On the Border with Mackenzie: or, Winning West Texas

By Capt. R. G. Carter

When it was first published in 1935, On the Border with Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches quickly became known as the most complete account of the Indian Wars on the Texas frontier during the 1870s, and remains one of the most exhaustive histories ever written by an actual participant in the Texas Indian Wars.

The author, Capt. Robert G. Carter, a Union Army veteran and West Point graduate, was appointed in 1870 to serve as second lieutenant in the Fourth United States Cavalry stationed at Fort Concho, Texas. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1900 for his gallantry in action against the Indians occurring on October 10, 1871, during the battle of Blanco Canyon. Led by Col. Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, the Fourth Cavalry moved its headquarters to Fort Richardson, Texas, in 1871 where they soon became one of the most effective units on the western frontier. Among the battles and skirmishes they participated in were the Warren wagon train raid of 1871; the Kicking Bird pursuit of 1871; the Remolino fight of 1873; the Red River War of 1874-75; and the Black Hills War of 1876.

“…a splendid contribution to the early frontier history of West Texas…a story filled with humor and pathos, tragedies and triumphs, hunger and thirst, war and adventure.”—L. F. Sheffy

“…[Carter] pulls no punches in this outspoken narrative, and the reader always knows where he stands.”—John H. Jenkins, Texas Basic Books

“…essential to any study of the Indian Wars of the Southern Plains.”—Charles Robinson, Foreword

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789120172

Capt. R. G. Carter

Robert Goldthwaite Carter (October 29, 1845 - January 4, 1936) was a U.S. Cavalry officer who served in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars, most notably against the Comanche during which he received the Medal of Honor for his role against a Comanche raiding party at Brazos River in Texas on October 10, 1871. Born in Bridgton, Maine, he moved to Massachusetts in 1857. He was preparing to enter Phillips Academy when he enlisted as a private in the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry at the start of the American Civil War, remaining with Army of the Potomac for two years (1862-1864), and took part in the Battle of Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and the Siege of Petersburg. In July 1865, he began attending West Point and was eventually commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 4th U.S. Cavalry in 1870. He participated in a number of expeditions over the next years against the Comanche and other tribes in the Texas-area. He was brevetted first lieutenant and awarded the Medal of Honor for his “most distinguished gallantry” against the Comanche in Blanco Canyon on a tributary of the Brazos River in 1871. Returning to active duty, he joined several campaigns, including against the Kickapoo of northern Mexico in May 1873, and awarded a brevet to captain. He won promotion to first lieutenant in 1875 but a severe leg injury disqualified him from active field duty and forced him to retire in 1876. He was promoted to captain on the retired list in 1904. He taught school and later headed the Washington-bureau of the Public Service Publishing Company in New York City. He wrote a number of booklets and books including Four Brothers in Blue (1913) and The Old Sergeant’s Story (1926). His most successful work was his memoir On the Border with Mackenzie (1935), which was published as the age of 90. Capt. Carter died at Washington, D.C. in 1936.

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Text originally published in 1935 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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ON THE BORDER WITH MACKENZIE

OR

WINNING WEST TEXAS FROM THE COMANCHES

BY

CAPT. R. G. CARTER, U.S. ARMY, RETIRED

THE DRAGOON BOLD (POEM)

"Oh, the dragoon bold, he scorns all care,

As he goes around with his uncropped hair,

He spends no thought on the evil star

That sent him away to the border war.

"His form in the saddle he lightly throws

And on the moonlight scout he goes,

And merrily trolls some old time song

As over the trail he bounds along.

"Oh, blithe is the life a soldier leads

When a lawless freedom marks his deeds,

And gay his path o’er the wildwood sod

Where a white man’s foot hath never trod."

ILLUSTRATION—GENERAL RANALD S. MACKENZIE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

FOREWORD BY J. C. DYKES 7

CAPTAIN CARTER—SOLDIER 7

CAPTAIN CARTER—WRITER 9

GENERAL RANALD MACKENZIE 11

PREFACE 13

INTRODUCTION 17

CHAPTER I—The Wedding Tour of An Army Bride 19

CHAPTER II—A Frontier Line—Border Posts 51

CHAPTER III—The March to Fort Richardson 58

CHAPTER IV—A Most Horrible Massacre—Sa-tan-tas Capture 71

CHAPTER V—The Captive Chiefs Conveyed to Texas—Death Chant and Killing of Se-tank—An Acrobatic Corporal 77

CHAPTER VI—Pursuit of Kicking Bird A Campaign in the Texas Bad Lands Against the Ki-o-was 86

CHAPTER VII—Tragedies Of Cañon Blanco 112

CHAPTER VIII—On the Trail of Deserters—A Phenomenal Capture 155

CHAPTER IX—Recollections Of An Indian Reservation 176

CHAPTER X—Our Wild Nomads—A Vanishing Race 189

CHAPTER XI—The Army Witness and His Dramatic Adventures 206

CHAPTER XII—Pictures of a Frontier Garrison Life Our Quarters—Carter’s Village 219

CHAPTER XIII—A Midnight Council On the Fort Sill Trail and The Scouts’ Test 235

CHAPTER XIV—Capture of Mow-wis Comanche Village and the Comanche Squaws 251

CHAPTER XV—To the Mexican Border For the Good of the Regiment 262

CHAPTER XVI—The Mackenzie Raid Into Mexico 278

CHAPTER XVII—Campaign of 1874-1876 312

CHAPTER XVIII—Mopping Up the Texas Panhandle 328

CHAPTER XIX—Surrender of Mow-Wi (Hand Shaker), the Qua-ha-da Comanche Chief. 349

NEWSPAPER COMMENT 354

CONCLUSION 355

Official Record of Brigadier General Ranald Slidell MacKenzie U.S.A. 356

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 361

DEDICATION

To the memory of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, that gallant Colonel of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry, whose star set in the overshadowing darkness of a clouded night, and to those heroic officers and soldiers of that command—my brave and devoted comrades of the Plains—who, by their untiring energy and zeal, their unrecorded sufferings, hardships and many sacrifices, did so much to make civilization possible on the borders of far Western Texas—this imperfect story of their services, is most sincerely and affectionately dedicated.

