A fair place it had been in its prime, and so it had seemed one afternoon in June, 1734, when for the first time the two white strangers had entered it.  Mountains more splendid than those which rose about it on every hand it would be difficult to imagine.  The dense, rich woods reach in undiminished vigor along the slopes covering them at a height of six thousand feet, till the “tree line” interposes; thence the great bare domes lift their stately proportions among the clouds.  Along these lofty perspectives the varying distance affords the vision a vast array of gradations of color,—­green in a thousand shades, and bronze, and purple, and blue,—­blue growing ever fainter and more remote till it is but an illusion of azure, and one may believe that the summits seen through a gap to the northeast are sheer necromancy of the facile horizon.

In the deep verdant cove below, groups of the giant trees common to the region towered above the stanchly constructed cabins that formed the homes of the Indians, for the Cherokees, detesting labor and experts in procrastination, builded well and wisely that they might not be forced to rebuild, and many of the distinctive features of the stout frontier architecture were borrowed by the pioneers from aboriginal example.  Out beyond the shadows were broad stretches of fields with the lush June in the wide and shining blade and the flaunting tassel.  The voices of women and young girls came cheerily from the breezy midst as they tilled the ground, where flourished in their proper divisions the three varieties of maize known to Indian culture, “the six weeks’ corn, the hominy corn, and the bread corn.”  A shoal of canoes skimmed down the river, each with its darting shadow upon that lucent current and seeming as native, as indigenous to the place as the minnows in a crystal brown pool there by the waterside—­each too with its swift javelin-like motion and a darting shadow.  Sundry open doors here and there showed glimpses of passing figures within, but the arrival of the strangers was unnoticed till some children playing beside the river caught sight of the unaccustomed faces.  With a shrill cry of discovery, they sped across the square, agitated half by fright and half by the gusto of novelty.  In another moment there were two score armed men in the square.

“Now hould yer tongue still, an’ I’ll do the talkin’,” said one of the white adventurers to the other, speaking peremptorily, but with a suave and delusive smile.  “If yez weren’t Frinch ye’d be a beautiful Englishman; but I hev got the advantage of ye in that, an’ faix I’ll kape it.”