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MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

LAMAR FONTAINE, C. E., Ph. D.

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New York and WASHiNaxoN THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

1908

I wo Copies t(ec«5j.: j

MAY 15 lyOB I

,F4T

Copyright, 1908, by THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

CONTENTS

FAOK

Introduction 9

I

Birthplace — Personal appearance — Educated in early years by a Polish exile — Sent to Onion Creek school — Run away from home — Stolen by In- dians 12

II

Parentage — Escapade with wild cats — Exploding " ghost " and " witch " theories — Visits to grand- parents— Partnership of my father with William Jacob Thompson — Protecting the government archives — Life with the Indians 18

III Prestige as a marksman — The Flat-Head Indians — My encounter with a grizzly — Finding evidences of the " Cliff-Dwellers " — Walk home a distance of 750 miles after living three years with the Comanches 28

IV

Arrival home — Mistaken for an Indian — Tortured by wearing clothing and sleeping in beds — Jeers of neighborhood children — Sent to Professor Bingham's school 89

V

Parting with my mother — Run away from Professor Bingham's school — Home again — Sent to sea — Life on the Vincens — Return home in December, 1846 — Join Perry's expedition to Japan in 1853

— Explorations in the Far East 45

3

4 CONTENTS

VI

Enlist in Russian army — Siege of Sevastopol — Re- warded for marksmanship — Back to Austin — Death of my mother — Explorations in Central and South America — Enlistment in Confederate army at Pensacola 59

VII

Life in camp — Opening guns of the war — The first battle — My father's bravery — Intense thirst saves me from an untimely grave — In the hos- pital— On guard 68

VIII

Comrade Moore shot on relieving me of picket duty — My vow of vengeance — Writing the poem, " All Quiet Along the Potomac " — Stricken with measles — " The massacre at Ball's Bluff " — Our life at winter quarters near Leesburg .... 79

IX

Hair-breadth escapes — Am appointed scout to Gen- eral Jackson — My appreciation of General Jack- son— The Romney Expedition — Jackson's splen- did generalship and military genius — My per- sonal experiences in Jackson's campaigns . . 90

X

Presented with saber by General Ewell — Turner Ashby — General Jackson's version of the " Gal- lop of Death " — Jackson's retreat up the Valley of Virginia — Death of Ashby — In the Shenan- doah Valley — In the hospital at Charlottesville 104

XI

Back to camp — At Cedar Mountain — Receive my dis- charge from the army — Remain in camp at re- quest of General Jackson — Exhibit my marks- manship to General Lee at his request — I report to General J. E. B. Stuart — The " Second Ma- nassas " battle 122

CONTENTS 6

XII

At Frederick City — With Jackson at Harper's Ferry — ^Receive letter of dismissal from my sweet- heart— Battle of Sharpsburg — With Jackson at Fredericksburg — Advance of Hooker's Army — Bravery of dying Confederate soldiers . . . 140

XIII Ordered to General Joseph E. Johnston's headquar- ters— Am sent with supplies and dispatches to General John C. Pemberton — My most perilous undertaking — " Whistling Dick " — Adventures at Vicksburg 156

XIV

My return trip to General Johnston — Advise General Johnston of conditions at Vicksburg — Am or- dered to take a rest and go to my father's home at Belvidere 182

XV

Am ordered again to Vicksburg — At Yazoo City — Return to Jackson — Am wounded and sent to hospital at Selma, Ala. — Report to General Bragg and join General Longstreet — Receive major's commission 198

XVI

Battle of Chickamauga — I make frequent raids — My

first spree — Battle of Missionary Ridge . . . 205

XVII

Receive orders from General Forrest — Am captured by Colonel G. W. Gaines — The Dutch jailer — Offered freedom — Am forwarded to Louisville — My escape — Am ordered to report to General Stuart in Virginia — My journey to Virginia . 214

6 CONTENTS

XVIII Arrival at General Stuart's headquarters — Battle of the Wilderness — " Jackson's Ghost " — Death of General Stuart — At Spottsylvania Court House — Captured and sent to Fort Delaware . . . 231

XIX

At Fort Delaware — On board the Crescent — In Charleston harbor — Under fire of our own guns — I agree to be exchanged for Major Harry White 237

XX

At General Hardee's headquarters — I refuse to be exchanged for White — Confederate prison at Charleston — I am exchanged for Major Charles P. Mattocks — Yankees refuse to accept the ex- change and I go back to Morris Island . . . 248

XXI

At Roper Hospital at Charleston — Reply to accusa- tion of apropriating to my own use supplies sent to prisoners by me — Spend Christmas holidays at Montgomery — Assigned to duty around Pe- tersburg— Rendered cripple for life . . . . 259

XXII Lee's surrender — Refused a parole — Go to Yazoo Valley — Make contract to gin cotton for Dr. Jiggets — Before the Grand Jury at Yazoo City 263

XXIII

I teach school — My marriage — Make Austin my home — The birth of our son — Surveying in Yazoo Valley — Retrospection 274

LECTURES ON "AMERICA; THE OLD WORLD," AND OTHER SUBJECTS

Situation of the Garden of Eden — The glories of the aurora borealis — North America undoubtedly the region of the earliest civilization . . . . 281

CONTENTS 7

WHERE DID CAIN GET HIS WIFE? ]

The sixth era of creation — The first men and women {

— The superior being of the eighth era — Adam !

and Eve — Cain's wife a creature of the sixth era 294 i

j

THE MOUND BUILDERS !

Civilization first attained along the range of the An- i dean Mountains — From here spread to the shores

of Asia and Africa — Negroes the Mound-Build- ]

ers under taskmasters — The potter's art — Life |

of the Mound-Builders 307

I

WHAT BECAME OF THE MOUND-BUILDERS? |

Miscegenation the true cause of their disappearance j

— Moses and the Israelites — A warning to this !

nation — The Negro 325 \

THE DARWINIAN THEORY ^

The survival of the fittest — Empedocles precursor of i

Darwin — Darwin theory tenable up to the eighth j

era of creation — " The Immortality of Love " — j

Darwin's theory not in conflict with the Mosaic I

account of man's creation — The blessings of God i

— Eternity 344 i

INTRODUCTION

In offering this book to the public I have been im- pelled by no desire to attain notoriety or hope of making money out of it, but as garbled accounts of many of the incidents I shall herein relate have long been public property, and read and reread in many lands, I feel it a duty I owe, not only to the reading public, but to myself and descendants, that I give the cold facts just as they occurred. I shall make no attempt to write history, or give details of great battles, I shall narrate what I saw with my own eyes and what occurred to me individually, and I will be as brief with each event as possible, and where they are of great importance to me personally I shall be minute in my word painting, and truthfully convey the scene and incident to the mind of the reader.

For more than a third of a century I have been urged and entreated by my legions of friends to give these incidents to the public, but until now I have been restrained from the fear that I would be looked upon as an egotistical braggart — for my long life, of more than three-quarters of a century, has been a busy and eventful one, and filled with adventures in every clime under the sun. And whether in early childhood as a schoolboy, or as an Indian, a captive, on the wild Western plains of my own native State, as sailor, soldier, explorer, hunter, or civil engineer, I have been guided by devotion, concentration, and absolute persistence in the duties involved in whatever enterprise or calling I at the time engaged in. I always tried to excel in whatever I undertook. I was taught in my early childhood by one of the best of mothers that whatever was worth doing was worth doing well, and this idea has always been uppermost in my mind, and has been my guide through life.

An old Latin idiom in early life appealed to me, and

10 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

I adopted it, " Aut viam, mveniam, aut faciam.^^ Broadly translated, " I will find a way, or make one." This has carried me through many a wilderness, and cheered me and forced paths over seemingly insur- mountable difficulties, and brought me to havens of safety through many storms.

In my explorations I followed no guides. I led the way and blazed the paths. In hunting the wild ani- mals of the jungle I made no haphazard shots at them, I shot to kill. In battle I saw my country's foes, those whose duty it was to slay me or my com- panions, and to slay them was the duty I had to per- form. Hence, I loaded my rifle to kill. And, when I came in contact with those vast hordes of foreign hirelings who entered the Federal Army during the great " Confederate War " for gold alone, and not from patriotism or love of country, I felt it a solemn, a God-given duty, a privilege to kill them ; and I thanked my Creator that he had given me steady hands and good eyes to hold and direct my missiles of death, for they were only fit to feed the buzzards of our Southland. They had sold their very souls for gold, and I took delight in piling their carcases in mounds to feed the fowls of the air. And I would do it again, under the same conditions, a thousand times over.

My early training and life with the Comanche In- dians imbued me with a spirit that made me never for- get an enemy or desert a friend, hence I always smote my enemies and loved and helped my friends, and did my duty as my God-given conscience dictated and approved.

And here, to-day, in my little, humble cottage home in the village of Lyon, in the beautiful and most fertile region of earth near the banks of the Sunflower River, in the great plain of the Yazoo Delta of the Mississippi Valley, where the whir and hum of the mighty wheels of that far-reaching, civilizing, ^nd educating railroad, the Illinois Central, daily and hourly reminds me of the busy outside world, I sit and dream over the past, enjoying the confidence and esteem of friends and neighbors, and, above all, blest with the love of a truly

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 11

womanly woman, whose tender touch and devout min- istrations for forty years have smoothed the wrinkles from my brow, and have made my pathway, once so rugged and bloodstained, smooth and level, and covered the dark, crimson-dyed spots on it with pure white lilies-of-the-valley, and filled my vase with the per- fume of star jasmine and violets. And with my brow still caressed by her loving hand, and my lips kissed by hers and those of my loved children and grand- children, I feel at peace with all the world.

For the part I took in the war I feel a just pride, and have no apologies to make. I leave my acts and deeds a legacy to my loved ones and their descendants ; and were I to go over the same long four years of bloody warfare again, as in the sixties, I would not alter a single step, but pursue the same pathways to the end. I love my sunny Southland as only a son can love a mother. And to those dear old comrades with whom I ate, drank, slept, marched, fought, and shared the prison fare I tender a comrade's love. I feel that if we meet no more on earth we shall soon do so in the " Bivouac beyond the Stars," and that we shall rest in the beautiful vales of Paradise and enjoy the smiles of a just, approving God.

CHAPTER I

Birthplace — Personal appearance — Educated in early years by a Polish exile — Sent to Onion Creek school — Ran away from home — Stolen by Indians.

I WAS born in Captain John Christman's tent, on Laberde Prairie, on the headwaters of the Yegua River, near where the small village of Gay Hill was after- ward built, in what is now Washington County, Texas, on the 10th of October, 1829. My mother has often told me that at my birth I weighed only three pounds, clothes and all, and that when a week old she slipped her wedding ring over my hand up to my shoulder. At sixteen years of age I weighed only fifty-eight pounds.

At the beginning of the war in 1861 I was six feet and one-quarter of an inch in height, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, and my face was as smooth as a girl's, and as free from whiskers. In my babyhood days and early childhood my father de- termined that I should be a preacher, a missionary to some foreign clime, and he wished me educated with this end in view. I was taught my letters from a Latin grammar, and began the study of that language as soon as I mastered the alphabet, Greek and Hebrew followed.

When but three years of age there came into our camp an old man, a Polish exile, a baron of German birth, by the name of Homvosky. He was a graduate of Heidelberg, and was a general in the Polish Army, and had been banished from Europe upon the downfall of Poland.

This old man took a great fancy to me, and for years I slept with him. He would wash and dress me, and I almost worshiped him. He taught me my Latin, Greek, and Hebrew lessons, and, what I liked best, how

12

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 13

to box, wrestle, fence, with both foil and saber, and how to ride, and shoot the rifle and pistol. Many a long ride over the prairies, on his shoulders, have I taken, when in search of deer, or turkeys, or wild animals of that region.

When on these tramps he would fill my youthful mind with history of great events that had occurred in ages past. Under his kind and steady hand, for nearly seven years, my young mind expanded rapidly, and I was almost as well versed in the languages and ancient histories, and almost as far advanced in mathe- matics as many of our college graduates of to-day.

Just before my tenth birthday my old friend passed into the " Great Beyond," and left a void in my life — my first great sorrow.

At that time we were in camp where the city of Austin now stands. There were not enough children in our camp to employ a teacher, but about seven miles south of Austin, on the banks of Onion Creek, was a larger settlement, known as the Tom McKinney branch of Austin's colony. Here, in a wooden-framed, cloth-covered schoolhouse, some twenty or more of the colonists' children daily studied under the tutelage of an old red-headed, Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian school- master.

Soon after the death of my grand old Baron-exiled friend and teacher I was sent to the Onion Creek school by my father. I had to ford the Colorado River, and ride across a wide prairie studded with live-oaks and dogwood thickets, and here and there a few post-oaks. Many of the live-oaks were draped in mustang grape vines, on which hung great clusters of these fragrant, luscious, and juicy fruit. The land- scape was one to awake all the poetry in the soul of a young and ardent lover of nature.

Each morning and evening, on my Indian pony, I rode the seven miles that lay between the school and my home. I did not fancy my teacher— our spirits were not in accord. He was as far off from my old exiled friend in intellect and soul as the earth from the sun, and he was a stem and strict disciplinarian. He

14 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

did not believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child, as he held a switch ever ready in his hand, and upon the least provocation, from boy or girl, he let it fall upon the offender with force, or gently as a reminder. I could feel neither love nor respect for him.

Among the pupils was a young girl just budding into womanhood, a Miss Mary Stone, whose father had been captured by Mexicans in what is known in Texas history as the Mier expedition. These men, some two hundred and fifty strong, had made a raid into Mexico, and been captured by the soldiers of Santa Anna and confined in the castle of San Perote, down in Mexico, and every tenth man condemned to die. They were not chosen by name or number by their captors, but their selection left to the chance of drawing from twenty-five black beans and two hundred and twenty- five white. Each prisoner was required to step up and draw a bean from the hat, where they had all been placed. Those drawing black ones were shot.

Mary's father drew a white one, and thus for the present was safe, though still a prisoner, and suffer- ing all the tortures that a half-civilized people inflict on helpless men when in their power.

My sympathy and love went out to Mary in her dis- tress at the uncertainty of her father's fate. She would take me in her lap, and curl my long hair, kiss me, and call me her little sweetheart, and I almost worshiped her. She was beginning the study of Latin, and I would write her exercises, and thus keep her at the head of her class. One evening, just at recess, someone informed the teacher that I aided Mary and kept her at the head of the class. Without any warn- ing he carried me down to the spring, which was just under the bluff, a short distance from the tent-house in which he taught, and near the spring, in the shadow of an old cottonwood log, he repeated a verse from the Bible, about sparing the rod and spoihng the child; he then knelt, and prayed a short prayer, in which he asked his Heavenly Father to forgive the awful crime of which I had been guilty, and then rose,

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 15

and catching me by my long hair, almost lifting me from the ground, he administered an awful whipping, such as I had never felt before.

The first terrible blow from the lash almost took my breath, and the sting of it sent a thrill through every fiber of my being. I started to scream, but caught my breath and shut my teeth together, and let every muscle grow rigid, and made no sound. He might have cut me in two and I would not have flinched.

Such feelings as crept over me are indescribable. I determined to have revenge on him for the outrage and pain inflicted, and I grew as calm and stolid as if made of stone.

When he had finished I saw the blood trickling down my feet from his cruel blows. I started straight up the bluflp, my feet and hands clasping the limestone steps that we boys had cut in the soft rock to aid us in climbing its perpendicular sides. My intentions were to reach and saddle my pony, and gallop away toward my home before my teacher could reach the school grounds, and prevent me, as he would have to go down the creek, some hundred yards, before he could get up on the bluff", and by the time he reached the tent I would be on my pony and flying across the prairie out of his reach.

Just as I got to the top of the bluff* I looked down and saw him climbing up close behind me. I did not hesitate a moment ; I , gathered a stone, sharp and jagged-edged, and with all the strength and pent-up anger I felt I sent it at his head, and struck him fair in the forehead just as he was lifting his eyes to see how near he was to the top.

As my stone struck, he dropped like a dead man to the bottom. I felt a great load, as it were, lifted from my soul; I felt that I had fully avenged my wrongs without aid from anyone. I took my bucket and books, saddled my pony, and without saying a word to anyone I mounted, and with a light heart rode home.

Some two or three hours after my arrival I was chagrined and surprised to see the old fellow, all cov- ered with soot and blood, ride up to our tent, dismount,

16 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

and go in. In a few moments I was called by my father, and I saw my old teacher, covered with blood and his head bound in cobwebs and soot, and his brown linen suit, that had been washed and bleached until white, showed him up as the bloodiest man I had ever seen alive.

I found that he had given my father his side of the controversy, and I made no defense. I aimed to kill him as he climbed the bluff behind me, and had failed, and I was disappointed.

My father gave me another terrible whipping in the presence of my teacher, and I bore it with the same unflinching stoicism, and without a sound. But I made up my mind, while the lash burned my tender skin, that never again would I attend school under the old Scotchman. Yes, I would die first.

I there determined to run away from home the next day, and go to Mexico, to Castle San Perote, where Mary's father was a prisoner, and live with the Mexi- cans, where neither my father nor teacher would dare to come to hunt me.

That night I molded bullets, with two negro boys, until late in the night, and secured a large buffalo horn, containing five pounds of powder, for my little rifle. The rifle was a present from General M. B. Lamar, and my shotpouch a gift from General Sam Houston. I put my bullets in one end and my powder- horn in the other of a rawhide sack or wallet, as they were called in those days, and hid them in a crevice of a bluff on the river, just above the ford on the bank of the Colorado, where I daily crossed it on my way to school. The next morning I took my rifle, and a few charges of powder in the horn attached, and my bucket of lunch, and satchel of books, and, giving my mother an extra hug and kiss, I mounted my pony and rode away. As soon as I crossed the divide be- tween the river and Onion Creek I set my satchel of books and bucket in the trail, and turning southwest I put my pony in a lope, and struck the trail that led from Austin to San Antonio, entering the latter near Manchac Spring, about twelve miles from Austin. I

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 17

turned down the trail in a gallop, and rode up on the bluff that overlooks the San Marcos Springs. The trail makes a sudden turn to the east and follows down the river on top of the bluff for some distance, before descending to the ford. Just as I made the turn I saw, standing directly in front of me in the trail, an Indian in his war paint, and with his bow at a ready. My first impulse was to raise my rifle and kill him before he could shoot me, but my gun was in its sling and swung to the pommel of my saddle, so I merely checked the speed of my pony and rode straight up to him.