FOREWORD BY J. C. DYKES

CAPTAIN CARTER—SOLDIER

Robert Goldthwaite Carter is one of the half-forgotten heroes of the Indian wars in Texas. As a young officer in the Fourth Cavalry he had a major role in assisting General Ranald Mackenzie to clear the Llano Estacado (High Plains) of Texas of Indians, thus opening up a vast area to settlement. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for most distinguished gallantry in action against the Indiana on the upper Brazos on October 10, 1871. Carter was a Second Lieutenant at this time and was brevetted a First Lieutenant for his gallantry. In 1873 (he was not actually promoted to First Lieutenant until 1875), he was brevetted Captain for gallant services in action on the Mackenzie punitive invasion of Mexico. The Indians, who had constantly harassed the Texas frontier by their raids across the Rio Grande, were badly defeated and the Southwest border country made much safer for ranchers and settlers.

The State of Texas took an unprecedented action following the Mackenzie raid:

"Whereas reliable information has been received that General Ranald Mackenzie of the U.S. Army, with the troops under his command did on the 19th day of May, 1873, cross the Rio Grande into the Republic of Mexico and inflict summary punishment upon a band of Kickapoo Indians, who, harbored and fostered by the Mexican authorities, have for years past been waging a predatory warfare upon the frontier of Texas, murdering our citizens, carrying their children into captivity, and plundering their property: therefore,

"Resolved by the Senate of the State of Texas, the House concurring, That the grateful thanks of the people of our State, and particularly the citizens of our frontier, are due to General Mackenzie and the troops under his command for their prompt action and gallant conduct in inflicting well merited punishment upon these scourges of our frontier.

"Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be, and he is hereby, requested to forward a copy of these resolutions to General Mackenzie and the officers and troops under his command."

The joint resolution was officially signed by the Governor and copies were sent to Mackenzie and the Fourth. Here we have a State thanking a Federal officer for his unauthorized invasion of a sister and friendly republic.

Captain Carter is not specifically mentioned in the joint resolution, but the fact that he was brevetted for his conduct indicates the importance of his role. Incidentally, it was this brevet that entitled (a matter of military courtesy and usage) Carter to the title Captain since his permanent rank was never higher than First Lieutenant.

Many years later (1928) a bronze tablet was placed over the fireplace in the lobby of the Spur Inn, Spur, Texas, to commemorate The Mackenzie Trail. The Inn was built on the Trail used by Mackenzie on his expeditions against the Indians. Captain Carter is honored in these words, Captain Robert G. Carter, formerly Fourth U.S. Calvary, is especially worthy of honor because of serious and permanent injuries received in action against the Indians on what is now the Spur Ranch, compelling his early retirement from active service.

Despite such recognition, Carter is practically an unknown today among the school children of Texas. Mackenzie is not much better known in a State that owes him much.

Robert Goldthwaite Carter was born in Maine on October 29, 1845 and grew up in Maine and Massachusetts. He came of fighting stock as at least twenty of his ancestors served in the Colonial, French and Indian, and Revolutionary Wars. At the first call for volunteers in 1861 Bob Carter tried to enlist—he tried again in 1862 but on both occasions he was turned down as being under-age. Later in 1862 he told the recruiting officer that he was eighteen, the legal age, and was accepted. He began his services as a private in Company H, 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The 22nd Mass. lost 216 men by death on the battlefield and gained the reputation of being one of the best fighting regiments in the Army of the Potomac. Bob Carter was the youngest of four brothers in the Army of the Potomac and between them they participated in every campaign and major battle from the first Bull Run to the surrender at Appomattox. Captain (Brevet Major) Eugene Carter was a graduate of West Point, class of ‘61; John H. Carter rose to the rank of sergeant in the artillery while still another brother, Walter, became a sergeant-major. Bob Carter was cited for good conduct but due to his youth received no promotion or brevets—he was mustered out on October 4, 1864.

Bob Carter entered West Point on July 1, 1865 and graduated June 5, 1870. While a cadet he was a corporal, sergeant, and first lieutenant in the cadet battalion. On August 4, 1869 he saved the life of a young lady from drowning in the Hudson River at the risk of his own life. After graduation leave he reported to the 4th U.S. Cavalry in Texas. His career in Texas is covered in detail in this book. But, it was soon over.

As a result of his serious leg injury received in a fight with the Comanches in October, 1871 and his continuing to serve after receiving it, he was forced to retire as permanently disqualified on June 28, 1876. Antiseptic surgery was unknown at the time and it was not until nearly a quarter of a century later that he was freed of the pain and his disability by skilful surgical operations. This surgery could not be performed at the time of his forced retirement—it involved ten stays in the hospital and twenty-five major and minor operations. Captain Carter was not satisfied to stay on retirement once the disability was removed and constantly urged on the Army, and finally the President, his restoration to active duty. His requests were not granted.

Captain Carter’s son, Robert D., carried on the fighting tradition of the Carters. He became a Second Lieutenant in 1900 and served in the Philippines, on the Mexican Border, and in France in the First World War. He retired as a Lieutenant-Colonel on October 22, 1918. He died of pneumonia in the early thirties and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

CAPTAIN CARTER—WRITER

This book was issued in 1935 when the author was 90 years old but to quickly reassure those who may feel that it was written when Captain Carter’s memory was dimmed by time, some parts of it were printed in YOUTH’S COMPANION and OUTING MAGAZINE as early as 1886. Carter was completely loyal to General Mackenzie—he sincerely believed that Mackenzie was the most efficient officer in the Army. It was not long after he was forced to retire that he started work on this book as a tribute to his old commanding officer. The magazine stories and the book are based on Carter’s diaries and journal and on official memoranda and records. At least four chapters in the book were issued separately: TRAGEDIES OF CAÑON BLANCO: A STORY OF THE TEXAS PANHANDLE and THE MACKENZIE RAID INTO MEXICO in 1919 and ON THE TRAIL OF DESERTERS: A PHENOMENAL CAPTURE and PURSUIT OF KICKING BIRD: A CAMPAIGN IN THE TEXAS BADLANDS in 1920. It is likely that all, or nearly all, the text of another booklet, MASSACRE OF SALT CREEK PRAIRIE AND THE COWBOYS’ VERDICT issued in 1919 appears in the book. These booklets were printed in editions of 100 copies each and distributed to his friends and relatives and are now all eagerly sought by collectors.

