ground, and helped
them to set it in corn, for the winter's

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

subsistence, he straightway seemed to discharge
from his mind all farther care of them, and
began to ramble up and down the mountains,
a bag slung upon one shoulder, a rifle on the
other, remaining absent from home generally
all day long, and sometimes a week together.
At first, he was supposed by his few neighbors
who noted his proceedings, to be absent
on hunting expeditions, until it was observed
that he seldom returned so well provided with
game as with fragments of stone and minerals,
with which useless commodities his sack
was usually well filled.

This produced questions, and questions
brought replies; and Merry, who, though absorbed
by his pursuits, was not of a selfish
or incommunicative disposition, gave them to
understand he had better game in view than
bear, elk, or deer; in short, that he was hunting
for gold; with which precious metal, he
averred, these very mountains abounded; a
fact which, he declared, with a great deal of
wild enthusiasm, he was very sure of; for,
first, an old Cherokee Indian had told him so
when he was a boy; secondly, a great scholar
had assured him of the same thing, declaring
that the Spaniards had once, in the days of
De Soto, been at the mountain mines and

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

worked them, till the Indians drove them
away, or killed them; thirdly, his father, who
had, in his time, been an Indian trader, and
made a fortune thereby, was of the same
opinion, because of the jealousy of the Indians,
who would never suffer a white man
to examine too closely into their soil for
minerals;[3] and finally, because every one
knew there were bits of gold sometimes
found in Virginia and the Carolinas, along
the rivers that flowed from the mountains,
from which it was plain the gold must have
been washed down from the mountains. To
this he added, that he had himself been, for
ten years or more, hunting for the precious
place of deposit, and it was, therefore, but
reasonable to suppose he must soon succeed
in finding it. He had often discovered places
where there was a little gold to be gathered,
but it was a very little; and he should not
stop short till he had lighted on the true
mines that had been worked of old by the
Spaniards, the discovery of which would certainly
be a fortune to him.

This representation had its effects upon
Merry's friends; who, being shown a store of

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

minerals, gathered by himself in different
places, and abounding, as he said, in lead,
copper, and other ignoble metals, together
with sundry touchstones, a blowpipe, a bottle
of acid, and other simple implements of the
art metallurgic, of which he had in some way
learned the use, were very ready to assist
him in a pursuit that promised to lead to
fortune; and for a few months, the whole
neighbourhood was rambling with him over
the hills, in search of hidden treasures. As
no gold was, however, found, nor, indeed, the
least sign of any, the enthusiasm for gold-hunting
soon abated in all but Merry himself,
who, at first deserted by his friends, was at
last derided by them as a crack-brained
schemer, whose efforts were more likely to
ruin a fortune than to make one.

And, indeed, it appeared from some expressions
of Merry's wife, who by no means
relished her husband's neglect of his family
and affairs, that he had already, or his family
for him, paid dear for his gold mine, having
been originally the possessor of a sufficient
and comfortable estate, a good patrimonial
farm, and slaves to till it; all which had slipped
through his fingers in the course of his
ten years' wanderings.

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

Desertion and derision, however, produced
no change in honest Merry; who having remained
long enough in his first seat to explore
every nook and cranny among the
adjacent hills, and satisfy himself that the
object of his search was not there, drew up
his stakes one fine morning, removed his
habitation some fifty or sixty miles further
west, and there, having constructed another
cabin, and cleared another field, recommenced
his explorations precisely as he had
done before, and with exactly the same results;
except that on this, as well as on all
future occasions, his character having travelled
before him, he found no neighbours willing
to unite with him in his enterprise. But this
was an affair of no consequence to Merry the
Miner; who, equable and contented on all
subjects except that of his gold mine, was
equally satisfied to share his hopes and
labours with others, or to enjoy them alone.
Nor did the ridicule and general contempt
under which he fell, much affect him: “By
and by,” said he, “I shall find a gold mine,
and then they will treat me well enough.”

The reproaches of his dear spouse were
not always received with the same equanimity;
but the practice which caused them

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

was the surest means to avoid them; and accordingly
some of the uncharitable have hinted,
that if his golden monomania had not
been enough to drive him from his habitation,
the lectures of his helpmate would have been
cause sufficient.

