There I remained for a very eventful month. Paxton had entered with the conquerors, and had just seized on the house. I may indeed say thatweseized on it, as regards any right—I being accepted as hail-fellow-well-met, and as a bird of the same feather. In it was a piano and a very good old-fashioned library. It was like Paxton to loot a library. He had had his pick of the best houses, and took this one, “niggers included,” for the servants, by some odd freak, preferred freedom with Paxton to slavery with their late owner. This gentleman was a Methodist clergyman, and Paxton found among his papers proofs that he had been concerned in a plot to burn Cincinnati by means of a gang of secret incendiaries.
Whenever the blacks realised the fact that a Northern man was agentleman—they all have marvellous instincts for this, and a respect for one beyond belief—they took to him with a love like that of bees for a barrel of syrup. I have experienced this so often, and in many cases so touchingly, that I cannot refrain from recording it. Among others who thus took to me was the giant Jim, who was unto Paxton and me as the captive of our bow and spear, albeit an emancipated contraband. When the Southerners defied General Butler to touch their slaves, because they were their “property” by law, the General replied by “confiscating” the property by what Germans callFaustrecht(or fist-right) as “contraband of war.”
This Jim, the general waiter and butler, was a character, shrewd, clever, and full of dry humour. When I was alone in the drawing-room of an evening, he would pile up a great wood-fire, and, as I sat in an arm-chair, would sit or recline on the floor by the blaze and tell me stories of his slave life, such as this:—
“My ole missus she always say to me, ‘Jim, don’ you ever have anything to do with dem Yankees. Dey’re all pore miserable wile wretches. Dey lib in poverty an’ nastiness and don’ know nothin’.’ I says to her, ‘It’s mighty quare, missus. I can’t understan’ it. Whar do all dem books come from? Master gits em from de Norf. Who makes all our boots an’ clothes and sends us tea an’ everythin’? Dey can’t all be so pore an’ ignoran’ ef dey writes our books an’ makes everythin’ we git.’ ‘Jim,’ she says, ‘you’re a fool, an’ don’ understan’ nothin’.’ ‘Wery good, missus,’ says I, but I thinked it over. All we do is to raise cotton, an’ dey make it into cloff, which we hav’n’t de sense to do.”
I believe that I give this word for word. And Jim, as I found, was a leading mind among the blacks.
I had a letter of introduction from Mr. Lea to Horace Harrison, who was the State Attorney for Tennessee. At this time his power was very great, for he had in his hands the disposition of all the estates of all the rebels in Tennessee. He was the type of a Southwestern gentleman. He reminded me very much of my old Princeton friends, and when I was in his office smoking a pipe, I felt as if I were in college again. I liked him very much. One morning I called, and after some deliberation he said, “You are a lawyer, are you not?” I replied that I had studied law under Judge Cadwallader.
“Then I should like to consult with you as a lawyer. I have a very difficult case to deal with. There is a law declaring that all property belonging to rebels shall be seized and held for one year. Now, here is a man whose estate I have held for six months, who has come in and declared his allegiance, and asks for his lands. And I believe that before long, unless he comes in now, they will be almost ruined. What shall I do?”
“It appears to me,” I replied, “that if the disposal of these lands is in your hands, you must be supposed to exertsome will and discretion.Stat pro ratione voluntasis a good axiom here. We are not at allin statu quo ante bellum—in fact, the war is not at an end, nor decided. Your duty is to act for the good of the country, and not simply toskinthe enemy like a bushwhacker, but to pacify the people.Victor volentes per populos dat jura—laws should always be mildly interpreted. In your case, considering the very critical condition of the country, I should in equity give the man his property, and take his oath of allegiance. Severe measures are not advisable—quod est violentum,non est durabile.”
This is, I believe, pretty accurately what I said. That evening, as I was sitting with General Whipple, he amazed me by addressing me exactly as Mr. Harrison had done in the morning.
“I say, Leland, you’re a lawyer, and I want your advice. There are six warehouses here, and I want them badly for military stores. But Horace Harrison says that I can’t have them, because he holds them for the United States. What am I to do?”
“General Whipple,” I replied, “is this town under military occupation in time of war, or is it not?”
“Most decidedly it is.”
“So I should think from the way your patrols bother me. And if such is the case, all things must yield to military wants. Where we have no legal principles or courts to decide, we must fall back on legal axioms. And here the law is clear and explicit, for it says,Inter arma leges silent—the laws are suspended in warfare.”
“A magnificent saying!” exclaimed the General admiringly. “Ah! you ought to be in the Supreme Court.” And seizing a pen he wrote to the State Attorney:—
“Sir: This town, being but recently captured from the enemies of the United States, is, of course, under military occupation, which renders absolutely necessary for military purpose many temporary seizures and uses, such as that of the six warehouses referred to in our late correspondence.As regards legal precedent and principle, I need not remind one of your learning that—(I say, Leland, how do you spell that Latin?—I-n-t-e-r—yes, I’ve got it)—Inter arma silent leges.”
“Sir: This town, being but recently captured from the enemies of the United States, is, of course, under military occupation, which renders absolutely necessary for military purpose many temporary seizures and uses, such as that of the six warehouses referred to in our late correspondence.As regards legal precedent and principle, I need not remind one of your learning that—(I say, Leland, how do you spell that Latin?—I-n-t-e-r—yes, I’ve got it)—Inter arma silent leges.”
I am afraid that Horace Harrison, when he got that letter, suspected that I had been acting as counsel for both sides. However, as I took no fee, my conscience was at rest. I think that I was of great use to General Whipple at that time, and, as he said one day, an unofficial secretary. Great and serious matters passed through our hands (for the General and Harrison were taking the lead in virtually reforming the whole frontier or debatable land), and these grand affairs were often hurried through “like hot cakes.” My slender legal attainments were several times in requisition on occasions when the head of the Supreme Court would have been a more appropriate referee. I discovered, however, that there was really a department of law in which I might have done good work. Questions of very serious importance were often discussed and disposed of among us three with very great economy of time and trouble. And here I may say—“excuse the idle word”—that I wonder that I never in all my life fell into even the most trifling diplomatic or civil position, when, in the opinion of certain eminent friends, I possess several qualifications for such a calling—that is, quickness in mastering the legal bearings of a question, a knowledge of languages and countries, readiness in drawing up papers, and an insatiable love of labour, which latter I have not found to bealwayspossessed by the accomplished gentlemen whom our country employs abroad.
I may here narrate a curious incident which touched and gratified me. When all the slaves in Nashville were set free by the entrance of our troops, the poor souls, to manifest their joy, seized a church (nobody opposing), and for three weeks held heavy worship for twenty-four hours per diem.But not a white soul was allowed to enter—the real and deeply-concealed reason being that Voodoo rites (whichgained great headway during the war) formed a part of their devotion. However, I was informed that an exception would be made in my case, and that I was free to enter. And why? Had Jim surmised, by that marvellous intuition of character which blacks possess, that I had in me “the mystery”? Now, to-day I hold and possess the black stone of the Voodoo, the possession of which of itself makes me a grand-master and initiate or adept, and such an invitation would seem as natural as one to a five-o’clock tea elsewhere; but I was not known to any one in Nashville as a “cunjerer,” and the incident strikes me as very curious.
