chair was conspicuous by its absence. It was very humiliating for me to have to do the interpreting in so personal a matter, but there was no help for it. General Loring told me to say to the pasha that it was absolutely necessary for him to have me beside him, as I was his only means of communication, and besides he had only one arm and frequently needed assistance. The pasha replied that I could stand behind the general's chair. I was never so near becoming a madman as I was while translating this suggestion, and when I had finished I told the general that I would retire. He begged me not to desert him, and explained that no offense was meant--only they did not know any better. Finally a chair was brought for me and placed by the general.

        I was indignant with General Loring for the excuse he made for wanting me beside him. I was neither an interpreter nor a valet--and before I got through I intended to make him understand it too. I was a gentleman at home, and I intended to be treated as one in Egypt. It appeared strange to me that I, who had been a guest at the Khedive's table on several occasions, should not be considered of sufficient rank to sit at a meal in the company of these cheap off-colored beys. I had had enough of it, and I intended to sever my connection with His Highness's service the moment I could get hold of pen, ink, and paper.

        The next morning I took the train for Cairo, and on arriving there went straight to the citadel; and as I gazed on the great square between the palace and the mosque,--the scene of another banquet, when Mehemet Ali invited the Mamelukes to partake of his hospitality and when they were inside closed the sallyport and cut loose the artillery into them,--I realized that I was not the only man that had got more than he bargained for at an Egyptian feast. The artillery could not have been worse than the mortification I had suffered.

        After a short wait I was shown into the presence of General Stone, who appeared very much shocked at my

story and frankly told me that the affair was going to embarrass him greatly. I insisted that the simplest way out of the difficulty was to use his influence to have my resignation accepted immediately. But this he would not hear of, and instructed me to return to him in three days. The chief-of-staff was very suave--he was not only a most accomplished man in his profession, but he was a born manipulator of men. Mott, Loring, Sibley, Rhett, Kennon, and several others had formed a cabal against him, but he had handled the whole crowd as though they were so many naughty children; and before he got through with them they were tame enough to eat out of his hand and beg for his influence when they wanted any favors from the Khedive. It was not extraordinary, therefore, that he bent me to his will, tore up my resignation, ordered me not to say another word about the matter, as it would greatly annoy the Khedive if it got to his ears, and then informed me that it had been decided to send me to the staff of Ratib Pasha, lieutenant-general, and commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army. This detail would give me the rank of a lieutenant-colonel and all danger of a repetition of such a contretemps as the one I had recently been subjected to would be at an end.

CHAPTER XXXV

Ratib Pasha--Attempted suicide gained him promotion--Ratib is presented to a pretty soubrette--And calls on her accompanied by his staff--The commander-in-chief is peeved--The Abyssinian campaign--Ratib Pasha the only court favorite faithful to the Khedive Ismail in the hour of humiliation and sorrow--The Duke of Hamilton, General Mott, and the duel that did not come off.

        RATIB PASHA, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army, was not an imposing figure to look at; he was only five feet four or five inches in height and could hardly have weighed more than a hundred pounds; his features were not at all impressive, and they were of a dark brown tinge. He had risen to his high rank suddenly, and like most military heroes rejoiced in an ugly facial wound which did not add to his personal beauty. The story of his promotion was typical of the methods of the khedives of the time in such cases.

        Abbas Pasha was the ruler, and little Ratib was one of his equerries. Abbas used to turn him into ridicule and get lots of fun out of him; but one day Ratib had the misfortune to displease his master, who had a very ugly temper, and in a burst of rage Abbas turned upon him and hissed the awful word "Canzire!" The Arabic language is prolific in epithets, but not one of them conveys the degrading insult incorporated in this Arab word for "hog." One might pass over lightly being called the "brother of a sow," but the plain, unvarnished name of the unclean beast, when applied to a gentleman, demanded either satisfaction or death. Now Ratib could not challenge his lord and master, so he did the next most proper thing--he retired to an antechamber where there was a little parlor pistol lying on a table. This he picked up and fondled fondly for a moment, and then he lay down on a divan, placed the muzzle of the toy pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger! The little pellet of lead penetrated the roof of his mouth and came out alongside of

his nose. Ratib's nose bled in sympathy, and he soon became a gory-looking spectacle. The surgeons arrived and quickly performed a most remarkable operation--they inserted a small silver tube in the hole, which served to decorate his features as well as to announce to the world that he was a hero.

        Like most men of quick and high temper, Abbas Pasha was overcome with regret, and to make amends promised Ratib the first thing that he thought the little fellow would like, which was the position of commander-in-chief, on condition that he would recover. Ratib recovered--not only recovered, but retained his position under the reign of Ismail Pasha, Khedive.

        When the quiet and politic American, General Stone, was made chief-of-staff of the army, he did not announce himself with a blare of trumpets; in fact he kept in the background, and few of the high officials were aware of the fact that a new power had arisen among them which had to be reckoned with. Stone worked silently and unobtrusively, but he had the tremendous leverage of the Khedive's power to help him; and soon, without depriving Ratib Pasha of a single chevron or gold tassel, that officer, hardly perceiving the momentum, gently glided into what Mr. Cleveland would have called a position of "innocuous desuetude."

        Such was the general to whose staff Colonel Charles Chaillé-Long and I were detailed; and when we reported for duty I cannot say that Ratib appeared overjoyed to see us, despite the fact that we had been told the orders were issued at his personal request. I think myself that Ratib imagined it would give him a little prestige among the natives to have a couple of the Americans, who were regarded as curiosities from an unknown land, riding in his train.

        Of course, with my usual luck I soon managed to fall into disfavor. My fall from grace came about in a most unexpected way. It was an off night at the opéra bouffe, and the incomparable Céline Monthalon was charming

her audience with the wonders of her delightful voice at the Italian opera, the famous edifice which had been built by the Khedive for the production of Verdi's "Aïda." During an entr'acte I discovered that there was a large sprinkling of the artistes of the bouffe and comedy companies in the audience--among them, seated in a box, high up, I spied pretty and piquant little Mademoiselle Girardin, the charming soubrette of the opéra bouffe. She was accompanied by her mother, for she was awfully proper and never went to any place without a mother. (Duplan, the bouffe tenor, told me that she was so particular in this matter of mothers, that this was the third she had had in two years to his knowledge.) I went up to the box to pay my compliments and was enjoying myself greatly when there was a knock at the door and to my astonishment some one asked for me. I went to the door and came face to face with my chief Ratib Pasha! I could have been knocked down with a feather. But the interview was not so awful as might have been expected--all that the great man wanted was an introduction to Mademoiselle Girardin, which seemed a very simple matter, but which was not. I asked the young lady's permission to present to her His Excellency, Ratib Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army, and the little minx put me to confusion by flatly denying his identity, asserting that I was always trying to play practical jokes, and insisted that she did not believe Ratib was any kind of a general at all, much less the great commander-in-chief. Ratib took a seat beside her and began the agreeable task of convincing her that he was indeed the great and only human being of that exalted rank, and before he knew what she was up to, the little scamp in petticoats had extracted a promise from him that he would the next day prove to her that he was really and truly "It" by calling on her at her apartments, not only in full uniform, but also accompanied by his staff! By this time, realizing that my services were no

longer required, I quietly sneaked out of the box only to be heartily laughed at by my young men friends for having been run off by "old Ratib."

        The next afternoon Colonel Chaillé-Long was absent from headquarters on some duty (fortunately for him), when His Excellency informed me that he wished his staff to accompany him on his ride, in full uniform. Instantly it flashed through my mind what was up, and I swore a mighty internal oath that I would not accompany him even if every soubrette in the trade died of disappointment. When the appointed hour arrived it found the staff, with the exception of myself, all ready. I was still attired in my Presbyterian parson single-breasted black undress uniform coat. The pasha appeared in full regalia, with his broad sash across his sunk-in chest and his coat so covered with embroidered gold flowers that only here and there was a blue spot of cloth visible. He glared at me for a moment and remarked that he was under the impression that he had told me he expected me to accompany him, and I replied that "I would be unable to ride that afternoon." He then ordered me to remain until he returned, as he would have something to say to me, and then he mounted his horse and, accompanied by his staff, rode away to conquer or die.

        Ratib's staff consisted of some twenty-odd Egyptian officers (exclusive of Colonel Chaillé-Long and myself), and they formed quite a gorgeous pageant as they wended their way out of the courtyard and into the street. It was the hour at which all the prominent people of Cairo went for their afternoon promenade on the fashionable Shubra drive, and to get into that beautiful avenue they all had to pass by the apartments of Mademoiselle Girardin.

        The commander-in-chief drew his staff up in front of the soubrette's house and dismounted, doubtless affording the pleasure-seekers much amusement; and I take it for granted that he convinced the young lady upon whom he

called in such state that he really was a general. When he returned to his palace he asked me "if my conduct was a sample of the discipline I had come so many miles to teach his countrymen, and for which His Highness paid such an extravagant price." There was an offensive sneer on his face which I resented, informing him that I might be a mercenary, but that I would never put His Highness's uniform to such a doubtful use as presenting it before actresses as proof that I was one of his officers. Ratib was furious. For a moment I thought the little fellow was going to assault me, but he seemed suddenly to change his mind and hurled himself on to a divan instead, where he began to kick and scream with rage like an angry child, and there I left him. After this scene I got on very well with my chief, officially, as he had no desire to have the cause of the trouble made public property; and personally he was such a religious fanatic that he did not dislike me any more than he did any other Christian dog.

        Ratib had in his composition a goodly share of Oriental cunning and was familiar with all the subtle workings of Egyptian ways of bringing about results, which were incomprehensible to the American mind. For instance, the Khedive decided that his army needed a little exercise, and to give it to them he sent an expedition of twelve thousand men down the Red Sea coast to castigate the Abyssinians. He had never heard the Gilbert and Sullivan song about the "torpedo and the whale," and little dreamed that Egypt was cast for the part of the whale. Loring was immensely delighted when the command was given to him. Ratib Pasha lay low and said nothing until just before the expedition sailed; then he obtained permission to accompany it merely as an onlooker and a student of war with no authority over the troops whatever so far as Loring was aware of. The Oriental gentlemen who knew the ways of the country and also felt kindly disposed toward Loring shook their heads knowingly, but did not dare to warn him.

The army landed, but had not gone very far from the coast when they received information that the Abyssinians were coming, some thirty thousand strong, to attack them. Now the Egyptian Army was splendidly drilled and disciplined, and they were armed with Remington breachloaders, at that time one of the best weapons in use in any of the armies; but alas, the troops did not know how to shoot and few of them had ever fired a gun. Powder was too expensive to be wasted in target practice, and what money De Lesseps did not get out of the Khedive for his canal was needed too much to swell the fortunes of the court favorites, those soulless parasites who kept the khedival treasury drained. If fearlessness of death constitutes bravery, then every Egyptian soldier is a hero, for they have not the slightest dread of their end. They come from the peasant class (fellahs) and are not aggressive, but rather than attack they preferred to stand still and be killed like sheep.

        Fortunately for Loring, when the Abyssinians appeared, Ratib, who had no idea of letting Loring reap the glory of a great victory while he himself was present on the field, produced from his breast-pocket an order from the Minister of War authorizing him to take over the command of the army whenever in his opinion it should be necessary, and of course the necessity had now arisen. Loring was relieved and the Abyssianians poured down the mountain-sides armed with all sorts of antediluvian weapons including flintlocks, swords, and rhinocerous-hide shields, spears, and clubs. They rushed up to the Egyptians and wrenched the breech-loaders out of their hands and used them to club the life out of those poor wretches. The slaughter was great and the disaster frightful. But it did not appear that Ratib lost much in prestige so far as his standing at court was concerned.

        My remarks concerning the fighting qualities of the Egyptians, it must be remembered, refer to a time before

Gordon licked his Soudanese army into shape and made them fight so splendidly. He had done the same thing previously with the Chinese, and always insisted that they were splendid fighting material when officered by Europeans; and it must also be remembered that the Soudanese and Nubians are fighting men naturally, and very different races of men from the gentle peasant of the lower Nile.

        To the everlasting honor of Ratib Pasha I must say that when Ismail Pasha, Khedive, was dethroned and all the parasites who had drained him of his wealth had abandoned him, Ratib Pasha alone followed the master who had been so kind to him into exile, and shared his imprisonment and broken fortunes.

        It was while I was attached to the staff of the commander-in-chief that a personal difficulty occurred in Cairo which caused a great deal of gossip both in Egypt and Europe, and I regret to say that I was partly the unintentional cause of it.

        The Duke of Hamilton had come to Egypt in his steam yacht bringing a very gay and noisy party of young men with him. It was shortly after he had met with great losses on the turf and had found it convenient to skip to France between two days to avoid his most pressing creditors. He had celebrated his arrival in Paris by sending all Europe into convulsions of laughter by his answer to an invitation to dine with his cousin the Emperor Napoleon. It read: "Sire: I have neither the clothes nor the manners for imperial society." The duke's creditors, however, were amenable to reason and made an arrangement with him whereby they took over the management of his enormous estates and allowed him a pittance of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year until they could pay themselves.

        The duke and his party went to Cairo where they took possession of Shepheard's Hotel, the most famous caravansary for Europeans in the place at that day, and they made

things lively for the rest of the guests, one of their most favorite amusements being footraces through the long corridors in the middle of the night.

        If there was any trouble brewing, it was just my luck to stumble into it. There was a rich Englishman by the name of Fairman visiting Cairo, and he and I were not on good terms. One afternoon on returning from riding I stopped at my restaurant and went in to dinner just as I was, dressed in my undress uniform, and carrying in my hand a light riding-whip. I took my seat at a table where Colonels Chaillé-Long and Mason were dining, and after I got through I walked out of the room, and in the corridor met Mr. Fairman, who made a remark at which I took offense, and, losing my temper, I struck him with the whip. Mr. Fairman told me he would send his seconds to me and we separated. But on reflection he decided not to challenge me.

        Now, it so happened that Mr. Fairman was an acquaintance of the Duke of Hamilton and his party, and shortly after our affray he was seated at a table with them in the garden in front of the Villa Shubra (a place where promenaders could stop for refreshments), and who should enter the grounds but Major-General Mott. Mott knew the duke and saluted him as he was passing the table where the latter was seated with his friends. The duke courteously invited Mott to join his party, but Mott replied that he would do so with pleasure if it were not for the fact that Mr. Fairman was present. The duke was naturally offended and asked for an explanation. Mott replied that "under no circumstances would he sit at the same table with a man who had been publicly horsewhipped and had not resented it." The words were no sooner out of Mott's mouth than a sporty young baronet in the party jumped to his feet and demanded Mott's card, saying that he would send his seconds to him, and selected the duke for one of them. The duke carried the demand for an apology or satisfaction to Mott,

and the latter referred him to me as his friend who would carry on the negotiations. The duke, when he called on me, made himself so agreeable that I took quite a fancy to him and tried to point out a way by which the matter might be dropped without having recourse to a hostile meeting. I became so confidential with him that I told him his young friend would not have a ghost of a chance for his life if ever he went on the field with General Mott, who, besides having fought several duels and killed one man to my knowledge, was a magnificent swordsman and a dead shot with pistols, and furthermore it was useless to expect an apology from him. But my remarks did not seem at all to dismay the duke, and as no apology could be had, the only other thing to do was to arrange the details for a hostile meeting. These we agreed upon in the most amicable spirit. We were to go to Alexandria and the party was to stop at the Hotel Abbatt on the plaza, and the next morning at daylight repair to a cemetery in the suburbs (the one where one of the Apostles is supposed to be buried), and there let our principals blaze away at each other.

        At daylight on the morning on which the duel was expected to take place, General Mott and myself, carrying a case of dueling pistols, entered the office of the hotel and asked the night clerk if the duke and his party had yet been called, when to our amazement the sleepy clerk replied that they had left the hotel at 2 A.M. and gone aboard their yacht and were probably by that time far out at sea!

        Instead of letting the matter rest there, against my advice General Mott wrote a letter to the London papers in which he particularly excoriated the Duke of Hamilton, and brought down upon himself a torrent of abuse. The Duke of Hamilton took no notice of him, but truth compels me to state that I afterwards heard that the young baronet was anxious to fight and that the duke, having no intention whatever of allowing him to be perforated by Mott's leaden pellet, had forcibly carried him away.

CHAPTER XXXVI

The Franco-Prussian War--Apply for leave to go to France--Wrecked Paris in sackcloth and ashes--A generous Jew.

        WHEN the Franco-Prussian War was at its height several of the American officers, among them myself, through the Khedive requested permission to go to France for the purpose of studying our profession on the battle-fields. The answer came back that the Imperial Government would be pleased to receive a small number of native Egyptian officers, but that they did not care to have the Americans in His Highness's service. I had a great desire to see what was going on, so I applied for leave of absence, which was granted me, and I took passage for Marseilles in a little bark because it was a cheap way of making the voyage, and like everything else I have found in this life that was cheap it was "bum."

        The Tigre was supposed to be a steamer. I don't know how many "cat" power her engine was said to have had, but I do know that it broke down whenever it felt like it. She was crowded with the usual polyglot assemblage of passengers of all Oriental nations commonly found aboard ships in the eastern Mediterranean, many of them--in fact whole families--camping on the upper deck for economical reasons. The filth of the vessel was indescribable. I shared my stateroom with a young Jew who spoke several languages and was both highly educated and refined. All went well enough until after we passed through the Strait of Bonifacio and struck the mistral, which was blowing a gale. We were off the Îles de Hier on the French coast, bucking the heavy sea without making any headway, when our miserable little coffee-mill of an engine broke down. The ship was hastily put under sail, and thinking that she was riding the seas nicely I turned into my bunk and went to

sleep, only to be suddenly awakened some time in the middle watch by an awful crash. Rushing on deck I found that both fore and mainmast had gone by the board. Nearly every man on deck had appointed himself captain and was frantically bellowing orders to which no one else paid the slightest attention. There was a perfect Babel of tongues at work. The spars, held by their rigging, were acting as battering-rams against the wooden sides of the ship, and it was evident that she would not be able to stand the punishment for very long. The passengers rushed for the boat davits and began to lower the boats, a difficult feat even for sailors to perform in such a seaway. As the boats touched the water the poor wretches, like a frightened flock of sheep, leaped over the side, more alighting in the sea than in the boats, sufficient numbers, however, landing in them to cause them to swamp. But strange to say several of them got away and reached the shore which was only a few miles away.

        My roommate, Mr. Suarez, made several starts for the boats, but I dissuaded him. When day broke the Tigre was sinking fast by the stern, but fortunately both sea and wind had gone down. There was a very small dinghy, used as a market boat in port, fastened bottom up on the poop deck, and on this boat I had had my eyes fastened for some time, knowing that no one else would think of taking her. When at daylight Mr. Suarez and I found ourselves alone on the fast-sinking bark, I turned this little boat over and found her oars fastened under the thwarts. The bow of the Tigre was standing high out of the water and her taffrail was submerged, so without difficulty I launched our pygmy craft and leaped into her as she glided into the water, but alas! my pocketbook with every sovereign I possessed was in my breast-pocket and as I jumped into the boat I heard it go kerchunk into the sea. I paddled back to the wreck for my companion, and to my surprise found that he had gone back to the cabin and brought up a very light steamer

trunk of mine, but the water was so deep he had not been able to save anything of his own. Without further adventure we rowed to the island and from there were taken to La Ciotat on the mainland and then proceeded to Marseilles by rail, Mr. Suarez having kindly purchased a ticket for me as well as for himself.

        At Marseilles we could form no idea of the condition of the interior of France, as the heavy hand of war had not reached that far south, and hearing that trains were running through to Paris we started for that once gay capital, only to find that we had been misinformed and that we had to undergo many vexatious delays before arriving there. We soon entered the country still occupied by the Germans, although the war was over. They had their sentries at all the railway stations, and I was disgusted at the brutal and overbearing manner they showed toward the civilian population. Instead of commanding a Frenchman to halt, they would merely strike him a fearful blow in the pit of his stomach with the butt of a musket; even when these poor people only wanted to approach a train for the purpose of making inquiries about missing friends or relatives.

        It was in the early spring of 1871 when we entered Paris in one of the first trains that had arrived in that city since the suppression of the Commune. It was dark when we detrained and when we asked for a cab we were laughed at; the porter asked of what use a cab would be since all the horses had been eaten. We were also told that all the famous hotels whose names we remembered had been converted into hospitals. Finally a man agreed to pilot us to a small hotel on the Boulevard Montmartre where we could get accommodations and we followed him.

        The next morning early I wrote to friends in England telling them of the loss of my pocketbook and asking them to send me enough money to enable me to return to Egypt, but the mails were disorganized and I never heard whether or not they had received my letter. After I had finished

my breakfast I took a walk, passing through the once crowded boulevards des Italiens, des Capucines, and la rue Royale without meeting a living soul. The once magnificent plate-glass show windows which were not smashed were perforated with bullet holes so close together that it would have been impossible to put one's hand on a spot that a bullet had not gone through. The Palace of the Tuileries was an ugly mass of smouldering ruins with the smoke still ascending from it, and the fronts of the houses on the rue de Rivoli, opposite the Palace of the Louvre, were lying in the street. In some of the houses the interior of the bedrooms could be plainly seen, looking as though their former occupants had only just stepped out of them for a moment. I walked down the Champs Élysées where once the fountains and the trees had been so beautiful, but there was now not even a bush or shrub to relieve the desolation which had been wrought by the hands of vandals. I proceeded on through the Arc de l'Étoile to the edge of a treeless desert once known as the Bois de Boulogne, one of the most beautiful parks in the world. Returning I passed through the Place Vendôme and saw its beautiful column, broken into several pieces, lying on the ground. I had seen enough. Could this be the gay and debonnaire Paris with the gilded and mirrored pleasure places and the laughing throngs I had seen only two short years previously?

        That was a gloomy and a weary week I spent in Paris, and when its end came I was still without funds and the landlord was scowling at me. I had never laid eyes on my companion in the shipwreck since the night of my arrival! He was still in Paris and stopping at the same house, but I came to the conclusion that he was avoiding me. Hopeless and expecting to be put out on the street, I went up to my room one night after wandering for hours about the deserted streets and saw what I supposed was a notice to leave pinned on the pincushion. Wearily opening the envelope, the contents of which I thought I already knew, I was greatly

delighted to find that I was mistaken and that it contained a note from Mr. Suarez telling me that he regretted that business had prevented him from seeing me, and directing me to take an enclosed note to a friend of his, a banker, who would supply me with quite a large sum of money which I could return at my convenience! He wound up the note by saying that he was compelled to leave hurriedly that night. The banker gave me the money, but said that Mr. Suarez had left no address, as he expected to return to Paris in a few days, but that as he knew my address in Egypt he would write to me. I have never seen or heard from that generous Jew from that day to this.

        It is not necessary for me to say that I left Paris as quickly as possible and returned to Egypt where I resumed my uncongenial military duties.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Return to America--Tired of the Egyptian service, but the Khedive declines to allow me to resign--Grants me a furlough with permission to go home--Determine again to become a farmer--"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses"--Columbia, South Carolina--Become lord and master of the great Hampton plantation--A bachelor's ménage and appetite--A lively fox hunt in which the wily Carpetbag Government is run to cover--Matches only cost five cents a box--Trial justice Sam Thompson.

        EARLY in 1872 it became very evident to me that there was no future for the American officers in Egypt, and many of the others thought as I did, but few of them had any very bright prospects to look forward to if they returned home. I determined to chance it, knowing that I could always turn to that last resort of the navy man and become a farmer. Land was plentiful and cheap where I came from.

        I was agreeably surprised to find that the Khedive did not want to let me go, saying that I was only a homesick boy and that he would allow me a six months' furlough instead of accepting my resignation. I assured him that I would not come back, but he thought differently and advised me to accept the furlough, saying that if at its expiration I was still of the same mind he would then accept my resignation. So I bade farewell to Egypt and went to Liverpool, where I took ship for New York and was delighted to find among the passengers Clarence Cary and Frank Dawson, two of my best friends, and comrades in the Confederate Navy.

        I had a letter from my friend, Mr. Edward Markoe Wright, asking me to come to his house immediately on my arrival in New York, and landing in that port very early in the morning I waited until I thought the family were up and then went there. While waiting for my host to come down I opened a Bible which was lying on a table and the first words that caught my eye was the commencement of the thirty-first chapter of Isaiah: "Woe to them that go down

to Egypt for help; and stay on horses," etc. I had not seen a Bible for a very long time, but this verse was so apt that I had no curiosity to read any further for fear that it might become even more personal. Arriving in Charleston, South Carolina, although Mr. Trenholm advised me against the venture, I managed to persuade him to let me have the grand old Hampton plantation in exchange for some stocks I had in railroads and a cotton manufactory. The property comprised several thousand acres and was situated on the Congaree River, four miles below Columbia, the capital of the State. There was a new ten-room house which had been recently erected on the place and a huge barn capable of stabling a hundred animals. The avenue, a mile long, leading from the public road to the house, was lined by huge oak trees whose limbs formed a perfect Gothic arch the whole distance. One of my little nephews the first time he passed through it, in a subdued whisper said, "It feels like a church, does it not?" Alas, that wonderful avenue has long since been turned into cordwood and burned.

        The place was so large that there were five separate and distinct villages or negro settlements on it. My grandfather, writing an account of a visit he had paid General Hampton in 1798, says that he "saw one hundred ploughs going at the same time in one field." Of course these were the little one-horse ploughs commonly used in the South until many years after the Civil War, but it goes to show how enormous was the size of the fields.

        I set up housekeeping at Hampton and at first my ménage was as lonely as it was unique. I had only one servant, Maum Margaret, a huge black woman somewhat past the middle age; she must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, and she had only ten children. She cooked for me and made my bed, and when dark approached she returned to her cabin and her family. Maum Margaret always carried a huge basket, both going and coming, and when my bills came in for the first month's expenses I felt

that I had discovered a clue to the mystery of the basket. According to the grocer's bill, besides the game I had killed, and the fish, chickens, and fresh meat that I had bought, in a little over four weeks I had eaten fifty pounds of bacon, eleven hams, three barrels of flour, and a lot of canned things, and still I weighed at that time only a hundred and forty-five pounds!

        The house was surrounded by forest trees, and the nights were very lonely, my only companions being an ugly-looking bulldog and a hound. I was the only white man on the place and there were hundreds of ignorant negroes, many of them lawless and fast reverting to barbarism. It was impossible to obtain a conviction against one of them for any crime, as the negro trial justice was dependent upon his fees for his livelihood, and it was well known that a white man would pay rather than go to jail and that a negro would not.

        When I had left South Carolina three years before it was under martial law; now the experiment of the Reconstruction, which ought to have been called the "destruction," was in full sway. Franklin J. Moses was governor, and the helpless whites were compelled to submit to outrages by the presence of United States troops who were there to see that we did not run amuck among the carpetbaggers and scalawags. The latter name was applied to Southern men who had joined with the carpetbaggers in plundering their fellow citizens. While these thieves lived in luxury their lives must have been mentally very uncomfortable, for they well knew that if the troops should be removed for a moment their lives would pay the penalty of their outrages. But the swag was so rich that not even fear for their lives could induce them to let go even after they had accumulated riches beyond their most extravagant dreams. Their only safeguard was the soldiers, and the regular officers had such a contempt for them that they would hold no social intercourse with them, and the privates hated the negroes with a bitter hatred and took no pains to disguise their feelings.

        Moses did not belong to the low class of whites, as has often been represented; on the contrary, he was one of that class of Jews which had always stood high in the estimation of their fellow citizens and he had married into a most excellent family. He was an officer in one of the regular South Carolina regiments and had an excellent record in the Confederate Army. On one occasion when the flag was shot away, at Fort Sumter, under a heavy fire he climbed the flagstaff and replaced it. Why he should have pursued the course he did is incomprehensible. I first saw him under very ludicrous circumstances. I had known from childhood Colonel Black, who commanded the Eighteenth Infantry, the United States regiment stationed at Columbia to keep us "rebs" in order, and I was on the most friendly terms with all the officers of the command than whom a higher-toned set of gentlemen it was never my good fortune to meet. Among the younger officers was a Lieutenant Todd, from Kentucky, who, like all his countrymen, was very fond of fox hunting. Riding by the barracks one afternoon Lieutenant Todd stopped me and asked if I could not get up a fox hunt for that night, as the moon was full and it would be a great night for a chase. I agreed with him and told him if he would notify the other officers, I would go back to the club and tell my friends that there was to be a hunt and then go and see some of the planters who had hounds, and that I would meet them at the Lexington County end of the bridge which spanned the Congaree.

        When I arrived at the rendezvous with the dogs I found some thirty or forty hunters assembled and each one seemed armed with a pocket flask. They were very busily engaged in renewing the assurances of their highest, consideration for one another, at the same time whooping and yelling like demons. I begged them to keep quiet, as not only would the noise run every fox out of the county, but it would also excite the dogs who had not been hunted for some time and were very fresh. Silence was obtained for a few minutes and

I uncoupled the hounds and started the hunt. The full moon was shining brightly on the white sandy soil, and except where the shadows of the lofty yellow pine trees fell, it was as light as day. The dogs had hardly begun the hunt for a trail when unfortunately a puppy in the pack spied a stray cur and gave tongue, followed by the rest in full cry. The men put spurs to their horses, their yells drowning the music of the pack. I had seen the cur they were chasing, but I was helpless to stop either dogs or men; so I blew my horn in vain for some time, and then, knowing that as soon as the dogs caught the cur, they would make their way across the bridge and go to a farm in the sand hills on the other side of Columbia, I rode to the bridge and asked the man in charge of it if he had seen a pack of dogs cross. He told me that he had, and also about fifty crazy men after them. Passing by the barracks on my way to the farm where I supposed I would find the dogs, I was hailed by an officer who was crossing the parade ground. He asked me to dismount and said that it was a very good joke, and had been very well played, but the time for stopping it had come, as he had no idea of keeping the whole regiment, under arms all night for my amusement, and that, anyhow, Colonel Black was in the officer of the day's office and would like to see me. The room was dimly lighted, and at first I saw no one but the colonel, who was seated at a table on which there was a lamp. Calling me by my first name, he asked since when I had become a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Before answering I glanced around the room and to my astonishment beheld the governor and his cabinet seated in line against the wall. I laughingly replied to the colonel's inquiry by saying that if I was a Ku Klux there were about fourteen officers of the Eighteenth Infantry who belonged to my particular band; and just then the disappointed huntsmen trooped in, and not seeing their colonel at first, began to berate me for letting the dogs get away. Moses and the lieutenant-governor, the secretary of state, the treasurer,

comptroller, adjutant-general and superintendent of public education arose and sneaked out into the night.

        "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." The next morning we heard the explanation of the carpetbaggers' scare. It seems that when the hunting party gathered in the woods at the end of the bridge, and were making so much noise, an old negro woman hastened across the river and warned the governor that hundreds of Ku Klux were gathering for an attack on the state officials. Moses sent out a trusted scout who, when he had got halfway across the river, took fright, and returning reported that thousands of the white-sheeted devils were assembled and only waiting for the signal to annihilate every white Republican in the capital. Moses sent the warning to his friends, and they all fled to the barracks for protection, their flight being accelerated by the yells of the sportsmen trying to head the dogs as they scampered through the streets of the city. Those were sad days for Columbia, but the natives had at least one week's merriment over this escapade.

        The first time I came into conflict with the carpetbaggers was one day when Maum Margaret informed me that she wanted to get through her work early, as there was to be a "speaking" and she wished to attend it. I asked where the meeting was to take place and she informed me that the white man (I never heard a negro call a carpetbagger a gentleman) was having my property moved out of one of my barns for the purpose, as it was raining. The man was a candidate for the legislature, and I determined to attend the meeting. The fellow was uneducated and mouthy. I heard him tell those ignorant blacks that "the land belonged to them by rights, as their labor had made it what it was, and the only way to get rid of the rebel landlord was to tax him out of the country, and that if they would vote for him he would get a law passed to effect that desirable result"; and then he went on to say that if we could not be got rid of in that way, then they ought to burn us out--

a box of matches only cost five cents and any child could strike one. At this I jumped on the improvised speaker's stand and grabbed him by the collar and hustled him out of the building and to the public road, where I faced him in the direction of Columbia, and telling him if he ever dared put his foot on my property again I would fill him full of lead, I gave him a kick where I thought it would do the most good and started him on his way. Not a single negro had followed us, so naturally there were no witnesses, but the next day I was served with a warrant charging me with assault, and when the trial came off the scoundrel had dozens of witnesses, negroes who lived in my houses and who were dependent on my employment for their means of subsistence, to testify against me.

