So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain.
And this horn was made of the same material as the boat. They performed upon a wooden bugle of long conical shape, constructed of small wooden staves, which, according to all accounts, produced sounds of a wonderfully sweet tone. On a beautiful, clear and still morning the echoes of the boatmen’s trumpets, prolonged at a great distance through the neighboring woods and hills which bordered the river, are said to have possessed a charm and enchantment which none can realize but those who have heard them.
The Western boatmen were not the only ones who used
Wooden Bugles,
for there is an instrument of this kind still preserved in Kentucky, and is now, or was a few years ago, in the possession of Mrs. Annie Mayhall, a granddaughter of Captain Robert Collins.
Figs. 109 and 110.
Colonel Richard Johnson made a famous charge in the war of 1812, and Captain Bob Collins sounded the charge on his home-made cedar horn.
If there are any illustrations of this charge, the bugler will no doubt be represented as blowing on the regulation brass instrument; but you must remember, boys, that the artists were not in that fight. Artists have a way of doing things up fine, as may be seen by the pictures of our