Winn Parish Treasures

 (This column was published in the New Orleans  Picayune Oct. 23, 1892.)

I have been struggling to properly begin this letter with some reference to Christopher Columbus. It seems the proper thing nowadays during an access of appreciation for a hero, whose dust lacks not much of being half a thousand years old, to begin all sorts of communications with a reference to his deed or person, just as English people preliminate with "Victoria, by the Grace of God," etc.

This sort of post-mortem favor currying is a common characteristic. Our later heroes are too close to us to be classic and it is or purpose to pull them down, not build them up. Only the slanders of them stick like burrs in the memory. If the Commodore Columbus were alive and in New Orleans today there would be animating little minds tinctured with the aloes of little jealousies to engineer projects for sending north or east or at any rate Elsewhere for Anybody else’s account of the discovery of America, to be related, let us say, at the Columbus Fair. At last, however, a gold plate has been adjusted to the head of the great Genoese and the hero worship and saint worship of him begins.

This is Sunday morning, and I, far from the madding crowd, am out in the sweet woods of one of our north country parishes. God is saying yet, "remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Far away out here, where after days of hard travel my recollection of dates was inextricably confused, I knew it must be Sunday just by the feel of it.

I do not suppose there is a human being within six miles of us. We are pushing on to some good resting place, and as when one travels en voiture the greatest speed is oftenest attained by resting one’s team, we have stopped here in the forest to rest, to feed the horses and take our own lunch.

Here in the forest! I think on Canal Street—blaring and glaring in the sun—I see gay hats in the windows and lazy loafers who never saw a sunrise or knew the satisfaction of laying and lighting a pine stick fire—leaving that pleasure, generously, to their old mothers. They are, as usual, gathered about the foot of St. Charles and Royal Streets, and by and by when high mass is over they will move up to Cusach’s drug store and watch the ladies come by from church. Well, well. I am glad at least they shall dip their sore eyes, as sick ones descend into healing pools, on the innocent, womanly purity and loveliness of those, clean, sweet women at this moment on their knees in the lofty old church where

The organ rings and the sweet choir sings

Along the emblazoned walls.

Here in the forest! It is the Sabbath and the Madonna is out overhead above the tracery of the lace-like pines, and higher than the pink and salmon pillar clouds of the sweet gum trees in all the splendor of autumnal foliage, her blue robe floats. No green, no yellow, on crimson or purple could be so vivid, so joyously luminous, so peaceful and so airy, so softly translucent and so tender as this Sabbath Southland sky. Here and there a pine tree stands tall, more adorning than its neighbors. Its delicate needles, flinging from an umber, pungent stem, are sprayed this way and that, etched into the melting lazuli stone. It is like the pompon on a French soldier’s cap—being translated.

I sit on a log writing uncomfortably and taking a dread delight in the very possible possibility of being in the best position to harm a hostile snake. The ponies, with dropped traces, to counteract any Columbus proclivities there may be in their young blood, are dissatisfiedly nibbling corn fodder brought at the last farmhouse. Phillip, my driver, whose taciturnity seems to be growing over him like a cell, just as our own dear, valiant soldiers during the war were often, when prisoners, made to build about them their own confining walls—an exquisite way of punishment—Phillip, I say, sits stolidly staring into a blissful vacuity. If my eyes could go where his have gone I should solve problems in chemistry and hygiene.

Just at the foot of this little hill a dimpled stream flashes across the road. It flows like a liquid amber over frozen glade, so golden is its tannin-stained water, so grayly, frostly green, are the broad, flat rocks over which it jingles, chinking like cracked ice, whispering when it comes to some reeds and rushes on its way to "join the brimming river."

All about in their undiscoverable coverts, for their cloaks are literally invisible green, locusts are singing sleepy, long Sunday psalms, sawing like so many small saw mills. Indeed, they seem to be intoning a sort of Druid service. Overhead, the nearing blue deepens and deepens, and here and there, in the space made vacant by a fallen tree, sends down a shaft of loveliness, a column of sapphire stone, a something better than Jacob’s ladder, which, at best, was only made of stars for angels’ climbing, while here any lonesome human may thus mount into the eternal.