        The trial justice was a negro by the name of Sam Thompson. He had been a slave of my brother-in-law, Dr. Alfred Wallace, and when they were boys Dr. Wallace had amused himself by teaching Sam to read. This was the judge before whom I was tried and fined fifty dollars, which of course I paid rather than go to jail, and the justice pocketed the fines and fees. Seeing how easy it was to get it out of me, Sam ever afterwards looked to me for a regular monthly contribution; in fact, I was before him so often that we became quite intimate.

        Another candidate appeared a few days afterwards. This one was a common cornfield negro who appealed for votes on the ground that if he was elected he would have two laws enacted, one for the whites and another for the colored folks; of course the one for the negroes would be better than the one for the whites, but he never intimated what the laws were to be. A few days after this man made his appearance on the place I caught him, axe in hand, attempting to cut down one of the magnificent oaks in the avenue. I not only ordered him to desist, but threatened him with personal violence if he struck the tree another blow. He said he would see if any white man could talk to him that way,

and the next day I was again fined for assault. I was becoming a regular gold mine for Sam Thompson, the trial justice.

        My only milch cow, which had a young calf, was killed skinned, and butchered in the middle of the night within three hundred yards of my house. I traced the hide to a negro's house and recovered it. One of the women in the house had me arrested and fined for trespass. The fact that it was my house and that she paid me no rent for it didn't "cut any ice."

        When I went to the Hampton plantation I had an idea of helping these people,--there were several hundred of them,--and while I could give employment only to some fifteen or twenty, I gave all of them permission, not only to cut as much firewood as they needed out of the forest, but also to sell wood to the inhabitants of Columbia, and for this they were to pay me nothing. My reward was that when the cold weather came instead of going out and cutting wood they ripped the planks from the interior of my houses and burned them, giving as an excuse that it was too far to the woods situated some four or five hundred yards away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The name Galapagos inspires the preacher--I take Northern friends to a prayer meeting--"Getting glory"--A chicken thief and a bulldog get hitched together--Death of Hector as a consequence--The preponderance of the evidence--Ball toilets in the middle of the day and champagne orgies on the main street--The comptroller of the State opens fire on the house of Colonel Black, U.S.A., the commandant--Moses, promised immunity, gives testimony in the fraudulent bond case--Questions of personal privilege--Nancy Eliot.

My mother and unmarried sister came to stay with me at Hampton bringing with them my little nephew Howell Morgan, whose father had died a prisoner of war on Johnson's Island, and after their arrival there was a change in my ménage. Maum Margaret was discharged on the score of economy, and sad to say, several of her grown sons and daughters had to return to the fields and work for their bacon and hominy. A new, cook and a maid were installed, and when we had company we commandeered "Monday," the head preacher on the place, who had once been a house servant before he found preaching more lucrative. It is hardly necessary to say that Monday was the biggest old scoundrel in the neighborhood.

        Hampton was the camp-meeting place where thousands of negroes assembled for an annual orgy, and Monday was getting his flock into condition for the great event. At the camp-meeting grounds an immense arbor of pine boughs had been erected and rough seats or benches installed. In Monday's flock were two girls, as black as ebony, named Blanche and Pearl, and had they been white they undoubtedly would have made a sensation on the stage.

        Two of my Northern friends came to see me on my promise that I would give them some good shooting, which, of course, I could do, as the place in those days was overrun with quail and rabbits. I wanted to amuse them and determined to take them to my private theater, namely, a prayer

meeting at the camp-ground. I confided my intention to Monday and told him that there was a dollar in it for him if he would work his congregation up in proper style, and a half-dollar each to Blanche and Pearl if they "got glory" in extra good form. Monday assured me I should be more than satisfied.

        At dinner we had some mock-turtle soup and the conversation turned to turtles. I remarked that in the Galapagos Islands turtles had been captured which weighed a ton and more, and the others had big turtle yarns to spin also. Every time the name Galapagos was mentioned I could see Monday's eyes fairly bulge. He was waiting on table, and knowing the negro's love for strange-sounding words which he did not understand, I rather suspected that there would be echoes from that one. After we had finished dinner and smoked our cigars, I proposed a visit to the prayer meeting. We approached the place from behind where the preacher was exhorting, and as we arrived we heard Monday from his rough pine board pulpit say: "My brederin, in dat great day when de angel ob de Lord come down and say 'Gallipagos! Gallipagos! Gallipagos!' what den is you goin' to say?" And a roar came back from the congregation, "Gallipagos! Lord, Gallipagos!"

        As Monday went on exhorting, moans became more and more frequent, interspersed with shouts of "Glory!" and "I gettin' glory!" But the eyes of most of the spectators were fixed upon Blanche and Pearl, who slowly arose and began to move their feet, at first with great deliberation, and then with increasing speed while announcing in a most convincing manner that they were "gettin' glory." This went on until their bodies were writhing in the most wonderful contortions accompanied by occasional extraordinary leaps into the air, while uttering wild shrieks and blasphemies which I will not pain the reader by repeating. The performance ended by these girls falling to the ground in a fit and remaining there, foaming at the mouth, while

their bodies and limbs were as rigid as iron bars. Then they were taken up by men who lifted them by their heads and heels, and still rigid they were carried out to where water could be poured over them until they revived, and in a few minutes they were ready for another exhibition.

        Although there were some notoriously bad characters living on the place, I had no fear of their entering the house, but they would pilfer grain from the barn and rob the hen-roost. I slept on the lower floor and my bulldog stayed in my bedroom at night, and when any unusual noise occurred outside he would give me notice and I would open a window, out of which he would jump. If I heard any one yell I knew somebody was there, and I would go out and disengage Hector from him.

        There was a negro by the name of Renty who had served one or more terms in the penitentiary and who gave me a great deal of trouble. Nominally he lived in one of my houses, but as there were always warrants out for him, he spent most of his time hidden in a swamp, where his wife, a most excellent and hard-working woman, kept him supplied with food.

        One night the bulldog awakened me and, as usual, I let him out of the window, and soon heard moans of "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" Taking a lantern with me I went to the chicken-house and found that Renty had used the open slats out of which it was built for a ladder and had climbed as high as possible, and dangling from his trousers was Hector, swinging like a pendulum. I persuaded Renty to come down, and when he reached the ground he suggested that I should get a chisel and hatchet and pry the dog loose. But I explained to Renty that since emancipation an English bulldog was worth a great deal more money to me than a free nigger, but offered a compromise: if he would remain perfectly still I would go into the house and get something that would make Hector let go. Procuring a handful of smoking tobacco I returned and sprinkled it on

the dog's nose which caused him to sneeze and Renty was freed from his viselike teeth. Three days after Hector was a dead dog, a piece of meat well sprinkled with powdered glass having been placed where the poor beast was sure to find it.

        Shortly after Hector's tragic death, I heard one night the whinny of a horse in my barn, and I got up and went to investigate its cause. I found backed up against the open barn door a one-horse spring wagon half loaded with my cow peas, and coming out of the door was my old friend Renty with a full bushel basket on his shoulder. He dropped the basket on seeing me and seemed in mortal terror that I was going to kill him, but I soon reassured the scoundrel, and ordered him to saddle a horse for me. It was between three and four o'clock in the morning and there was not as yet a soul stirring on the plantation. I made Renty mount his wagon and escorted him to Columbia. It was shortly after daylight when we arrived at the trial justice's office and we had not met a single human being on the way. We sat on the steps until judge Sam Thompson opened his court at nine o'clock. I then made my charge against Renty and called attention to the cow peas in the wagon as my proof. The judge took Renty aside, and after some conversation, which I could not overhear, "His Honor" informed me that he could not hear the case until one o'clock in the afternoon, and that in the mean time he would be responsible for the prisoner.

        When I returned to the court I found some fifteen or twenty negroes from the plantation assembled in the courtroom ready to testify as witnesses. Renty took the stand himself and swore that he had never been in that barn in his life,--despite the fact that he had been a slave of the Hamptons and afterwards of the Trenholms,--not even in corn-shucking times when all the hands were gathered there. He could not explain how this was, but stuck to his story. Next he put a little girl on the stand who swore that

she was his niece and was only eleven years of age. She also swore that her uncle had never been in the barn in his life. I asked her if she understood the nature of an oath, and she replied that the "debbil" would get her if she did not tell the truth. I then asked her to be careful about her answer to a question I would ask her. I told her that her uncle had sworn that he was thirty-seven years of age, and asked her if she was willing to swear that her uncle had never been in the barn during the twenty-six years that he had lived on that place before she was born; and she replied, "I swear to God he never was!" I turned to the judge and said, "Sam, you see what kind of a story this is." His Honor put on a solemn expression and replied, "I can't help it, suh, de preponderance ob de ebidence is agin you."

        But that was not all. The judge called Renty to him, and after a whispered conference, Renty entered a charge of assault against me! And his witnesses all swore to the same story, namely, that Renty was driving his cart peaceably in the avenue and that I had come up on horseback and dragged him off his wagon and beat him in a most shameful manner. I realized at once the helplessness of my situation and became reckless. "Sam!" I shouted to the judge, "did you ever hear that I was a strong man?" "Yes," suavely replied His Ebony Honor: "everybody knows you is double-jinted." "Well," I said, "I want you to take a good look at Renty's face now and see how differently it will look after I drive him one from the shoulder." And with that I drew back to strike, but Renty was too quick for me, and with a wild cry of "Jedge, for God's sake, don't let him do it!" he dived under the table at which the judge was seated. It sounds very funny now, but it cost me fifty dollars then, and money was very scarce in South Carolina at that time.

        In those days strange sights could be witnessed in the streets of Columbia at any time. I remember--not only once, but on several occasions--seeing a handsome landau drawn by a spanking pair of high-stepping Kentucky horses

and containing four negro wenches arrayed in low-neck and short-sleeved dresses, their black bosoms and arms covered with real jewels in the middle of the day, draw up in front of a barroom on Main Street where the wives and daughters of the old and impoverished aristocracy did their shopping. Out of the saloon would come the governor accompanied by several high state officials, followed by a servant bearing a waiter on which was champagne and glasses, and right there on the public sidewalk enter into a perfect orgy with the dusky belles.

        White carpetbaggers seemed to have so much money that they did not know what to do with it. I have seen one of them walk into a drinking saloon by himself and ostentatiously order a quart bottle of champagne, take one glass of it, and carelessly throw a ten-dollar bill on the counter and tell the barkeeper to keep the change; and this in a community where people bred in affluence were suffering for the very necessities of life.

        The salary of the comptroller was eighteen hundred dollars a year. Dr. Nagle, who held the office, had arrived in Columbia literally in rags. In the first year of his incumbency--out of his salary, of course--he bought a fine house and a carriage and horses with gold-mounted harness among other things, and incidentally built a bridge across the Congaree River that must have cost thousands of dollars. This worthy official, returning home one day while drunk, caused quite a sensation, beating his wife unmercifully, and she fled from the house and took refuge in the home of Colonel Black, U.S.A., which was next door. Whereupon Nagle, armed with a Winchester rifle, began to pump lead through the sides of the commandant's frame house. The soldiers of the Eighteenth Infantry, hearing what was happening at the home of their beloved colonel, came from the barracks on the run, determined to have Nagle's gore, and tore down the picket fence in front of his house, before their officers arrived and stopped them.

        Cardoza, a negro, was superintendent of public education, and Purvis, a Philadelphia mulatto, was adjutant-general of the State. These two men were considered by the natives to be the most respectable members of the State Government. A law was passed authorizing the issue of some twenty millions of state bonds, and it was supposed that a large number of fraudulent bonds were also printed. At all events, when Hampton upset the carpetbag government, Parker, the state treasurer, started a bonfire in his back yard which made so much smoke that the fire engines turned out and extinguished it, and to the amazement of the crowd which had rapidly assembled it was discovered that it was state bonds that he was burning. Parker was afterwards tried and convicted. Ex-Governor Moses was promised immunity if he would come back to the State and testify in the case, and to the astonishment of the court he volunteered the information that when he was speaker of the House of Representatives he had signed more than eighteen hundred thousand dollars of fraudulent pay certificates. The State House was overrun with young negroes who were down on the pay-rolls as "attachés" (they called themselves "taw-cheeses"), and that may have accounted for some of the money.

        The legislative halls of South Carolina presented a spectacle such as had never been seen before, and the like of which, let us hope, will never be witnessed again. The furnishings were very fine, especially the carpets and cuspidors; the latter were charged to the State at eighteen dollars each. The members were mostly negroes, as there was not a sufficient number of carpetbaggers to fill all the offices. The negro members from the upper part of the State reveled in the use of long words which they generally mispronounced, and those from the low country mostly talked in the sea island and ricefield pidgin English called "gulla," which is unintelligible to the stranger. For instance, they call all males "she" and all females "he"; and

if they want to ask if you hear, they say "Yedium"; and "Shum deh" is "Do you see it?"

        When in session the legislature was as good as a circus. I remember once, when one honorable member called another honorable member "a liar," the offended Solon jumped to his feet yelling: "Mr. Speaker! I rises to a question of pussonal privilege. I wants dat ricefield nigger to understand dat I won't stand none ob his insinuendos agin me!"

        General Worthington, who had been an officer in the Union volunteer army, and who had been one of the pallbearers at the funeral of President Lincoln, came to South Carolina immediately after he had been mustered out of the service and found no difficulty in having himself elected to Congress. One day he was busily engaged in lobbying a bill through the legislature, and while holding a huge bunch of greenbacks in one hand, which he occasionally waved aloft as he passed from the seat of one member to that of another, suddenly a negro jumped to his feet and claimed the recognition of the Speaker on a question of privilege. When asked to state it, he said he had just been informed that General Worthington had given another member twenty-five dollars for his vote on the bill, and he had only given him, the protestor, five dollars. He wanted that "white man" to understand that his vote was worth as much as that of any ricefield nigger from Santee or any other part of the State! In any State north of the Potomac this brazen confession would have landed a member of the legislature in the penitentiary, but in the legislative halls of South Carolina it only caused a roar of laughter at the expense of the cheap lawmaker.

        The speaker of the House was a very highly educated and able man, as black as a highly polished boot; some said that he was a Jamaica negro who had been to school in England and others insisted that he was a product of Harvard University. Be that as it may, he certainly was one of the most brilliant orators I ever heard speak. His name was Eliot,

and he evidently had a susceptible heart, for in the midst of his meteoric career of loot and pillage he fell desperately in love with Nancy, the most beautiful mulatto girl in Columbia. Nancy was the nursemaid for Mrs. Heyward's little children, and although the Heywards, like all other aristocrats, had been impoverished by the war, and Nancy was then free, not even the high wages offered by the carpetbaggers could tempt her to leave those little children of whom she was fond. But Eliot offered marriage, and the girl was dazzled by the high position to which he proposed to raise her, and tearfully she left the Heyward home to become the proud wife of the wealthy speaker. Nancy had been brought up among aristocrats and she knew how to do things. She was no sooner married than she set up a handsome establishment, and she could be seen in full ball toilet, in the middle of the day, with her neck and arms covered with jewels, driving down Main Street. But besides the love of finery Nancy had another side to her character. Nothing could have induced her to stop in front of Mrs. Heyward's house in that costume or in her carriage, but in the cool of the afternoon, Nancy, arrayed in the neat cap and apron of a nursemaid, would stop her carriage around the corner from her former mistress's home, and alighting would walk to the house and beg to be allowed to take the children out. The people who had seen her in gala attire in the middle of the day would behold the strange spectacle of the same Nancy, as demure as a novice, seated on the front seat of her own landau, with the children occupying the back seat. Everybody liked Nancy and her promenades with the children were among the strange features of that strange time. Nancy attended one of the inauguration balls in Washington and was said to have been one of the most beautifully gowned women of the occasion.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Corrupt judiciary--Melton voted for Seymour and Blair, but bet his money on Grant--Feud between Attorney-General Melton and Colonel Montgomery in which Mr. Caldwell was killed and I was wounded.

        THE judiciary was as corrupt as the legislature--and that is saying a great deal. An imported negro sat on the supreme bench, his colleagues being white carpetbaggers. There was talk about impeaching a negro judge of one of the district courts in the lower part of the State, and judge Moses, an uncle of the governor, was actually impeached by the piebald legislature because he got away with a large amount of property belonging to a white widow and her fatherless children while the estate was in the hands of the court. The outrage was so flagrant that even the Government at Washington took notice of it, and orders came from the national capital that not only must such things stop, but that more honest men must be elected to the judgeships at the next election. Moses was only allowed thirteen days to prepare for his defense. While walking on the street one day, and longing for human sympathy, he met Major Melton, a famous wit and likewise a stammerer. "Major," said the judge, "history does not record such an outrage as a man being allowed only thirteen days to prepare for his defense in a trial!" "Hold on, judge," replied Melton, "the Bible, which is the foundation of history, records that your people didn't allow our Saviour thirteen minutes!"

        Major Melton was a native-born South Carolinian, a lawyer by profession, and he had served throughout the war as an officer in the Confederate Army. That he was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, no one doubted until the time came for the legislature to elect new district judges. Judicial timber among the carpetbaggers was scarce. Washington was peremptory in its orders that a higher class of men should be placed on the bench, and the legislature did not

dare disobey its orders, as they full well knew that they could not exist an hour if the Administration withdrew the troops. So they issued an invitation to all lawyers who cared to accept judgeships to appear before the legislature and address that august body. To the amazement of everybody Melton was one of those who appeared. He was a fine orator and made them an eloquent Republican speech, and was getting on finely until an old negro member interrupted him with "Dat's all very fine, Mr. Melton, but who you vote for last election?" The question brought Melton to his stammering and he replied, "I vo-vo-voted for Sey-seymour and Blair." A roar of laughter interspersed with jeers greeted this confession, but Melton's voice soon dominated the situation and he was heard to say, "Ho-ho-hold on; I bet my money on Grant!" His quickness saved and elected him.

        Afterwards judge Melton was elected attorney-general of the State and unfortunately became involved in a newspaper controversy with Colonel Montgomery, the president pro tem of the Senate, in which several vituperative letters were exchanged. Montgomery was also a Southern man who had become a Republican. The public were freely discussing the fiery correspondence and it was the general opinion that a personal difficulty would result from it.

        I was in Columbia one day when a particularly abusive letter over the signature of Montgomery appeared in the paper. I did not know the president pro tem of the Senate, and had only a bowing acquaintance with judge Melton. I had attended to some business I had in the city and had mounted my horse with the intention of returning to my home, when on Main Street I met young Mr. Caldwell, a cotton broker, and one of the few men in Columbia who had any money. Mr. Caldwell hailed me and asked me to dismount and accompany him to Pollock's Restaurant and have luncheon with him. I laughingly declined, at the same time pointing to the well-known horse I was riding, a wicked thoroughbred stallion, who a short time before had

killed a man. Mr. Caldwell called a negro, man who was standing on the corner and asked him if he would not hold the horse, telling me that the man had formerly been the horse's groom. I dismounted and walked down the street with my host.

        Arriving at the restaurant we saw that the long table in the public dining-room was fully occupied, and Mr. Caldwell proposed that we go upstairs into a private room, where we had our meal and were just finishing it when a servant brought Mr. Caldwell a card. Turning to me my host asked if I had any objections to having Judge Melton join us, as he, Mr. Caldwell, had something very particular to tell him. Of course I said that I would be delighted to see the judge, and he was ushered into the room. Mr. Caldwell and the judge went over to a window and entered into a conversation which did not last over three minutes. I never learned what the subject discussed was. The three of us then descended the stairs and Mr. Caldwell went to the cashier's desk to pay the bill. Mr. Caldwell tendered a bank-note of rather large denomination, and while we waited for the change he asked me if I had ever seen Colonel Montgomery, and on being told that I had not seen him to know him, he pointed toward the dining-room, the door of which was open, and said: "The man seated at the head of the table is Captain Tupper, and the man on his right is the president pro tem of the Senate." "Yes," I replied, "and there goes Judge Melton into that room. Those men will surely have a difficulty." Mr. Caldwell said, "I will stop him"; and started for the door, I following. I was two or three steps behind Caldwell, and as I entered the room I saw Melton with his open hand slap Montgomery in the face, and the two clinched, upset the chair, and rolled on to the floor. Instantly Captain Tupper rose from his chair, drawing it back with his left hand as with his right he drew a revolver from his hip pocket. He raised the weapon and fired, and as he did so Caldwell threw up his arms and with a gasp fell

dead in my arms. I laid him gently on the floor and as I raised my head I heard a bullet whistle near my left ear. Thinking I had better hurry, I stepped over Caldwell's dead body, and leaped over the two struggling men on the floor while Tupper was again cocking his pistol with his eyes now glued on Judge Melton, who was on top of Montgomery. Tupper was standing between two windows, and I felt certain that I could throw him out of one of them before he could shoot Melton. I picked him up, and in another instant I would have sailed him through the window, when to my surprise he reached over my left shoulder and, pressing the muzzle of his pistol against my back, just below the point of the shoulder blade, he pulled the trigger. My left arm fell limply by my side and Tupper dropped to the floor, landing on his feet. With my right hand I grabbed the wrist of the hand which still held the smoking pistol and it dropped to the floor at my feet. I could easily have picked it up and killed him with it, but I felt sure that I had my death wound, and I did not wish to go before my Maker with the blood of another on my hands; so I compromised by telling Tupper that before I went I was going to give him the worst beating he ever had had.

        While this was going on, the guests, who a moment before, had been enjoying their meal, were panic-stricken; those who were near the door rushed through it, and the rest sought safety under the tables. In such emergencies singular ideas sometimes flash through the mind. I could have done all I wanted to do to Captain Tupper just as well where I was as in any other place, but it seemed to me that I wanted room, and plenty of room, so I threw my right arm around his body, lifted him on to my hip, and carried him out of a side door leading into an alley. I then dropped him on to his feet and before he could recover from his surprise, I must have struck him a pretty hard blow, for the back of his head was the first thing that struck the bricks. I felt that I must hurry as my strength was fast failing, and I leaped upon

his prostrate body. Tupper was a very handsome man and seemed to have but one idea and that was to save his face, which he covered with his hands. I would hit his hands so hard that the pain would make him remove them for an instant and before he could get them back I would smash him again. Tupper was dressed in a white duck suit and I in tweeds of a red and brown hue. The blood rushing out of my wound saturated his white clothes and I must confess he was a gory-looking object. Several negro policemen arrived on the scene and began to club me. The sheriff came, and after I was pulled off of Tupper, asked me if I was not ashamed to beat a man in that way after I had shot him. To my insistence that Tupper had killed Mr. Caldwell, and that it was my blood which saturated his clothes, I could get no credence. The sympathies of the representatives of the law were all with Mr. Tupper, and the police dragged me off to jail, and although I offered no resistance they twisted my arms, especially the injured one, in a most brutal manner--Judge Melton (who accompanied me) protesting all the way against my being treated so roughly. It was some little time after I reached the jail that the sheriff found out the true state of affairs and arrested Captain Tupper. Mr. Clarke, a lawyer at that time, and now the president of a bank (I am glad to say he is still living--1916), came hurriedly to the jail in a carriage and took Judge Melton and myself to the judge's home, where I was laid on a bed until the doctors and their operating-table arrived, and then they began to carve and probe me for the bullet. Three separate times did they strap me to that leather-covered table during the three months I was absolutely helpless, and they wanted to dig into me a fourth time, but I protested against their doing so until I could have a talk with Mr. Trenholm, who at my request left his important affairs in Charleston to come to me. I could not speak in a voice above a whisper, but I managed to tell my best friend that if I was put on that operating-table again I would die under the knife and that

I preferred to die in my bed. Mr. Trenholm told me that it was the opinion of the surgeons that I surely would die unless they extracted the bullet, and I told him that they did not know where the bullet was and were only groping blindly in my body. Mr. Trenholm asked the doctors if I would live if they found the lead, and they replied that they could give no assurance to that effect, but that I would certainly die unless it was found. Under these circumstances my friend agreed with me that it would be better for me to be allowed to pass away quietly in my bed.

        When the decision was announced, the doctors told Mr. Trenholm that I could have anything I wanted, as nothing would hurt me, and the kind old gentleman leaned over me and asked if there was anything I desired to have and was amazed when I murmured "champagne." The doctor told him it would be better to humor me, as I might fret if it was denied me, adding that I would not be able to swallow it. A small glassful of the wine was put to my lips and I took one good swallow, and then my throat seemed to contract so that I could not have taken another if my life depended upon it, and in a few minutes I dozed off into a profound slumber, the first sleep I had had in three months without the use of chloral, and I did not awake from it for two hours. The first thing I asked for on opening my eyes was champagne, and this time I was able to drain the glass and then slept for five hours.

        When the surgeons came the next morning to dress my wound, they were surprised to find my condition so improved and ordered more champagne, and from that moment I began to get better. Why I craved champagne is a mystery to me, as it is a wine I never cared for when in my normal condition.

        India-rubber tubing had been inserted to drain my wound, and every morning the surgeons would take it out to cleanse it and then they would put it back; this hurt worse than the probing and cutting did. To have a bullet

enter one's body is not such an unpleasant sensation as would be imagined, but oh, the agony of the probe and forceps, especially when a surgeon makes a mistake and tries to pull out something that is not the bullet--as happened to me.

        While I was lying helpless in Judge Melton's home the house caught fire one day. The soot in one of the chimneys became ignited and fell on the shingle roof causing quite a blaze. A young gentleman by the name of Richard Bacot, who when a boy had run away and gone to sea before the mast, performed a rather remarkable feat. There was no ladder on the premises, but the sailor did not need one; he went up the lightning rod hand over hand and tore away the burning shingles with his bare hands, and of course was burned very badly. Mr. Bacot was in the house when the alarm was given, as he had kindly volunteered to assist in nursing me.

        When I was able to be up and about again, the trial of Captain Tupper for the killing of Mr. Caldwell was begun, and of course I was one of the witnesses called by the State. I described what had taken place and also told the court that I did not blame Captain Tupper for shooting me, as I surely would have thrown him out of the window if he had not done so. I was not cross-examined, but the trial took on the appearance of a French court, where they do what is called "reconstituting" the tragedy. I was made to place officials of the court in the positions occupied by the principals of the deplorable affair and show how Tupper arose from his chair and fired the fatal shot; how Caldwell fell dead in my arms, and how I laid him down on the floor and stepped over his body and leaped over Melton and Montgomery as they struggled with each other, etc., etc. It was my first appearance in public as an actor, and thank Heaven, my last.

        Captain Tupper, testifying in his own behalf, said that he had had no intention of shooting until he saw me enter

the room, and then, fearing that I would kill him if I got my hands on him, he had fired his revolver in self-defense. Why he should have expected an attack from me I cannot imagine, as I had never before spoken half a dozen words to him in our short acquaintance.

        Judge Carpenter, who presided at the trial, was a carpetbagger, a man of considerable learning and ability, but unfortunately he would go, periodically, on the most frightful debauches. The jury was a mixed one of whites and blacks and they brought in a verdict of guilty. Captain Tupper was sentenced to the penitentiary, but he never went there. He was nominally kept in the jail at Columbia for some months. I was told that his room in the prison in the daytime resembled a club, where he entertained his friends very hospitably. Sheriff Dent and his sons were friends of Tupper and at night, with Tupper, they would visit the places of amusement. After several months of such nominal confinement, Captain Tupper was pardoned by Governor Franklin J. Moses, and shortly after securing his freedom, he was elected mayor of Summerville, South Carolina. He killed another man and died an honored(?) citizen in the community in which he lived.

        If the above facts were not a matter of record in the courts and elsewhere, I would fear to put them on paper, as they seem to be so preposterous in Anno Domini 1916. The story of the Reconstruction period in South Carolina has never been told in print except in the files of the "Charleston News and Courier," and now that nearly all of those who passed through that nightmare have passed away, I fear that the present generation will never realize its horrors. But believe me, South Carolina was the nearest approach to a hell on earth during the orgy of the carpetbaggers and negroes that ever a refined and proud people were subjected to.

CHAPTER XL

Cotton-picking by moonlight--Swindled by a carpetbagger out of my hay crop--Legislative debates--Confiscation by taxation--Poverty no bar to marrying and giving in marriage--Hound dog gives the alarm and saves my family from death when house catches fire--Pay taxes in a novel way, and sell Hampton plantation--Move to Charleston.

        As a cotton planter I was a failure. Negroes, who cultivated in a desultory manner a half-acre of poor ground capable of producing a quarter of a bale of cotton, marketed five or six. This was made possible by the proximity of the cotton-fields of the white planters, and moonlight nights, combined with the fact that low whites had established near each large plantation country grocery stores where they exchanged bacon, hominy, and whiskey for unginned cotton. In fact they were simply fences where stolen goods could be disposed of.

        There were hundreds of acres of bottom lands on the plantation which produced a luxuriant growth of natural grass which grew to a great height and made very good hay. This crop alone should have brought me in a very good income, but there were almost insurmountable difficulties in the harvesting of it. Like most of my neighbors I had great quantities of land, but very little ready money.

        There was also a very good water-power on the place, furnished by a creek which divided the estate into two parts. Once there had been a gristmill on its banks, but Sherman had destroyed it and the dam; only the millstones were left intact. General Dennis, a carpetbagger, superintendent of the penitentiary, sized up my situation and generously (?) came to my relief with a proposition that if I would give him the hay crop, he would build a dam and rehabilitate the mill for me. I grabbed at the offer as a drowning man would at a straw, with the result that General Dennis brought his convicts down to the plantation,

harvested the hay, and when the last load had safely come across the bridge he tore that structure down and pretended for a few days to be busily engaged in repairing my dam. He soon wearied of the farce and I saw no more of either him, his convicts, or my hay crop. I had enough sense left not to go to law with him about it, as a negro jury or a carpetbag judge would surely have decided in favor of Dennis, who was a political leader. I simply should have had to pay the costs of court, and should have been lucky if they had not awarded Dennis damages against me.

        Things were fast going from bad to worse. Ill-gotten wealth and power had made the carpetbaggers more arrogant and offensive than ever, and day by day the ignorant negroes became more impossible to deal with. In the country a white woman did not dare go more than fifty paces from her own front door, and after every outrage there was a lynching as sure as the night followed day. There was very little secrecy about it and everybody knew who the lynchers were, but the carpetbag and city negro, constables felt a delicacy about risking "malaria" by going into the country to make arrests.

        The only place of amusement open in Columbia was the legislative circus, whose real business was transacted by some half a dozen white scamps in the privacy of their committee rooms while the ricefield negroes from the low country and the cornfield negroes from the up-country mouthed and made faces at each other on the floor of the House, laboring under the impression that they were engaged in important argument.

        There was a shrewd negro member by the name of Beverly Nash, who prided himself on his courtly manners and his knowledge of legislative etiquette, and it was said that no white carpetbagger had ever been smart enough to get away with his (Nash's) share of the swag in any public robbery. Beverly had been the body-servant of an ante-bellum member of the legislature, and in the old

days had attended his master at many sessions of that august body. Whenever the language in debate between the negroes grew too heated, or too strong, Beverly would always arise to a question of personal privilege, and preface his remarks by saying: "Mr. Speaker, when real gentlemen used to occupy these seats befo' de wah, dey nevah used no sich language as dat widout somebody got shot or else got der heads knocked off wif a gov'ment inkstand!"