Apropos of marvels, many of the blacks can produce in their throats by some strange process sounds, and even airs, resembling those of the harmonicon, or musical box, one or the other or both. One evening in Nashville, in a lonely place, I heard exquisite music, which I thought must be that of a superior hand-organ from afar. But, to my amazement, I could discover none; there were only two black boys in the street. Alexis Paxton, the son of my host, explained to me that what I heard was unquestionably music made by those ebony flutes of boys, and that there were some wonderful performers in the city. I have listened to the same music at a public exhibition. I greatly wonder that I have never heard of this kind of music in Europe or the East. It is distinctlyinstrumental, not vocal in its tones. It has the obvious recommendation of economy, since by means of it a young lady could be performer and pianoforte all in one, which was indeed the beginning of the invention in Syrinx, who was made into a pan-pipe, which as a piano became the great musical curse (according to Heine) of modern times, and by which, as I conjecture, the fair Miss Reed or Syrinx revenges herself on male humanity. By the way, the best singer of “Che faro senza Euridice” whom I ever heard was a Miss Reed, a sister of Mrs. Paran Stevens.
I had a very pleasant time with Paxton, and I know right well that I was no burden on him, but a welcome friend.Au reste, there was plenty of room in the house, and abundant army stores to be had for asking, and one or two rare acquaintances. One of these was a Southern officer, now a general, who had come over to our side and fought, as the saying was, with a rope round his neck. He was terribly hated by the rebels, which hate he returned with red-hot double compound interest—for a renegade is worse than ten Turks. He was the very type of a grim, calm old Border moss-trooper. He lived in his boots, and never had an ounce of luggage. One evening General Whipple (always humane and cultivated, though as firm as an iron bar) said to him before me, “I really don’t know what to do with many of my rebel prisoners. They dress themselves in Federal uniforms for want of other clothes; they take them from the dead on the battlefield, and try to pass themselves off for Federals. It is very troublesome.”
“No trouble to me,” replied the other.
“And how do you do with them?”
“Shoot them asspies. Why, only last week I got four dozen of them, and in less than four minutes I had them all laid out stiff in the road.”
The reader need not imagine that the general here romanced or exaggerated. At that very moment the massacres and murders which were going on within three miles of us were beyond belief. The bands ofguerillasor bushwhackers which swept the country murdered in cold blood all who fell into their hands, and the Confederate soldiers often did the same. There resulted, of course, a deadly hatred on both sides, and the most unscrupulous retaliation.
I could fill a book with the very interesting observations which I made in Nashville. And here I call attention to a very strange coincidence which this recalls. During the previous year I had often expressed a great desire to be in some State during its transition from Confederacy to Unionism, that I might witness the remarkable social and political paradoxes and events which would result, and I had oftenspecified Tennessee as the one above all others which I should prefer to visit for this purpose. And I had about as much idea that I should go to the moon as there. But prayers are strangely granted at strange hours—plus impetravi quam fuissem ausus—and I was placed in the very centre of the wheel. This very remarkable fulfilment of a wish, and many like it, though due to mere chance, naturally made an impression on me, for no matter how strong our eyesight may be, or our sense of truth, we are all dazed when coming out of darkness into light, and all the world is in that condition now. No matter how completely we exchange the gloom of supernaturalism for the sunlight of science, phantoms still seem to flit before our eyes, and, what is more bewildering still, we do not as yet know but what these phantoms may be physical facts. Perhaps the Voodoo stonemayhave the power to awaken the faith which may move the vital or nervous force, which may act on hidden subtler forms of electricity and matter, atoms and molecules. Ah! we have a great deal to learn!
Through General Whipple’s kind aid the brothers Colton were at once brought up from the front. With them and Captain Paxton we went to Murfreesboro, and at once called on the general in command, whose name I have forgotten. He struck me as a grim, brave old commander, every inch a soldier. While we conversed with him a sergeant entered, a man who looked as if he lived in the saddle, and briefly reported that a gang of guerillas were assembled at a certain place some miles away—I forget how far, but the distance was traversed in an incredibly short time. The general issued orders for a hundred cavalry to go at once and “get” them. They “got” them, killing many, and the next morning, on looking from my window, I saw the victors ride into the courtyard, many of them with their captives tied neck and heels, like bags of corn, over the cruppers of the horses. A nice night’s ride they must have had! But the choice was between death and being cruppered, and they preferred thelatter to coming a cropper. Strange that the less a man has to live for the more he clings to life.
The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and four men, and if we were well armed, that wemightgo out on the Bole Jack road and return unharmed, “unless we met with any of the great gangs of bushwhackers.” But he evidently thought, as did General Whipple, who did not heed a trifle by any means, that we were going into the lion’s jaws. So the next morning,equo iter ingredi, I rode forth. I had some time before been appointed aide-de-camp to Governor Pollock, of Pennsylvania, with the rank of colonel, and had now two captains and a corporal with his guard. It was a rather small regiment.
We heard grim stories that morning as to what had taken place all around us within almost a few hours. Three Federal pickets had been treacherously shot while on guard the night before; the troops had surprised a gang of bushwhackers holding a ball, and firing through the windows, dropped ten of them dead while dancing; two men had been murdered by --- --- and his gang. This was a noted guerilla, who was said to have gone south with the Confederate army, but who was more generally believed to have remained in hiding, and to have committed most of the worst outrages and murders of late.
At the first house where we stopped in the woods there lay a wounded man, one of the victims of the dance the night before. The inmates were silent, but not rude to us. I offered a man whisky, but he replied, “I don’t use it.” We rode on. Once there was an alarm of “bushwhackers.” I should have forgotten it but for the memory of the look of Baldwin Colton’s eyes, the delighted earnestness of a man or of a wild creature going to fight. He and his brother had hunted and fought guerillas a hundred times, perhaps much oftener, for it was a regular daily service at the front. Once during a retreat, Baldwin (eighteen or nineteen years of age) fell out of rank so often to engage in hand-to-hand swordconflicts with rebel cavalrymen, that his brother detached four to take him prisoner and keep him safe. Daring spirits among our soldiers often became very fond of this kind of duelling, in which the rebs were not a whit behind them, and two of the infantry on either side would, under cover of the bushes, aim and pop away at one another perhaps for hours, like two red Indians.
I have forgotten whether it was with extra whisky, coffee, or money that we specially gratified our corporal and guard; but Baldwin, who was “one of ’em,” informed me that they enjoyed this little outing immensely, just like a picnic, and had a good time. From which it may be inferred that men’s ideas of enjoyment are extremely relative. It could not have been in the dodging of guerillas—to that they were accustomed; perhaps it was the little extra ration, or the mystery of the excursion, for they were much puzzled to know what I wanted, why I examined the road and rocks, and all so strangely, and went into the very worst place in all the land to do so. Baldwin Colton himself had been so knocked about during the war, and so starved as a prisoner in Southern hands, that he looked back on a sojourn in thatergastulum, Libby Prison, as rather an oasis in his sad experiences. “It wasn’t so bad a place as some, and there was good company, and alwayssomething to eat.” The optimist of Candide was a Mallock in mourning compared to this.