Again unsuccessful, again the untiring
Merry changed his quarters; and this he continued
to do year after year, until he had consumed
ten more years in the unavailing
search. By this time his spirit was fainting
a little within him, and doubts began to oppress
him sore. Gray hairs were thickening
on his temples, and his fortune was not yet
made; on the contrary, poverty, after many
premonitory knocks, had passed his door, and
taken the best seat on his hearth. His
children had grown up, and grown up unaccustomed
to rule, at least for the five last
years; for, five years before, Merry had followed
his wife to the grave; after which her
children took matters into their own hands,
and grew up the way they liked best. One
after another, they dropped away from their
father to seek their own fortunes, until at last,
one—one only of all remained, his youngest
daughter, who was handsome and, as Merry
thought, good, for she was faithful when the

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

rest were found wanting. “Very well,” said
Merry, as he again trudged to the mountains,
one bright morning; “when I find a gold
mine, she shall know what it is to be a good
daughter, for she shall have it all to herself.
No, not all,” he muttered; “for the rest
will come back, and they must have something,
to know their father was hunting gold,
not for himself, but for them. But Susie, my
darling Susie, shall have the most of it, because
she was faithful to her father.”

When Merry returned again from the
mountains, his darling Susie was gone—gone
with a villain, for whom she had forsaken her
parent. Merry sat down in his deserted
cabin, and there remained for a week, content,
for the first time in twenty years, to remain
at home, when home had nothing further
to attract him.

On the seventh day, Merry again seized his
sack and rifle, and whistling to his dog Snapper—
for so he called him—an ugly, starveling cur
that had long been his companion, and now
was the only living thing upon whose fidelity
he knew he could rely—made his way up the
wild little valley in which his cabin stood,
following the course of a brawling river that
watered it. This river—fed by a hundred

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

brooks that came chattering down the sides
of the mountain, in whose cloven and contorted
flank the little vale was but one of
many embayed recesses—Merry had often before
thridded, examining its different forks up
to their springs; where—upon his principle of
belief, that when gold is found in a river, it
must have been washed down from its sources—
he always seemed to think there was the
best prospect of discovering his long sought
mine. He had thus followed them all, or
thought he had done so; and having found
them all equally destitute of treasure, he
would himself, perhaps, have been puzzled to
say why he now set out again in the same
direction. Another person, however, might
have found a sufficient explanation in the agitation
of mind of the poor wanderer, whose
every look and step bore witness to the disorder
of his spirits.

Up this rivulet, then, he wandered, without
well knowing or noting whither; clambering
up the ledgy banks of one of its chief springs,
now nearly dried up, which he began, after a
time, to have a vague suspicion he had never
before explored. It had a new, fresh look
about it that gradually wrought upon his attention,
and was fast wakening him from

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

abstraction; when his revery was further put to
flight by Snapper, the dog, who set up a
yelp or howl, Merry knew not which, but it
sounded very wild and mournful in that desolate
place, and fell to scratching in the
shingly bed of the torrent, as if disinterring a
rat or some other object of equal interest, ever
and anon looking around to his master, as if
to invite him to his assistance.

Merry approached and took from under
the paw of the dog a bit of stone, or sparry
concretion, of a very odd appearance, having
a kind of rude resemblance to a thumb and
fingers grasping something between them,
and that something exhibiting, at a broken
corner, a certain yellow gleam that made
Merry the Miner's heart leap within him.

With a little hammer drawn from his bag,
he broke off the ragged superfluities incrusting
what seemed a metallic core; an edge of
which he straightway rubbed on his flinty
touchstone. It left a yellow trace, as clear
and brilliant as heart could desire. Merry
drew out a vial of acid, and his hand trembled
as he applied it to the yellow trace. The
yellow trace vanished—No! it was the dimness
that came over the miner's eyes; the
yellow trace remained as bright and as

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

beautiful as before. He dipped the corner of the
mineral into the acid; it hissed and fumed and
bubbled; but the yellow speck became the
broader and brighter. It was gold then—
`gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!' and
Merry—But hark! Snapper howls again, and
again tears up the pebbles of the brook!
Merry clapped his prize into his sack, and
clambered up higher after the dog, admiring
at this own happiness in possessing an animal
of such marvellous sagacity, perhaps wondering,
too, how such an ugly brute should know
pebbles of gold from any others, and more especially,
how he should know his master was
seeking after them.

But Merry the Miner's mind was too full
of more important matters to question or
wonder long over the mystery. Snapper had
scratched from the shingle another specimen,
and one far more satisfactory and valuable
than the former—a lump of virgin gold as
big as a pigeon's egg, and looking not unlike
one, except that it was marked all over with
strange figures and fantastic shapes, so that
Merry almost doubted whether it was not a
work of art, instead of a freak of nature.
But while he was doubting, Snapper scratched
agian, and Merry picked up another piece;

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

and then another, and another, in all five or
six pieces, though none of them at all comparable
in size and value with the two pieces
first stumbled on.