        Rumors of the outrageous and excessive taxation imposed upon the citizens by the legislature had reached even the ears of a Republican Congress, and an investigating committee was sent to Columbia. If they ever conferred with or examined anybody besides the leading carpetbaggers, I never heard of it. The Congressmen were informed by these worthies that the landowners had no cause for complaint, as they were taxed only two and a half per cent on the value of their property and that the people of New York State were taxed at the same rate, and this appeared to the Congressmen to be fair enough. But the carpetbaggers did not tell the committee that in New York a man was taxed on one half to two thirds of the actual value of his property, and in South Carolina on ten times as much as it could possibly be sold for. Take my case as an example. The Hampton plantation was taxed on a valuation of some two hundred and sixty-odd thousand dollars. I went before the "board of equalization," which the committee had insisted should be organized and which, of course, was composed entirely of carpetbaggers, and made my protest, with no avail. I even offered to sell the property to any member of the board for thirty thousand dollars, but they had looked up the records and found that Mr. Trenholm had paid the Hamptons in 1862, when Confederate money was worth something, one million dollars besides giving them a bond for three hundred thousand dollars payable in gold six months after peace was declared between the North and South. They considered that they were letting me off

very cheap, and declined to take into consideration the fact that when Mr. Trenholm had purchased, there were hundreds of slaves, and herds of blooded horses and cattle, besides flocks of sheep of rare breeds and also Angora goats. So far as my offer to sell them the property for thirty thousand dollars was concerned, they were a "board of equalization," and not real estate speculators.

        At last the day came when my property was put up for sale for past-due taxes. Of course no Southern gentleman, even if he had had the money, would have bid for the estate of a fellow sufferer at a tax sale, but there were creatures who had plenty of cash who would. I told the auctioneer that I hoped he would get more for the plantation than the taxes amounted to, as I would appreciate what was left over. The auctioneer smiled and invited me to talk to the crowd and invite them to bid. I told him I would be delighted to do so. It was rumored in the crowd that Nagle, the comptroller, was going to buy the property. I told the assemblage that it was useless for me to tell them anything about the plantation, as they knew it as well as I did, but what I did want to tell them was that that place was my home and I would fill the man who came on it with a tax title so full of lead he would never be able to swim again. Instantly the crowd began to call for Nagle, urging him to buy, and assuring him that he would never die of chills and fever if he did. There were no bids and the sale was postponed for another month, and month after month on every sales-day it was offered and every time it was put up for sale the crowd would begin to yell for Nagle and urge him to buy. After some months, without any explanation, the auctioneer no longer offered it for sale; and for a time his reasons were an inexplicable mystery to the natives, who knew that it was impossible that I could have raised money enough to pay the taxes.

        The Southerner is a queer composition. As a good piece of breakfast bacon is streaked with lean and fat, so is his

character made up of layers of gayety and sadness. A sorrowful gloom spreads over his countenance as he listens to some favorite song, such as "There will be a vacant chair," or, "Under the rosebush there is a grave," and the next instant he will be roaring with laughter over a witty remark, or gayly dash off into the mazes of the dance. In this Reconstruction period he held public meetings at which he proclaimed his intention of shaking off the yoke of his carpetbag and negro tyrants, and yet insisted that under no circumstances would he break his parole by raising his hand against the United States Government troops. All the same he was grimly determined that his persecutors should go: in carriages, if they would, or in hearses, if they must. The grave consequences which might follow what he intended to do did not dampen his spirits, however, and he had his barbecues and his shoots for turkeys, and also his balls where dress coats were not to be seen and where his devoted women appeared in cheap muslin gowns, their very simplicity still more endearing them to the hearts of the men who loved them so dearly and were so proud of them.

        Poverty was no bar to matrimony and there were marrying and giving in marriage. The young men took no thought of what the future might have in store, and the young girls, brought up in an atmosphere of self-denial, willingly took the risks with the men they loved. I was not different from the other young men with whom I associated, and amid the mutterings of the coming storm and while the old Confederate veterans were forming rifle clubs all over the State, I married Miss Gabriella Burroughs, a granddaughter of former Chancellor William Ford De Saussure, the head of an old Huguenot family, and my sister Sarah, whose journal, "Diary of a Confederate Girl," was published recently (1915), married Captain Francis W. Dawson, who had become the editor of the "Charleston News and Courier." My wedding took place some months before that of my sister, and after the ceremony I

took my bride to the plantation, It was a dark night and the negroes had, as a compliment to the bride, built bonfires of pine knots which lit up the stately oaks in the avenue and made quite an impressive picture. Fires in the night have always had a fascination for me, but that night I got more than I cared for.

        My mother and sister occupied the second story of the frame house, and there was only one staircase leading from the wide hall to the upper chambers, and in that hall was kept burning a kerosene swinging lamp on account of my mother being nervous. My bedroom was on the lower floor.

        There was no use my trying to keep watch dogs, as I knew from experience that the negroes who liked chickens and things would poison them as fast as I brought them home. About the premises, however, was an old hound whose name was Blitzen--"peace be to her ashes." Blitzen was the kind of a hound dog that every one liked to kick around--she was absolutely good for nothing, or so we all thought. She could neither trail a fox nor give tongue on a trail. No one had ever heard her bark at the approach of a stranger, and her only interest in life was to lie outside of the kitchen door and sleepily wait for the bones the cook would occasionally throw to, or at, her, according to the humor of that important person at the moment. In the middle of the night I heard a dog whining and scratching at the back door and I got up to investigate. As I opened my bedroom door imagine my horror when I beheld the yellow pine floor of the hall in flames at the very foot of the staircase, the only possible means of escape for my mother and sister. The kerosene lamp had exploded and covered the floor with burning oil. I rushed back into the bedroom, jerked the blankets off the bed, and with them managed to smother the flames, but not before my hands were badly burned. From that time to the day of her death no one was ever allowed again to "kick that hound dog around."

        As time went on my financial condition made my position on the plantation more and more untenable, until one day Colonel Childs, a banker, told me that he would buy my property if I would pay the taxes up to date. I laughed at such an offer, as it was of course impossible, or I thought it was, for me to comply with the terms. Colonel Childs then advised me, as a mere matter of curiosity, to go to the tax collector and find out the exact amount due. I did so, and to my amazement was told that the taxes had been paid! I demanded to know the name of the person who had paid them, and after demurring until the carpetbagger concluded that it would be more comfortable to give me the information than to have a row, he told me that Dr. Nagle, the comptroller of the State, had paid them. Almost bursting with rage and indignation I hurried to the State House and was fortunate enough to find Nagle alone in his office. As I entered he looked up uneasily and with his right hand started to open a drawer. I suspected that there was a pistol in that drawer, and quickly putting my hand on my hip pocket exclaimed, "Stop that!"--and his arm fell limply to his side. I wasted no time, but at once plunged into a statement of the object of my visit, demanding to know what he meant by his insolence in paying the taxes on my property. He stammered for a moment, and then assured me that he did not wish to have any trouble with me, and that he had only paid the taxes to rid himself of the monthly annoyance of having all the toughs of the town howling to him to buy my property, their only purpose being to make trouble for him with me. Reaching a bundle of tax receipts, which were in a pigeon-hole in his desk, he handed them to me, saying that rather than have anymore trouble about the matter I was welcome to them. He could well afford to be generous, for Heaven only knows what the amount of this fellow's stealings were from the State.

        Within the hour after my pleasant interview with Nagle I was back at the bank and amazed Colonel Childs by handing

him the tax receipts. The transfer of the titles to the estate were quickly completed, and I moved to Charleston where I accepted a position in the office of the "News and Courier" tendered to me by my brother-in-law Captain Dawson.

CHAPTER XLI

Friendly shooting-match--Dancing the "Too Ral Loo"--Negro mobs--Dawson wounded--U.S. Regulars attacked with stones--General Hunt, U.S.A., takes command of the rifle clubs--This action costs General Hunt his promotion on retirement--Feud between Governor Chamberlain and Captain Bowen, the sheriff of Charleston County.

        THE political situation in Charleston looked even more ominous than that in Columbia. The white carpetbaggers had begun to quarrel among themselves and the negroes were becoming enraged because the white rascals reserved for themselves all the best places in the gift of the State. Before I went to Charleston there had been a shooting-match at a meeting of the board of aldermen. Cunningham, a carpetbagger, of course, was mayor, and he had in some way incurred the emnity of the two Mackeys, Thomas Jefferson and William M. (cousins). Some hot words passed between these affectionate relatives and simultaneously they drew their revolvers and opened fire. The other aldermen dived under the table, as did the mayor, and well for him that he did in time, for after the smoke cleared away it was discovered that all of the bullets had struck the wall in a small circle just behind where the mayor's head had been. Of course neither of the Mackeys had been hurt. The latter were what we called "scalawags"--Southern men who for office had joined our persecutors. William Mackey, to strengthen his hold on the negro vote, married a quadroon girl who he claimed was a descendant of General Sumter, of Revolutionary fame.

        I saw a queer sight soon after my arrival in Charleston. The negroes seemed to have gone crazy and were constantly parading the streets--men and women--singing and dancing a dance they called the "Too Ral Loo." They would gather by the hundreds on the beautiful Battery, and with the steps familiar in the "cake-walk" they would chant the

refrain, "I am dancing the Too Ral Loo." However, as they molested no one, nobody interfered with them.

        Greatly enjoying their license to take possession of the streets, the mobs formed without provocation with more and more frequency, and as long as they confined their activities to dancing and singing no one seemed to mind their vagaries, but becoming emboldened they began to throw stones. That was the signal for the rifle clubs to repair to their armories, and well it was for the ignorant creatures that the clubs were composed mostly of veterans of the war, who were under perfect discipline, or else there would have been a massacre.

        Captain Dawson, who was indefatigable in his efforts to redeem the State from carpetbag rule, lashed the miscreants unmercifully with his virile pen and never failed to expose their rascalities and pillory them before the public. The carpetbaggers in revenge had taught the negroes to hate Dawson more bitterly than any other white man in the State. Dawson had the energy of a steam engine and usually worked at his desk until two or three o'clock in the morning. The only physical exercise he allowed himself was to ride on horseback from his home to his office and back again for his meals. A mob assembled in Broad Street one day, and Dawson, on his way home, rode through it with the result that a perfect fusillade of revolver shots were turned loose on him and one bullet struck him in the leg. He continued on his way home, where he had his wound bound up, ate his lunch, and then, mounting his horse, rode back to his office, passing through the rioters again--this time without being hurt.

        General Henry J. Hunt, U.S.A., who had commanded the artillery in the Army of the Potomac from the crack of the first gun to Appomattox, was in command of the military district in which Charleston was situated, and unlike his predeccessors he was very much respected by the natives. He knew that the white people did not intend to lift a

finger against the United States Government again, and he had kept but one skeleton company of artillery at the arsenal where he had his headquarters. There were only some thirty-odd men in the company.

        One day a mob of several thousand negro men and women gathered near the City Hall, and became very violent in their threats, which this time were directed principally against the white carpetbaggers, who they claimed had got all the swag and had not divided fairly with them, and they clamored for their blood. The carpetbaggers were badly frightened, fled to the arsenal, and begged General Hunt for protection. General Hunt at once marched his skeleton company to the scene of the riot, and arriving at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets he came face to face with the mob, which did not seem disposed to give way before his troops, whom he had ordered to ground arms while he advanced and commanded the rioters to disperse. This order was replied to with jeers and curses, and while General Hunt was trying to persuade them to go quietly to their homes, they began to throw bricks and stones at the soldiers. I was on the sidewalk near where the soldiers were drawn up, and never did I see a better example of discipline than was exhibited by those poor fellows standing there like statues, with their faces bleeding, while they awaited orders under a perfect shower of missiles. General Hunt knew that every negro in the crowd carried a weapon, either a pistol or razor, and he also knew that by sheer weight of numbers they could sweep his small command off the street if they rushed them. In this dilemma he asked some of the white bystanders if they could point out to him the commander of the rifle clubs of which he had heard. They directed him to a one-legged man, General Conner, a veteran of the war, and General Hunt requested him to call out the clubs, and form them behind his regulars. Almost instantly there, was heard a bell tolling in the steeple of old St. Michael's. This was the signal agreed

upon, and as though by magic there came a rush of several companies of infantry, a battery of artillery, and a squadron of cavalry. The negroes knew, these men, and before they had fairly taken up their stations in support of the regulars, the mob had melted away, and in less than ten minutes there was not a black face to be seen on the street.

        The sequel to this incident was as follows: It was, and is, the custom that when a veteran officer who served in war retires he is given an additional grade. General Hunt was a colonel in the regular army with as fine a record as any officer in it. During the war commanders-in-chief were frequently changed, but no one ever suggested the idea that Hunt could be improved upon as chief of artillery. When he came up for retirement, however, on account of age, he was retired with only his rank of colonel through some unseen influence, which came out of hiding when an effort was made to pass a bill through Congress to give him the additional grade. The very carpetbaggers whose worthless lives he had saved flocked to Washington and protested against his promotion on the ground that he was a rebel sympathizer and had on one occasion taken command of the rebel rifle clubs and used them to cow the loyal element in Charleston!

        At the time of the riots in Charleston bitter dissensions had sprung up among the white carpetbaggers, the most important being that between Bowen, the sheriff of Charleston County, who wielded great influence over the negroes, and Daniel H. Chamberlain, who was then governor of the State.

        Bowen was the felon who had occupied the cell in the Charleston jail into which Mr. Trenholm, the former Secretary of the Confederate Treasury, had been thrust on his arrival in Charleston. Bowen had been released at the time of the general jail delivery when Charleston was captured. He had taken refuge on one of the sea islands where he acquired great influence over the negroes during

the military rule, and when the Reconstruction began and the carpetbaggers took charge, he came forth from his seclusion a full-blown politician.

        Even the most bitter enemies of Governor Chamberlain recognized him as a man of ability. He was a man of refinement and brilliant education. One great reason for the intense dislike shown toward him was that, when one of his children died in Columbia, he called in a negro preacher to perform the burial services. But I have heard that Chamberlain said his reason for this was that at such a time he did not care to subject himself to the chance of a rebuff from any of the white ministers. Governor Chamberlain soon found himself between two fires--the enmity of the white natives on one side, and the bitter hatred of the carpetbaggers, who had discovered that they could not control him, on the other.

CHAPTER XLII

Captain Dawson, editor of the "Charleston News and Courier," denounces Bowen as the assassin of Colonel White--Bowen brings libel suit--Eli Grimes, the actual murderer, located--I go to Leesville and bring Grimes to Charleston to testify--Grimes attempts to kill himself--Grimes's sensational testimony--Mistrial.

        THE fortune of the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. King, who had saved Mr. Trenholm's gold for him while he occupied the felon's cell in Charleston jail so recently vacated by Captain Bowen, had suffered like those of the rest of the people of Charleston, and it was necessary for her to obtain employment, which she easily found in the United States Treasury. Clerks, if they know what is good for them, don't rebuff Congressmen. It was Mrs. King's misfortune to meet Bowen, then a full-fledged Congressman. To escape her unaccustomed drudgery she married this fellow, and in less than a year a previous wife turned up and had Bowen indicted, tried, and convicted on a charge of bigamy. He was sent to the penitentiary, but only remained there for a short time, as he had a strong political pull. He was pardoned and returned to Charleston where he was immediately elected sheriff of the county.

        Captain Dawson, editor of the "Charleston News and Courier," who, figuratively speaking, could attach the sting of a hornet to the nib of his pen and write with it, mercilessly attacked Bowen in the columns of his paper. Bowen, having no character to lose, for a time ignored the editor, but when Dawson boldly charged him with the murder of Colonel White during the latter part of the war, even the carpetbaggers insisted that the sheriff should take some action against him. He sued Dawson for libel, claiming damages in the sum of one hundred thousand dollars.

        The facts of the case as charged by Dawson were that Colonel White had put Bowen under arrest for some breach

of discipline and had thereby earned the latter's enmity; that Bowen had a private soldier in his company who had committed a murder, of which crime Bowen alone was cognizant, and naturally had Eli Grimes, the private, in his power. He commanded Grimes to kill Colonel White. Grimes demurred, and Bowen threatened to inform the civil authorities in Lee County, southwestern Georgia, where the crime had been committed. Frightened, Grimes agreed to do as his tormentor wished. On his first attempt to assassinate his colonel he hid in a "turkey blind" situated on a path which Colonel White used twice a day, but the murderer's heart failed him and he let his intended victim pass without firing. He made the excuse to Bowen that the spring of the lock of his gun was out of order. Bowen then gave him a new carbine and warned him that if Colonel White was alive the next morning he would inform him of the murder Grimes had committed in Georgia. At about ten o'clock in the night Colonel White was reading by a small lamp in a room of the weatherboarded shanty which he occupied, and Grimes, having located his position by the light, sneaked up to the side of the house and fired through the thin weatherboarding, killing White instantly. Grimes escaped into the swamp, but was soon surrounded and captured. Grimes at once implicated Bowen in the crime, and both of them were arrested and put on a train for Charleston where they were to be tried, but Grimes, although he was in irons, eluded the vigilance of his guard and jumped out of a window of the slow-moving train while it was on the trestle, some ten miles long, which spans the Santee Swamp. It was supposed that he had been drowned or that the alligators which infest the swamp had made a meal of him. Bowen was safely landed in the Charleston jail, where he was when the Union troops took possession of the city and opened the prison doors.

        Bowen brought his libel suit in 1875, eleven years after the murder had been committed. Colonel White's command

had scattered, so Dawson had no witnesses by whom he could prove his charge. The loss of one hundred thousand dollars, or any large part of such a sum, meant financial ruin to him, and the fact that the case would be tried before a carpetbag judge and a jury composed mostly of negroes, the panel for which would be chosen by Bowen's henchmen, was not reassuring. While in this dilemma Dawson received a letter postmarked Louisville, Kentucky, from a woman, who stated in it that "she was Bowen's legal wife and that she wanted to get even with him." She also asserted that Eli Grimes was not dead, and that he had as great a desire to get even with Bowen as she had, and that if Captain Dawson would go to Lee County, Georgia, he would find the man. She advised Dawson to be very careful, as Grimes was a desperate and dangerous fellow; that she was from Lee County herself and knew what she was talking about.

        This Mrs. Bowen was the same woman who, under the alias of Mrs. House, became a celebrated criminal and landed in the New Jersey penitentiary for the crime or crimes of having put out of the world several husbands by poisoning them.

        Captain Dawson went to Leesville, Georgia, a county seat, saw Grimes, and persuaded him to allow himself to be locked up until it was time for him to testify against Bowen. It was deemed advisable to keep secret the fact that Grimes was alive until he could be produced at the trial. When that time arrived, I volunteered to go after Grimes. Dawson went with me to Columbia, South Carolina, and explained the case to Governor Chamberlain, who gladly embraced the opportunity to punish his arch-enemy, Bowen. He secretly made out extradition papers and appointed me a state constable to bring back Eli Grimes, charged with murder. The Governor of Georgia, a Democrat, was delighted to honor the requisition.

        I proceeded to Leesville and was much disappointed to find that Eli had tired of the monotony of the jail and had

left. The sheriff, to whom I carried a letter from the governor, informed me that he did not care to he mixed up in the case; that Grimes belonged to a large clan of poor whites and that they were a dangerous lot. He also advised that take a train bound north, which was shortly due, as it would be better for my health to get away before the Grimes family learned what I had come for. The only compromise I could effect was that he would show me where Grimes lived in the suburbs. He also agreed to lock Grimes up if I brought him to the jail with my warrant. I waited until an hour before day, and then, armed with a revolver and pair of handcuffs, I went to Eli's house and knocked at the door which, after a short wait, was opened a hand's breadth. Seeing that it was not going to be opened any wider, I exclaimed, "In the name of the law I arrest you!"--and throwing my full weight against the obstruction I burst into the room and instantly found myself grappling with my prisoner. We struggled all over the room while a woman in scant night attire leaned over the banister above us shrieking at the top of her voice. Suddenly the banister gave way and the woman tumbled down, landing on our heads, knocking both of us to the floor. I fell on top of Grimes, and the almost nude woman, now insensible, lay alongside of us. I quickly put the handcuffs on Grimes and ordered him to stand up and precede me to the door, emphasizing my command by the display of my pistol. Grimes demurred because he had on only his underclothes. Not knowing that his wife was in a faint, he commanded her to get his gun, and as she did not move he cursed her in a most shocking way. I forced him out of the house, and on the way to the jail promised him that not a hair of his head should come to harm, and told him that Captain Dawson had the promise of the governor that even if there was a trial and conviction, he would pardon him for the crime committed more than ten years before.

        When I got Grimes in his cell I left him in the care of

the one-legged keeper, who was himself a prisoner, but a "trusty," and went to the sheriff's house, where I was invited to have breakfast. I had hardly eaten a mouthful when the one-legged "trusty," with only one crutch, bounded into the room exclaiming, "Eli Grimes is dead!" We leaped to our feet and rushed to the prison, and when the cell door was opened we beheld a gruesome sight. Eli's body lay on the floor and his mangled head and face were covered with blood. The village doctor was summoned and much to my relief pronounced the man to be still alive. He bathed and bandaged his damaged head, and in an hour Grimes, apparently, was himself again. The "trusty" told the sheriff that after I had left the jail Grimes swore I should never take him to South Carolina alive, and that he, the "trusty," had paid no attention to what he said, but went to another part of the building to attend to his duties, when suddenly he heard some awful thuds, and going to Grimes's cell found that worthy engaged in running the length of his narrow quarters and with all his force striking his head against the steel with which the walls were lined.

        The Grimes family soon assembled and made threats, but I persuaded them that no harm should befall Eli. The doctor advised me to take him away on the first train, as, he said, unless I took him away before dark, his friends would rescue him.

        When I arrived at Macon I found I had a very ill man on my hands, and I had to ask the hospitality of the local jail. Oh, the days I spent in jail with that raving criminal, who was "out of his head" from the effects of a raging fever. Had I been that wretch's mother I could not have nursed him more tenderly.

        When Grimes was able to travel I took him to Augusta, Georgia, to await further instructions, and of course had to occupy the same cell with him as a precaution against his again trying to commit suicide. A dead Grimes would have been of no use to Captain Dawson.

        We were taken to Charleston on a special train and on arriving there I dressed Grimes in a suit of my own clothes and had him shaved and his hair cut. We then wandered around the city until it was time for him to appear in court, where we took our seats among the crowded spectators. The trial proceeded in a desultory manner until one of Dawson's counsel asked that Eli Grimes should be called. Bowen and his lawyers burst into such loud laughter at this that the judge rapped for order. The court crier went to the door and perfunctorily called "Eli Grimes!" I took that individual by the arm and steered him through the throng of spectators until I landed him safely in the witness box. Grimes was sworn, but so certain was Bowen that the man was dead that he and his friends had paid no attention to what was going on until Grimes, when asked his name, in a loud voice answered, "Eli Grimes!"

        The appearance of the supposedly dead man must have shocked Bowen considerably, for he turned an ashen color, gasped, and appeared about to faint, but was revived with a glass of water.

        One of the first questions asked the witness was, "Who killed Colonel White?" Before answering, Grimes pointed his finger at Bowen and said, "If you will make that man look me in the eyes I will tell you." But Bowen did not accept the challenge. Grimes said, "I knew he didn't dare do it." And then in a most impressive manner he turned to the court and said, "Judge, I pulled the trigger, but there (pointing to Bowen) is the man who killed Colonel White." He then went on to tell of his acquaintance with Bowen, who at home was a professional gambler, and how he in a fracas had killed (in a most cowardly manner) a neighbor during a quarrel about a hog. It was in a lonely spot in the woods and he buried his victim so well that he felt sure his crime would never be known, but when he looked around he saw Bowen, who was squirrel hunting.

        It was early in the war and Bowen, who was raising a

volunteer company, asked him to enlist, but that he had replied that it was a rich man's war and as he, Grimes, did not own any "niggers," he did not see why he should be expected to fight for them. Whereupon Bowen quietly informed him that if he did not enlist at once, he, Bowen, would inform the authorities where they could find the body of the dead man, and also the man who killed him, and intimated that there would be a hanging soon. Badly frightened, Grimes enlisted. When their regiment was on North Island, South Carolina, Bowen had some trouble with his colonel and proposed that Grimes should kill him, but Grimes demurred; saying that he had nothing against that officer. But Bowen again threatened him and frightened him into doing it.

        When Grimes had finished his testimony, Bowen fairly shrieked to his deputies to "Arrest that man!" But I showed my instructions from the governor to bring Grimes to Columbia and the judge ordered that I should be allowed to proceed.

        The case resulted in a mistrial, and that was much better than Captain Dawson had expected. As Grimes had come back to life, Bowen never dared to demand a retrial, and Dawson resumed his pen-lashings.

CHAPTER XLIII

Exciting political campaign of 1875--I return to Columbia--The dual legislature--Hamilton, negro member of the legislature, makes a Democratic speech--The military evict the Democrats from the Capitol.

        THE political campaign of 1875 was probably the most exciting one that this or any other country ever went through, and it was a red-hot one in South Carolina as the native-born population of that State had determined, cost what it would, to overthrow the carpetbag and negro government and free themselves from a tyranny that was no longer bearable. None but a desperate people would have dreamed that it could be done, as the negroes not only greatly outnumbered the whites, but, not satisfied with their great normal majority, on election days, permitted many darky boys, ranging between the ages of seventeen and twenty, to vote, as no one could swear positively to a negro's age. Black women were also allowed to vote by the election officials, who were, of course, appointed by the carpetbaggers, and it took an expert to detect the sex of a flat-chested negro woman of over forty years of age when she was dressed in men's clothes. I remember one instance a negro man, challenged at the polls, with tears in his eyes acknowledging that he had voted at the other precincts, but protested that he had not before voted at that particular polling-booth!

        Besides the great majority that was to be overcome it was necessary to avoid any conflict with the United States Government or its troops. General Wade Hampton, General M. C. Butler, General Gary, and Captain Dawson were the acknowledged leaders of the forlorn hope, and rifle clubs were formed all over the State. These clubs were called by the carpetbaggers "Redshirts," as for economical reasons they wore red flannel shirts instead of more costly uniforms. The carpetbaggers tried to give the National Government

the impression that these clubs were simply made up of bandits when the truth was that they were composed mostly of veterans of the Civil War, men who belonged to the best families in the State.

        For the first time a great and united effort was made by the native whites to influence the colored vote. Heretofore the blacks had to a man voted the Republican ticket, and now, although they spoke with the greatest contempt of the carpetbaggers, they could not be induced to vote against them on election day. Many amusing stories were told at the expense of those who endeavored to convert Sambo and induce him to embrace Democratic doctrines. One of them was that General Hampton had met one of his former slaves and asked him what he had in a basket which the fellow was carrying on his arm. The man said he had some puppies in it. The general, who was an ardent sportsman, asked what kind of puppies they were, and the darky, removing the cover, disclosed three or four newly born pups, at the same time saying, "Dey is good Democratic pups, suh." A month later the general met the same negro with the same basket and again asked him what was in it, and again the man replied, "Pups, suh." "What kind of puppies have you today," laughingly inquired the general; and the darky replied "Good Republican pups, suh,"--and uncovered his basket. The general, who never forgot a horse or a dog, said, "Why, Sam, you rascal, those are the same puppies you showed me a month ago, and told me that they were good Democratic puppies!" "Yes, Mas' Wade," replied the darky; "but don't you see dey done got der eyes open now!"

        Of course all efforts to wean the negroes from the Republican Party were futile, but the whites had great hopes that the dissensions among the carpetbaggers would disrupt their party. They soon learned that in those days the Republican Party did not divide on election day.

        Wherever in the State the carpetbaggers held a political meeting, there would assemble the whites and insist on a

division of time with their orators. It was embarrassing to the aliens.

        Captain Dawson asked me to go to Columbia, as he thought I could be of service to the cause in Richland District, as the county was called at that time. Shortly after my arrival in the capital we heard that the Republicans were to hold a great mass meeting in Edgefield District, the home of General M. C. Butler. The word was passed to the members of the rifle clubs, and those within reach, as usual, attended the meeting. A platform had been erected in a grove of trees, and seated on it were Governor Chamberlain and a number of his most prominent black and white lieutenants. The speaker's stand was surrounded by a dense mass of blacks through which we forced our horses, and as many of us as could find room took up our positions as near the stand as possible.

        General Butler, against the protests of the carpetbaggers, forced his way on to the stand, accompanied by several others. General Butler was an extraordinarily handsome man--tall and graceful, and possessed of the manners of a Chesterfield. His courtesy and winning smile made friends of all who came in contact with him. At one of the battles in Virginia a shell had struck his horse in the breast and exploded inside of the animal, shattering the general's leg so badly that it had to be amputated below the knee; but so well did he manage his artificial limb that for several years after the war was over he used to dance at balls, and it was difficult to convince strangers that he was a one-legged man. In the hour of danger he was one of the coolest men I ever saw, and he feared neither man nor devil. But with all of his beautiful manners, when he wanted to, he could be the most cold-blooded, insolent human being that mortal eyes ever beheld. Without saying so much as "by your leave" to the assembled carpetbaggers, Butler began to harangue the crowd, denouncing the Republican leaders who were present. While he was tongue-lashing Chamberlain, he stood

over him shaking his finger almost in his face. Chamberlain, who was a bald-headed man, was seated with one elbow resting on the arm of his chair and his forefinger was moving nervously back and forth in the rim of hair below his bald spot and just above his ear. Suddenly, during one of the pauses in General Butler's speech, a voice in the audience rang out with "Run him out in the clearing, Governor, and I will shoot him for you!" Looking in the direction from whence the interruption came, I saw a "redshirt," mounted on his horse, not ten feet from the governor, with a Colt's revolver aimed at the head of the chief magistrate of the State. But at a word from Butler he lowered his weapon and kept quiet during the rest of the speaking.

        The negroes, naturally afraid of their former masters, became somewhat terrorized, and when the redshirts appeared at their meetings the more timid among them would quietly sneak away. Of course there were clashes in various parts of the State, but the blacks had become so nervous that the white carpetbaggers could not induce them to stand their ground, and the meetings soon took on a decided Democratic hue. The few Republican speeches made became very conservative, and the eyes of the speakers, while they were delivering them, looked as wild as those of a cornered jack-rabbit looking for some means of escape.

        Some extraordinary incidents occurred. The night before the election a barbecue was held on a plantation, which was a polling precinct where several hundred negroes and possibly half a dozen whites voted, and the next day it was carried by an enormous Democratic majority. The negroes always voted the straight Republican ticket, and the whites, of course, voted the Democratic; and it seemed a strange reversal of form only to be accounted for by the fact that some old veterans knew where two Confederate brass field-pieces had been buried to keep them from falling into General Sherman's hands. These cannon had been disinterred, and manned as a section of artillery, they had been

brought to the barbecue. In the small hours of the night a drill had been ordered, and several shells had burst in the air, with the result that when the polls were opened in the morning no negroes were around there to vote.

        I do not suppose that any one claimed that the famous election of November, 1875, was a fair one. Where the negroes were in such a majority that they could manage things in their own way, negro women and boys under age voted with impunity and repeated as often as they felt disposed. On the other hand, the whites in some places played practical jokes which were highly successful in their results. At one precinct in the country, where it was considered impossible to overcome the great black majority, two young white men did the trick quite successfully. They had posted themselves in front of the voting-booth as challengers of illegal voters--they were brothers-in-law and devoted friends. While the voting was going on, to the amazement of the onlookers, they became involved in a quarrel in which one of them called the other a liar. Instantly they both drew their weapons and began to shoot. It was afterwards discovered that most of their bullets landed in the polling-booth. The negro judges of the election fled, but the sole Democratic official, who usually, at elections, could get no one to listen to his protests, was left alone in charge of the ballot boxes and took them safely to the capital, where, when opened, their contents fairly staggered the Republican officials so great was the Democratic majority in this usually overwhelming Republican precinct.

        The carpetbag officials, of course, counted the Democrats out--and the native whites swore a mighty oath that no longer would they submit to carpetbagger and negro domination. They proclaimed General Hampton and the Democratic candidates for the legislature as elected, and the rifle clubs began to gather in the vicinity of the capital.

        Two legislatures assembled in Columbia. The carpetbaggers and negroes had possession of the State House, and the

Democratic body met in the local court-house--each claiming to be the legal lawmakers for the State.

