That county, which was the world of my young and impressionable life, seemed to me to hold all that was necessary to human happiness. Its territory was equal to the State of Rhode Island, and three rivers were born within its borders--the Tombigbee, the Hatchie, and the Tuscumbia. Even to my unsophisticated mind there was something in the grandeur and the freedom of the place that spoke of things beyond the senses of the body. Like all the Indian countries, it had its mysterious landmarks and its sad and beautiful legends of the wars and loves and tragedies of the wild, savage, brave people whose crude road to God was through the “happy hunting ground.” My boyish imagination deeply colored with the glory and the romance of those vague traditions, I have stood, in the shadow of moonlit nights, and watched the dark heads of the pines nodding to the sky, and thought that, perchance, their whispered song was the echoed sigh of the vanquished red man brooding, in spirit, above the land he had so loved. Another scene that flutters through my memory like a fantastic dream is the darkening forest of the evening twilight hour, alive with uncounted thousands of wild pigeons, turning the silent woods into a Babel of musical chatter as they gathered to rest in their sylvan lodge. These all have flown away on the wings of time, as utterly as the great herds of the buffalo have vanished from the plains of the West, and, so far as I know, not a single bird of this species is left in our country. For some strange reason the God of nature has permitted spoiled man to waste the myriad wonders of the virgin woods, until only the rivers, the springs, and the eternal sky are left of the glory that was. In melancholy recollection of all the people and all the things beloved that are gone from that small, though great, green country of my early life, I salute thee, O Tishomingo of sacred memories! This reverie may be meaningless to the majority of my readers; but if this, my heart’s humble tribute to the remembered beauty of my native land shall meet the eye of a single companion of those blissful days and enchanting scenes, _he_ will understand and the others will forgive. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XXVII RECONSTRUCTION Much has been said and written of that unhappy period immediately following the Civil War--unhappy for both the North and the South, because its memories delayed the reunion of our sections through many years. The humiliation and griefs of that frightful era left far deeper scars than did all the sabers and swords and bullets from Bull Run to Appomattox. The flame of war had burned out the lives of thousands of our brave sons and consumed our homes and wasted our lands, but the embers of reconstruction seared their mark upon the very souls of our people.