The brave men of the Fifth Corps in the Cuban War of 1898, endured hunger and thirst and other conditions better remembered than described. Some of them partook of the gracious offerings of hot gruel, malted milk, boiled rice, apple wine, and prune cordial at the hands of Mrs. Dr. Gardner. It will perhaps interest them to know that she is the same who, as Miss Enola Lee, was one of the company of the “Mattie Bell” in 1884.
Some of the men of the War of 1861 may remember the officer who had charge of the Commissary Department at Washington. I shall never forget the man who, despite all rank and position, stood many an hour of many a day beside my army wagons loading at his headquarters, and who wisely directed the selection of material best suited to and most needed at the proposed terminus of the dark and weary journey I was about to undertake—it was then Colonel, now General Beckwith of the regular army. He was in 1884, holding the position of Commissary at St. Louis. In the same old time spirit and in the old time way he came upon the deck of our little steamer, and directed the placing of the supplies of the “Mattie Bell.” One will never forget the terror depicted on his fine face when he saw the bales of hay taken on board. “Great heavens, you are not going to risk that! Think of it—you in the middle of that great, rushing river, no land in sight, and your ship on fire!” Still, the risk was taken, and both the ship and the stock were saved.
A few hours previous to the sailing of the “Mattie Bell” from St. Louis a stranger came on board and asked to be permitted to go with us. There was nothing very remarkable in his appearance, either for or against; but on general principles we objected to taking on a stranger without some good reason for it. His quiet persistence, however, won, and perhaps through lack of active measures on the part of some one he went. He was a silent man—walked by himself, or stood alone on some unfrequented corner of the deck. As we got lower down and more tributaries were pouring their contributions into the mighty volume that rolled and seethed about and beneath us, the danger became more imminent. Running after dark was out of the question, and timely orders were given one afternoon to tie up for the night; but our captain, anxious to make a headland a few miles further on, begged permission to run a little later, sure he could reach it before dark.
His request was rather reluctantly granted, and as we steamed on a fog and mist came up and night set in with us still afloat. In less than a half hour the stranger rushed to me with: “We are in a crevasse! We must pull out or we are lost! I have warned the engineer and captain.” The forward rush of the boat ceased; she stood still, pulled first one way then the other, shivered and struggled amid the shrieks of the reversed engine, while we waited, thoroughly aware of the situation and the doom awaiting us all, depending on the power and strength of one mute body of steel and one firm man at the helm. At length the struggling ceased; the engines had triumphed over the current. We commenced to move slowly backward, and with a grateful awe in our hearts that no words could express we found a place of safety for the night.
Daylight revealed to us a crevasse opened the day before where the river had broken through to a width of thirty rods, with the water pouring down a depth of twelve or fifteen feet in a perfect torrent into the current below, and rolling off in a self-made track to some other stream or to the Gulf of Mexico.
I have no way of accounting for this incident, but the reader will perhaps not be “too hard” on me, if I say with the father of “Little Breeches,” “I have believed in God and the angels ever since one night last spring.”
Down the Mississippi.
Down the Mississippi all was changed. Two worlds could scarcely differ more. The ofttimes shoreless waste of waters; the roaring crevasse through the broken levees; the anxious ebony faces and the hungry animals that “looked up and were not fed,” among whom and which we floated, could not fail to carry our thoughts back at times to the history of the Deluge and the Ark. The simile, however, had this important difference; we were by no means so good as to be preserved, nor they so bad as to be destroyed.
Any bare description of this voyage constitutes only the woody framework of the structure. You will readily imagine that, when it should be clothed with its ever recurring incidents it would become a very different edifice. Never a day that did not bring us incidents to be remembered, sometimes sad and touching, sometimes laughable or ridiculous.