        One night some twenty or thirty young men, myself among the number, although none of us were members of the legislature, quietly entered the State House, and distributing ourselves at points of vantage and the exits, we allowed no one to leave the building. There were quite a number of young negroes--"Tacheeses" (attachés) as they called themselves--in the building, but none of the higher officials were there. As there were no telephones in those days, and as we would not let anybody leave, there was no way for them to get word to their friends that we were in possession. Everything with us seemed to be plain sailing, and expecting to be complimented on our enterprise we sent word to General Hampton that we had the State House and would hold it until the Democratic legislature assembled therein. But our leaders wanted above everything to avoid a clash with the United States Government, and knowing that the United States troops would be called upon to eject us, General Hampton sent back word for us to withdraw from the capitol at once--which we did.

        I think that it was two days after the foregoing episode that the Democratic legislators met at the court-house and decided to go to the capitol and take their seats, as by right, in the legislative halls. Led by General Wallace, their speaker, they marched to the State House followed by a number of men bent upon assisting them if they met with any opposition. Arriving at the State House they thrust aside the sergeants-at-arms and doorkeepers, and took their seats in their respective halls. It was before the usual hour for the Republican legislature to meet, and the chambers were empty, with the exception of a few negro employees. I entered the House of Representatives with the members of that body. General Wallace took the speaker's chair and called the House to order, and was proceeding with the business of the day, when the Republican members arrived

in a great state of excitement, palpably chagrined at finding themselves outwitted. The Democrats had occupied all the seats on the right of the speaker, and only the vacant chairs on his left were empty, so our former masters had to be content with those. Mackey, the speaker of the Republican House, had an ordinary chair brought and placed alongside of the regular speaker's seat now occupied by General Wallace. Neither speaker recognized the other, nor did they interchange a single word during the whole time the dual legislature was in session. Whenever a Democratic member arose to address the House, a carpetbagger or negro would also get on his feet. General Wallace would recognize the Democrat, and Mackey would do the same for the Republican, and then both members would begin to speak at once, each pretending to be absolutely oblivious of the other's presence. But now and then curiosity would get the better of the Republicans and their spokesman would stop to listen to what the other orator was saying, and as the other orator was engaged in a denunciation of their rascalities, it could not have afforded them much satisfaction.

        At times it looked as though it would be impossible to avoid a hostile collision between the two bodies despite the fact that the carpetbaggers were frightened, knowing, as they did, that the first shot would be the signal for their annihilation. They had become desperate, and the scathing denunciations which they had to listen to penetrated through even their dulled sensibilities.

        No one, singly, dared to leave the chamber for fear they would be unable to return, but the citizens generously smuggled in baskets of food for their representatives, so they did not suffer from hunger.

        Hour after hour passed, during which many exciting scenes took place;--night came, the hall was lighted, and still the pandemonium reigned. About ten o'clock, Hamilton, a black and very intelligent negro member who had accumulated quite a handsome fortune as a planter of cotton, and

who had the reputation of being the most honest politician among that nefarious gang, came to me and said, if I would stand by him, that he would make a speech and expose the rascalities of the carpetbaggers. Of course, before committing myself I consulted some of the leaders, who approved, and Speaker Wallace was informed as to what was about to take place. I was surprised to find, on inquiry, that Hamilton was not armed, and taking him out into a committee room I gave him my revolver. I followed him back into the chamber and stood behind his chair. Hamilton at last caught the eye of Speaker Mackey and to the amazement of the Republicans and most of the Democrats also, Speaker Wallace, in a loud voice, also recognized the Republican member.

        Hamilton was in earnest--he was tired of the uncertainties of life and property in which he lived. He also had the foresight to see that the end of carpetbag rule had come, and had determined to cast his lot with his former friends, the ex-slave-owners. He had a fine command of the English language, having traveled considerably with his master as a valet when a slave. He not only named the crimes which had been committed against the people of the State, but also named the time, place, and the men who had perpetrated them. This was too much for the carpetbag and negro members; they raged and stormed at first, and finally, urged on by the carpetbaggers, a dozen or more negroes started for Hamilton, who drew his pistol and leveled it at them. I warned him not to shoot until some one touched him, and at that moment a friend of mine took up a position behind me, and knowing that I was not armed pushed a pistol into my hand. The negroes hesitated and stopped, and Hamilton, laying his revolver on his desk, remarked that he would kill the first man who laid a finger on him. By this time the chamber was in an uproar. The negroes and their white confrères were engaged in reviling Hamilton, while the Southerners were urging him to go on.

Hamilton proceeded with his speech, and never did I hear, even from the mouth of General M. C. Butler, such a scathing denunciation of the carpetbaggers.

        When Hamilton had finished his remarks to the House, he turned to me and said that "now his life was not worth the price of a puff of smoke," as the negroes would surely kill him before he could get out of the city. I reassured him by telling him that I was going to stay by him until he was out of danger.

        We left the House of Representatives together and were not followed. I took Hamilton to the home of Mr. Douglas De Saussure, a prominent lawyer, and he was kept there until he could catch a train bound for his home.

        Returning to the House of Representatives I found my way barred by General Dennis, the carpetbagger who had robbed me of my hay crop and mill dam, and half a dozen so-called "Tacheeses." I roughly pushed Dennis aside and walking through the gang of young negroes entered the chamber. It was now after midnight and the House was in as great disorder as when I had left it. A number of negro members were gathered together near the speaker's desk, and there was some anxiety expressed for the safety of General Wallace. One of our leaders asked me to take up a position behind the chair of General Wallace. To this Speaker Mackey objected, but on my informing him very impolitely that there was no one man enough to remove me, he paid no more attention to me.

        Urged on by the carpetbaggers, the negroes made a demonstration as though they wanted to remove Speaker Wallace from the chair by force, but they changed their minds when they saw how quickly the whites rushed in between them and the speaker. They wavered for a moment and then returned to their seats.

        By three o'clock in the morning the speaking had ceased and every one seemed weary of the excitement. There was absolute silence for a little while, and then the whites were

aroused by a burst of melody which came from the throats of the plantation darkies who had, in such a marvelous manner, been transformed into statesmen.

        With the morning came the military, who had received orders from Washington to evict from the State House the so-called "Wallace House." The Democrats after a protest marched out of the building in the same order that they had marched into it.

        As a matter of personal interest I might add that my daughter Helen afterwards married the only son of General Wallace.

CHAPTER XLIV

General M. C. Butler elected U.S. Senator by Democratic legislature--Carpetbag conspiracy against Butler proves a fiasco--Don Cameron, to the amazement of the country, forces the seating of Butler in the U.S. Senate--Senator Blaine traps Senator Vance who was fond of practical jokes--Astonishing clash between Senators Bayard and Blaine--Visit of a Senate Committee to the Indian Territory--Attempt to give a scolding to Chief Joseph, of the Nez Percés Indians, and the result--The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed had to go to the mountain--Joseph turns the tables on the Senators and administers a stinging tongue-lashing--We leave Joseph, but do not feel very proud of ourselves.

        POLITICAL events both national and state in 1875-76 were full of thrills. Hayes and Tilden each claimed to have been elected to the Presidency, and Chamberlain and Hampton each claimed to have been legally elected as Governor of South Carolina. Tilden was counted out and Hampton was counted in. How the electoral vote of South Carolina could have been given to Hayes, and Hampton at the same time declared to have been elected governor, is, as the late Lord Dundreary would have said, "One of those things no fellow could understand," as, while negro women and boys under age may have voted, and there might have been several tissue ballots found in the boxes, still, it was a well-known fact that neither whites nor blacks ever voted a split ticket in South Carolina.

        South Carolina was in deadly earnest in her determination never again to submit to carpetbagger and negro rule. The authorities in Washington realized that the criminal orgy, miscalled government, of these wretches had come to an end, and that the only result of keeping them in power by the use of bayonets would be to cause the slaughter of numbers of ignorant, misled negroes.

        Having nothing to do I accepted several invitations from Northern friends (strange to say they were all Republicans in politics) and went with one of them on a yachting cruise

along the New England coast, stopping at Bath, Maine, among other ports, where my host begged me not to let it be known that I had once been a pirate and had participated in the capture of several vessels belonging to that once prosperous shipowning town.

        After the yachting cruise I paid a number of visits to friends and was having a delightful time at the beautiful country seat of General E. Burd Grubb, near Burlington, New Jersey, when I received a letter telling me that a trust estate, my last and sole source of income, had forever disappeared. By my authority my trustee had lent the money, for which he was seeking an investment, to a friend of mine who was in business. Knowing our personal relations, the trustee let him have the money on his assurance that he would at once send back the collateral securities, but my friend failed before he did so. On learning of my total financial ruin I at once went to Washington to the house of my brother-in-law, General R. C. Drum, adjutant-general of the United States Army at that time, and I was still there when the United States Senate met to hold probably the most exciting session in its history.

        The Democratic legislature had kept up its organization despite the fact that the military would not allow them to enter the State House, and they had elected General M. C. Butler, a nephew of Commodore Perry, to the United States Senate. Corbin, a carpetbagger, was elected to the same seat by the Republican legislature. As the United States Senate at the time was Republican by a majority of one, Butler's election was generally regarded, by everybody except Butler, as an empty compliment.

        The carpetbaggers had fled from the South and were gathered in great numbers in Washington, posing in the rôle of political "lame ducks" and demanding that the Republican Administration should take care of them.

        The Senate was Republican by a majority of one, and no one, with the exception of General Butler, dreamed that it

would be possible for him to obtain the seat under the circumstances. But the carpetbaggers were not satisfied with this apparent certainty. They wanted revenge, and to obtain it they formed a conspiracy for the purpose of so besmirching Butler that he would never be able to appear in national politics again.

        One day General Butler sent for me and told me of the conspiracy and how one of the carpetbaggers had gone on a spree and let the cat out of the bag, by mistake, to a Northern Democrat under the impression that he was a carpetbagger from some other State than South Carolina. The simple scheme was to have a woman of the demi-monde visit the general's apartment at an hour when it was known that he was usually alone, and the conspirators were to follow her into the rooms. It was a plan that required more courage than I had ever given the carpetbaggers the credit of possessing. The general requested me to remain with him until the dénouement.

        As the probable time for the visit approached, General Butler went into his bedroom and I remained in the sitting-room. The apartment was situated on the ground floor in a house on "F" Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets. His rooms were separated by folding doors. We had not long to wait before a heavily veiled woman, without asking for General Butler, or knocking at the sitting-room door, boldly entered and seemed considerably excited when she discovered me alone in the room. Before I could ask her business she demanded to know where General Butler was. I frankly told her that the general knew all about the conspiracy, and that if she would take a seat she would probably see some fun when her friends arrived. The woman became greatly agitated and started for the front door, but I had no idea of letting her meet the conspirators, and suggested to her that in going out that way she might fall into the hands of the police, and that as I did not want a scandal I would gladly show her out the back way where she could

escape into an alleyway and from thence to a side street. She accepted my offer with enthusiasm and made a hasty exit.

        When I returned to the apartment General Butler and I changed places and he seated himself in the parlor while I went into the bedroom and closed the doors. The cicatrix of the stump of the General's amputated leg had been paining him and he was using his crutches that day. We had not long to wait. The door leading to the street and the one between the hall and his sitting-room had been left purposely ajar, and a few moments after the departure of the mysterious lady five carpetbaggers burst unceremoniously into the room. General Butler arose and demanded to know what they meant by the intrusion, but they were all so hilarious that they took no notice of his indignation, and two of them suddenly threw open the doors of the bedroom and to their surprise did not find the lady, but beheld me reclining on a couch. I leaped to my feet and seizing a chair for a weapon began to brandish it, at the same time, I fear, using some very violent language. General Butler was hopping about on one crutch while making most menacing flourishes in the air with the other. The general was the possessor of a most highly sulphurated vocabulary when his angry passions were aroused, and he was using it with unstinted prodigality. The scoundrels did not stand on the order of their going, but struggled among themselves for the honor of being first to reach the street--and thus ended the adventure with the veiled lady.

        I was in the gallery of the Senate when the contested seat in that body between Corbin, the carpetbagger, and Butler, the Confederate brigadier, came up for decision. It was a very exciting session. Conkling and Blaine for once were in accord, and they were merciless in their denunciations of Butler. Butler, of course, could not talk back, as he was not yet a Senator. Conkling described the Chesterfieldian Butler as a "swashbuckler," and Blaine accused him of

being "a murderer whose hands were dripping with the blood of innocent negroes massacred at Hamburg." I was surprised at Butler's seeming indifference to the attack until he afterwards told me that he was not at Hamburg when the shooting took place, but that he was near there--in fact, his home was not twenty miles away from the scene. The truth of the matter was that, urged on by their white leaders, the negroes in Hamburg had started a riot, and an Edgefield rifle club had hastily assembled and suppressed them, and in the process had killed a few of the most violent. It was singular that no carpetbaggers were ever killed in those collisions.

        When the vote as to whether Butler or Corbin should be declared the duly elected Senator from South Carolina was taken, no one seemed particularly interested, as it was taken for granted that the Republican majority of one would seat Corbin, but great was the amazement when Don Cameron, the autocrat of the Pennsylvania Republican machine, announced that he voted for Butler. The excitement caused by this vote was nothing, however, in comparison to the pandemonium which reigned in that dignified body when Patterson, the carpetbag Senator from South Carolina, a man I had frequently heard Butler denounce at public meetings as everything that was dishonest and despicable, followed the lead of Cameron and voted also to seat Butler! Patterson was a Pennsylvanian, and a henchman of the Camerons. The carpetbag days in South Carolina were over forever, and he well knew that ruin stared him in the face at home if he dared vote contrary to the wishes of Cameron.

        Butler was seated and given the chairmanship of the Civil Service Committee, a sinecure, as that committee had nothing to do in those days, and was one of the least important committees, whose chairmanship was usually given to a member of the minority. His only patronage was the appointment of a messenger at a salary of fifteen hundred

dollars a year, and this position he gave to me--and I surely did need the money at that time.

        I was in the Senate Chamber on that memorable night when Senators Conkling and Lamar had their famous clash, and on another occasion I was a witness of that extraordinary sight when Senator Blaine, like a caged lion, walked back and forth in front of the Democratic desks behind which were seated a number of ex-Confederate brigadiers. He would stop first in front of one of them and denounce his political methods, and then pass on to the next, but always skipped Senator Bayard, of Delaware, who was seated alongside of the one-legged General Hampton, and also ignored Senator Voorhees, of Indiana. At the end of the row was seated Senator Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina, an inveterate joker. When Blaine would reach Vance's seat he would look at him for a moment and then give a little start as though very much surprised, then retrace his steps and take up a position in front of some other Democratic Senator on whom he would pour out his wrath. This performance, repeated several times, made, as I have no doubt it was intended to make, Bayard, Voorhees, and Vance conspicuous because he excepted them from his general denunciations so freely lavished on their Democratic confrères. First Bayard and then Voorhees asked permission to interrupt him, but curtly refusing the former's request, he told the latter that he would not give up the floor for an instant to a man who in the Civil War had been neither "fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring." Vance seemingly flushed with anger at being excepted from the attacks, without asking permission to interrupt challenged Blaine "to show that he had ever made a disloyal remark since the surrender at Appomattox." Blaine called the attention of the presiding officer and the Senate to the fact that he had carefully avoided making any attack on the Senator from North Carolina, but added that he usually had on his desk some ammunition, useful in such contingencies, and he strode to

it pretending that he was looking for something important among the mass of documents strewed thereon. Seemingly failing in his search, he gave a sigh. The Democratic side of the chamber laughed with glee at his supposed discomfiture, but when the merriment ceased Mr. Blaine said that he sometimes had something under his desk, and stooping down he produced a schoolbook of orations published for the use of the public schools of North Carolina. This book he told the Senate was issued to the schools when Zebulon B. Vance was governor and also, ex-officio, a member of the public school board, and this was the kind of oratory and loyalty being taught the youth of the State. He then opened the book at a marked page and read a selection from one of Vance's orations which proved to be a red-hot "secesh" speech, all about "when the South, like a phoenix, would arise from its ashes and cast out the Northern vandal," etc., etc. The Senate lost its dignity and indulged in roars of laughter in which Senator Vance hilariously joined. He saw the trap Mr. Blaine had set for him and appreciated the dexterity with which it had been sprung.

        After the merriment had somewhat subsided, Mr. Blaine stopped in front of Senator Bayard's desk. His hands were in his trousers pockets and his whole attitude, I must say, was offensive, and doubtless was meant to be so. General Wade Hampton occupied the next seat to Mr. Bayard and Mr. Blaine commenced to berate the general as though he was responsible for all the sins of the South since the commencement of the Civil War. General Hampton, in a most dignified manner, remained perfectly quiet during the verbal attack, but suddenly, without even asking the President pro tem's permission to interrupt the speaker, Mr. Bayard exclaimed, while shaking his finger at Mr. Blaine, "You shall not stand in front of my desk in that insolent attitude with your hands in your pockets!" Mr. Blaine glared at him for a moment and then said that he would stand in any place in the Senate Chamber that he chose, and he certainly

would keep his hands in his pockets as long as it pleased him to do so. Mr. Bayard lost his temper, and jumping to his feet exclaimed, "You may talk that way here, but at another time and place--" He got no farther, for Mr. Blaine fairly roared, "Stop!" And then in a lower tone of voice, while pointing to General Hampton, he said, "If that threat had come from that one-legged man, it might mean something, but from you--p'st!" he hissed, and at the same time snapped his fingers in a most offensive manner.

        When Mr. Blaine had finished his tirade against the "Confederate brigadiers," he took his seat. Mr. Bayard, showing great emotion, instantly arose, and addressing the presiding officer said that "if in the heat of debate he had said anything to offend the Senator from Maine he wished to withdraw the remark!" The Senators and the crowds in the galleries fairly gasped in astonishment, for surely, if an apology was in order, it was not due from Mr. Bayard.

        As I watched this unpleasant scene little did I dream that it was destined at a future day to give me what the French call a "mauvais quart d'heure"--but it did.

        The marvelous Hayes-Tilden-Hampton-Chamberlain decision had given South Carolina control of her own political affairs, but not the control of her judiciary, as carpetbag judges still presided over her courts, and the warfare between the carpetbaggers and the natives still continued before the courts. Corbin, the disappointed contestant for a seat in the United States Senate, was the United States district attorney, and naturally thirsted for revenge and sought to use the United States District Court to attain his ends. He hated Dawson, the editor of the "Charleston News and Courier," even more than he did Butler. Colonel Simonton, an ex-Confederate officer, and a brilliant lawyer, was informed that Corbin was about to proceed against Dawson, and a number of other prominent Democrats, in the United

States Court, charging them with instigating or participating in violations of the United States laws governing presidential or national elections. On the other hand, United States Senator Patterson, the South Carolina carpetbagger, and Cardozo, a highly educated carpetbag negro who had been superintendent of public education, and many other ex-officials of the looted States, had been indicted before the state courts, and it was well known that the judges thereof were anxious to make their peace with the native whites.

        The following letter from Senator M. C. Butler will give an idea as to how things were managed in those days:--

EDGEFIELD, S.C., Sept. 12, 1879.

COL. J. M. MORGAN,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR MORGAN: --

        Colonel Simonton writes to-day that Corbin is in Charleston preparing to renew the election prosecutions in Charleston in November, in the United States Court, and suggests that the prosecutions in the State Courts be pressed at the next term of the Court in Columbia--third Monday in next month--before [Judge] Mackey.

        I would be obliged if you would see Patterson and Cardozo in person and say that you have this information from reliable sources, and that unless Corbin is stopped there will be no possible chance to control the prosecutions in Columbia. Chamberlain will be moved upon also, as the truce will be at an end.

        The repeal of "test oath" and amendment to the jury law will protect our people--but we do not want this question reopened, and it will not be, unless the Radicals make the first move.

        I am sorry that Dawson is not here, as Corbin will have especial delight in annoying him, if he can.

        Mention no names in your conferences, and be good enough to let me hear from you. I will see Youmans next week.

Very truly yours,

M. C. BUTLER.

        I had a talk with Patterson and Cardozo, and there were no more prosecutions.

        It must have been a mighty poor Senator who in those days could not (at the expense of the Government) get up, under the guise of an "investigation," a "junket" to some part of the country he wished to see during the summer vacations.

        It was my good fortune to accompany one of these luxurious pleasure parties to the Indian Territory. The object of our jaunt was supposed to be for the purpose of looking into the condition of the Nez Percés Indians who were interned there and who were becoming restless. It was thought it would be well to give their chief, Joseph, a good scolding, and the result of their well-meant efforts was that Joseph gave the Senators a tongue-lashing the like of which United States Senators have rarely been subjected to. Joseph fairly excoriated them, and worse than that, he was in the right.

        Our accommodations for the journey from Washington consisted of a splendid Pullman sleeping-car (special) and a luxurious dining-car, and most sumptuously did we fare on the best of everything there was to eat. Champagne was served even at breakfast as well as at other meals, and was also at the service of any one who wanted it between meals. There were only four Senators, but including ladies, men guests, and Senate attachés our company numbered some thirty people.

        Joseph's camp with its brown tepees was very picturesque. Seats for the Senators had been placed in a grove of oaks. The rest of us stood behind the chairs of the Solons, and, we flattered ourselves, made a very dignified and imposing picture, shaded as we were by magnificent trees, amongst which were the wigwams of the Indians, and between the trees a glimpse of the almost limitless prairie could be had.

        At the foot of a gigantic tree, leaning with his back against it, sat Chief Joseph with his braves seated in a semicircle around him. They were at least a hundred and fifty yards from where the Senators had taken up their position. When

all was ready for the "pow-wow," the chairman of the committee sent the assistant sergeant-at-arms, with me as his aide-de-camp(?), to give Joseph permission to approach the august presence and receive a scolding. We walked up to the silent chief, who neither rose nor deigned to look at us. Christy, the assistant sergeant-at arms, gave him the message through an Indian interpreter. Joseph's reply was that he had not sent for the Senators, nor did he care particularly to talk to them, but if they had anything to say to him they could come over to where he was seated and say it. The programme had been that Joseph was to stand in front of the seated Senators while they read the "riot act" to him, but the wily savage had no intention of occupying any such undignified position. He refused to budge. As the mountain would not come to Mohammed, the Senators were compelled to go to Joseph, or else give up the conference. They decided to go and soon found themselves standing in the presence of the seated savage monarch.

        Patterson, the carpetbag Senator from South Carolina, was the chairman. He was not an impressive speaker, and used many awkward gestures, sawing the air with his arms when orating. He was also very vehement in his style, and plunged right into his subject, scolding Joseph for his sins of commission and omission. When he got through two more Senators took an oratorical fling at "Lo the poor Indian." All this time Joseph and his braves sat wrapped in their blankets--and silence. When the Senators had finished their tirades, Joseph, a magnificent specimen of the red man, standing, as he did, over six feet high in his moccasins, slowly arose, and as he did so his blanket gradually slipped from his shoulders to the ground leaving him clothed only in the eagle feathers of his headdress and a breech-clout. The first words he uttered were to ask the Senators if they had finished, and on being assured that they had, he began an oration, which, although it had to be translated by an interpreter, for eloquence and pathos I have rarely, if ever, heard

equaled. He described how his tribe had dwelt on their lands, which the Great Spirit had given them, from time immemorial; how game was plentiful, and life was pleasant; how they had been kind to the first white settlers who had come to Oregon, and how when more came they had assisted them; how when the whites had become more numerous they had fenced in the land for their cattle, spoiling the hunting; and finally how the whites had ordered his people to "get out"! He told how when a little boy his father made him promise that he never would part with any of the lands to the pale faces, or any one else, and that all the tales of settlers to the effect that the Indians had sold them land were false. He then went on to tell the reasons why he went on the war path. He described his pursuit by the army, and claimed that he had defeated the soldiers in every engagement; how in one battle the troops had bravely charged his rifle pits and some of them had fallen within his lines, and, having no medical facilities, under a flag of truce he had sent the wounded soldiers to General Howard's camp to be made well. He called the attention of the Senators to the fact, which he said he could prove by the soldiers, that neither his braves nor himself had ever scalped a dead or a wounded white man. He also asserted that, though he was the victor in the fighting, under a flag of truce, as he did not wish to prolong the strife, he had agreed to accompany the soldiers to the nearest settlement where there was a fort and surrender on condition that he and his warriors should be sent back to Oregon; that, instead of keeping faith with him, they had disarmed his braves, and then had brought them to this unhealthy country. He added that it appeared to him the whites were afraid to fight, like men, in the open, and had sent them to this pest-hole to be killed by fever. He said that he had brought several hundred braves to this place and asked the Senators if they saw them around him. Pointing to a near-by graveyard be answered his own question by saying, "No; they lie over there, killed by

your fevers!" He boldly denounced the Indian agent as a dishonest and immoral man, accusing him of stealing the rations and medicines the Government sent for his use, and called attention to several Indian girls who were gaudily dressed in the attire of white women, with their necks and arms bedizened with pinchbeck jewelry; he told the Senators that those young women had once been honest squaws, contented with their blankets, and intended for wives for his young men, but with those trinkets and bright-colored calicos, the Indian agent and his white assistants had led them astray.

        When Joseph had finished his arraignment of the whites, without saying so much as "By your leave," he picked up his blanket, wrapped it around him, and, followed by his warriors, he was dignity, outraged dignity, personified as he walked away and sought the seclusion of his tepee.

CHAPTER XLV

"Fighting Bob" Evans gets me employment with Governor Alexander R. Shepherd and I go to Mexico--My brother, P. H. Morgan, is appointed U.S. Minister to Mexico--San Antonio, Texas, where we buy a herd of unbroken mules--The Canon de las Iglesias--Dangers of the mountain trail--Batopilas--The San Miguel silver mine--Governor Shepherd as an executive--A law unto himself, he wins the favor of Porfirio Diaz--In Bonanza--My conducta carries a hundred and forty thousand dollars in silver bars to Chihuahua--Instinct of the mountain mule--Beware of the polite Mexican--Narrow escape from falling into the hands of Victoria, the Apache Chief--The mountain trail strewn with silver bars.

        DURING the whole time I was an attaché of the Senate I was longing for some more suitable position, and in 1880-81 I confided my wishes to my old classmate in my Annapolis days, Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans, popularly known as "Fighting Bob."

        Alexander R. Shepherd, formerly Governor of the District of Columbia, was organizing a mining expedition to go to Batopilas, Mexico. Admiral, then Captain Evans, recommended me to Governor Shepherd as a good man to take charge of the conductas, as the mule trains carrying bullion to Mazatlan on the Pacific, on one side of the mountains, and Chihuahua, on the other, were called.

        Before we started I learned that my elder brother, Philip Hicky Morgan, the United States judge of the International Court in Egypt, had been appointed United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico. This appointment only increased my desire to see that wonderful land, accounts of which I had greedily listened to in the days of my childhood when the Mexican War veterans talked of little else.

        Governor Shepherd was taking his whole family to Mexico with him, and was also accompanied by some half-dozen friends, all of whom evidently expected to "get rich quick." A large number of people were gathered at the

station to see the Governor off and wish him bon voyage and all manner of good luck. We left Washington in style, traveling in a private car and having every luxury money could buy. Our first stop was in St. Louis, Missouri, where we spent two or three very pleasant days before proceeding to San Antonio, Texas, where the Governor bought a herd of wild mules, a number of wagons, and a couple of ambulances for the convenience of his family. He also engaged a number of cowboys, and it was very interesting and exciting to watch them while engaged in breaking in the wild mules who never before had known even the restraining influence of a rope.

        After some three weeks of toilsome travel over the desert-like plains we reached the Rio Grande at a little town called Presidio del Norte, and after fussing for two or three days with the Mexican customs officials we proceeded to Chihuahua, Mexico, where the Governor had to sell the American mules and buy a new herd of mountain-bred ones to carry the packs over the Sierra Madres. We used the American animals to haul the wagons to Ysabel, some thirty miles from Chihuahua, a town without houses situated at the commencement of the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. The inhabitants were cave-dwellers. We had been told that they were there, but on our arrival, as we saw neither houses nor people, we wondered, and some of us proceeded to investigate the mystery. We climbed the rocky hill and soon located the holes in the side of it in which the Indians lived. I entered one of these caves, which was about eight feet in diameter, and found a man and his wife and three children. An old iron skillet, a stone on which they ground their corn, and two goats, comprised their worldly goods. The Indians apparently had no curiosity concerning us and had not even taken the trouble to look at our large cavalcade.

        At Ysabel the wagons were unloaded and their contents packed on the backs of the little squirrel-like mountain

mules. This operation was very interesting to watch. A Mexican would lasso a mule and then blindfold him; until this was done no power on earth could have cinched a packsaddle on the animal's back. This blindfold was shaped like the eye-shades used by clerks to protect their sight from the glare of electric lights. With the older mules this operation was merely perfunctory, as the muleteers would carelessly hang the string over one ear and let the blindfold dangle by the side of the animal's jaw. Of course the mule saw everything that was being done to him, but without that cloth somewhere about his head it was at the risk of life that any one approached him, and the Mexican, although usually brutal in his methods with animals, made that concession to the mule's prejudices.

        As nearly as it was possible to do so, the packs which each mule carried were made to weigh three hundred pounds. As soon as the load was well cinched to their backs, the mules were turned loose, but made no attempt to escape. The secret of this was that the old white bell mare was securely tethered. As soon as all was ready for the start the bell mare was led to the trail and started upon it, and the bridleless little animals fell in behind her in Indian file and the eight-day mountain journey commenced.

        We had not traveled very far before we entered the Cañon de las Iglesias, or "Cañon of the Churches," where we saw one of the grandest and most magnificent spectacles. The precipitous sides of the canon rose to a height of from five hundred to two thousand feet, and the face of the rock at intervals took on the appearance of great cathedrals. No imagination is required to discern the spires, towers, and minarets, and several of them have a plainly marked Gothic-arched entrance extending for some feet back into the rock. It seemed hard to realize that they were the work of the elements and not of some gigantic race of men. Some of these cathedrals of nature are beautifully

proportioned and deeply impressed the least imaginative members of our party.

        The trail across the mountains is very rough and in some places dangerous. At one point a chasm some two hundred and fifty yards wide is spanned by a ridge only about three feet wide at the top. There are holes in it all the way across for the mules to put their feet in to avoid the possibility of slipping; there is a sheer fall of three thousand feet to the bottom on one side and seven thousand on the other. No one is allowed to cross on foot, and those who are susceptible to dizziness have to be blindfolded. The scenery along the trail is magnificent. At times we could look down and see the buzzards gracefully circling above the clouds. It is a strange sensation to see lightning below you and to hear the rumbling of the thunder as it rises to your level.

        We had to ford several mountain streams which, after heavy rains or a cloudburst, are very dangerous, and we passed within sight of a few Indian villages, perched high up on a mountain-side, whose inhabitants fled on perceiving us, driving their goats ahead of them, and soon disappearing among the crags. With others I visited one of these abandoned villages and found that the Indians had left behind them all of their belongings that were not edible. From time immemorial they have been subjected to such cruelties by the Mexicans that they take no chances of coming into contact with them if they can possibly avoid it.

        On our arrival at the hacienda of the San Miguel mine, which Governor Shepherd had purchased from Mr. Fargo, of the famous express company, things began to be doing, and the native had his first experience with an example of the genus hustler.

        The town of Batopilas, situated on the right bank of the river of that name, is about a mile below the hacienda. Its inhabitants, with few exceptions, were miners, who

had been out of employment for a long time, as the mining industry had been at a standstill for several years.

        To reach the town from the hacienda it was necessary to cross the river, a very rapid stream flowing through the narrow canon whose precipitous sides rose to a height of two or three thousand feet, shutting out a glimpse of the sun from before ten o'clock in the morning and after three in the afternoon.

        The San Miguel mine was situated about half a mile above the hacienda. The tunnel leading into it was a little above the high-water mark, and after entering it we discovered that, contrary to all of our preconceived ideas, the miners mined upward instead of downward. Out of this mine several millions of dollars of silver had in the past been taken out. It was what is called a "pocket" mine, and marvelous stories were told by the natives about the great riches some of the pockets had contained. The roofs of some of the ancient pockets were sustained by great columns of rock out of which "native" silver, as it is called, protruded in the shape of nails. The richness of these old pillars could not be questioned, but it was against the law to touch them, as they were kept for the protection of the miners.