I have swung the milk bottle on a bit of grape vine in the stream to get cold, and be and by, when this letter is ended, and merely to make your mouths water, I may tell you whet we had for lunch. Now it is my duty to look back overland, across the hills and far away whence I have traveled as willingly and as charmedly as any Hamlin child following after the music of the Pied Piper.

Beginning in the north center of our wonderful and opulent state is a wide stretch of hilly land, thickly covered with a growth of pine trees whose size and quality render them of almost fabulous value. There are in the state about 8,000 square miles of this pine hill land. On the hills grow only pines of the long leaf variety and a scrub oak known as "black jack."

The only undergrowth is grass, flowers and a highly decorative, coarse fern. But in the hollows between the hills, which fairly surge in long billows like green waves at sea, are forest growths, almost untouched by the ax, of white oak, sweet gum, ash, beech, hickory and cypress. Untold millions of feet of lumber are in these forests. Every acre will average ten to fifteen trees, and the trees will average about 900 feet of lumber each. Beginning in Jackson and Bienville parishes, this region of pine hill land sweeps in a grand, almost unbroken tract southwestward almost to the sea, taking in Winn, Catahoula, Grant, Natchitoches, Sabine, Vernon, Rapides and Calcasieu parishes, in part or whole, as in the case of Vernon and Winn, which are all pine hill land.

Beautiful, clear streams of water thread these hills, running east or west; and as the rocky formations increase going northward, mineral springs and wells abound, as fine as any in America, but all undiscovered as yet. The natural products are corn, cotton, potatoes, oats and fruit. Sugar cane, it will surprise some to know, grows almost, if not quite up to the Arkansas state line, and nearly every farmer makes his own molasses.

This magnificent country lies with its arms wide open, ready to embrace any railroad enterprise that may come its way. The railroad men were, however, the first to appreciate the value of these lands, and by grants or purchase easily acquired ownership to multitudinous acres. New Orleans men of long sight watch the tax sales and silently gobble up tracts by wholesale. One New Orleans broker owns at lest 8,000 acres of land in Jackson Parish, which he bought for 37-1/2 cents an acre at tax sale, and for which he now refuses $3 an acre.

Accompanied by Hon. J. M. McCain, ex-member of the legislature of Winn Parish, the best of guides, the gentlest of philosophers and loyalest friend, I made the tour of Winn Parish. It is a parish in many respects the most unique, valuable and interesting of any in the state, and, in fact, I would not be amazed if it did not turn out to be the "ugly duckling" of the lot, although now it is as innocent of railroad facilities, of the modern appliances of electricity, as a lamb is of guile or a baby of deceit.

Now that I have driven over Winn Parish, and eaten salt with its genial, generous and hospitable people—who, by the way, since they nearly all belong to the Third Party, refute by their homes, breeding and culture any campaign calumnies to the effect that Third Parties are sure to be aliens and outlaws—I am prepared to tell, myself, that to see this parish was one of the chief objects of a long, 500-mile buggy trip that still shows as little sign of giving out as did the biblical widow’s cruise of oil.

Winn Parish contains nearly 1,000 square miles—to be accurate , 970 square miles. Of this, all is woodland and hill land, save a central strip of prairie region covering an area of thirty square miles. Of long leaf pine hills there are 850 square miles, and of oak uplands, mostly white oak and the beautiful sweet gum, there are ninety square miles.

The surface of the parish is rolling, the multitudinous forests are masses of fine timber, and the long hills are of limestone formation, generally. In the southwestern corner of the parish, the hills demonstrate the presence of remarkably fine iron ore. The rocks assay, it is claimed, 75 percent of pure iron.

