I was roused at five or thereabouts on the morning after our arrival here by a visit from a big dog belonging to a native, not quite a mastiff, but more like that than anything else, who, seeing my window wide open, jumped in from the verandah, and came to the bed to give me goodmorning with tail and muzzle. I was glad to see him, having made friends the previous evening, when the decision of his dealings with the stray hogs who came to call on us from the neighbouring forest had won my heart; but as his size and attentions somewhat impeded my necessarily scanty ablutions, I had to motion him apologetically to the window when I turned out. He obeyed at once, jumped out, laid his muzzle on the sill, and solemnly, and, I thought, somewhat pityingly, watched my proceedings. Meantime, I heard sounds which announced the uprising of “the boys,” and in a few minutes several appeared in flannel shirts and trousers, bound for one of the two rivers which run close by, in gullies 200 feet below us. They had heard of a pool ten feet deep, and found it too; and a most delicious place it is, surrounded by great rocks, lying in a copse of rhododendrons, azaleas, and magnolias, which literally form the underwood of the pines and white oak along these gullies. The water is of a temperature which allows folk whose blood is not so hot as it used to be to lie for half an hour on its surface and play about without a sensation of chilliness. On this occasion, however, I preferred to let them do the exploring, and so at 6.15 went off to breakfast.

This is the regular hour for that meal here, dinner at twelve, and tea at six. There is really no difference between them, except that we get porridge at breakfast and a great abundance of vegetables at dinner. At all of them we have tea and fresh water for drink, plates of beef or mutton, apple sauce, rice, tomatoes, peach pies or puddings, and several kinds of bread. As the English garden furnishes unlimited water and other melons, and as the settlers—young English, who come in to see us—bring sacks of apples and peaches with them, and as, moreover, the most solvent of the boys invested at Cincinnati in a great square box full of tinned viands of all kinds, you may see at once that in this matter we are not genuine objects either for admiration or pity. I must confess here to a slight disappointment. Having arrived at an age myself when diet has become a matter of indifference, I was rather chuckling as we came along over the coming short-commons up here, when we got fairly loose in the woods, and the excellent discipline it would be for the boys, especially the Londoners, to discover that the human animal can be kept in rude health on a few daily crackers and apples, or a slap-jack and tough pork. And now, behold, we are actually still living amongst the flesh-pots, which I had fondly believed we had left in your Eastern Egypt; and I am bound to add, “the boys” seem as provokingly indifferent to them as if their beards were getting grizzled. One lives and learns, but I question whether these states are quite the place to bring home to our Anglo-Saxon race the fact that we are an overfed branch of the universal brotherhood. Tanner, I fear, has fasted in vain.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when there was a muster of cavalry. Every horse that could be spared or requisitioned was in demand for an exploring ride to the west, and soon every charger was bestrid by “a boy” in free-and-easy garments, and carrying a blanket for camping out. Away they went under the pines and oaks, a merry lot, headed by our geologist, who knows the forest by this time like a native, and whose shocking old straw blazed ahead in the morning sun like, shall we say, “the helmet of Navarre,” or Essex’s white hat and plumes before the Train Bands, as they crowned the ridge where Falkland fell and his monument now stands, at the battle of Newbury. Charles Kingsley’s lines came into my head, as I turned pensively to my table in the verandah to write to you:—

When all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, and round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog his day.

Our two lasses are, undoubtedly, queens out here. The thought occurs, are our swans—our visions, already so bright, of splendid crops, and simple life, to be raised and lived in this fairyland—to prove geese? I hope not. It would be the downfall of the last castle in Spain I am ever likely to build.

