They listened to the talk, and were evidently taking notes of what they heard. Their information may be known by the following sample.
While we were at lunch one day the conversation happened to turn on petroleum. The Judge addressing one of the jokers who was known as “the Major,” said very gravely: “That was a singular practice during the war, giving each man a pint of crude petroleum to drink before going into battle.”
“Yes;” the Major replied, “but it paid very well at first, as the men fought like tigers in consequence. But we had to abandon it before the end of the war.”
“Really now, you don’t mean that your soldiers drank that abominable stuff?” said one of the astonished Britons. "Oh, yes,” said the Judge, his solemnity increasing, “they grew very fond of it, and many of them deserted when they were deprived of it.”
“Why was it given up?” asked Briton number two.
“It was found’,” the Major explained, “that many of the men died of spontaneous combustion in consequence of drinking this stuff. In the case of smokers it was specially dangerous, as a man’s breath might take fire while he was lighting his pipe. One of our best regiments—the 49th Buffaloes—was almost annihilated by petroleum. It was during the ‘Seven Days’ Fight’ near Richmond. They had been in action continuously, and, for more than a week, quadruple rations of petroleum were served to them, so that they were saturated with it. On the last day of the battle, as they were drawn up in line for inspection, one of the men struck a match just for fun. His breath caught, and so did that of the man on each side of him. In half a minute the flame ran along the line, and in less time than it takes me to tell it, half the regiment were on fire. Some had presence of mind to fall on their faces when they saw the flash, and these were the only ones that were saved.”
“Dear me! how strange!”
“Yes;” the Major added, “and sometimes prisoners in the hands of the enemy were set on fire by the inhuman officers who wished to witness their terrible sufferings. We found the use of petroleum as a beverage was in various ways an injury to the army, so we gave it up.”
This wonderful story was heard with apparent confidence by our fellow travellers, and I have no doubt that it was told round British firesides in perfect good faith. The Judge and his friends talked of snow-storms a hundred feet deep, of potatoes in South Carolina as large as flour-barrels, of oysters in Texas that sing and play the piano, and of a horse in Cincinnati that could swear and chew tobacco. Wonderful adventures in all parts of the land were minutely described, and if the voyage had lasted a week longer, and the stories could all be collected and published, they could give Baron Munchausen several points and beat him. The wags described bloody encounters of men in the West, and left the impression that anywhere beyond the Hudson River a person who by accident brushes against the elbow of another is shot down immediately.
In the same spirit of mischief they tortured the timid youth till he did not know what he was about. He was not so good a subject as one with whom I crossed the Atlantic some years before; but he did very well. The principal joke played upon him was to talk of accidents when he was at hand.