That night we came to somebody’s plantation. I forget his name, but he was a Union man, probably averyrecent acquisition, but genial. He had read theKnickerbocker, and knew my name well, and took good care of us. In the morning I offered him ten dollars for our night’s lodging, which was, in the opinion of my two captains, stupendously liberal, as soldiers never paid. Our host declined it like a Southern planter, on the ground that he never sold his hospitality. So I put the money into the hand of one of his pretty children as a present. But as we rode forth we were called back, and reminded that we had forgotten to pay forthesoldiers! I gave another five-dollar greenback and rode away disgusted. And at the gate a negro girl begged us to give her a “dalla” (dollar) to buy a fish-line. It all came from my foolish offer to pay. Gratitude is a sense of further benefits to be bestowed.
The place where the oil had been seen was near a conical rocky hill called Grindstone Knob. We examined carefully and found no trace of it. The geology of the country was unfavourable, much flint and conglomerate, if I remember, and wanting in the signs of coal, shales, &c., and “faults” or ravines. I may be quite wrong, but such was my opinion. No one who lived thereabout had ever heard of “ile.” Once I asked a rustic if any kind of oil was found in the neighbourhood in springs. His reply was, “What!ilecome up outer the ground like water! H---! I never heard of sitch a thing.”There was no oil.
At the foot of Grindstone Knob was a rather neat, small house, white, with green blinds. We were somewhat astonished to learn from a negro boy, who spoke the most astonishingly bad English, that this was the home of Mas’ --- ---. Yes, this was the den of the wolf himself, and I had no doubt that he was not far off. There was a small cotton plantation round about.
We entered, and were received by a good-looking, not unladylike, but rather fierce-eyed young woman and her younger sister. It was Mrs. ---. The two had been to a lady’s seminary in Nashville, and played the piano for us. I felt that we were in a strange situation, and now and then walked to the window and looked out, listening all the time suspiciously to every sound. It was easy enough for Mrs. ---, the brigand’s wife, to perceive from my untanned complexion that I had not been in the field, and was manifestly no soldier. “Youlook like an officer,” she said to Captain Colton, “and so doesthatone, but what ishe?” meaning me by this last. We had dinner—roast kid—and when we departed I gave the dame five dollars, havingthe feeling that I could not be indebted to thieves for a dinner.
We had gone but a little distance when we saw two bushwhackers with guns, and gave chase, but they disappeared in the bushes, much to the grief of our men, who would have liked either to shoot them or to bring them in. Then the corporal told us that while we were at dinner’s “faithful blacks” had informed his men that “Mas’ had been at home ever since Crismas”; that at eleven o’clock every night they assembled at the house and thence went out marauding and murdering.
I paused, astonished and angry. It was almost certain that the bushwhacker had been during dinner probably in the cellar under our feet. The guerillas had great fear of our regular soldiers; two of the latter were a match at any time for half-a-dozen of the former, as was proved continually. Should I go back and hang --- up over his own door? I was dying to do it, but we had before us a very long ride through the Cedar Barrens, the sun was sinking in the west, and we had heard news which made it extremely likely that a large band of guerillas would be in the way.
That resolve to go actually saved our lives, for I heard the next day that a hundred and fifty of these free murderers had gone on our road just after us. This fact was at once transferred to the Northern newspapers, that “on --- a hundred and fifty bushwhackers passed over the Bole Jack road.” Which was read by my wife and father, who knew that on that very day I was on that road, to their great apprehension.
I never shall forget the dismal appearance of the Cedar Barrens. The soil was nowhere more than two inches deep, and the trees which covered it by millions had all died as soon as they attained a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Swarms of ill-omened turkey-buzzards were the only living creatures visible “like foullemurésflitting in the gloom.”
Riding over the battlefield the Coltons and Paxtonpointed out many things, for they had all been in it severely. At one place, Major Rosengarten, a brother of my old Paris fellow-student, had had a sabre-fight with a rebel, and they told me how Rosengarten’s sword, being one of the kind which was issued by contract in the earlier days of the war, bent and broke like a piece of tin. Hearing a ringing sound Baldwin jumped from his horse, picked up a steel ramrod and gave it to me for a cane.
As we approached Murfreesboro’ I met a genial, daring soldier, one Major Hill, whom I had seen before. He had with him a hundred and fifty cavalry. “Where are you going so late by night?” I said.
He replied, “I am after that infernal scoundrel, --- ---. My scouts have found out pretty closely his range. I am going to divide my men into tens and scatter them over the country and then close in.”
“Major,” I replied, “I will tell you just where to lay your hand at once, heavy on him. Do you know Grindstone Knob and a white house with green windows at its foot?”
“I do.”
“Well, be there at exactly eleven to-night, and you’ll get him. I have been there and learned it from the niggers.”
“Well, I declare that you are a good scout, Mr. Leland!” cried the Major in amazement. “What can I do to thank you?”
“Well, Major Hill,” I said, “I have one thing to request: that is, if you get ---, don’t parole him.Shoot him at once; he is a red-handed murderer.”
“Iwillshoot him,” said the Major, and rode forth into the night with his men. But whether he ever got --- I never knew, though according to the calculations of the Coltons, who were extremely experienced in such matters, “Massa ---” had not more than one chance in a thousand to escape, and Hill was notoriously a good guerilla-hunter and a man of his word.
I believe that at the plantation our men had camped out.At Murfreesboro’ we returned them to the general, and I took the Coltons to a hotel, which was so very rough that I apologised for it, while Baldwin said it seemed to him to be luxurious beyond belief, and that it was the first night for eighteen months in which he had slept in a bed. In the morning I wanted a spur, having lost one of mine, and there was brought to me a large boxful of all kinds of spurs to choose from, which had been left in the house at one time or another during the war.
I did not remain long in Nashville after returning thither. I had instructions to go to Louisville, Kentucky, and there consult with a certain merchant as to certain lands. General Whipple accompanied me to the “depôt,” which was for the time and place as much of an honour as if Her Majesty were to come to see me off at Victoria Station. There was many and many a magnate in those days and there, who would have given thousands to have had his ear as Paxton and I had it.
One night we were in the side private box at the theatre in Nashville. Couldock, whom I had known well many years before, was on the stage. The General was keeping himself deeply in the shade to remain unseen. He remarked to Paxton that he wanted a house for his family, who would soon arrive, and could not find one, for they were all occupied. This one remark shows the man. I wonder how long General Butler would have hesitated to move anybody!
Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody. With a quick glance from his keen dark eyes he exclaimed—
“I’ve got it! Do you see that fat man laughing so heartily in the pit? He has a splendid house; it would just suit you; and he’s a d---d old rebel. I know enough about him to hang him three times over. He has” (here followed a series of political iniquities). “Voilà votre affaire.”
“And how is it that he has kept his house?” asked the General.
“He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or something of that sort.”
