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When men begin to burn and plunder dwellings, attack station-houses, hang negroes, and shoot down policemen, it is too late to attempt to restore peace by talking about the constitutionality of laws. The upholding of laws about the constitutionality of which there is no doubt, is the only thing deserving of consideration.
On the 12th, General Kautz, with his cavalry, was started on a raid against the Danville Railroad, which he struck at Coalfield, Powhatan, and Chula Stations, destroying them, the railroad-track, two freight trains, and one locomotive, together with large quantities of commissary and other stores; thence, crossing to the South Side Road, struck it at Wilson's, Wellsville, and Black's and White's Stations, destroying the road and station-houses; thence he proceeded to City Point, which he reached on the 18th.
Amidst, and almost above, the terrible anxiety about our own individual safety, for the snow was over the roof of many of the station-houses, came the pressing question, "Where are the sheep?"
The improvement in the Russian telegraph line, perhaps, owes something to its brief association with the invading stranger from England; and now among the sublime loveliness of this Caucasian Switzerland one finds the station-houses built with far more pretence to the picturesque than on the barren steppes toward Baku and the Caspian.
The grey and yellow desert was varied only by occasional ruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station-houses, where the spindling trees and sickly vines in the blue-grass yards made little green reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand.
Mobs springing up everywhere, and flowing together often apparently by accident, each pursuing a different object: one chasing negroes and firing their dwellings; others only sacking; a house, and others still, wreaking their vengeance on station-houses, while scores, the moment they got loaded down with plunder, hastened away to conceal it all showed that the original cause of the uprising had been forgotten.
Kimball began successfully the seemingly hopeless task of converting the dirty, ruinous station-houses and their lazy, disorderly keepers and crews, scattered along the coast, to the order, discipline and efficiency of forts and drilled soldiers, and the result proved that order and discipline, when evolved out of the worst materials, can grapple with and conquer even the sea.
On the 12th, General Kautz, with his cavalry, was started on a raid against the Danville Railroad, which he struck at Coalfield, Powhatan, and Chula Stations, destroying them, the railroad-track, two freight trains, and one locomotive, together with large quantities of commissary and other stores; thence, crossing to the South Side Road, struck it at Wilson's, Wellsville, and Black's and White's Stations, destroying the road and station-houses; thence he proceeded to City Point, which he reached on the 18th.
If my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours, I would wish to remind him of an old “Nut” of mine, in which I endeavoured to demonstrate the defective morality and economy of our penal code a system, by which the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state several hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical scale of progressive aggrandisement, gradually swelled into a most expensive process, in which policemen, station-houses, inspectors, magistrates, sessions, assizes, judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and transports, all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention of which might, perhaps, have been effected for two-pence.
We saw many chromos of American celebrities in the various station-houses, and the most numerous was that of Thomas A. Edison. His phonograph, we were told, had already made its appearance in Pishpek, but the natives did not seem to realize what it was. “Why,” they said, “we have often heard better music than that.” Dr. Tanner was not without his share of fame in this far-away country.