Then once more he sought to goad his drooping spirits, to rouse himself
to a keener efficiency. He would not give up the emprise, he declared
again, he would not be conquered save by time itself. It was rather an
instinct, in pursuance of this revival of his resolution, to seek to rid
himself of his own thoughts, the constant canvass of his despair; this
had necessarily a resilient effect, benumbing to the possibilities of new
inspiration. He sought to freshen his faculties, to find some diversion
in the passing moment that might react favorably on the plan nearest his
heart. He forced himself to listen, at first in dull preoccupation, to
the talk of a group in the smoker; it glanced from one subject to
another--the surroundings, the soil, the timber, the mining
interests--and presently concentrated on a quaint corner of the region,
near the scene of the stoppage, the Qualla Boundary. This was the
reservation of a portion of the tribe of Cherokee Indians, the Eastern
Band, who nearly a century earlier had evaded, in the dense fastnesses of
these ranges, removal with their brethren to the west, and had finally
succeeded in buying this mountainous tract of fifty thousand acres.
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