The General looked thoughtfully at the fat man as the latter burst into a fresh peal of laughter. I thought that if he had known what was being said in our box that laugh would have died away.
I do not know whether the General took the house. I think he did. I left for Louisville. There I saw the great merchant, who invited me to his home to supper and consulted with me. His daughters were rebels and would not speak to me. He had a great deal of property in Indiana, whichmightbe oil-lands. If I would visit it and report on it, he would send his partner with me to examine it. I consented to go.
This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy manners. With him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by “stages,” waggons, or on horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the interior of the State. I can remember vast marshy fields with millions of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen in my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to the doors and floors of the houses. At last we reached our journey’s end at a large log-house on a good farm.
I liked the good man of the house. He said to us, after a time, that at first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up city fellows, but had found to his joy that we were old-fashioned, sensible people. There was no sugar at his supper-table, but he had three substitutes for it—“tree-sweetnin’, bee-sweetnin’, and sorghum”—that is, maple sugar, honey, and the molasses made from Chinese maize. Only at a mile’s distance there was a “sugar-camp,” and we could see the fires and hear the shouts of the people engaged night and day in making sugar from the trees.
He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often wandered. During the Revolutionary war some onehad buried a barrelful of silver plate and money, and over it flitted the quivering silver flame, but no one could ever find the spot.
The next day I examined the land. There was abundance of fossiliferous limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary shells, also cartloads of beautifulgeodesor round flint balls, which often rattled, and which, when broken, were encrusted with white or purple amethystine crystals. I decided that there were places where oil might be found, though there was certainly no indication of it. I believe that my conjecture subsequently proved to be true, and that Indiana has shown herself to be a wise virgin not without oil.
On the afternoon of the next day, riding with my guide, I found that I had left my blanket at a house miles behind. I offered the man a large price to return and bring it, which he did. While waiting by the wood, in a dismal drizzle, I saw a log cabin and went to it for shelter. Its only inmate was a young woman, who, seeing me coming, hastily locked the door and rushed into the neighbouring woods. When the guide returned I expressed some astonishment at the flight;hedid not. With a very grave expression he asked me, “Don’t the gals inyourpart of the country allays break for the woods when they seeyoua-coming?” “Certainly not,” I replied. To which he made answer, “Thank God, our gals here hev got better morrils than yourn.”
We returned to St. Louis. There I was shown the immensely long tomb of Porter the Kentucky giant. This man was nine feet in height! I had seen him alive long before in Philadelphia. I made several interesting acquaintances in St. Louis, the Athens of the West. But I must hurry on.
I went to Cincinnati, where I found orders to wait for Mr. Lea. A syndicate had been formed in Providence, Rhode Island, which had purchased a great property in Cannelton, West Virginia. This consisted of a mountain in which there was an immense deposit of cannel coal. Cannelton was verynear the town of Charleston, which is at the junction of the Kanawha (a tributary of the Ohio) and Elk rivers.
I waited a week at the hotel in Cincinnati for Mr. Lea. It was a weary week, for I had no acquaintances and made none. Never in my life before did I see so many Sardines, or Philistines of the dullest stamp as at that hotel. But at last Mr. Lea came with a party of ladies and gentlemen. A small steamboat was secured, and we went up the Ohio. The voyage was agreeable and not without some incidents. There was a freshet in the river, and one night, taking a short cut over a cornfield, the steamboat stuck fast—like Eve—in an apple-tree.
One day one of the party asked me what was the greatest aggregate deposit of coal known in England. I could not answer. A few hours after we stopped at a town in Kentucky. There I discovered by chance some old Patent Office reports, and among them all the statistics describing the coal mines in England. When we returned to the boat I told my informant that the largest deposit in England was just half that of Cannelton, and added many details. Mr. Lea was amazed at my knowledge. I told him that I deserved no credit, for I had picked it up by chance. “Yes,” he replied, “and how was it that youchancedto read that book? None of us did. Such chances come to inquiring minds.”
It also chanced that this whole country abounded in signs of petroleum. It was found floating on springs. The company possessed rights of royalty on thousands of acres on Elk River, which was as yet in the debatable land, harassed by rebels. These claims, however, were “run out,” and needed to be renewed by signatures from the residents. They were in the hands of David Goshorn, who kept the only “tavern” or hotel in Charleston, and he asked $5,000 for his rights. There was another party in the field after them.
I verily believe that David Goshorn sold the right to me because he played the fiddle and I the guitar, and because he did not like the rival, who was a Yankee, while I was a congenialcompanion. Many a journey had we together, and as I appreciated him as a marked character of odd oppositions, we got on admirably.
In Cannelton I went down into a coal mine and risked my life strangely in ascending a railway. The hill is 1,500 feet in height, and on its face is a railway which ascends at an angle of 15°, perhaps the steepest in America. I ascended in it, and soon observed that of the two strands of the iron cable which drew it one was broken. The very next week the other broke, and two men were killed by an awful death, they and the car falling a thousand feet to the rocks below.
The next week we returned to Cincinnati, and thence to Philadelphia. On my way from New York to Providence I became acquainted in the train with a modest, gentlemanly man, who told me he was a great-grandson or descendant of Thomson who wrote the “Seasons.” I thought him both great and grand in an incident which soon occurred. A burly, bull-necked fellow in the car was attacked with an epileptic fit. He roared, kicked, screamed like a wildcat; and among fifty men in the vehicle, I venture to say that only Thomson and I, in a lesser degree, showed any plain common sense. I darted at the epileptic, grappled with him, held him down by what might be called brutal kindness, for I held his head down, while I sat on his arm and throttled himsans merci—I avow it—and tore off in haste his neckcloth (his neck was frightfully swelled), while Thomson brought cold water from the “cooler,” with which we bathed his face freely, and chafed his pulse and forehead. Little by little he recovered. The other passengers, as usual, did nothing, and a little old naval officer, who had been fifty years in service (as Thomson told me), simply kicked and screamed convulsively, “Take him away! take him away!” The epileptic was George Christy, the original founder of the Christy Minstrels. I can never think of this scene without exclaiming, “ViveThomson!” for he was the only man among us who displayed quiet self-possession andsavoir faire. As for me, my“old Injun” was up, and I had “sailed in” for a fight by mere impulse.ViveThomson!Bon sang ne peut mentir.
I went to Providence, where I was empowered to return to Cannelton to pay Goshorn $5,000, and renew the leases on Elk River. I should have to travel post to anticipate the Yankee. It was not concealed from me that even if I succeeded, I had before me a very dangerous and difficult task. But after what I had already gone through with I was ready for anything. I was really developing rapidly a wild, reckless spirit—the “Injun” was coming out of me. My old life and self had vanished like dreams. Only now and then, in the forests or by torrents, did something like poetry revisit me;literaturewas dead in me. Only once did I, in a railway train, compose the “Maiden mit nodings on.” I bore it in my memory for years before I wrote it out.
I arrived in Philadelphia. The next morning I was to rise early and fly westward. No time to lose. Before I rose, my sister knocked at the door and told us the awful news that President Lincoln had been murdered!