        Before Governor Shepherd had been at the hacienda twenty-four hours both it and the mine took on the appearance of a busy beehive. The notoriously lazy Mexicans suddenly discovered that they could move at the double-quick under the magnetic eye of their new ruler. It seemed as though by instinct the natives instantly recognized the big man as a born ruler, and he was in fact one of the ablest executives it was ever my good fortune to know. He seemed instinctively to know everything, although this was his first experience in mining. He was a man who was fond of luxury and would send for miles to some snowcapped peak for snow to make for himself a cooling drink, and while sitting on the piazza in a comfortable chair,

enjoying a fine cigar, no man could pass within the radius of his vision that he did not instantly know what that fellow could do best, and what he ought to be doing at that moment.

        The Governor had brought with him a large amount of paper money which he had had printed in New York. He at once opened a store at the hacienda and told the miners that he intended to pay them with this paper money and that they could buy what they wanted at the store with it, and the miners greedily accepted his offer. Then, to their amazement he ordered them to knock down those rich columns containing Heaven only knows how much native silver to the ton!

        Naturally there were storekeepers and others who became envious, and they reported to the Government at the City of Mexico how the Governor had defied the law both in the matter of the columns and in the issuing of paper money without the consent of the authorities. But a little thing like that did not faze the Governor. The row got him into communication with the President, Don Porfirio Diaz, and soon this extraordinary Washington man had authority to do pretty much as he pleased in the Batopilas district, and even the mighty jefe politico, or sheriff, was courting his favor.

        In a very short time the columns were ground into dust, the silver extracted and cast into bars weighing about a hundred pounds each, two of these bars were strapped to the pack-saddle of each mule, and I was started with my conducta, carrying a hundred and forty thousand dollars worth of silver, on the trail to Chihuahua. At Chihuahua the silver was turned over to a regular freighter whose wagon train took it across the American boundary.

        No sooner had I arrived in Chihuahua than a report spread that Shepherd had struck a new and immensely rich pocket in the San Miguel mine which was once more in bonanza, and the news of my arrival with the treasure

was telegraphed to the United States causing quite a flurry in mining circles. This was the beginning of the great boom inaugurated in Mexican mines by American promoters, in which millions of dollars, in good money, were invested. Worked-out mines were plentiful and cheap. Doubtless, if one only dug deep enough, a silver mine could be found anywhere in Mexico.

        Sometimes I carried the bullion to Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast, but the trail to Chihuahua was by far the most picturesque and interesting. Occasionally in the rainy season we would come to a mountain stream that was a raging torrent and impossible to ford, and then we had to sit down by the side of it and wait for the waters to subside. Of course we had no conveniences for carrying tents, and when it rained we got wet, and when the sun came out we got dry again.

        We usually traveled about twenty miles a day, but the distance depended upon favorable camping-spots. When the day's journey was over, the mules were lassoed, blind-folded, and hobbled, their loads and pack-saddles removed, and then the blindfolds were taken off, and they were allowed to graze on the mountain-sides--if one can call it grazing where no two spears of grass are within ten feet of each other. These hardy little animals, however, even with their front feet tied together, could climb like goats, and succeeded in getting from such scanty pasturage sufficient sustenance to enable them day after day to climb up rugged mountains with from two to three hundred pounds on their backs. Sometimes in the morning our start would be delayed on account of their having strayed three or four miles away during the night.

        The intelligence--or instinct, if one prefers to call it such--of these mountain mules is most extraordinary. We were going through an arroyo one afternoon, the bed of the stream perfectly dry, and its banks so precipitous that it seemed impossible a hoofed animal could climb them,

when without any apparent cause a panic or stampede occurred, and in less time than it takes to tell it those mules, with their heavy packs, were climbing up the precipitous sides of the cliffs as though they were squirrels. The Mexicans followed them, on foot, while wildly crying to me to follow their example. I needed no persuasion, as my mule became unmanageable, took the bit in his teeth, and scampered up the steep bank as nimbly as the others. Perched upon a ledge, some thirty feet above the trail, I soon learned the cause of the excitement, as in a few minutes I heard a mighty roar and then saw a wall of water some fifteen feet in height rushing down the arroyo. The Mexicans explained to me that there had been a cloudburst up in the mountains, and that the rush of the torrent was so great that but for the sense of the so-called "stupid" mules, we should all have been swept to our deaths.

        This life on the trail was naturally one of hardship and privation. When we camped (going toward Chihuahua), I always made the men lay the silver bars close together on the ground and on these I made my bed by spreading my poncho, or rubber sheet, and my blanket over them. Pauper as I was, many is the night I slept on a fortune. My poncho was my sole protection from the weather in the rainy season, and when returning to Batopilas with the mules laden with goods, machinery, or provisions, I had, like the others, to sleep on the bare rock or ground, and many a morning found that I had a tarantula or a scorpion for a bedfellow, but I never saw any one bitten by these creatures. Rattlesnakes at high altitudes are also fond of human companionship and warmth, and are disposed to creep under a man's blanket or cuddle up alongside of him while he sleeps, but a hair rope laid in a circle around one's sleeping-place will prevent their too near approach.

        These journeys were very lonely to me. I usually had with me eight or ten men to manage the mules, but their society was not very comforting; I much prefered the company

of the long-eared fraternity "who had neither pride of ancestry nor hope of progeny." I never met a Mexican who did not try to impress me with the idea that the only way one of them could be managed was by showing him great deference and extreme politeness; but I found by experience that military discipline--fearless enforcing of orders worked to much greater advantage. The man who enters into a bowing contest with a Mexican has lost before he starts. When a Mexican means mischief he always advances on the man whom he intends to harm with his serape, or blanket, closely drawn about him, hiding both hands, and then he begins by paying his intended victim fulsome compliments, drawing nearer and nearer all the time, until close enough to use his wicked knife. Naturally I had occasional trouble with some of my men as to the propriety of their obeying orders, and when one of them would go into a frenzy of rage and then suddenly control himself and pretend that he wanted to apologize and would approach me, I simply would draw my pistol and order him to open his blanket, and never failed to find the ready knife concealed in its folds. I would make the fellow stand where he was and wait without argument until he had cooled off. I never found that they bore malice for any length of time, and besides they had quite a respect for any one who was handy with a gun.

        On one of my trips I came within a hair's breadth of losing my hair. I had made a very hurried journey to Chihuahua with some two hundred silver bars, worth a thousand dollars each, which Governor Shepherd was very anxious to have reach the town before the regular day for the monthly freight wagon train to start for the American border, as he had an arrangement with American bankers by which he could draw bills against silver shipments as soon as the bullion crossed the Rio Grande. Despite every exertion, I was detained by swollen mountain streams and arrived at Chihuahua too late to catch the wagons. According to my

instructions I turned the silver bars over to Mr. Macmanus, the Governor's agent, who insisted that I should put the silver into ambulances and try to catch up with the wagon train, which only had two days the start of me, and which only traveled at the rate of about ten miles a day. Mr. Macmanus urged this course because he said he knew how important it was for the Governor to have the shipment reach the border as soon as possible. At first I agreed to go, and the hour for my departure was fixed for seven o'clock the next morning. I was tired and hungry, and going to the little inn quickly ate my chile con carne and tortillas and then went to bed.

        I thought little of the race I was to make after the wagons, as it was all in the day's work, and when day broke I arose, quickly dressed, and proceeded to Mr. Macmanus's store to await the ambulances. The vehicles, each drawn by four fresh mules, arrived on time, the silver bars were placed in them, I bade Mr. Macmanus and his partner good-bye, my foot was on the step of the ambulance, and I was about to give the word to start, when suddenly a queer sensation came over me and the idea flashed through my brain that I had no right to take this great responsibility on myself. I withdrew my foot from the step and told the agent that I had decided not to go! He was shocked and amazed; tried persuasion, and threats as to what Governor Shepherd would do if the bullion failed to make the connection, etc.; but I replied that my instructions were explicit, and that they simply ordered me to deliver the silver to Macmanus & Co. at Chihuahua; and that I declined the responsibility of making a dash toward the border with it unless I had clear instructions from Governor Shepherd to that effect. I asked them how, if by any accident I lost the treasure, I could explain why, without orders, I was speeding for the border with it, when my instructions were to deliver it in Chihuahua and take a receipt for it. At all events, I would not go.

        At twelve o'clock I was still in Macmanus's store superintending

the packing of some goods I was to take back to Batopilas, when suddenly I heard men in front of the store talking in a most excited manner. A peon from Mr. Macmanus's hacienda, situated about twelve miles distant, had come to Chihuahua at full speed, as the condition of the horse he rode plainly showed. The man reported that at nine o'clock that morning Victoria, chief of the Apaches, with his band, had attacked the hacienda, killed and outraged many of the residents,--in fact all who were not quick enough to get away and hide; that he had looted the buildings, and driven off all the stock! Had I started with the silver I was to have made my first change of mules at this hacienda, and I most probably would have arrived there simultaneously with Victoria, who was every bit as cruel a savage as his successor Geronimo. Instead of having any more fault found with my want of enterprise, I received many compliments, and much praise for my good judgment--and extraordinary foresight (?), etc.

        On one of my trips from Batopilas to Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast with a conducta of over a hundred thousand dollars worth of silver bars, we came to a place in the mountains where the trail was literally strewn with silver bars, and not a man or a mule was to be seen. The bars lay on the ground some thirty to sixty yards apart and there were a great many of them. My men were certain that a conducta had been attacked by ladrones and urged me to hurry on, as they feared the bandits would return for their booty as soon as they had driven its lawful guardians well away. To tell the truth, by that time I knew the Mexicans well enough to know that had I stopped and tried to save the bullion, I would have received scant thanks from its rightful owners. My men also begged me not to say anything about it, as they feared they would be imprisoned until the bandits were captured--a very indefinite period, indeed. I sympathized with my peons, for a Mexican jail is no joke. It is expected by the authorities that a prisoner's family will feed him, and

if he has no money or friends, the only things he is given to eat are soup, made from the heads and shin bones of some unfortunate animal, and a crust of coarse bread not fit for human beings to eat. I visited one of the jails once and a filthier place it would be hard to imagine.

CHAPTER XLVI

Resign position as chief of conductas and start for home via Mazatlan and San Francisco--Alamos--Witness marriage between a Mexican girl and a German--New York--A dress-suit my chief asset--Return to Mexico and become a civil engineer (?) --Primitive coaching--Queretaro and its opal mines.

        To the wanderer in strange lands home becomes endowed with all sorts of advantages which had not been perceived before he roamed away from it. The fact that he left because he could not make a living there is entirely forgotten. My life on the trail was one of hardship, and I could see no prospect of bettering it if I spent the rest of my days on one mule while driving others up and down the mountain-sides. In the lonely hours of the night I thought of many things I could do if I could only once more put my foot on my native heath. A job appears to be about the easiest thing in the world to get to a man who is not in need of one.

        I resigned my position as chief of conductas, and Governor Shepherd made arrangements for me to accompany, on my way home, one Don Ramon, a merchant in Batopilas who was about to start for Mazatlan with a conducta. Young Lyman Learned, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a boy of eighteen, who was in ill health, also took advantage of the opportunity to return to the States, or "God's own country," as self-exited Americans call it.

        There is no race on earth that the Mexicans, high or low, hate as they do the Americans, and Don Ramon did not hanker after our company and made no secret of the fact. But to avoid incurring the displeasure of the all-powerful Governor Shepherd, he, with rather bad grace, consented to allow the two Gringos to ride along the same trail in sight of His Highness's mules.

        "Gringo," being interpreted, means the "unintelligible," and is an expression of contempt applied to all Americans.

        Arriving at the town of Alamos, we spent two days making arrangements to have our mules returned to Batopilas and also waiting for a tri-weekly stage that would take us to the coast of the Gulf of California and from thence to Mazatlan. While at Alamos we saw a rather unique ceremony. A young German was to be married to the daughter of a prosperous Mexican merchant, and before the ceremony could be performed he had to be taken to the fountain, in the centre of the plaza on which the church was situated, where he was stripped and publicly bathed. A sheet was then wrapped around him; and he walked to the steps which led up to the portals of the church, where he was made to crawl on all fours until he reached the door; then he was made to get down on his belly and wriggle his way up the aisle to the chancel rail, where he was again permitted to stand erect while he renounced Protestantism; after which he was conducted to the vestry, where he arrayed himself in his best clothes and returned to meet his bride at the altar and the ceremony was at last performed.

        A wedding in Mexico was at this time a most expensive luxury. I was told that no priest would marry a couple, even if they were peons, for a smaller fee than three hundred dollars, and in that day no peon could hope to save that amount, from his scant wages of five or ten cents for a day's work, in a lifetime. So the poorer classes just did without the blessing of the Church, and I must say, to the credit of the Mexicans, that it rarely, if ever, happens that one of them deserts the mother of his children.

        Learned and I took passage in a steamer bound for San Francisco, and singular to relate she proved to be the identical ship I had once made a voyage in from Charleston, South Carolina, to New York nearly twenty years before. Remembering some acrobatics the old "water-bruiser" had performed off Cape Hatteras on that occasion, I earnestly prayed that we should not butt into one of those not infrequent gales that the Pacific is famed for.

        After a short and pleasant stay in San Francisco, Learned and I started on our tedious overland journey to New York, where I found myself in a few days and at once went in search of that employment which had seemed so easy to obtain in my day-dreams when following the lonely trail in Mexico. But in the turmoil of New York's busy streets there seemed to be no place for dreamers of vague dreams, and I soon found myself wandering about with no very definite object in view. I did not know how to ask a stranger to give me employment, and if the stranger had asked me what I could do, I could only have answered, "Reef, furl, and steer, a little navigation, ride a horse, and some little knowledge as to how sugar cane and cotton seed ought to be planted," and I began to have grave doubts as to whether my accomplishments would make me an invaluable employee in a counting-house.

        I suppose every man has his little fad, idiosyncrasy, or peculiarity secreted some place about his person; at least all the men I have ever met carried around some pet foible. Among my acquaintances the man who came nearest to being free from fads was a millionaire who was lavish in his hospitality, and as generous as a prince ought to be; but alas, his pet and only economy was the saving of matches and it really hurt his feelings to see one wasted.

        One of my idiosyncrasies was a dress-suit. Through hope and despondency I clung to mine in whatever part of the world I was, and it never failed to reward me by securing for me a good time which, had I not been so loyal to it, would have been impossible. So after tramping the streets in the business district downtown all day, I would seek that dress-suit when the shades of evening ended my fruitless quest, and as I donned it my dejected air as by magic disappeared, and once more I became the man of the world without a care, usually spending my evenings at some entertainment at the houses of my wealthy friends, or at the clubs, to several of which I always had cards of invitation when in

New York. Many of my friends would have gladly assisted me in getting employment, but how can a man be helped in that way when he becomes speechless as the first business conundrum is asked him--"What do you know how to do?"

        To the impecunious man the day to "move on" comes sooner or later, generally sooner. I one day met the captain of a steamer which was about to sail for Vera Cruz, and taking a fancy to me, the skipper invited me to accompany him, as his guest, on the voyage. Of course I accepted, and on the ship met a Mr. Van Vleck, a civil engineer, who, accompanied by his son and three other young men, was on his way to Mexico in the employment of the Mexican Central Railroad, a corporation which at that time had recently been formed. Mr. Van Vleck informed me that his engineering party was complete with the exception of a "topographer" and offered me the position. When I told him I had no knowledge of the work, he brushed aside my scruples by saying that he would teach me, and of course I was perfectly delighted with the opportunity.

        At Vera Cruz the American Consul informed me that my brother, the Minister, was spending a few days at Orizaba, and I at once proceeded to that place to visit him. After a few pleasant days spent with my brother and his family, I had once more to come down from my high horse, as the brother of the representative of the United States, and go to work as a "sub" in the engineering party, which I joined in the City of Mexico. We proceeded by stage-coach to Leon where we were to commence our work.

        Traveling by stage-coach in Mexico (before the days of the railroads) was a most exhilarating and exciting experience. Besides the very rough roads and beautiful scenery there was always the possibility, if not probability, of having a brush with bandits, and the certainty of an upset at more or less frequent intervals. The stage-coaches were drawn by nine mules--two at the pole, four in the "swing,"

and three in the lead. The stage-driver was a man of great importance whom every one treated with marked deference. He never condescended to do anything but drive, and along-side of him, on the box seat, was his mozo or servant. At his right was a stand containing three varieties of whips with lashes of various lengths for use on the wheelers, or the mules in the swing, and the longest was for use on the leaders, who were so far away that it was difficult to reach them with any accuracy. This difficulty was provided against by the mozo supplying himself with a bucketful of pebbles, which he threw with such accuracy that he could hit either ear of any mule in the lead, especially if he was offered a small coin for an exhibition of his skill. Of course the control of that number of hard-headed and hard-mouthed mules was accomplished principally by a powerful brake on which, by placing his foot on the lever, the driver could throw his whole weight.

        Occasionally when the mules were changed at a hacienda perfectly wild and untrained one would be brought out and blindfolded and then most unceremoniously thrown down and his feet tied; while in that uncomfortable position the harness would be put on him and he would be hitched to the stage as one of the inside mules of the swing. Then the other mules would be placed and the wild animal's feet untied, the blindfold removed as the driver shouted to his team, and away they would go at the gallop while the frenzied and frightened wild mule would be plunging and kicking and throwing himself on the ground in his desperation. But the rest of the team never wavered or hesitated in their mad race, and whether lying on his side or kicking, the unruly one was dragged along until he learned that it was more comfortable to gallop with the rest than to be dragged over the rough stones on his side. The lesson was usually learned in a mile or two.

        On our way to Leon we passed through the rather pretty city of Queretaro, near which the Emperor Maximilian

was so cruelly put to death. One of the most singular traits of the Spanish race is their fastidiousness about the place where they murder an honorable enemy. They must have a wall to put his back against. The wall, or something equally as good, is an absolute requisite properly to stage the sport. About two miles from Queretaro, standing alone in a broad and level prairie, rises a solitary rock some hundred feet long and about thirty feet high with a precipitous side, and poor Maximilian, who after his capture was imprisoned in the city, was taken all that distance before his execution so that his murderers could have a fitting background for the tragedy.

        Another thing for which Queretaro is famous is its opal mines. I was fortunate enough to obtain permission to enter one of these mines, and lit up by torches the interior furnished one of the most beautiful sights that eye ever beheld. It was like fairyland. The multi-colored jewels reflected the light from the dome, the sides, and the floor of the cave. There were pieces of opal, protruding from the walls, which were as large as a man's body, and I no longer wondered why opals were cheap in Mexico. At the hotel I bought a handful of small stones from a peon, who seemed gleeful when I paid him with a Mexican silver dollar. I was afterwards informed by the proprietor of the inn that I had been outrageously swindled, as had he known I wanted to buy opals he would have furnished me with twice the number for half the price.

CHAPTER XLVII

Leon, the city whose sole industry is the carving of leather and making of saddles--Running trial lines on the gallop--La Piedad--Didn't flop quick enough and got stoned--The brave peccary--The strangler tree--The tree that bleeds blood--Come upon a murdered man lying on the road--The volcano of Colima--General Grant only likes rebels who fought--Mr. Gilmore comes near losing his life in the Jule River--Return to the States to finance a silver mine.

        ON our arrival at Leon we were surprised to find so large and thriving a city so far in the interior and of whose existence we had theretofore been ignorant. The secret of its prosperity lay in the fact that it was the centre of the saddlery and carved leather industry for which it is famed in Mexico.

        We bought horses and saddles and engaged mozos (servants who care for the horses), for this unique surveying party was to be mounted. The reason for this was that there was a rival corporation in the field and the one which first got its maps to the City of Mexico would obtain the rich concession.

        We took our departure from Leon, and when we had got well out of sight of the place, the race began. The "flag" man would be sent at the gallop as far ahead as he could be seen by the "transit" man, and the "chain" men measured the distance on the trot. As soon as they were far enough ahead, the transit stand was folded and given in charge to a mounted peon and he and the engineer put spurs to their horses and caught up with the flag. The work of the man with the level and of the topographer was necessarily slower, and after the start we rarely saw the party again until we rejoined them, sometimes late in the night, at the camp or village where they slept. In this manner we sometimes went over as much as thirty miles in a day, but as the very rough work was to be done over again before any railroad

was built, it did not matter. The concession was the thing to get, and after that was secured the engineers that were to follow would do the real work. At towns like Irapuato, La Piedad, etc., we would stop for days while the maps were being made, and as soon as finished they were hurried on to the City of Mexico and the concession claimed. They were very pretty maps and served their purpose well, but I should have hated to be a contractor who based his estimates on them.

        This surveying expedition was a very interesting experience to me. My duties necessitated my riding for miles away from the line, and although I had few adventures worthy of being recounted, still I saw much of the country that was of interest, such as visiting a silver mine situated on the top of a mountain so high that the snow never melted, and going down the mountain-side, in less than an hour, I found myself in a country where oranges, pineapples, and bananas grew luxuriantly.

        While in La Piedad I had a somewhat unpleasant experience owing to my ignorance of the manners and customs of the people. La Piedad, as its name indicates, is a very religious town. I was walking on the principal street one day when a religious procession came along. I saw the people kneel on the dirty roadway as the crucifix approached, but not being a Catholic I had no idea that I was expected to do likewise; but the Mexicans easily made their desires understood by the accursed Gringo by throwing a shower of stones at me, several of which hit their mark before I could find refuge in an open doorway.

        On another occasion, while alone, I saw a peccary, a small wild hog, come out of a jungle and stop in the middle of the trail. These animals are fighters and wonderfully brave. To get a good shot at him with my Winchester rifle I dismounted and fired, with the result that the peccary was wounded and my horse broke away and left me standing there, while the pig squealed and four of his companions

answered to his call of distress and made an awful row over him. They stood there, some hundred and fifty yards from me, until I shot the last one of them down. These animals have a gland on their backs near the tail which, when they are injured, emits a stench that would make a skunk turn green with envy, and which if not quickly removed with a knife in a manner well known to the Mexican, permeates the flesh and makes it unfit for food, but when the operation is successfully performed the meat is sweet and the hams are unexcelled in delicacy of flavor.

        Among the sights which made an impression on me was a forest of wild orange trees through which we rode for miles. I also saw many of the hygera, a species of the banyan tree in appearance. This tree is an assassin and a strangler. It starts as a slender vine and quickly climbs the tree it has selected for a victim--forms a network around the trunk, and creeping out on the branches it sends down vines which on reaching the ground take root and quickly grow to the size of large posts. The lacework formed by the vine around the trunk of the doomed tree grows into a solid mass, and as the hygera grows with great rapidity it tears the roots of the tree out of the ground and replaces them with its own. I saw one of these parasite trees which, with its posts supporting its limbs, covered at least half an acre of ground.

        Another tree which interested me very much produced a fruit about the size of a large apple with a russet-colored, thin skin, which contained a most delicious custard; one tasting it could hardly believe that it was not made by some expert cook. I also saw a tree called the sangre, about which the Mexicans in our party seemed to be somewhat superstitious. When the bark was cut through with a knife, it was found that its sap was of the color of blood and left a stain on a handkerchief exactly as blood would do.

        But there were other sights to be seen in Mexico besides the beauties of nature. I was riding along a public highway

early one morning when a heavy fog prevailed. Suddenly my horse shied and whirled around so suddenly that I was almost unseated, and after I had got him under control, he could not be persuaded to return to the spot where he had balked until my mozo had dismounted, and leading his own horse, led the way. An exclamation from the mozo caused me to dismount also, and on approaching him I plainly saw through the now lifting fog the cause of my horse's fright. There, lying on his back, with wide-open, bulging eyes, was a fine-looking man with about a foot of a machete standing up out of his breast. His dead body lay in a pool of blood. My mozo examined him and expressed the opinion that the poor fellow had not been dead for very long, as his body was still warm. As we could do nothing for him, we continued on our way, and until we reached the next village the mozo kept entreating me not to mention what we had seen. At the town I met an American who had been many years in the country, and naturally I confided to him our gruesome secret. To my surprise he advised me to ride on, and to ride fast, as at any moment an official might be informed of the tragedy, and if it was known that my mozo and I had passed along that road we should be thrown into prison and kept there until our friends could produce the murderer who had committed the awful deed. I took his advice, and urged on by my mozo, rode fast.

        Our road took us within a short distance of Colima, that wonderful volcano which, with almost clocklike regularity, sends up into the heavens a great cloud of smoke every four hours.

        Without further adventure I arrived at the City of Mexico, where I became an attaché of the Legation and spent several very pleasant months in that beautiful climate, where it is never very hot or cold and where the elements are so well regulated that in the rainy season one can tell by looking at his watch about when it is going to rain. At the same hour every afternoon the shower comes down, and

after it has laid the dust, Society enters its carriages and all the swells go out for a drive. The last piece of property a Mexican parts with, when adversity overtakes him, is his carriage.

        My brother's residence, on the fine public square called the Alameda, and the United States Legation, were twin buildings adjoining each other. One morning, coming out of the Legation, I was accosted by a gentleman who asked to be directed to judge Morgan's house. Although I had never met General Grant, I instantly recognized him from his resemblance to the many portraits I had seen. While I was offering to escort him into the house, my brother appeared and, after greeting the general, laughingly said: "Do you know that is a rebel you are talking to, General?" The ex-President gave me a kindly smile and turning to judge Morgan replied: "Well, the question is, did he fight? It is only the other kind of rebels I can't get along with." And that is the extent of my only interview with the great Union general, as he and my brother entered the house and I never saw him again.

        There was sojourning in the City of Mexico at this time a young gentleman from New Orleans by the name of Gilmore. One of his brothers had married a daughter of Judge Morgan. Gilmore had been tempted to go to Mexico by stories he had heard about the golden opportunities that there awaited young men of energy. He unfortunately fell into the hands of an enthusiastic disciple of Colonel Sellers, who persuaded him that there was "a fortune in pigs." Gilmore invested his money with him in a ham manufactory in Puebla, with the usual result, that when the partnership was dissolved, Gilmore received only the experience for his share of the assets.

        One day Gilmore informed me that he had received a communication from a Mexican who dwelt a hundred or more miles away, on the road to Tampico, offering him a three-fourths interest in a rich silver mine if he would

furnish the money to work it. Gilmore was enthusiastic over the proposition and offered me an interest (in the company to be formed) if I would go with him and investigate the property. I jumped at the chance, and accompanied by two mozos we mounted our horses and started for--we did not know where.

        We finally found the man who owned the mine and he piloted us to it. It did not require an expert to see that there was silver in the vein, as pieces of metal larger than ten-penny nails stuck out of the rocks, and we were permitted to take away with us a small bagful as samples to show prospective investors.

        As Gilmore and I had more time than anything else, we determined to prospect the country further and in fact ride as far as Tampico, a seaport we both desired to see. So we bade an adios to the Mexican who owned the mine and again started on our travels.

        We proceeded on our way until we reached the Jule (pronounced "Hoola"), or India Rubber River, where we proposed to stop for a long rest. It was well that we had determined to rest there, as there was a freshet and we found the stream unfordable until the waters should subside. On our way to the river our narrow trail led at times through a dense growth of wild lemon bushes whose leaves were infested with a tick whose Mexican name is too indecent to mention. This tick, on being brushed off the leaves by a horseman's legs, gets under his trousers and bores its way through the skin, where it deposits eggs which soon cause an ugly sore and a scab to form, which rapidly grows and has the appearance of small horns. They sometimes grow to a length of three quarters of an inch and the slightest touch causes them to give most agonizing pain, and frequently they cause the temporary loss of the use of the lower limbs. The itching is maddening. The antidote for these insects grows on the same bush on which they live, in the shape of a lemon whose juice instantly kills them, but

this fact we did not know at the time, and suffered accordingly.

        On the side from which we approached the stream were cliffs some seventy feet in height, and the river was reached by the dry bed of an arroyo which formed the road to the ford. The stream at this point was some four hundred yards in width and the shore just opposite was low. Below the ford cliffs arose on the other side, the river rapidly narrowed, and the current greatly increased in velocity until the water poured over falls, some eighty feet in height, a few hundred yards farther downstream.

        We longed for a bath, and lost no time in taking off our clothes and entering the water. There was a small islet, the crest of a sandbar, which showed its top above the water, and I swam for it. Making a landing, I lay down and began to rub my itching skin with sand and called out to Gilmore (who had told me that he could swim) to come over and enjoy it. Gilmore struck out, and when he had swam half the distance, to my horror, I saw that he was in trouble. I plunged into the water and went to his assistance. As I approached him he threw up his arms and sank, but I was fortunate enough to grab and raise him to the surface. I was dismayed to find that he had lost consciousness, but supporting him with one arm I swam for the shore with the other, naturally making but slow headway, and conscious of the fact that the current was increasing in velocity every moment. At last we reached the cliff and I seized a small bush which was growing out of a crevice in the rock. For a few moments my anchorage held while I shouted to the Mexican mozos for help. Then, after a few seconds, the roots of the bush were torn out by our weight and again we were carried down by the current. This happened again and again while the roar of the falls came nearer and louder each moment. At last I caught hold of a tuft of grass, the last hope in sight, and before it pulled out from its fastenings the mozos on top of the cliff tied their lassos together and

lowered them down to me. I at once made them fast to Gilmore's body and told the Mexicans to hoist away, which they did, and after great effort they finally landed him safe, but still insensible. While Gilmore was being hoisted up, my tuft of grass came out and I went drifting down the stream, only able to retard my progress by pressing my torn hands against the almost smooth side of the cliff, but finally--it seemed ages to me--the mozos again lowered the lasso, and I was hauled up to safety. I found that my friend was still unconscious, and to the amazement of the Mexicans I made them help me to hold him upside down until the water ran out of him, and after working his arms up and down and attempting to revive him by artificial respiration, at the same time rubbing him with mescal (native whiskey made from the maguey plant) we succeeded in bringing him to.

        After a wait of four or five days, until the waters subsided and Gilmore had recovered from his shock, we waded and swam our horses across the river which had so nearly caused our finish, and continued our journey. On our way, when near the head of navigation on the Panuco River we met with a strange character in the shape of a white man who said he was from Philadelphia originally, but had lived in Mexico for thirty years. He was a quack doctor, and evidently belonged to the class of "lost" men whose people, if he had any, supposed dead. The doctor, without invitation, joined our party and proceeded with us to Panuco. He became very friendly on the way, and informed me that he knew where there was a lake of asphalt and that for a very small consideration he would guide me to it. But my mind was engaged in dreaming dreams about the great wealth to be obtained out of the silver mine, so I paid very little attention to his story.

        Gilmore and I proceeded to Tampico, stayed there a few days, and returned to the City of Mexico without further adventure. It was decided that I should take the little bag

of ore samples and go to New York, via Vera Cruz and Havana, for the purpose of raising money to exploit our find. I could interest no one in New York in the enterprise, so, procuring some letters of introduction to people in Chicago, I went to that city only to find that the instant silver mines were mentioned I was looked upon with suspicion. In fact, the capitalists seemed to take it for granted that I was one of the class of operators who wished to organize a company to work an imaginary hole in the ground, to sell stock to confiding old maids and widows with stories showing how a five-dollar investment in the stock would produce millions, and having got their money to skip. I returned to New York depressed by my failure as a promoter, and to add to my troubles I found myself getting short of funds and no employment in sight.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Return to Tampico and get shipwrecked on the bar--A squaw man who was a quack doctor--Find a lake of asphalt and strike oil--A precarious ferry--Ill with fever and receive a matrimonial proposal.

        My experience with the silver mine ought to have taught me that rich mines and asphalt lakes are luxuries only for the already rich, and that the mines of Golconda would be absolutely useless to a man without capital to work them. But in the weary weeks I spent in New York at that time I could not get the idea of that asphalt lake out of my head, and I became a victim to one idea and that was to find my vagabond friend, the self-styled "doctor," again.

