I do not know whether the General took the house. I think he did. I left for Louisville. There I saw the great merchant, who invited me to his home to supper and consulted with me. His daughters were rebels and would not speak to me. He had a great deal of property in Indiana, which _might_ be oil-lands. If I would visit it and report on it, he would send his partner with me to examine it. I consented to go. This partner, Mr. W., was a young man of agreeable, easy manners. With him I went to Indianapolis, and thence by "stages," waggons, or on horseback through a very dismal country in gloomy winter into the interior of the State. I can remember vast marshy fields with millions of fiddler crabs scuttling over them, and more mud than I had ever seen in my life. The village streets were six inches deep in soft mud up to the doors and floors of the houses. At last we reached our journey's end at a large log-house on a good farm. I liked the good man of the house. He said to us, after a time, that at first he thought we were a couple of stuck-up city fellows, but had found to his joy that we were old-fashioned, sensible people. There was no sugar at his supper-table, but he had three substitutes for it--"tree-sweetnin', bee-sweetnin', and sorghum"--that is, maple sugar, honey, and the molasses made from Chinese maize. Only at a mile's distance there was a "sugar-camp," and we could see the fires and hear the shouts of the people engaged night and day in making sugar from the trees. He told me that on the hills in sight a mysterious light often wandered. During the Revolutionary war some one had buried a barrelful of silver plate and money, and over it flitted the quivering silver flame, but no one could ever find the spot. The next day I examined the land. There was abundance of fossiliferous limestone, rich in petrifactions of tertiary shells, also cartloads of beautiful _geodes_ or round flint balls, which often rattled, and which, when broken, were encrusted with white or purple amethystine crystals. I decided that there were places where oil might be found, though there was certainly no indication of it. I believe that my conjecture subsequently proved to be true, and that Indiana has shown herself to be a wise virgin not without oil.