The text of this book was ready for the printer many years before it was finally issued. It was offered to at least a dozen publishers—it was praised by some but they did not buy it for publication. Letters from the publishers, carbons of the Captain’s replies, and carbons of his letters to old army and other friends on the book are a part of the Carter Papers, owned by this writer. They reveal that one publisher thought that he might be interested provided the Captain would convert the book to a novel with an Indian heroine. Another suggested that the Captain secure the services of a professional writer to whip the manuscript into shape for publication and intimated that after this was done he might be interested in issuing it. Captain Carter indignantly rejected both suggestions. He had spent years in writing it, he revised and polished the manuscript several times as a result of new information and suggestions offered by former members of the Fourth (their letters are also in this writer’s collection) and he was confident, almost to the end of his life, that he would find a publisher for his masterpiece.

The names of the publishers who passed up an opportunity to publish one of the most sought for modern books of Western Americana will be omitted to protect the guilty. In the end, because he felt time was running out for him, Captain Carter had the book printed at his own expense. The title page carries the name of Eynon Printing Company, Inc. and in small type below the name is the word Publishers but this writer’s research indicates that this is in error and that Eynon was only the printer. However, it may have been a kinfolks rate arrangement since one of Captain Carter’s granddaughters married an Eynon. It has not been possible to determine the number of copies printed but it is a cinch that the edition was small and soon exhausted. This writer’s copy was purchased nearly a quarter of a century ago and he cannot recall having another opportunity to buy a copy. On the other hand, several other collectors have slyly offered various trades and even considerable cash-in-hand to effect a change in ownership without success.

Unfortunately, Captain Carter did not live to hear much of the acclaim that greeted his book on every hand. He died in Washington, D.C. on January 4, 1936 (his body lies in the Arlington National Cemetery), Scholars were quick to recognize that ON THE BORDER WITH MACKENZIE contains the most complete account of the Indian wars of the Texas frontier in the Seventies available to date. When paired with Captain Carter’s own THE OLD SERGEANT’S STORY (New York, 1926) the picture is just about all there—few can add to it. And despite the opinion of some stodgy publishers who said no here is one solid vote for a soldier’s eyewitness account that has its spritelier moments.

Captain Carter was a rather experienced writer when this book first went to press. His first separate publication appears to have been RECORDS OF THE MILITARY SERVICE OF FIRST LIEUTENANT AND BREVET CAPTAIN ROBERT GOLDTHWAITE CARTER, U.S. ARMY, 1862-1876. This booklet of 48 pages was issued in Washington in 1904. It was printed by Gibson Bros., according to the title page but it was almost surely paid for by Captain Carter since it seems to have been used primarily in his campaign for restoration, when he was almost sixty, to active duty with the Army.

His second book was also issued in Washington, D.C., FOUR BROTHERS IN BLUE, in 1913. This is large book of over 500 pages and deals with the Civil War experiences of the four Carter boys. The Captain explains in his introduction to this book that FOUR BROTHERS IN BLUE was compiled from all the letters written home by these four brothers and carefully preserved by a loving mother for future reference. This writer wants to point out that FOUR BROTHERS IN BLUE is not a compilation of letters from the front but a rather skilfully woven narrative of life on the Potomac front. The Captain certainly used the official records to supplement the letters. It is rumored that only 100 copies of this Civil War book were printed. It is most assuredly rare—it was not included in the first edition of Wright Howes’ US-IANA (New York, 1954).

While Captain Carter’s total output was not great—three hard-cover books and six booklets—it was certainly a significant contribution to the history of the Civil War and more particularly the Indian Wars in Texas, This reprint of ON THE BORDER WITH MACKENZIE is long overdue.

GENERAL RANALD MACKENZIE

This book is dedicated to the memory of General Mackenzie and to my brave and devoted comrades of the Plains by Captain Carter. The numerous letters from former members of the Fourth and from other friends, including many high ranking army officers, in the Carter Papers indicate that the Captain was a prodigious letter writer. Following the death of his wife after 53 years of married life, Captain Carter moved to The Army and Navy Club, Washington, D.C., about 1924. Here he stoutly defended Mackenzie in discussions with the other veterans of the Indian Wars and in his letters. While the last chapter of this book has much to say about General Mackenzie, the carbon of a letter in the Carter Papers seems to describe Mackenzie unusually well. It has previously appeared in CORRAL DUST, the official publication of the Potomac Corral, THE WESTERNERS, and in the Potomac Corral’s GREAT WESTERN INDIAN FIGHTS (New York, 1960) and is repeated here to round out the picture of Mackenzie.

"He was five feet, nine inches, in height; was very thin and spare and did not weigh over 145 pounds. Later, when he was made a brigadier general he gained flesh and may have weighed 160, but never 175 pounds. Most of the time he commanded the Fourth Cavalry. He was fretful, irritable, oftentimes irascible and pretty hard to serve with. This was due largely to his failing to take care of himself and his three wounds received during the Civil War, plus a bad arrow wound in his thigh in the 1871 campaign. He kept late hours, ate but little and slept less than anybody in the regiment. But he was not a martinet and was always just to all the officers and men. He finally broke down from worry and neglect in keeping up his strength by proper food and sleep.

"Mackenzie was a poor rider. He could not ride more than 25 to 30 miles without being in great pain and yet he rode 160 miles in 32 hours when we crossed the Rio Grande River in 1873, without, so far as I can recall, a single murmur or sign of exhaustion, although many of our men after going without sleep for 3 nights had hallucinations and showed signs of exhaustion and incipient insanity.

"He was so careless about his clothes on a campaign that in 1871—when we followed the Northern or Quahadi Comanches out on the Staked Plains and lost them at dusk in a black, sleeting norther—the men had to pull a buffalo robe off a pack mule and wrap it about him to keep him from freezing to death.

"Mackenzie hung on like a bull dog until the Indians begged him to let go. He had more brains than Carter, better judgment, and he carefully planned his attacks, providing for all emergencies, inspecting the arms and ammunition, and ordering all surplus ammunition to be carried by the men instead of placing it in the saddle pockets to be secured by the Indians by stampeding the horses.

