"  Major  McDowell,"  says  Sharp,  "  rode  along  the  lines,
and  informed  us  that  the  plantation  belonged  to  him,  and
kindly  invited  us  to  take  rails  from  his  fences,  and  make
fires  to  warm  and  dry  us.  I  suppose  that  every  one  felt
grateful  for  this  generous  offer ;  for  it  was  rather  cold,  it
being  the  last  of  October,  and  every  one,  from  the  Com-
mander-in-chief to  the  meanest  private,  was  as  wet  as  if  he
had  just  been  dragged  through  the  Catawba  river."

It  is  evident  from  Allaire's  Diary,  that  when  it  was  pos-
sible, courtesies  were  extended  to  the  British  officers — even
when  the  Whig  patriots  themselves  were  camping  out  on
the  ground.  "  We  officers,"  he  says,  "  were  allowed  to  go
to  Colonel  McDowell's,  where  we  lodged  comfortably."  A
litde  incident  transpired  on  this  occasion  which  the  good
Lieutenant  did  not  care,  perhaps,  to  record  in  his  Diary.
Some  of  these  very  same  officers  had  visited  the  residence


348  KING 'S  MO  UNTAIN

of  the  McDowell's,  under  very  different  circumstances,  the
preceding  month,  when  Ferguson  had  invaded  the  Upper
Catawba  Valley,  and  when  the  two  brothers,  Colonel
Charles  and  Major  Joseph  McDowell,  had  retired  with  their
little  band  across  the  mountains.  Their  widowed  mother
was  the  presiding  hostess  of  the  old  homestead  at  the
Quaker  Meadows  ;  she  was  a  woman  of  uncommon  energy
and  fearlessness  of  character — a  native  of  the  Emerald  Isle.
She  possessed  a  nice  perception  of  right  and  wrong ;  and,
withal,  was  not  wanting  in  her  share  of  quick  temper
peculiar  to  her  people.
