CHAPTER XVII
The Siege of Corinth.—1862
THE boat on which I had secured passage for Cairo
started down the river some hours after dark, and we
reached our destination the following noon. I rose early in
the morning and managed to write up my account of the
battle completely before arriving, so that I felt free to
rest and enjoy myself for two or three days, as far as it
was possible, in the small, struggling, rough place which
the town at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers then was. A pleasant surprise awaited me at the
St. Charles Hotel, where I took quarters. I discovered
among the guests A. D. Richardson, whom I had not seen
since our parting at Denver in 1859. He had gone there
again the following year to engage in newspaper work and
“town-site speculations,” but, upon the outbreak of the
Rebellion, had returned east to take the field as a war
correspondent. He shared rooms with three colleagues,
to whom he introduced me, and with whom I have kept
up a pleasant and intimate acquaintance ever since. One
of them was Thomas W. Knox, who had started a weekly
paper with Richardson in the town of Golden City that
had sprung up at the very point on Clear Creek where
Greeley, Richardson, and I crossed. Knox, after the war,
became a professional traveller and gatherer of material
in various countries for books for young people, which
brought him moderate fame and fortune. Another was
Junius Henri Browne, the well-known writer, with whom
my relations became closest; and the fourth, Richard T.
Colburn, who, at the end of the war, followed for many
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