But free niggers could never be depended upon for such continuous and arduous work. The abolition of slavery was the death-blow to the great cotton interest of the United States. “I honestly believe,” exclaimed the young Georgia planter first named, “that in five years the South will be a howling wilderness. The great mass of our lands are fit for nothing else, and you’ve destroyed the only labor with which we can cultivate them in cotton.” * * * * * Near Wytheville, accident threw me into conversation with a tall, raw-boned mountaineer, who might have been good looking but for the vulgarity of dyeing his moustache. He had been in the war for awhile, and then had gone to speculating. “I’ve made a good deal out of the war, and if the cussed thing hadn’t collapsed quite so soon, I’d been a millionaire—_in Confed_!” He was extravagant in his praises of Floyd, and presently it transpired that he had commanded a regiment on Floyd’s right, in one of the early affairs of the war—“Carnifex Ferry,” in West Virginia. He seemed delighted to learn that I had myself seen something of that fight—from the other side—and was at once full of inquiries and boasts. “I tell you, we got off mighty smart. The men didn’t know we were retreating; had been told they were only going to change their position. You scoundrels got my flag and trunk though. But what in thunder was that infernal racket on your left, after dark, when you were drawing off?” I explained the sad mistake by which a couple of our regiments had fired into each other. “Well, do you know, you scared us worse with that performance of yours than anything else? We felt certain you were going to sweep in on our right.” Curiously enough, this precise maneuver had been urged upon General Rosecrans by General (then Colonel) Smith, of the Thirteenth Ohio, and but for the approach of night might have been executed. I gathered from the Rebel Colonel that it would probably have been successful. “But we came very near using up your Dutch General, when you crossed the river and followed us up to the mountain. Old Bob Lee came down and reinforced us. All our arrangements were made for Floyd to march around to your rear. We were about to start, the guides were all ready, the route selected, and we would have been in your rear before daylight, with Bob Lee in your front; but Lee thought we were too late starting, and made us stop till the next night. By the next night, there was no Rosecrans there.” * * * * *