The people around the towns, such as Hickman, Union City, Dyersburg, and Moscow, are a highly respectable and well-educated class; but in the low, swampy country, in the cane brake and along the river, they are not, as a rule, a very agreeable class to live among. Of course, here, as in all other places, there are many intelligent, reliable, honorable men, but the great mass of the cane-brake population are ignorant and brutal. The term which they apply to their stock is also eminently appropriate to designate the people: they are "cane-fed." It is the custom to turn the cattle into the cane to feed when it is young and tender, and, as the amount of nutriment thus obtained is not very large, the "cane-fed" animals bear about the same relation to grain-fed stock that the people in that vicinity bear to the residents of healthy, prosperous, and educated communities. The larger portion of the population may be classed as "poor whites," and they constitute a peculiar variety of the human species. The men are tall, loose-jointed, and dyspeptic; they bear a marked resemblance to the vegetable productions of the vicinity, being rapid of growth, prolific, and generally worthless. Their education consists mainly of woodcraft and rifle-shooting; their proficiency in both of these branches is sometimes astonishing, and it is frequently said of their most expert hunters that they seem to have been born shot-gun or rifle in hand. Accomplishments they have none, except the rare instances where a few tunes upon the banjo have been learned from the negroes. Their tastes are few and simple,--whisky, snuff, hog, and hominy being the necessities and luxuries of life; that is, whisky and snuff are the necessities, all other things being secondary considerations. In their sober moods, they are frank, rough, and courageous; yet, even then, there is little about them to excite other feelings than those of pity and aversion. When full of bad whisky, however, they are apt to become quarrelsome and brutal, so that no man can feel sure of his safety in their company. An affront, real or imaginary, will then be apt to cause bloodshed, even if the insulted party has to bushwhack his enemy from a secure covert on the roadside as he is returning to his home. Every man goes armed, and, though fair fights in broad daylight are rare, cold-blooded murders are not infrequent. The law is seldom invoked to settle private differences, and, in fact, the functions of the legal officials are practically very limited in their influence. If a coroner ever sits upon a corpse, it is understood that he has done his whole duty by recording a verdict that "the deceased came to his death at the hands of some person or persons unknown."