“‘Yes!—No! now I come to think of it, I didn’t leave the note. I wanted to go down to the Parthenon to see the new burlesque, but I gave it to a man who said he would be passing the club and would hand it in. Let me see. Ah! I have it now—you know him—Loydall, the Olympian heavy lead.’”
A VISIT TO DEATH LAKE, FLORIDA.
BY LIEUT. W. R. HAMILTON.
SOME years ago, I was stationed at Fort Barrancas, on the west coast of Florida, and at the mouth of Pensacola Bay. It was the custom of the military authorities every summer, as the sickly season approached, to order all the troops stationed in garrisons along the southern coast into camps among the pine-trees to escape the fatal yellow fever. The camps were selected with a view to health and isolation combined.
In the year of which I write, we were ordered up into the pine woods about thirty-six miles north-west of Pensacola. The camp was several miles from the only line of railroad then existing in that country, and fifteen miles from the nearest settlement, which happened to be a railroad and telegraph station also. The yellow fever had already broken out with terrible violence in New Orleans, and all the southern coast was alarmed. Of course, we were obliged to maintain the strictest quarantine to prevent any communication between our camp and the outside world. This was necessary, as the country soon became filled with refugees from the plague-stricken districts, yet it made our existence particularly doleful. We received fresh meat only once a week, and, as it was brought in an open cart thirty-six miles in the hot sun, the term fresh was about all there was of that significance about it. We lived on potted meats and canned vegetables and fruits almost entirely. Nothing was allowed inside the lines except the mails, and even they had to be disinfected outside before admission. News of the outside world was from a week to ten days old, and as the weather was extremely hot, it can be easily imagined that our existence was not particularly rose-colored.
Judge, then, of the delight and pleasure we all experienced when, one sultry evening, when the very air was quivering and dancing with heat, an old man came into camp with a large basket full of beautiful little fresh-water fish. How he passed the line of sentinels no one cared to inquire, the probability being that the guards, knowing what a boon he had in his basket, winked at his passing. He came direct to the line of officers’ tents, and in five minutes had sold all his fish at a good price. We asked him where the fish came from, and he answered “Death Lake.” I had heard of “Death Lake” a number of times, and the negroes in the neighborhood always spoke of it with bated breath and a mysterious air, so that my curiosity concerning it was much aroused. I therefore asked the old man to my tent, where I could talk to him about it. After he had seated himself and taken a drink of cool water, fresh from the spring, I asked him the name of the fish and when and where he caught them.