Exploration and early travels : first impressions. The land and landscape : a new Eden. The third and last expedition, and conjectures of the land beyond the Apalataean Mountains / John Lederer -- from The journal of John Fontaine / John Fontaine -- The garden of God from Biographical memoirs of Daniel Boone / Timothy Flint -- from Letters from the South / James Kirke Paulding -- from Sketches of history, life, and manners in the United States / Anne Newport Royall.

Exploration and early travels : first impressions. The first inhabitants : the noble naturals. from Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake / Henry Timberlake -- Report of the journey of the Brethren Abraham Steiner and Frederick C. De Schweinitz to the Cherokees and the Cumberland settlements / Abraham Steiner and Frederick C. De Schweinitz -- from Letters from Alabama on various subjects / Anne Newport Royall -- Removal of the Cherokees / John G. Burnett.

Exploration and early travels : first impressions. The mythical heritage : poor white and hillbilly. from The History of the dividing line / William Byrd II -- from American ornithology / Alexander Wilson -- from Travels in America, performed in 1806 / Thomas Ashe -- from Letters from the South / James Kirke Paulding -- from Recollections of the last ten years / Timothy Flint -- from Sketches of history, life, and manners in the United States / Anne Newport Royall.

Backwoods humor : tall tale and tall talk. A bear hunt / David Crockett -- Sut Lovingood's daddy, Acting Horse / George Washington Harris -- Parson John Bullen's lizards / George Washington Harris -- Journalism in Tennessee / Mark Twain.

Southern romanticism : the sublime and the beautiful. Natural bridge (from Notes on the state of Virginia) / Thomas Jefferson -- The travellers (from Charlemont) / William Gilmore Simms -- The secret of the mountains / John Esten Cooke -- Friendship in the hills (from Tiger Lilies) / Sidney Lanier -- The mountains / David Hunter Strother ("Porte Crayon").

Local color : realism and romance. The dancin' party at Harrison's Cove (from In the Tennessee mountains) / Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) -- Christmas Eve on Lonesome / John Fox, Jr.

New dimensions of realism : Renaissance in the hills. The cow in the corn (from This day and time) / Anne W. Armstrong -- Sairy and the young'uns / Beulah Roberts Childers -- The Great Schism (from The hills beyond) / Thomas Wolfe -- A jury case / Sherwood Anderson.

Uses of the past : the search for identity. Vacation in hell / Jesse Stuart -- Melungeon-colored / Mildred Haun -- A master time / James Still -- Adjusting (from The Dollmaker) / Harriette Arnow -- Family ties (from A death in the family) / James Agee -- Sins of the fathers (from Return the innocent earth) / Wilma Dykeman.

Muse of the mountains : Appalachian poetry. Thar's more in the man than thar is in the land / Sidney Lanier -- Sanctuary / Donald Davidson -- from Man with a bull-tongue plow ; from Album of destiny ; from Kentucky is my land / Jesse Stuart -- from Gauley Mountain ; from Paradox Hill / Louise McNeill -- from Song of a woods colt / Billy Edd Wheeler -- from Scenes from a Southern road / Lee Pennington -- from Eyes of the mole / Jane Stuart -- from Leaves from the legend of Luther Lamp / David McClellan -- Cole's first song / Marion Hodge -- from Dialogue with a dead man / Jim Wayne Miller.

Echoes and reverberations : essays in criticism and culture. Some don'ts for literary regionalists / Robert Penn Warren -- Sevier, Robertson, and the Watauga Commonwealth, 1769-1774 (from Winning of the West) / Theodore Roosevelt -- Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (from Writings of Sam Houston) / Sam Houston -- Scotland, Ulster, and Appalachia (from A Study of history) / Arnold J. Toynbee -- Six Davy Crocketts / Walter Blair -- "Poisoned!" / Edmund Wilson -- Tidewater and frontier / Randall Stewart -- The hills of Zion / H.L. Mencken -- Education (from Yesterday's people) / Jack Weller -- A mirror for Appalachia / Jim Wayne Miller -- An examination of the dialect in This day and time / Earl F. Schrock, Jr. -- The myth of the southern Appalachian dialect as a mirror of the mountaineer / James Robert Reese -- Who are the southern mountaineers? / Cratis Williams -- Appalachian values / Loyal Jones -- O, Appalachia! / Harry M. Caudill.