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One lovely afternoon in May I had been wandering up and down, through rocky gorges, by little swampy bits of ground, and on the tops of windy headlands, looking for flowers, and had found many: large blue violets, the like of which you never saw; white violets, too, creamy and fragrant; gentle little houstonias; gay and dancing erythroniums, and wind-flowers delicately tinted, blue, straw-color, pink, and purple.
"God have mercy on us," I heard him mutter, "what's that? It sounds like the wail of all the babies since the world began." We listened together, and I can give no notion of the hideous mournfulness of the sound. We lay in a swampy little inlet, and the forest wall made a dark blur against the star-studded sky.
The cause of so much fever at St. Jago, may be traced to the peculiar situation of the town, which stands on an elevation between low swampy grounds, the exhalations from which pass over it as they arise. There are a great number of horses, horned cattle, goats, pigs, &c. bred here.
His hair is tufted, and will not lie smoothly. His cheek-bones are large and high set. There is a tint in his complexion. Perhaps the Seminole blood of his swampy state left a trace of its combative nature there. Payne was a preacher's son, and not the worst graduate of his class. His real name is Lewis Thornton Powell. He died without taking the hand of any living friend.
As we stumbled along in this swampy place, we came to a narrow-gauge railway, which we gladly followed until we saw we were coming to a city. This we afterwards knew to be the city of Hanau. Just in the gray dawn, we left the track and took refuge in a thick bush, where we spent the day. This was October 5th. Our first work was to change our socks, spreading the ones we took off on a tree to dry.
Suddenly we emerged upon a swampy piece of grass interspersed with clumps of tamarisk; here there was intense excitement among the elephants, several turned tail and bolted in an opposite direction; when the cause was quickly discovered, by a large tiger passing exactly in front of me not 20 yards distant, and showing himself most distinctly, giving me a lovely chance.
For they were in a land where wheeled carriages were almost unknown, all portage being done either by boats on the many streams, or on the backs of elephants and buffaloes, by the former of whom the few jungle-paths were terribly cut up, partly by the creatures' weight, but more particularly from the fact that, no matter how many passed along a track, or how wet and swampy it might be, the sagacious creatures believed in the way being safe where any of their kind had been before, and invariably placed their great round feet in the same holes; the effect being that these elephant-holes were often three or four feet deep, and half full of mud and water.
Then saluting us with his half-bred Spanish politeness, our guide stood while we possessed ourselves of our light luggage, and then led off his mules, leaving us to follow the pointed-out direction, which took us down to the swampy bank of a great muddy river flowing gently by us, cutting its way, as it were, through a forest of mighty trees, whose tall stems shot up from the water's edge.
But it was futile to expect such an arrangement to prove lasting unless steadily backed up with force. In their squalid villages in the swampy forests of northern Ohio and Indiana the redskins grew sullen and vindictive.
At this moment two sowars got clear of the swampy rice fields, and at once galloped, shouting, to the rescue, cutting and slashing at the tribesmen. All would have been cut to pieces or shot down. The hillside was covered with the enemy. The wounded officers lay at the foot. They were surrounded.
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