On Board Str. “Huntsman,”
Cumberland River, Christmas, 1864.
We left Louisville Thursday evening last and, just as the
boat was shoving off, I indicted you a brief note. We have progressed thus far,
having a few moments since left Fort Donaldson without accident. Fort
Donaldson, as you are aware, was the scene of General Grant's first great victory,
and the starting-point to his present greatness. I caught but a bird's-eye view
of the fortifications; from the river side they seem almost impregnable. It is
now garrisoned by some twelve hundered troops. All the way to this point we
have been warned to keep a bright lookout for guerillas, this boat being the
pioneer from Louisville. I have apprehended no danger and feel satisfied that
so far as these gentry are concerned we shall reach our destination
unobstructed. The anniversary, as usual, brings no joy to me, save that,
to-day, I have leisure in quiet to make a retrospect of the past. Last
Christmas I passed on the banks of the Yazoo, reviewing the field of battle on
which I had fought just a year prior to this time. How fraught with events to me
these years have been, and now I wonder where my next Christmas will find me.
I thought when I started to keep something like a log or
diary of my wanderings, but so thorough a nomad have I become, so used to the
current events of everyday travel, especially by steamboat, that something of a
really startling nature must transpire to make me think it worth while to note.
I would renew a former injunction to follow my course on the map. Trace me down
the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland, and up. It will be a good way for the
children to learn something of the geography of the country by following in
imagination their father's wanderings, in thousands of miles through various
States from the Gulf of Mexico to the extreme New England coast. It will seem incredible
to you, until after careful study, how much I have passed over within the past
year, and all without the slightest accident from the perils of navigation or
travel by land. I lay me down at night to sleep with the same confidence with
which I share your pillow; I wake in the morning to find myself hundreds of
miles from where I had my last waking dream or dreaming thought. The bird of
passage is hardly fleet enough of wing to outstrip me in my wandering. The
weather was very cold the day we left Louisville, the next still colder but
clear and beautiful and the morning sun rose and glittered upon one of the
strangest scenes I have ever witnessed in nature. A very heavy fog rose from
the river about one o'clock, and settling upon the trees and shrubs imperceptibly
froze and gathered until everything that had a spray was clothed with the
lightest feathery texture that can be imagined, lighter, purer, whiter than the
softest driven snow, and each little flake looking like a small plume, all
nodding and waving to the passing air; all this the sun shone upon from a
cloudless horizon through rosy tints and such a sunrise has rarely been
witnessed. The captain of our boat, an old man, who has been upon the river
thirty years, saw no sight like it, and the commonest deckhand looked on with
rapture at the beauty. All day under a bright sun, but with a freezing
atmosphere we glided through the drift of a full and rising river, and, by
starlight, kept on through the night coursing the bends and running the chutes bank
full; the next day was warm, and yesterday, as we struck the mouth of the
Cumberland, the air was soft and balmy as a day in May. We are running now
nearly due south, but a light rain is falling; it is a soft, green Christmas
here. No passengers on the boat; Joe and the horses, and officers and the crew,
all. We are freighted with iron and lumber, oats and corn. I tread the deck
sole monarch of the steamboat. The Cumberland winds through high banks of
limestone rock, rich with iron and coal, occasional bottoms fertile for corn,
but the rolling land back thin and sterile.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 371-3
