I will continue my story. As I have already told you, dear reader, my journey lay in a northwesterly direction from Florence prison, and at the negro shanty where we were separated it was very much nearer to our lines at Richmond than it was to Knoxville, Tenn., but while we were together we thought it was more difficult than to try to get to our lines at Knoxville, but after we were separated Henry made up his mind to try the nearest point. So I continued on my sad and lonely journey, not knowing what there was in store for me. If I had known what was going to befall me, it is possible this story would never have been written.
After I left the river and continued my journey I was now nearing the lines of West Virginia and the Blue Ridge mountains. I traveled a good many dark nights after I came in sight of the Blue Ridge before I came to them, and such nights—laying in swamps and the loneliest places that I could find—to avoid being discovered, and eating raw sweet potatoes and hard corn. It was very seldom I stopped to ask for anything to eat until I was starved into doing so.
Oh, how often since have I learned to put all my faith in God! I have frequently thought of the passage of scripture where the Saviour said the foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. How much I feel at this time that this was truly my condition.
Soon I felt as I neared the mountains, and at this time near the lines of West Virginia, that I must have something besides the stuff that I had been subsisting on or I would have to give up. I finally came to an old deserted house and at this time there was snow on the ground, some two or three inches deep. Then imagine a poor starved skeleton, weighing less than one hundred pounds, traveling the forests and swamps without anything but a pair of drawers and an old shirt; no hat or cap, no shoes, nothing but old rags tied around the feet, thinking of home and its warm fireside. Well, dear reader, this was my sad plight!
As I was saying, I had stopped at an old plantation to look around. Soon I saw a man about half a mile away toward the mountains, gathering corn from the field, with an old gray horse. I made myself known to him, for by this time I was getting very weak, not having had anything to eat since Henry and I had been separated at the negro shanty. If I remember right, there had been at least a week, if not better, since I had tasted food. When I got to the old man I gave him to understand that I was a fugitive and was on my way to Ash county, West Virginia. My way and manner of talking was not like that of the people here, so the old man told me he reckoned that I was a Yank from Salsbury prison, but he seemed to receive me so kindly that I told him who I was after he had told me that most of the people there were Union folks. This he did to win my confidence. Oh, how sorry I was as soon as I went to the house, for the old lady was, I believe, the hardest looking old woman, with a Roman nose, and such eyes I never saw, as she glared on me when I uttered the word that we were rebels. Here there was a son about thirty years old, seated in a chair, who was a sad sight, for he appeared to be perfectly helpless and he would repeat just like some parrot the same words, “Yes, we are rebels here,” and how simple he seemed to act. Now the old man told the old lady to give me some hoecake if there was any and he at this time showed his true colors, for he told me that there was a company being raised and I had better wait and eat some hoecake until he would return, and I would get a good suit of rebel gray, worth thirty or forty dollars a suit, and fifty dollars bounty. On saying this he left me, and jumping on the back of the old gray horse went off on the run to a small town four miles to the west and south of his place. This old man, I think, told me that he was eighty years old. As soon as he was gone I told the old lady if there was any hoecake in the house that I must have it. She still insisted that they were rebels and had nothing for a Yankee. Then I told her that I would have to help myself, for I was determined to have something to eat or die in the attempt. I had almost become mad on account of going so long and having so little to subsist on. You see the harvest had gone by and the cold, bleak rains and some snow would fall every few days.