Furthermore, all of his officers were loyal to him. There was no Reno or Benteen clique and there was always good team-work. He had many faults, but I always thought that his wounds and his intense concentration upon his work—the work that kills—and his ambition to succeed was the cause of his breakdown and I really regarded him as our best, most reliable or dependable Indian fighter. If Grant selected him to hold down those conditions in 1876 (threatened election riots), it was because he thought he was the best man fitted for the job, just as he expressed in his memoirs, ‘Mackenzie is the most promising young officer in the army.’ He had an indomitable will, wonderful powers of endurance and unsurpassed courage.

PREFACE

The railroad—that great civilizing agency—the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the radio and the many marvellous inventions of man have wrought such a wonderful transformation in our great Western country, that even now the American Indian has really become a race of the past—a Vanishing Race—and history alone will record the deeds and career of this strange and almost extinct people.

With these almost miraculous changes has come the extermination of the buffalo, and pretty much all of the wild game which, in countless numbers, freely roamed the vast prairies.

Where the nomadic red man and his migratory companion, the bison, lived and thrived but a comparatively short period ago, are now populous towns and cities, railroads, schools, ranches, great farms with immense yields of wheat, cotton, oil gushers, etc., and all the factories, mills and appliances of modern civilization.

It is my purpose in offering this work to contribute from my diaries, journals, itineraries, and illustrations, before they are lost to view, whatever has occurred in my experience, covering a period of years, in that Far West, in the expansion and peopling of which I was merely one of the actors, as an officer of our little Army which was so closely identified with that work.

This is by no means a history of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry. That I leave for abler hands. It is simply a brief narrative of events during the campaigns of that regiment under the leadership of that beau sabreur of the Cavalry, General Ranald S. Mackenzie, who, General Grant declared in his memoirs, was The most promising young officer of the Army,—from 1871 to 1876 in Texas, the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), on the Staked Plains (Llano Estacado) and Old Mexico into which has been, woven a few sketches of personal adventure, hunting and incidents peculiar to the frontier life of a Cavalry subaltern, in camp and garrison, on the march and in bivouac, at a time when the Western border was ablaze with Indian wars, and no Artist-on-the-Spot, or Our Special Correspondent were on hand to give a vivid or realistic picture of that life. Mackenzie’s part in the Winning of the West has never been, as yet, fully visualized, nor full credit given to the Fourth Cavalry for the part it took in the opening up of the Southwest, where credit was due. Doubtless had he lived much more would have been recorded of his busy life during the Civil War and on the frontier, than the writer is now able officially to transcribe, as many of his reports, letters and papers have either been lost or are almost impossible now to find.

History is defined to be the recorded events of the past, that branch of science which is occupied with ascertaining and recording the facts of the past.

History deals with facts and history can only be reliable when it is written by persons not interested in the outcome of the treatment to be given men or events dealt with.

What we now call propaganda is and has been too often mistaken for historical facts. There is no doubt but that much of what goes as history would have been differently recorded if the writer had had access to the facts or had not mistaken propaganda for facts, but better still have been a personal and active participant.

So far little attention has been paid to the facts having to do with the history of West Texas, while every phase of the history of the older portions of the State have been dealt with. This section has a history all its own just as fascinating and colorful as any other part of Texas; probably more so.

During the period prior to and including the years 1870-1873 while there had been a continuous Indian warfare on the border east and west of the 100th meridian, and north, including parts of the Texas Panhandle, in which units of our little regular army had been involved, all of which has been made a matter of record for years, and during which many lives were lost, ranches burned, women and children captured, and cattle and horses stolen, it was not until 1874 that the War Department resolved to place enough troops in the field, operating along converging columns and under some of its very best officers of tried experience, for the purpose of subjugating or annihilating those wild bands of Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians, who up to this period had absolutely refused to go into a Government reservation and become Agency Indians.

For many years West Texas had been given over to the red man and no settler dared to go west of the 100th meridian unless under the very guns of the forts temporarily placed at strategic points as a line of defense. The columns sent into the field during that period, 1874-1875, were under General N. A. Miles, operating from the North; Lieut.-Colonel (Black Jack) Davidson operating West from Fort Sill, I. T. (now Oklahoma); General Ranald S. Mackenzie, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, than whom there was no more effective fighter in the entire army, operating from Fort Concho towards the North and West; Col. G. P. Buell and Lt.-Col. (Beau) Neill operating in co-operation with General Mackenzie near the Fort Sill reservation in the Indian Territory, while Major Price was operating from old Fort Bascom, N. M., towards the East.

Thus there was placed in the field some 2,000 men for the purpose of crushing or subjugating these savages, who broke treaties and promises, because they were enraged at what they declared was the encroachment of the whites on their lands and the slaughter of buffalo on what they considered their own hunting ground—4,000,000 alone having been killed by the buffalo hunters north of Texas, to say nothing of the millions killed in Texas.

Many battles took place in the Texas Panhandle among the canyons and breaks of the Staked Plains. Until finally, after their villages and supplies had been taken and burned and all of their ponies captured and killed, leaving the Indians afoot on the high plains in midwinter, they were compelled to go into the reservation and surrender or starve. And thus the way was cleared and West Texas was at last relieved from further savage incursions, burning, pillaging and capture of women and children, and that region was made open to settlement and rapid development made possible.

The officers and men of our little army freely offered their lives and actually cleared that vast region giving it to civilization forever. One writer states, It is to be hoped that the services and sacrifices of these men will at least be remembered by the people who occupy this country and enjoy its benefits.

That section alone freed from the ravages of the Indians by our various campaigns, but particularly that of 1874-1875, is larger than all New England, together with New York, New Jersey and Delaware. This work will deal only with the Mackenzie column to which the writer was attached for this hard and perilous duty, and of which, it is believed, he is now the only surviving officer.

R. G. CARTER,

Captain, U.S. Army, Ret’d.

Formerly Fourth U.S. Cavalry.

Army & Navy Club,

Washington, D.C.,

October 29, 1931.

This story has been compiled from the diaries, journals and memoranda of an officer of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry who served with General Mackenzie in most of his Indian campaigns. He was his Field Adjutant on Mackenzie’s first Indian Expedition in 1871, and as his Acting Adjutant and confidential adviser assisted him in his plans for his great raid into Mexico in May 1873, which resulted in quiet along the Rio Grande border for many years, and a joint resolution of Grateful Thanks from the Texas Legislature convened in special session for that purpose by the Governor of that State.