As I approached the thought entered my brain, " Why not go with the Indians, instead of the Mexi- cans.?" and I made up my mind at once to go with them. I rode up and stopped, and he said in very good English :

"Where going.''"

Without hesitation or the least embarrassment I an- swered, " With the Indians."

" That's good, give me gun."

I handed him my rifle, and as I did so I glanced back up the trail, and at the very spot from which I would have tried to shoot my captor about thirty other warriors had risen out of tall mesquite grass. They came in a body down the road, and each took a good look at me, several saying in very good Eng- lish:

"How do.?"

They exchanged my pony for a fresher one, as my long gallop of some seventeen or eighteen miles had begun to tell on him, and mounted me on one of theirs, and we started off in a northwesterly direction.

CHAPTER II

Parentage — Escapade with wild cats — Exploding " ghost " and " witch " theories — Visits to grandparents — part- nership of my father with William Jacob Thompson — Protecting the government archives — Life with the In- dians.

Before going into the details of my long captivity of four years and three months among them, the reader must indulge me for a while, as I give a short history of myself and parents prior to my life among this fierce band of Comanches.

Both of my parents were natives of Virginia. Father was born in Henry County, at the old family residence of Patrick Henry, who was his great-grandfather on his father's side. John Fontaine, his grandfather, mar- ried Martha, the oldest daughter of Patrick Henry, and they named their first-born after Patrick Henry, and Patrick Henry Fontaine married Nancy Dabney Miller, and my father. Rev. Edward Fontaine, was the oldest child, and first great-grandson of the immortal Patrick Henry.

My father was born on Leatherwood Creek, in Henry County, on the 5th of August, 1800.

My mother was bom at the old homestead of the Maurys, in Albemarle County, Virginia, on September 13, 1805. Her father moved to Tennessee when she was an infant, and Maury County was named after him.

On the 10th of September, 1828, they were married at the old homestead near Columbia, in Maury County, and went at once to Texas with Stephen F. Austin, who had received valuable grants of land, and other inducements, from the Mexican authorities to induce emigration and the colonization of the territory.

My grandfather took up his residence at Pontotoc, in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, in 1834, and for sev- eral years, under President Jackson's Administration,

18

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 19

was surveyor general of public lands south of Ten- nessee, and had his land office at Pontotoc.

When a child only six years old I was carried to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and kinfolks in and around Pontotoc.

I well remember the looks of the great logs the negroes were hewing in long straight lines to build the houses to live in. They were a novelty to me, as my home had ever been a tent, and I asked my grand- father how he was going to take all those great logs with him when he went to move his tent.'' This, of course, provoked a laugh at my expense, and exposed my ignorance to the crowd, and my mother had to tell them that I had never lived in a house, but always in a tent that could be moved about to suit our nomadic life on the prairies of our Texas home:

I had several boyish escapades that were somewhat ludicrous, while we stayed at grandfather's. One I well remember.

Grandpa was very fond of cats, and he had a dozen or more that at each meal he would feed out on the brick walk at the front porch; and there were a num- ber that lived out on the lot around the stables and barns, and these were wild and would not come about the house. Grandma constantly complained that cats destroyed the young chickens, and ought to be de- stroyed; so, at her suggestion, grandpa offered us a picayune for each pair of cat ears we would bring him. Under the guidance of Billy Bradford, my un- cles, Edmund Winston and Charles Fontaine, we or- ganized a brigade of " cat hunters," and proceeded to destroy all the cats we could find around and about the barns and stables. But the cats seemed to have had warning of our intentions, and only two or three yielded us their ears, after a long and exciting chase. But nearer the house we found several tame ones ; these we did not kill, but merely cut off their ears.

That night I offered the spoils of the chase to my grandfather, and received fifty cents in picayunes for my reward. But the next morning, when the old! man went to feed his pets, seven hoisted their tails and

20 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

came rushing up to him, bloody around their heads and minus their ears.

He said nothing on the porch as he gazed at his shorn pets, but he walked out to a young, long-limbed elm and cut a nice keen switch, went into his office, and called me in. I had to obey. As I entered he aslced if I still had the money he paid me for catching the wild cats out at the barn.'' " Yes, sir," I said.

" Well, give it back to me, I paid you too much."

He held out his hand and I dropped the picayunes

one by one into it. He took out seven, and then

handed me back the rest, and I started to go, but he

said:

" I am not through my settlement with you yet ; don't I owe you something else.'' "

I knew by intuition what was coming — my con- science told me this, and I answered : " No, sir,"

" But I do," he said, " and I am going to pay you now."

And he did, and it made an impression on me that has never been effaced.

Upon another occasion, to get revenge for this whip- ping, I played a practical joke on him that was cruel in the extreme.

Every afternoon, after dinner, he would take a nap for a few minutes, and then get up and go in his garden and weed or work among his vegetables for exercise and recreation. On the day I remember so well it was washday, and the women had been washing. They had stretched a clothes line from the posts around the well to another in front of the back window of the office in which grandpa took his nap. I heard him snoring, and knew that he was sound asleep. I caught two of the largest old tomcats that were asleep on the gallery, and handling them gently I tied their tails together, and slipped up to the clothes line and threw them across it, and then hid behind the well curb and shed to watch the outcome. The cats at once made their presence known, and soon I heard grandpa say

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 21

" Scat ! " in no uncertain tones ; but his voice only in- creased the din of the warring cats, and brought grandpa to the window to see the meaning of the turmoil. I was peeping from my hiding-place enjoy- ing the fun, and he got a glimpse of me, and out in his slippers he came, cut the strings that bound the cats, and came straight to my hiding-place. He stripped a limb from a young peach tree, and for a minute or two I had some sure enough " fun " in the most exaggerated form.

On one occasion my curiosity was aroused by hearing the negroes talking about ghosts. I wanted to see one, and old Anthony, one of the oldest of the negroes, told me that I would have to go to a graveyard, among the dead people, and sit right still until midnight, and a ghost would come right up to me, and I could see him in the dark, as he would be white. So one night I slipped out of my trundlebed and went across the orchard, and into the graveyard, and got up on a tombstone and waited. How long I sat I have no idea, but presently I was aroused by the shaking of a bush that hung over the gravestone and touched me, and saw something white, seemingly, bowing to me and almost in reach. It came a little nearer, and I made a spring and grabbed it. It gave a quick whirl, and lunged forward with a loud " Baa-baa," and revealed by its bleat an old billygoat that I was familiar with around the lot. My disappointment was intense, and from that day to this I have had my doubts about there being any real ghosts.

I had another " witch theory " exploded in a some- what similar way not long after my ghost adventure. Only a few miles from grandpa''s there lived two very old people, kind, gentle, and as hospitable as could be found. They lived alone in a large, rambling house, with upstairs rooms. The children of this old couple were married and scattered around, and frequently with their children would spend days and weeks at the old homestead. I paid them a visit one evening, and a storm came up, and darkness, and they kept me until morning. When bedtime came they sent a servant

22 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

with me upstairs, and put me to bed in a large room with an old high-post tester-covered bedstead, hung all round with heavy curtains above and below the place I lay on. The negro helped me to undress, and put on my nightrobe, which was much too large for me, lifted me up into the tall bed, drew the curtains to- gether, and left me alone, I heard her footsteps echo- ing down the stairs, then all was silent as death. I lay for a long time thinking of all the stories I had heard the negroes tell about ghosts, and about this old woman, in whose house I now was, being a cruel witch that liked to ride horses at night, and take bad boys away from their homes, and not let them see their mother or father any more. I was satisfied on the ghost question, but the witch was a known quantity, for I had read of the Witch of Endor in the Bible, and I had no doubts on that line, and here I was, all alone, in a real witch's house, and miles from home.

I had been told by Nancy Ann and old Anthony, and other negroes at grandpa's, that as long as I worked my big toe on my right foot that the witches would not and could not bother me. I thought of these things in a wide-awake state for some time, when all of a sudden I was roused by the sound of footsteps coming up to my room. They were not those of a hu- man being, for these feet had claws — I could hear them strike the steps as they ascended the stairs. I was satisfied that the witch had transformed herself into some great animal and was coming to take me away. I worked my big toe with wonderful rapidity, but it did not seem to have the desired effect. The witch came on right to my chamber door, and I heard it screech, as she pushed it open, and I heard her claws strike the floor as she approached the bed, and felt the curtains part, and heard her heavy breathing as she seemed to stand and look down upon me. It was very dark, and I could see nothing. All of a sudden, as I was doing my best working my toe, a tremendous body lit upon me, nearly mashing me down through the bed, and I could feel the quick throb of the witch's heart beat. Mine almost ceased.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 23

I lay like a dead being for some time, with the pant- ing witch lying heavily upon me, and making no effort to do me an injury. I took my head from under the cover and stretched my hand out to feel her. The relief I experienced was beyond expression, for, instead of being grabbed by the long bony claws of a horrid witch, I was greeted by the warm breath of old Ossian, our big Newfoundland dog. I grabbed him and drew him under the cover, and in a few minutes I was safe in the land of Nod.

My dog had missed me and followed my pony's track, and was at the house before the storm, and when night came on he made so much noise that the servant let him in. He came right up to me, and thus for all time ended my belief in witches.

We spent several months with my grandparents, and I think that they were glad to bid me good-by. Upon returning to my prairie home and my old Polish exile, I practiced daily with my rifle at the deer, turkeys, and prairie chickens that were in herds and flocks on every hand, and became wonderfully expert with it. Under my old tutor I made progress with my lessons in mathe- matics and all the higher branches that he taught by the text and by lectures.

In 1837 we paid my grandparents another visit, and my father and the Hon. Jacob Thompson, who was af- terward Secretary of the Interior under President Buchanan, with William Bradford, formed a law part- nership at Pontotoc. My father and Jacob Thompson entered some large tracts of land in the Mississippi bottom, on what is now known as Bear Lake, in Tunica County, and in the winter of 1837 and 1838 they took a surveyor and a large force of negroes, wagons, and mules, and four Chickasaw Indians — the latter as hun- ters to keep them in fresh meat.

We camped on some mounds just south and west of the present station of Dundee, on the Yazoo and Mis- sissippi Valley Railroad, on the east bank of Bear Lake. Here, with " Fat Bob " as my Indian compan- ion and guide, I hunted as far south as Ward Lake.

Father and " Jake " Thompson followed the sur-

24 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

veyors' trails and superintended the deadening of the lands.

Returning to Texas in 1838, we moved up the Colo- rado River to the present site of the city of Austin, and laid it out. Our tent was pitched in the center of what is now Pecan Avenue, and in laying off the city a small triangle was left to mark the spot, as ours was the first tent pitched, and ours the first horses ever staked by a white man's hand in that region.

Being the first male child born in the colony, I was allowed to hold and help drive the first tent pin, and to I aid in staking the first horse on the site of what was to be the capital city of the largest and greatest State in the grandest republic the world has even known.

It was on this occasion that I first felt that I had a place in the world.

In 1839 we built a substantial, double-walled, four- room, auditor's, comptroller's, and treasurer's log- house, and a heavy double-walled house, lined with earth, eight inches thick, of hand-sawed boards, for a general land office, and a large, roomy capitol build- ing of hand-sawed boards. We then stored all the archives of the State away nicely for the officers in charge whenever their services should be required.

President Sam Houston, concluding that Austin was too far out on the confines of civilization for their safety, decided that he would remove them back to Washington, where they would not be so exposed. So he sent some commissioners, headed by old " Deaf Smith," to remove them. But they met a snag and did not carry out Sam Houston's directions.

All the men were absent from the city upon their arrival, on an Indian scout, and only seven grown women, and five boys, myself the oldest boy, and one girl composed the whole white population of the city when the commissioners appeared. Mrs. Crosby, Mrs. Haynie, and Mrs. Swisher had the keys to the build- ings, and they told the commissioners that they could not get the archives, nor could they enter the build- ings, until the men returned. The commissioners be- came indignant at the delay, and said that they would

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 25

break the doors down and remove them anyhow, as they were clothed with the power and had the authority to do so from the President.

My mother replied that when they broke open those doors and removed those records it would be over the dead bodies of every woman and child in that place.

The ladies loaded a small six-pound cannon and sighted it at the entrance to the land office, and gave me and three other boys rifles, and lit a piece of hemp rope, and primed the cannon, ready to defend the archives of the State from being removed, and, as " Deaf Smith " stepped upon the front porch into the vestibule of the land office, they touched the match to the cannon and the ball entered the building just in front of " Deaf Smith," covering him with dust and splinters. We boys lay behind a small breastwork ready to fire with deadly aim at the word, but it never came. The commissioners beat a hasty retreat, and the ar- chives were saved.

The hole made in the wall of the old land office by the six-pound shot on that fateful morning was af- terward closed up, and a metal tablet marked the place, with the history of the occurrence engraved thereon to perpetuate the event to the coming generations.

The men upon their return thanked the gallant women for their brave acts, and said that it was bet- ter than they could have done, as they would have had to obey the President and give the archives up.

It is a pleasure to me now, at this distant day, to recall those stirring times in the early days of my native State, the founders of which had in their veins the best and purest blood of this great nation. It was among these noble men and women that my early childhood was spent, and the memory of them clings to me, and cannot be obliterated.

Turning again to that fateful morn, the 10th of September, 1839, when I handed my gun to my In- dian captor, and upon a fresh pony was carried into a little over four years of Indian life, I will try to give you a brief history.

26 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

My captors placed my saddle on a fresh pony, took my gun and ammunition, and we started on what was to me a long and tiresome ride. About four o'clock in the evening two of the " bucks " dismounted at the top of a high ridge, while the rest of us rode on down into a beautiful valley, a mile or more from the ridge. Here we dismounted, let our stake ropes drag, and hoppled some of the ponies with rawhide thongs, coup- ling their front feet close together. After watering them, we turned them out tlius fastened to graze. About sundown the two Indians left on the ridge came up, and we again mounted and continued our march, which lasted through the night. I went to sleep on my pony and when I awoke I found myself in the arms of an Indian — and thus I rode until sun-up.

We then dismounted, ate a strip of dried venison or buffalo meat, and watered and grazed our horses for an hour or two, then rode until four in the evening. Some time in the night we remounted, and rode until daylight, myself in the arms of an Indian. We con- tinued thus for many days — I don't know how long. I lost my hat the first night, and I thought that maybe someone would find it and thus get a clue to the way I had gone.

One evening we came in sight of a very large camp where there seemed to be from thirty to forty thousand men, women, and children (we numbered only about a hundred), and when we rode into their midst they made quite a din. I was given in charge of an Indian woman, about forty-five years of age, who put her arms around me, gave me a hearty squeeze, and made signs that I belonged to her. I went into her teepee, and was soon fast asleep. How long I slept I have no idea. When I awoke the sun was nearly an hour high, and the morning bright and clear.

My foster mother gave me a breakfast of fresh veni- son, roasted on the coals, some jerked buffalo meat, and dried turkey, and a gourd of water before I left the tent.

As I walked out into the campus all the little In- dians around came up and took a good look at me.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 27

One little tot about my size walked up and gave me a sharp rap square in the face. I stood still and looked him in the eye. He came up again laughing, and as he attempted to repeat the blow I warded it off, let drive at him, and laid him out on the ground, flat on his back, with the breath almost knocked out of him.

Another, a shade larger, came up and struck at me. I parried the blow and sent him to earth also. Then several rushed at me and I got some heavy licks about the head and ears, but every blow I struck would send my victim to the ground. They were com- ing at me in crowds, and I was fast getting winded when my foster mother, hearing the melee, came rush- ing to my aid and carried me into her tent. After resting for an hour or two, I again left my quarters and the battle was renewed.

This routine I had to go through two or three times a day for more than a week, until I think that every little Indian in the camp that was near my size had had a taste of my fist. As I always came out victorious when in single combat, they ceased to tor- ment me, and I was looked up to as a " good warrior," as I was a victor in full three hundred encounters.

CHAPTER III

Prestige as a marksman — The Flat-Headed Indians — My encounter with a grizzly — Finding evidences of the " ClifF-Dwellers " — Walk home a distance of 750 miles after living three years with the Comanches.

After living with my captors for about three months and sharing all of their sports and games, swim- ming, running, wrestling, and ball playing, I was given back my rifle and a small amount of ammunition, and told to go and kill a deer for my mother. My own pony was returned, and two nearly grown war- riors were sent with me to the hunting grounds.

After riding several miles down a lovely valley, we came up on a wide, level plain, with here and there a few mcsquite trees, and occasionally a thicket of dog- wood or " shin-oak." Just before we reached the end of one of these dwarf shin-oak thickets, a very large buck leaped out in front of me only a few yards away and dashed off at his best speed. I raised my rifle, let drive at him and broke his neck. I saw a look of sur- prise on my companions' faces, but they said nothing. They were only armed with bows and arrows. They dismounted and hung my deer high up in a mesquite tree above the reach of a wolf, and we continued our hunt. As we approached another thicket we separated, they a little in advance and on the right side of me. I had only ridden a few yards when another deer sprang Into the open In front of me and I repeated my first shot. They hung him up just as they did the first. Not half a mile was passed when several deer dashed out of a thicket and I broke the neck of an- other. Neither of my companions had had even a shot, for I did not wait for the deer to stop so that they could stalk and creep up on them, but killed them while at full speed, a proceeding they had never be- fore witnessed, and they could not comprehend the power that I held.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 29

Putting a deer up behind each of us, we turned back to camp. They laid the three deer down before my foster mother's door and rode off. Soon, from the gestures and the language of many around the camp, I noticed that there was something wrong. I saw my comrades show that I had killed all three of the deer while sitting on my horse, that I had broken each of their necks while they were at full speed, and it was plain to see that they did not believe this. All eyes were turned on me, and by gestures they asked me if I did kill them while running, and without getting off my horse. I answered in the affirmative. Fully a dozen or more gray-haired warriors came up and made a close inspection of the deer, turning them about in different directions, then, leaving, they returned with the chief. He also turned the deer about, made a careful and critical examination of them, gave a grunt of incredulity, and left. He had made the two young men who were with me go through the same pantomime that the others had, showing how I sat my horse, how the deer ran, and how I threw my gun up and shot; how the deer were hit and how they fell.

