Part 19 (2/2)

I believe that at the plantation our men had camped out. At Murfreesboro' we returned them to the general, and I took the Coltons to a hotel, which was so very rough that I apologised for it, while Baldwin said it seemed to him to be luxurious beyond belief, and that it was the first night for eighteen months in which he had slept in a bed. In the morning I wanted a spur, having lost one of mine, and there was brought to me a large boxful of all kinds of spurs to choose from, which had been left in the house at one time or another during the war.

I did not remain long in Nashville after returning thither. I had instructions to go to Louisville, Kentucky, and there consult with a certain merchant as to certain lands. General Whipple accompanied me to the ”depot,” which was for the time and place as much of an honour as if Her Majesty were to come to see me off at Victoria Station. There was many and many a magnate in those days and there, who would have given thousands to have had his ear as Paxton and I had it.

One night we were in the side private box at the theatre in Nashville.

Couldock, whom I had known well many years before, was on the stage. The General was keeping himself deeply in the shade to remain unseen. He remarked to Paxton that he wanted a house for his family, who would soon arrive, and could not find one, for they were all occupied. This one remark shows the man. I wonder how long General Butler would have hesitated to move anybody!

Captain Paxton knew everything and everybody. With a quick glance from his keen dark eyes he exclaimed--

”I've got it! Do you see that fat man laughing so heartily in the pit?

He has a splendid house; it would just suit you; and he's a d---d old rebel. I know enough about him to hang him three times over. He has”

(here followed a series of political iniquities). ”_Voila votre affaire_.”

”And how is it that he has kept his house?” asked the General.

”He sent the quartermaster a barrel of whisky, or something of that sort.”

The General looked thoughtfully at the fat man as the latter burst into a fresh peal of laughter. I thought that if he had known what was being said in our box that laugh would have died away.

I do not know whether the General took the house. I think he did. I left for Louisville. There I saw the great merchant, who invited me to his home to supper and consulted with me. His daughters were rebels and would not speak to me. He had a great deal of property in Indiana, which _might_ be oil-lands. If I would visit it and report on it, he would send his partner with me to examine it. I consented to go.

This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy manners. With him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by ”stages,” waggons, or on horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the interior of the State. I can remember vast marshy fields with millions of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen in my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to the doors and floors of the houses. At last we reached our journey's end at a large log-house on a good farm.

I liked the good man of the house. He said to us, after a time, that at first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up city fellows, but had found to his joy that we were old-fas.h.i.+oned, sensible people. There was no sugar at his supper-table, but he had three subst.i.tutes for it--”tree-sweetnin', bee-sweetnin', and sorghum”--that is, maple sugar, honey, and the mola.s.ses made from Chinese maize. Only at a mile's distance there was a ”sugar-camp,” and we could see the fires and hear the shouts of the people engaged night and day in making sugar from the trees.

He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often wandered.

During the Revolutionary war some one had buried a barrelful of silver plate and money, and over it flitted the quivering silver flame, but no one could ever find the spot.

The next day I examined the land. There was abundance of fossiliferous limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary sh.e.l.ls, also cartloads of beautiful _geodes_ or round flint b.a.l.l.s, which often rattled, and which, when broken, were encrusted with white or purple amethystine crystals. I decided that there were places where oil might be found, though there was certainly no indication of it. I believe that my conjecture subsequently proved to be true, and that Indiana has shown herself to be a wise virgin not without oil.

On the afternoon of the next day, riding with my guide, I found that I had left my blanket at a house miles behind. I offered the man a large price to return and bring it, which he did. While waiting by the wood, in a dismal drizzle, I saw a log cabin and went to it for shelter. Its only inmate was a young woman, who, seeing me coming, hastily locked the door and rushed into the neighbouring woods. When the guide returned I expressed some astonishment at the flight; _he_ did not. With a very grave expression he asked me, ”Don't the gals in _your_ part of the country allays break for the woods when they see _you_ a-coming?”

”Certainly not,” I replied. To which he made answer, ”Thank G.o.d, our gals here hev got better morrils than yourn.”

We returned to St. Louis. There I was shown the immensely long tomb of Porter the Kentucky giant. This man was nine feet in height! I had seen him alive long before in Philadelphia. I made several interesting acquaintances in St. Louis, the Athens of the West. But I must hurry on.

I went to Cincinnati, where I found orders to wait for Mr. Lea. A syndicate had been formed in Providence, Rhode Island, which had purchased a great property in Cannelton, West Virginia. This consisted of a mountain in which there was an immense deposit of cannel coal.

Cannelton was very near the town of Charleston, which is at the junction of the Kanawha (a tributary of the Ohio) and Elk rivers.

I waited a week at the hotel in Cincinnati for Mr. Lea. It was a weary week, for I had no acquaintances and made none. Never in my life before did I see so many Sardines, or Philistines of the dullest stamp as at that hotel. But at last Mr. Lea came with a party of ladies and gentlemen. A small steamboat was secured, and we went up the Ohio. The voyage was agreeable and not without some incidents. There was a freshet in the river, and one night, taking a short cut over a cornfield, the steamboat stuck fast--like Eve--in an apple-tree.

One day one of the party asked me what was the greatest aggregate deposit of coal known in England. I could not answer. A few hours after we stopped at a town in Kentucky. There I discovered by chance some old Patent Office reports, and among them all the statistics describing the coal mines in England. When we returned to the boat I told my informant that the largest deposit in England was just half that of Cannelton, and added many details. Mr. Lea was amazed at my knowledge. I told him that I deserved no credit, for I had picked it up by chance. ”Yes,” he replied, ”and how was it that you _chanced_ to read that book? None of us did. Such chances come to inquiring minds.”

It also chanced that this whole country abounded in signs of petroleum.

It was found floating on springs. The company possessed rights of royalty on thousands of acres on Elk River, which was as yet in the debatable land, hara.s.sed by rebels. These claims, however, were ”run out,” and needed to be renewed by signatures from the residents. They were in the hands of David Goshorn, who kept the only ”tavern” or hotel in Charleston, and he asked $5,000 for his rights. There was another party in the field after them.

I verily believe that David Goshorn sold the right to me because he played the fiddle and I the guitar, and because he did not like the rival, who was a Yankee, while I was a congenial companion. Many a journey had we together, and as I appreciated him as a marked character of odd oppositions, we got on admirably.

In Cannelton I went down into a coal mine and risked my life strangely in ascending a railway. The hill is 1,500 feet in height, and on its face is a railway which ascends at an angle of 15 degrees, perhaps the steepest in America. I ascended in it, and soon observed that of the two strands of the iron cable which drew it one was broken. The very next week the other broke, and two men were killed by an awful death, they and the car falling a thousand feet to the rocks below.

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