Mr. Fairbank gives many interesting devices that he employed in his work to throw off pursuit. "Forty-seven slaves I guided toward the north star, in violation of the state codes of Virginia and Kentucky. I piloted them through the forests, mostly by night; girls, fair and white, dressed as ladies; men and boys, as gentlemen, or servants; men in women's clothes, and women in men's clothes; boys dressed as girls, and girls as boys; on foot or on horseback, in buggies, carriages, common wagons, in and under loads of hay, straw, old furniture, boxes and bags; crossing the Jordan of the slave, swimming or wading chin deep; or in boats, or skiffs; on rafts, and often on a pine log. And I never suffered one to be recaptured."[497] [497] _Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times_, pp. 10 and 11. About 1850, Seth Concklin, a resident of Philadelphia, learned of the remarkable escape of Peter Still from Alabama to the Quaker City. Here the runaway was most happily favored in finding friends. William Still, his brother, from whom he had been separated by kidnappers long years before, was discovered almost immediately in the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society; and Seth Concklin soon proffered himself as an agent to go into the South and bring away Peter Still's family. The fugitive himself first visited Alabama to see what could be done for his wife and children; but failing to accomplish anything he gratefully accepted the offer of the daring Philadelphian. Mr. Concklin expected to assume the character of a slave-owner and bring the Stills away as his servants; he found, however, that the steamboats on the Tennessee River were too irregular to be depended on. He therefore returned north to Indiana, and arranged for the escape of the slave family across that state to Canada. The story of his second attempt at the South has a tragic ending, notwithstanding its favorable beginning. Having made a safe start and a long journey of seven days and nights in a rowboat the whole party was captured in southwestern Indiana. A letter from the Rev. N. R. Johnston to William Still, written soon after the catastrophe, gives the following account of the affair: "On last Tuesday I mailed a letter to you, written by Seth Concklin. I presume you have received that letter. It gave an account of the rescue of the family of your brother. If that is the last news you have had from them I have very painful intelligence for you. They passed on (north) from near Princeton, where I saw them.... I think twenty-three miles above Vincennes, Ind., they were seized by a party of men, and lodged in jail. Telegraphic despatches were sent all through the South. I have since learned that the marshal of Evansville received a despatch from Tuscumbia to look out for them. By some means, he and the master, so says report, went to Vincennes and claimed the fugitives, chained Mr. Concklin, and hurried all off...."[498] In a postscript, the same