After some consultation and the elapse of an hour or so, they brought my pony out, and several hundred men assembled, including my two comrades of the morning without their arms, and the chief, and mount- ing their horses the whole cavalcade moved up the valley in an opposite direction from our course of the morning.

I was placed in front and my two comrades just behind me. After riding a mile or so we came to a clump of Cottonwood trees on the bank of the stream upon which we were camped. On the opposite side of the river was a high bluff. The party halted, and my two comrades rode some two or three hundred yards in front of the crowd. Some prairie chickens flew up and I started to throw up my rifle and shoot, but they caught my gun and stopped me. After a silent ride of a mile or more farther a fine drove of wild turkeys flew up from under the lower bank of the river and one sailed across in front of me. I raised my rifle and fired,

30 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

cutting him down. My two companions yelled, whirled round, and rode back in a gallop through the crowd that was following, and never halted until they reached the camp. The whole cavalcade rode up to me, and the chief took me and my gun in his arms from off my pony, and said many times " How do ! How do ! " and I think I shook hands with every member of the party.

My turkey was borne in triumph on the point of a lance into camp, and laid at the door of my foster mother's tent. My prestige as a marksman and hunter was never again doubted from that day until I left them four years after. I had their full esteem and confidence, and was always awarded the leadership in all juvenile expeditions, and was made chief of the young ball players and their games. From my deci- sions there was no appeal.

My life among these Indians was very pleasant for four years. In the spring, as soon as the calves of the buffaloes were old and strong enough, these animals would begin to move northward. This was the signal for the Indians to break up their winter camps and follow them, as the buffaloes furnished them their meat and their houses. We would follow them to the shores of Manitoba. I have killed them on the Yellowstone, far up on the Platte, the Sioux, and in the valley of the Red River of the North, when not a human being of my own race inhabited those wild regions, sixty odd years ago.

The buffaloes do not feed like any other animals of the plains — they stretch out in long lines, one behind the other, and make beaten trails, which they follow until paths are worn so deep into the soil that they touch their sides, and the young can scarce reach the grass that grows along the edges. At the head of the moving column are the young and powerful bulls and the young heifers, next come the cows and their calves, and last the aged patriarchs of the herd. The latter act as guards for the young and helpless. All feed as they march along the narrow roads.

They reach their long tongues as far out as pos-

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 31

sible and grasp a huge mouthful of grass, then slowly chew it for some time before they take another bite. Thus there is always left a bunch for those following behind.

On one occasion, as I was out in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with a small party of young boys and girls on a frolic, we got far out of the regular line of march and were lost. We fell into the hands of a tribe of Flat Head, or Digger Indians, and they took all the care of us they could. We could not speak their language, but all tribes have a universal sign language that is understood. These Indians are the poorest and the lowest in the scale of humanity of all the North American tribes that inhabit the plains. They live on roots, acorns, grasshoppers, lizards, and various kinds of small birds that are easy to trap. They catch large quantities of grasshoppers, and a small white rock lizard. These they store away in straw bunks or pumps, after drying them in the sun. They are very fond of a small, sweet, black acorn of the live-oak, and the pecan is as great a delicacy as candy to a city-bred child.

Their mode of cooking was crude in the extreme. They hollow out a basin with their knives in the soft limestone rocks, and fill the hole with water, in which they place their dried grasshoppers, lizards, and pow- dered acorns. Then they build a fire near by and in it place rocks. When these are heated to a very hot temperature, they remove them and dip them into the water that contains the mass of lizards and other in- gredients. As soon as the hot rock quits sizzling, they remove it and put in another. This is repeated until the stuff is boiled to their taste. We ate this grass- hopper and lizard soup for at least a week, when we were rescued by our own tribe. This lizard dish is quite palatable and tastes like a " crab gumbo " pre- pared by a French cook. It would be enjoyed by many, as far as taste is concerned, if its composition was unknown.

During my four years of captivity I learned much of the habits, the modes, manners, and customs of the

32 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

wild, nomadic tribes of these yellow savages that prof- ited me in after wanderings in other lands and other climes. I never led as free, untrammeled a life as I here enjoyed among these Indians. My thin summer cloth- ing that I wore when captured was soon in rags, and I discarded the remnants, and in a state of nudity I roamed the rest of the days and years of my captivity. Every part of my body became as impervious to heat and cold as was my face. I felt far more comfortable and free. My skin was like a tanned buckhide, my hair long, and my eyesight as keen as that of an eagle. I was never sick a day, and my muscles were like steel.

I often rode alone far away from our camps or trails, exploring and examining the country, and my old foster mother always had a large store of provi- sions, due to my skill with the rifle. I met with one adventure that is worth relating, as I thought at the time it was the last that I would ever be the hero of.

I was about five miles from our trail, had dismounted, and was stalking a large buck antelope that stood on guard on an eminence, under which a large herd was feeding. It was not more than a mile from the high bluffs that overshadowed the plains. My ante- lope was not paying much attention to my signals, but seemed to have his attention fixed in an oppo- site direction. I saw this, took advantage of it, and was soon in shooting distance. I fired and he fell. I reloaded my rifle and was priming it as I approached to cut his throat and prepare the body for transporta- tion to my camp. As I reached the top of the elevation and was within a few feet of him, the whole herd, of which he was the guardian, came by with a rush, and right behind them one of the largest grizzly bears that I had ever seen, dead or alive. My dead deer lay be- tween us, my horse was half a mile away, and there was not a spot of safety or place of retreat in the whole range of my vision. I was about ten feet from my antelope and I thought that maybe the bear would be satisfied with it, and let me alone. This hope was soon dispelled, for he came up to it, smelt it, turned it over, licked the blood, and looked at me.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 33

I stood perfectly still and made up my mind that the only spot my little ball could have any effect on his huge carcass was in his eye, and the only hope I had was to find his brain in that opening. All of a sudden he quit licking the blood, looked toward the bluffs, gave a low growl, and turning toward me raised on his hind feet until it seemed that he was as tall as the bluffs. I saw that his intentions were to destroy me, and I had to act quickly or it would be too late.

As he rose and faced me, I raised my rifle and fired directly at his throat, as I knew that a blow near or upon " Adam's apple " always knocked a man down or stunned him. My little ball went true and the giant fell at my very feet. I loaded as quickly as I could, and put another bullet in the hollow of his ear, but this was needless, as the first shot had killed him.

I reloaded, and in a moment after I was very weak and could hardly stand. The sudden revulsion of feel- ing from a nightmare of death to the enchanted ground of perfect safety was too great, and I had to sit down and recover.

My pony was frightened by the stampede of the herd of antelope and the scent of the grizzly, and galloped across the prairie toward our camp, leaving me alone with my dead. I knew, however, that when my pony reached the camp that my friends would begin a search for me, and I did not feel the least alarm. I took out my flint and steel from my shot pouch, and gathered some " buffalo chips " and dry grass, and kindled a fire, then took a steak from my buck and soon had a savory meal. I built a large blaze so that my friends could see where I was, and to protect me from the wolves, that I knew would put in their appearance as soon as night came on.

I was sound asleep when a band of searchers awoke me, and their exclamations of admiration at the prowess I had shown in killing the great grizzly with one small bullet sent a thrill of pleasure to my young heart. Several horses were hitched to the bear, I mounted my pony, which they had brought with them, and we rode into camp.

34 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

The next morning they examined the bear, the track of the bullet, cut him up, and gave the flesh to my foster mother. They cut the claws from the hide, cleaned and polished them beautifully, and mounted them on a band. The war chief put the band around my hair, and told me that I belonged to him and was one of his warriors.

Of course I felt proud of the distinction, as I was the smallest and youngest of the tribe who had ever been thus honored.

While with the Indians I was a constant student of nature, and learned much of the habits and nature of wild animals. I could follow their trails sAviftly over any kind of ground as unerringly as a trained hound could by scent. I wandered among the ruined cities of the ancient " cliff-dwellers," and climbed the steep sides of the great " mesas " of the Zuni plateaux, and played hide-and-seek in the chambers of these, the first civilized people in the world — the very first that carved stones and lived in stone houses, and un- derstood the art of making glazed porcelain ware.

I have often carried beautiful, small, glazed, and col- ored cups, vases, and bowls of different patterns from these great elevated rock-hewed houses of a hundred rooms to my Indian mother, to use in our camp in her domestic pursuits, and I taught her the use of many of them. She would never carry them from one camp to another, but would either break them or leave them where they were last used. I suppose she was superstitious regarding them, as she would not give me any reason why.

I remember that in one of the rooms, in a residence that was over a thousand feet above the level of the surrounding plain, I found a number of skeletons of a small, straight-boned people with high foreheads, who were nothing like the Indian skeletons. They had been murdered by a people using the chipped, rough stone arrows and spears, and some of the stones were still imbedded in their skulls.

These skeletons were covered with dust from two to three feet deep, beneath which their outlines were

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 35

plainly visible. When uncovered their bones were too soft to handle — they, too, were but dust and crumbled at my touch. Xheir implements were all of polished stone and colored pottery. I have seen my little In- dian playmates throw hundreds of the large and small vessels of this pottery ware over the bluffs, from the doors of these chambers, and watch them fall and fly into a thousand fragments below. How often in later years have I regretted this wanton destruction, which at the time was great fun to us !

But to recount my various adventures while with these Indians would only tire you. To the northwest of the largest of one of these prehistoric cities of the first civilized people of earth there is a lovely canyon, and in a day and a half's ride you will pass under three long, high " natural bridges." The one nearest the mouth of the canyon is about 150 feet high, over 400 feet long, and 100 feet wide; the second is fully 250 feet high, 150 feet wide, and is fully 500 feet long; the third is a magnificent structure over 500 feet above the bottom of the dry bed of the canyon, 300 feet wide and 700 feet in length.

I have passed under these great works of nature in our hunting expeditions into the mountains after bear. I call attention to these great " natural bridges " here to cause some adventurer to visit and photograph these wonders of nature.

I have, in these same regions, passed over beautiful tesselated pavements of white and black stone for sev- eral miles in extent, and through forests of petrified trees that are of the most beautiful colors. It is worth a journey across those trackless wastes to see them. In the rooms of the cliff-dwellers you can see upon the plastering, to this day, the prints of their hands, the lines of the epidermis yet clear and distinct, and by the art pursued by Bertillon you could get a very good idea of the people who once inhabited this region. The phrenologist and the anatomist, in the modern light of science, could give us pictures of these van- ished and long-ago forgotten civilized people.

Toward the close of my third year of captivity with

36 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

the Comanches I asked the chief if he would not let me go back to my home and see my mother and my people. He said yes, if I would walk.

This reply put a damper on my undertaking the journey, as it was at least seven hundred and fifty or more miles in an air line, across a trackless waste, to my home, and on the route there was a desert of eighty miles, without a drop of water in its whole extent. There was not a white man nor white settlement on those wild wastes between the city of Austin and the Pacific Ocean at that time. . So, with a desert in front of me of eighty miles in extent and no pony to ride, I hesitated and did not accept his offer. But upon our return the next year I renewed my request, and received the same answer. I then determined to make the attempt on foot, and so informed my foster mother.

The next day I made preparations for my long and lonely journey. My foster mother did all she could to deter me from the undertaking, but I was firmly resolved on making the trip. She made me several pairs of heavy-soled moccasins that reached far above my knees, to prevent the long coarse grass from cut- ting my skin, as I waded through it across the buffalo trails. She also prepared some shredded, dried turkey breast and venison in a buckskin pouch, filled my quiver with a supply of fresh arrows, and a new deer sinew string to my bow, and, after putting her mark care- fully upon each arrow, she told me to " be good." I bade her farewell, and, alone and on foot, I set out on my long journey homeward.

Reader, can you imagine a child scarce fourteen years of age (who at sixteen only weighed fifty-eight pounds), on a bald prairie, seven hundred and fifty miles from home, without a companion, without a horse, without a guide, surrounded by wild animals, and some parts of his way not within eighty miles of a drop of water.? This was my condition. Only the hope of seeing my mother at the end of my long tramp gave me strength.

I knew that all the water courses that had their sources on the southern and eastern slope of the Rocky

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 37

Mountains flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and that by following any of them I would strike the Gulf some- where. When I came to the desert, or waterless region, game became scarce. I carried a deer hide across it, and in the morning I would spread it out, shake the dew from the grass on to it, and gather the ends up, and thus get a supply sufficient to last me all that day. Thus I succeeded in keeping water. My rifle kept me in a good supply of food — the jerked or dried venison and the shredded turkey breasts I used as bread. _

At night I would kindle a fire of the dry buffalo chips, broil my fresh meat, eat a hearty meal of it, and then lie down by my fire and sleep as sound as a tired child only can. Sometimes the coyotes and larger wolves would make some trouble with their howling and snarling. If they got too bold I would send a ball or an arrow into the nearest and most bold, and he would leap off with a howl and the rest would scatter.

I did not see a human being on my whole journey, and I don't think that I was ever in any great danger from any wild animal. I felt that a special guardian angel watched over my pathway, and guided my every step. The first water course I struck, after crossing the Rio Grande and Pecos, was the Conchas, a tribu- tary of the Colorado, the very stream on which the city of Austin was located, and on which was my home. But I did not know it, and did not recognize it until I reached the junction of the San Saba and the Colorado. There I saw the remains of one of our camping places of more than four years before. My heart gave a ereat bound when I saw the first marks of a civilized people, and knew that I was not more than seventy-five miles from home.

The day was bright and clear and the moon was but a day old, and, had I had moonlight I think that I would have been tempted to travel all night, I was so elated.

One evening just after sundown I had built my campfire on the eastern slope of a mountain, on the

38 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

south side of the river, and was looking off down it, when I caught the glimmer of a light. It shone out bright and clear, and twinkled like a star. I watched it until my eyes grew weary and heavy with sleep, and I drifted into the Land of Nod with its sheen upon my lids. This mountain was only twenty miles from my home, and the light was in my mother's room.

CHAPTER IV

Arrival home — Mistaken for an Indian — Tortured by wear- ing clothing and sleeping in beds — Jeers of neighbor- hood children — Sent to Professor Bingham's school.

The next night I was within ten or twelve miles of Austin and on another mountainside. I again built my fire, and as it grew* dark I watched for my light again. When it appeared, Columbus, seeing the first gleam of light from out the pathless sea that shone from this, to him, new world, was not and could not have been more rejoiced than I.

For an hour I sat and watched it twinkle, and then I made my own larger and brighter, and then I slept as sound as a babe. The next day I wandered on, over high mountains and deep ravines, until nearly dark, when I came out on top of a bluif overlooking Bartons Creek. The sun was down as I reached this bluff, but from it I could see a house not more than three miles away, and it was from this house the light shone. I descended the bluff, crossed the creek, and came out on the prairie beyond just as night descended.

To understand my position exactly it is necessary for me to remind the reader that I was a stranger to the habits and customs of civilized life. I had been reared, as it were, in a tent on the prairies of Texas, and had made but two short visits to a civilized country, where houses and fences were a part of the surround- ings. These were unfamiliar scenes in my Texas home, and were unlooked for, and such a thing as a window- glass I did not dream of.

I took my course across the prairie toward the light, and was compelled to go around thickets and other natural obstructions until at last I came to a high rail fence. I clambered over into an open plowed field. Across it I encountered a high picket fence. The tops

39

40 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

of the pickets were sharpened, and I had considerable trouble in getting over, but I succeeded at last and found that I was in a pen of horses and other kinds of stock. I crossed the pen and encountered another picket fence. This I also climbed, and made straight for the light, which was some eight feet above the ground, shining through a narrow door. Asl came under it I saw that I had to climb up quite a distance, over logs laid one on the other, to get inside of the small door. I took off all of my plunder, set my gun down, and hung my bow and quiver of arrows upon it, and climbed straight up to it.

Through the opening I could see my mother sewing by a table with a candle burning upon it, and in an adjoining room I could hear the voices of several men conversing, my father among them. As I reached the opening I attempted to enter, and my head and my face encountered an invisible obstruction which was shattered into fragments, and made quite a noise as it rattled on the floor inside of the room. I attempted to withdraw my head as my mother raised her eyes. She uttered a scream, and I dropped to the ground and heard her shriek, " Indians." I darted under the house as I heard the commotion I had been the cause of, and clambered up on one of the floor sills between the joists, and lay upon it as still as a squirrel.

Soon lights began to shine in every direction. They took charge of my paraphernalia and looked under the house in every direction. I heard " Deaf Smith " say that my outfit was that of a Comanche scout. When this declaration was made there was a short consultation among the men, and soon I heard a drum sounding, and then another and another, and the as- sembling of men in numbers. I laid as still and silent as possible, not daring to move, until I was almost in a cramp, and I listened until the voices of the men died away and I could hear no sound of them.

I was wondering if it was not safe for me to get down and try to make my escape when I heard the rustle of a dress, and stooping down I peeped out and saw my mother in the faint light of the young

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 41

moon standing just where I struck the ground as I slid from the window. My face had been cut by the shattered glass as I withdrew my head, and I was bleeding a httle, a drop here and there. I dropped from my hiding-place and said:

" Ma, it's Lamar."

She recognized my voice and clasped me in her arms. We entered the house, and she stanched the blood and washed my face and hands. As I did not have on any clothing except a small cape made from the soft hide of an unborn buffalo calf, which was simply used to keep the weight of my load from cutting my shoul- der, she proceeded to make a long shirt, that reached below my knees, from one of my father's old ones. This she put on me and then took the band of bear claws from my hair. With her shears she clipped my hair short, and combed and washed it and my scalp for some time, until it seemed that she had fully scalped me, and my head was as tender as if it had been skinned. She then washed me over and over and over again, and then put me in her bed. There was a " dry norther " blowing, though not very cold, but when she put me in a featherbed and covered me up my skin felt as if it were on fire, and I was in torture. She talked to me and I understood every word she said, but I could not reply in English, as I had forgotten my native tongue. I would answer in the Indian vernacular.

