Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars/7
We went to Philadelphia, where my wife was, under the care of the great and good Dr. Meigg, who was not only chief of living physicians, but one of the most charming of raconteurs. His visits were tri-weekly; but when he came he was prepared to sit nearly an hour with us, entertaining us with his instructive and delightful talk. I remember, as an evidence of his thoughtful kindness, that he brought one day from his house an exquisite Madonna to brighten my wife's room, and hung it where she could see it from her bed. When our stay in Philadelphia was ended, I went to his house and asked him for his bill. He showed a desire to make no charge at all for his services, but finally said in a pleasant way:
"I know how proud you army men are, and you will be angry if I charge you nothing. I am in great need of a twenty dollar gold piece, and if you have one about you, I will thank you for it." I had one and many more which I had expected to pay him.
People were very kind to us in Philadelphia, especially the families of Biddle and Gilpin. During our stay there the lamentable wreck of the steamship San Francisco occurred. A widespread anxiety prevailed in our whole country, for upon her was a whole regiment of United States artillery, en route to California round the Horn. By breaking off the upper deck, Colonel Washington, Captain Taylor, and several hundred officers and men were swept away. The hull was left drifting, with hundreds of the men, women, and children of the regiment, -- where no man could say.
My uncle, Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, had then announced his theories about the wind and currents of the sea, and was head of the National Observatory. Humbolt had declared him the discoverer of a new science. On him the Secretary of the Navy called to locate the position of the San Francisco, and direct the course of the ships to be sent to her rescue. I well remember the honest pride with which he wrote me how they found the wreck where he showed it ought to be, and saved the hundreds of survivors; among them Lieutenant Frank Murray, who won grateful acknowledgment for his heroic conduct and gentle care of the helpless women and children, in recognition of which the people of Philadelphia gave him a service of silver.
I took my wife to her home at "Cleveland," her father's country seat, and went my way to Texas again, arriving at Corpus Christi in time to join General Persifer Smith on his expedition up into New Mexico. He had an escort of one hundred Riflemen, made up of ten men from each company, under the command of Captain John G. Walker. I commanded the artillery, viz., one mountain howitzer and twelve men. Lieutenant E. A. Carr, lately promoted to brigadier, Lieutenant Alfred Gibbs, aide-de-camp, and Assistant-Surgeon McPharlan completed our command.
General Persifer Smith had been our first colonel, and all who remembered him at Monterey and on "Scott's line" from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico will agree that he was a fine specimen of soldier and man. In the day of battle he perhaps had no superior in our army. His courage was of the highest order, his attainments were varied, his professional information was excellent, his judgment was sound, his plans were always formed promptly and executed boldly, and he had under all circumstances complete control of his resources. Those who knew General Smith only after disease had sapped the vigor of his facilities can form little idea of him as he was when first appointed colonel of the Rifles. He was then the illustration of a brave and hardy soldier, and courteous, high spirited gentleman. Had he no claim upon history beside Contreras, he would still rank with the best commanders America has produced. His success in that affair was achieved by a small force over the Mexican army in strong position. His confidence in his troops and in the soundness of his plans was strikingly illustrated by the composer with which he drew out his watch as he saw his Rifles moving to the assault, and when the last Mexican had left the redoubt or surrender, announced to the officers around him, "It has taken just seventeen minutes."
He marched with a large wagon train to carry forage for our horses, for we were to be gone nearly four months, and could not expect to find adequate pasturage along our route. We arose at 3 A.M., marched at 3:30, and halted for camp on the best water we could find, averaging thirty three miles daily throughout the march.
One day, having missed out watering place, we continued the march till 10 P.M., camping on Lympia Creek, in the mouth of the Wild Rose Pass. At Fort Davis, upon the Lympia, we halted, where was a great spring of fresh delicious water and excellent grass. From this camp General Smith went off toward the Rio Grande.
Soon after Baldy Smith proposed to me to take a good escort and make up a party of officers and go down the pass of the Sierra Prieta, a lofty peak which rose at the mouth of the gorge above all the surrounding mountains. Game abounded all about us, and I well remember that Lieutenants Dodge and Cole and myself killed over eighty ducks, mostly blue winged teal, that day, so we had a bountiful supper. Dr. Guild was one of our party, afterward chief medical officer of the army of northern Virginia. All was quiet outside our camp during the night, while in the great Sibley tent we passed a jolly time.
