University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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TItc (HWtl Hill mtsian. Manj ' years before the location here of the Univer- sity the place had become fairly well known as a camp- ing ground for the wagoners between Newbern and Salisbury ; between Petersburg and Pittsboro and other places to the south. The famous spring from which they drank is still to be found near the southwest cor- ner of the campus ; a small chapel stood on the lot now occupied by Mrs. Graves ' residence. The two most noted hills on the roads from Petersburg and from Newbern were those leading up to this camping ground. The old Strowd hill (recently abandoned), on what is now called the Durham road, and the hill on the Raleigh road (now also abolished), lying to the north of Piney Prospect. In view of these conditions it is easy to understand how the place came to be called Chapel Hill; and doubtle.ss many a wagoner commented on the appro- priateness of the name when, after a hard struggle, late in the afternoon, he reached the camping ground at the summit and greeted a fellow wagoner who, even after a harder pull, had just brought his loaded wagon up the other hill. Here, after swapping stories (and perhaps horses), these wearj ' travelers would rest under the shade of the oaks, already then more than a cen- tury old, and which for another century since have given pleasure and comfort to thousands of the young men from this and other States. Doubtless then, as now, everyone who has stopped on this hill long enough to drink the pure and never-failing water, to feel the delightful breezes that move across these hills, to enjoj the shade of these splendid trees, and to see the pic- turesque nooks and brooks that abound, has departed with regret. But few students during their college course tramp over the region around Chapel Hill as they should, and among those who were here years ago I often hear expressed the regret that they had not done more of this. Indeed, the life of the average student illustrates how one-sided an affair the ordinary education is. The average man, though himself a part of nature, seems to go through life with the feeling that, outside of him- self and his fellow-men, there is but little in nature worthy of his consideration. If everj- student who so comes to the University would, during his college life, spend one afternoon per week tramping over the hills and through the ravines within a few miles of the place, not .so much with a view to getting exercise, but with an earnest eifort to learn something about the .soils and the rocks, the springs and the wells and the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and the animals which may come in his way, he would not only come to be a more observant man, but he would gain a fund

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T }t mninttsiiv End tl;t State. £m The University is the head of the educational system of the state. Its life has run for over a century, and it is our oldest public school. It is older than all the present political parties, and doubtless it will survive them all. As the life of to-day is more exacting, more complex and more all embracing than the life of half a century ago, so the university of to-day, being both product and factor of the larger life about it, is broader in its field of work, more intense in its training, freer from artifi- cial and conventional methods and standards and nearer to actual life than the university of former days. There is greater freedom in all things and greater .sys- tem in all things. There is better conduct with fewer rules for conduct. There is less compulsion by author- ity and more compulsion by public sentiment. There is less molding and more developing. The teacher no longer plaues, saws, hammers and chisels the pupil into the required conventional shape, but teacher and student are both students, both teachers, companions, fellow-laborers in the great work of self-development. The university imposes no rigid nor uniform curric- ulum of study. Within reasonable limits each student may select to suit his tastes, talents or necessities. If a degree is sought, the candidite must not only lay the broad foundation of gene ral culture and learning, but must also demonstrate his power of original thought and prolonged investigation by some larger perform- ance than is involved in class-room work. The uni- versity requires for graduation to-day nearly twice as much work as it formerly did, and the quality of the work is even more improved. The university is daily coming into closer touch with the life of the state. It realizes that it exists for the good of the state. The problems before it are the problems that confront the state : problems of crime, of pauperism, of social unhappiness and disorder. It is training minds and training hearts and training bodies that will solve these problems. Its immediate ta.sk, and possibly its greatest, is to build up a system of education whereby each child in the state may achieve the largest possible development of all its faculties. It recognizes its right and its duty to be the head and heart of a life-giving system of education which carries cheer to the humblest cabin, strength to the weakest child, faith and hope to all that love human- ity. For this task it has girt its loins ; in this task it now labors with the zeal that comes from noble im- pulses and the confidence that is inspired by the clear perception of a splendid truth. It will not rest until the coals of learning from its altars have kindled fires that illumine the state. i6

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of information and a love of nature which would be a pleasure and a benefit to him as long as he l ived. Even a casual observer can see at once that the countrj ' which lies at the foot of the hills, to the east of the University, and extends on to Durham and to Morrisville, possesses characteristics quite different from those immediately about Chapel Hill. The rocks of this region to the east, which may be seen to begin at the foot of both the Stroud hill on the Durham road and the Cemetery hill on the Raleigh road, are com- paratively soft, red, brown and graj ' sandstones and shales, which nowhere on the surface are to be seen in rugged angular blocks like those on the hills about the town. They decay more rapidly into reddish and grayish sandy soils, which in turn are more easily washed away bj the action of running water than are the stiffer clay loam soils of the hills. And conse- quently during the past centuries and cycles of time the entire surface of country to the east of us has been worn away more rapidly and more extensively through the action of running water ; and now that surface is at a level of from loo to 200 feet lower than the country to the west. As a result of this difference in elevation, the streams which rise to the west of Chapel Hill, like Morgan ' s creek and Borlan ' s creek, at this greater elevation, and flow down into the lower sandstone region to the east of us, have each of them a rapid cur- rent, which has in each case carved out a valley or ravine in which it runs ; and thus it is that both to the north and to the .south of Chapel Hill we have the.se deep and narrow valleys, and between the two (on which the town and University are located) is a narrow ridge, covered for the most part by soil, though over a considerable portion of this surface are scattered boul- ders of rock, and in some cases larger masses of rock are exposed on the surface. Of the water which falls as rain upon the back of this ridge, the larger part of it runs off into the valleys with rapidity, and as it does so it washes away the .soil and carves out smaller irregular ravines down the slopes of the ridge. A portion of this water, however, sinks into the surface soil and reappears at the springs about the margins of the ridge, some but little below the top, like those within the University campus, and others nearer the base of the ridge. Still another por- tion of this water which sinks into the surface .soil gradually finds its way into the wells in the University campus and scattered through all portions of the town. Instead, then, of our drinking water which, in some mysterious way, flows in underground currents from the mountains, we drink that which falls as rain and soaks down through the soil immediately about us. The soil thus acts as a great storehouse of water ; and in long dry seasons, if the supply is not replenished from above by rains, the springs and wells sometimes go dry. It will be readily understood that this carving action of the water would .soon remove all of the surface soil of the ridge but for the fact that the surface is protected by the forest growth which covers it, and the rocks are decaying and thus furnishing new supplies of .soil from below. It will be readily understood, further, that if this decay of the rocks and washing action of the water is continued into the indefinite future, the entire ridge will be removed. But whether at that time the fraternity or anti-fraternity faction of the Uni- versity is in ascendancy — the greatest question on earth ; whether or not then the President has secured