When my father and the other men who were with him returned, my mother told them who their Indian was. I was brought out, and I thought that they were going to shoot me, so I again said, " Ma, it's Lamar." This was all the Enghsh that I could say.

In this crowd of men around me I knew General M. B. Lamar, after whom I was named ; also old " Deaf Smith," Captain James G. Swisher, James H. Ray- mond, " Milt " and Munroe Swisher, and several mem- bers of the Texas Congress, which body was at that time in session. Many of these men were boarding at my father's, and it was gratifying to me that I knew them all, but exceedingly awkward that I could not

42 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

talk to them. Old "Deaf Smith" could speak Co- manche, but could not hear my reply. He said that I was only an Indian decoy, and sent as a spy among my own people to murder them, and that I ought to be taken out and hanged. It made my blood boil to hear him say this, and I could have shot him with as much delight as I would have shot a panther or sneaking coyote.

I told them that I had not seen an Indian for months, and that I had come from the Rocky Mountains all by myself, and that not an Indian had come with me. This they did not believe, as the distance was so great a child my size could not make the journey alone. Nor could I convince a single one of them. My father wanted to whip me until I would tell them the truth, but General Lamar said it would do no good — that the best thing to do would be to send out scouts on my back track, and see if I was alone, and to be pre- pared for any emergency by keeping the army under arms and ready. This they did.

I was so uncomfortable in bed with my nightclothes on that as soon as everything was asleep but the sentinels out on the prairie, I crept out of bed and crawled out into the yard, and, throwing my gown under my head, I lay down between the roots of a large live-oak tree that grew in the back yard. I was soon sound asleep and did not wake until nearly sunup, when I crawled back into the house without making any disturbance. The soldiers, under the skillful guidance of Tonkaway and Caddoe Indians, took my back track and followed it up to and beyond the San Saba River. They were gone some ten days and re- turned, reporting that so far no Indian traces were found, and that I had no companions, and no following friends; that I was absolutely alone in all my journey from the San Saba to my home.

During the ten days the soldiers were absent I was closely watched and my every movement noted. I kept close to my mother, for I was afraid of old " Deaf Smith," and thought he would kill me if he got a fair chance. During those ten days I made considerable

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 43

progress in regaining the use of my tongue, by con- stant practice with my mother, and she learned much of the Comanche language. I got so I could converse in my native English.

Mother made me new clothes, and fitted them to me, but the torture in having to put them on and wear them was fearful. As I had not had any on for four long years, every part of my body was as impervious to heat and cold as was my face. I would wear them while in or about the house, but when I was off from the house, or alone, the first thing that I would do was to disrobe and enjoy the freedom of my limbs, and ease my tortured hide.

My life was not one of pleasure, and I did not enjoy my homecoming as I had expected. All I said or did was misconstrued. The children of the neighborhood would make faces at me, and call me " Indian, spy," and all sorts of names. I bore it all with Indian sto- icism, and made no reply, but it would not have been healthy for one of them to have met me alone in some out-of-the-way place, for I would not have hesitated to kill him as I would a wolf or panther. I con- sidered them the worst enemies that I had on earth, having robbed me of my fair name and given me one of derision. All I said and all the hardships that I had endured were laughed at, and I was considered a menace to the community. I told my mother my every thought on this hne, and asked her if she would be sorry if I went back to the Indians. She told me not to mind what my persecutors did, that I had performed feats beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mortal, and hence my deeds to them were but lies ; that all would come right in the end, when I was better under- stood. She gave me all the comfort that lay in her power, but my own heart was sore and I strongly contemplated returning to my little Indian playmates, where at least I was appreciated.

At last it was determined to send me away to some distant school, where my Indian life was not known. When I found this out I felt a great rehef, for home was not what I had pictured it on my long and lone-

44 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

some journey across those wild desert wastes. It was a torture to live in it and I welcomed anything that promised a respite. I was to be sent to Professor Bingham's school in North Carolina, among the hills and mountains of that grand old State, and I felt a secret joy at the coming change.

One morning the carryall was made ready and my father, the negro driver, and I got in. With an extra pair of horses led by another negro we set out on our overland journey to the Old North State.

A

CHAPTER V

Parting with my mother — Run away from Professor Bing- ham's school — Home again — Sent to sea — Life on the Vincens — Return home in December, 1846 — Join Perry's expedition to Japan in 1853 — Explorations in the Far East.

I WILL not recount the incidents of my trip, as they made but little impression on me at the time. I was too glad to get away from the home that had been such a terrible disappointment to me. Strange thoughts flitted through my brain. I loved my mother with a passion that was sacred to me, and I would have given my life willingly to save her even a pang, but I could not be with her, and life for me was a blank with- out her.

Those long-ago days now rise before me in all their vividness. As I pen these lines, nearing the seventy- seventh milestone in life's rugged pathway, I feel the loving kiss yet burning on my lips where she pressed it as she bade me " Good-by." There are some things in our life that time does not eff^ace, and this is one of them. They are like the brand of red-hot iron that sears the tender hide of the bleating calf; once burned in it lasts as long as life. I can see the last wave of her hand as she watched us move off across the prairie, and the picture is branded in my brain.

After about a month or more on the road we reached Professor Bingham's school. I begged my father not to enter me under my own name, as there was a chance of my name having reached there from Texas, through the newspapers. If it should be recognized, the very thing that I wanted to avoid would confront me again, and I would certainly leave the school and return to the Indians, for I would not undergo in this school the tortures of suspicion that I had labored under in my own home. He respected my wishes, and I was enrolled under a new name.

I was soon a favorite in the mess hall, as well as

45

46 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

campus. My ball playing was as good as the best, for in the Indian game " shinney " I was an expert, as I had played it for years with my little Indian team on a field many miles in extent, not limited to the nar- row lines of our campus. I was often the first choice in the " toss-up," as we called it, and for two long weeks I was happy as a boy could be in my position. But a cloud hovered over my horizon. At all schools there are some who are envious of others, and our school was no exception to the rule. One boy accused me of doing an act of which I was entirely innocent, and, without giving me a chance to disprove the charge, the professor gave me a severe chastisement. This raised a demon in my heart. The next day being Saturday, we had a big ball game, in which the profes- sor took a hand. I was on the opposite side and I laid my plans so as to get near him. As we both made for the ball I was a little quicker than he, but I waited until he shoved his stick forward and covered the ball, when, without hesitating, I let drive with all my might an upper stroke. Glancing up his stick, I struck him a fearful blow, unhinging his lower jaw and driv- ing some of his teeth down his throat. To the out- siders it appeared to be an accident, but I knew that the professor would not so regard it when he recovered.

That night I determined to leave the school and go to some other place, but I wanted to meet the fellow who was the cause of all the trouble. I met him, and such a drubbing as he got at my hands that night he never forgot.

I took what money I had, and with only the clothing I had on I scaled the college walls and footed it to Newbern, on the coast. There I crawled aboard a large schooner that was taking on a load of lumber for Galveston, Texas, and for three days I hid in the hold until I could feel the steady swish of the sea and the long swell of the waves. Then I came on deck and took the crew and ofllcers by surprise. I told the cap- tain my full story, concealing nothing. It made the right impression upon him, and he sympathized with me, and made me his friend forever. He said that

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 47

he, too, had run away from school and his home for unjust punishment in his early youth, and he knew just how it made me feel.

We were some time at sea, owing to adverse and stormy weather, and I soon became familiar with every part of the ship, and each line and rope. I took delight in climbing to the crow's nest and watching for passing vessels, and the wild freedom of the winds and waves had a fascination for me that I had never felt on the land. During that trip I made up my mind that I would be a sailor and make the sea my home.

We reached Galveston without accident, and I went from there up to Houston by boat. In Houston I met the proprietor of the stage line that ran to Austin, and was given a seat in the coach. I reached home all right, and was clasped in my mother's arms again.

I had been home two days before my father arrived from his long return journey from Bingham's school. He had been delayed by a visit to his own father at Pontotoc as he came back from North Carolina. His surprise was great at seeing me, and my explanations did not seem to satisfy him in all things. He would look at me in such a way that I hated to be alone in his presence. I felt that there was doubt in his mind of every statement I made.

I gave my mother a straight and clear statement of my adventures at the school, and the cause that led to my striking the professor ; how I aimed to kill him for the way he had treated me. I told her of the thrashing I gave the boy who had lied to the pro- fessor, and caused me to be so unjustly whipped, and I saw her shudder at my words. She told me that I did wrong, and that my father would send me back ; that I must apologize to the professor, and to the young man who was the cause of all my trouble at the school. When this plan of going back to school was presented a spirit of unrest took possession of me, and I made up my mind that I would bid adieu to all home ties forever, and go at once to my Indian friends in the far West. I let my old negro nurse into my secret and she informed mother of my intentions.

48 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

I made every preparation to leave. When father found it out, instead of being angry and punishing me, he said that he had no intention of sending me^ back to North Carohna, but that I could stay at home and be with mother as long as I would behave myself and be a good boy.

That night I fell asleep in my mother's lap, and the world had a fairer and broader view for me. I had a feeling of perfect rest that night such as I have rarely since felt. My intense love for mother seemed strength- ened tenfold, and I never wanted to be out of her sight. Such feelings and such love can only enter our lives once in a lifetime. Its memory clings to us sacredly until we " cross the Great Beyond." I have felt it on the frozen shore of Greenland, on the burning sands of Sahara, in the jungle wilds of Asia and Africa, in the lonely watches of the midnight hour on the track- less sea, and on the snow-capped peaks of the Hima- layan and Andean mountain chains. It never dies. It is a part of the " arcana " instilled into us by the Hand above. It binds us to the Great I Am, and will reunite us in the dim hereafter.

I remained at home a few short months or maybe only weeks, hunting and fishing, generally alone, as I wanted none of my former playmates about me ; they only reminded me of my first homecoming from my Indian captivity, and the least word or remark about my being an Indian decoy or spy would have given them trouble.

One morning, after a long, hard ride on a bucking bronco, I was informed that father and I were going to Pensacola, Florida, to see a kinsman, Lieutenant M. F. Maury, of the U. S. Navy. In a few days we bade mother " Good-by," and with a negro boy as my body servant and " Jake " the carriage driver we drove to the town of Houston, on Buffalo Bayou. Here we took a steamboat and went into Galveston. From there we took passage for New Orleans on the old Maria Burt, and on reaching that city we took a steamer for Pensacola by way of the lakes.

One evening we reached Pensacola, and went aboard

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 49

a side-wheeled steam gunboat, the Vincens. That even- ing we attended a banquet given by the officers, and about eleven o'clock I crawled into a hammock that was swinging against or near the side of the vessel, and was told by Lieutenant Maury to rest there as long as I wanted to. I was soon asleep, and when I awoke the ship was out of sight of land. My father was not on board, and I was alone on a strange ship among entire strangers. Lieutenant Maury was the only one I had ever seen before. My feelings were strung to the utmost tension. I felt that I had been kidnaped, shanghaied, or stolen. A feeling of resent- ment arose in my bosom, and I determined to get even some way at the first opportunity and leave them all. I saw there was no way to escape then, as there was no land, and that I would have to wait until we entered some port.

Our vessel I heard from the sailors was bound for the Arctic regions, and that probably our first land would be at the Dutch Cape Farewell on the southern shore of Greenland. This was not very soothing to my pentup feelings, but with Indian stoicism I said noth- ing. I obeyed every order with alacrity, and in a few days I had made many friends and become a favorite among the men. I loved to climb the ropes, sit far up in the rigging, and feel the sway of the vessel and watch for ships on the horizon. I soon became fond of the sea and my surroundings on the ship, but the reflection that I had been made a prisoner never for a moment left me, and the thought constantly rankled in my breast. I began the study of the higher branches of mathematics under Lieutenant Maury, and was soon familiar with the use of the quadrant, the compass, and the log, and could rattle off the names of the various sails and lines and parts of the ship, and many nautical phrases common to the sailors. I did not grieve over my captivity, but made the best of it.

I learned to love the sea, and to this distant day I am happy when I hear the roar of the breakers and see the long lines of waves as they dash upon the shore and send the spray in clouds far up into the air. To me

k

50 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

it is the grandest music that can greet the human ear. I love it in its quiet grandeur; I love it when the " Storm God " heaves its breast and shakes its shores in awful thunder. To me it is like a mirror of eternity, the looking-glass of Nature, and of Nature's God.

We made our first land in Boston harbor, and here many of us went on shore, and I was struck with the wild recklessness of a " Jack Tar " on the land. He is as different a being ashore as it is possible to im- agine. He seems to be, and is, as helpless as a child. He needs a guardian here more than anywhere on earth.

At Boston we took on vast stores of all kinds of provisions suitable for an Arctic expedition, and I was soon, I thought, to be a partaker of all the hardships and rigors of a polar exploration. Lieutenant Maury believed that there was an open polar ocean, and we were going to find and prove it. I made up my mind that if I had to go to the North Pole, that it would be on a ship and with a crew of my own choosing; so a few hours before sailing I left the Vincens. I met the captain of a whaling vessel and went aboard his ship, thus giving the officers and the crew of the Vin- cens the slip, and a day or so after she sailed we, too, left for a two years' cruise in the far-off frozen zone.

We headed for Greenland, and when off Cape Fare- well coasted along the western shore as far as Upper- navik, and then northwest, until we were in latitude 79° 13' north, and longitude 70° 10' west. Here we spent the winter, frozen hard and fast. On the 17th of July, 1846, we were anchored in the wake of a grounded iceberg in latitude 74° 48' north, and longi- tude 66° 13' west, cutting up and trying out the fat of several large sperm whales we had in tow.

On the 26th of July the two vessels of Sir John Franklin's expedition, the Erehus and Terror, stood by, and asked about the channels and islands to the north and west of us. We gave them all the informa- tion as far north and west as we had been. We were fully in sight of them for more than twenty-four

\v/

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 51

hours. I believe that we were the last ship and crew that they ever saw.

One winter in this cold, bleak, frozen region was enough for me. I never want to see it again while I live. The eternal silence that reigns fills you with awe and an uncanny dread — a something that you cannot comprehend. Everything is unnatural. The aurora borealis is simply indescribable, and has to be seen to even catch a faint realization of its splendor and grandeur — words cannot paint them. The most wonderful are seen when the thermometer registers ninety degrees below zero. It is the most sublime of all Nature's handiwork. It is the " flaming sword " that God placed in the hands of the cherubim to guard the portals of the Garden of Eden when He drove the man of the living soul from out its walls.

I visited many islands and points of land in the Arctic regions, and was surprised at the vast amount of fossilized remains of animals, birds and beasts, as well as plants, that belong only to a warm tropical climate. In fact they are of larger size, and could only have lived in a hotter country than the tropics now present. I think that this idea will strike almost any observer when he first beholds them. But I will not trouble you with a minute description of these. We were very successful in our voyage, and carried into Boston a full cargo of oil.

In December, 1846, I reached Mobile, Ala., and made a trip to Pontotoc, Miss., where my parents were on a visit to my grandfather.

In January, 1847, I went on board the U. S. frigate Sabine, and on the 7th of February we opened fire on the city of Vera Cruz, and continued until that city surrendered. I was with the battery of guns that was sent to the rear of the city, and while on the vessel was at the starboard bow gun, a twenty-pounder, as I remember it now.

After the bombardment and surrender our vessel, as well as the St. Lawrence, the Susquehanna, the Missis- sippi, and one or two others, was sent to the Far East into the China Sea, and with Bolingbroke we con-

52 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

summated a treaty with China. I marched afoot from Tsin Tsen to Pekin over a marshy, level country, densely populated, and was the first American boy to enter the city. I spent several months in China, and around Hong Kong Island, and went with some natives far up the Yang Tse into the mountains, five hundred miles from the coast. I made many observa- tions for my kinsman. Lieutenant Maury, to aid in his work, " The Physical Geography of the Sea."

In 1853 I joined in Perry's expedition to Japan. Our vessel was dressed as a merchantman, and sent to destroy the pirates off Sasebo. This we did most ef- fectually, not letting a single one reach the land. They thought that we were a merchantman aground, and came in swarms to capture and destroy us, but we were not aground, only ready and waiting for them. As they approached us in their long, low, rakish-look- ing boats, we could see that their intentions were sinister, and we prepared for them. Our rigging was filled with Chinese sailors, and not an American seaman was visible. When they were within two ship's cables of us the Chinese began to hail them and told them to go back. They paid no attention to their cries, but began shooting at us. It was amusing to see the Chinamen tumble down on deck and scoot for cover. The Japs fired from long single-barreled, match-locked muskets, that took two to fire. One held and sighted the gun and the other touched it off, just as boys now do their brass Fourth of July toy cannons. These " Long Tom " muskets were almost harmless, and their bullets rattled against the sides of the ship like peb- bles thrown against the walls of a house, and did as little damage.

We waited until they swarmed around us and threw their grappling hooks up on deck, then we turned our guns, with double charges of canister and grape, upon them, and our marines, with their rifles, sent all of them to " Davy Jones' Locker." I suppose that we destroyed about two thousand in all, and we put a quietus upon these pirates and their descendants forever.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 53

Our ships, that had gone around the eastern shores of the islands, met us in the Japanese Channel, about 150 miles south of Hakodadi; and we took twenty-six of the princes and princesses of Nippon, and brought them to the United States. We kept them here at school for fifteen years, educated and civilized them, and sent them back to their native land. From the seed thus sown in 1853 the present status of the Japanese Empire had its origin.

From the Far East I returned in 1849, and in 1850 I went back and remained in India, China, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and Syria.

In 1855 I again visited my Texas home. While in the Far East I explored parts of India, and went to the heads of the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmapootra, the Yang-tse-Kiang, and thence to the Hoang, or great Yellow River in northern China. I followed the Great Wall of China, about fifty miles or more west of where it crosses the Hoang Ho, then turned back east and went on until I reached the great gate lying north of Pekin, some two hundred miles east of the crossing of the Yellow River.