Early next morning, leaving a strong guard in camp, we commenced the ascent of the mountain along whose base ran a deep trail made by the Apaches on their way to and from their permanent camp, twenty miles distant. The ascent was the work of several hours. We rode until our horses could go no further, and then dismounting, we all, seven in number, raced for the top. I forbear to say who first waved his bandanna from the summit. Around the crown of this single peak arose a precipice of basaltic rock some thirty feet high, after surmounting which we found ourselves upon a smooth plateau nearly a mile across. Upon it were grass and herbs, and a rabbit bounced up here and there and scuttled away from us. To this day I have never been able to decide how those rabbits got there, or why.
Baldy Smith pointed out to us the Apache camp, in which two years before he, with William Henry Whiting, Dick Howard, and Policarpio, their guide, were carried prisoners, and held until the chiefs decided whether to kill them or not. Happily, after a solemn council it was determined to release them. "Polly," as he was known, was a famous Mexican guide and hunter, as brave and faithful as any man upon the plains. When last in Texas I heard of him as an eloquent Baptist preacher.
When we descended, we found in the trail the fresh pony tracks of two Indian scouts, so we kept very quiet in camp till after full dark, when we harnessed up and drove ten miles on our homeward way as fast as we could go, and halted for the night in the road. Once during the night the sentinel quietly called us. Some animal, probably a grizzly, was moving along the mountain side not far above us. We were astir early next morning, and were soon back in our camp upon the Lympia. The First Infantry had arrived by this time and established itself in Fort Davis, situated in a beautiful canon in the mountains, with a deep, cold, gushing spring just at its mouth.
The next party that went down that Lympia Canon did not fare as well as we did. Like ourselves, they went partly for the pleasure of the trip and partly to report as to the whereabouts of the Indians, but none of them came back to recite the incidents of the expedition; for they were surprised in their camp and all murdered by those Apaches.
I have never seen anything in America as the Wild Rose Pass, where for nearly twenty miles the bright Lympia finds its way along the base of the precipices, over one thousand feet high, or through lovely meadows which stretch away for miles over slopes dotted with patches of fine timber. The morning we first entered it, Baldy Smith and I rode together, and noted with delight how the morning sunshine touched the tops of those high cliffs, and bathed them in innumerable tints of crimson and violet and gold. We used to believe when we visited the Dusseldorf Gallery, and noted the landscapes hanging there, that such coloring was the invention of the painter; but no painter yet has ever equaled nature, and in the Wild Rose Pass she has spread her most beautiful colors. I remember once to have heard an artist of merit discussing this very question of the inadequacy of the painter's palette to reproduce the hues of nature. "People are prone," he said, "to criticize landscapes and say they are exaggerated in color, but if any one will try to reproduce a sunrise or a sunset he will realize the difficulty upon one small canvas the brilliant and beautiful tints which nature continually spreads out before us."
We rested well and long in that delightful camp upon the Lympia. I was the hunter of our mess, and was often tempted to stray too far from camp alone. I had a great ambition to encounter a grizzly, as we called the fierce, brown bears of that region, and one evening I had gone alone down into the canon in search of partridges and teal. One barrel of my gun was charged with number six, and the other held nine buckshot for Indians. I had gone some distance down into the canon, when I observed that the sun was low and I must hasten back to camp. On my homeward way I came upon the track of a huge grizzly, who had crossed the road only a few minutes before, and must at that moment have been within two hundred paces of me. When I viewed that footprint, two feet long, and knew the foot that made it was close by, I quickened my pace for camp, and did not feel that I was called upon to "project" with bears like that. I had several times caused apprehension by long absences alone, and at last Walker insisted that I should not go out again without an escort, and gave me two fine young Riflemen, Bryan and Davis, for my companions, who were good hunters, and added much to my pleasure and comfort.
One day while hunting alone on some lagoons seven or eight miles from the camp, I crawled upon some geese and bagged three with one barrel while they were upon the water, and two of the second barrel as they rose. They flew half a mile and settled upon the bare prairie, whither I followed them and got three more, and hastened back to camp with my horse covered with geese and ducks, which I liberally distributed among the ladies of the First Infantry, who had just arrived from their long march to occupy Fort Davis. This was probably the best game they had tasted for a month or more.
