THE history of Asheville tells in part the story of the people, and in part answers two questions always asked by the newcomer, Who are the "Mountain Whites," and how did they get here? The foot-hills, as we know, were settled early in the history of the state, and there was a sparse population on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge long before any one ventured to establish a home in the mountains that lay beyond that barrier, the first permanent settlers west of the Blue Ridge not appearing until after the Revolutionary War, in the course of which the Indians were partly subdued. As time passed, the restless drifting of those people who came to the New World in search of homes brought one and another to the mountain country, fabled for its beauty, healthfulness, and possibilities; and while some of these wanderers drifted away again, others settled down and raised families who clung to the land of their birth, where their descendants are yet to be found.

Since North Carolina was settled from "almost all the nations of Europe," one looks to find traces of this motley assembly among the present inhabitants of the mountains; and there are traces in the names and the features of the people, although the population in course of time became homogeneous for several reasons. For one thing, it was similar qualities and tastes that first drew the people to the mountains and afterwards kept them there; also, by far the greater number of these emigrants came from the British Isles; and finally, the conditions of life in the mountains was such as still further to leaven all society to the same consistency.

The early settlers came in that youth of the nation when land was free and hopes were high, younger sons sometimes, and business men of small property who had a dream of possessing a landed estate and "founding a family" in the New World, the fabled western mountains powerfully attracting these seekers for fame and fortune, most of whom in course of time were doomed to discover that owning a tract of land was not the only requisite to success. No- body got rich in the mountains, excepting the fortunate few who had placed themselves in the line of traffic that, in course of time, was established between the South and West; the poor soil was an insuperable obstacle, as were the social conditions induced by slavery. The settlers in the mountains did not realize their ambitions, but many of them found a home and peace and plenty, according to the modest standards of those days.

Besides those well-to-do settlers who came to found a family, and formed the "quality" of the mountains, who are not to be confounded with the "quality" of Charleston, which was quite another matter, there were others who, for various reasons and at different times, drifted in from the eastern lowlands as well as down from the North. Most of the writers tell us rather loosely that the Southern mountains were originally peopled with refugees of one sort and another, among whom were criminals exported to the New World from England, which, they might as well add, was the case with the whole of the newly discovered continent, America being the open door of refuge for the world's oppressed. Hither fled dissenters from all sorts of established form, from French Hugenots to convicts, a company of seekers who, for the most part, were to fulfill a high destiny in the making of a nation.

The popular writers, in speaking of the origin of the "Mountain Whites," rather insist upon the criminals, perhaps because of their sensational value, but one can find no evidence that these malefactors, many of them "indentured servants" sent over for the use of the colonies, made a practice of coming to the mountains when their term of servitude expired. And knowing the manner in which many of these white slaves, wretched precursors of the black slaves, were procured, without any other fault of theirs than their helplessness, one need not tremble with fear at thought of them.

The truth is, the same people who occupied Virginia and the eastern part of the Carolinas peopled the western mountains, English predominating, and in course of time there drifted down from Virginia large numbers of Scotch-Irish, who, after the events of 1730, fled in such numbers to the New World, and good Scotch Highlanders, who came after 1745. In fact, so many of these stanch Northerners came to the North Carolina mountains that they have given the dominant note to the character of the mountaineer, remembering which may help the puzzled stranger to understand the peculiarities of the people he finds here to-day. The Celtic element has also strongly impressed a love of nature upon the people, as shown in their care of flowers and their pleasure in the beauties of the wilderness. They can tell you where to go for the finest views, and they know any peculiarity of rock or tree that may occur in their neighborhood.

Emigration to the mountains, at one time considerable, practically ceased when the great West was opened up and the people flocked thither, no longer drawn to the less exciting region of the Southern mountains. The more enterprising of the North Carolina mountaineers also went West, we are told, thus leaving behind the conservative element, another fact rich in explanation of the people here to-day, and leaving also the less ambitious natures, as well as the weaker ones. The easy conditions of life here doubtless appealed to many who had not been endowed with the kind of strength required to wrest success from active life in the New World, some of them seekers after better things than they could hope for at home, gentle souls who were not tempted by the glittering prizes to be struggled for in more favored parts of the then unexplored continent. The rapid growth of slavery no doubt discouraged many, who, unable to succeed in the slave states, were crowded to the mountains, or else became the "Poor White" of the South, who must not for a moment be confounded with the "Mountain White," the latter having brought some of the best blood of his native land to those blue heights. He brought into the mountains, and there nourished, the stern virtues of his race, including the strictest honesty, an oldfashioned self-respect, and an old-fashioned speech, all of which he yet retains, as well as a certain pride, which causes him to flare up instantly at any suspicion of being treated with condescension, this pride being one of the most baffling things to the stranger, who never knows when he is going to run up against it.

That the people are, for the most part, of English, Scotch, and Irish descent, their names show. And what good names some of them are, names that are crowned with honor out in the big world, - Hampton, Rogers, McClure, Morgan, Rhodes, Foster, Bradley, and dozens more; and to those fortunate ones, who out in the big world have gained fame and fortune, these Highlanders are undoubtedly related. The same blood flows in their veins, although they are here, and living back in the eighteenth century.