While in the Himalayan Mountains, near Dumjah, I was made a Buddhist priest, and took several orders. This gave me entrance into their secret archives that are hidden alike from Christian or Mohammedan. They are sacredly kept apart from all eyes, save those of the ancient order of the Aryan Sanscrit Priesthood. Only those of the pure white race ever see them. No yellow or black or mixed blooded priest or layman ever lays eyes on these records. In tha Vale of Kashmir I found the purest blood of the Aryan people. Here, beyond the Hindoo-Koosh Mountains, they speak of Alexander the Great as if he had only been gone a few short years ; all call him uncle, and claim kin with him. These people had never been subdued by the English.

In a series of lectures that follow this biographical sketch I give you some of the things I learned while a sojourner among these brave and true people, the only pure descendants of the ancient founders and

54 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

civilizers of India, who ages agone migrated westward from the shores of ancient America to this region. There are many traditions among their archives that point to America as the place from whence they mi- grated, but I will not indulge in speculative thoughts here, as I am only giving you a brief story of my life and wanderings. But before leaving the dreamy land of these Hindoos I cannot help but give you a description of the beautiful temple near Agra, on the banks of the Jumna, a tributary of the holy river of these ancient people. It is called the Taj Mahal, and was erected many hundreds of years ago by Prince Jehan, as a monument to himself and wife. It is im- possible to paint it with words or pen, so that you can realize its splendor and its majestic grandeur, as there is no building on earth that can compare with it. When you stand in front and look up at its massive dome, covered with hammered gold, and its pure white Parian marble walls and columns, all rising to a height of 296 feet above you, gleaming in the clear light of a bright, unclouded sun, you seem to feel, as you lift your eyes upward, that you are gazing at the " Great White Throne " of the Living God, and the longer you gaze the more impressive becomes the scene. Go in- side and the same feeling of awe comes over you. The massive columns, wreathed in vines of living verdure from whose petals the dew and raindrops seem to glit- ter and fall and the breezes to fan the clinging ivies that twine around them, are as smooth and cold as polished glass. Place your hand upon these columns and you will find each vine, each petal, each dewdrop a precious stone, inlaid into the cold white marble, without a flaw or blur. Each dewdrop that glistens in the soft subdued light is a pure diamond of the first water, and the colored leaves and vines are of colored quartz an inch and a quarter long, hexagonal in shape and not larger than a cambric needle, fitted so close that it takes a microscope to discern the junction. There are fifty-two of these great columns thus dec- orated.

Now let us visit the tomb of Jehan and his wife, and

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 55

see its wonders. Here a marble wall, six feet high and eighteen inches thick, encloses but does not hide it, for J9U peer through a real veil of pure marble, so cut and pierced that it does not obscure the vision. You are lost in a maze of wonder. This solid piece of mar- ble seems in reality but a gauze veil, thin and light, apparently so fragile that you could lift it with your breath. But feel and measure it ; it is eighteen inches thick and six feet high. At his wife's head there is a small table, apparently about two feet wide and three feet long, and seemingly an oil painting of a beautiful, quiet mountain home scene. It really is a mountain home. You look up at the mountain tops, and down into the sweet peaceful glens and valleys, in perspective, such as no artist of modern times has even attained with pencil or brush. View it closely with your microscope, and you will find that it, too, is made of small needles of various hued pure quartz, no single stone larger than a cambric needle, but each color blended one into the other with a master hand, so true to life that the whole is a living and real picture of the birthplace and early home of the dead woman. I asked my guide if any value had ever been placed upon this work of art, and he said that several visitors from Eng- land and France had offered as high as a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it, but that it was in reality worth several times as much ; that there were no artists in the world that could even polish the delicate stones into their hexagonal shapes in a lifetime of sixty years, much less to select the true colors, shades, and the minutiae necessary to paint this picture with quartz needles. The great Taj Mahal has no equal on this earth, and many thousands of years of our civilization will roll away before it can have a duplicate.

I hope the reader will pardon these thoughts that fill my mind — they are not a part of my life, but the memory was so strong that I could not help the di- gression.

One of the best-remembered journeys that I ever took was from the port of Sallee, on the west coast of Africa, to the upper regions of the Nile, in the Nubian

56 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

Desert. The port of Sallee is about 125 miles south of Tangier, and from there I went ahnost due east to the city of Fez, the ancient capital of Morocco. Here I fitted out a " desert kit," and in a large cara- van, numbering some five thousand or more, I became a unit. I will be as brief as possible in giving you a picture of life on the greatest " sandy sea " on the earth.

The scenery of the first three hundred miles south of Fez is one of real gloomy grandeur. There are some wonderful valleys, rich in the loveliest foliage and verdure. At times we were eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and in the clear air the views were grand. After leaving the influence of the wadis, or rivers, leaving all signs of vegetation behind and enter- ing the desert proper, the change was something never to be forgotten. The long line of the caravan, in single file or in groups, would stretch out in an un- broken line for miles. The dust would almost strangle those in the rear on the lee side. At times you could see but a few feet, and the heat was something fearful. I have seen my thermometer register, in the shade of the tent at nine o'clock in the morning, 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and twice during the prevalence of a simoon I have seen it rise to 170 degrees, and at night it would drop to 28 degrees above zero.

At our evening camps thousands of yards of car- peting would be spread on the level sands, and hundreds of the young dancing girls, very scantily clad in soft, clinging, bright-hued garments, would take their places on the carpets, and, to the sound of weird wind and stringed instruments, with drum and tambourine ac- companiments, give us varied specimens of their vo- luptuous " cooche coochie " dance, lasting far into the night. The wonderful fascination that these dark- eyed and dark-hucd maidens exercise over these desert- born Bedouins is very remarkable. They hold them with a hypnotic power, and sway them as the winds do the branches and foliage of the trees. Thus to the wanderers of these sandy wastes is life made tolerant. Throughout the long weary day of marching over

IVIY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 57

the black and hot sands they look forward to the night of revelry and dancing, or to the fascination of gambling.

There is no twilight or rosy dawn in the desert. The moment the sun sinks a pall of darkness falls over the earth, just as if the lamp had been extinguished in your chamber. The day bursts upon you like press- ing of the electric button. The sun simply flashes out at once without warning, and ushers in the day with all its brilliancy. Not a day passes that you do not see and feel the influence of the magic mirages. They certainly are of hypnotic birth. They hold you with an unseen power, and present to your wondering gaze the most beautiful pictures of lovely scenes, where you lie under the shade of wide-spreading trees, beside the margins of foaming rivers or grand lakes, over whose surfaces the snow-capped waves chase each other and break in sparkling foam at your feet. Or you see the peaceful village of your own nativity, clearly defined against the horizon of the desert. At other times the whole plain will be filled with beautiful groves of trees and green, grassy, cool, shady spots, with here and there a sparkling brooklet, with splashing waterfalls and small placid lakes sleeping in vales between rolling hills, and the camels and horses assume the appearance of houses and towering steepled churches, and the dark boulders of sand-polished stone rise as frowning cas- tles, set upon unapproachable heights, all as real and true to the vision as the reality.

For five months this great caravan was my home. I soon got accustomed to the daily routine, and with the wild roving Bedouins I felt as much at home and at ease as I did on the wild Western plains with my Indian friends in my earlier days. When we reached the valley of the Nile, near the northern boundary of the Nubian Desert, our great caravan divided. Part went south to Khartoum, and I with another part went down the great valley to the city of Cairo. I wandered among the vast piles of ruins from Karnak to the mouth of the Nile, and examined every feature of them in detail as I did the fossilized remains of the flora

58 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

and fauna of the icy regions of the far north. The more I studied them, the more thoroughly I became convinced that it was here that ancient civihzation ended instead of began. These works were not those of men who were just learning how to build. Their teachers and architects had had the experience of countless centuries of time. It was this idea, conceived on the top of the largest of the pyramids, as I looked down at the other eight of the great structures that form this group, and the lion-man-headed sphynx, a thousand years older than the pyramids themselves, that gave me the impetus to wander the world over, in search of the ancestors and teachers of the builders of these pyramids and ruined cities. For twenty-seven years I gave my time and money to this endeavor. I left no stone unturned and braved every danger of land and sea with this end in view. In my lectures on " America, the Old World," I have given you my conclusions on the subject which are not germane to this biographical sketch.

From Egypt I surveyed the pathway of the Israel- ites across the Red Sea into the Holy Land. I camped upon the top of Sinai and listened to the weird sounds that are produced by the sands blown upward upon its summit and then, slowly trickling down its sides over large and small cavities, make mournful sounds. As the winds blow gentle or strong and shift these musical sands in large or small quantities across these holes, some of which are deep and others shallow, soft, low sweet notes or weird unearthly sounds are produced. To one filled with superstition, and to the ignorant, these sounds have a terrifying effect. Fear and dread seize upon the poor creatures, and they shake like an aspen leaf. I bathed in the dense, slimy waters of the Dead Sea, and in the muddy, frothy stream of the Jordan, and in those of Galilee. I mapped the streets and walls of Jerusalem, stood on Golgotha, and wandered in the garden of Gethsemane. I ran a line of levels from Joppa through Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, and found that the Dead Sea was 1296 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea.

CHAPTER VI

Enlist in Russian army — Siege of Sevastopol — Rewarded for marksmanship — ^Back to Austin — Death of my mother — Explorations in Central and South America — Enlistment in Confederate Army at Pensacola.

From the shores of the Holy Land to the Crimean coast is not more than a thousand miles, and when the alHed armies of Turkey, France, England, and Sar- dinia flocked into the Black Sea, through the Dar- danelles, I, too, went on board one of our vessels, the Osprey. I landed at Balaklava, and went at once into the Russian lines, and enlisted in the troop of KioskI Cossacks that composed the body guard of Prince Gortschykoff^, and took part in the siege of Sevastopol. This city held out for thirteen long months against the combined allied armies. The British alone lost over ninety thousand men ; the Turks nearly twice as many, and I have never heard what the French and Sardinians lost. This was the greatest and the blood- iest war that had raged since the Napoleonic days of the French empire. Lord Ragland of the British Army was the nominal head of the allied armies, but he was not much of a general. I do not care to go into the merits or demerits of this war, but shall be brief in my memoirs of it, although at the time it was a stu- pendous event in my life, for I was only twenty-five years old when I entered the employ of the Tsar of all the Russias.

To give you a clear understanding of the situation, it will be necessary for me to give 3'^ou a geographical description of Sevastopol and its defenses. The Cri- mean peninsula is about 120 miles long, from its neck at Perekop, where it is only five miles wide, with the Black Sea on one side and the Sea of Azov on the other, the Black Sea lying on the west and the Sea of Azov on the east. From Perekop on the north to Balaklava on the south it is 120 miles.

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60 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

The city of Sevastopol is on an arm of the Black Sea that stretches inland for several miles, and comes to a sharp point where the River Tcheniaya flows into it, making a splendid, deep harbor, several miles in extent. From this arm, about a mile east of the junction of the river, another arm of the sea forks, running almost due south for a mile and three-quar- ters. This also makes a very deep and fine harbor. On both sides of this latter arm, or harbor, and around its southern end sits the city of Sevastopol. The Crimean Peninsula from the city of Sevastopol juts out into the Black Sea almost due west for ten miles, and then turns, curving south and east, to the port of Balaklava, about sixteen miles south of east. This peninsula is indented with deep bays or arms of the sea, making the coast line very irregular, and in outline much like an Indian flint arrow head. The bays are formed by deep ravines entering the sea along the south side of the Sevastopol peninsula. The sea rolls against a rugged, rock-bound shore, overlooked by high bluffs, until you get to the port of Balaklava, where there is a small but safe harbor.

The battlefield of Inkerman is about five miles due east from Sevastopol, and on the banks of the Tcher- naya River. The grounds around the city of Sevasto- pol are a succession of hills and ravines, each having a name. The main works, like the Malakoff, Redan, Mamelon Hill, etc., lie due east of the short arm of the sea, on what is known as the inner harbor. The ship docks, the barracks, and government works all lie on the east side of this inner harbor. Fort Nicholas on the west and Fort Paul on the east guard the mouth of this inner harbor, and all along the outer harbor line for several miles are splendid fortifications. The first bay west of the city of Sevastopol is called Quar- antine Bay, and on its eastern point is Fort Quaran- tine ; to the east of it is Fort Alexander. At Fort Alexander begins a series of batteries that extend en- tirely around Sevastopol, crossing Careenage Ravine, and ending on the shore of the outer harbor at a bluff known as the White Works, so named on account of

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 61

the color of the soil of which they are constructed. The MalakofF sits between the Dock Ravine on the west and south, and the Careenage Ravine on the east, but much nearer Dock Ravine. The Mamelon Hill lies nearly east of the MalakofF, and the allied armies spread their lines on a great rim outside of all these works.

The Russians were under Prince GortschakofF, Prince MenschekofF, General SaimonofF, and that great engi- neer, General Todleben ; and the whole army, of course, under Czar Nicholas. It was from the heights of the MalakofF I saw the smoke and heard the guns of the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, rendered famous by the poet Tennyson ; and it was from this same point of view that I saw a part of the great battle of Inkerman, in which the Russian army of relief was driven back. Every ravine by which the Russians could approach had been doubly fortified, and charge after charge of the most desperate kind was repulsed by the allied forces.

The MalakofF was the key to the inner harbor, and the whole end and aim of the besiegers was to capture or reduce it. Here the bloodiest and most persistent efforts were made by the Turks and French. The Turks were the most reckless and daring of all the nations that opposed us. They are but wild fanatics, and believe that at death they will go straight to the Heaven, to a Paradise where they will have three hun- dred dishes of angel food served three times a day, on three hundred golden dishes, by a band of three hundred lovely female slaves ; and where they will live in eternal bliss without a wish ungratified. This belief renders them fanatics, and induces them to court rather than shun death. It was in this war that the sharp- pointed minie ball was first used. It was hollowed like a lady's sewing thimble, with a solid point; the thin rear end by expansion filled the grooves of the rifle and prevented windage, thus giving the projectile greater force and speed, and reducing the curvature of the course of the bullet to a flatter plane. I had three rifles, one made by Mills of Kentucky, one by Phihp Lambert of Galveston, Texas, and one by Schni-

62 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

der of Berlin, Germany. I would sit in a porthole of the MalakofF by the hour, and pick off the sappers and miners of the Turkish army. The Russian officers would watch my expertness through their glasses, and express their wonder in no unmistakable language. My rifle would be loaded by one of the soldiers and handed up to me. I would watch for the appearance of the head of a Turk as he heaved a spade full of earth up, and as it came in view I was ready ; my ball would crash into his skull, and the spade would fall to the earth from a graspless hand. At each shot you could tell that my aim was true by the flight of the spade.

The most terrible bombardment that has ever jarred the earth in all history previous to that time took place while I was a defender of the Malakoff". The whole combined forces of England, France, Turkey, and Sar- dinia concentrated every available gun on both land and sea onto the citadel, and for nine days and nights there was a continuous fire poured into it. When they began to batter its walls with this iron hail it was three stories high; when they prepared to charge it was only a mass of debris, but stronger than ever, for we had strengthened it on the inside, and when they charged they met a terrible fire from under the earth as it were, against which they had no chance. As long as life lingers I can never forget the ceaseless roar and jar of that bombardment. I have seen the blood trickle from the ears of the men, as they slept, from the concussion of the explosion of the shells. Hundreds of these missiles of death were twenty-one inches in diameter, filled with musket balls glued to their inner sides with sulphur. This horrid shell would fill the cavities and bombproofs with a stifling gas that was terrible. We stood this awful thunder and roar with- out a moment's rest or cessation for nine days and nights. When the awful roar was over it seemed that every faculty that I possessed was numb, or dead, and it was many years after before I was myself again.

For the part I took in the defense of the MalakofF and for my marksmanship I was given the Iron Cross of Peter the Great, by Prince Gortschakoff, by com-

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 63

mand of the Czar Nicholas. It was presented to me in the presence of the whole Russian army, drawn up in a hollow square, on the naval parade ground at Sevastopol.

In leaving the Crimea in a few hours' sail I saw one of the most sickening scenes of my whole life. The sea was covered for miles with the floating carcasses of dead soldiers, and our paddle wheels would stir them up like driftwood. They were soldiers who had died with the cholera, and had been weighted and thrown into the sea. The weights had became detached, the swollen, bloated bodies had risen to the surface, and the whole sea was a reeking mass of rotting carcasses of human beings. It was reported at the time that the British alone lost ninety thousand men from the cholera.

When I look back at those long-past days and think of the awful scenes that I beheld in and around Sevas- topol, a shudder creeps over me and I try to forget it all, but memory is too strong. At some unwonted noise in the silence of the night, when roused from a sound sleep, I hear that awful bombardment of the MalakofF and feel the deafening roar. It is only for a moment, yet it leaves its impress on my brain.

On the trip home I was like one freed from a terri- ble bondage. The soft, still beauty of the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, as we steamed by them, seemed a land of enchantment. For hours I would sit alone on the deck, and in a dreamy way throw the horrors of Sevastopol behind me. When we reached New York I hastened aboard a vessel for New Orleans, and, on reaching that port, I was soon on board a coaster for Galveston. I reached Austin, Texas, in the latter part of May, and, after resting up a few days, I went with my mother, who was in the last stages of consumption, up to the Lampasas Springs, about sixty miles from Austin, to try the effect of the water and outdoor life upon her. But it was of no avail, and at the end of a month we returned. On the 13th of July her pure spirit winged its flight back to the God who gave it. In the lonely watch, by the side of her inanimate dust,

64 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

I sat the livelong night, and reviewed every event of my whole life. When they laid her to rest in the vil- lage cemetery I felt as one deserted upon a barren isle in a trackless sea.

I left at once for the wilds of Central and South America. Until December 21, 1860, I was an explorer and civil engineer in some part of that region of the earth. Under Henry Meigs, who had a contract un- der Totten and Trautwine, I aided in building a railway across the Isthmus of Panama, and for a while in 1858 I acted as private secretary to General M. B. Lamar (after whom I was named), while he was minister from the United States to Nicaragua. In the latter part of October, 1859, I came back to Texas with him, and on the 19th of November, about ten o'clock in the morning, he passed away from an apoplectic stroke. I returned at once to Managua, and thence to Lake Titicaca, and began a long journey up the ancient macadam road that was built by the first civilized peo- ple of earth. I followed this road, with all its mean- derings, for fifteen hundred miles ; past the ruins of hundreds of cities, and through vast forests of petri- fied trees, whose trunks have lain for countless cen- turies ; across the ruined walls and sculptured statuary of many ancient cities that were in ruins and deserted ages before the pyramids of Egypt or the foundation stones of Baalbec or Palmyra were dreamed of.