As I went to the station I saw men weeping in the streets, and everybody in great grief, conversing with strangers, as if all had lost a common relation. Everywhere utter misery! I arrived in Pittsburg. It was raining, and the black pall of smoke which always clothes the town was denser than ever, and the long black streamers which hung everywhere as mourning made the whole place unutterably ghastly. In the trains nothing but the murder was spoken of. There was a young man who had been in the theatre and witnessed the murder, which he described graphically and evidently truthfully.
I reached Cincinnati, and as soon as possible hurried on board the steamboat. We went along to Charleston, and it will hardly be believed that I very nearly missed the whole object of my journey by falling asleep. We had but one more very short distance to go, when, overcome by fatigue, I dropped into a nap. Fortunately I was awakened by the lastringing of the bell, and, seizing my carpet-bag, ran ashore just as the plank was to be withdrawn.
I went directly to Goshorn’s hotel. He was a stout, burly man, shrewd in his way, good-natured, but not without temper and impulses. He looked keenly after business, played the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of legerdemain. He had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me, especially after they came to know me pretty well. The lady had a nice, easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever I wanted to ride. One day it was missing. The master grieved. They had named it after me in compliment. “Goshorn,” I said, “in future I shall callyou Horse-gone.” But he was not pleased with the name. However, it was recovered by a miracle, for the amount of horse-stealing which went on about us then was fabulous.
After a few days Goshorn and I prepared to go up Elk River, to renew the leases of oil and coal lands. Now I must premise that at all times the man who was engaged in “ile” bore a charmed life, and was venerated by both Union men and rebels.Hecould pass the lines and go anywhere. At one time, when not a spy could be got into or out of Richmond to serve us, Goshorn seriously proposed to me to go with him into the city! I had a neighbour named Fassit, an uncle of Theodore. He had oil-wells in Virginia, and when the war begun work on them was stopped. This dismayed the natives. One morning there came to Mr. Fassit a letter imploring him to return: “Come back, o come agin and bore us some more wels. We wil protec you like a son. We dont make war onIle.” And I, being thus respected, went and came from the Foeman’s Land, and joined in the dreadful rebel-ry and returned unharmed, leading a charmed ifnotparticularly charming life all winter and the spring, to the great amazement and bewilderment of many, as will appear in the sequence.
The upper part of Elk River was in the debatable land, or rather still in Slave-ownia or rebeldom, where a Unionman’s life was worth about a chinquapin. In fact, one day there was a small battle between me and home—with divers wounds and deaths. This going and coming of mine, among and with rebels, got me into a droll misunderstanding some time after. But I think that the real cause lay less in oil than in the simple truth that these frank, half-wild fellowslikedme. One said to me one day, “You’re onlike all the Northern men who come here, and we all like you. What’s the reason?” I explained it that he had only met with Yankees, and that as Pennsylvania lay next to Virginia, of course we must be more alike as neighbours. But the cause lay in thelikingwhich I have for Indians, gypsies, and all such folk.
Goshorn began by buying a dug-out poplar canoe sixty-four feet in length, and stocking it with provisions. “Money won’t be of much use,” he said; “what we want chiefly is whisky and blue beads for presents.” He hired two men who had been in the Confederate army, but who had absented themselves since the proceedings had become uninteresting. These men took to me with a devotion which ended by becoming literally superstitious. I am quite sure that, while naturally intelligent, anything like a mind stored with varied knowledge was somethingutterlyunknown to them. And as I, day by day, let fall unthinkingly this or that scrap of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a miracle. One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me meaningly, that I liked curious things, and that he knew a nest where he could get me a youngraven. The raven is to an Indian conjuror what a black cat is to a witch, and I suppose that Sam thought I must be lonely without a familiar. Which recalls one of the most extraordinary experiences of all my life.
During my return down the river, it was in a freshet, and we went headlong. This is to the very last degree dangerous, unless the boatmen know every rock and point, for the dugout canoe goes over at a touch, and there is no life to besaved in the rapids. Now we were flying like a swallow, and could not stop. There was one narrow shoot, or pass, just in the middle of the river, where there was exactly room to an inch for a canoe to pass, but to do this it was necessary to have moonlight enough to see the King Rock, which rose in the stream close by the passage, and at the critical instant to “fend off” with the hand and prevent the canoe from driving full on the rock. A terrible storm was coming up, thunder was growling afar, and clouds fast gathering in the sky.
The men had heard me talking the day before as to how storms were formed in circles, and it had deeply impressed them. When Goshorn asked them what we had better do, they said, “Leave it all to Mr. Leland; he knows everything.” I looked at the moon and saw that the clouds were not driving dead against it, butaroundwhile closing in, and I know not by what strange inspiration I added, “You will have just time to clear King Rock!”
It was still far away. I laid down my paddle and drew my blanket round me, and smoked to the storm, and sang incantations to myself. It was a fearful trial, actually risking death, but I felt no fear—only a dull confidence in fate. Closer grew the clouds—darker the sky—when during the very last second of light King Rock came in sight. Goshorn was ready with his bull-like strength and gave the push; and just as we shot clear into the channel it became dark as pitch, and the rain came down in a torrent. Goshorn pitched his hat high into the air—aux moulins—and hurrahed and cried in exulting joy.
“Now, Mr. Leland, sing us that German song you’re always so jolly with—lodle yodle tol de rol de rol!”
From that hour I wasKchee-Bo-o-inor Grand Pow-wow to Sam Fox and his friends. He believed in me, even as I believe in myself when such mad “spells” come over me. One day he proved his confidence. It was bright and sunshiny, and we were paddling along when we saw a “summerduck” swimming perhaps fifty yards ahead. Sam was sitting in the bow exactly between me and the duck. “Fire at it with your revolver!” cried Sam.
“It is too far away,” I replied, “and you are right in the way.”
Sam bent over sideways, glaring at me with his one strange eye. It was just about as close a shot as was William Tell’s at the apple. But I knew that reputation for nerve depended on it, so I fired. As the duck rose it dropped a feather.
“I knew you’d hit!” cried Sam triumphantly. And so I had, but I should not like to try that shot again.
Reflex action of the brain and secondary automatism! It must be so—Haeckel, thou reasonest well. But when the “old Injun” and my High-Dutch ancestor are upon me, I reason not at all, and then I see visions and dream dreams, and it always comes true, without theleastself-deception or delusion.
It is a marvellous thing that in these canoes, which tip over so easily, men will pass over mill-dams ten or twelve feet high, as I myself have done many a time, without upsetting. The manner of it is this. The canoe is a log hollowed out. This is allowed to pass over till it dips like a seesaw, or falls into the stream below. It is a dangerous, reckless act, but generally succeeds. One day Sam Fox undertook to shoot our dug-out over a fall. So he paddled hard, and ran the canoe headlong to edge, he being in the bow. But it stuck halfway, and there was my Samuel, ere he knew it, high in the air, paddling in the atmosphere, into which thirty feet of canoe was raised.