Soon after this we set out for El Paso, and on the second or third day were met by a man who told us with great vociferation how the Indians had run off fifty head of his cattle from Eagle Springs, and begged the general to aid him in recovering them. His nickname was "Talking" Campbell. In those early days of Texas, men were named from some personal peculiarity, and we had then living "Big-foot" Wallace, a tremendous, good natured fellow from Rockbridge County, Virginia. On my first introduction to him I could not perceive any unusual size in his feet, and was informed that he acquired his cognomen honestly in battle, having slain a famous Indian chief known as "Big Foot." Then there was "Deaf" Smith, who once, when General Houston ordered his army to lie down that they might be better protected from the Mexican cannon, looked around him, and, seeing the smoke and flame of the Mexican guns and all his comrades prone upon the ground, did not tarry there a moment longer, but, turning, fled and reported all killed but himself. It was said that for years "Deaf" Smith was engaged in single combats because of this experience in his first great battle. Few men dared to mention San Jacinto or Sam Houston in his presence.
Then there was "Stuttering" Lane, a capital good fellow from San Antonio, who had many funny jokes upon himself suggested by his infirmity. When asked why a certain lady did not marry him after promising to do so, he stammered out that she was going to marry him, till a certain "damn-fool-busybody" told her he stuttered! Another was our friend then present with us,, and no man who ever met "Talking" Campbell ever had occasion to inquire why he was so called any more than he would have had in interviewing "Stuttering" Lane. But "Talking" Campbell was full of fight, and delighted when Captain Walker with forty Riflemen was ordered to follow and recover his cattle; he insisted upon going along. Young Frank Armstrong, General Smith's step-son, afterwards a very distinguished general himself, also obtained permission to go, and Lieutenant Carr was of the party.
The Indians had more than twenty four hours start, and had driven the cattle at headlong speed and left a broad trail straight to their stronghold in the mountains, whither Walker followed and found them in their village, where a harp fight ensued. One Rifleman was killed, and Carr was wounded with an arrow in the abdomen, as was Captain Van Buren, who died of his wound on the seventh day after he received it. It seemed a mere incident, so slight that neither Van Buren nor the surgeons felt any anxiety about it. He was sitting up, laughing and talking with his comrades, and apparently well, when an artery burst, and he died in a few minutes. This made us anxious about Carr's wound, but he soon recovered from it to be mainly instrumental in defeating Van Dorn at Elk Horn in 1862. The cattle had been cut up and distributed, and all Walker could do was kill a few Indians and destroy their village.
We pursued our march, and he rejoined us in the course of a few days. Campbell's herd was of fifteen hundred head, which he was driving across to California. The night of their halt at Eagle Springs very few of them got any water, and they were driven on to the Rio Grande, thirty miles distant. At fifteen miles from the spring we came upon the first dead cattle. When within sight and smell of the river, they made a grand rush for the water, and lay dead in piles. We afterwards heard that he got safely to market with the balance and made a good profit. We never saw "Talking" Campbell again, or any man equal to him in his peculiar line.
We reached El Paso in the height of the grape season. Never had we tasted such delicious grapes, and the wine made from them was very good. But our relish for it was not enhanced when we saw the process of its manufacture. Under a dirty shed a bull's hide was hung by the legs. In it were many bushels of grapes, and also a dirty, bare-legged Mexican, who, stripped to his knees, was actively pressing the juice with his feet, which had not been intentionally washed before a long time, not since the last grape season. We were assured it was the best way to make good wine, but we did not try any more of that. From El Paso we went up to Fort Filmore, where the last time I met my friend, Bernard Bee. When we parted, he gave me a very curious and massive ring made of several different colors of the gold of that country. It was stolen out of my dressing case soon after his death.
