I suppose the country lying between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing could
boast a few inhabitants other than alligators. What manner of people they
were it is impossible to say, inasmuch as the fighting dispersed, or
possibly exterminated them; perhaps in merely classing them as non-saurian
I shall describe them with sufficient particularity and at the same time
avert from myself the natural suspicion attaching to a writer who points
out to persons who do not know him the peculiarities of persons whom he
does not know. One thing, however, I hope I may without offense affirm of
these swamp-dwellers--they were pious. To what deity their veneration was
given--whether, like the Egyptians, they worshiped the crocodile, or, like
other Americans, adored themselves, I do not presume to guess. But
whoever, or whatever, may have been the divinity whose ends they shaped,
unto Him, or It, they had builded a temple. This humble edifice, centrally
situated in the heart of a solitude, and conveniently accessible to the
supersylvan crow, had been christened Shiloh Chapel, whence the name of
the battle. The fact of a Christian church--assuming it to have been a
Christian church--giving name to a wholesale cutting of Christian throats
by Christian hands need not be dwelt on here; the frequency of its
recurrence in the history of our species has somewhat abated the moral
interest that would otherwise attach to it.