THE HUSTLE NOTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 313, 11 January 1908, Page 3

THE HUSTLE NOTS.

KWERE YAM\'Fi-'<3 A TO? NEVER- IN A HURRY.

It is a mistake to suppose that all Ameajcans are born •' hustlers." Up in the rerest-covered mountains of Ken tucky and Tennessee, where the famous ' moonshine '• whisky is illicitly dist.iled. they breed some of the slowest and most backward people on catrth. I spent (writes a contributor to " Answers ") a summer holiday among them some years ago, and met dozens of old men and women who had never been to a town ind never seen a railway-train. Horn in i log-hut on the mountains, with twenty or thirty miles of rough tracks separating them from the nearest hamlet, they live a life that is very near to Nature. They keep a few pigs and fowls, and •ultivaU a few wretched patches of Indian corn and potatoes, but they care nothing for agriculture. M heart they iru all hunters. The mountain forest"? iwnrm with rabbits, bears, deer, anil thor game. A lx>y learns to use a rifle here before he is ten, and Hie women ■re all deadly shots. Hut bisgnr game than eoons and deer often falls to the rides of these sonrbarbarian mountaineers. In point of fact, they are little liettcr than out'aws. They live completely outside the 'aw, never paying taxes or sending their ■hildren to school.

If two mountaineers qunrri-l, they ivatcli for one another in the woods, nlle in hand. They may wait for weeks mil montlis, -but sooner jir later one <hoots the other dead. Then a fend be•rins, as merciless as any Oorsican veil■letta, and it lasts for years, until one family is completely wiped out, women iiid children included.

The county sheriffs and their posses seldom interfere. A governor of Kentucky tried to put down this system a few years ago. and he was promptly shot >!(•;>« on the steps of the State Capitol. _ '"'"• 'Mountaineers' only industry is the ■listill'ii-r of "moonshine" whisky—sorallud because it is made, at night— ; n '■aves in the depth of the forest. Thev never take it to the towns or villages t'., sell. Small barrels are left at appointed <l>"t.«. and fetched by the town-dwellers., >vho leave in payment groceries, flour, tobacco, clothes, and ammunition.

The United States Revenue officer--, irmed to the teeth, are alwavs on the hunt for these illicit stills, and there is a deadly feud lietween them and th« mountain-dwellers. Large rewards are offered to informers, but any man who informs is sure to get a bullet through h ! s brain if he stays in the district ,1 week. Yet the temptation is great, for some of the families are almost starving in winter, and the profits to be made out of the illicit distilling of "moonshine" whisky are frequently by no means inconsiderable. " Slv man dun fole the Revcnno* last winter." a widow woman told me when f visited her hut. "T* couldn't, stand •r see the children hungry. It was a hundred dollars. He tolc'd back from Knoxville with his arms full o' CT ub an' thmgs ter last the winter. Then he iust set down ter his cn'nmeal, said goodbye, an' walked inter the wood. Soon 1 heard a shot. He never come back." Nor is this a single isolated instance. Mnuv more such pathetic stories could be related. I" became friendly with an old bisnnhunter named Jed Hawkins, who was

tvpicnl of the rest. ITe had lived all lii« life on "'o mountains, and had never seen a Uu'S"' eomiminity than the nearest village, which had about two hundred inhabitant'. Up had never been on a main road, never read a book or a nfiiv-iiimwr. or hoard one read. The hM Pr.sirlent he had he»rd of wa* Abraham L ; neoln; McKinley and TSonscv't were «tr»H"-e names to him: the SrimiisltAmcrican Was was news. Of England he had heard, hut very vnsuplr. TTis children were "-rowing up as ignorant barbarians as himself.