CAMPING BY NIGHT--FORLORN WOMEN--BEAUMONT--HOUSTON.
We were going to Texas, the great State that opened its hospitable
doors to hundreds of refugees fleeing like ourselves from their own
homes. We were going to Texas for many reasons.
A loving brother was there, and our slaves were there at peaceful work
on land cultivated on shares. We had, besides, the feeling that the
Federals could never get a foothold on its boundless prairies, though
they had made an ominous beginning by capturing its most valuable
seaport; but, above and beyond all, we could take refuge in Mexico if
the worse came to the worst.
We had long journeys of days that ran into weeks, of camping under a
tent that was scarce large enough to cover four. Every night after
the day’s ride, fodder, that was picked up in the fields bordering
the road, was carefully spread on the bare ground, with comforts and
a blanket on top, and we stowed ourselves away, each with a child to
keep warm. Often we rose in the morning to find the ground covered
with frost, and the tent too stiff to be folded into the wagon. Then,
crossing rivers by rope-ferries, “manned” by women whose husbands were
in the mountains of Virginia or the swamps around Vicksburg--frail
rope-ferries, that could only take one vehicle at a time without
risk of sinking; riding by day, camping by night, occasionally in
rainy weather asking shelter at houses by the road-side; though
never refused, the accommodations were always scant and more or less
uncomfortable. Proceeding west, we found the people poorer and more
ignorant, consequently more helpless. In many instances only women
and children were left in the almost destitute farm-houses. One rainy
Sunday afternoon we stopped at a miserable country house--the first
one we had seen all that day--which consisted of two rooms and a porch
perched a few feet above the ground on the inevitable six stumps
which formed the foundation, and a retreat at the same time for pigs
and chickens. After rapping and calling for some time, finding no
response, and the door on the latch, we ventured to enter the deserted
house. The rafters were hung with long leaves of partly cured tobacco,
and there was a remnant of fire on the capacious hearth, with other
evidences that the owner was temporarily absent. Not a living thing was
to be seen around the premises but a broken-down, one-eyed horse, and
an ancient rooster, that strutted around in solitary state. In the
course of the afternoon two forlorn women made their appearance with a
handkerchief full of “borrowed” corn-meal, for, except a pound or two
of rusty bacon, they had nothing whatever in the house to eat. It was
difficult for my husband to believe they could be so destitute that
they had to walk in a drizzling rain four miles to a neighbor to borrow
a half-peck of meal; he freely offered to pay any price for a few ears
of corn for the mules. They were not to be had.
Their husbands (they were mother and daughter) had gone “to fight
Lincoln,” they pathetically told us, and when they went, “now gwine
on two year,” they expected to “git done with the job” in a month.
The poor women had eaten everything their husbands left them but the
“_terbacker_,” and, from the way they smoked and chewed that night, I
am afraid they consumed all that before the men returned, if, alas!
they ever did. We had hoped, being only twenty miles or so from the
town of Beaumont, on the Sabine River, to find some variation in our
own camp-diet. The poor baby had been fed on sweet-potatoes--the brave
little fellow only six months old. When we asked for milk, they showed
us the old one-eyed _mar_, stretching her long, skinny neck over the
broken fence, as the “onlyest she-critter’” they had. In despair for
ourselves and pity for them, we brought out our camp supplies--coffee,
sugar, salt, and hard-tack--and the famished women enjoyed a sumptuous
feast with the hot corn-bread and fried bacon they were able to add.
We were allowed to occupy their only bed, and I think there were a
million of _cimices lectuarii_ in it, for Henry and the patient little
baby presented the appearance of having measles when we awoke the next
morning.
We parted from our wagon and its camping facilities at the door of this
old cabin, sending it by road direct to Houston, proposing ourselves
to take cars at Beaumont, thereby saving at least sixty miles of wagon
travel, which mode of conveyance had become intolerably wearisome to
the children.
The only tavern at that picturesquely located town was less adapted
to the accommodation of man than of beast. There was but one
guest-chamber, and its only entrance was through a combination of
office, bar, smoking and lounging room, presided over by the landlord,
a kindly, hunchbacked dwarf, whose wife, a comely, intelligent woman,
by the way, was the first “_dipper_” I ever saw. She confined herself
mostly to the kitchen, where her pot of snuff and dip-stick were
conveniently at hand on the window-sill, and between dips--I refrain
from describing the process--attended to her domestic duties. The
universal assembly-room was the only one provided with a fireplace.
As a severe storm of rain and sleet, accompanied by a sharp fall in
temperature, set in on Monday, the very day of our arrival, and
continued with increasing fury until Friday, I sat all those days in
a corner by a smoky fire, with baby wrapped in shawls on my lap. We
were the only lodgers, so far as could be discovered, but the boarders
hung round the same pitiful fire from meal to meal, reluctant to brave
the inhospitable elements. They smoked pipes, talked, chewed, and
expectorated hour after hour, but I was so glad of a warm, dry corner,
and not inappreciative of the scant courtesy showed to the only lady in
the crowd, that I had no complaints to make. No recollection remains to
me regarding the time-table of the Houston and Beaumont Railroad, but
a dim idea dawns that it was intended to make a round trip daily, _Deo
volente_, which implied “weather permitting”; but when rain soaked the
wood piled by the road-side so that it would not make steam, or when
sleet made the rails slippery, travel was entirely suspended. As both
these contingencies existed the week we were in Beaumont, of course no
travel could be thought of.
At Orange faint rumors were circulated that Galveston had been
recaptured by the Confederates. Proceeding west, those rumors became
more frequent and positive; and the last day at Beaumont we had the
happiness to have them verified by eye-witnesses of General Magruder’s
heroic and gallant act, which could scarcely have been excelled by any
similar event of the war. The story, repeated again and again, with
added particulars at every recital, gave us mighty food for boastful
talk, and our hearts so glowed with the warmth of excitement, that it
was not surprising the sun burst out from the dark clouds then and
there, and scattered the sleety rain-drops.