Why have they remained in the mountains all these generations? The answer may be found, partly, at least, in the fact that in the beginning it was too easy for them to make a living, that is, such a living as contented them. Game was abundant, and their flocks and herds supplied their own wants upon the mountain "ranges" for practically eight months- of the year. The reason for their remaining after the easy conditions of pioneer life had passed are, first, because those who remained were not those who came, but their descendants, born and raised in the wilderness, inured to its life of want and of freedom, and with no knowledge of any different life. And then, they were imprisoned in their mountain fast, nesses because of lack of means of communication, in part the result of obstacles presented by the slave states that surrounded them like an unnavigable sea; by lack of communication and by the conditions of life in the lowlands where the black man was king as well as slave. As time went on, they were forgotten by the rest of the world, which they in turn forgot.

Excepting in a few places where people came a little while each summer for pleasure, and where the traffic of the mountains passed out, the mountaineer had no contact with the outside world. Even the coming of the summer visitors, who, in the early days, brought their own servants in the form of slaves, did not to any extent influence the lives of the natives. To get a living from the poor soil required all their energies, the mild climate indisposing them to exertion beyond that needed to supply the merest necessaries of life. And so it happened that for a hundred years or more most of them were completely lost to the world.

Bad blood there was among them as well as good, and brave men as well as weak ones. The brave as well as the bad blood sometimes worked out its destiny in vendetta and "moonshining," although there never existed in the North Carolina mountains the extensive and bloody feuds that distinguish the annals of Virginia and Kentucky.

For more than a century, then, the mountain people lived as their pioneer forefathers had lived before them, retaining their language and their old customs modified only by the slow growth that comes in a fixed environment, and slowly spreading over the whole mountain region wherever a " cove " or a valley offered hope of sustenance, until to-day, there are some two hundred thousand of them in the North Carolina mountains alone. Little villages grew up where some natural advantage drew the people together, or near where the people from the lowlands chose to come for their summer outings. So while the rest of the world was advancing in a mad rush toward some unseen goal, the Southern mountaineer was simply living. The stranger who occasionally penetrated into his wilderness was amazed at the simplicity of life there, as well as at the native intelligence and shrewdness of a people so separated from all contact with the world of action.

When a new tide in the affairs of man began to bear people again to the Southern mountains, this time in search of health, retirement, mines, lumber, or "business" of various kinds, the mountaineer appeared as a unique and puzzling personality, more or less difficult to cope with. Cautious, suspicious of new-fangled notions, and very suspicious of any attempt to "improve" him or his community, believing that what was good enough for his father was good enough for him, he stood like a bulwark against the advance of new ideas, and particularly against the intrusion of the rich and " bigotty " newcomer, who he imagined looked down on him and his simple ways. Hospitable to a fault among his own, and to the stranger whom he trusted, but resorting at need to more than questionable methods of freeing himself from the presence of an obnoxious neighbor, the Southern mountaineer was an enigma to the wellmeaning but impolitic stranger, who, seeking to make for himself a beautiful home in the Southern mountains, was perhaps forced to leave the country before the exactions and the implacable hostility of the native people. If you are friends with the people, all is well, but if you are a mere customer of their commodities or their labor, then you must match not only your wits against theirs, but your ignorance against their knowledge of the mountains, with the odds seldom in your favor.

The mountain people are many of them poor and ignorant, but the ill-clad man, who to the city visitor may look like a vagabond, is not to be treated as such; he knows some things the fine-appearing stranger does not know, and is well aware of the fact. The mountaineer is very old-fashioned, so oldfashioned that he values native shrewdness above what he calls " book-- larnin"' ; so old-fashioned that he thinks his neighbors as good as himself, and himself as good as his neighbors, irrespective of who has the biggest cornfield; and so old-fashioned that he believes progress to be a menace against his personal freedom, a thing to be combated at every point. His long-continued, almost communal life in a free wilderness, where every one had a right to do what he pleased, - hunting, fishing, pasturing, even cutting down trees wherever it happened to suit his convenience, - made for him the acceptance of other ideas of pt-operty rights peculiarly difficult. He gladly sold his land to the newcomer whose slaughter of the forests he understood, but if the purchaser, instead of destroying, tried to preserve the forest land, prohibiting burning-over, pasturing, and common use of the territory - then there was trouble. Also the inalienable right to hunt and fish when and where he pleased was a part of the faith of the mountaineer, whose long sojourn in the wilderness had ingrained in him primitive ideas which the gradual filling-up of the country did not change, although his methods were rapidly exterminating both fish and game animals.

But while the new pioneer among the settled natives of the Southern mountains had his troubles, the native himself, although it may not have been apparent at first, was changing. He learns slowly, but an idea once established grows and flourishes with astonishing vigor. In course of time the advantages of modern methods, particularly in business, dawn upon him, when, sometimes to the discomfiture of his unconscious teachers, he takes a hand and proves himself a winner in the new game. Indeed, nothing concerning these people is more interesting or more illuminating than the quickness and success with which they adopt the ways of the world when once their interest is aroused. That they are honest, intelligent, and efficient workers has been proved by all who have employed them with discrimination, and nowhere better than in the development of the large estate of Biltmore, which, the first enterprise of great importance to enter the mountains, won its way to success by help of the people, though not without many and unforeseen difficulties, principally in connection with controlling the land purchased.