The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and
Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
Floods.
About every year or two the question is sprung whether or not a horse is
a natural swimmer. It appears that some horses are and some are not, if
the statements of various persons interested be true. An old soldier, who
was a colonel in the big fight, once told me that in a close place he
rode his horse in the Tennessee River, hoping to swim across. The animal
never struck a lick at swimming, but simply waded in until it committed
suicide, and but for the timely arrival of a friend in a canoe, the rider
would have drowned also. On the other hand, it is an historical fact
that Weatherford, the Indian chief whom Jackson defeated and captured in
the Creek War, and who always rode a gray horse which was at least half
thoroughbred, when surrounded by soldiers and crowded to a big bluff on
the Alabama River, took a running start, drove the spurs into his horse,
who jumped off a bluff fully twenty feet high, into the river. Horse and
rider went out of sight, but rose again and struck out, the chief still
on his back, to the distant bank. So daring and brave was the act that
Jackson’s soldiers would not shoot at them, but let them escape into the
forest.
There is one horse in Tennessee that I will make affidavit to the fact
that he is a swimmer, as well as a lightning pacer. It is Brown Hal Jr.
2:10¼.
On Good Friday, 1902, the heavens simply opened on the South. Never has
such a flood been heard of—at least since Noah’s day. Creeks became
surging rivers, rivers vast lakes of water rushing seaward. Mr. Robt.
Hutton, one of the owners of Brown Hal Jr. 2:10¼, writes that that game
son of the old horse was in a large stable, in which a half dozen mules
were also confined on the creek near the town. Mr. Hutton is a banker and
was busy in his bank. The cloudburst came so suddenly that people indoors
did not appreciate the extent of the downfall of rain.
“Is there anything in your barn, Bob,” asked a friend as he stuck his
head in the door. “I see it is about to float away.”
“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.”
The Week After that Flood.
This started John W. Alexander, the Lynnville druggist and horseman, and
the present owner of Brown Hal, Jr., He had been eating a currant pie
and stopped long enough to say: “My flood yarn is the greatest thing
that I ever heard of. An old man—a good, honest, but poor farmer—has
been tilling a hillside field three miles above Lynnville for years. The
week after that flood, while plowing in the hillside, suddenly, without
any warning, his team and plow disappeared in the furrow ahead of him.
The man stopped and found that he stood on the brink of a hole that had
suddenly opened in the earth and taken his team in. Peering down he saw
his poor horses, piled on one another fully twenty feet below. They were
groaning and calling pitifully for him to help them, but in a half hour
their groans ceased and they were dead. The explanation is simple: The
heavy rains had cut out a sink hole in a few feet of the surface, which
broke under the weight of the team. We raised, by public subscription,
enough money to buy him another team.”
By this time, Geo. Campbell Brown, of Ewell Farm, had eaten the other
pie. “Do you all know old man Simpson, of Richland Creek?” he asked
innocently. We all knew him.
“Well, you know, he was drowned in that flood while trying to drive some
colts out of the bottom lands before the water was too high. His wife
told him not to go into that swamp, but you never heard of a man taking
his wife’s advice when it comes to horses, so he was drowned, and went on
to a better land. He hadn’t more than arrived before he was telling it to
listening crowds what a terrible flood they had in Tennessee and how old
Richland Creek spread all over the state of Giles. Finally he went on and
told about Pat Connolly and the snake, the jackass tale, and the Indian
graveyard and all that, and closed by telling that Richland Creek was
twenty feet higher than the high-water mark of 1834, registered on the
old elm at Possum Bend School House. When he said this he noticed an old,
gray-headed man turn up his nose disdainfully and walk off without saying
a word.
“‘Why, that old man seems offended,’ said Simpson—‘who is he?’
“‘Why, don’t you know him?’ said a listener—‘that’s Noah!’”
“I think it is time for the squirrels to begin to come out again,” I
said, as I picked up my gun and started into the woods.