We then retraced our route to San Antonio, laying in a good supply of grapes and watermelons for our mess and a good store also for the wife of Captain Granger, who had entertained us very kindly upon our upward march. Captain Granger commanded a small detachment of infantry, twenty eight men, stationed at a famous Indian crossing on Devil's River. There was no defence whatever, and an Indian arrow could have pierced the cotton walls of Mrs. Granger's tent, but she seemed secure and contented in her isolated home. There was not a white man within hundreds of miles. Soon after we passed, a soldier was shot to death with an arrow, close to her tent, but no other casualty occurred there until a year or two later. General Hood, then a lieutenant, had a hard fight with a band of Indians thereabouts. He and several of his men were wounded, and some were killed; the Indians got rather the best of the cavalrymen that time. Hood was a very daring and ambitious man, but very unfortunate as a commander, Devil's River was far too beautiful a stream to have so bad a name. It was like the Shenandoah in the great valley of Virginia. It was clear and very grateful to the sight and taste of the weary and thirsty men and horses who sought it far and wide.
While we were at Fort Inge, Colonel Crittendon marched, with two or three squadrons, up to the Nueces, scouting after a large body of Indians. The weather was very hot and dry; the springs were gone, and water could be found only in the larger streams. He marched from the Nueces across to Devil's River, and for three days neither man nor horse had one drop of water. As they approached Devil's River, they rode amongst some thousands of wild turkeys, trotting along the same road after water. Their wings were hanging off from their bodies, and their mouths were wide open. They paid no attention to the troops, merely opening out to let them pass, and the men had no desire to molest them. Neither man nor horse died of that terrible suffering, and never was Devil's River more welcome, than when on the morning of the third day they rode into its pleasant waters.
We saw many upland plover upon our march, and found them always on the burned places of the prairie. They found in them the roasted grass seed upon which they love to feed, and on which they grow fat and delicious in flavor. For the first time, I shot the black partridge, the moreno, the best of the five varieties of that bird I found in this region. Their crops were always filled with small nuts resembling beechnuts, which they find at the roots of a grass growing upon the mountain side. They are very game, lie close and fly strong, and are tender and juicy, being one or two ounces heavier than the Virginia partridge.
Our march ended at San Antonio, where I turned in my artillery and went to join my company at Fort McIntosh, Laredo. The headquarters of the regiment were there, with one squadron, also seven or eight companies of infantry and one company of artillery. Laredo, a Mexican town, was a mile away. Occasionally, Colonel Loring, one of the kindest and best and bravest of men, gave a fandango at his quarters, and invited some of the elite of Laredo to meet our officers and their families. But there was no cordial association possible between people who did not understand each other's language. My resource was hunting, and, a few days before Christmas, Colonel Loring proposed that we should make up a party and go thirty miles or so away, where we could find plenty of deer, and bring in some venison for Christmas. Captain Tom Claiborn and Lieutenant Tom English were of the party.
In every company there were several hunters, who scouted the country for game, and sometimes brought in reports of Indians. In our party there were seven of us, who in four days killed thirty six deer and lion, all of which we shot with the Mississippi rifle. In one day we brought in sixteen deer and the lion. We lived upon the tid-bits and fore quarters of the deer, which Tom Claiborn knew well how to cook over a camp fire, while he seasoned his culinary efforts with racy anecdotes of his experiences in Oregon and on the great overland route of the regiment.
Late one afternoon, we had all come in from our day's hunt, when we heard partridges whistling close by. Lieutenant English had a handsome black setter puppy, which he had taught some tricks of a poodle, and which he had named Toots. Claiborn took Toots with him and went in pursuit of the partridges. He had a fine Manton gun, and before sunset he bagged twenty two birds, without missing a shot. Toots behaved so well that Claiborn convinced English that he ought to give the dog to me, which he did, only stipulating his name should not be changed. For more than ten years, he was one of my family. He had his mouth on every kind of game that ever wore fur or feathers. He fought with my grey-hounds in many a wolf hunt, whipped every bulldog that ever attacked him, was bitten by a rattlesnake, and sprinkled by a polecat, and had as much sense as many men, and more principle. It was while he was hunting with me one day that he was bitten by a rattler. I burned the place with gunpowder, and carried him as quickly as I could to a doctor. Toots had never seen him before, but he allowed him to cut away the flesh and burn him with caustic, only whining softly from the extreme pain. Some months after this, he got into a fight and was bitten on the same foot. I was away when it happened, and he went by himself to that same doctor, and sitting upon his haunches, as he had been taught to do, held up the injured foot for the doctor's inspection and treatment.