In the last days of December, 1860, I reached the mouth of the Ulna River in Honduras, and learning from a small fruit steamer just out of New Orleans that Abraham Lincoln, one of the old abolitionists and one of the worst enemies of my sunny Southland, had been elected President, I gave up my work and went at once to the United States. Finding that South Carolina had already withdrawn from the Union, I went with a party to Pensacola, Florida, and aided in the capture of Forts McCrea, Barancas, the Re- doubt, and the Navy Yard. I insisted that we should above all others take Fort Pickens, and send Lieutenant Slimmer home, but I was not in command and was overruled.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 65

I stayed in and around the port of Pensacola, doing guard, and other duties, until some time in the month of March, 1861, when I went up to Jackson, Miss., to see my father, whom I had not seen since the death of my mother. He had married again, and was Hving about fifteen miles from Jackson. Here I spent a few days, and hearing that a company was being or- ganized at Jackson to go to the front, or seat of war, wherever that might be, I at once joined this com- pany ; it was called the Mississippi Rifles, and the orig- inal company was at one time commanded by Jeff Davis, and was a part of the regiment he commanded at the battle of Buena Vista in the war with Mexico. For the first time in my life I enrolled under my own name. We went at once to Pensacola, and on the 13th of April, 1861, we were regularly mustered into service. We elected Moses Phillips, of the Yazoo County com- pany, our colonel.

On signing the muster roll each man put down after his name the term of days, months, or years he would serve in the army. When I signed I wrote in a clear and distinct hand, " Forty years, or the war." I was then in my thirty-second year, and I thought that by the time I was seventy-two my life's race would be run, and I could retire with an honorable record, spend the remainder of my life in some pleasant, quiet spot, and dream of the past. Many of my comrades, to. whom I was an entire stranger — I had never met a single one of them before I became a member of the company — exclaimed at my foolishness in writing such a long term of enlistment after my name. I cited the civil wars of the Romans, and the thirty years' war of the Spaniards, and the war of the Roses in England, and said that I thought that we could fight as long as any people on earth, and that the Yankees would do the same; that they had all the ships and could hire all the foreigners, and bring as many as they wished from every clime under the sun. I said that we would have to fight our battles alone without any aid from abroad, as we did not have a friend among all the nations of the globe. They laughed and made fun at my predic-

66 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

tions, and said that the war would be over and all of them except me be at home before Christmas. I was guyed at every point by the boys as one who " knew it all." I had been a hermit apart from my fellow- man so long that their jibes fell on dull and unheeding ears, and I kept on the even tenor of my way. In later years my old comrades have made amends and ap- plauded my acts in those long-ago days, and profited by the example I set.

My recollections of those early days of the beginning of the great Confederate war are growing dim, as the years go by, but there are some things that cannot be forgotten, and several are indelibly impressed on memory's tablet.

Once we were issued rations of condemned salt-bar- reled beef. The boys resented this and we dumped each man's share on a great improvised litter, and, with our muskets draped with strips of black cloth tied to each bayonet, with fife and drum muffled, we marched around the entire encampment, then behind the com- missary's tent, where we dug a deep hole and deposited the salt junk, popped three caps each in military style, and set up a headboard with this inscription in white chalk : " Here lies old Ned, strong in life, in death still stronger."

We suffered from various kinds of insects, especially flies and mosquitos. The latter were very annoying, but fleas were the most tormenting. They seemed to be the product of the sand of the beach — they were all over the face of the earth and clung to you like leeches. I hung my hammock as high as I could reach between two small pine trees. Before going to rest I would strip on the ground, hang my clothing on an adjoining limb of a tree, and, with a brush, dust myself from head to foot. Then I would break as hard and fast as I could run, and leap up to my hammock, and wipe the sand and fleas that might have clung to me as I ran. Thus I would be able to avoid many of these vicious, blood-thirsty pests, otherwise they would keep me in a constant torment during the night. When we bathed, many of the boys were speckled with their

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 67

bites, until they looked as if they had measles, or some skin disease.

My friend, Sergeant Louis Burt, was taken with typhoid fever and I went to the hospital to assist in nursing him. At this time the measles broke out in camp, and many of the men were very ill. The first death in our ranks was our colonel, Moses Phillips.

On the 20th of June I was transferred from Com- pany A, of the 10th Mississippi, to Company K, the Burt Rifles, of the 18th Mississippi Regiment. My father was captain of the company, and Sergeant Louis Burt's father was colonel of the regiment. It was stationed at Manassas, in Virginia. I left Pensacola on the evening of the 20th of June, and on the 25th I reached Camp Walker at Manassas, and reported for duty. I received a letter from Sergeant Burt, thanking me for my kindness in nursing him through his long spell of illness, and Colonel Burt also received one from Colonel Robert A. Smith, of the 10th, my former cap- tain, calling his attention to my kind ministrations to his son. These letters were very gratifying to me, as I was an entire stranger to every man in the 18th Regiment at that time, except, of course, my father.

CHAPTER VII

Life in camp — Opening guns of the war — The first battle — My father's bravery — Intense thirst saves me from an untimely grave — In the hospital — On guard.

Life in camp was very dull, and on the 17th of July, in company with a few of the boys, we went on a scout hunting for fruits and vegetables, chickens, or any edibles to add to our camp fare. Many of the citizens around Manassas were truck farmers, and had been in the habit of supplying the markets of Wash- ington City with supplies. Many of them were full- blooded Yankee South-haters, and strong Unionists, acting as spies for the Yankee army during the move- ments of our troops in and around Manassas.

The morning we went on our scout we came to a peach orchard on the east side of the pike that led to Washington. Several of the boys were up in the trees gathering peaches, when a Yankee cavalryman came down the pike from the direction of Washington, and ordered them out of the grounds. I was on the out- side of the orchard farthest from the pike, and had a good view of all the surroundings. When I saw that it was a Yankee soldier that had given the order to get out, I turned to Hal McGee of my company and said that we had as much or more right to gather peaches there than that Yankee had, as we were on our own Southern soil, and that we should not obey him or any other Northerner. Hal agreed with me. The boys were leaving the orchard and climbing over the back fence, when I got up on the fence, and in a loud tone told the Yankee that if he did not leave and mind his own business I would send a bullet after him. He rode right up to the fence from the pike, stuck his horse's head above the rails, and said:

" What did you say ? "

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MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 69

I repeated my order, and he threw open his breast with both hands and said:

" Shoot, you d— Rebel! "

I did not hesitate. The white face of his horse and the white front of his open breast was a fine target. I raised my old Savage pistol and fired. My bullet sped true to the mark, and he tumbled from his horse without a sound. His horse whirled off up the pike toward Fair- fax Court House. I went over to where he lay on the edge of the pike, and most of the boys followed me. We held a consultation and concluded that we had better bury him where he lay. We sent one of our negroes to the nearest house to borrow spades and picks, and on his return we dug a grave and laid the Yankee in and covered him up. I took a part of a plank from the fence and with a knife and pencil I wrote upon it this obituary :

" A Yankee host, a mighty hand,

Game down to take our Southern land. But this low barren spot

Was all that this d d Yankee got."

Some of the boys were indignant at the want of feel- ing I displayed in the matter, and made bold to say so, reproving me openly and in no uncertain ways. I told them that they would in the end be more callous and used to death ; that I had not a particle of feeling in the matter ; that I was only a soldier, and that it was my duty to kill an enemy and defend my country. It was for this purpose that I had enlisted, and I would so continue until a bullet from an enemy sent me to join the great band that had gone before to the shores of eternity. The killing of this one soldier was the first death that many of them had ever witnessed, and I was often asked if it did not make me feel bad, to which I replied that I had no feeling in the matter

The advance of Scott's great army of invasion began on the 18th of July, and our pickets and the Yanks had their first skirmish. We were held in readiness all day to move at a moment's warning, and listened to the irregular firing. At about daylight on Sunday

70 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

morning, the 21st, we heard the opening guns of the first great battle of the Confederate war. Every man was ready and anxious to meet the advancing Yankees, and to test the prowess of the Southern arms against the North. The firing was steadily approaching and we felt and knew that our forces were being driven back by the Yankees. I saw many a lip pale as the sound of the cannon grew louder and nearer. Suddenly a shell flew over our heads, and every man at once as- sumed the position of a soldier. A courier dashed up and handed a dispatch to General D. R. Jones, our commander, and in a few moments came the sharp command :

" Forward, double-quick, march."

We trotted in the direction of the roll of musketry and the quick, heavy crack of the rifled Parrott guns. After about a mile and a half of double-quicking, with here and there the hiss of a deadly minie, the shriek of a shell, or the hum of a solid shot above our heads, we halted. We could hear the yells of the Confederates and the huzzahs of the Yanks ; louder and nearer they came. The excitement was intense, and we won- dered why they would not let us go on. Several of our officers and a few men went forward to the top of a hill that was in front of us, and were gone some time. In the meantime the roll of musketry was in- creasing, and we were standing stock-still in an open field, but near the skirts of a small belt of timber.

For a while the incessant roar of the musketry in- creased, and the huzzahs of the Yankees seemed to grow fainter, and we saw our officers returning. Again a courier galloped up and gave our general another dispatch. We were about-faced, and in a double-quick, hurried back past our starting point, and on down in the direction of Union Mills, far on our extreme right, some five miles from the fight at the Henry house. We crossed Bull Run and stopped under a hill, and were ordered to rest in line. Many of the men looked pale and exhausted, and fell down from the long run of five miles. I leaned on my musket and retained my position in the ranks. My father rested against one

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 71

of the small saplings close by. Presently an old gentleman of General D. R. Jones' staff, Colonel J. J. B. White, came dashing up from our rear and rode to the front. Orders were given to " fall in," and the lines were instantly formed. Shells began to burst around us in close proximity. I saw one cover Colonel White and his horse with smoke and dust, but it did not injure him.

We were moved forward in the direction of the can- nonading, and crossed over a hill into a small valley, through which flowed a small branch, and in a crooked road, with our left in the front, we marched alongside of this branch. Its banks were about eight feet high above the water and almost perpendicular, with black- berry vines between us and the branch.

While in this narrow valley we came in sight of the Yankees posted on a hill, directly in our front, and with a line of skirmishers to the right and left of us on high hills. I could look right into the mouth of a ten-gun battery, and could see a brigade of regulars of the old United States Army on the brow of the hill below it. We heard a voice sing out in a clear, sharp tone:

" Are you friends ? "

Not a sound was uttered by us, but our hands were raised for silence, and the signal passed down the line. Our colors were rolled up in an oilcloth cover, and never unfurled during the day that I am aware of. We marched straight ahead and kept our eyes on the Yankees in our front. Again came the voice from the Yanks, but we paid not the slightest attention to it, and marched on toward them. They ordered us to halt, but we did not obey. Then came the command, " Ready," and involuntarily each of us cocked his gun, but did not halt. We heard the command given by the Yanks, " Aim," and saw every one of their guns come into position, like clockwork. Before the word " Fire " rang out, every man of us, with the exception of a dozen or more, jumped through the blackberry thicket into the bottom of the branch, and the two vol- leys of the Yanks were poured into vacant space, and

72 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

we felt the wind of the bullets as they passed over our heads.

Some of the guns of the boys were discharged as they reached the bottom of the branch. Cass Olten- berg's gun jarred me as it went off not more than a foot from my head. Just after the Yankees gave us their volleys from the front, rear and side, someone gave the order for us to charge. Up we rose out of the branch, and, with a loud yell, rushed straight at the nearest body of Yanks As we mounted the top of the steep bank and went toward the hill on which the Yanks were, we came to the top of a steep bluff that we could not get down. There they poured a galling fire into us which we returned, but it was foolish for us to stand exposed to the fire of a whole brigade of infantry and ten rifled Parrott guns. Father at once ordered us to follow him, and led us by the right flank into the rear of their line. Every man who was in the sound of his voice followed him. I was shot just as we reached the top of the bluff", and lay there until ten o'clock that night. I heard the first volley our boys poured into the brigade from their rear, and heard the awful roar of the retreating Yanks as the volley, de- livered in their rear, surprised them. They thought that they were surrounded and cut off" from their line of retreat.

For his daring act my father was complimented by General Beauregard in his official report of the battle. I have tried to give you a brief description of the part I took in this great battle, which should have been one of the most decisive of the whole war, for we had the Yankees at our mercy, and could have entered their capital. This was the desire of Generals Joseph E. Johnston, E. Kirby Smith, Stonewall Jackson, and Beauregard, but President Davis ordered otherwise, and prevented us, thus turning our great and glorious vic- tory into nothingness.

I can never forget those long hours I lay, on that July Sunday, in the blazing sun after I fell on the top of the bluff". The roar of the cannon was around me, and the incessant hiss of the deadly minies, as they

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 73

threw the dust mto my eyes and ears, was fearful. I could not move hand or foot. We sometimes live a whole lifetime in a few short minutes, but here I had hours, and they were fearfully long ones at that. I was not in any very great pain, as I was completely paralyzed. My neck was twisted, and my chin rested against my backbone; I was doubled up into a short space, and wedged in a small gully.

Toward night everything grew dim and confused, and the silence of death fell on the field. Close by me a httle drummer boy was lying, cut nearly in two by a cannon ball. His blood and entrails had been scat- tered over me until I, too, looked as if torn to pieces. Near my feet lay Captain McWillie, a son of Governor McWillie of Mississippi. I saw my father, as he passed, raise his arm to his eyes to hide my body from his view, and pass on with his men to the front. It was not long before my eyes began to grow dim; everything had put on a lurid glare, then it faded to a yellow tinge, then to a dark blue, and finally to a black; I tried to speak, but my tongue and throat, like the rest of my body, were numb, and would give no response to my efforts. My brain and thoughts alone were active. I felt no pain, only a tingling sensation, just as you feel when any of your limbs are asleep.

Some time in the night I heard the approach of voices and the tramp of men. Soon I heard the sound of picks and spades and caught the gleam of lanterns, and knew a burial party was on the field, and that surgeons, with their attendants, had come to pick up and care for the wounded. Again and again I tried to speak, but no sound came. Presently I felt the jar of the picks and spades as they dug a grave by my side, and then I felt a strong hand grasp my head and another my feet, and lift me clear of the ground. There was a sharp click, and then a loud buzzing sound in my cars, and my whole body was in an agony of pain. A fearful thirst tortured me. I spoke, and my friends let me drop suddenly to the ground. The jar awoke every faculty to life. I asked for water, and at oncG a strong light was flashed in my face, a rubber

74 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

canteen applied to my lips, and I felt a life-giving stream of cold, refreshing water flow down my swollen throat, and seemingly into every part of my frame. I was carefully lifted from the ground and placed upon a caisson box of a captured cannon. I saw them lay the mangled form of the drummer boy in the grave which they were preparing for me.

I was carried to a large house, across Bull Run, several miles from our part of the battlefield, and laid on a mattress on the floor in a large room with fold- ing doors. There were some nine or ten other wounded men in the room, and all were South Carolinians, as I soon learned from their conversation, and belonged to the 5th Regiment, which was a part of our brigade.

Soon after the South Carolina burial party had re- moved me from the field, my father, with another party of our own regiment, passed over the ground, and seeing the grave of the little drummer boy, took it for mine. Upon returning to camp my father ordered a casket from Richmond to send my body home in.

About five days after the battle we were moved from the house and placed in comfortable cots in hospital tents, and every care given us possible under the cir- cumstances. On the day that we were moved into the open air, my negro boy George was passing by and I hailed him. My neck was swollen fearfully, my thigh was black up to my waist, and I was in some pain. My negro recognized my voice, and came at once to where I was lying. The look on his face made me smile. Knowing the superstition of the negro, I asked him if my father had escaped unhurt in the battle.'' He stammered for a while before he could reply, and said :

" De bullets just raised two big welks, one under Old Massa's left arm and one clean across his back, like you hit him wid a club ; and I done patched up de holes de bullets make."

I told him to go and tell father where I was, and to come and take me to our own hospital. He said :

" Lord, Mas Lamar, Old Massa done saunt to Rich- mond for your coflin, and gwine to send you back home in it."

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 75

As soon as he delivered this information, he broke off in a trot for our camp, and in an exceedingly short time I saw my father and Dr. Holloway, our surgeon, with George and Eli, my father's body-servant, come in sight, and I felt that all was well. I was moved to our own regimental hospital, and under skillful nurs- ing was able to get up and move around, but Drs. Isom and Holloway both said that I would never again be fitted for infantry service. My casket came, and the remains of Captain McWillie were sent home in it. I read a very flattering obituary of myself in the Richmond papers, and learned of the details of the great battle, in which I took so small a part.

I could relate many incidents that are yet fresh in my memory of that, our first encounter with the Yanks, but it would make this volume too large and tiresome.

We were joined by the 13th Mississippi and the 8th Virginia, and sent to Leesburg, soon after the men were rested up. Our brigade was then composed of the 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi Regiments, and the 8th Vir- ginia, all under General Nathanael Greene Evans of South Carolina. Toward the last of July we went into camp near the town, and pickets were placed along the banks of the Potomac. Captain Duff's company, of the 17th Mississippi, was at a large spring above Leesburg, and our Company K, of the 18th Mississippi, near Goose Creek, below Leesburg.

Instead of being discharged, I took a transfer to Company I, Captain John D. Alexander's company, the Campbell Rangers, from Lynchburg, of the 2d Virginia Cavalry, commanded at the time by a Colonel Radford, and afterward by Colonel T. T. Munford. Our company was attached to Evans' brigade, and we had to do picket duty from above Point of Rocks, down to near Dranesville, only a short way out from Washing- ton City.

In the cavalry company to which I had been trans- ferred T was an absolute stranger, not even having a single personal acquaintance. Among the men was a young married man, William Moore by name, who was also a stranger in the company. I think he was from

76 INIY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

Botetourt County, near the line of Bedford County, just under the Peaks of Otter. Young Moore and I soon formed a close friendship that was cemented and strengthened in a common cause, and we loved with a love as close as that which brothers feel. We were as inseparable as twins. We ate and slept together. On picket and guard duties we were always together, and we had little pocket editions of our favorite poets, his being Burns, and mine Byron. Together we would sit under the shade of overhanging rocks or trees while on the lonely picket posts, and read poems from our favorites to each other.

