In his time, one of those exhibitions then rare, but unfortunately too common now--a prize fight--took place at, or very near Harper's Ferry. The then notorious Yankee Sullivan and an English bruiser named Ben Caunt, met by appointment there in 1846, and treated the people to one of those brutal shows. Caunt came to Harper's Ferry several weeks before the fight and there he went through his course of training. He was the favorite with the people, no doubt, because of his nationality--most of the armorers being descended from Birmingham gun-smiths. Sullivan arrived on the night before the encounter and with him came a crowd of shoulder-hitters, pick-pockets, et hoc genus omne. They took possession of the town and, until the fight was decided, the utmost terror prevailed among the peaceable inhabitants. The battle ground was outside the town limits, east of the Shenandoah, in a meadow near what is called "the old still-house," on the line of Jefferson and Loudoun counties. Sullivan won the fight, but the exhibition broke up in a general row. In the summer of 1850, the fearful scourge--the Asiatic cholera again made its appearance at the place and decimated the people. Although it is said that the ravages of this pestilence are mostly confined to people of dissolute habits, it was not so in this case, for it visited the homes of rich and poor indiscriminately, and all classes suffered equally. It is estimated that over one hundred people at the place perished by this epidemic and, the town having been deserted by all who could leave it, business, too, suffered severely. Major Symington was succeeded, in 1851, by Colonel Benjamin Huger. He was of Huguenot extraction and a native of South Carolina. His administration was not marked by any very important events. The excitement against the military system that arose in the time of Colonel Craig continued unabated. During Colonel Huger's superintendency in 1851, a sad accident occurred at Harper's Ferry. On the opening of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad from Cumberland to Fairmont, an excursion train containing the principal officers of the road proceeded from Baltimore to what was then the western terminus of that great channel of commerce. A number of Harper's Ferry people determined to give them a salute, as they passed that station, and, with this purpose, they loaded an old twelve-pounder cannon which was kept at the armory for such occasions. Through some mismanagement, there was a premature explosion which caused the death of two colored men. One of them, named John Butler, was a veteran of the war of 1812 and had been long a resident of the town. The other, named Scipio, was, too, like Butler, well known and respected at the place. A third party, a white man, named James O'Laughlin, to whose want of forethought the accident was attributed, lost his life shortly afterwards by being run over by the railway cars, in front of the ticket office.