Our Southern Highlanders

Excerpt: ...practices them as instinctively and with as little compunction upon his own species as upon the deer and the wolf from whom he learned them. As a friend, no one will spring quicker to your aid, reckless of consequences, and fight with you to the last ditch; but fear of betrayal lies at the very bottom of his nature. His sleepless suspicion of ulterior motives is no more, no less, than a feral trait, inherited from a long line of forebears whose isolated lives were preserved only by incessant vigilance against enemies that stalked by night and struck without warning. Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the mountaineers. I am not speaking of personal but of race character