But had they been less numerous or less
precious than they were, Merry would have
rejoiced none the less. He had struck the
path of fortune at last, and knew the goal
could not now be far off. Too eager to waste
time in hunting what he doubted not was a
mere subordinate and chance deposit of fragments
washed down from above, he gave
over the search, to continue his explorations
up towards the source of the brook.

As he rose, eager and exulting, his eye fell
by chance upon the little valley in which he
lived, now far below, and upon his distant
and deserted cabin. He sat down and wept.
What did gold avail him now? He had
found the long desired treasure; but his children
were lost to him for ever. For this,
then, he had bartered them away—squandered
the rich treasures of their love, and, worse
than all, the rich treasures of honour and virtue,
of reputation and happiness, that should
have formed their inheritance.

Many a man has felt, and many will feel,
like Merry the Miner, when, after a life of

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

gold-hunting, whether in the field or the
counting-room, in the land-office or the stock-market,
the prize is won, and they lost who
might have been good and happy without it.

Bitter were the thoughts of Merry, and he
looked upon his prizes with the feelings of a
Timon. He cursed them; nay, he snatched
them up with a desperate intent to hurl them
away; when Snapper fetched another howl,
and—and Merry the Miner forgot his anger
and his grief. He clapped the golden fragments
into his sack, added another piece of
gold to his store; and, having now lost sight
of his cottage, followed, with Snapper, up the
mountain brook, exploring with eager care,
and impatient to arrive at its golden springs.

The way was long, the path was wild, and
the sun was in the meridian when Merry
reached the apparent source of the streamlet;
and he was then in the heart of a mountain
wilderness as wild, as desolate, as solitary as
imagination ever painted. High in air, shut
up among ridges that sloped up to heaven all
around him, bristled over with black firs or
speckled with gray rocks and precipices, no
companions but his dog, and the eagles that
sometimes swooped down from adjacent
peaks to view the invader of their realm,

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

Merry might have felt the elation inspired by
a scene so august and lonely, had not the
feeling of the mine-hunter swallowed up
every other. His good luck had departed
from him; he had trudged miles without finding
any further traces of gold, or indeed any
thing at all remarkable, save fragments of
spar and stalagmitic concretions, in which
fancy traced a thousand resemblances to objects
he had left in the world behind him, as
well as to others that existed only in the
world of dreams. These, interesting as they
might have proved on another occasion,
Merry would now have joyfully exchanged
for a single bit of gold, the smallest that miner
ever picked out of earth. But the gold
had vanished, and Merry arrived at the head
of his rivulet only to be persuaded he had
arrived in vain.

A deep and narrow ravine, up which he
scrambled with infinite labour and pain, and
down which the feeble and dwindling waters
seemed to find it as difficult to flow—for
lazily, and with complaining murmurs, they
dropped from rock to rock, creeping and
moaning among obstructions, over which, it
was plain, at other seasons, a torrent came
bounding and roaring like a lion after his

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

prey—its lofty walls growing loftier as the
miner advanced, and flinging a gray and
smoky midnight over all below, was suddenly
terminated by a precipice, from whose inaccessible
heights the stream fell in a dreary,
ever pattering, but meagre shower, while a
still feebler runnel oozed from a chasm in
the precipice, as if flowing from a spring in
the heart of the mountain.

Upon examining this chasm a little—there
came from it a faint, icy breath of air—Merry
was surprised to find it the entrance of a
cavern—a huge, yawning antre as black as
death, and gloomy, and ruinous, and mouldering
as a sepulchre of a thousand years.
Merry cared not a whit for caverns, great
or small; and as the feeble ray of light
admitted from the ravine did not penetrate
beyond a few feet, and disclosed a formidable
labyrinth of rocks and stalagmites covering
the watery floor, he felt no great desire to
disturb its solemn privacy. But Merry was
heated and wearied by his toilsome ascent of
the mountain, and the cool air of the cavern
tempted him to enjoy a moment of repose.
He sat down upon a rock and endeavored
with his eyes to fathom its hidden recesses,
but in vain. Nothing was to be seen but the

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

formidable rocks and stalactites, and they all
vague, shadowy, and undistinguishable. But
the ray of light, imperfectly disclosing the
darksome labyrinth, revealed, almost under
his feet, another object neither formidable
nor repulsive—a little topaz-hued star glistening
on the floor, from which Merry eagerly
snatched it up, and carried it to the light of
day. It was gold—a rounded mass inferior in
size only to the pigeon's egg, and bright and
pure as gold could be.

eaf018v1.n1

[1] In the hands of its original possessors no longer:

“The stranger came with iron hand,” &c.