Accompanying this story are many photos for reproduction, very valuable now as the negatives (wet plate) have long since been destroyed, showing the various border posts; Indian village life in their skin lodges or tepees; hunting camps; drying buffalo meat; many noted chiefs, now dead; etc., etc.

Some of the most prominent members of the U.S. Geological Survey and of the Cosmos Club of this city, and who are more or less familiar with the recurring Indian outbreaks in the southwest, are urging me to publish this material, in order that the present generation of Texans, of the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and along the Rio Grande border, may know something more of the hardships, privations and sacrifices which our little regular army made in those days to free the settlers from marauding bands of savages and to secure the peace and prosperity of that part of Texas which is now one of the richest and most populous sections of the United States in minerals, oil, cotton, etc., where during that period that section was overrun with Indians, buffalo, wolves, jack rabbits, prairie dogs, sage brush and cactus.

R. G. CARTER, Washington, D, C., April 1935.

INTRODUCTION

The writer was born at Bridgton, Maine, October 29, 1845, but in 1847 removed to Portland, Maine, where he received his early education in the public schools of that beautiful Forrest City—the home of Longfellow—on Casco Bay by the sea. His father was a prominent journalist, lawyer and jurist for more than 60 years. He was then editor of the leading Whig paper of the state—the Portland Advertiser—and was associated with the Washburnes, Morrills, William Pitt Fessenden (Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln), Hannibal Hamlin (his cousin, who later became vice-president of the United States with Abraham Lincoln), Neal Dow, James G. Blaine, who succeeded him as editor of the Advertiser, and many others in the formation of the Republican party of that state. As a delegate to the first convention of that party in 1856 for the nomination of John C. Fremont, he and Blaine occupied the same room and bed at the old Continental Hotel in Philadelphia.

Becoming wearied of politics, Judge Carter removed to Massachusetts in 1857 and resumed the practice of law. The writer’s education being then incomplete, he was, at the age of 15, about to enter Phillips (Andover) Academy to prepare for college or business, when the demon of Civil War broke out and changed the entire course of his future life. At the age of 16, the youngest of four brothers, he entered the service to fight for the preservation of the Union. One brother entered the regular army and the others enlisted as volunteers. Although their father was then, on account of his military experience (having been a Cadet at West Point for two years—1832-1834), Chairman of the Military Committee of the Massachusetts Senate, and in daily conference with the great war governor, John A. Andrew, and could have secured commissions for all of them for the asking, but on account of their extreme youth and lack of experience, all declined, preferring to remain in the ranks where they felt they could perform more efficient service.

They covered all of the principal campaigns and battles from the first Bull Run in 1861 to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865—one brother commanding B Company, Third U.S. Infantry, at the former battle, while another, the eldest, was a sergeant in the First Massachusetts H. A. (Fourteenth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry) at the surrender. It is also a well authenticated fact that these two brothers were both on duty the same day at either end of Long Bridge, examining all passes of officers and soldiers crossing the Potomac River.

The writer came from a race of soldiers. He has the military records of 34 ancestors on the paternal and maternal sides who fought in every war that this country was engaged in, including Unigrets, King Phillips, (one ancestor, Major Mason, being credited with having killed the great Narragansett chieftain), both sieges of Louisberg, Acadian Expedition, French and Indian Wars, the relief of Fort William Henry, Siege of Oswego, Lord Amherst’s Expedition to Crown Point, etc., up to the Revolution, in which both paternal great-grandfathers fought—one with four sons, as a Captain, and the other, as a Colonel, with two sons. Among these ancestors was one Colonel David How (or Howe), cousin of Tabitha Hough (How or Howe), the wife of Colonel Josiah Carter, the writer’s great-great-grandfather, a Colonial and Revolutionary soldier, who had been in the garrisons of Sudbury, Leominster, and Lancaster, Mass., when the latter was burned three times, its inmates massacred and women and children carried into captivity by Indians. Colonel Howe built at Sudbury the celebrated Red Horse Tavern, made famous by the poet Longfellow as The Wayside Inn. It was maintained in the possession of himself and descendants for nearly 150 years, and has been recently bought by Henry Ford, the automobile builder, to be restored to its original form and converted into a museum.

The campaigns and battles of the Civil War have been graphically portrayed by the writer in a volume of 509 pages entitled Four Brothers in Blue—or Sunshine and Shadows of the War of the Rebellion—a true story of the great Civil War from Bull Run to Appomattox, and is compiled from all of the letters written home by these four brothers and carefully preserved by a loving mother for future reference. They do not follow the diary form but are broken up into a running narrative or sketched story.

The year of 1865 found this young soldier fresh from the battles of the Army of the Potomac, now a veteran, entering West Point as a cadet. His father and a brother had been there before him, the former in the class of 1836 with such distinguished soldiers as Generals Meade, Hooker, Meigs and Haupt. His roommate had been A. P. Crittenden, nephew of Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. He had resigned from the army, had studied law, and was practising in San Francisco, when he was killed by one Laura Fair, a California adventuress on the Oakland ferry boat. The writer’s brother was in the class of 1861 and was a classmate of General Custer, killed in the battle of the Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876; Alonzo Cushing, killed in the assault by Pickett upon his battery A Fourth U S. Artillery at the Bloody Angle, Gettysburg, Pa., July 3, 1863; Colonel Patrick O’Rourke (140 N. Y. Vol. Inf.), killed on Little Round Top, July 2; and Lieut. G. A. Woodruff, killed at the Bryan House near Ziegler’s Grove, the next day.

West Point was therefore a hallowed spot, a cherished memory for the young soldier just graduated from the old Army of the Potomac and with his just pride in the record of battles fought on the fields of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, etc., for the preservation of the Union, he transmits the same as a heritage to his children and to the readers of these lines. Moreover, his ancestors had been there and at Newburg in the Continental line during the disaffection of Benedict Arnold and his treasonable plot to surrender West Point to the British for a sum in gold. Almost the first thing the writer saw when attending Sunday service in the old cadet chapel, and always pointed out to all new cadets, was the black tablet on its walls, and next to such names as Knox, Wayne, Greene, Lafayette, and Pulaski, with no name upon it—a perfect blank—to indicate to the cadet just about to enter upon his studies and following his graduation, a lifelong and honorable career, how odious was and will ever be, that act of Arnold’s black hearted treason for mercenary gain.