Meanwhile, the legal business and renewal of the leases and the payment of money was performed accurately and punctually. Talk aboutmannain the wilderness!moneyin the wilderness came to the poor souls impoverished by the war as a thousandfold nicer. But over and above that, half a pound of coffee or a drink of whisky would cause a thrillof delight. One day, stopping at a logger’s camp, I gave a decent-looking man a tin cup full of whisky. The first thing he did was to put it to the mouth of a toddling two-year-old child and it took a good pull. I remonstrated with him for it, when he replied, “Well, you see, sir, we get it so seldom, that whisky is a kind o’delicacywith us.”
Sometimes the log huts were twenty miles apart. In such isolation there is no rivalry of ostentation, and men care only tolive. One day we came to a log house. The occupant had several hundred acres of very good land, and only a half acre under cultivation. He was absent at a county court for amusement. All that I could see in the cabin was a rude seat, an iron pot and spoon, and a squirrel-gun. There were two cavities or holes in the bare earth floor, in which the old man and his wife slept, each wrapped in a blanket. Even our boatman said that such carelessness was unusual. But all were ignorant of a thousand refinements of life of which the poorest English peasantknowssomething, yet every one of these people had an independence or pride far above all poverty.
One night we stopped at the house of a man who was said to possess $150,000 (£30,000) worth of land. The house was well enough. His two bare-legged daughters, girls of seventeen or eighteen, lounged about smoking pipes. I gave one a cigar. She replied, “I don’t keer if I do try it. I’ve allays wanted to know what a cigar smokes like.” But she didn’t like it. Apropos of girls, I may say that there is afarhigher standard of morals among these people than among the ignorant elsewhere.
It was indeed a wild country. One day Goshorn showed me a hill, and a hunter had told him that when standing on it one summer afternoon he had seen in a marshy place the very unusual spectacle of forty bears, all wallowing together in the mud and playing at once. Also the marks of a bear’s claws on a tree. Game was plenty in this region. All the time that I stayed with Goshorn we had every day at hiswell-furnished table bear’s meat, venison, or other game, fish, ham, chickens, &c.
There was a great deal of very beautiful scenery on Elk River, and some of its “incidents” were marvellously strange. The hard sandstone rocks had worn into shapes resembling castles and houses, incredibly like buildings made by man. One day I saw and copied a vast square rock through which ran to the light a perfect Gothic archway sixty feet high, with a long wall like the side of a castle, and an immense square tower. There are the most natural-looking houses and Schlösser imaginable rising all alone in the forest. Very often the summits of the hills were crowned with round towers. On the Ohio River there is a group of these shaped like segments of a truncated cone, and “corniced” with another piece reversed, like this:
Round tower
These are called “Devil’s Tea-tables.” I drew them several times, but could never give them the appearance of beingnaturalobjects. It is very extraordinary how Nature seems to have mocked man in advance in these structures. In Fingal’s Cave there is an absolutely original style of architecture.
The last house which we came to was the best. In it dwelt a gentlemanly elderly man with two ladylike daughters. His son, who was dressed in “store clothes,” had been a delegate to the Wheeling Convention. But the war hadborne hard on them, and for a long timeeverythingwhich they used or wore had been made by their own hands. They had a home-made loom and spinning-wheel—I saw several such looms on the river; they raised their own cotton and wool and maple sugar, and were in all important details utterly self-sustaining and independent. And they did not live rudely at all, but like ladies and gentlemen, as really intelligent people always can when they arefree. The father had, not long before, standing in his own door, shot a deer as it looked over the garden gate at him. Goshorn, observing that I attached some value to the horns (a new idea to him), secured them for himself.
A day or two after, while descending the river, we stopped to see an old hunter who lived on the bank. He was a very shrewd, quaint old boy, “good for a novel.” He examined Goshorn’s spectacles with so much interest, that I suspect it was really the first time in his life that he ever fully ascertained the “true inwardness and utilitarianism” of such objects. He expressed great admiration, and said that if he had them he could get twice as many deer as he did. I promised to send him a pair. I begged from him deer-horns, which he gave me very willingly, expressing wonder that I wanted such rubbish, and at my delight. And seeing that my companion had a pair, he said scornfully:
“Dave Goshorn, what doyouknow about such things? What’s setyouto gittin’ deer’s horns? Give ’em to this here young gentleman, who understands such things that we don’t, and who wants ’em fur some good reason.”
I will do Goshorn the justice to say that he gave them to me for a parting present. My room at his house was quite devoid of all decoration, but by arranging on the walls crossed canoe-paddles, great bunches of the picturesque locust-thorn, often nearly a foot in length, and the deer’s horns, I made it look rather more human. But this arrangement utterly bewildered the natives, especially the maids, who naively asked me why I hung them old bones and thorns up in my room.As this thorn is much used by the blacks in Voodoo, I suppose that it was all explained by being set down to my “conjurin’.”
The maid who attended to my room was a very nice, good girl, but one who could not have been understood in England. I found that she gathered up and treasured many utterly worthless trifling bits of pen-drawing which I threw away. She explained that where she came from on Coal River, anything like a picture was a great curiosity; also that her friends believed that all the pictures in books, newspapers, &c., were drawn by hand. I explained to her how they were made. WhenIleft I offered her two dollars. She hesitated, and then said, “Mr. Leland, there have been many, many gentlemen here who have offered me money, but I never took a cent from any man tillnow. And Iwilltake this from you to buy something that I can remember you by, for you have always treated me kindly and like a lady.” In rural America such girls are really lady-helps, and not “servants,” albeit those who know how to get on with them find them the very best servants in the world; but they must be treated asfriends.
I went up Elk River several times on horse or in canoe to renew leases or to lease new land, &c. The company sent on a very clever and intelligent rather young man named Sandford, who had been a railroad superintendent, to help me. I liked him very much. We had a third, a young Virginian, named Finnal. At or near Cannelton I selected a spot where we put up a steam-engine, and began to bore for oil. It was very near the famous gas-well which once belonged to General Washington. This well gave forth every week the equivalent ofone hundred and fiftytons of coal. It was utilised in a factory. After I sunk our shaft it gave out; but I do not believe that we stopped it, for no gas came into our well. Finnal was the superintendent of the well. One day he nearly sat down—nudo podice—on an immense rattlesnake. He had a little cottage and a fine horse. Hekept the latter in a stable and painted the doorwhite, so that when waking in the night he could see if any horse-thief had opened it. Many efforts were made to rob him of it.
At this time Lee’s army was disbanded, and fully one-half came straggling in squads up the valley to Charleston to be paroled. David Goshorn’s hotel was simply crammed with Confederate officers, who slept anywhere. With these I easily became friends; they seemed like Princeton Southern college mates. Now I have to narrate a strange story. One evening when I was sitting and smoking on the portico with some of thesebons compagnonsI said to one—
“People say that your men never once during the war got within sight of Harrisburg or of a Northern city. But I believe they did. One day when I was on guard I saw five men scout on the bank in full sight of it. But nobody agreed with me.”
The officer laughed silently, and cried aloud to a friend with a broken arm in a sling, who lay within a room on a bed, “Come out here, L---. Here is something which will interest you more than anything you ever heard before.”
