Brave Deeds of Confederate Soldiers

SOLDIERSchimneys of a country town.Still more rarely would lines of railway have been noticed.There were not enough of these lines to link up every comer of that almost boundless rural region.It is true that the great divisions of the South were united by the locomotive, but vast areas were still remote from all facilities for transportation except by steamboat or batteau; the principal means of getting about, not only from neighborhood to neighborhood, but not infrequently from one important town to another, consisted still of the riding horse and the carriage; and for the accommodation of their owners, there were comfortable though primitive inns or ord- inaries at all the crossings of the principal public highways.The seclusion of the whole region left a very deep impression on the disposition of its inhabitants.In a general way, it fostered in them a passionate, an almost romantic, love of the soil; a love that was further intensified by their descent as a body from the original settlers of that part of the Union; for this meant that they and their forbears had been associated with it for many generations.Indeed, time had brought about a complete identity of feeling, sentiment, and points of view even where the earliest population was sprung from different European nationalities.The fact too that the vast majority of the inhabitants had been engaged in CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS Montevideo, Buena Vista or Montezuma.Daredevil expeditions like those which the filibuster Walker, as brilliant an adventurer as Aaron Burr, led against Central America, aroused the warmest sympathy and enthusiasm in the South, where their largest number of volunteers were obtained, because there so many men were animated by an irrepressible thirst for dangerous enterprises.It was due to this universal love of adventure, this hunger for an active and stirring life, -that Sir Walter Scott enjoyed such extraordinary popularity in the homes of the Southern people.There were few libraries of importance among them that were lacking in those splendid volumes in which he has drawn such romantic pictures of the entrenched camp, the martial council, and the sombre castle swarming to the battlements with mail-clad defen- ders; or has described so vividly the headlong charges and the sword-to-sword clashes of the battle- field; or related so graphically the adventures of wandering soldiers of fortune in Highland glen or on the plains of France and Palestine.It was due to this military spirit, which found such pleasure in the books of the great Scottish novelist, that the tournament remained down to the beginning of the war one of the most popular kinds of amuse- ment in the South.It is true that this sport did not take the ancient form of a personal combat CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS firing at the huge object overhead, now clearly visible in the moonlight.Slowly the balloon drifted away until it stood above the margin of York river, and as it passed out over the stream, it had sunk so low that Bryan could distinctly hear the rope that was trailing beneath it splashing in the water.Fearing that he would be thrown out into the Bay, and that he would be impeded in swimming by a pair of heavy boots which he was wearing, he endeavored to draw them off, but in vain; and it was not until he had ripped their sides wide open with his knife that he at last rid his feet of the obstruction.While he was fumbling with this task, the balloon, under the influence of another current of air, drifted back to land; and when it had sunk still nearer to the surface of the earth, he grasped the rope, and with the agility of an acrobat, let himself down to the ground by means of it.Running forward with the end in his hand, he tied it to a tree, and the balloon, already near the last stage of complete collapse, soon settled quietly in a heap on the grass. CHAPTER IVLieutenant Robins and the Vanguard CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS order to force the enemy to use up a great many troops in guarding all points; and he was indefatigable in his efforts to disrupt their communications by every means available to his hand.So suddenly did he appear in the open, so quickly did he vanish in the nearest forest, that he was often spoken of by the foe as the Flying Dutchman of the Woods, and his followers as Children of the Mist

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