On a certain day, the 6th of August, we were to- gether below Goose Creek and not a great way from Dranesville, when we received a large bundle of delayed mail matter, the mails having been cut off by the move- ments of the army before the late battle of Manassas. In that mail was a long and patriotic letter from Moore's wife, and in it a ferrotype of his two little babes. He read me parts of this letter, and while we were reading the papers and commenting on the battle there came a hail from a Yankee picket across the Po- tomac opposite us. He asked if we would exchange papers with him, if we had any late ones. We at once answered that ;^e would. He asked us to meet him in the middle of the river. I arose and walked down to the water's edge, divested myself of clothing, and, taking several copies of the Richmond papers in my hand, I waded out and met my Yankee friend, and made the exchange. For a while we stood and con- versed about the great battle, and he kindly invited me to cross to his side of the river and take dinner with him, as it was about dinner time. I accepted his invitation, and together we went into his camp where there were about thirty Yankees, under command of a lieutenant. I put on a Yankee overcoat, and sat and conversed with these men for some half hour or so, and told them of the part I took in the battle. Now and then we could hear the crack of a rifle, up or down the river as the pickets would fire at each other, and the lieutenant said that If we would stop this

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 77

firing at our post, he would. I at once agreed to this, and he drew up an agreement in duplicate, and we both signed it. At this moment dinner was served, and I ate a hearty meal, better than I had had since the battle.

After dinner they brought clay pipes with short stems, made of chalk or some such substance, and a lot of tobacco stems, cut up into fine and coarse strips. I lit one and the taste and smell was not at all like tobacco. I asked if they could give me a chew, and they gave me a short, narrow plug of a very dark-looking substance that did not at all taste or resemble tobacco. I turned to the lieutenant and asked if this was the kind of tobacco they used all the time, and he replied that it was what the commissary issued to them, and that they had no other. I then told him to let my friend of the morning return with me and I would send them some real old Virginia chewing and smoking tobacco. He agreed, and the Yank and I returned to our side of the river. I gave Moore a description of my trip, and told him for what purpose the Yank had returned my visit. We gave him several plugs of fine Lynchburg chewing, and half a dozen twists of the very best smoking tobacco. I took pains to tie them all to a stout pole, long enough to feel his way while crossing the river, for any deep holes that he might stumble into. After he returned, we saw a good many of them come down to the river, and strip and take a swim. They thanked us for the tobacco, as they swam halfway across, and said that they were glad that they could take a bath without having to dodge bullets, and that they hoped the war would soon be over and we could all go home. Moore and I sat on the bank in full view, watched their sports, and read the Northern version of the great battle, and the various causes of their defeat. The principal excuse was our use of masked batteries and our overwhelming numbers.

When night came I went on guard duty at six o'clock, and Moore made down our pallet in a small shady place, sheltered by a dense foliage, just back of

78 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

the spot that overlooked the river, and just under where we had sat and read the papers. A small ravine led into the river, and a wet weather spring trickled down from near our sheltered camp. Moore used both our blankets, and a lot of pine straw and brush made a nice soft bed, and he retired to dream of home and his loved ones. I walked my beat in silence and kept a watchful eye upon the river, listening to the bugles of the Yankees and the sounds from their camps. An occasional song would swell upon the air until the tattoo would sound, then all sank into silence, except the cry of the sentinels, such as :

" Post No. 9, ten o'clock, and all's well." Just before the midnight hour arrived, it became a little chilly, and I went up near the spot where we had read the papers, and gathered a lot of dry pine limbs and brush, and built up a bright, blazing fire. I could see several such, far up and down the river on the opposite side.

CHAPTER VIII

Comrade Moore shot on relieving me of picket duty — My vow of vengeance— Writing the poem, " All Quiet' Along the Potomac " — Stricken with measles — " The massacre at Ball's Bluff " — Our life at winter quarters near Lees- burg.

When my fire was at its brightest, I stepped down to where Moore was in a deep sleep, and roused him to take my place on guard. He rose at once and made his way to the fire. I knelt down and was smoothing out the wrinkles in our bed, sheltered from the direct rays of the firelight, when I saw a flash on the walls of the ravine and heard the thud of a bullet. I rose and saw Moore, with his gun resting on the ground and his arms stretched out, sink to the earth. I ran at once to him, saw a gush of blood pour from his skull, and his brains scattered over the pile of papers on which he had fallen. In large bold type were the headlines staring me in the face, " All quiet along the Potomac to-night." I could see nothing further — the words burned in my brain and obscured everything else.

I dragged his body away from the fire, and for a while was dazed. At last reason asserted itself. I felt that I was a murderer — that I had, without provo- cation, murdered my dearest and best friend in cold blood. I trembled like an aspen leaf, as I gazed upon his cold, bloody, inanimate form, and thought of his wife and orphaned babes in their far-off mountain cot. I felt that I had kindled that fire, and invited him to his death.

I gathered his things together, and made a bundle of them for the express. I took my place on the picket line, and, no matter where I turned my gaze, I could only see his blood and brains scattered on that paper, and hear the thud of the bullet that had sent him into eternity. While in this state of mind, I wondered why I had kindled that fire and sent my comrade to his long home.? When I remembered the compact I had

79

80 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

that day made on the opposite shore of the river with the Yankee officer, and remembered the crowd that had gone in swimming in full reach of my rifle, it all be- came plain, and I had a breath of reason for the kin- dling of that blaze. I did not feel that I was a murderer any longer, but that I had trusted too much in the honor of a treacherous foe, and was only guilty to that extent. I breathed a sigh of relief, and watched the opposite shore with a vengeful eye.

Toward the breaking of the day I again looked upon the form of my friend, and above his dead body I reg- istered a solemn vow to high Heaven that I would avenge his death, and during the continuance of the war would never again trust to the promises of any Yankee, under any consideration. How well I kept my oath of vengeance, I let the annals of my country tell. Sufficient to say that when I glanced along the barrel of my rifle and touched the trigger, it was with a prayer, and the bullet winged its flight to the heart of my enemy with the thought of my dead comrade to guide it. Never did I let an opportunity to send one to his long home escape me. I felt a fiendish delight in shooting them.

It was while in this frame of mind that I penned these verses to the memory of my murdered friend, who sleeps in a lonely grave, far from the home of his loved

" All quiet along the Potomac," thej say,

Except here and there a stray picket Is shot, as he walks on his beat to and fro,

By a rifleman hid in a thicket.

It's nothing; a private or two now and then Will not count in the news of the battle.

Not an officer lost; only one of the men Moaning out all alone the death rattle.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night.

Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;

Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon Or in the light of their camp-fires gleaming.

A tremulous sigh, as a gentle night wind Through the forest leaves softly is creeping,

While the stars up above, with their glittering eyes. Keep guard o'er that army while sleeping.

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 81

There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread As he tramps from the rock to the fountain.

And thinks of the two on the low trundlebed Far away in the cot on the mountain.

His musket falls slack and his face dark and grim

Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep —

For their mother, may heaven defend her.

The moon seems to shine as brightly as then,

That night when the love yet unspoken Leaped up to his lips and when low murmured vows

Were pledged to be ever unbroken.

Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes

He dashes oflF tears that are welling, And gathers his gun close up to its place

As if to keep down the heart's swelling.

He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,

The footsteps are lagging and weary. Yet onward he goes through the broad belt of light.

Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.

Hark ! Was it the night wind rustled the leaves ?

Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing? It looked like a rifle; Ah, Mary, good-bye,

And the life blood is ebbing and splashing.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night;

No sound save the rush of the river; While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,

That picket's " off duty " forever.

I did not write this in a day, but from the 6th until the 9th of August I strove to make it in accord with my feehngs. On the 9th it was complete as above, and I gave it to my comrades. Hundreds of copies were sent out by the boys of our brigade to friends, sweet- hearts, wives, and sisters, as well as mothers and fathers. I gave autograph copies to several ladies of Leesburg, among them Miss Eva Lee, the sister-in-law of the mayor of the town ; also to the Misses Hemp- stone. The latter set it to music and used to sing it to the boys to some familiar air. So many of the men wanted copies that I took a copy to the editor of the county paper, and had a thousand printed on small strips of paper. These I gave to whoever asked me for a copy. I think that all the members of my own

82 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

and Captain Duff's company, of the 17th Mississippi Regiment, were given copies. Mr. J. H. Hewitt, a bandmaster, asked for a copy, and I gave him an autograph copy, and a written permission for him to set it to music. I think that at least five thousand copies went out to the pubhc from Leesburg, a month before the battle of Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, as the Yankees called it. Early in September, several mem- bers of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment, U. S. A., in camp near Poolesville, Md., opposite Leesburg, were in possession of it and sent it home to their friends in the North at that time. On the 19th of August, 1861, I sent President Davis an engrossed copy, with my compliments, and received a nice letter in reply, which I took great pride in showing to the boys of my com- pany. Mr. Hewitt set it to the air that soon became familiar to every soldier in our army, and Mr. Julian A. Selby, of Columbia, S. C, pubhshed, and copy- righted it in the Confederate States, before it was pub- lished in the North. The first printed copy I saw of Selby's music was at Richmond, in the first days of November, 1861. I sent it to my father at Jack- son, Miss.

I tried to throw into this poem the ardor of my in- most soul, so that to the soldiers that were along the Potomac in those wild heroic days of our great strug- gle, it would breathe the true animus of their souls. And I am satisfied that when a true soldier, be he of the Gray or Blue, reads that poem, he can see the stars shining through the tree tops that waved above his head in the silent watches on the lonely picket lines. He can hear the thud of a bullet as it strikes a tree or comrade; he can hear the clear notes of the bugle as it sounds taps and lights out; the far-off neigh of a horse, and the distant boom of a gun. It is replete with life, love, memory, and death; and it will live as long as the memory of that great Confederate war. It came straight from the heart of a soldier who was an active participant in that stupendous struggle, that never before had its counterpart on the face of the globe. It is a monument of word painting that will

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 83

endure as long as the civilized white man exists on earth. Time and the plural actions of the elements of nature disintegrate the carved granite, and crumble into dust the brazen images made by the hand of man, but the thoughts are a part of deity, and can never perish. When given out to the world they go on the wings of the wind, sounding down the dim aisles of the temple of eternity, imperishable forever.

It is with pride that I now look back through the lapse of forty-five years at those long passed days, and I need no more lasting monument or mead of wealth to leave as a legacy to my children and grand- children, than that poem, " All quiet along the Po- tomac."

The routine of camp life and picket guard, with an occasional skirmish here and there along our lines, kept us from the terrible ennui that the soldier feels, but here and there nostalgia would assert its baleful in- fluence on some poor soldier. In September the camp measles became an epidemic, and we lost many noble men. I was stricken and carried to the hospitable home of the Rev. Mr. Nourse, a Presbyterian minis- ter, where I was kindly cared for, and, on the 19th of October, I resumed my place in the company and an- swered to roll call.

On the morning of the 21st, as I was relieved from picket duty, just below Point of Rocks near the old Mason plantation, above Leesburg on the Potomac, I heard considerable skirmish firing below Conrad's Ferry, at Big Spring, where Captain Duff's company of the ITth Mississippi, was on duty. I put my horse into a gallop and was soon opposite them, on the river road, and could see that the Yankees had crossed the river and that our boys were giving them the best that they were able, under the circumstances. The company was retreating toward Leesburg, not all together, but In squads, each squad loading and firing as it fell back, but not seeming to be in a hurry or much excited. I kept abreast and a little in the rear, watching for the enemy, who was invisible to me. As I passed the west end of the old Ball field, I looked in the direction of

84 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

Leesburg and saw the Confederates on the move. I could see a color or two flying, and could see handker- chiefs and small flags waving from some of the upper windows of the houses in the town. Suddenly, as I glanced my eyes across a field of shocked com in the direction of the river, I saw a Yankee come out of the woods nearly opposite me, get up on the back fence, and look, with his glasses, toward the town. I jumped from my horse, and, with the reins over my arm, I sent a rifle ball through him. He hung halfway across the fence, and there he was two days after the battle was over. I remounted my horse, after loading my rifle, and galloped into Leesburg, just as the 18th Missis- sippi was hurrying through. I joined them, as my own command was absent, and with my father's old company I went into the battle.

For long years afterward this battle was called, in the Yankee histories, " The Massacre at Ball's Bluff." In reality it was a terrible slaughter of the lager beer Dutch from Philadelphia, under command of Colonel Baker. Our company was thrown forward as skir- mishers as soon as we crossed the corn field and entered the woods. We descended a gentle slope and suddenly came right upon a Yankee regiment only a few feet off^. We called for their surrender, and our guns were leveled directly in their faces. Instantly they reversed their arms and went through the motion of surrender- ing. Just at this moment another Yankee regiment obliquely to our right poured a volley toward us, and we turned and fired at them. Just as our front rank delivered their volley, the surrendered regiment poured a deadly volley into us at close range, and here we lost some of our best men, among them John Pettus, a son of our Governor. I had not fired and instantly sent a shot into the brain of the nearest Yankee, and like demons we drove our bayonets and clubbed guns into their treacherous ranks, sparing none.

We dropped into a small ravine that ran parallel to the river. Our regiment was on the slope of a hill behind us and many feet above usl In our front was a thicket, very dense, of mountain laurel, and I could

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 85

see nothing. To me it was like looking for a bear in a Mississippi canebrake, where the dogs are baying around you, and the animal not in sight. The little drain that I was in was about three feet deep, and a saphng about eight inches in diameter was just in front of me, not more than a foot from my head. I at once saw the great advantage and protection I had, if we could only hold our position. Soon the rattle of the musketry began, and the bullets flew high above our heads. The smoke rose in dense columns out of the laurel thicket, and the roar was deafening. We shot voUey after volley into this obstruction that hid our view, and soon the thicket seemed to melt, and disappear. Here and there a glimpse of a Yankee could be caught, and our fire from the skirmish line began to increase. Before an hour had elapsed the laurel thicket had been mowed down, and our field was clear. I then began to single out my Yank, and with a steady, deadly aim I hunted a belt buckle as my target. Every time I touched the trigger I thought of my murdered comrade, Moore, of the lonely picket hne, and of the morning treachery when John Pettus was sacrificed.

Our ammunition was getting low, and the enemy in front of us some ten lines deep, seemed to increase in numbers, as the places of their dead were instantly filled. I was afraid that we would have to fall back from our chosen ground, but my fears were unfounded, for I saw the " powder monkey," in the shape of a member of our regiment, making his way up our ravine with an ample supply. My cartridge box and pockets were soon overflowing. I shot coolly and deliberately, as if firing at an ordinary target for a prize. I did not want a shot to go astray; and I don't believe that a single one did. Night had fallen and the flash of the . Yankee muskets threw sparks almost into our faces, we were so close to them. The fire seemed to be on the increase. I had torn most of the front of my shirt away, and used it on the end of my ramrod to keep my gun clean and unchoked, and, as I had to wet it each time by holding it a moment in my mouth, be-

86 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

fore wiping the rifle out, of course I was as black and powder stained as I could well be. My hair and eye- brows were singed from the escaping flashes of my open gun tube on which the cap rested.

About sundown, as the twilight began to grow dim, there came a clear and very distinct command to us from the rear :

" Drive them into the Potomac, or into h ! G

d 'em ! "

With a loud and fiendish yell we arose as a single man, and, with our bayonets fixed, we made a quick dash at them. They broke, and yelling like fiends incarnate we pursued, each man doing his best to catch and bayonet a Yank. I singled out a big Dutchman who weighed about 250 pounds, but, do all I could, I could not gain much upon him. When close enough to hurl my rifle spear fashion at him, I did so, and as the sharp saber bayonet struck him full in the back he disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him, just at the edge of what I thought was a thicket of under- brush. I halted at the very edge of it, and as I halted I heard the thud of a heavy body falling far under me. My Dutchman had dropped over a bluff" onto the solid rock, fifty-two feet below us, and I had come very nearly following him. The discovery made me feel nervous for a moment, as I paused on the brink of the abyss. But I did not stop long. I heard the voice of my captain cry out, " Burt Rifles, rally on me ! " I snatched up a deserted musket, examined it as I ran, and gathering up a cartridge box and belt, I reached the captain, as he stood on the top of the bluff' looking down into the river. He said:

" Do you boys see that boat load of Yanks out there trying to get away.f* Give them a volley, and don't let one escape you. They may be a part of those scoundrels that slaughtered us this morning. Ready, aim, fire ! "

We poured a deadly volley into them, as they were huddled like turtles upon a log on a genial summer's day. We emptied the rear of the boat of its human freight, and the front end, which was overcrowded,

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 87

went to the bottom, I suppose. Soon the water was covered with a mass of men strugghng and making for the opposite shore — but none of that boat load ever reached it. We stood and loaded and shot at every head, or wave, or riffle of water that appeared on the surface.

When all was still I sank like a rock, exhausted and utterly worn out, right upon the top of the bluff where I had fired my last shot. When I awoke, a fine misty rain was falling, and I was wet and stiff. I could see men raising up from all around me with sunken, haggard looks and powder-blackened faces. The sun was high up in the heavens, as we began to look around us and ask for our commands. All were in the same boat, and no one knew who we were, ex- cept that we were on the banks of a river, and on the edge of the battlefield. That was all. We did not know the result of the battle — whether we or the Yanks had been victorious. We only knew that we had driven those in front of us into the river, and killed all we saw.

Slowly each one of us got up and rubbed his eyes and looked at the comrade nearest him. Then we began asking each other what we had best do. I said, " Let's go back to Leesburg and find out where our men are." I was asked if I knew the direction to go. I said I did, and we all set out under my guidance and were soon in sight of the town.

I am not writing a history of the great Confederate war — only the part that I took in it — and, as more than forty years have elapsed since its close, of course my memory is all that I have to depend upon. Yet that memory is indelible with many scenes and inci- dents that will never be erased until I cross into the " Great Beyond."