CHAPTER I—The Wedding Tour of An Army Bride

GRADUATED from West Point June 15, 1870; married September 4, 1870; assigned by a War Department order to Troop E, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, then stationed in Texas, with headquarters in San Antonio. What next? Why, a Wedding tour or ‘tear’ by an army bride—of course. This long and rather eventful journey, of over 2,000 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to the far off western frontier or extreme border of Texas, was our goal and our reveille, or awakening to army life on the border, and ultimately of putting this young battle-disciplined soldier and his unsophisticated bride on The Fighting Line for the further advancement of civilization all along the southwest border from the Rio Grande to Kansas, and from a line of rude posts already established or being built to the easterly limits of New Mexico and Arizona, then almost uncharted territories. This vast area comprising the state of Texas and Indian Territory, much of it now included in the state of Oklahoma, and covering the great unexplored region of the Staked Plains (Llano Estacado), and the Panhandle was then infested by numerous bands, large and small, of the nomadic and hostile tribes of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, intent upon securing their rights under the many treaties which the Government had been making with them; with predatory bands of Lipans and Kickapoos, the latter having left their reservations in Kansas and gone into old Mexico during the Civil War; while to the North and East were the civilized and semi civilized tribes of Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Osages and Delawares of the Indian nation—which had many years before been transported from their homes in North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.

The following official letter from the headquarters of the Fourth Cavalry was our only guide, and on September 12 we started:

"Headquarters Fourth U. S, Cavalry,

San Antonio, Texas,

August 22, 1870.

Second Lieutenant Robert G. Carter,

Fourth U.S. Cavalry,

Bradford, Mass.

Sir:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your personal report of the 8th instant, and to inform you that your Company (E) is stationed at Fort Concho, Texas, 215 miles distant from here.

Your route is, via New Orleans and Indianalo—the latter by stage; thence by stage to Fort Concho, three times a week.

I presume you can get a horse at the station of your Company.

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

(Signed) JNO. M. WALTON,

2nd Lieut., 4th Cav’y,

R.Q.M. & Act’g Adjutant."

Our journey was via the old Panhandle Route, through Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky.; Holly Springs and Humboldt, Tenn.; Milan, Grenada and Jackson, Miss.; to New Orleans; thence across the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston (we found we could not go by Indianola as the official letter had indicated), and from there partly by stage and by rail to San Antonio, where we could take a stage to Fort Concho—running tri-weekly, if it ran at all.{1}

It took six days at that period to make the trip from Boston to New Orleans. The luxurious, palatial dining and drawing room and observation cars, the buffet cars and stateroom sections, barber shops, libraries, etc., etc., had not then been installed. Each passenger, if he was more or less opulent, carried a huge lunch basket or capacious hamper filled to the brim for the entire journey.

Failure to thus provide meant getting out at dingy, dirty stations at all hours, when a stop was made, and eating hasty, greasy, indigestible meals, or go without, trusting to luck or the generosity of a neighbor in the next section.

Sometimes, if the train had been delayed by washouts, or culverts and bridges had been carried away, or, as occurred once or twice, a collision with a cotton freight train took place, no stops for food were made.

We got coffee or tea whenever or wherever it could be obtained. On one occasion the bridegroom got off at Humboldt, Tenn., to get a pitcher of coffee. It was early morning. When he reappeared the train with the nervous bride had disappeared. After frantically scouting about and making numerous inquiries of the yard men, it was found that the train had gone around a curve for about an eighth of a mile and was backing in on another track. The bridegroom had the tickets and all the money either possessed. They were only separated a few moments but great was the joy of their reuniting.

Much time had been spent in trying to persuade the newly-made bride that the best course for us to pursue in this whole matter would be to leave her in New Orleans and for the bridegroom to precede her to Fort Concho, get everything in readiness for her comfort, then to return for her. But the plan suggested to no purpose; with her it was "now or never after a rather long and lingering engagement of three years. A quarantine at New Orleans of six weeks on account of an epidemic of yellow fever was pleasantly spent with the bride’s father who was then living there and was a Custom-house officer, but not without considerable anxiety as people were dying almost daily all about us. It is recalled that an old paymaster (Col. George Febiger), then stationed in New Orleans, long since dead, upon learning that we were just from New England and consequently unacclimated, said to me one day, Young man, my advice to you would be to go around the corner to the nearest liquor store and get four gallons of good whiskey and stimulate daily during the time you may be compelled to stay here."

This was the old-fashioned idea of preventing the disease among those who were suddenly exposed to this terrible and generally fatal scourge. But we had no fear of it, and merely adopted a strictly quiet life and diet, keeping out of the sun, remaining indoors at night, and being regular in our habits.

On October 28 (Wednesday) after a most delightful stay in the beautiful Crescent City, we took the train from Algiers, across the river, for Brashear City, where we changed to the Morgan Line of steamers for Galveston. This was called the Berwick Bay or inside route. This was the first time our Northern eyes had ever seen sugar or rice culture, and this ride of 85 miles proved exceedingly novel and interesting.

The entire country seemed one large plantation, cut up and intersected by almost interminable irrigating ditches. The Chinese coolies in their native dress, transported us in a degree to a foreign clime. The rank vegetation, everywhere about us; the new, strange foliage of the trees; the long miles of swamp, thickly studded with live-oaks, with their long, gray Druidical beards swaying in the bright sunlight like huge veils; all this tropical growth, this new land was instructive, calling up new thoughts and ideas. It was a constantly shifting panoramic view. Our steamer was the City of Norfolk. The trip across the Gulf of Mexico, although a new and most interesting one, was practically devoid of incident or adventure. The sea was smooth. We watched the sea gulls follow the steamer and greedily swallow the crumbs and offal which were thrown from the tables into the water. There was the never-ending stretch of blue peculiar to the waters of the Gulf. At night we watched the intensely phosphorescent light flashing amidst the yeasty foam as the steamer ploughed her way in the bright starlight of a soft and beautiful tropical night.

At 6:00 A. M. the following morning we found ourselves nearly in over the shifting bar of Galveston. This bar had been in charge of the Engineer officers of the Army for many years. Extensive dredging operations had been conducted at great expense, as also a great breakwater then under construction, the completion of which in later years and until the great hurricane—which put it out of business, added to the city’s commercial prosperity.

