“I should say there is,” he said, as he started on a run for the barn. A boat was procured and the door finally reached, when the gallant horse was found swimming around for his life and doubtless wondering why he had been shut up to drown. Once out he left no doubt of his ability to breast a flood.
But talking of the flood, I suspect I will have to make affidavit to this, but unless several friends in whose word I have the greatest confidence have prevaricated, I am willing to do so. Down in Giles, where it seems everything happens now and then, Col. Martin Houston, of near Pulaski, had two lovely asses of the Mockingbird breed. These wandered by day in a delightful paddock in Richland Creek, and at night sang in basso profundo to the listening lady loves. The floods came and Richland Creek became a Mississippi, and before the festal asses could consult the weather bureau at Nashville (which, by the way, I will solemnly swear published it the day before that it would be “cold and fair,” the next day), these two Romeos went floating away on the deep, with nowhere to lay their heads. Colonel Martin grieved sorely, for they were worth many shekels while the South African war was on. After the floods subsided Colonel Martin went out to examine things, and down the creek, a mile or so, high up in the top of a tall sycamore tree, hung one of his Romeos, alive and kicking. Ropes were got and neighbors came. The tree was tied on four sides, then cut in two, at the base, and gradually lowered until the animal was released sound and all right. Now, the above is vouched for by many citizens, but what became of the other ass I am unwilling to publish over my own signature, as I have some respect even for the reputation of a maker of rhymes. I clip this from the Nashville Banner of April 23:
Columbia, April 23.—An unusual story comes from Glendale of the endurance of a jack. Two of these animals were in pasture on the banks of Fountain Creek, at the time of the big flood three weeks since, and were swept away. The body of one of them was found, but nothing was heard of the other one till last Friday, when, it is said, some workmen found him buried in a sandbar with only his head out, still alive.
Spades were secured and the animal exhumed, when, so the story goes, he ate food offered him and lived till Saturday, when he died as the result of over-indulgence after the long fast.
Pat Connolly and the Snakes.
Here is Conductor Pat Connolly’s experience as he related himself. Conductor Connolly is an Irishman and hates snakes now worse than ever.
“When my train reached the creek at Wales Station, faith I never seen sich a flood. The track was gone—washed away for twenty yards or more, and the water over everything else. I walked out on the track ahead of the engine to see her sweep by—me an’ Jim Tally, the fireman, when I felt the cross-ties I was on turn over and I went with ’em. The water had washed the track and embankment up that we stood on, so sudden we never knowed it, an’ me an’ Jim was jus’ washed along in the flood. It was aisy swimmin’ for we just scooted along like a mill-race, an’ by an’ by when I passed a big sycamore with its top just out, I hung on an’ clambered up. Jim followed an’ we set there on a limb, way up in the top, with our legs in the water. We was feelin’ pretty good an’ comfort’ble till our company came. I felt something wrop round my leg—faith, it was a snake. They simply hung to every limb of that tree. They was there by the hundreds, all kinds an’ conditions of ’em. I went up to the top notch an’ Jim after me. I never stopped to dispute the pint with ’em, as to who was entitled to the lower limbs. They seemed to have got there fust an’ I gave ’em the benefit of the doubt, anyway. They hissed and wiggled around an’ looked meaner than original sin. I never seen as many snakes in my life. Night came on, but the moon rose up an’ we could see everything plain. The water was rising a foot an hour, an’ Jim an’ me put up some silent prayer that it wouldn’t get over that treetop. Well, sah, about ten o’clock we seen something that made our hair rise. It was a dead nigger floatin’ round that tree dressed in a long, white robe. He floated under my limb and gazed up at me, an’ I’ll swear I nearly fell off my perch. Then here come another, an’ another—nigger babies, old niggers, mammies, young niggers—dozens of ’em; some in coffins and some out. None of ’em didn’t wanter go by that tree, but just floated around an’ around an’ grinned at me an’ Jim. We didn’t kno’ then, of course, what it was, but we learned afterwards the high water had washed up a nigger graveyard about three miles above. It was midnight before they got a boat from Pulaski and took us down. I had lost forty pounds, an’ Jim’s hair was as white as snow.”
Indian Graves.
The above sounds fishy, but it was the actual experience of Conductor Pat Connolly. But a stranger thing happened than the washing up of the negro graveyard, and one which is greatly interesting the Tennessee Historical Society. At a little station a few miles below Pulaski, in Giles County, there is a very rich field which old men know has been cultivated for seventy-five years. Nor was the water ever known to rise over it before. Before it was known to the ploughshare, it was a great forest, covered with trees of great age, many of them there when De Soto’s Spaniards marched through in the sixteenth century. Last month I went down into that county to hunt squirrels, and as we rested in the woods, turned into bouquets by blooming dogwood and red-buds, to eat our noon lunch by a big, cool spring, Mr. Bob Brannon, of Lynnville, who was in our party of hunters, told me this incident.
“When the waters subsided over this field,” said Mr. Brannon, “the current at one place had taken off two feet or more of soil, and there fully exposed as if laid bare by hand, was a burial ground of some ancient people. The tombs had been nicely built of slabs of rocks, enclosing the body, of which a number were found, some of them as perfect skeletons as I ever saw. Infants lay side by side with father and mother and how long they had slept there only the Great Father knows, for not a descendant of this ancient race now lives on the earth, every vestige of its cultivation has passed away and forest trees, centuries old, have grown over their graves, which might have slumbered on till eternity but for the flood. I handled the skulls and bones, but I felt as if I was touching sacred things, relics of civilization older than any we know of.”