He came out, and, having heard my story, said—
“Nobody ever believed your story, nor did anybody ever believe mine. Mine is this—that when we were at Sporting Hill a corporal of mine came in and declared that he and his men had scouted into within full sight of Harrisburg. I knew that the man told the truth, but nobody else would believe that any human being dared to do such a thing, or could do it. And now you fully prove that it was done.”
There came to Goshorn’s three very interesting men with whom I became intimate. One was Robert Hunt, of St. Louis. He was of a very good Virginia family, had been at Princeton College, ran away in his sixteenth year, took to the plains as a hunter, and for twenty-three years had ranged the Wild West from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. At the end of the time an uncle in the Fur Company had helped him on, and he was now rich. He was one of themost genial, gay, and festive, reckless yet always gentlemanly men I ever knew. He expressed great astonishment, as he learned gradually to know me, at finding we were so congenial, and that I had so much “real Injun” in me. His eyes were first opened to this great fact by a very singular incident, of which I can never think without pleasure.
Hunt, with two men who had been cavalry captains all through the war, and his friend Ross, who had long been an Indian trader, and I, were all riding up Elk Valley to look at lands. We paused at a place where the road sloped sideways and was wet with rain. As I was going to remount, I asked a German who stood by to hold my horse’s head, and sprang into the saddle. Just at this critical instant—it all passed in a second—as the German had not heard me, my horse, feeling that he must fall over on his left side from my weight, threw himselfcompletely over backward. As quick as thought I jumped up on his back, put my foot just between the saddle and his tail, and took a tremendous flying leap so far that I cleared the horse. I only muddied the palms of my gloves, on which I fell.
The elder cavalry captain said, “When I saw that horse go over backwards, I closed my eyes and held my breath, for I expected the next second to see you killed.” But Robert Hunt exclaimed, “Good as an Injun, by God!” And when I some time after made fun of it, he shook his head gravely and reprovingly, as George Ward did over the gunpowder, and said, “It was amagnificentthing!”
That very afternoon Hunt distinguished himself in a manner which was quite as becoming an aborigine. I was acting as guide, and knowing that there was a ford across a tributary of the Elk, sought and thought I had found it. But I was mistaken, and what was horrible, we found ourselves in a deep quicksand. On such occasions horses become, as it were, insane, trying to throw the riders and then jump on them for support. By good luck we got out of it soon, but there was anawfulfive minutes of kicking, plunging,splashing, and “ground and lofty” swearing. I got across dry by drawing my legs up before me on the saddle,à latailor, but the others were badly wet. But no sooner had we emerged from the stream than Robert Hunt, bursting into a tremendous “Ho!ho!” of deep laughter, declared that he had shown more presence of mind during the emergency than any of us; for, brandishing his whisky flask, he declared that while his horse was in the flurry it occurred to him that the best thing he could do was to lighten the load, and he had therefore, with incredible presence of mind, drunk up all the whisky!
However, he afterwards confessed to me that the true reason was that, believing death was at hand, and thinking it a pity to die thirsty, he had drained the bottle, as did the old Indian woman just as she went over the Falls of Niagara. Anyhow, the incorrigiblevaurienhad really emptied his flask while in the “quick.”
Though I say it, I believe that Hunt and I were a pretty well matched couple, and many a wild prank and Indian-like joke did we play together. More than once he expressed great astonishment that I, a man grown up in cities and to literary pursuits, should be so much at home where he found me, or so congenial. He had been at Princeton, and,ex pede Herculem, had a point whence to judge me, but it failed.[309]His friend Ross was a quiet, sensible New Englander, who reminded me of Artemus Ward, or Charles Browne. He abounded in quaint anecdotes of Indian experiences.
As did also a Mr. Wadsworth, who had passed half his life in the Far West as a surveyor among the Chippeways. He had written a large manuscript of their legends, of which Schoolcraft made great use in hisAlgicbook. I believe that much of Longfellow’sHiawathaowed its origin thus indirectlyto Mr. Wadsworth. In after years I wrote out many of his tales, as told to me, in articles inTemple Bar.
The country all about Charleston was primitively wild and picturesque, rocky, hilly, and leading to solitary life and dreams ofsylvaniand forest fairies. There were fountained hills, and dreamy darkling woods, and old Indian graves, and a dancing stream, across which lay a petrified tree, and everywhere a little travelled land. I explored it with Goshorn, riding far and wide into remote mountain recesses, to get the signatures in attestation of men who could rarely write, but on the other hand could “shoot their mark” with a rifle to perfection, and who would assuredly have placed such signature on me had I not been a holy messenger ofIle, and an angel of coming moneyed times.
One day we stopped at a farm-house in a wild, lonely place. There was only an old woman there—one of the stern, resolute, hard-muscled frontier women, the daughters of mothers who had fought “Injuns”—and a calf. And thereby hung a tale, which the three men with me fully authenticated.
The whole country thereabouts had been for four years so worried, harried, raided, raked, plundered, and foraged by Federals and Confederates—one day the former, the next the latter; blue and grey, or sky and sea—that the old lady had nothing left to live on. Hens, cows, horses, corn, all had gone save one calf, the Benjamin and idol of her heart.
One night she heard a piteous baaing, and, seizing a broom, rushed to the now henless hen-house, in which she kept the calf, to find in it a full-grown panther attacking her pet. By this time the old lady had grown desperate, and seizing the broom, she proceeded to “lam” the wild beast with the handle, and with all her heart; and the fiend of ferocity, appalled at her attack, fled. I saw the calf with the marks of the panther’s claws, not yet quite healed; I saw the broom; and, lastly, I saw the old woman, the mother in Ishmael; whose face was a perfect guarantee of the truth of the story. One of us suggested that the old lady should havethe calf’s hide tanned and wear it as a trophy, like an Indian, which would have been a strange reversal of Shakespeare’s application of it, or to
“Hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs.”
“Hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs.”
Then there came the great spring freshet in Elk River, which rose unusually high, fifty feet above its summer level. It had come to within an inch or two of my floor, and yet I went to bed and to sleep. By a miracle it rose no more, for I had a distinct conviction it would not, which greatly amazed everybody. But many were drowned all about us. The next day a man who professed bone-setting and doctoring, albeit not diplomaed, asked me to go with him and act as interpreter to a German patient who had a broken thigh. While felling a tree far away in the forest, it thundered down on him, and kept him down for two or three days till he was discovered. To get to him we went in a small canoe, and paddled ourselves with shingles or wooden tiles, used to cover roofs. On the way I saw a man on a roof fiddling; only a bit of the roof was above water. He was waiting for deliverance. Many and strange indeed were all the scenes and incidents of that inundation, and marvellous the legends which were told of other freshets in the days of yore.
I never could learn to play cards. Destiny forbade it, and always stepped in promptly to stop all such proceedings. One night Sandford and friends sat down to teach me poker, whenbang,bang, went a revolver outside, and a bullet buried itself in the door close by me. A riotous, evil-minded darkey, who attended to my washing, had got into a fight, and was forthwith conveyed to the Bull-pen, or military prison. I was afraid lest I might lose my shirts, and so “visited him” next day and found him in irons, but reading a newspaper at his ease. From him I learned the address of “the coloured lady” who had my underclothing.