Navigable streams in the parish, during a part of each year, are the Dugdemonia and the Saline Bayou. Much land in Winn Parish is owned by railroads and the now inoperative New York Lumber Company. There is a population of 7,500, an increase of twenty-one percent since the census of 1880. Crime is really below the average and the parish jail at Winnfield has been known of late years to go eighteen months without a single occupant. There are still in the parish vast tracts of good, nay the best, timber land subject to government or state homestead entry, and if one does not wish to undergo the necessary formality of five years’ occupancy in order to secure title, an easier way is to buy land at from 50 cents to $3 an acre. It is to be had in large or small tracts.

Along the creeks and streams, I should have said, are magnificent canebrakes of virgin cane. Even the most humane farmer need not feed his cattle in winter time; and beeves, ready, fine and fat for the market, are all the year round killed right off the range.

All day long Mr. McCain and I had been driving up and over the ambling pine hills—traveling from that gentleman’s cozy home in the southwest corner of the parish—in a straight, northerly line, being bound for a tiny settlement down on the maps as Coldwater, and which consists of several farmhouses, huddled on the brown hills, and near by a big, homely go-as-please, countryfied saw mill, sugar mill and grist mill, owned and run by one of the bravest and manliest men in the state, Mr. A. L. Martin.

We were only incidentally bound for Coldwater. Our first object being to get to the Saline Bayou and the scene of the old, little-known salt works that during the war were visited by people both from Arkansas and Mississippi, who came her to make salt.

It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon when the ponies trotted over a little rolling bit of prairie lands, picking their way carefully to avoid the thorny thickets of cacti that held the ground like a strong foe. Just ahead of us through the pink curtains of sweet gum leaves showed a dreary, puddly, waste of sand, with here and there white patches like frost lying thick on it. Cattle were browsing on it, and as we drew rein on the ruin of this cup of hills that surrounds this island of bleakness, it took me sometime to realize that yonder white frost sparkling in the sun was fine salt crusting the ground for a depth of a quarter of an inch.

Several old sugar kettles lay about and dead embers under one told where some thrifty farmer had recently filled one with salt water and boiled it down into salt. A kettleful of water will yield about three bushels of salt.

Many years since, a man named Drake bored two artesian wells at this place. One is closed up; an enemy damaged the other, but its big iron pipe still yields a flow of about thirty gallons a minute. The well is 1,200 feet deep and the water is cold, sparkling, more exquisitely pure and beautiful to look at than any mineral water I ever saw. It is as salt as the ocean, saltier than the famous springs at Weisbaden in Germany. Mr. McCain struck a match and touched it to the mouth of the well. Immediately the whole surface was on fire. It cast up a dark, rich, red flame, about two feet high and burned steadily for the space of half a minute.

That the water has remarkable medicinal qualities there can be no doubt. Its local reputation is great. Many have been cured when in the fatal stages of stomach diseases, and to bathe in it, so the country people say, is a sure cure for trembling limbs, weakness and skin diseases. It permanently cures breaking out of heat and it is said that during the war the soldiers frequented this salt bath to be relieved of the physical ills that are incidental to a hard, army life. The wells are the property of the government and are now held on a lease by a farmer of Winn Parish.

It is proper to state here that within three miles of the little rustic town of Winnfield, the parish seat and directly in the center of the parish, is a similar salt barren, where the salt, lying in lumps as big as your thumb, is of finer grain and a whiter, more sparkling crystal than the best Liverpool salt I ever saw imported, and where the cures made in the big, twelve-foot deep well are authentic and numerous.

It seems incredible that this big bonanza of a health resort should be absolutely unknown to the world and unregarded. Yet one of these days when railroads come, the salt wells of Winn Parish may run in opposition to those of Weisbaden in Germany.

It was almost dark night when we climbed down in front of the cheery home of M. Martin, where we were self-invited, but non-the-less welcome guests. It was a cheery, wholesome, all-over, make-yourself-at-home sort of welcome we got from Mr. And Mrs. Martin and all the young Martins and the four-footed members of the family. In a trice a fat pine log was roaring its welcome up the big, beautiful, stone chimney, and in a trice the smell of coffee hung in the air, and I had reason to believe a plump chicken had laid down its life for us.