Soon spires began to appear, one by one, and as the sun lifted its head from the far off Gulf, and the low, flat island rose like a mirage and hung apparently suspended in mid-air, it recalled to our minds pictures of Venice and the incomparable Adriatic Sea.

Upon landing the usual rabble of hackmen was met, who demonstrated before we reached the train, on the other side of the city, by a pitiless extraction of ten dollars for the transportation of our quartette, that the Texas Jehu of that period was not so very far behind or any different from his New York brothers, in fact we thought him a little ahead.

Taking the train in the sand—which seemed to make up this curiously located city—from a dirty, dingy, pine-built depot, we found ourselves—after paying eighteen dollars apiece in gold—on the G. H. & H. RR., bound for Columbus on the Colorado River, where we were to take a stage for San Antonio. This proved to be a very long, hot and terribly tedious ride. We crossed the bridge which seemed to interminably span the waters of this Texas Venice, connecting it with Virginia Point, and soon got further and further from the cool sea breezes. We now entered upon prairie after prairie, mile after mile over an unsettled country, and the further we rode the more they stretched out and the more there seemed of them.

First passing through some small herds of cattle, we continued through herd after herd, each larger and larger, until it seemed to have rained cattle from the dark ages to the present time, and all that one could seem to refer to as a comparison—over this vast stretch of grazing land, were the locust flights of our Biblical teachings. They were the famous long horns, which we had read about in such Texas literature as we had picked up on the trains. As the expanse of prairie grew almost limitless, so increased proportionately the vast masses of cattle. We seemed to literally wade through them as the train slowly proceeded, they merely giving us the right of way through courtesy. We realized this more fully years later when we tried many times to pass on the trail countless thousands of buffalo as they blocked our way to some camp we were trying to make many hundreds of miles away.

The day was hot; the cars were filled with an assemblage of whites and blacks. Once four cowboys or punchers entered; their six shooters were strapped to their hips; they wore flannel shirts of every hue and color, with collars open at the neck. Wide sombreros were upon their heads and huge Mexican spurs jingled on their heels. Pulling out a very greasy pack of cards, they opened up a very lively game of seven up or California Jack, and soon the car was filled with their loud talk and boisterous laughter. There were no Pullman or Drawing Room cars. All this frightened the brides into a very Quaker-like silence and their eyes were never taken from those belts and formidable looking guns. The boys left at a station further on.

Reaching Harrisburg, after passing through Richmond and several small burgs, none of them boasting of more than a few ranches, a cattle pen or corral and a dozen or more loose swine of the razor-back species, comfortably waddling and grunting in the oozing mud or hog wallow—we changed cars and continued on, being jostled and jolted along. The country now became more rolling and there were frequent fringes of timber to relieve the eye and the monotonous stretch of prairie. The same brown mass of cattle, seemingly endless, still continued however, and pen utterly fails to give anybody a clear conception of their countless numbers. We ascertained that a recent heavy rain and flood, evidences of which we had seen along the route, had overflowed and broken through the banks of the Colorado, and it was reported that the town of Columbus was nearly all under water. A construction or repair train had just come in; it was now late in the afternoon. The train hands said that we could go no further, so we made our preparations to tarry for the night at a rather inhospitable looking place called Eagle Lake. We saw neither eagles or lake. It consisted, like many other small places which we had passed through, of one ranch, with the usual low, broad piazza or porch extending about the entire house, and a few sheds or outbuildings. Sheriff Goode lived there. There were at least 50 people—Irish, Germans and negroes from the construction train—besides all of the passengers from ours. What was to be done with us? After a hearty meal of fried chicken, biscuits, dried peaches, etc., Mrs. Goode proceeded to solve the problem and make the best possible distribution for the night, not a very easy task as we could plainly see. Of course, the men disposed of themselves in rows on or about the long porches and on the floors of the empty attics. Mrs. Goode knew that we were two bridal couples journeying to San Antonio and the frontier. It was suggested that our brides should sleep on the floor with the women from our train in a separate attic or ranch loft, while we, the bridegrooms, should spread down with the men. This hardly conformed, however, with our previously conceived ideas of a bridal tour or tear, and the brides naturally objected to such a solution, their fears getting the better of their judgment, and when she wont, she wont, etc., etc. The next best, and really the only other alternative, was that our quartette should sleep in one of the lower rooms on the first floor, with two beds in it. After some demurring but knowing that it was Hobson’s choice they (the brides) consented, in the belief, perhaps that really there might possibly be quite a touch of romance to it (the Wedding tour) and work in as a sort of novelty to our enforced predicament.

This room had three low windows, which, as the night was sultry, were wide open, and all looked out upon the open porch well filled with the men from the construction train. After much tactical maneuvering one bridal couple going in first, followed by the other, and with tallow dips—which were lighted and blown out at opportune moments—all managed to settle down to bed for a much needed rest, for the ride from Galveston had fully tested our mental and physical strength. But now occurred a most laughable—really ludicrous—incident. Lieut. O—and his bride, who had accompanied us on this journey—occupied a bed diagonally opposite to ours. He had scarcely retired when his bed gave a sudden groan, then a dismal squeak, and began to come down one slat at a time, until in his desperate efforts to see what was the matter the mattress gave a lurch and a slide and with the last slat and a terrible rattle deposited the uncomfortable couple on the floor, with a noise that could be heard all over the ranch. The men on the porch, sleeping within a few feet of their bed, immediately set up a loud shout. It was taken up inside, and soon there was an uproar of rude, noisy, but good-natured laughter, sandwiched with remarks and jokes at the expense of the discomfitted tenderfoot bridal pair. This, of course, brought in Mrs. Goode to the rescue with candles, followed by two strapping negro wenches with hatchet, axe, boards, nails, etc.

