Pat Connolly and the Snakes.
Here is Conductor Pat Connolly’s experience as he related himself. Conductor Connolly is an Irishman and hates snakes now worse than ever.
“When my train reached the creek at Wales Station, faith I never seen sich a flood. The track was gone—washed away for twenty yards or more, and the water over everything else. I walked out on the track ahead of the engine to see her sweep by—me an’ Jim Tally, the fireman, when I felt the cross-ties I was on turn over and I went with ’em. The water had washed the track and embankment up that we stood on, so sudden we never knowed it, an’ me an’ Jim was jus’ washed along in the flood. It was aisy swimmin’ for we just scooted along like a mill-race, an’ by an’ by when I passed a big sycamore with its top just out, I hung on an’ clambered up. Jim followed an’ we set there on a limb, way up in the top, with our legs in the water. We was feelin’ pretty good an’ comfort’ble till our company came. I felt something wrop round my leg—faith, it was a snake. They simply hung to every limb of that tree. They was there by the hundreds, all kinds an’ conditions of ’em. I went up to the top notch an’ Jim after me. I never stopped to dispute the pint with ’em, as to who was entitled to the lower limbs. They seemed to have got there fust an’ I gave ’em the benefit of the doubt, anyway. They hissed and wiggled around an’ looked meaner than original sin. I never seen as many snakes in my life. Night came on, but the moon rose up an’ we could see everything plain. The water was rising a foot an hour, an’ Jim an’ me put up some silent prayer that it wouldn’t get over that treetop. Well, sah, about ten o’clock we seen something that made our hair rise. It was a dead nigger floatin’ round that tree dressed in a long, white robe. He floated under my limb and gazed up at me, an’ I’ll swear I nearly fell off my perch. Then here come another, an’ another—nigger babies, old niggers, mammies, young niggers—dozens of ’em; some in coffins and some out. None of ’em didn’t wanter go by that tree, but just floated around an’ around an’ grinned at me an’ Jim. We didn’t kno’ then, of course, what it was, but we learned afterwards the high water had washed up a nigger graveyard about three miles above. It was midnight before they got a boat from Pulaski and took us down. I had lost forty pounds, an’ Jim’s hair was as white as snow.”