“Let us have peace”—his monument will be.
John Trotwood Moore.
Stories of the Soil
The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
Floods.
About every year or two the question is sprung whether or not a horse is a natural swimmer. It appears that some horses are and some are not, if the statements of various persons interested be true. An old soldier, who was a colonel in the big fight, once told me that in a close place he rode his horse in the Tennessee River, hoping to swim across. The animal never struck a lick at swimming, but simply waded in until it committed suicide, and but for the timely arrival of a friend in a canoe, the rider would have drowned also. On the other hand, it is an historical fact that Weatherford, the Indian chief whom Jackson defeated and captured in the Creek War, and who always rode a gray horse which was at least half thoroughbred, when surrounded by soldiers and crowded to a big bluff on the Alabama River, took a running start, drove the spurs into his horse, who jumped off a bluff fully twenty feet high, into the river. Horse and rider went out of sight, but rose again and struck out, the chief still on his back, to the distant bank. So daring and brave was the act that Jackson’s soldiers would not shoot at them, but let them escape into the forest.
There is one horse in Tennessee that I will make affidavit to the fact that he is a swimmer, as well as a lightning pacer. It is Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼.
On Good Friday, 1902, the heavens simply opened on the South. Never has such a flood been heard of—at least since Noah’s day. Creeks became surging rivers, rivers vast lakes of water rushing seaward. Mr. Robt. Hutton, one of the owners of Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼, writes that that game son of the old horse was in a large stable, in which a half dozen mules were also confined on the creek near the town. Mr. Hutton is a banker and was busy in his bank. The cloudburst came so suddenly that people indoors did not appreciate the extent of the downfall of rain.
“Is there anything in your barn, Bob,” asked a friend as he stuck his head in the door. “I see it is about to float away.”