The Bull-pen was a picturesque place—a large log enclosure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas inmoccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, desolate deserters, often deserving pity—thedébrisof a four years’ war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen to the dirt.
Warm weather came on, and I sent to Philadelphia for a summer suit of clothes. It came, and it was of alight grey colour. At that time Oxford “dittos,” or a suitpareil partout, were unknown in West Virginia. I was dressed from head to foot in Confederate grey. Such a daring defiance of public opinion, coupled with my mysterious stealing into the rebel country, made me an object of awe and suspicion—a kind of Sir Grey Steal!
There was at that time in Charleston a German artillery regiment which really held the town—that is to say, the height which commanded it. I had become acquainted with its officers. All at once they gave me the cold shoulder and cut me. My friend Sandford was very intimate with them. One evening he asked their Colonel why they scorned me. The Colonel replied—
“Pecause he’s a tamned repel. Aferypody knows it.”
Sandford at once explained that I was even known at Washington as a good Union man, and had, moreover, translated Heine, adding other details.
“Gott verdammich—heiss!” cried the Colonel in amazement. “Is dot der Karl Leland vot dranslate deReisebilder? Herr je! I hafe got dat very pook here on mein table! Look at it. Bei Gott! here’s his name!Dotis der crate Leland vot edit deContinental Magazine! Dot moost pe a fery deep man. Und I dinkhevas a repel!”
The next morning early the Colonel sent his ambulance or army waggon to my hotel with a request that I would come and take breakfast with him. It was a bit of Heidelberg life over again. We punished Rheinwein and lager-beer in quantities. There were old German students among the officers, and I was received like a brother.
At last Sandford and I determined to return to the East.There was in the hotel a coloured waiter named Harrison. He had been a slave, but “a gentleman’s gentleman,” was rather dignified, and allowed no ordinary white man to joke with him. On the evening before my departure I said to him—
“Well, Harrison, I hope that you haven’t quite so bad an opinion of me as the other people here seem to have.”
He manifested at once a really violent emotion. Dashing something to the ground, he cried—
“Mr. Leland, youneverdid anything contrary to a gentleman. I always maintained it. Now please tell me the truth. Is it true that you’re a great friend of Jeff Davis?”
“Damn Jeff Davis!” I replied.
“And you ain’t a major in the Confederate service?”
“I’m a clear-down Abolitionist, and was born one.”
“And you ain’t had no goings on with the rebels up the river to bring back the Confederacy here?”
“Devil a dealing.”
And therewith I explained how it was that I went unharmed up into the rebels’ country, and great was the joy of Harrison, who, as I found, had taken my part valiantly against those who suspected me.
There was a droll comedy the next day on board the steamboat on which I departed. A certain Mr. H., who had been a rebel and recanted at the eleventh hour and become a Federal official, requested everybody on board not to notice me. Sandford learned it all, and chuckled over it. But the captain and mate and crew were all still rebels at heart. Great was my amazement at being privately informed by the steward that the captain requested as a favour that I would sit by him at dinner and share a bottle of wine. I did so, and while I remained on board was treated as an honoured guest.
And now I would here distinctly declare that, apart from my political principles, from which I never swerved, I always found the rebels—that is, Southern and Western men withwhom I had had intimate dealings—without one exceptionpersonallythe most congenial and agreeable people whom I had ever met. There was not to be found among them what in England is known as a prig. They were natural and gentlemanly, even down to the poorest and most uneducated.
One day Sam Fox came to me and asked me to use my influence with the Cannelton Company to get him employment at their works.
“Sam,” I replied, “I can’t do it. It is only three weeks now, when you were employed at another place, that you tried to stuff the overseer into the furnace, and if the men had not prevented, you would have burned him up alive.”
“Yes,” replied Sam, “but he had called me a -- son --- of ---.”
“Very good,” I answered; “and if he had called methat, I should have done the same. But I don’t think, if Ihaddone it, I should ever have expected to be employed again on another furnace. You see, Samuel, my son, that these Northern men have very queer notions—very.”
Sam was quite convinced.
At Cincinnati a trifling but droll incident occurred. I do not set myself up for a judge of wines, but I have naturally a delicate sense of smell orflair, though not the extraordinary degree in which my brother possessed it, who never drank wine at all. He was the first person who ever, in printed articles or in lectures, insisted that South New Jersey was suitable for wine-growing. At the hotel Sandford asked me if I could tell any wine by the taste. I replied No, but I would try; so they gave me a glass of some kind, and I said that honestly I could only declare that I should say it was Portugal common country wine, but I must be wrong. Then Sandford showed the bottle, and the label declared it to be grown in Ohio. The next day he came to me and said, “I believe that after all you know a great deal about wine. I told the landlord what you said, and he laughed, arid said, ‘I had not the American wine which you called for, and so Igave you a cheap but unusual Portuguese wine.’” This wine is neither white nor red, and tastes like sherry and Burgundy mixed.
At Cincinnati, Sandford proposed that we should return by way of Detroit and Niagara. I objected to the expense, but he, who knew every route and rate by heart, explained to me that, owing to the competition in railway rates, it would only cost me six shillings ($1.50) more,plus$2.50 (ten shillings) from New York to Philadelphia. So we departed. In Detroit I called on my cousin, Benjamin Stimson (the S. of “Two Years before the Mast”), and found him a prominent citizen. So, skirting along southern Canada, we got to Niagara, and thence to Albany and down the Hudson to New York, and so on to Philadelphia.
It seems to me now that at this time all trace of my former life and self had vanished. I seemed to be only prompt to the saddle, canoe-paddle, revolver, steamboat, and railroad. My wife said that after this and other periods of Western travel I was always for three weeks as wild as an Indian, and so I most truly and unaffectedly was. I did notactin a foolish or disorderly manner at all, but Tennessee and Elk River were in me. Robert Hunt and Sam Fox and many more had expressed their amazement at the amount of extremely familiar and congenial nature which they had found in me, and they were quite right. Sam and Goshorn declared that I was the only Northern man whom they had ever known who ever learned to paddle a dug-outcorrectly; but as I was obliged to do this sometimes for fifteen hours a daynolens volens, it is not remarkable that I became an expert.
As regards the real unaffected feeling of wildness born to savage nature, life, and association, it is absolutely as different from all civilised feeling whatever as bird from fish; and it very rarely happens that an educated man ever knows what it is. What there is of it in me which Indians recognise is, I believe, entirely due to hereditary endowment.
“Zum Wald, zum Wald, steht mir mein Sinn.So einzig, ach! so einzig hin.Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh,Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so.”
“Zum Wald, zum Wald, steht mir mein Sinn.So einzig, ach! so einzig hin.Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh,Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so.”
It does not come from reading or culture—it comes of itself by nature, or not at all; nor has it over-much to do with thought. Only in something like superstition can it find expression, but that must be childlike and sweet and sincere, and without the giggling with which such subjects are invariably received by ladies in society.