The Heart of the Alleghanies; or, Western North Carolina — Reading Notes

A Surveyor’s Eye, Not a Storyteller’s

The excerpts reveal a work preoccupied with measurable resources. The authors devote substantial space to the value of forests, noting that “five thousand square miles of area are awaiting enterprising dealers” and that the wood of certain shrubs “can be worked only when green; dried, it becomes as hard as bone.” They discuss lumber production in Hickory and Highlands, and lament the lack of systematic geological exploration. The tone is promotional, urging capital and transportation to develop the region. This focus on economic potential aligns with the primary catalog subject of geography and travel, but leaves little room for the fantasy-folklore tag. The only hint of the supernatural is in the chapter titles—such as “The Devil’s Chin” and “Legendary Superstitions”—but the excerpts do not deliver any such content.

The Mineral Rush and Its Human Traces

The text captures a moment of speculative fever: “the mineral excitement was highest from 1872 to 1875.” The authors quote a traveler who found locals greeting rock hunters with “Good mornin’, gentlemen; after rocks?” and producing specimens they could not name. The authors themselves note that “private enterprise is annually adding to the stock of information.” This interplay between amateur prospectors and systematic science is a recurring thread. The excerpts also include a telling remark about a hostess who “had kep’ a powerful site of them rock-hunters,” suggesting the ubiquity of mineral speculation in daily life. Yet the catalog’s fantasy label might stem from the inclusion of Cherokee legends or supernatural tales in other chapters—none of which appear here.

What the Catalog Misses: The Absent Folklore

The catalog lists “fantasy-folklore” as a secondary subject, but the provided excerpts contain no folklore whatsoever. The table of contents promises “Legendary Superstitions,” “The Devil’s Footprints,” and “Cherokee’s Paradise Gained,” but these are not present in the sample. Instead, the text is dominated by practical descriptions: bear hunting techniques (“sticking a bear”), trout fishing, and the physical landscape. The authors even include a disclaimer about their mineralogy section: “Our errors … will be errors of omission.” This honesty contrasts with the catalog’s implication of mythic content. Readers expecting fantasy will be disappointed; the work is a straightforward, if boosterish, geographical and economic account. The folklore may exist in omitted chapters, but the excerpts do not support its prominence.

Readers should approach this book as a period piece of regional promotion rather than a collection of folklore. The catalog’s “fantasy-folklore” tag likely refers to chapters not included in these excerpts. For a fuller picture, one would need to consult the sections on Cherokee legends and supernatural beliefs. As it stands, the text is a valuable record of how late-nineteenth-century Americans described and marketed the Appalachian landscape, with a strong emphasis on extractable resources and the practical knowledge of its inhabitants.

Reading about those old Alleghany trails, I remembered my grandfather’s faded maps, and how he’d trace the ridgelines with a finger. That same quiet awe washed over me years ago with Journal of my journey over the mountains while surveying for Lord Thomas Fairfax, baron of Cameron, in the northern neck of Virginia, beyond the Blue Ridge, in 1747-8. — Reading Companion — a shared sense of land holding secrets only time reveals.