Shall I ever forget that big, warm, kitchen, the royal fire, fit for a barbecue, on the hearth, and, as if this were not enough, an impertinent, jealous, modern cooking stove, spitting and crackling, roaring and sticking out tongues of flame and almost bursting with red hot anger in opposition to that huge, unvexed Vesuvius, sending its resinous eruption into the night.

We had chickens smothered in cream, which must be an ideal death, jerked deer’s meat and corn dodgers that two hours before had been on their native cobs in the barn. These were eaten with sweet butter whipped in a jiffy out of this morning’s milk, with goblets of cream and a honey-like liquid, commonly known as sorghum syrup. In fine, what with the welcome and the pine fire, and this thrifty, little island of a home in the bleak wilderness of howling pines, it was a feast to make even my accomplished friend Mme. Bezaudun of La Louisianais, hide her sleek head in envy.

A striking thing to observe is the young married people. We had asked our way at a cottage home where the young husband was 17 and his child wife less than 15, and here at Mr. Martin’s were two or three 16-year-old wives, while my hostess, less than forty years old, is several times a grandmother.

Winnfield is the parish seat. It is a venerable old village, resting on all fours on a cluster of noble hills, girdled about by two creeks with their dense canebrakes and rich forests. On one side is Bayou Port Luce, on the other Dugdemonia, both frequently navigable. Mr. Tannehill, the third party candidate for governor, lives here in a big, comfortable country home. During my stay, I was a guest in the charming and refined home of the brilliant young district attorney for this section, Hon. Robert E. Milling, who has been twice elected, and is genuinely popular with all classes of people beyond the forces of mere political prejudices. Mr. Milling conducts a thrifty, successful farm, a model in the way of barns, fences, gardens and stock, and he is a splendid specimen of the typical young man of the South.

Winnfield has two large general merchandise stores making shipments via Montgomery, twenty-four miles away. Those belonging to Mr. Charles Smith and Mr. Bernstern carry large stocks, have some trade with Indians and do a picturesque commodity of fine fur skins. There is an admirably maintained school and a good jail, but no courthouse, the latter having been recently burned. The town scatters with cheerful homes on the broad hills, where a decent, refined and moral people are living good and wholesome lives and children grow as pure as the pine-sweet air that pumps to their lungs.

The oldest house in the village—that is as peaceful and pretty as that far off Irish Auburn I once traveled countless miles to see and fall in love with its sweet silences—is of big, oak logs, black with age, picturesque in the grand manner of fine places, exquisitely clean, with a memory of spinning wheels about its low-raftered ceiling and full of the homely comfort of home-made chairs with deer hide seats, regular Sleepy Hollows, as much created for such big firesides as Eve was created for Adam.

It was just such a stout old log house as one reads of in blood-curdling Indian stories, and my delight increased when I discovered right in its middle rib a queer little box-shop of a post office belonging to Uncle Sam, and presided over gently, primly, and gracefully by one of Uncle Sam’s bonniest daughters, Miss Florence Dunn. Did ever a huge oaken window so pleasantly frame a young post-mistress, whose eyes compensated for the letter that never came? Long may she keep in office—come Democrat, Third Party or Republican—even until Winnfield’s ways are all electric lighted, and the quaint Log House Hotel has retired to an honest obscurity behind some four-storied, mansarded American gorgeousness.

Just about four miles outside of Winnfield, where the hills are steepest, the forests densest, there is a grand tumblification of noble gray rocks. The place is known as the marble quarry, and at one time things got so far along towards a boom that an adjacent, meadowy, sunny slope of land at the top of the tallest hill was laid out, on clean white paper, into town lots, and this city in the air—full of "chateau en Espagne"—was christened Marble City.

