I will do Goshorn the justice to say that he gave them to me for a parting present. My room at his house was quite devoid of all decoration, but by arranging on the walls crossed canoe-paddles, great bunches of the picturesque locust-thorn, often nearly a foot in length, and the deer’s horns, I made it look rather more human. But this arrangement utterly bewildered the natives, especially the maids, who naively asked me why I hung them old bones and thorns up in my room.
As this thorn is much used by the blacks in Voodoo, I suppose that it was all explained by being set down to my “conjurin’.”
The maid who attended to my room was a very nice, good girl, but one who could not have been understood in England. I found that she gathered up and treasured many utterly worthless trifling bits of pen-drawing which I threw away. She explained that where she came from on Coal River, anything like a picture was a great curiosity; also that her friends believed that all the pictures in books, newspapers, &c., were drawn by hand. I explained to her how they were made. When I left I offered her two dollars. She hesitated, and then said, “Mr. Leland, there have been many, many gentlemen here who have offered me money, but I never took a cent from any man till now. And I will take this from you to buy something that I can remember you by, for you have always treated me kindly and like a lady.” In rural America such girls are really lady-helps, and not “servants,” albeit those who know how to get on with them find them the very best servants in the world; but they must be treated as friends.
I went up Elk River several times on horse or in canoe to renew leases or to lease new land, &c. The company sent on a very clever and intelligent rather young man named Sandford, who had been a railroad superintendent, to help me. I liked him very much. We had a third, a young Virginian, named Finnal. At or near Cannelton I selected a spot where we put up a steam-engine, and began to bore for oil. It was very near the famous gas-well which once belonged to General Washington. This well gave forth every week the equivalent of one hundred and fifty tons of coal. It was utilised in a factory. After I sunk our shaft it gave out; but I do not believe that we stopped it, for no gas came into our well. Finnal was the superintendent of the well. One day he nearly sat down—nudo podice—on an immense rattlesnake. He had a little cottage and a fine horse. He
kept the latter in a stable and painted the door white, so that when waking in the night he could see if any horse-thief had opened it. Many efforts were made to rob him of it.
At this time Lee’s army was disbanded, and fully one-half came straggling in squads up the valley to Charleston to be paroled. David Goshorn’s hotel was simply crammed with Confederate officers, who slept anywhere. With these I easily became friends; they seemed like Princeton Southern college mates. Now I have to narrate a strange story. One evening when I was sitting and smoking on the portico with some of these bons compagnons I said to one—
“People say that your men never once during the war got within sight of Harrisburg or of a Northern city. But I believe they did. One day when I was on guard I saw five men scout on the bank in full sight of it. But nobody agreed with me.”
The officer laughed silently, and cried aloud to a friend with a broken arm in a sling, who lay within a room on a bed, “Come out here, L---. Here is something which will interest you more than anything you ever heard before.”
He came out, and, having heard my story, said—
“Nobody ever believed your story, nor did anybody ever believe mine. Mine is this—that when we were at Sporting Hill a corporal of mine came in and declared that he and his men had scouted into within full sight of Harrisburg. I knew that the man told the truth, but nobody else would believe that any human being dared to do such a thing, or could do it. And now you fully prove that it was done.”