On reaching our abode, I was aware of the Forester coming across from the English garden, of which he has charge, followed by a young native. He walked up to me, and announced that they were come across to tidy up, and black the boots. Here was another shock, that we should be followed by the lumber of civilisation so closely! Will boots be blacked, I wonder, in the New Jerusalem? I was at first inclined to protest, while they made a collection, and set them out on the verandah, but the sight of the ladies’ neat little high-lows made me pause. These, at any rate, it seemed to me, should be blacked, even in the Millennium. Next minute I was so tickled by a little interlude between the Forester and the native, that all idea of remonstrance vanished. The latter, contemplating the boots and blacking-pot and brushes—from under the shapeless piece of old felt, by way of hat, of the same mysterious colour as the ragged shirt and breeches, his only other garments—joined his hands behind his back, and said, in their slow way, “Look ’ere, Mr. Hill, ain’t this ’ere pay-day?” The drift was perfectly obvious. This citizen had no mind to turn shoe-black, and felt like discharging himself summarily. Mr. Hill, who was already busily sweeping the verandah, put down his broom, and after a short colloquy, which I did not quite catch, seized on a boot and brush, and began shining away with an artistic stroke worthy of one of the Shoeblack Brigade at the London Bridge Station. The native looked on for a minute, and then slowly unclasped his hands. Presently he picked up a boot and looked round it dubiously. I now took a hand myself. If there was one art which I learned to perfection at school, and still pride myself on, it is shining a boot. In a minute or two my boot was beginning “to soar and sing,” while the Forester’s was already a thing of beauty. The native, with a grunt, took up the spare brush, and began slowly rubbing. The victory was complete. He comes now and spends two hours every morning over his new accomplishment, evidently delighted with the opportunity it gives him for loafing and watching the habits of the strange occupants, for whom also he fetches many tin pails of water from the well, in a slow, vague manner. He has even volunteered to fix up the ladies’ room and fill their bath (an offer which has been declined, with thanks), but I doubt whether he will ever touch the point of a genuine “shine.”

They are a curious people, these natives, as the Forester (an Englishman, reared in Lord Denbigh’s garden at Newnham Paddocks, and thirty years out here) told me, as we walked off to examine the English garden, but I must keep his experiences and my own observation for separate treatment. The English garden is the most advanced, and, I think, the most important and interesting feature of this settlement. If young Englishmen of small means are to try their fortunes here, it is well that they should have trustworthy guidance at once as to what are the best crops to raise. With this view, Mr. Hill was placed, in the spring of this year, in charge of the only cleared space available. All the rest is beautiful, open forest-land. You can ride or drive almost anywhere under the trees, but there is no cultivated spot for many miles, except small patches here and there of carelessly sown maize and millet, and a rood or two of sweet potatoes. The Forester had a hard struggle to do anything with the garden at all this season. He was only put in command in May, six weeks at least too late. He could only obtain the occasional use of a team, and his duties in the forest and in grading and superintending the walks interfered with the garden. Manure was out of the question, except a little ashes, which he painfully gathered here and there from the reckless log-fires which abound in the woods. He calls his garden a failure for the year. But as half an acre which was wild forest-land in May is covered with water-melons and cantalupes, as the tomatoes hang in huge bunches, rotting on the vines for want of mouths enough to eat them, as the Lima beans are yielding at the rate of 250 bushels an acre, and as cabbages, sweet potatoes, beets, and squash are in equally prodigal abundance, the prospect of making a good living is beyond all question, for all who will set to work with a will.

In the afternoon, I inspected the hotel, nearly completed, on a knoll in the forest, between the English garden and this frame-house. It is a sightly building, with deep verandahs prettily latticed, from which one gets glimpses through the trees of magnificent ranges of blue forest-covered mountains. We have named it “The Tabard,” at the suggestion of one of our American members, who, being in England when the old Southwark hostelry from which the Canterbury Pilgrims started was broken up, and the materials sold by auction, to make room for a hop store, bought some of the old banisters, which he has reverently kept till now. They will be put up in the hall of the new Tabard, and marked with a brass plate and inscription, telling, I trust, to many generations of the place from which they came. The Tabard, when finished, as it will be in a few days, will lodge some fifty guests; and, in spite of the absence of alcoholic drinks, has every chance, if present indications can be trusted, of harbouring and sending out as cheery pilgrims as followed the Miller and the Host, and told their world-famous stories five hundred years ago.