The "city" is still a meadow and the only inhabitants are the fairy folk of the forest, but the marble hill of exquisite beauty, of scenery, or enormous value in some far future to possible developers, as real as rock can be. Here is a hill of perhaps 250 or 350 feet in elevation, jutting boldly and ruggedly out above the surrounding country, and all is lost under a jungle of interlacing vines and a tremendous growth of big trees as to have all the romantic appearance of an undiscovered treasure land.

Accompanied by my gallant young host, Mr. Milling and his charming wife, we drove out one afternoon to see the marble hill. The road was pretty, as these country roads always are, curving sinuously down hill, and shaded by the broad branches of noble beech trees. Scarcely the old skeleton of a wagon rut showed in the meadowy no- thoroughfare, and we pushed the nervous ponies on down-hill over rotting logs, through lush vines and over tumbled rocks on which their feet flashed fire. So dense was the forest that it seemed a gray, late afternoon, although out on the hill top of Winnfield I knew the sun was boldly blazing.

On we moved, until, when my guide said we had come four miles, he invited us to alight. We stood in a tiny bit of a lost valley, scarcely large enough, it seemed, to turn the horses in. Just before us lay soft mosses of rock burned down into lime, and all about great boulders of the marble we had come to see. One huge fellow that had been blasted out might almost make a sarcophagus for a king; others were smaller. High above our heads towered the rugged hill. The marble is here in apparently inexhaustible quantities, lying in an amphitheater of exquisite beauty, and it is certainly of a great value, if only for building purposes.

The marble is gray and white; it runs in many streaks, like the lean and fat in bacon, dark gray and bluish white. Some rocks showed these gray and white stratas as uniformly arranged as the printed lines of color in a bed ticking. Many of the large pieces showed blemishes, or big pores, but a commercial availability was patent to the most careless eye. When polished, it is of a fine, satiny surface, and extremely handsome to the eye, although with the sad, tombstoney suggestion inseparable from gray and white marble.

Leaving the foot of the quarry, we drove slowly around the hill until its top was reached. Here, standing on a broad shelf of marble, we could look down, some thirty or forty feet, upon a fern-fringed lake, and below that the tiny valley where the lime kiln was. The rock hill was like a huge basin hollowed out. Here and there piles, as if earthquake-wrought, tumbled over each other, all moss-grown or dank with delicate ferns. Here a huge hole showed the entrance to a cave that no one has explored because of the spirit dwelling there. A quaint little legend runs that rocks dropped down this cavernous maw come slowly rolling back again next day.

Standing out lonesomely and steep on a huge column of rock, rounded and shaped as if the statue already leaped in its rigid fabric, with a gray beard of fading vines at its foot and a waving tuft of dried grasses on its crest, this "Pulpit Rock" adds its somber shape of beauty to a scene that looks more Alpine or Californian than Louisianan. Below on the still lake, the long green rushes lean to touch the big rocks mirrored there. With an unearthly hoot, an owl wings over the rock valley from brim to brim of the basin. And then, silenced by all the solitude of nature, we come slowly away.

A railroad will do for Winn Parish what centuries of other enterprises might not accomplish. The key to this treasure house is a steel rail. It will make its landowners prosperous, it will develop its curious salt region and build a sanitarium there, it will turn those huge gray lumps of stone, like crude wedges of jelly cake, into polished slabs, into monuments on which post mortem and inefficacious compliments may be paid to us, into rustic cut blocks for the building of rich men’s palaces. It will bring the wines of France in contact with its white oak staves and send its splendid pine half around the world.

A railroad is now in process of building from Eldorado, Ark., to Alexandria. Its air line goes through Winnfield. This would be a short line to St. Louis. The Watkins road, already running from Lake Charles to Alexandria, promises to pass by the marble quarry. Meanwhile slowly, silently and pluckily a sturdy little road known as the Beardsley Road is pushing on Winnfield from Homer.

Surely, one of these days the ugly duckling of Winn Parish, that famous parish going by the spread-eagle subtitle of "free," will parade its wealth and resources to the world, nor will it have then in that golden day of opulence any need of so humble and modest a pen as that of her who signs herself

CATHRINE COLE

Notes: