That morning I saw on the street several Indians from the banks of Soco creek twenty miles distant. They were not arrayed in the picturesque pomp of the savage, but in the garb of civilization--home-spun coats and pantaloons, muslin shirts, and black hats. One of them, mounted on a stout little bay pony, was trying to sell his animal to some one in a crowd of horse-traders. Ponies can be purchased of the Cherokees at prices ranging from forty to seventy-five dollars. At present, however, there are very few of the full-blooded stock in the reservation. The other aborigines whom I chanced to see were, with moccasined feet, threading their ways through the crowds of lighter-complexioned, blue-clothed dwellers of the forests. The strongest drink sold openly during court-week is cider. Several wagons, holding barrels containing it, occupy stations close by the court-house door. A supply of ginger cake is sold with the cider. Whiskey can be procured at the drug store, but only on prescription. To the uninitiated it is a mystery where so many prescriptions come from; but perhaps a certain judge from a lower county, who some time since presided in this court, might rise and explain. The judge in question was exhausted from travel, and badly under the weather. Upon his arrival in the village he dispatched a negro to the drug store for a bottle of this singularly accredited panacea for all evils. The druggist refused to comply with the request, sending back word that he was obliged in all cases to conform to the requirements of the law, and that his honor should consult a physician. Later in the day the judge himself appeared at the drug store, and taking a package of paper from his pocket, cooly counted off sixteen prescriptions. Said he: “I have consulted my physician. You may fill one of these now; hang the others on your hook, and fill them as I send my order.” Whether the judge called for them all during the time he presided on that bench, is no part of the story. In the practice before the bar of the tribunal there is no marked difference between the proceedings of the mountain county court and those of the courts of other states practicing under the code. It has a peculiar but beneficent feature, however, in the rapidity with which cases are disposed of. One great end of justice, too frequently neglected--that wrongs shall be promptly righted--is hereby secured. A false and irreversible judgment of the court occurring, as may be, upon too hasty examination of a case, is no worse for the litigant than the trial of the heart between hope and despair for long, weary years before a decision is rendered, even though that decision be just.