        Unexpectedly becoming the possessor of a small amount of cash, I started at once for New Orleans, determined to work my way back to Tampico from that city if my money gave out; but luck was again with me, and at New Orleans I met my old friend Captain McIntosh, who commanded a ship bound to Mexico and making Tampico one of her ports of call. Telling my friend of my plight he kindly offered me a free passage which I gratefully accepted.

        During the Mexican War in 1846 several vessels were sunk to blockade the port of Tampico, and at the time of which I write a bar extended across the entrance with so little water on it that ships had to lie some distance out and transfer their freight to lighters. (The bar has been dredged in recent years.)

        With some difficulty, on account of a northeaster blowing, with two or three other passengers I was transferred to a ramshackle steam launch. The sea was running quite high, and when we got on the bar the little craft rose on the crest of a high curler and the next moment her bow struck the bottom just as another wave capsized her, throwing us into the sea. Boats put out from the ship, and amongst others, I

was pulled into one of them, but several Mexicans who could not swim were drowned.

        From Tampico I went to the head of navigation on the Panuco River as a passenger on a little stern-wheel steamboat which had originally plied on the bayous of Louisiana. Landing at the village, I had no difficulty in finding my rollicking doctor, who was delighted to see me again and insisted that I should be his guest. The doctor had, years before I met him, married (?) an Indian woman. He was what would have been called on our own plains a "squaw man."

        The question now arose as to how we were to get horses for our trip to the asphalt lake. The doctor could get one, but the natives did not seem disposed to oblige the new Gringo. The doctor got around the situation by walking some distance to the house of a patient and by representing that the horse he had borrowed had gone lame and it was necessary for him to have a sound one. His request was granted, and mounted on the new animal I started with only the doctor for a guide, and very soon found that he had never been to the lake and did not even know where it was, but was asking information from every native we met. It was in the rainy season and sleeping on the ground was very uncomfortable, and when we rolled up our blankets in the morning, preparatory to resuming our journey, it gave one a disagreeable sensation to find that a tarantula or a scorpion had crawled under it for the warmth and been a bedfellow for hours probably.

        After wandering about in the dense forest, in what began to look to me like an aimless way, we suddenly came upon the object of our search. The asphalt lake appeared to be about a mile long and several hundred yards wide. Its surface was hard enough to bear our weight, but it was very sticky. In walking along its banks I was surprised and delighted to find crude petroleum trickling through the crevices of the rocks. Here indeed was a find! Joyfully I filled

one of the doctor's mescal bottles with a sample, and we lost no time in returning to the doctor's home, and from thence I went to Tampico and New York, via New Orleans.

        Arriving in New York I at once informed my friends, Mr. Clarence Cary and Mr. Frederick W. Whitridge, of what I had found, and they engaged Mr. John F. Randolph, a mining expert, to return to Mexico with me and make a report upon the find, as well as to file claims under the Mexican laws.

        We lost no time in making preparations for the journey and soon arrived at Panuco, where we had no difficulty in getting into communication with the doctor, but to our dismay we found it impossible to get horses on which to continue our journey. The doctor informed us that there were large herds of horses in the neighborhood, and that it was only a way the Mexicans had of taking their time when there was a chance to sell anything, and that it was useless to try to hurry them: if we would take it easy we undoubtedly would get the animals in time, so we hired a small vacant adobe house and proceeded to wait--wait. The only thing that would stand a chance of winning in a waiting contest with a Mexican would, in my opinion, be the Washington Monument.

        The days dragged slowly by until Mr. Randolph announced that his business at home would not permit of his remaining any longer and we began to pack up our things and make inquiry about a boat to take us back to Tampico. The next morning there were between twenty and thirty horses lined up in front of our house waiting for a purchaser, and we found them very reasonable in price.

        Having our mounts and a pack-horse, with the doctor as our guide, we started for the lake. The doctor was a gay old guide. He told us that he had a patient who would give us accommodation for the night, and that he would take us to the house by a short cut through the dense forest. Night came on, and it was soon evident that he had lost his bearings.

Randolph got an ugly fall into a mud puddle when his horse stumbled, and then the animal ran away, which made things worse. Next the doctor was dragged from his saddle by a tangled mass of vines and his horse also escaped, leaving the doctor and Mr. Randolph to proceed on foot, tripping at almost every step. It was after midnight, and it was a very dark night too, when we arrived at the bamboo house, only to find that the owner was dying. The doctor alone was allowed to enter, but the old women of the household, with their faces well covered by their rebozos (shawls), supplied us with much-needed coffee and tortillas. The horses of the doctor and Mr. Randolph were recovered by peons the next morning, and we proceeded to a river which was too deep to ford. The doctor went some distance up the stream to get an Indian and his boat to ferry us across. The boat, a canoe made out of the trunk of a tree, was very cranky, and when we had put our traps into her and got in ourselves her gunwales were not more than three inches out of the water, and to add to the precariousness of the situation we had to lead four horses by the lassos while they swam alongside of the boat.

        We arrived at the lake and Mr. Randolph made a superficial survey of it and marked out some claims for oil wells, and after taking more samples we went on to the town of Vanilla and the doctor returned home by himself.

        Vanilla is the great market of Mexico for the vanilla beans. As one enters the town the odor of vanilla is so strong that the atmosphere is impregnated with it, and no wonder, as the streets in front of every house are partially covered with blankets on which the beans are spread to cure before being shipped. The beans are brought into town by the Indians. They are grown in the forest, where each vine has a tree to itself. No particular tree belongs to any individual until he has planted his vine alongside of it. A stranger would imagine that inextricable confusion as to the ownership of particular vines would arise, but such was

not the case. I was told that not only did each Indian remember where he had placed his seed, but that no altercations ever arose among them as to the ownership of particular vines. In Vanilla we learned that there were other parties to the westward who were prospecting for oil, and it was decided that it would be best for me to go in search of them and find out what they were doing, and then to return to Tampico to attend to some business there in connection with the claims.

        It was a long and lonesome ride over a trail I had never been over before--I was unaccompanied even by a mozo. I found the oil men, and they showed me a spot where they had sunk a shallow well and struck oil a few feet below the surface. There was no way at that time of marketing the stuff. It was flowing over the ground and going to waste.

        Proceeding on my way, I was soon attacked by the form of malaria common in the tierra caliente, and was compelled to stop at a small settlement whose head man was a Mexican of rather light color. For a consideration he hospitably consented to furnish food for my horse and myself and also permit me to sleep on the bamboo poles which formed the bunks in the usual thatched shed some little distance from his house, and there I lay tossing with fever for I do not know how many days; my host afterwards told me I had been delirious.

        It was while lying in my bunk after I regained my senses that I witnessed a very interesting festival. All children in Mexico are named after the saint on whose day they are born. Those born on Christmas are named Jesus, and when a male child is born on a day which has been set apart for a lady saint, the poor little fellow is christened Mary, Magdalen, Dorothy, or whatever other girl name the saint bore whose feast-day it happened to be.

        The day I refer to was the birthday of the sole child of the head man. There were thirty or forty men and women, the latter, of course, wearing their rebozos over their heads

and a part of their faces. They seated themselves on the bare ground in a semicircle, a few yards from where I lay, and opposite them, seated on rustic chairs, were two musicians who played, one on a small and the other upon a huge guitar, the largest I had ever seen.

        The daughter of the house, accompanied by her father, soon made her appearance, and in a most staid and solemn manner took up a position in the centre of the circle and commenced dancing for the entertainment of her guests. The girl was of an unusually light complexion: she was tall and handsome and the undulating motions of her lissome body reminded me of the movements of a leopard. Her great bright black eyes would blaze with light one moment and the next soften and languish according to whether the music was fast or slow. Her jet-black hair hung down her back in two large plaits which reached to her knees. Her dress was made of calico of a brilliant red hue, and I thought it rather immodestly short for a Mexican woman, as it barely reached to her instep.

        Her dancing reminded me of Egyptian dancing, as it consisted mostly in movements of the hips, and the bare feet, barely lifted from the ground, seemed only used to turn her around and around in unison with the slow music.

        The fiesta commenced in the afternoon. There were intermissions in the dancing for refreshments consisting of coffee and native beer, after which the dancing was continued far into the night. I was surprised to see that none of the young men sought to dance with the girl, but suppose that it would not have been in good form for them to offer to do so on such an occasion.

        Despite my diet of tough beef, fried, of course, and all on fire with hot chile pepper, I commenced to get better, and my lonesomeness made me all the more anxious to be on my way again. I had never seen the daughter of the house except on the occasion of the fiesta, and of course I had never spoken to her. Judge of my surprise when one day

her father joined me and said that he wanted to have a talk with me. I naturally told him to go ahead, and to my great amazement he made me a financial statement of his assets consisting of his home, land, cattle, horses, and goats. I could not think what he was driving at until he told me that the girl I had seen dancing was the idol of his heart and that his only object in life was her welfare and happiness. He went on to say that Mexicans made very bad and selfish husbands, and that he had always heard that the Americans were the kindest husbands in the world, and for that reason he wanted her to marry one. He also told me that he was very anxious to have her marry at once, as he suspected that she was already favorably inclined toward a worthless young Mexican who he was afraid would carry her off some day. He wound up his tale of romance by saying that he had taken a great fancy to me, and if I would become his son-in-law he would take me into partnership immediately, and eventually leave me all his property when he died.

        Naturally I was very much astounded by the proposition, and must confess that I was somewhat worried, as I was entirely in the power of this man and did not even have my horse to get away on, as the poor brute was being pastured some miles away from the settlement. It was a difficult situation for me, as I wished, at all costs save one, to avoid offending him or arousing his ire. In as kindly and sympathetic a way as possible I suggested that the young lady might object, as I had never had the honor of exchanging a word with her, but he brushed the idea aside by informing me that the girl had nothing to say about it, and that she would marry the man he chose to select for her. Things were getting to be serious, so I mustered up sufficient courage to tell him that there were insurmountable difficulties in the way of the alliance he seemed disposed to honor me with, and that while I fully appreciated the compliment, it was impossible for me to conform to his wishes, as it was a matter of great importance that I should return to the

United States immediately, and if I took his daughter with me, she, not being able to speak English, would naturally be dreadfully lonely, homesick, and unhappy. I omitted to say anything about hotels being indisposed to accommodate us on account of her color. But such arguments as I used seemed to carry weight with the old fellow, and the next day my horse arrived and we parted most amicably. This was the only time in my life I was ever proposed to--or for.

        Being very weak and having to sleep on the ground in my wet clothes (it was the rainy season), the fever came on again, and my body was racked with pain while traversing the weary, lonely miles until I arrived at Panuco, where I found my friend the doctor, who administered some pills, after taking which I entirely collapsed. When I again became convalescent, the doctor boasted that he had administered thirty grains of calomel to me in one dose!

        Bidding the doctor farewell forever, I proceeded once more to Tampico to take ship for the States. I was fortunate enough to be in time to catch the steamer Mexico commanded by my old friend Captain McIntosh, who, when I boarded the ship as she lay off the bar, expressed himself as being shocked at my wretched appearance.

CHAPTER XLIX

Not even any money in oil, when I am interested--President Gonzalez and General Porfirio Diaz--Collapse of oil scheme--Encounter General Charles P. Stone by accident and get employment--The Statue of Liberty--Swept to sea by harbor ice--Meet an old foe--Laying a corner-stone--General Winfield S. Hancock--Lecture my superior officer--I am appointed Consul-General to Australasia.

        ARRIVING in New York I spent my days building castles in the air whose only foundations were my wild speculations as to the amount of wealth the oil fields in Mexico were going to bring me. But wiser and cooler heads saw the danger of investing good money in our sister (?) republic.

        President Gonzalez, who had been pitchforked into the position of President by Porfirio Diaz because the Mexican constitution at that time did not permit of a Mexican President succeeding himself, was a one-armed man. He had lost a hand while serving under Diaz in one of the latter's many campaigns, and Diaz, while expressing the greatest confidence in him, took the precaution of having himself appointed as Minister of War so that he could retain control of the army.

        Gonzalez was a diseased man, and it was necessary to have his arm repeatedly amputated on account of the cicatrix never properly healing, and when it sloughed away there was danger of his bleeding to death through the exposed arteries. Everybody felt sure that there would be a revolution when he passed away. His arm finally was cut off so near the shoulder that there was no chance of a further amputation, and every time there was a rumor that the President was ill, Mexico trembled with fear, and foreign investors buttoned up their pockets when Mexican speculation was mentioned. The time allowed by law for us to do a certain amount of work on our claims passed, and they

lapsed. I found myself poorer than when I had first gone to Mexico.

        It might be interesting to mention that the constitution of Mexico at that time provided that in case of the death of the President he should be succeeded by the Chief Justice, but when it became known that Gonzalez's life was in grave danger, Congress hastily amended the law and conferred the succession on the President of the Senate, Mr. Rubio, and very shortly after the law was passed, Porfirio Diaz, then a man about forty-five years of age, married the daughter of the President of the Senate, Señorita Carmen Rubio, a girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, and I must say the most beautiful girl, of the upper class, that I saw during my travels in that country.

        The oil field which we had located passed into the hands of great corporations who bitterly fought over the claims, and when they were not fighting each other, the Mexican revolutionists broke the monotony by raiding the property, levying forced loans, and occasionally killing a few employees.

        After my hopes for the success of the oil enterprise were blasted, I remained in New York City because there was as good a chance of my getting employment there as there was in any other place, and besides, while New York is no place for people of moderate means to live in, it is the very best town in the world for the very rich and the very poor. The rich can find every pleasure, and the poor can live there better on less money than they can in any other place.

        I was disconsolately walking on Broadway one day, after having failed to get employment, when in front of old Trinity Church a man threw his arms suddenly around me in a most demonstrative manner while assuring me that he was delighted to see me again. The man was General Charles P. Stone, under whom I had served in Egypt. One of the first things the general said to me was that he hoped I was at leisure and not in any employment, and I told him that was

very unkind, as I needed work badly and was sorely pressed for money--small as my expenses were. The general replied that I was just the man he wanted, as he had a place for me on Bedloe's Island where he was the engineer who was to erect the "Statue of Liberty." Naturally I jumped at the chance.

        Bedloe's Island was the scene of the hanging of the last real deep-sea pirate executed in the United States, as General Stone frequently facetiously reminded me by saying that if the Georgia had been captured during the Civil War I might have occupied a very high position on Bedloe's Island. The quarters for the small number of troops necessary to garrison the little fort were frame buildings and were then used for offices. As I had no place to live on the island I slept at my lodgings in the city, which necessitated my being at the barge office on the Battery every morning at five o'clock to take a small steam launch for the island. At that time there was no other way of getting there. The launch was old and the engine was feeble and rickety. The winter of 1884-85 was cold, and at times much ice formed in the harbor. One dark and foggy morning the launch broke down when we were about halfway to the island. The tide was swiftly running out. An ice field quickly imprisoned us and we were carried nearly to Sandy Hook. None of the vessels--which we could hear but could not see--paid the slightest attention to the feeble squeal of our toy whistle. The day was waning and the prospect of passing the night out on the broad Atlantic in that little unseaworthy craft was not pleasant, especially as the wind was rising. just as night was coming on, however, a Good Samaritan in the guise of a tugboat heard our shouts and came to our assistance, but before passing a line to us demanded and received ten dollars for towing us back to the city. We had been all day without either food or water and arrived at the barge office after ten o'clock that night.

        Major Kennish, who had been on the staff of General

Butler during the time the Dutch Gap Canal was being cut, had charge of the concrete work for the foundation and pedestal on which the statue was to stand. He became greatly interested when he learned that I had been engaged in throwing shells at him for seven months during the latter part of the war, and when I made a boast about pointing a rifled gun on one occasion and knocking a timber out of the wooden tower General Butler had erected near the canal and went on to give a ludicrous description of how two men engaged in looking through a telescope came scrambling to the ground, Major Kennish said he had good cause to remember the incident, for the reason that one of the men was General Butler and the other was himself.

        Outside of having to catch the five-o'clock boat every morning my duties on the island were not very onerous. General Stone knew my limitations, and was very considerate. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the scientific work and the foundation and pedestal grow. The stormy day on which the corner-stone was laid I shall never forget. I was as proud as though the completion of the work was due to my individual efforts.

        On the great day, when the hour for the ceremonial arrived, it rained in torrents, driving General Stone and the reception committee to shelter. The boat bearing Major-General Winfield S. Hancock, who was to lay the stone, was expected every minute, and as I knew the general well personally, General Stone suggested that I should wait on the dock and receive him. The rain let up just in time, and the function went through without a hitch. Photographs and visiting cards, my own among the number, were placed in the niche along with coins, newspapers, etc., and unless that pedestal is used in the future to sustain something besides that old sheet-iron effigy, which was originally designed for a statue of victory, that receptacle will probably be opened during the lifetime of people now of middle age, owing to the fact that the Goddess of Liberty has been so rust-eaten

from the elements already that Anthony Comstock's society will soon make it a sine qua non that she either get new clothes or go into seclusion.

        It was Rochefoucauld, I believe, who in a cynical mood once said: "We even take a certain amount of pleasure in the very misfortunes of our friends." This was certainly the case with me when one day there was an awful row, on the parapet of the fort, between General Stone and the gifted artist-author-contractor, F. Hopkinson Smith, whose official position I never could quite define; but he was either interested in the contracts or else represented the society which raised the money to erect the statue. When the quarrel was at its height General Stone called me and asked if I would be the bearer of a challenge for him, and of course I said, "Yes, with pleasure." As the verbal quarrel was about to be renewed, I interposed by telling the general that under the code no further interchange of harsh words were permitted after calling in the services of a second, and then I carried him off triumphantly for a private consultation. After the two gentlemen had had time to cool off, I settled the matter amicably, but oh, wasn't it nuts to crack--for me! On several occasions in my life I had had to stand at attention in the presence of the chief-of-staff of the Egyptian Army while he lectured me on the subject of losing my temper too quickly, and now it was my opportunity to do a little lecturing on the same subject myself. I talked to him like a father, more in sorrow than actual reproof, until the general burst into laughter at the idea, and told me to "go to the devil" and settle the matter in any way I chose.

        It was while I was employed on Bedloe's Island that the great function of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge to traffic took place. I was fortunate in that friends secured for me an invitation to be present and the party I was with had seats near the President. Mr. Cleveland, then Governor of New York, and many of the state officials occupied seats in a stand just opposite. I must confess that the huge form

of Mr. Cleveland did not appear to advantage when contrasted with the symmetrical, well-dressed, and elegant figure of President Arthur. But looks do not amount to much when history is written, and Mr. Cleveland's Administration will be long remembered after that of Mr. Arthur has been forgotten.

        While I watched the President that was, and the President that was to be, I found myself wondering if they ever acknowledged to themselves that "luck" had played any part in elevating them to the proud positions they occupied in the nation, or if they attributed their success to their own superior abilities and energy, as in my experience in life I had never met a successful man who was willing to acknowledge any obligation to dame Fortune. A little perfunctory recognition of the slight assistance rendered him by Divine Providence is grudgingly vouchsafed by the average man after once achieving success, because that is good form; but that is all, despite the fact that the world around him is filled with human derelicts, men of great mental powers as well as physical energy, who have labored through the years without attaining success. In my wanderings over the world I have met many favored mortals, but I have never yet seen one of them who could be made to understand that it might not be entirely a man's own fault if he failed to accumulate wealth.

        The work on the pedestal was nearing completion, and where the winds of Fate would waft me next was a matter over which I had no control--and consequently was none of my affair. It was while thoughts such as these were running through my head I received a telegram which gave me the surprise of my life. It read: "You have been appointed consul-general to Australasia. Come to Washington and file a bond." And it was signed, "F. W. Dawson."

CHAPTER L

My appointment as consul-general arouses great indignation among Southern office-seekers--Mr. Cleveland said he never would have appointed me had he known I was a "pirate"--Torpedo, in the shape of a pamphlet, comes near blowing up my prospects--Mr. Secretary Bayard gets angry--Mr. Cleveland brushes the matter aside and wishes me bon voyage--Get married and start for San Francisco--Mr. Bayard recalls me to Washington by telegram--I sail for Australia--Seventh-Day Adventists indignant when Captain skips Saturday at the one hundred and eightieth meridian.

        GROVER CLEVELAND had been inaugurated as President on the 4th of March, 1885, and it was early in April when I started for Washington to get my instructions from the State Department before departing for my new post.

        Friends volunteered to go on my bond. I called on the President and Mr. Bayard, the Secretary of State, both of whom received me most cordially and congratulated me on my appointment. And then suddenly to my amazement I found myself the centre of quite a storm.

        It had been many a year since the Democrats had had any patronage to distribute, and Washington had been invaded by an army of office-seekers, principally from the South, who, like the fastidious Kentuckian, "wanted a little sugar in theirs." The newspapers--Democratic ones--criticized my appointment adversely, while politicians protested against it personally. The applicants from South Carolina thought that they were being robbed of a choice bit of patronage which belonged by right to them, and harped upon the fact that I had not been born in the State, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that if that lot ever learned that Nazareth was situated beyond their boundary lines, there would not be left a Christian among them in a week. Of course some of the carpetbaggers had a shy at me, but much worse than that, Southern men who had never met me, who probably had never heard my name before, joined in the hue and cry against my appointment.

Mr. Tillman, afterwards Senator, was quoted in one of the newspapers as saying that I had been a participant in one of the most disgraceful tragedies that had ever occurred in South Carolina. The remark was so worded that it left the reader in doubt as to whether it was Captain Tupper or myself who had killed Caldwell. Possibly the fact that while Dawson lived he never let Tillman's head rise much above the surface of the political whirlpool without ducking him, may have somewhat influenced the latter's opinion of myself. Senators Hampton and Butler, of South Carolina, were the recipients of an avalanche of indignant protests (from people who wanted the place for themselves or their friends), although neither of the Senators had had anything to do with getting me the plum. Things became so warm for them that Mr. Cleveland came to their rescue, like the brave man he was, and announced that the appointment was entirely a personal one of his own, and that he wanted placed before him by reputable parties some distinct charges against me before he would rescind it. The only charge submitted was that I had been an officer of the United States Navy and had resigned and served in the Confederacy, and that awful accusation was made by a Southern man! It is a good joke on my self-elected enemies that none of them knew enough about my past life to make the charge that I had served on board of a Confederate cruiser engaged in burning American ships on the high seas, for that would most certainly have ended my aspirations, as Mr. Cleveland afterwards told my brother-in-law, Captain Dawson, that had he known I was on the Georgia he never would have made the appointment.

        The mystery of my appointment ought to have been a very simple one to professional politicians. The solution of it is as follows: Dawson was the editor of the most powerful Democratic newspaper in the South at that time; he was a member of the National Democratic Committee, and had been a delegate to the convention which nominated

Mr. Cleveland. Senator Hampton was strongly in favor of the nomination of Mr. Bayard, but Dawson beat him for the chairmanship of the South Carolina delegation and induced its members to authorize him to cast the solid vote. When noses were counted in the convention it was discovered that the South Carolina delegation had just the required number of votes to make the selection of Mr. Cleveland certain. Dawson cast them for Mr. Cleveland.

        Several weeks after Mr. Cleveland had assumed the Presidency, Captain Dawson called at the White House to pay his respects, and as he entered the President's presence the latter, who was in a jolly mood, laughingly said: "I know all about what you did for me, Captain Dawson, but you must remember that there are others--don't claim everything." Dawson, in the same bantering spirit, replied: "Mr. President, if you will appoint my brother-in-law as consul-general to Australasia, I will promise you not to ask another favor during your administration." Mr. Cleveland, still laughing, replied: "Your brother-in-law is appointed. What is his name?" It was immediately after this conversation that I received the telegram informing me of my appointment.

        When Mr. Cleveland was informed that I was a little fifteen-year-old midshipman at Annapolis when the war began, he brushed aside the charge, that I was an officer of the navy who had resigned to fight against the flag, as unworthy of serious consideration. But my troubles were not yet over.

        In an unlucky moment, tempted by the desire to make a few dollars, I had written an article calling attention to the remarkable resemblance between the lower classes of Egyptians and Mexicans in appearance, customs, and manners. That was harmless enough: but unfortunately I had told of some outrages perpetrated on Americans while I was in Mexico, and how they had been stopped by the firmness of Mr. Blaine when he became Secretary of State, and I also

had said some very complimentary things about the ex-Secretary, winding up with the statement that "with such a man at the helm there never would be any more cold-blooded murders in the despotism known as the Republic of Mexico."

        Some one of my many evil-wishers in some way got hold of the pamphlet and carried it to Mr. Bayard. Mr. Bayard immediately sent for me, and for reasons of his own also sent for Senator M. C. Butler. When we entered the Secretary's office it was evident that he was livid with rage. In his left hand he held the pamphlet, while with his right he pointed at it with a trembling finger while he demanded to know if I was the author. I told him I was, whereupon he flew into such a paroxysm of temper that I feared he would break a blood vessel. He grabbed a handful of papers which were lying on his desk, tore them, and threw them on the floor, and then stamped on them, while from his mouth he poured forth a torrent of abuse, until General Butler arose and in a very dignified manner said, in those quiet tones of his which his intimates knew were a danger signal: "Mr. Secretary, you must remember that I am a United States Senator!" Mr. Bayard, his voice almost choked with emotion, replied: "I am not talking to you, Senator; I am talking to this man," pointing at me; and then he fairly wailed: "The President does not know of this! The President does not know of this!"

        I turned to Senator Butler and said: "I am not going to remain here to be insulted in this way." And taking no further notice of the Secretary, I walked out of his office and returned to my hotel, where half an hour later I received a summons to the White House. I felt that my sentence was about to be pronounced, and to say that I was very unhappy but mildly describes my feelings.

        When I was ushered into the presence of the President, he was alone. In his hand he held a copy of that infernal little pamphlet. He was standing, and his huge figure looked

bigger than ever to me. As I advanced toward him he appeared to be frowning (which was not a good augury to me). He opened the interview by saying: "Mr. Morgan, do you really believe Mr. Blaine to be as able a man as you describe him in this article?" I replied: "I most assuredly do, sir." Mr. Cleveland's eyes twinkled and a humorous smile passed over his face as he said: "I am very glad to hear you say so, for if you did not regard Mr. Blaine as an able man I am doubtful if you would have the capacity to fill the important position I am sending you to. I wish you a pleasant voyage. Good-bye!"

        I was fairly dazed by this unexpected turn in my affairs, for after my unpleasant interview with Mr. Bayard I had regarded the matter of my appointment as having been settled adversely to my hopes. How I got out of the White House I do not know, but when I came to my senses I was out in the grounds hurrying as fast as I could to tell Senator Butler of my wonderful interview with the President.

        That night I went to New York and a few days after my arrival I married Miss Frances A. Fincke, a daughter of Judge Charles Fincke, of New York, and we started for San Francisco, at which city we arrived safely without further adventure.

        In San Francisco I met several old friends and shipmates who were more than kind. There was Dick Floyd who had served in the C.S. cruiser Florida. I also met the Reverend Mr. Foute, an Episcopal clergyman and the rector of a very fashionable church; he was a most dignified dignitary of the Church. The last time I had seen Foute was some twenty years previously when he was a midshipman in the Confederate Navy waiting in Paris for a Confederate cruiser which never materialized. If my memory serves me correctly, at that time the clerical gentleman (that was to be) was about as wild as an "unbusted" bronco, and as apt to kick over the traces. Foute had been on board the Merrimac in the great fights in Hampton Roads, and in those

days would have welcomed a fight with a circular saw. I also met Frank Roby, one of the ablest and most gallant of the young naval officers of the Confederacy, with whom I had served on the Mississippi River in 1861-62.

        One day a police officer came to me: he turned out to be an old shipmate, having been a quartermaster on board the McRae when I joined that vessel at the commencement of the war. Forgetting the dignity of my position and possibly having some recollections of his own concerning my midshipman days, he very unnecessarily intimated that I could paint the town any shade of red I preferred without the least fear that the police would notice the change of hue.

        The day before that appointed for our departure quite a good-sized bombshell was dropped into our camp in the shape of a telegram from Mr. Bayard. The message was short and to the point; it said: "Return to Washington. The President has not finally decided on your appointment." Mr. Bayard was not the only man with a temper that day; I was slightly "peeved" myself. I wired back: "I sail for Australia to-morrow. Please address any further communication to Melbourne." This message might have been construed as a case of lèse majesté, but so far as I was concerned I had stood all the hazing I intended to stand. I had the President's appointment in my pocket, and I decided that if I was consul-general to Australasia, my place was in Melbourne, and if I was not the consul-general, it was none of Mr. Bayard's business where I went, especially as the Government had advanced me no money, and I was traveling at my own expense. Strange to say, I never heard any more about the matter.

        On board the ship as passengers were representatives of several different religious sects who were bound for the antipodes bent upon the conversion of the heathen Australian. The largest sect represented was composed of some forty or fifty Seventh-Day Adventists, who, if the captain of the ship had allowed it, would have held a continuous

revival throughout the voyage. Their nautical lore was limited, and probably none of them had devoted much time to the study of the science of navigation. Owing to this omission on their part we came very near having a mutiny on board when one day at dinner the captain arose from his seat at the head of the table and with his knife rapped for silence. When he had secured the attention of the assembled company, he announced that the ship was approaching the one hundred and eightieth meridian of longitude which would be crossed during the night, and informed us that, although the day was Friday, the next morning would be Sunday, and that he would read the religious services on the quarter deck, as he was required to do by law. Instantly there was an uproar among the Seventh-Day Adventists, who shouted in protest against the tyrannical decree of the captain, accusing him of trying to rob them of their Sabbath, which was Saturday. They treated with indignation and contempt the captain's assurance that if the ship had crossed the one hundred and eightieth meridian on Saturday night, the next day would necessarily be Monday. Things looked squally for a time, until the captain offered a sensible compromise, tendering them the use of the saloon for their devotional exercises, and assuring them that he had not the slightest objection to their regarding the next day as Saturday, or any other day, so long as it did not interfere with the navigation of his ship.

CHAPTER LI

Sydney's beautiful harbor--The authorities compliment me by giving me a private compartment for the journey to Melbourne and I am surprised to find myself a prisoner therein--Beautiful Melbourne and its suburbs--Sir Henry Loch, Governor of Victoria--My wife suddenly ennobled--Singular coincidence of meeting a gentleman who had been a passenger on a ship we had stopped on the high seas twenty-two years previously--Wonderful Australian horsemanship.

        IT would require the pen of a much more skilled writer than I am to depict the beauties of the harbor of Sydney. Suffice it to say that, although the harbors of New York, Rio de Janeiro, and San Francisco are very magnificent, they cannot compare in grandeur to that of the "Queen of the Antipodes," where the greatest ships that plough the seas can tie up to its docks and still have fathoms and fathoms of water beneath their keels.

        Every one was very kind to us in Sydney. An American merchant who owned an American trotting-horse took me for a drive in the beautiful suburbs, and we went as far as Botany Bay, so famed in history and story as the location of the much-dreaded prison settlement, all signs of which have disappeared long years ago. I shall always feel grateful to my newly made friend for his considerate advice, which was never, in speaking to a native, to allude to the fact that there was once a penal settlement in Australia, for while hundreds of thousands of immigrants of all classes of society, who had never seen the inside of a prison, lived in the country, they resented any allusion to its once having been a penal colony. A student of the vagaries of human nature would be impressed by the singular coincidence that the criminals who were deported to the American colonies by the mother country, like their Australian confrères, never left any progeny, despite the fact that all other men and

animals who settled in the two countries immediately became most extraordinarily prolific.

        The railway journey from Sydney to Melbourne is between six and seven hundred miles and was in that day (1885) a most tedious one. Without my ever having met with any of the railway officials, they most considerately and courteously sent me free transportation, and more than that, reserved a whole compartment for Mrs. Morgan and myself, the guard (a conductor we should call him) being given orders to lock us in and not to open the door for any one. These instructions, faithfully carried out, caused us, for a time, no little inconvenience, for when the train made a long wait at a station and the other passengers got out to get refreshments and stretch their limbs, the grateful change was denied us, as the guard was obdurate, and insisted on obeying his instructions to the letter. Finally at one of the stations I raised such a row that a railway official who fortunately was a passenger came to our compartment to find out what was the matter. Explanations followed and he persuaded our jailer to let us out amid much good-natured laughter at our expense.