For a few days after the massacre at Ball's Bluff we were moved about to various points, just to keep up our spirits, and not let us stiffen our joints by too much sleep and camp ennui. Daily guard duty, a few drills, and changing of camping places for our health was the order of the day. Soon came the question,

88 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

where were we going to build our winter quarters? Where was the whole army going to spend the winter? This and other questions kept us with something to talk about. Our cavalry company began building log huts, with canvas tops and stone chimneys, on a slop- ing hill, facing the north and the river, just opposite the battlefield, and above Leesburg, and south of the road leading from Conrad's Ferry, and in full view of the Yankee encampment at Poolesville, in Maryland. With a good glass they were plainly visible from my shanty, and were not more than four miles away.

During some of the bright, clear days in November, the Yankee batteries would occasionally throw a few shells at our shanties, and every man in camp would turn out to watch these iron Yankee visiting cards come over the river to call on us, and it got so that we felt something was missing if they failed to come.

I loved the picket line, and would take the place of any of the men, in preference to the routine of camp life. I wanted to be actively at the front all the time, any many a bluecoat, from above Lovettsville on the river front, down to a point just above the head of Seneca Island, felt my bullet slip through his anat- omy— I never let a single chance escape me. I was frequently in the guard house or under arrest for picket shooting. Of course my shots would disturb the picket next to me, and he would fire his gun in the air, and thus the firing would go down the line until it reached the camp guard. The long roll would rattle, the men fly to arms, and form in line ready for an attack. In a few minutes would come the word:

" It's nothing but that fool Fontaine. He's up to some of his pranks just to disturb the camp."

I can truthfully say that I rarely fired my gun at a bluecoat that he did not fall. I can't say that I killed every one I shot at, but I shot only to kill.

Our pickets had a very narrow escape one morning at Lovettsville. We were in the habit of entering the village every morning just at daylight, or a little be- fore, and on this particular morning it was a little before day that we approached it. When about a half

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 89

mile from the town, we saw, In an upper window of a house, a hand waving a white flag at us, with a quick motion to go back. We returned the signal, but kept on. I was in front, and, as I rode into the village with Corporal John Moon, he asked what I thought about that waving from the window? I said that I thought it a warning of danger, and that we had better keep a sharp lookout. There were about twenty of us in the picket squad from our camp, and we generally patroled the river from Buzzard Roost down to Lees- burg. I had ridden nearly to the upper end of the town when I saw that the street in front of me was barricaded. I rode up to the obstruction, and said:

" Look there, John."

Instantly there was a flash and a roar of musketry all along the street, from one end to the other. I did not hesitate, but dashed straight at the barricade in front of me, and spurred my horse upon it. She went over like a cat, and not a shot hurt us. Corporal Moon also escaped, and we only lost two men. This ambush taught us a lesson that we never forgot. We set a secret watch after that, and I picked up the traitors and we gave them short shrift. After escap- ing, I rode up to the house, where the signal of warn- ing had been given us as we were going into Lovetts- ville, and met a young girl not more than twelve years of age. She asked me why we did not go back when she told us to. She said that she saw the Yankees when they were at work setting the trap for us, and that she had been up all night waiting to tell us about it. I thanked her very kindly, and reported her con- duct to General Evans, and he complimented her very highly, and he and his staffs paid her a special compli- ment by bringing her to a grand reception in her honor at headquarters in Leesburg.

CHAPTER IX

Hair-breadth escapes — Am appointed scout to General Jackson — My appreciation of General Jackson — The Romney Expedition — Jackson's splendid generalship and military genius — My personal experiences in Jackson's campaigns.

At our picket post just opposite Point of Rocks, one chilly day in early November, I was sitting on mj'^ horse watching the signal flag of the Yanks about a mile away, as it waved from right to left and up and down and sidewise. I was trying to catch their signs, when I saw a Yank kneel by the side of a rock and bring a rifle to bear on me. The distance was so great that I sat still and watched him. I saw the smoke curl up and suddenly the ball struck me just above my ankle in the fleshy part of the calf of my leg, grazing the large bone. My leg was lying across the neck of my horse in front of the saddle, and but for this my wound would probably have been fatal, as the shot would have entered my bowels instead of my leg. The ball lodged in the fleshy part of the calf, only bulging the skin on the opposite side. It was as fine a shot as I had ever seen in my life, and I waved my hat at the Yank, as I rode off^ to have my wound at- tended to. Dr. Holloway removed the bullet and bound up the wound, and in a few days I was all right.

I met with a hair-breadth escape from the Yankees at a point opposite Lovettsville early one morning. I had spent the greater part of the night on the Mary- land side of the river, and had two Yankee prisoners in charge. I was just getting them into my boat to cross over, when I saw a woman on our side wave a light several times in a circle around her head; two other lanterns just below me on the Maryland shore answered her. I hurried my prisoners into the boat and shoved off' from the bank. As I did so a bullet whistled close over my head, and another and another, and I saw that I was discovered. My two prisoners became

90

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obstreperous, and ordered me to surrender; they both rose in the boat and started toward me. I did not hesitate a moment, but drew my pistol, dropped them both into the river, and, putting all the strength I had into my paddle, I struck out for the opposite shore. It was too dark for accurate shooting, but the Yankees made the water bubble up around my boat, and I could see them below me on the river in boats, trying to reach the opposite shore ahead of me. However, I beat them and landed first, but such a landing place I had not anticipated. It was an almost inaccessible bluff of smooth rock, but I caught on and lifted myself clear of the boat, and began a hard climb up its steep, al- most perpendicular sides. Reaching a shelf some three feet wide I ran along its sides until I found a place I could ascend to a higher point. Up this I went as fast as possible, clinging to a projecting rock here and there. I climbed up for more than a hundred feet before I found a level foothold on another shelf. I ran along this shelf, which had an upward tendency, for a hundred yards or so, when I again began to climb. I reached another shelf that I thought would take me to the top, but it did not, and I had to stop to rest, as this running and climbing was too much of a strain. The Yanks, in the meantime, were not idle, as the zip of a bullet here and there plainly told me. I felt that if I did not have help from my own men I would meet my fate. I remembered that two chambers of one of my pistols were empty, and I at once reloaded them, and as I pressed the last bullet home I determined not to be taken alive. I knew that the overhanging rocks prevented them from seeing me from above, and that I was protected from the river, as I could not see the water from where I sat ; also that no overwhelming numbers could charge me along the narrow ledge that I had just passed over.

All the thoughts flashed with rapidity through my brain as I sat in silence awaiting developments. There was an occasional shot, and now and then a mumble of voices above me, and I heard a woman's voice, clear and distinct, say :

92 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

" You can't get down that way."

The sound came from directly over my head, and ap- parently not more than a hundred feet away. I looked up, but the hanging rocks hid everything from view. Several stones were loosened, and came rolling down the bluff into the river below. I heard a Yank say to another:

"Where was he when you saw him last?"

I could not catch the answer. I kept my eye on the track I had come over, and presently I caught a glimpse of a bluecoat cautiously creeping along the bluff, his gun in one hand, and clinging to the rocks with the other. As he came into plain view, not more than forty feet away, I sent a bullet crashing into his brain, and he dropped into the river more than a hundred feet below. In a moment there was a shower of lead spat- tering around above me and fragments of rock rolled down the mountainside.

Again and again some foolhardy Yank would try to approach over the route that I had come, and he would meet the fate of his predecessor. In a little while they changed their tactics. Sharpshooters began to send their bullets from the opposite side of the river, and they would spat the rocks uncomfortably near. But I could not see the shooters, and I knew that I was invisible. The sun rose and I knew that it would not be long before I would hear from my own men, as the news would not be long in reaching Leesburg. I suppose that an hour or more must have elapsed after I fired my last shot, when I heard that same woman say:

" The Rebs are coming, a whole world of them."

I did not dare to move or expose myself, but sat and waited. I heard the bluecoats taking to their boats, and the short commands of their officers as they passed off from above and around me. Ere long I heard a volley fired down the river, and another and another, until it sounded like a sharp skirmish. I then rose cautiously, and, clinging close to the rock, so as to expose as little of my person as possible, I took a good look down the river, and could see a perfect

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 93

fleet of boats pulling rapidly for the Maryland shore, and those landing were running for cover.

It was not long before I heard the voice of Corporal Moon say that they did not come any higher up than there. I sang out:

" John, is that you ? " And he answered: " Hello, are you hurt.? "

I said no, but I had had a close call. I soon found a place to climb up the mountain, and while our men of the Washington Artillery were shelling the Yanks m Pomt of Rocks I reached the command and went back safe to our winter quarters.

A few days after this adventure I was sent by Lieu- tenant Colonel Jennifer with a dispatch to General Stonewall Jackson at Winchester, in the valley of Vir- ginia. I reached Jackson's headquarters about the last day of November, 1861, and from that day until the 3d of May, 1863, I was his scout, under orders only from him. I was sent on many secret expeditions of great import to our common cause, having been highly recommended to General Jackson by Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, and our Secretary of War, Seddon, both of whom were kinsmen of mine. My life in the camp of Jackson was not one of roses, as I was a complete stranger and made but few acquaintances. Of course I was known by sight to most of the men, but no familiarity existed between us. My duties re- quired silence, and I practiced it to the letter of my commander, and had communion with no one.

I am satisfied that no greater commander ever hved than Stonewall Jackson. No army was ever too large for him. Among the English speaking people of this earth there never were but five real generals, in the full sense and meaning of the word. They were Marl- borough, Wellington, Washington, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, and, but for seniority, I think that Jackson ought to head the list. I saw him in every phase of a general's hfe. In victory and defeat he was the same. He had a master mind, one that at a glance could take in the whole detail of a subject. His resources were

94 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

unbounded. He was as gentle as a woman in manner, pure as a vestal virgin in thought and act in his every- day life, and as stern in duty as a Roman Senator, and obedient to law and its commands as a Spartan soldier on the picket line. His counterpart has never before appeared in the annals of history in any age or clime.

I rode in his rear, that beautiful bright New Year's Day, out of Winchester on his disastrous Romney ex- pedition, when we were not allowed to take an overcoat or blanket on our horses, but had to deposit them in our baggage wagons that were to keep up with us (said wagons to this distant day have never yet over- taken us).

In that awful campaign I saw the weary men, like horses, pulling the heavy guns into position ; saw them fall and slip on the ice-sheeted mountainsides, bruise and shatter their limbs. With him I have lain against a log at night, and, with a blanket of snow for a cover- ing and the frozen earth for a mattress, await the coming of the day. Without fire or food of any kind, save a few grains of raw Indian corn saved from that wasted by our horses, to satisfy the awful cravings of hunger. I have listened to the loud and deep curses of the half-frozen men, as they trod the frosty ground, with the piercing north wind chilling their very marrow, the thermometer registering ten degrees below zero. And after the fierce fight at Kernstown, where he held his own against ten times his numerical strength, and compelled the Yankees to cease their advance, and again at McDowell, he circumvented Milroy and his cohorts, and practically destroyed his army. Then he swung down the valley of the Shenandoah, and, at the head of his corps, rode into Front Royal, and galloped across the two burning bridges with but a handful of scattering cavalry. On the pike leading from Front Royal to Winchester, with but sixty-eight men, he compelled the retreating forces to halt until his re- serves could come up and capture the major part of them. Then, in a rush, he cut off and destroyed the wagon trains and ammunition, and, in a word, crushed

MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES 95

the corps of Banks and freed the valley of Virginia of every Yankee.

Again, when the armies of Fremont and of Shields were doubled and concentrated upon him, and the great army of McClellan was about to invest Richmond, he sent dispatches to Davis and Seddon by couriers, with the request that they send him fifty thousand men and he would relieve the siege of Richmond, capture Wash- ington, and dictate terms of peace in Philadelphia or New York. This seemed like a pipe dream, when he had only fifteen thousand men, and in his front two army corps of twenty-five thousand each confronted him, only a few miles apart and each determined to capture and destroy him. And how he paralyzed Fremont's twenty-five thousand one day and scattered his hosts to the four winds, and then turned the next day and annihilated Shields, and, without a pause, swept across the State and fell with overwhelming force on the rear of McClellan's great army around Richmlond, driving him into the sea !

Thus he showed the power he had, and made himself the idol of all the South. Thus he gave to the world a new record of generalship that had no place before in the annals of history. And what was more he led and was followed by the same soldiers who had cursed and condemned him on that fearful expedition to Rom- ney, but a few days or weeks, I may say, before. There hatred was turned to idolatrous love, and, with the confidence he inspired, his men would have stormed any works on the face of the earth. Nothing could shake their confidence in him.

I am satisfied at this distant day, and so is every man who served with Jackson, that if Davis and Seddon had sent him the fifty thousand men he asked for at that time in the valley of Virginia, he would have fulfilled his promise to them.

But the past is in the eternal past, and there is no recall. When the military student comes to survey the genius and generalship of Stonewall Jackson he will have to lift his eyes to a towering height, far above the plain of ordinary humanity, and it will be a snow-

96 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

shrouded and cloud-dimmed peak that will greet him. Centuries will roll away before his equal will again tread the fields of martial glory. If I could only soar to that blue vault that arches o'er this sunny southern clime of ours, I would dip a fiery pen into the Stardust that sparkles along the pathway of the angels, and write his name in letters of living light upon the dome of heaven, there to shine until earth shall pass away. His spirit is immortal, and his example is ours, and our children's children through all eternity. I hope the gentle reader will pardon me for this tribute to my great commander, for I felt it a duty that I, as one of his men, owed him and his memory.

In the stupendous movements of Jackson in his cam- paigns I will give some of my individual adventures.

Just before driving Banks out of the valley, I was sent down ahead of the movement to look over the situation, and to note the movements of the Yankees. I was in Page Valley, near Luray, when I saw a squad of bluecoats around Kite's distillery, not far from Marshhead Mountain. I led my horse into a small grove, and, leaving my pistols and belt on my saddle, I climbed up a pine tree to get a clear view of the surrounding country, and especially the party around the distillery. I was fully sixty feet from the ground when three bluecoats rode up and ordered me to de- scend. I came down rapidly, as they leveled their carbines at me, and as I reached the ground I twisted around the tree, and put it between me and them. I pulled a small Smith & Wesson pistol from my pocket and shot the Yank that had my horse, and put a second shot into the brain of the next nearest. As the third fired at me, I shot at him just as he whirled. I struck him, as we learned afterward, through the bowels.

My horse stood still, as she had been trained, and I mounted and caught the other two, and put out up the winding road that led to the top of the mountain where we had a heavy picket. I was going as fast as I could make the horses travel, when I looked back and saw about thirty bluecoats coming as fast as they

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could travel. They were gaining on me rapidly. I made one of the turns in the winding pike up the mountain, when the bullets of my pursuers began to whistle around and kick up the dust uncomfortably near. I had to turn my led horses loose and put mine at full speed, as I had to pass again in close range, on account of the windings of the road up the mountain. Some of them had dismounted and were coming straight up the mountain to cut me ofF. My little mare seemed to realize the danger, and of her own accord increased her speed. As we crossed the danger line the bullets whistled uncomfortably near.

As we again came around the screw-shaped incline, I slackened my speed, for coming down to meet me was a squad of our men, and I knew that I was not going to be captured. I dismounted and put my horse out of danger, in the small spot outside of the pike and next to the mountain. I laid flat on the ground and peeped down the ascent that my pursuers were climb- ing. The first fellow that came fully in view I tumbled down the bluff', and at the same time those who were on horseback following were met by a withering fire from the boys who were coming to my rescue. This put a new phase on the proceedings and the pursued be- came the pursuers. We killed several of them before they got out of range.

I spent the night on Marshhead, and the next morn- ing there were no bluecoats visible about Kite's dis- tillery. Half a dozen men rode with me that far. I rode down in the direction of Front Royal, but, seeing a well-beaten path of infantry, cavalry, and artillery going in the direction of Fhnt Hill, I followed them, and was soon in view of their rear guard. I turned off at right angles, and rode about a mile down a neighborhood road at full speed, and then turned and paralleled their Hne of march. I was going at full speed so as to get in advance of this brigade or divi- sion, and find out whose it was, when I was suddenly halted by a squadron of my own regiment. I reported the object of my movements and Captain Alexander sent Corporal Moon and ten men with me. We ap-

98 MY LIFE AND MY LECTURES

proached Flint Hill just as the Yanks were entering it. I told Moon to halt and conceal the men, and that I would ride down as close as I could and try to ascer- tain what troops they were. I rode almost into the town, in fact so near that I could distinguish the color of the men's hair, for I felt that the nearer I was the less notice they would take of me, thinking that I was one of their own men.

I was in quite a deep cut, with a high fence and hedgerow on my right and a steep incline and a stone fence on my left. I was counting the files as they passed, and noting the numbers of the regiments, and looking for the corps badge, when I heard a bugle sound a short distance behind me. I glanced quickly back and saw a whole company of Yankee horsemen coming directly toward me from my rear. I did not hesitate, but rode up the embankment to my left, stuck the spurs into my horse, and made straight for the stone fence, which was about four feet high, and I cleared it like a bird.

There were several companies of bluecoats, and they were on the north and east side of the little field that I was in. They all set out to kill or capture me. Several rode up to where I had jumped the fence, spurred their horses, and tried to make them jump it as mine had, but they failed. In the meantime I had turned a little southwest, diagonally across the field, and as I reached the south side of it they sent a shower of bullets after me. This woke the whole march- ing army to my right, and many horsemen and some infantry tried to cut me off. My little mare out-dis- tanced every pursuer, and across fields and pastures I sped like a fox hunter, with possibly two hundred soldiers doing their best to overtake me, and a con- stant rain of lead flying around me.

I gradually inclined my course toward where a part of my regiment was on duty. Presently I saw about a hundred of them hid in a hedgerow within twenty feet of me, and I was ordered not to check up. I understood the meaning of the move instantly, merely leaned forward, and increased my speed. I glanced

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back and saw that the head of the pursuing cavalry had just about passed our ambuscade, when there was a sharp, rattling volley poured into them, and the road was instantly full of fallen men and horses. I turned and met a lieutenant of the 12th New York Cavalry and a sergeant. They surrendered at once, and I rode back to where the dead and dying, some thirty odd, lay.

I, of course, succeeded in accomplishing