Lieut. O—set to work, with his black assistants to nail cleats on the side rails to hold up the short or attenuated slats. In the meantime Mrs. O—had been stood up in a corner, well wrapped in a blanket. The two wenches giggled and rolled their eyes about the dimly lighted room, while we, the other bridal couple, were striving to smother our laughter under the bedclothes. Huge cracks opened into all of the adjacent rooms, giving everyone a full view, while the windows were lined with curious heads. Finally came the explosion. As the helpers were about to leave the room, one of the wenches turned to Lieut. O—and said aloud, so that all could hear, Ain’t yo shamed of yoselbs, sleepin’ all togedder in one room? Yah! Yah!! This was the signal for a grand shout from all the guests and involuntary lookers-on. It was a dismal joke, however, for the sensitive brides. There was little sleep that night on account of the heat, mosquitoes, bedbugs and the rare novelty of our situation. Bright and early the next morning we chartered an old, broken-down, ancient vehicle—long ago devoid of all paint or beauty, and called in Texas a hack, and were soon on our way to Columbus on the Colorado.

The dimly defined road was badly gullied; mud, sand, stumps and hog-wallow holes predominated. Our team consisted of an old faded, worn-out mule, hitched up with a small, scrubby, bony shadow of a horse or pony—that had once been black but was now faded out to a dirty, rusty brown. Our driver was a small negro boy, about fourteen years old, and as black as an ink bottle. The mule’s name was Maria, and the skeleton pony enjoyed the euphonious name of Zeke. Crack! Crack! went the black snake whip, and Get up you, ‘Ria, You, Zeke, were the oft repeated ejaculations of our small sable Jehu driver, much to the amusement of our observant brides—one of whom had been a school teacher in or near Troy, N. Y., while the other had but recently graduated at one of the oldest female seminaries in Massachusetts. We rolled along, now uncomfortably striking a stump, and nearly jerking Zeke out of his patched-up, disjointed harness, now hub deep in black doby mire, to the utter discouragement of her muline ladyship who, with ears laid back and nose thrust out almost parallel to her body, was trying to see which was the toughest, her well-ridged hide or the boy’s black snake whip.

We were kept in a perfect roar of laughter, which so astonished our small driver—who had become well hardened to this sort of thing—that, with our chaffing, left him hardly knowing whether to be indignant or moderately amused.

After a continuous series of mishaps, during which we had several breakdowns and had repaired our hack and harnesses several times, we arrived at the ferry—a distance of about 12 miles from Eagle Lake—opposite Columbus, where we embarked upon a boat of Ye olden style, navigated by one man by means of a rope and a creaking windlass, block and tackle. We crossed. Remounting our conveyance we moved through a deep cut in the red soil and on to the Columbus House, the latter selected on the recommendation of our now rather communicative boy driver. It was a low one-story and a half frame house with double porches in front, dingy in appearance, devoid of paint, and otherwise rather uninviting. The chambers were small, close and uncomfortable, and the beds—well—they proved to be already thickly populated. Notwithstanding the present high posted bed and tester, with mosquito bar over it and the windows, we could with difficulty see out of our eyes in the morning and most of the night was spent in repelling frequent attacks of our hungry pests. The food was greasy and unpalatable, consisting of the everlasting fry, with a dessert of fruit—which meant dried apples or peaches, except on one occasion, when we were treated to a genuine sweet potato pie—floating in vinegar—which highly amused our amateur cooks—the brides—who, upon first inspection had pronounced them just a delicious peach pie. While eating our meals the brides were somewhat startled at first, but later became reassured when several razor-backs came under the dining room and loudly scraped their backs against the floor, accompanied by many squeals and grunts of satisfaction after each visit and nearly jostling the food from the table. The stage company would carry but one trunk. We had two and a chest; all excess baggage had to be carried by weight, payable in gold. The big trunk and chest with our most useful belongings, could not be transported. We arranged, however, with Captain Hodges, the military storekeeper, at Columbus, to store our surplus baggage, to be shipped to us at the first opportunity, which he assured us would be in a few days. Only articles absolutely necessary, therefore, were placed in our brand new leather army trunk. The bridal trousseau—there was no help for it—must be left behind. It was hard to convince the uninitiated brides, or to preach faith as a guide. When the question came—What shall we do when we are presented at Fort Concho and San Antonio our answer was necessarily short and crisp, for we were now under Uncle Sam’s orders—Well, don’t know I Can’t help it! etc.

The weather was still sultry; the stage road thick with dust. There were six passengers inside the Concord coach; finally increased to nine, and we had 230 miles of staging.

Among the passengers was a pale, sickly, tired-out looking German woman, who carried a weak, worn-out, crying baby. Her fat, ill-natured, cross-grained, good-for-nothing, beer drinking, sauerkraut eating husband was loath, in fact, absolutely refused to do anything to assist the mother by holding the baby, notwithstanding our oft repeated hints and strong suggestions to that end. Had we not relieved and strengthened her occasionally with a little brandy, which we happened to have, it is doubtful if she could have survived the trip. The ride was long, hot and very tedious, only relieved night or day by the changing of horses, stopping for meals and the beautiful scenery which we frequently enjoyed after crossing the wide, monotonous prairies.

A Texas Prairie

The country, the trees, flowers, grass and surroundings were all new to us. We were, at all times in the midst of a lovely landscape, literally travelling over flower prairies. Flowers of every hue and shade were on all sides as far as the eye could reach; they were almost numberless; we counted many varieties one is familiar with among our Northern wild flowers and cultivated gardens, and then they seemed to have but just begun. They grew in immense beds or vast patches—here the most vivid yellow and brightest scarlet, then the deepest crimson, often shading off as they became mingled to a beautiful purple, blue and white. There was an almost limitless stretch of yellow sunflowers, or helianthi, painted cups, yellow indicus, purple lupines, California poppies, verbenas in huge beds, the delicate little sweet peas clambering up the long grasses; marigolds, scarlet flox, passion flowers, even the little innocent field violets with their faint azure hue, and lilies with their delicate white tendrils and soft shadings. There was the beautiful little sensitive plants whose leaves shrank up and folded at the touch, however light, of the human hand, and whose round, fuzzy balls of rich crimson—with fragrant perfume—was most entrancing to eye and nose.

Such brilliant surroundings in nature, such gorgeous grouping of colors, gave the ground the tints of the clouds during one of those summer sunset skies—which artists delight to contemplate but have scarcely the courage to delineate on canvas. The background of rich live oaks, post oaks and pecans, broken up into shady glades and openings amidst which were the emerald green of the various grasses, all fading away into the serene blue of a perfect Southern sky, seemed to steal away one’s senses and almost leave us