The drink question has reared its baleful head here, as it seems to do all over the world. The various works had gone on in peace till the last ten days, when two young natives toted over some barrels of whisky, and broached them in a shanty, on a small lot of no-man’s land in the woods, some two miles from hence. Since then there has been no peace for the manager. Happily the feeling of the community is vigorously temperate, so energetic measures are on foot to root out the pest. A wise state law enacts that no liquor store shall be permitted under heavy penalties within four miles of an incorporated school; so we are pushing on our school-house, and organising a board to govern it. Meantime, we have evidence of unlawful sale (in quantities less than a pint), and of encouraging gambling, by these pests, and hope to make an example of them at the next sitting of the county court. This incident has decided the question for us. If we are to have influence with the poor whites and blacks, we must be above suspicion ourselves. So no liquor will be procurable at the Tabard, and those who need it will have to import for themselves.

A bridle-path leads from the hotel down to the Clear Fork, one of the streams at the junction of which the town site is situate. The descent is about 200 feet, and the stream, when you get to it, from thirty feet to fifty feet wide,—a mountain stream, with deep pools and big boulders. Your columns are not the place for descriptions of scenery, so I will only say that these gorges of the Clear Fork and White Oak are as fine as any of their size that I know in Scotland, and not unlike in character, with this difference, that the chief underwood here consists of rhododendron (called laurel here), azalea, and a kind of magnolia I have not seen before, and of which I cannot get the name. I passed huge faggots of rhododendron, twelve feet and fourteen feet long, lying by the walks, which had been cleared away ruthlessly while grading them. They are three miles long and cost under £100, a judicious outlay, I think, even before an acre of land has been sold. They have been named the Lovers’ Walks, appropriately enough, for no more well-adapted place could possibly be found for that time-honoured business, especially in spring, when the whole gorges under the tall pines and white oak are one blaze of purple, yellow, and white blossom.

On my return to the plateau, my first day’s experiences came to an end in a way which no longer surprised me, after the boot-blacking and the Lovers’ Walks. I was hailed by one of “the boys,” who had been unable to obtain a mount, or had some business which kept him from exploring. He was in flannels, with racquet in hand, on his way to the lawn-tennis ground, to which he offered to pilot me. In a minute or two we came upon an open space, marked, I see on the plans, “Cricket Ground,” in which rose a fine, strong paling, enclosing a square of 150 feet, the uprights being six feet high, and close enough to keep, not only boys out, but tennis-balls in. Turf there was none, in our sense, within the enclosure, and what there must have once been as a substitute for turf had been carefully cleared off on space sufficient for one full-sized court, which was well marked out on the hard, sandy loam. A better ground I have rarely seen, except for the young sprouts of oak, and other scrub, which here and there were struggling up, in a last effort to assert their “ancient, solitary reign.” At any rate, then and there, upon that court, I saw two sets played in a style which would have done credit to a county match (the young lady, by the way, who played far from the worst game of the four, is the champion of her own county). This was the opening match, the racquets having only just arrived from England, though the court has been the object of tender solicitude for six weeks or more to the four Englishmen already resident here or near by. The Rugby Tennis Club consists to-day of seven members, five English and two native, and will probably reach two figures within a few days on the return of the boys. Meantime the effect of their first practice has been that they have resolved on putting a challenge in the Cincinnati and Chatanooga papers offering to play a match—best out of five sets—with any club in the United States. Such are infant communities, in these latitudes!

You may have been startled by the address at the head of this letter. It was adopted unanimously on our return in twilight from the tennis-ground, and application at once made to the State authorities for registration of the name and establishment of a post-office. It was sharp practice thus to steal a march on the three Etonians, still far away in the forest. Had they been present, possibly Thames might have prevailed over Avon.