        We found Melbourne to be a beautiful city, excelled in that respect possibly by only one city of its size in the world, and that, of course, is Washington. The city proper is only a mile square in dimensions and is situated on the Yarra Yarra River, about three miles above where that stream empties itself into Hobson's Bay, a great stretch of landlocked water which is the harbor of Melbourne, but with none of the picturesque beauty of Sydney Harbor. The city on the Yarra Yarra has many fine buildings, but they are devoted almost entirely to business purposes, the majority of its population living in the picturesque suburban settlements which entirely surround it and where almost every residence is surrounded by a garden. The handsomest of these suburbs, which contains many palatial dwellings, is called "Toorak," and naturally is the abiding-place

of most of the millionaires. Being a modest man I took a house in South Yarra, where people of moderate means resided.

        My first pleasant duty was to call on Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Loch, the Governor of Victoria, and personal representative of the Queen, to whom I showed my credentials and received his authority to act while awaiting the receipt of my exequatur with Queen Victoria's signature attached. The governor was a remarkably handsome man, tall, well formed, dignified, and at the same time possessed of most winning and courteous manners. He was that Sir Henry Loch who with Sir Harry Parks, while both of them were serving on the staff of Lord Elgin in China, were captured under a flag of truce and most cruelly tortured. Sir Henry told me that he had been manacled and placed in a cage, and in that way had been carried through the country as a spectacle for the edification of the people in the interior. When he arrived at a town of any considerable size, for the amusement of the natives, the "foreign devil" as they called him was taken out of his cage, naked, and chained to the stone pavement; and among other tortures be was smeared with molasses so as to make him more attractive to the flies. Lady Loch belonged to one of the bluest-blooded families of the British aristocracy; she was a beautiful woman and looked the part of "vice-reine" which she so charmingly impersonated.

        Sir Henry had surrounded himself with quite a number of high-born young men, several of them bearing titles, who assisted in making the social functions at Government House very attractive. There was also a constant stream of distinguished travelers passing through Melbourne, and quite a number of younger sons and other sprigs of nobility who had come croppers at home and were seeking new fortunes in the land of gold, where people made fabulous returns from every other employment than that of digging for the yellow metal.

        Shortly after our arrival in Melbourne we were invited to dine at Government House and incidentally received our first jar at the hands of the gorgeous flunky who, resplendent in the vice-regal liveries, announced the guests. In an undertone I gave him our names as Colonel and Mrs. Morgan, when to my horror and mortification he shouted at the top of his voice, "Colonel and Lady Morgan!" And for the rest of our stay in Melbourne Mrs. Morgan was addressed generally as "Lady Morgan."

        At the dinner, the governor, who had become very friendly with me, laughingly asked a Mr. Calder who was seated near him if he was aware that a reincarnation of "Morgan the Buccaneer" was present. Mr. Calder replied that he himself had once been captured by pirates, and went on to describe how in 1863, when returning from England, the ship he was on had been stopped by the Alabama, and how, when the boat from the "corsair" came alongside, he had expected to see the typical pirate, over six feet high, with a huge beard, board the vessel. He was amazed to see an infant in uniform climb up the ladder and demand that the captain show him the ship's papers! I here interrupted by assuring him that he was mistaken about the Alabama having captured him, at which assertion he became very indignant and informed me that, as he was there, he ought to know what he was talking about, and added that the infant had told him that the name of the cruiser was Alabama. I replied that the infant had lied, and Mr. Calder demanded to know how I could possibly make such an assertion, and was dumfounded when I told him that I was the infant, and had been sent aboard the Australian liner for the purpose of telling them that our ship (the Georgia) was the Alabama, in the hope that in speaking other ships the news that the Alabama was in those waters would reach the American men-of-war in search of her and take them off of her trail while she made her way to the Indian Ocean. I also told Mr. Calder that while the infant midshipman

was in the captain's cabin, he, Mr. Calder, had procured a paper bag full of cakes and two copies of the "Illustrated London News" and presented them to the grateful middy, who had not enjoyed such good things for many a long day. The gentleman looked amazed and in reply to his unspoken question, I said, "Yes; I have grown somewhat in the last twenty years."

        My house in South Yarra was situated not very far from Government House, and Sir Henry frequently sent for me when anything of interest was going on there. On one occasion he invited me to see an exhibition of riding by an Australian, and I must say that it was the most remarkable bit of horsemanship I ever beheld. I have ridden with the Englishmen behind the famous "Pytchley," I have lived with the Texan, and sojourned with the Western cowboy, and I have also matched my own skill with the Bedouin Arab on his native desert, and there are old men still living who will bear testimony to my expertness in the saddle when I was young; but I take off my hat to the Australian and will give him the palm as the best horseman in the world. The Bedouin rides a horse that was foaled in his master's tent; he was always broken. The Englishman rides a horse that is trained from the time he is a yearling and who never, even in a nightmare, dreamed of bucking; and the cowboy, while deserving all credit for his wonderful sticking abilities when "busting" his bronco, is after all only riding a pony who quickly gets tired of bucking and quits. But the Australian rides an entirely different animal from any of the foregoing. The English thoroughbred,--and there are no other kinds of horses in Australia,--when bred on the great stations (ranches), where they roam over estates of hundreds of square miles, not only becomes very wild, but develops into a buck-jumper of magnificent proportions, and furthermore he grows to be a much larger animal than his English ancestor. It also must be remembered that the Australian rides a plain English saddle without pommel or cantle.

        When I arrived at Government House on this occasion, I found Sir Henry Loch and two other gentlemen waiting in the paddock; one of these was the Honorable Robert Boyle, a younger son of the Earl of Cork, and the other was that Sir George Tryon, commander of the fleet in Australian waters at that time, who afterwards lost his life when the collision occurred in the Mediterranean between the battleships the Camperdown and the Victoria.

        The horse to be ridden was a big bay nearly seventeen hands high and powerful in proportion. He was eight years old and had never had even a rope on him before that day. He had been driven in a "mob" of horses from the station where he was bred, and now was in a narrow trap into which he had been forced by the use of a portable fence. In this pen of strong timbers the frightened and frantic creature had, for the first time in his life, a snaffle bit forced into his mouth and a saddle girthed to his back. It was also while confined in this way that the Australian, a splendid-looking specimen of a man, mounted him, and as though by magic the impromptu stall tumbled apart and the struggles of the horse to get rid of the man, and of the man to stay on the horse, commenced. The enraged creature suddenly lowered his head until it was between his knees and then leaped into the air perpendicularly and came down on the same spot stiff-legged; then he jumped sideways to the left, followed by a spring to the right, and with the quickness of a cat he plunged forward and then backward; and before the onlookers could catch their breath he had whirled around several times with such lightning-like rapidity that it made every one dizzy to watch him; he then began to squeal and dashed off in a mad race around the paddock, only interrupted by frequent stops to indulge in buck-jumping and whirls. During the whole of this performance the Australian calmly kept his seat as though he was a part of the frantic animal. This exhibition of rough riding came near ending in a tragedy. The horse by leaps

and bounds finally approached within eight or ten feet of the stout board fence which enclosed the paddock, and then he leaped into the air and threw his body, broadside on, against it! Horse, man, and fence went down with a crash, and for a moment there was indescribable confusion as amidst the flying planks the horse rolled completely over his rider, recovered his feet, and continued his acrobatic feats; but to his evident astonishment his mad attempt at murder and suicide had not budged the Australian from his saddle.

        Sir Henry Loch ordered the performance stopped at once; saying that he could not allow the sacrifice of the life of one of Her Majesty's subjects simply to show two sailors what real horsemanship was. But the Australian did not take the same view, and begged, almost with tears, to be allowed to stay where he was until the horse gave up the fight, saying that if he dismounted then, no living human being would ever be able to ride that horse again. But Sir Henry was firm, and the show was over.

CHAPTER LII

Impecunious globe-trotters--Consular courts--Become skipper of a water-logged bark against my wishes--A captain claims a dollar a day for tuition in the culinary art--For obeying my instructions an Australian court mulcts me for five hundred dollars, holding that despite my exequatur I am only a commercial agent--Grocer's assistant gets quite a large fortune--Many supposed dead men live in the South Sea Islands--Blackbirders.

        WERE I an habitual office-holder I would describe my duties at the consulate-general as onerous and myself as the only man who could possibly perform them. But such was not the fact. The only line of American steamers came to the port of Sydney, and only a small quantity of wool was shipped to the United States from Melbourne. At rare intervals an American sailing ship, generally a dilapidated, bluff-bowed old "water-bruiser," would limp into Hobson's Bay, either loaded with lumber or in ballast, and from there go to Newcastle, New South Wales, for a cargo of coal, and the business of these vessels did not occupy much time. Of course I was harassed by impecunious "globe-trotters," who would insist that as consul I had in my keeping a large fund, furnished by the Government, for the purpose of paying their passages to the next point of interest they proposed to visit, and failing that, as a man and a brother, my conscience should compel me to supply the means out of my own pocket. At rare intervals it was necessary to hold a consular court, either to take testimony in some lawsuit pending before the courts at home, or to decide some question between an American captain and his crew. One case of this kind was when a captain demanded that I should discharge his crew for him without pay on account of their mutinous conduct, and the counter-charge of the crew that the ship had been sent out from the home port in ballast for the purpose of having her wrecked so as to collect the insurance money, and that it was because they would not allow

the skipper to scuttle her that he made the charge of mutiny against them. I decided in favor of the crew and ordered them paid off, but the skipper said he had no money, and when I told him that I would not clear his ship with a new crew until he did pay them, the skipper skipped, leaving his unseaworthy old bark on my hands, and the port authorities made life miserable for me until she was finally beached to keep her from sinking in the harbor.

        The captains of some of these Pacific sailing tramp ships were a hard lot, who were so mean that they not only ill-treated their crews and gave them scant rations, but to save the expense of oil actually carried no lights at night, much to the danger of other vessels as well as their own. One of these fellows, whose crew I discharged, had borrowed the savings of his negro cook amounting to a hundred dollars, but when it came to a settlement both loan and wages were wiped out by the captain's counterclaim for broken crockery, dishes spoiled in the cooking, and a charge of one dollar a day for tuition in the culinary art during the whole time the man had been on board of his ship. He pretended to be indignant when I would not allow this fraud to pass.

        I had a personal experience with one of the Australian courts of justice which was temporarily both costly and unpleasant. The circumstances were as follows: There resided in a handsome villa in a fashionable suburb a woman who was always expensively dressed and who, despite her dissipated appearance, still showed signs of once having been beautiful and refined. I was told that her house was richly furnished and contained costly paintings and marble statues besides other objects of art, etc. Every three months a bill of exchange for a large amount came to the consulate from a city in New England, with instructions that it was to be given into the hands of this woman and her receipt taken therefor. This went on for a long time until one day, after the arrival of the American mail, she did not put in an appearance at the consulate. I sent word to her that her

money had arrived, but for some time afterward received no reply, until one morning, a very "cheeky" young man bounced into my office and informed me that he was the assistant of the grocer who supplied the woman with provisions, and that he had come for her check, at the same time insinuating that there was no use in my denying it, as he knew I had the money. Naturally I declined to entrust the valuable piece of paper to the keeping of this individual, much to his indignation. A few days afterward he returned and told me that the lady was very ill and must have the money at once. Again I declined to part with it, when the fellow angrily said: "Well, anyhow, she is going to die tomorrow and then I will show you who will get the money." I asked him how he dared say that any one was going to die to-morrow or any other day, but he only repeated his assertion. The very next day he again made his appearance and, with a broad grin on his vulgar face, exclaimed: "She is dead! I told you so! And now I will show you who is going to get the money."

        I sent the consular clerk at once to the house with instructions that, if the report that the woman was dead was true, he was to place the seal of the consulate upon all of her effects, as I was required to do by the consular instructions. This was done; and I immediately called on the doctor who had attended the dead woman during her last illness. I found him in a very indignant frame of mind concerning the case. He told me that his patient had died from alcoholism, and that despite his instructions that under no circumstances should she be allowed to touch spirits of any kind, the grocer's assistant had surreptitiously kept her supplied with the brandy which had caused her death.

        When I had made sure of the woman's death I placed the bill of exchange in a sealed envelope, directed to the person who had sent the money, and dropped the missive into the post-office with my own hand; and well it was that I did so, for no sooner were the obsequies over than the

grocer's assistant filed a will signed by the unfortunate deceased in due legal form, making him sole legatee as well as executor of her estate. He then came in haste to me and demanded that I surrender to him the bill of exchange, and his impotent rage when I told him that I had returned it to its rightful owner was a sight to see. But the fellow got even with me. He sued me personally for trespass and demanded damages. My lawyer thought it would only be necessary for me to produce my book of instructions from my Government to convince the court that I had acted legally, but the grocer's clerk employed a smarter lawyer, who made the point that there was not and never had been a consular treaty between Great Britain and the United States, and that consequently, at most, I could only be regarded by the court as a commercial agent, with none of the prerogatives of a consul. The judge who presided at the trial was an Irishman who had formerly been a policeman in New York: he mulcted me for fifty pounds sterling for damages besides fifty pounds for costs, making five hundred dollars outside of my lawyer's fee!

        Of course I reported the matter to the State Department, which took scant notice of my protest, and I will maintain with my dying breath that, unless such a treaty has been made since that time, no official act of an American or British consul in either country is or has ever been legal.

        After Mr. Blaine became Secretary of State I related the above facts to my friend Walker Blaine, his son, who brought the matter to the attention of his father with the result that the five hundred dollars was refunded to me.

        The South Sea Islands have a singular fascination for some people. There are many men, whose families at home have long since mourned them as dead, who to-day are alive and well enjoying the care-free life and dolce far niente of that dream-compelling climate. I heard of one such man who had been for many years a dweller on one of the islands, and was told that he was a one-legged man and that his

name was Proctor. It so happened that I had had a schoolmate by the name of Proctor who had lost a leg at the first battle of Manassas. He was a nephew of General Beauregard, and after he returned to his home in New Orleans, after the Civil War, he found that a young lady with whom he was deeply enamoured had married some one else, and Proctor disappeared, not to be heard of again for many years.

        I started inquiries about this man Proctor, and was informed that he was living with the natives and in sore trouble on account of his artificial leg having worn out. I also heard a strange story connected with that same leg, which was that on one occasion when Proctor and a boat's crew had landed on the beach of one of the islands, they were suddenly set upon by cannibals. It was a case of sauve qui peut, and the rest of the crew left Proctor to his fate as they took flight toward the place where they had left their boat. Proctor could not run, but nothing daunted he sat down on the beach and deliberately unfastened his artificial leg, intending to use it as a weapon and sell his life as dearly as possible. The cannibals, seeing a man unhitching his limbs, took fright and scampered back into the bush leaving Proctor unharmed. I soon learned that this same man was the friend of my boyhood, and I wrote him a letter asking him to come to Melbourne and also sent him money to come with. When he arrived in Melbourne I took him to my home and gave him employment in the consulate.

        Proctor told me many of his adventures and of his strange life among the South Sea islanders who, when they are not cannibals, are most hospitable and the kindliest people in the world. Shortly after his first arrival in Australia necessity compelled him to accept the first offer of a job that was made him and this was to take command of a "blackbirder." A "blackbirder" was nothing more or less than a slaver, but the word "slave-owner" horrifies our British cousins too much to allow of its use in their presence. Proctor, and

many others in the trade, only took their ships to promising islands and, anchoring offshore, tempted, at first, one or two of the more venturesome of the suspicious natives to come on board: these pioneers were shown many colored beads, gaudy handkerchiefs, and tinsel, and then they were allowed to return to their friends to tell of the wondrous store of what they considered wealth the ship contained. Finally, impelled by curiosity, the king or chief would go on board, and the rest was easy. He was shown the coveted articles on the upper deck, and then was promised a number of them if he would induce the ablest of his young men to come on board. Once on the ship they were invited to go below and see greater wonders still, and while they would be admiring the gaudy trifles, the hatches would be suddenly closed, and the "blackbirder" would sail away for Queensland where the sugar planters were eagerly waiting for them. They were not sold into slavery,--oh, no! that is too horrid a word; but those poor devils, who could neither read nor write, nor yet speak English, signed contracts to work on the plantations and in return for their labor received a few strings of beads and three or four bandanna handkerchiefs. The Government allowed them to be contracted for a term of only three years, and there was a clause in the document requiring their return at the expiration of that time. This clause was faithfully lived up to by the planters, and possibly the same ship which had brought them took them back to the chain of islands, which all look wonderfully alike. The natives were told by the captain to point out their particular island and they would be landed. But few would risk it, as, if they made a mistake and put foot on the wrong island, they would be killed and eaten before the ship which had brought them sailed out of sight. Consequently the unfortunates preferred to return to their drudgery than to take such risks.

        It might be asked where the profit to the ship came in. Well, it is said that there are cabins de luxe on the transatlantic

liners which cost a thousand dollars a trip, and while not quite so luxurious, the price of a passage from the islands to Queensland for a cannibal was proportionately high for the accommodations furnished, and the planter had to pay this before he got his "nigger."

        Proctor remained with me for two months, and then the "call from Cathay" became too strong for him to resist, and he returned to his queer friends, who knew not what labor meant, nor the need of clothes, and to whom Nature supplied cocoanuts, fruit, and fish which amply supplied their wants.

        In reading this account of the doings of the "blackbirders," as recounted to me by Proctor, it must be remembered that I am writing about a state of affairs which existed forty or more years ago, and that the Government of Queensland even in my time (1885-89) had put a stop to much of the injustice of the trade.

        Ten or fifteen years after I had returned to the United States, I learned that Proctor had come home to New Orleans, found the sweetheart of his youth a widow, and married her.

CHAPTER LIII

Vast estates--Australian hospitality--Kangaroo hunting--The dingo --Rabbits in myriads--Aborigines--Marriage customs--Black trackers--Black swans--No songbirds, but many curious birds--The "laughing jackass" always gets a laugh when he tells a funny story--The "Ornithoryncus."

        WHILE in Australia I visited several of the large stations (as the ranches are called), many of them comprising several hundreds of square miles of land, whereon thousands of cattle, horses, and sheep grazed at will: that is, they grazed at that time wherever the rabbits had left any verdure for them to feed upon.

        The owners of the vast estates possessed every comfort that money could procure, and they wanted for nothing except social intercourse with their equals. Owing to their great holdings of land frequently the nearest neighbor lived thirty or more miles away, and a visitor was generally received with open arms. They were a most hospitable people and joyously "welcomed the coming guest," but were loath to "speed the parting one."

        One of the greatest amusements at the stations was the kangaroo hunt, for which sport they had bred a special dog very much resembling the great English staghound. An Australian would no more shoot a kangaroo than an Englishman would a fox. I went on several of these hunts, which take place very frequently, as the singular beast feeds on the grass needed for sheep. In the daytime the animal is to be found only on the tops of the hills, where he can easily see the approach of a possible enemy.

        One morning I went out with a party of gentlemen and employees of the estate, and with field-glasses located a number of kangaroos. We passed around the foot of the hill until we got well to leeward and then commenced the

ascent. We were well on top of the hill before we were discovered and the animals took fright. They started down the incline with marvelous speed, their extraordinary leaps covering forty or more feet at each bound, and the jumps following each other with such astounding rapidity as fairly to daze the onlooker.

        I was mounted on a race-horse called "Post Boy," belonging to my host, which was noted for speed, he having won a valuable cup only a month prior to the time of our hunt. Putting the spurs to our horses, we fairly flew after the fleeing kangaroos, but no horse, no matter what his speed, can keep up with one of these animals going downhill. When we reached the level ground, however, we gained rapidly, and then I saw a singular sight. The horsemen had their stirrup leathers so arranged that they could easily be unfastened from the saddle, and when we reached the level ground they unfastened one, swinging the iron stirrup around their heads as a cowboy would a lasso. Each man went in chase of a particular kangaroo, and when he ranged alongside of the poor beast, with unerring aim he laid the creature low with a single blow. The kangaroo's most tender spot is the head, so tender, in fact, that the aboriginals kill it easily with the light boomerang.

        One kangaroo, when he got tired, stopped in the open, and a jockey, a boy of sixteen, leaped from his horse and running around the poor creature, to avoid its death-dealing kick, he seized it from behind, and then commenced a most interesting wrestling-bout, for the kangaroo turned in the boy's embrace and they had a grand struggle until one of the horsemen arrived and gave the brute a coup de grace with his stirrup. After the mêlée it was found that the boy had been quite badly bitten on the shoulder.

        Another kangaroo, when he came to a huge and dead eucalyptus tree, placed his back against it and faced his foes, the first of whom to reach him was a large hound, and as the dog leaped for his throat the kangaroo raised one of his

powerful hind legs and with a swift blow disemboweled the hound as cleverly as though the operation had been performed with a butcher's cleaver.

        I also participated in a dingo hunt. This cowardly brute is the only carnivorous animal indigenous to Australia. He is red in color and is a species of wild dog, resembling in his habits and appearance our own despised coyote. I was told that a single dingo in one night would kill as many as fifty sheep merely for the love of slaughter. I saw, too, while at these stations the ravages committed by the rabbits. These little creatures are not indigenous, but are the offspring of a half-dozen which were imported by a gentleman for the purpose of making his lawn look more like home, as even the Australians who have never visited the mother country call England. The rabbits on arriving in Australia changed many of their habits, and instead of breeding only once or twice a year and producing only two young at a time, they began to breed when only a month old, giving birth to four or six at a litter, and producing a new litter every month, until the country was overrun by them, and lands which had supported thousands of sheep became as bare as if a fire had swept over them, the rabbits having fed upon even the roots of the grass. I saw one stretch of country where there were so many of these creatures that the ground seemed to be in motion, so close were they together. The ravages were so serious that a bounty was paid by the Government for rabbit scalps, and thousands of pounds were offered for an invention that would rid the country of the pest. Miles of rabbit-proof fencing was put up and an attempt made to kill all the vermin within the enclosure, but it was discovered that when the men engaged in the exterminating process found rabbits getting scarce, rather than lose their jobs they would throw a few pair over the fence so as to secure a new supply.

        I sent a report to the State Department describing the ruin the rabbits had wrought, and in it stated that one pair

of rabbits in three years would, through their progeny, produce two millions of bunnies. The newspapers got hold of this report and made great fun of me. It was suggested that I revise my figures, and in reply I sent them the report of the government statistician from which I had procured my information on the subject, in which it appeared that an experiment had been made by segregating one pair of the little animals in an enclosure so arranged that they could not burrow out of it and no other rabbits could get to them. After a time, when the enclosure could hold no more, a simple calculation, made by multiplication, gave the above result.

        I saw many strange sights in this land, where the trees do not lose their leaves, but do shed their bark, and one of the weirdest sights was to pass through a forest of eucalyptus trees which had been belted so that grass for sheep would grow at their roots, and watch the flocks of white cockatoos flying from dead branch to dead branch, and on the ground an "old man" kangaroo, at least six feet in height, looking very uncanny, as with extraordinary leaps and bounds he fled from the approach of man.

        I saw also great fern trees, of the same species we place in jardinières, whose leaves were fifteen or twenty feet in length.

        I visited a camp of the aborigines, those strange black people, with long and silky hair, who are classed as the lowest specimens of the human race. At night the spectacle of the camp was most attractive, as the ground seemed to be sprinkled with tiny lights. The aboriginal says that when a man's stomach is warm, it is all that is necessary in cold weather, and each member of the tribe builds his own individual little fire of twigs affording a small flame not much larger than that of a candle, and getting his belly close to it, and his body forming a half-circle around it, after his day of hunting he comfortably sleeps.

        The Australian opossum, which has a fine fur as well as

a bushy tail, is the mainstay of the native's existence, furnishing him with meat and the little clothes which he wears only in cold weather. The aborigines climb to great heights on the giant dead trees, which have limbs only near their tops, by cutting with their tomahawks notches in which they insert their big toes. I saw one of these fellows, at least fifty feet from the ground, stop, and with his hatchet dig out of the dead tree a worm at least six inches long and as big around as my first finger, and, horrible to relate, he opened his mouth and swallowed the slimy thing.

        The way the men get wives is rather unique. Only in exceptional cases do they take women of their own tribe for mates, and as every tribe is constantly at war with all their neighbors it would seem that the race must die out but for a custom of hunting in three parties, the men in one, the married women in another, and the young girls of marriageable age forming a third. The object of the hunt, besides the obtaining of food, is to capture the young women of their enemies. When they do marry in their own tribes the ceremony is very striking. After the bargain with the girl's father is completed and the required number of opossum skins paid, the bride takes up a position just outside of her parent's hut, and alone waits there. She has not long to wait, for the groom to be is watching. As soon as he sees her in her proper place, he seizes his war club, walks to where she is standing, raises his weapon, and bats her over the head, knocking her senseless. He then picks up her body, puts it on his shoulder, carries her to his own hut--and the ceremony is over. The object of hitting her on the head is said to be for the purpose of showing her who is going to be boss in the future. When an attempt is made to civilize these people, they quickly become victims of tuberculosis and die.

        Many of these aborigines are employed by the rural police to assist in the capture of escaped prisoners, or to find people who become lost in the "bush," as the back country is

called. Those used in this service are called "black trackers," and besides their marvelous woodcraft they possess a keen faculty of scent unsurpassed by even that of a hound dog, and it is said that no prisoner who ever attempted to escape into the bush has ever been able to elude them, and they never fail to bring back those travelers who have lost their way.

        I went also to the lake whereon the black swans breed, and was surprised to find that their young were white. The morning after my arrival there I was awakened by the sound of myriads of little tinkling silver bells, and was amazed to find that the sweet music came from the throats of numberless little "bell" birds no bigger than my thumb.

        I also saw in my travels into the interior of the country those remarkable cranes called the "companion birds," which live in flocks on marshy ground and when alarmed form quadrille sets and dance. Really they appear to be going through the figures of the "lancers," a dance very popular fifty years ago.

        There are no native songbirds, but the Australian magpie learns to talk with great facility, and his voice is much more human than that of the average parrot. The magpies which nest near human habitations often repeat the words they hear children use while at play, and when miles away from any settlement the stranger, riding alone through the bush, feels rather a creepy sensation when he is told by an invisible and almost human voice to "leave something alone," or receives an invitation "to play." These birds when nesting are very savage and will attack a man who even passes near the tree where their nests are. I once saw a man who had had his face and neck terribly lacerated and his cap torn to shreds by a couple of them.

        The ugly "lyre" or "bower" bird, with the beautiful tail whose feathers form a very good imitation of a lyre, is also something of a mimic, and by making sounds resembling the chopping of wood, or the squeaking of wagon wheels, he

entices the weary traveler (who about sundown is searching for a place to camp) from the trail, and the trails are so faintly marked that, once departed from, the wayfarer is lost; worse than that, he will never find the water he imagined must be near the camp whose sounds had been imitated by the bird. One of the peculiarities of the lyre bird is that he is somewhat of a landscape gardener, and makes himself quite a pretty bower in which he places all sorts of bright-colored pebbles. Why he builds the bower, unless it is for a playground, has never been explained, as the bird builds its nest, and deposits its eggs, in entirely different places.

        The "laughing jackass" is an unfailing source of amusement to the natives as well as to strangers. This brownish bird is about the size of a small pigeon, and consists mostly of a head which is larger than his body and ridiculous little tail combined. His bill is shaped like that of a duck, and his laugh is infectious. About sundown a dozen or more of them can be seen sitting on the dead limb of a tree near some barn, and one of them will begin to croon as though he were telling his friends a funny story, and when he evidently reaches the point of the joke, the others burst into hilarious laughter sounding wonderfully like the mirth of a lot of aged men. The laughing jackass is protected by law, as he not only is a good scavenger, but he is also a good ratter and mouser. He is, too, the deadly enemy of snakes, of which there is no non-poisonous variety in Australia. He soars high in the air when hunting for reptiles, and when he espies his prey he lets himself fall out of the skies and comes tumbling down in the same manner that a pelican does when fishing, only the laughing jackass hits solid ground instead of yielding water, and the sound of his little body hitting the earth can be heard quite a distance away. When he rises in the air again the snake can be seen dangling from his talons while in small circles the bird attains a great height. When he decides that he has reached the

proper altitude for his purpose, he lets the snake drop and comes tumbling down after it, at the same time giving utterance to screams of laughter. This performance is repeated until the reptile is dead. I had one of these birds in my garden as a pet, and every time I passed by him he laughed at me until I became quite sensitive on the subject of his disrespectful conduct.

        But the most wonderful bird (or should I call it animal?) of Australia is the "Ornithoryncus" or "Platibus," as it is commonly called. This strange creature has a body formed somewhat like that of a small beaver. Its fur is of almost as fine a texture as that of a seal. It has the bill of a duck and its four feet are webbed and shaped like those of a duck. It lays eggs, and is amphibious!

CHAPTER LIV

Sir Henry Loch gives a fancy-dress ball in honor of the Queen's jubilee--The Melbourne Exhibition--Return to America via Suez Canal--Visit to the "Isle of France" (Mauritius)--Paul and Virginia must have sat down hard--Return to Melbourne--Secretary of State appoints a naval officer to take charge of appropriation for American exhibit--First World's Fair Commission ever to turn back a balance into the Treasury--Receive a medal--Leave Australia--Authorize captain of the Mariposa to return to Sydney--Samoans as swimmers--Resign.

        WITH the year 1887 came the preparations and festivities for the celebration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, which were opened at Government House by one of the grandest fancy-dress balls that had ever taken place in Australia. All of the costumes of the dealers were engaged long before the great event, and even the theatres closed their doors that night because the actors had no costumes left, as the management had lent them all to swells who wanted to attend the ball. I was one of those who could not procure a fancy dress from either costumer or theatre, but not willing to acknowledge myself beaten, I went home and brought out a Mexican sombrero, serape, and a pair of brass spurs which I had kept since the days I was in Mexico, and these, with a pair of black trousers slashed up the side from foot to knee and trimmed with gold lace, a piece of clothes-line for a lasso, and some long false hair hanging from the sombrero to below my shoulders, made me a very good imitation of the Mexican vaquero or cowboy. My get-up was pronounced the success of the evening, and I was followed by a throng of the curious who wanted to know what character I represented, what the lasso was for, and why I wore spurs with rowels as big as silver dollars and with bells on them.

        Some time previous to this ball, at the solicitation of Sir Henry Loch, I had recommended to the State Department the advisability of an appropriation for an American exhibit at the great World's Fair which was shortly to take

place in Melbourne, and Congress had appropriated the necessary money.

        The health of my wife, never very good, about this time became so bad that her attending physicians advised me to lose no time in taking her home. We took passage on a French steamer and returned home via the Suez Canal, stopping on the way at Adelaide, South Australia, Mauritius, or Isle of France, Reunion, which in the days of the French monarchy was known as the "Isle de Bourbon," the Seychelles Islands, Aden, in Arabia, Suez, and from thence through the Mediterranean to Messina, and, passing between Corsica and Sardinia, disembarked at Marseilles, from which place we went to the Riviera.

        I must mention that while at Mauritius we visited the wonderful Botanic Gardens, and the attendant who accompanied us through the grounds, with a perfectly straight face pointed out the identical stone bench upon which "Paul and Virginia" had sat! They must have sat a long time judging from the two hollows worn in the stone.

        From the Riviera we went to Paris, and after a short stay proceeded to Havre, where we took a French steamer, and after a most boisterous voyage arrived in New York at the commencement of the great blizzard of March, 1888.

