Letters from the Frontiers, etc

Introduction

. The following Letters, published in compliance with the expressed desire of those valued friends for whose eyes alone they were originally intended, are taken, chiefly, either from copies retained by the writer at the time, or from the origi nals which have recently been placed in his hands by those to whom they were addressed. Many of them, embracing per haps the longest and those written with most care, have been copied verbatim under his own eye. Some have been docked of their redundance, trimmed into shape, and redressed so far as was requisite in preparing for the press letters written currente calamo, and comprising subjects of various descrip tions, as well personal as of a general character. Others may be said to have been re-written, always, however, preserving strictly the outline and main features of the subject, and the facts and incidents by which it was sought to be illustrated.

One or two were written for publication, and appeared in the journals of the day ; they are here introduced unaltered. Many are mere extracts. Two or three incidents only are related which did not pass under the writer's own eye ; these were communicated directly by officers of character, who were themselves eye-witnesses, and they are so noticed where introduced. Nothing has been exaggerated, nor is there

INTRODUCTION.

. IV much that is even highly colored. The reader may therefore rely upon the Letters, taken collectively, as a fair and just delineation of the peoples, the countries, the incidents and adventures into which the writer was led in the course of a long military service. They commenced with the commence ment of his military career ; for a few weeks only had passed from the day on which he was graduated at the Military Academy at West Point, — while in the full enjoyment of emancipation from the rigid though wholesome discipline of a military school, and proud of the elevation from a Cadetship to a Lieutenancy, — when he received orders to join a detachment of one hundred and twenty recruits destined for his regiment, and a company of the 2d Artillery stationed at Pensacola. Here he encountered and mingled with a people strangely differing in manners and habits from those of his native State ; but who nevertheless possessed traits of amiability and gentleness in the women, and a love of pleasure in the men, which rendered them commonly unobtrusive, but some times fiery and vehement where they thought their rights were invaded.

Here, and at other military posts in Florida, he passed several years ; at times amid the wild scenery of that country whose climate, in mildness and salubrity, yields to that of no other portion of our national domain ; a land where the atmosphere is so pure and bright that the mere sense of existence is absolutely a physical as well as a moral pleasure, not appreciable by one who has not experienced it. Here he rode through her silent woods, and sat by her magnificent springs, at an age when impressions are readily received, but firmly stamped upon the mind and feelings. It was such scenes, and the feelings with which they were associated, that he endeavored to sketch in the language of one for whom

INTRODUCTION.

. V " Nature in her wildest hour of infancy " has always possessed unrivalled charms. His service in the course of years carried him over the whole of the southern and west ern territory to the Rocky Mountains ; and these Letters are his efforts to portray the accidents by flood and field, " all of which he saw, and part of which he was ;" and they are sub mitted, with their original imperfections scarcely amended, to the clemency of the reader. Belair, November, 1867. 1* CONTENTS.