Master Henry had been so long confined to the smoky, stale odor of the
sitting-room, that he took immediate advantage of the clearing weather
to explore the town, whose mysteries he had studied for days through
the grimy, rain-spotted windows. When missed, he could not be found.
Beaumont is located on a high, almost perpendicular bluff, which runs
sheer down to the bed of the narrow river. As the tavern was only a
stone’s-throw from this precipitous bank, the first thought was that
the child might have tumbled into the river. Our kind landlord himself
headed a search, and, when the children at the school were dismissed
at recess, they also joined in. When, some time afterward, the
enterprising young scamp was found, quietly watching the men at work in
a saw-mill out of town, the whole population had already been aroused.
Meanwhile my husband--with an occasional little inquiring trip to the
door, which did not arouse my suspicions--remained with me engaged in
earnest discussion of the news from Galveston, in which, as in all
particulars concerning the war, I was always so easily interested as to
become for the time oblivious of every other subject. So well did he
manage the self-imposed task, that the little truant was brought back
before I had felt any anxiety on the score of his absence.
After a long day’s snail-like progress, the train stopping every few
miles to take a load of wet and soggy wood, and every few minutes to
get up steam, slipping, sliding, and sometimes refusing point-blank
to budge until all the men got out in the mud and slush to “giv her a
shove,” we reached Houston after midnight, tired, cold, hungry, and
cross, to find no conveyance at the muddy, inhospitable shed of a depot
to carry us to a hotel.
One of our fellow-passengers, who had also sat by the Beaumont fire,
procured a carriage from a stable near by, and in the wee hours of the
morning our party tumbled into the “Old Capitol.” I believe there is a
new hotel of the same name on the spot now, of which Houstonians are
justly proud; and, as our advance in the refinement of life is measured
by the depths from which we started, they will not be offended if
reminded that the “Old Capitol,” in war-times, was about as wretched a
hostelry as could have been found on the face of this continent.
A small bucket, filled with cold meat and sweet-potatoes by the hostess
of the Beaumont tavern, to serve in case of delay, was so liberally
shared with the other hungry passengers of the train, that we were
famished when we arrived at Houston. Nothing whatever to eat was
procurable at that late hour. Sabe managed to kindle a fire in the
grate of our chilly chamber, already filled with half-burned coals,
ashes, scraps of paper, stumps, and quids of discarded tobacco, and we
were made more comfortable by a cup of coffee from our own camp supply.
Upon the edge of boasted grazing prairies, where the grass furnished
boundless pasturage for cattle too numerous to be counted, not a drop
of milk could be had for patient baby, who had almost forgotten the
taste of the only food he ought to have had, not a particle of butter
to soften the dry sweet-potato he had to eat, not even a piece of
broiled steak. Milk and butter, we were coolly told, were out of season
(one would have thought they were vegetables and fruit like green
peas and peaches), and the meat, tough and stringy, was fried to the
consistency of leather.
A dark purple calico dress and black cloth sacque, my hair combed
straight back _à la chinoise_, and protected from dust by a cap of
chenille, a home-made palmetto hat of the “wash-bowl” pattern, with
a fold of black bombazine around the crown, constituted the costume
in which I had traveled and camped. The first morning in that unique
hotel, decked out in my black bombazine, my hair in the broad,
spreading bands over the ears, as was the fashion, I sallied out to
breakfast. A freshly shaved gentleman in broadcloth passed and repassed
me with a perplexed look that attracted my notice. Glances of inquiry
were exchanged, followed by peals of laughter; the outfit of our
Beaumont friend had been even shabbier than mine, and each found the
other metamorphosed by change of clothes almost beyond recognition.
While enjoying a hearty laugh over the affair, another butterfly
emerged from the chrysalis state, and we stoutly refused to recognize
my husband fresh from the barber and boot-black.
Drums were beating, flags flying, and the whole city in holiday
attire, streets filled with crowds jostling their way toward a grand
stand erected on a broad open space in Main Street, where, with some
music, more speeches, and most cheers, a pretty young lady in a blue
silk evening-dress presented in the name of the “Lone Star State” (as
Texas loved to call herself) a superb sword to the gallant general
whose dashing heroism had wrested their island city from the grasp of
the foe, and much more to the same effect. General Magruder, whose
soldierly bearing was somewhat marred by an unfortunate lisp in
his utterance, conveying the impression of effeminate affectation,
graciously received it, and, refusing the assistance of his aide,
buckled it himself about his gorgeous uniform with a solemn oath that
it should never be sheathed while the enemy was on Confederate soil,
etc., all very grand, glittering, and impressive. I can not but smile
now when the scene comes back to me, as I stood in the thickest of
the throng, holding Henry by the hand, my heart almost bursting with
proud emotion, my eyes dim with grateful tears, and hoping the boy
was inhaling patriotism with every breath, though still too young to
understand and appreciate the greatness of the occasion. That the
elegant sword was _borrowed_ for the presentation from a veteran of
the war with Mexico, and was only typical of a more magnificent weapon
to be substituted later when circumstances would permit, and was to
be returned with thanks to its owner that very night, did not cause
a ripple of a derisive smile. Every emotion was merged in patriotic
fervor.
Years after, when General Magruder became our guest in a foreign land,
how uproariously we laughed at the incident when he repeated, in his
peculiarly halting lisp, portions of the gushing address, and in his
inimitable way went through the motions of buckling on the borrowed
saber, which, by the way, the donors had never been able to replace!