She knew me for a Northern man. “I’m proud of Northern men! They’ve caused me to see a heap mo’e pleasure ’n I ever see befo’e.” Her husband was a good man, but she was not at all enthusiastic about him. “I had one husband; I loved him! He belonged to a man that owned a power o’ darkeys. He sold him away. It just broke my heart. But I couldn’t live without some man, no how; so I thought I might as well marry again.” She regretted the closing of the schools. “My chap went a little, but not much.”
“Are these your chickens?”
“No, I can’t raise chickens.” It was the fault of her neighbors. “They just pick ’em up and steal ’em in a minute! Heap of our people will pick up, but they’re sly. That comes from the way they was raised. I never stole in my life but from them that owned me. They’d work me all day, and never give me enough to eat, and I’d take what I could from ’em, and believe it was right.”
Hearing martial music as I returned across the river, I went up on a hill east of the town and witnessed the dress-parade of the sixteenth colored regiment (Tennessee). I never saw a finer military display on a small scale. The drill was perfect. At the order, a thousand muskets came to a thousand shoulders with a single movement, or the butts struck the ground with one sound along the whole line. The contrast of colors was superb,—the black faces, the white gloves, the blue uniforms, the bright steel. The music by the colored band was mellow and inspiring; and as a background to the picture we had a golden sunset behind the mountains.
[10]. Or Mission Ridge; named from an Indian mission formerly located in this vicinity.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN.
The next morning General Gillem, in command at Chattanooga, supplied me with a horse, and gave me his orderly for an attendant, and I set out to make the ascent of Lookout Mountain.
Riding out southward on one of the valley roads, we had hardly crossed Chattanooga Creek before we missed our way. Fortunately we overtook a farmer and his son, who set us right. They were laboring over the base of the mountain with a wagon drawn by a pair of animals that appeared to have been mated by some whimsical caprice. A tall, bony horse was harnessed in with the smallest mule I ever saw. Imagine a lank starved dog beside a rat, and you have an idea of the ludicrous incongruity of the match.
The man had in his wagon a single bag of grist, which he had to help over the rough mountain-roads by lifting at the wheels. He had been twelve miles to mill: “away beyant Missionary Ridge.” I asked him if there was no mill nearer home. “Thar’s a mill on Wahatchie Crick, but it’s mighty hard to pull thar. Wahatchie Hill is a powerful bad hill to pull up.” He did not seem to think twelve miles to mill anything, and we left him lifting cheerfully at the wheels, while his son shouted and licked the team. I trust his wife appreciated that bag of grist.