It has been asserted by many writers that the negros had some occult means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people, probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning.  Very astonishing stories are told of things communicated in this way across the length or breadth of the Confederacy.  It is said that our officers in the blockading fleet in the Gulf heard from the negros in advance of the publication in the Rebel papers of the issuance of the Proclamation of Emancipation, and of several of our most important Victories.  The incident given above prepares me to believe all that has been told of the perfection to which the negros had brought their “grapevine telegraph,” as it was jocularly termed.

The Rebels believed something of it, too.  In spite of their rigorous patrol, an institution dating long before the war, and the severe punishments visited upon negros found off their master’s premises without a pass, none of them entertained a doubt that the young negro men were in the habit of making long, mysterious journeys at night, which had other motives than love-making or chicken-stealing.  Occasionally a young man would get caught fifty or seventy-five miles from his “quarters,” while on some errand of his own, the nature of which no punishment could make him divulge.  His master would be satisfied that he did not intend running away, because he was likely going in the wrong direction, but beyond this nothing could be ascertained.  It was a common belief among overseers, when they saw an active, healthy young “buck” sleepy and languid about his work, that he had spent the night on one of these excursions.

The country we were running through—­if such straining, toilsome progress as our engine was making could be called running—­was a rich turpentine district.  We passed by forests where all the trees were marked with long scores through the bark, and extended up to a hight of twenty feet or more.  Into these, the turpentine and rosin, running down, were caught, and conveyed by negros to stills near by, where it was prepared for market.  The stills were as rude as the mills we had seen in Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and were as liable to fiery destruction as a powder-house.  Every few miles a wide space of ground, burned clean of trees and underbrush, and yet marked by a portion of the stones which had formed the furnace, showed where a turpentine still, managed by careless and ignorant blacks, had been licked up by the breath of flame.  They never seemed to re-build on these spots—­whether from superstition or other reasons, I know not.