        In April, 1888, I had to return to Australia, via San Francisco, alone, but before doing so I went to Washington to pay my respects to the President and to the Secretary of State. Mr. Cleveland, of course, was very courteous; I expected that; but I was greatly surprised at the cordiality with which Mr. Bayard received me; in fact, he became quite confidential during the interview and impressed upon me the necessity of trying to curb the extravagance of the commissioners to the exhibition, of whom I was one (ex officio), recently appointed to represent the country at the Melbourne World's Fair. He told me that "these commissions had become a stench in the nostrils of the nation, as it was their custom to throw away the money they were authorized

to expend, and then come back to Congress for another appropriation to pay the bills with." I suggested that if he would put the funds into the hands of a naval officer, accustomed to disbursing large sums of money, this danger might be easily avoided. Mr. Bayard seized upon the idea with avidity, and asked me to accompany him to the office of the Secretary of the Navy. On our way through the corridors I saw Lieutenant Marix, and told the Secretary that this officer had recently been at Melbourne in the sloop-of-war Enterprise, and Mr. Bayard asked me to introduce him. In a few minutes the Secretary of the Navy had ordered Mr. Marix to report for special duty to the Secretary of State. The result of this appointment was not only a success, but it also was very amusing.

        When the commissioners reached Melbourne, all business men, having private axes to grind, they proceeded to business at once and held a meeting, to which I was not invited, and decided that they would divide the appropriation into as many parts as there were commissioners, and that each one should take charge of a special department, and be responsible for his share of the money. That being settled, they called on me with a demand that I turn the funds over to them. I never saw a madder set of men than they were when I told them that I had nothing to do with the money, and that it was not only not in my keeping, but in that of a naval officer, who, acting under the orders of the Secretary of State, would attend to the decoration of the hall and arrangement of the exhibit as well as the disbursement of all funds, and save them all trouble in that respect. But the result was that, for the first time in the history of American commissions to world fairs, every bill was paid and a large balance returned to the United States Treasury!

        As an exhibition the World's Fair at Melbourne was a great success, but unfortunately the Australians became possessed of a craze for real estate speculation. The price

of land, miles from the City Hall, was run up to fabulous prices, the purchasers never stopping to inquire where the necessary population was to come from to build on the lots for which they paid so dearly. The madness dimmed the business vision of all classes, with the result that when the exhibition closed and the strangers went home, there followed a panic which brought ruin to thousands of unfortunately credulous people of moderate means as well as to some of the wealthiest families in the country.

        After the fair was over, through the United States State Department, I received a most artistic and beautiful medal in recognition of my endeavors to promote the success of the undertaking.

        In September, 1888, I left Australia on the steamship Mariposa (Spanish for "butterfly") bound for San Francisco. It was lucky for the captain that I was on board, for when we arrived at Auckland, New Zealand, he received a cablegram urging him to return to Sydney to take command of one of the company's ships the captain of which had met with some accident. This could not be done without the consent of the consul-general, as the vessel was under the American flag. After consultation with the captain and mate, and having satisfied myself that the latter had a master's certificate, and was in every way competent, I took this grave responsibility on myself and allowed the captain to leave.

        At the island of Tutuila, one of the Samoan group, I witnessed a thrilling and most interesting sight. A schooner from Apia always met the steamer at Tutuila with the mail for the United States. We passed her a hawser and unfortunately it slacked up and became entangled in our propeller. The sea was smooth and the water was very clear, permitting us to see down to quite a depth. Around the vessels were several canoes filled with natives, both men and women being as naked as the day they were born. A dozen or more

had come on board of the steamer bringing fans, sea beans, and other trifles to sell. Our captain offered to pay the men if they would dive down and cut the hawser free from the screw. They jumped at the chance of making a little easy money, and being supplied with knives, they plunged overboard, one at a time, and proceeded to saw away on the heavy cable. They seemed to be able to stay below the surface for an extraordinary length of time, and as fast as one man would come to the surface another would go down and continue the work. Suddenly those of us who were watching the performance were horrified to see two immense sharks approach the man at work. The attention of the captain, who had spent many years on the Pacific, was called to the monsters. The captain only laughed, and said that if the Samoan was a white man he would already have been eaten, but, he added, "Sharks are not cannibals, and they won't harm their brother who is half fish himself." The sequel proved the captain to be right, for while we stood at the taffrail anxiously watching the terrors of the sea, one of the sharks approached the man at work, and was so near to him that he appeared to be smelling him, and the only notice the Samoan took of the great fish was to put his hand on its nose and shove it away.

        As soon as the mail bags were safely on board, and the screw was freed from its entanglement, we proceeded at full speed. The native canoes made no attempt to follow us, and the Samoans on our ship's deck seemed perfectly unconcerned as they stood patiently waiting for a purchaser for their wares. They asked no one to buy, and accepted any money offered and gleefully parted with their property. The ship was making about fourteen knots and Tutuila, although a high island, was fast sinking out of sight behind the horizon, when first one and then another of the "men fish" looked toward his home. Quietly laying their wares on the deck they deliberately walked to the rail and dived, head first, into the sea. By this time we must have been

some eight or more miles from land, and on my expressing some anxiety about the islanders, the captain assured me that they ran no risk, as they were perfectly capable of remaining in the water for forty-eight hours!

        When I rejoined my wife in Washington, D.C., she was in such bad health that I decided it would be impossible for her to return to Australia, so I decided to resign the consul-generalship. I called on the President and made known my decision to him and was somewhat surprised when he requested me to postpone sending in my resignation until I heard further from him, and at the same time cautioned me not to mention my intention to any one, as the news would cause a host of applicants for the place to assemble in Washington to present their claims to the appointment before he was ready to name my successor, and that would cause him much inconvenience. A month later he signified to me that the proper time had arrived. I regretted very much that family reasons necessitated my giving up the lucrative and congenial office, as I liked Australia and the Australians very much, and although a Republican administration was about to come into power, I could have retained the place for another four years under President Harrison, who had been a classmate and intimate friend of two of my brothers at Miami University, Ohio. The family intimacy dated from before the days of the Revolution and had always been maintained, and besides this kindly feeling, Mrs. Harrison, who was a Miss Scott, was named for one of my father's sisters. Then, too, Mr. Blaine, who was to succeed Mr. Bayard as Secretary of State, was a good friend of mine, and his son, Walker, who was also to occupy a position of influence in the Department, was one of my intimates. Mr. Cleveland appointed as my successor, Mr. Lesesne, of Charleston, South Carolina, who met with a tragic fate before he had been very long in Australia. His body was found floating in Sydney Harbor.

CHAPTER LV

"Cedarcroft"--Death of Captain Dawson--Ten years on a farm--Vagaries of the genus horse--Australian fox terriers.

        WHEN my daughter Frederica was born, both she and her mother were so delicate that I was advised to take them into the country, one of the doctors telling me frankly that it was the best thing to do, but that he doubted if either of them would be alive in six weeks. I bought a farm called "Cedarcroft," near Gaithersburg, Maryland, and moved my little family there and never had cause to regret it, as the open-air life restored both wife and child to health.

        We had hardly got comfortably settled on the farm when I was summoned by telegraph to Charleston, South Carolina, as a most horrible tragedy had occurred there resulting in the death of my dear friend and brother-in-law, Captain Francis Warrington Dawson, editor of the Charleston "News and Courier." My sister, Mrs. Dawson, was in the habit of making frequent visits to Europe, and on one of these trips she had brought back with her a very pretty Swiss nursemaid. Just around the corner from where Captain Dawson lived was the home of a Dr. McDow and his family. The back yards of the two houses adjoined each other. One day the nursemaid complained to Captain Dawson that whenever she went out with his children Dr. McDow accosted her on the streets and forced his attentions on her, and that she wanted a stop put to the annoyance. Captain Dawson was very indignant, and said that he was going to see McDow and forbid him speaking to the girl again while she was accompanying his children. He was seen to enter McDow's office, which was on the ground floor of his residence, but Captain Dawson never came out again alive. What actually happened in that office

only Dr. McDow knew. He was alone in the house, as his family was absent at the time. At his trial the doctor testified that Dawson came into the office, where he, McDow, was seated at his desk, and not only used abusive language, but raised his cane to strike him, and that he, McDow, in self-defense, seized a pistol which was lying in an open drawer at his right hand, and fired, with the result that Captain Dawson fell, mortally wounded. The singular part of this story was that the autopsy showed that the bullet had entered Captain Dawson's body from behind. To the astonishment of the country at large the trial resulted in a miscarriage of justice through a mistrial and Dr. McDow was set free.

        Captain Dawson had a strong character; in fact, he was a masterful man. He had many friends, and more enemies. His caustic editorials in the "News and Courier" were much admired by some, but the bee on the end of his pen had stung many others. He had undoubtedly done as much as, and probably more than, any other man to free South Carolina from the carpetbag yoke, but when the editorial lion was dead, the political hyenas whose aspirations he had failed to further gathered at his grave to growl and snarl over his dead body, and it was probably owing to this bitter feeling that his murder went unavenged. Some years after the horrible tragedy, Dr. McDow was found dead in his house where he was living alone.

        Sad at heart over the loss of my brother-in-law and best of friends, and the bereavement of my sister and her son and daughter, I returned to my Maryland farm. For ten long years I devoted my time to farming and the breeding of horses with rather worse than indifferent success. When I started the business it seemed as though a craze had possessed all the young men of fortune in the country to set up large breeding establishments, with the result that horses became a drug on the market.

        I wonder if any one ever understood the workings of a

horse's mind, or instinct, as some prefer to call it? The staid and sober old family horse who will with the utmost sangfroid walk up to a locomotive and smell it, or who will refuse to become interested in blasting operations going on near him, or who will go to sleep while the racing horses drag a fire engine with its clanging bells by him on the street, will throw a dozen fits, go into convulsions, and smash things generally if he sees a piece of paper on the ground, or when a chicken flies across the road in front of him. I attended to the breaking of my colts myself, and they usually afforded enough excitement to prevent my suffering from ennui. Runaways and smash-ups were of frequent occurence and were regarded as being in the day's work. One day, while driving a very gentle colt to a light sulky, the ubiquitous chicken ran across the road in front of him with the usual result. The colt jumped sideways and fell, overturning the two-wheeled vehicle and throwing me out, landing me at the bottom of a deep ditch with the colt on top of me. When the colt struggled to his feet he stood for a few moments with one hind foot planted on my breast. I was almost suffocated, and for an instant thought that the bones would be crushed in by the weight of the animal; but he was a kindly creature and seemed to know he was hurting me, as he, with deliberation, lifted his foot from my chest and put it down alongside of my face. With all that tangled mass of broken harness hanging from the young animal, I did not know at what moment a kicking exhibition would commence, and slowly raised myself to a sitting position and inched myself out of immediate danger. A violent fit of coughing, followed by the expectoration of a quantity of blood, left me feeling quite weak, but I managed to get the colt out of the ditch, and the only memento I now have of my narrow escape from death is a protuberance of bone as big as the end of my thumb which adorns the end of one of my upper ribs.

        I had brought several fox terriers from Melbourne, and as

these dogs had never before seen snow it was amusing to see them grab a mouthful, and when the cold bit their tongues, lose their tempers and proceed to fight it. There are no non-poisonous snakes in Australia, and when a blade of grass, moved by the breeze, rustled against another, these little animals would make a leap as though they were being shot out of a catapult, so instinctively afraid were they of snakes. Fox terriers at the time happened to be the fad in dogs, and I bred them for profit. At times I would have between twenty and thirty of these active, nervous, little creatures on the farm, and life to them meant one continuous rat hunt in the barn varied by wild chases after rabbits and strange curs. Any one who has ever kept one fox terrier can imagine the din in which we lived with twenty-five on the premises.

CHAPTER LVI

Visit Mrs. Jefferson Davis in New York--Accompany Mrs. Davis to Richmond--Unveiling of the memorial window to Mr. Davis--Make the oration at the unveiling of the statuette to Mr. Davis in the Confederate Museum--The old Confederate "White House"--Present my sword and letters from President Davis and General Lee to the Museum--Letter from Mrs. Davis on the subject of Prince Polignac's canard about his mission to France for the purpose of selling the State of Louisiana.

        IN 1897, I went to visit Mrs. Jefferson Davis in New York. She was then living at the Girard Hotel, by no means a fashionable hostelry, but the best the poor lady, who was supporting herself by her pen, could afford. I had last seen Mrs. Davis when she visited Mr. Trenholm's family in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1867. At that time she was a middle-aged woman in splendid health. She was tall and her figure showed strength and activity in her every movement. Imagine what a shock it was to me to see coming into the room an old lady, bent with sorrow and, physical suffering, who walked with the assistance of a cane. But the shock which her appearance gave me was no greater than the change that time had wrought in me caused her. I advanced to meet her, and she placed her hands on my shoulders and kissed me, then, holding me at arm's length, she earnestly gazed at my face for a moment and suddenly exclaimed: "Jimmy! my child! What have you done to your pretty brown hair?" She told me that nothing had made her realize so vividly her own age as the sight of my white hair, as she had always thought of me as a laughing, romping boy, who, with her youngest brother, was always in some kind of mischief.

        When the memorial window to Mr. Jefferson Davis, in St. Paul's Church in Richmond, was to be unveiled, in April, 1898, Colonel Burton N. Harrison, Mr. Davis's former

private secretary, and I were invited to accompany Mrs. Davis to the former capital of the Confederacy. It was not a cheerful trip, for we could not help but remember that former painful journey that we had taken together when Richmond fell and the hopes of the Southern people were annihilated. Try as we would we could find no topic of conversation that would not lead us back to memories of our loved ones who had passed away since the stormy days of the war, or recollections of the gallant heroes we had known who had died for what they thought was the cause of the right.

        At the unveiling I found it difficult to fix my attention upon the religious services of the moment, as my memory surged backward to a time some forty years previously when I sat in the same church with the family of Mr. Trenholm and listened to its much-loved old rector, Dr. Minnegerode, with his strong German accent, pray fervently for the success of our arms; and when my attention would wander, as wander sometimes it did, my eyes would frequently rest upon the bowed heads of such historical personages as President Davis, General Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, and many other officers of high rank and fame who usually attended services there when they were in Richmond for the day.

        The day after the unveiling of the memorial window, I was invited to make the speech in presenting a statuette of Mr. Davis, which had been given to the ladies in charge of the Confederate Museum, which occupies the former residence of the Confederacy's chief. I could only with difficulty control my emotion as I spoke, for that house, where as a young midshipman I had romped with "Jeff" Howell, Mrs. Davis's youngest brother, and where I had spent so many happy days when off duty, was now filled with ghosts of the past. The ladies connected with the Museum were very kind to me, and I felt very much complimented when they requested me to present to the Museum the Confederate

regulation naval sword, which I wore when I accompanied Mrs. Davis South. The sword was made in England, and had the cotton plant chased on one side of the blade and the tobacco plant on the other; also the first Confederate flag (the "Stars and Bars") and the naval coat of arms--two crossed cannon and a fouled anchor. This sword now hangs in the "Louisiana" room of the Confederate "White House."

        Prince Polignac, a French officer, served for a time in the Confederate Army. Mr. Jefferson Davis appointed him a brigadier-general and sent him to Louisiana to serve under Mr. Davis's brother-in-law, General "Dick" Taylor, commanding the Southern troops in that part of the country. Prince Polignac, being a foreigner, had an advantage over the native-born soldiers in that he could quit when he got tired. A wearied feeling came over him in the latter part of 1864, when things were looking rather gloomy for the Confederacy, and he returned to "la belle France," as he had a perfect right to do. As distance always "lends enchantment to the view," Polignac after a few years began to imagine himself a second Lafayette as well as the real hero of the Confederate Army. In carrying out the resemblance to Lafayette, he proposed to revisit America after thirty years and make a triumphal tour of the Southern States. He really seemed to labor under the hallucination that he had won the independence of the Southern Confederacy. But that was not the only illusion he labored under. In 1901, unable longer to bear the strain of an impossible state secret whose weight he had staggered under for forty years, he confided to a newspaper reporter the story of Jefferson Davis's treachery and meditated treason, and told how he, Polignac, had been sent to France by Mr. Davis to offer to the Emperor Napoleon III the State of Louisiana in return for military assistance in the struggle then going on between the North and South. I sent the newspaper clipping to Mrs. Davis and received the following reply:--

HOTEL GIRARD, NEW YORK,
123 WEST FORTY-FOURTH STREET,
March 21, 1901.

MY DEAR JIMMIE: --

        Your letter was a great surprise to me and I have sent it with the slip to Mr. Reagan. I should have asked Burton Harrison for his memories in the matter, but knew the whole statement false, and even if it had not been, Harrison would not have known anything about a matter necessarily of so private a nature. The matters of State were not, of course, confided to him, so Mr. Reagan will answer the accusation definitely and brand it, as a scandalous invention of some one. That some thoughtless men might have collogued together is barely possible, but not probable, as if we had been reduced to such a strait the French Government would have known Mr. Davis could not give France territory already on the eve of being captured from us, and such an agreement or offer would have been utterly worthless.

        Even the man who writes does not certify to Mr. Davis or the Confederate Government having sent Prince Polignac on such a mission. Who else had the right? This is a ridiculus mus, I suppose found by some pothouse statesman.

        Thank you for your defense of Mr. Davis, and believe me,

Faithfully your friend,

V. JEFFERSON DAVIS.

        Mr. Reagan was Postmaster-General of the Confederate Government, and at the time Mrs. Davis wrote the foregoing letter he was the only survivor of President Davis's Cabinet. Mrs. Davis sent me his answer to the canard about the offer to trade Louisiana, and of course it was an indignant denial of the story. Wishing to put the refutation of the impossible falsehood where it could be seen by future generations, and also to protect Mr. Davis's memory, I gave Mr. Reagan's letter to Professor Callahan, the Southern historian, as I knew Mrs. Davis wanted it to have publicity. But Mrs. Davis objected to some statements that Professor Callahan had made concerning her husband in some of his writings, and when I informed her as to the disposition I had made of the letter she wrote me at once as follows:

HOTEL GIRARD, NEW YORK,
123 WEST FORTY-FOURTH STREET,
April 9, 1898.

MY DEAR JIMMIE:--

        Yours received. Please get back the letter which you sent to Professor Callahan; I do not wish him to have it, and wish to preserve it myself. I have no reason to suppose that he will use it in the just and impartial spirit of a historian, nor yet with the reverence due to my dead husband's memory. I am sure you meant to perpetuate Mr. Reagan's testimony in the most enduring manner, but some of Professor Callahan's utterances convince me to the contrary. With thanks for your interest, and very happy over my friend Prince Polignac's interest in my husband's stainless reputation,

I am affectionately yours,

V. JEFFERSON DAVIS.

CHAPTER LVII

The hero of Manila Bay--Distinguished dead who were my friends--Some learned societies which have honored me--"Peace at any price."

        IN 1898, I sold "Cedarcroft," my country place, and moved to the City of Washington where I was living when the "hero of Manila Bay" returned to the capital after his brilliant victory and received an ovation from his fellow citizens which must have made his very blood tingle with pride and gratification. In the old prints the naval heroes are always depicted as standing on the quarter deck, sword in hand, and pointing with it toward some indefinite object in the distance, but the picture of Admiral Dewey which I saw a few days after his triumphal entry into the city, although never painted, will remain indelibly printed on my memory as long as life lasts.

        My little daughter, Frederica, a child of nine, was, like everybody else, enthusiastic over the admiral, and her one ambition was to shake hands with him and be able to boast in years to come that she had talked with the great man. I was persuaded to take her to his bachelor quarters to satisfy her longing. The admiral, of course, was very kind and courteous, as it is natural for him to be, and in a little while he took the child into the next room, leaving his aide-de-camp and me to entertain each other. After some little time, fearing we were making too long a visit and that the admiral might tire of his little guest, I went into the room to tell her it was time for us to say good-bye. As I entered the apartment I beheld as pretty a picture as ever eyes rested upon. There, in front of an open trunk, seated on the floor, side by side, were the victorious admiral and the little girl having the time of their lives. The hero was busily pinning his decorations and medals on the front of her little dress, and around her neck was the famous diamond-studded

chain of the magnificent watch which the City of Boston had presented to him. With much laughter he ordered the aide and myself to leave him and his playmate alone, and for nearly an hour longer continued to amuse her with the treasures the wonderful trunk contained.

        I have other and sadder memories of distinguished and gallant officers whom I have had the honor to number among my dear and personal friends. I was one of the pallbearers at the funeral of Major-General Harry Heth, who commanded a division in General Lee's army. General Heth was like one of the family in General Lee's house, where he had spent much of his time in boyhood. He had the unique distinction of being the only officer whom General Lee ever was heard to call by his first name. He invariably addressed both of his sons, Custis and Runie, as "General," but General Heth was always spoken to as "Harry."

        Another dear friend whose body I accompanied on its last journey was Rear Admiral James E. Jouett, U.S.N., one of the most gallant officers in the service. He it was who in a launch boarded and captured the Confederate gunboat Royal Yacht in Galveston Harbor, and afterwards commanded the U.S.S. Metacomet which was lashed alongside of the Hartford at the battle of Mobile Bay. He cut loose from the Hartford and engaged the C.S. gunboat Selma and after a furious engagement destroyed her. I on one occasion heard Mr. Loyal Farragut, the only son of the great admiral, say that undoubtedly Jouett was his father's favorite captain.

        Admiral Jouett died at the "Anchorage," near Sandy Springs, Maryland, his favorite place of residence. I was in the same house with him when he passed away, and only a week or ten days before I had seen that wonderful old gentleman (he was a good deal over seventy) on a moonlight night out with his beloved hounds chasing a fox. None of Admiral Jouett's immediate family were with him, when he,

died, as they were in Florida at the time. I could not bear the idea of the old hero being buried from an undertaker's shop, so I had his body taken to my residence in Washington, and from there, escorted by the Marine Band and a battalion of marines and sailors, it was taken to Arlington, where he now rests.

        As an ex-vice-president of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution I was one of the guard of honor who walked alongside of the caisson which bore the remains of General Clinton, the fourth Vice-President of the United States, and a Revolutionary hero, from the Congressional Cemetery to the railway station on the occasion of their removal to his native State of New York in 1908.

        When I was United States Consul-General in Melbourne, the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia did me the honor of making me a life member, and in 1904, when the Eighth International Geographic Congress met in Washington, my Australian friends further honored me by appointing me their delegate. The assemblage was a most imposing one, for here were assembled the most distinguished geographers and explorers living at the time. When I was called on to say something, I felt very nervous in the presence of such a gathering, for while I had wandered over a great portion of the globe, I had not been any place that some explorer had not been before me. So to avoid appearing silly, I read to them a hitherto unpublished diary of my great-grandfather, Colonel George Morgan, giving a graphic account of a voyage he made in a batteau from the mouth of the Kaskaskia River to the Gulf of Mexico in 1767. Butler in his "History of Kentucky" (1834) says: "The earliest enterprise in navigating the Mississippi by Americans from Pittsburgh to New Orleans was indeed one of boldness. It was performed by Colonel Taylor, of Kentucky, his brother, and Colonel Linn, who got as far as the Yazoo, and then went to Georgia with the Southern Indians in 1769."

        Colonel Morgan's voyage was made, as recorded in his diary, two years previous to this date, namely, 1767; and he also covered the whole route, returning to Philadelphia by sea. The Geographic Congress was much interested in the diary and ordered it printed in its "Proceedings."

        Again, in 1906, the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia paid me the compliment of delegating me to represent them at the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, held under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, an institution which was founded in 1743. When the delegates were called to order it appeared that most, if not all, of the great scientific societies and institutions of learning in the world were represented. Oxford, Cambridge, the Royal Society of London, as well as many of the Continental universities, had sent some of their ablest men to represent them and to do honor to the memory of Benjamin Franklin.

        Harvard, Yale, and other American universities and learned societies were represented by such men as Charles W. Eliot, Arthur T. Hadley, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Professor Simon Newcomb, etc. When the speech-making began, one of the delegates addressed the assembly in Latin, and was followed by others who spoke in the languages of their various nationalities, and I must confess that I felt myself very much out of place amidst all this erudition until Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrew's, mounted the stage and commenced orating with his strong Scotch accent.

        In 1914 I was invited to deliver the oration on the occasion of the decoration of the graves of the Confederate dead at Winchester, Virginia,--historic Winchester, around which so many bloody battles were fought, and which changed hands so many times during the great conflict of the Civil War, and where some of the residences to this day show the marks where shot and shell struck them.

        There are two graveyards at Winchester, situated side by side, with only a narrow footpath separating them. One is the United States National Cemetery, where sleep the Federal soldiers who fell in the neighborhood, and in the other lie the Confederates who probably killed and were killed by them. It is a solemn sight, these brave and silent warriors camped alongside of each other for all eternity.

        I am doubtful if my remarks on that occasion met with unanimous approval from my living audience. I feel sure, however, that they met with the approval of the dead heroes who, I maintained, had given up life and all that was dear to them in an effort to defend and protect their native land. But a fad, amounting almost to a religious mania, has swept over the nation in recent years. It is called "peace at any price" and is a menace to the country. Most living Southerners have either forgotten or never have experienced bayonet rule, and how the carpetbagger and the negro tyrannized over us in the days of the so-called "Reconstruction." They seem to think that if the conqueror does come, it will only be like a change in national administration, and that, secure in their lives and property, all will go on as before. These deluded "peace-at-any-price" people are bad enough, but then we have in our midst the more dangerous element American braggarts--who maintain that no preparation for war is necessary, as a crowd of farmers and dry-goods clerks armed with pitchforks, scythes, and yardsticks, or a corporal's guard of Boy Scouts with their pretty little staffs can whip the British Coldstream Guards and the Prussian Death's-Head Hussars combined! They point with pride to how the Confederates built, within a few months, ironclads which fought splendidly, and in their ignorance nothing but a great disaster could make them realize that a single modern dreadnaught can whip the Gulf of Mexico full of just such craft as the Merrimac, Albemarle, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

        They have entrusted the training of their boys entirely

to women, forgetting that woman follows the fashion of the moral fad of the hour as earnestly as she does the Parisian styles in clothes, and is easily persuaded to take up with ecstasy such fads or myths as universal peace, and to labor conscientiously to instill into the pliant minds of her young pupils the beautiful and peaceful principles of turning the other cheek, or lying down when they feel themselves being imposed upon. In fact, deep in her heart, there is nothing a woman has such a contempt and disgust for as she has for a weakling or a coward, and when the fad of the day is war, there is nothing so merciless and cruel as the female. I remember seeing the mothers and grandmothers of these same women, in the early sixties of the last century, instigating their men-folks to arm and slay, and I distinctly remember how they would contemptuously sweep aside their skirts for fear they would be contaminated by coming in contact with even a lifelong male friend who had dodged going into the fray. I also told the young men that these same young women, who held aloft their peace banners with such a sanctimonious air, would march off with the conqueror when he came, leaving their own men, the creatures of their fallacious teaching, prostrate under the heel of the victor, bereft of self-respect, property, and of all their good-looking young women. I warned them that wars would occur in the future as they had in the past; that they had continued, with short intervals of peace (for the purpose of recuperating their energies), since the time when God Almighty Himself and his archangel had led the hosts, to the day of Appomattox.

        I made my speech on the 30th of June, and on the 1st of August, thirty-two days later, the greatest war the world has yet witnessed was begun in Europe.

CHAPTER LVIII

The "birth of a nation"--Assistant manager of the Washington branch of the International Banking Corporation--Extracts from a diary kept on a journey to Panama--Meet my old classmates Admirals Coghlan and Glass, of the "brood of the Constitution"--My old hulk is laid up in ordinary waiting to be scrapped.

        IT does not fall to the lot of every man to be present at the birth of a nation, but it so happened that I was present when the Republic of Panama made its first appearance in the family of-- so-called--independent countries. President Roosevelt was the chief medical attendant in charge of the accouchement, with William Nelson Cromwell acting as sage femme and the French engineer, Bunau-Varilla, acting the part of the trained nurse.

        It so happened that in the year 1903 I was the assistant manager of the Washington branch of the International Banking Corporation. The high officials of the bank, whose headquarters were in New York, knew what was in the wind, and wished to send a representative to the Isthmus to spy out the land and report as to the advisability of establishing branches there. All of the bank officials agreed that it would be advisable to investigate the new field, but such was the universal fear of the dreaded yellow fever that they all side-stepped the detail. I volunteered for the service and received the appointment, as there were no competitors.

        The following extracts, made from my diary kept on the voyage, may be of interest:--

        December 1, 1903. At 11.30 A.M. boarded the Panama steamship Seguranca. This ship was the headquarters of General Shafter and his chief of staff, Colonel Miley, during the Spanish War. Found the decks deserted, but soon saw Mr. Bunau-Varilla, the first Panamanian Minister to the United States, come up from below. He continued to bob up and down through the hatchway until the ship was ready to sail. I wondered at his

strange antics until I learned that the whole Panama Government, the "Junta," was on board.

        A man who holds forth continuously in the smoking-room swears that he took part in the last Panama revolution and that "so many men were killed that the buzzards would not touch any one under the rank of a colonel."

        December 6. The "Junta," which hitherto has remained secluded, is now very much in evidence on deck. It appears that I am an object of some little curiosity among them. I was approached by Señor Arosemina, a highly educated gentleman with charming manners, who evidently intended to pump me as to my object in going to Panama at this time. He was very diplomatic and tactful, but I made the work easy for him by blurting out that "I had no secrets to conceal. I represented a great bank which had branches all over the world, and that I was going to the Isthmus to find out if it would pay us to establish branches there." The señor's astonishment at my frankness was so great that he fairly gasped, and then he took his leave.

        In a little while I was interviewed by another member of the "Junta," Don Federico Boyd,--the name sounds English because his father was a former American newspaper editor in Panama. Don Federico's manner was very different from that of the courtly Arosemina. He appeared to me to be very angry, and tersely informed me that under no circumstances would I be permitted to open a bank on the Isthmus, and then he turned on his heel and walked away.

        Shortly after this Señor Arosemina came to my stateroom, I suppose for the purpose of finding out how I took the unpleasant news. I told him that I wanted to bet that the United States, after all, would not recognize the Republic of Panama. As he smiled incredulously, I told him that General Thomas H. Hubbard, president of the International Banking Corporation, was not only a man of great wealth and social prominence, but that he was a man of great influence in the councils of the Republican Party, and that as soon as the ship reached the dock in Colon I was going to cable him that no American would be allowed to do a banking business in the country, and that of course he would make the contents of my cablegram public, and that I did not believe any United States Senator would have the courage to vote for the recognition of a country which would not allow a reputable American banker to do business within its limits.

        The señor seemed to consider my remarks as of sufficient importance to be reported to the "Junta," and soon I received a

visit from the head of that august body, Dr. Amador, first President of the Republic of Panama, who informed me that I entirely misunderstood what Don Federico Boyd had said to me; that the idea the latter intended to convey was that no foreign bank would be permitted to flood the country with its notes, etc.; but that while he did not think that a foreign bank would find it lucrative to start business in the community, still if I wanted to lose my money no one would prevent me so long as I did not put any bank-notes into circulation. As the International was not a bank of issue, and as I had never mentioned any intention of putting out bank-notes, I thought the explanation very ingenious--and very satisfactory. I told the President that I was merely going to look over the field and report as to whether or not I considered it would be advantageous to establish branches there. I afterwards learned that two of the President's daughters were married to two sons of Ehrman, who seemed to have a monopoly of the banking business of the country.

        Dr. Amador is tall and straight with a benign countenance and is possessed of the typical sympathetic manners of the family physician. He is said to be universally beloved and respected by the people of Panama.

        December 8. Ship rolled and pitched heavily all night. At daylight arrived at Colon. American fleet commanded by my former classmate Rear Admiral Joseph B. Coghlan ("Jolly Joe"), the man who created such excitement by repeating the popular "Hoch der Kaiser" rhymes, the refrain of which is "Me und Gott," for which he was banished to Bremerton.

        About every half-hour a rain squall passes over the place and the water comes down, not in drops, but in sheets.

        A small crowd of officials came to the dock to welcome Dr. Amador home. They seem delighted to learn that they have had a revolution and that it has been successful (in Washington). Dr. A. is really the whole revolution.

        At 9 A.M. took the special train for Panama. Train decorated with flags. We had an ovation all the way across the Isthmus. The train runs for some distance along the banks of the Chagres River and crosses that stream several times. From Colon to Panama there is an almost continuous settlement inhabited chiefly by Chinamen and Jamaica negroes. Along the route of the proposed canal there lies, going to ruin, an extraordinary amount of machinery such as locomotives, cars, steel rails, etc., and steam tugs, dredges, and barges.