THE personal experiences here related are of interest and have a value mainly as they throw somewhat of fresh light upon the character of the subject of this work, Captain Brown, and upon the events and times in which he was the leading actor.

Those were troublous times,—times that indeed "tried the men's souls" who experienced them. The hardships were severe. Danger and disease, death by ruthless hands, and even death from starvation, often stared us in the face. At one time we lived six weeks solely on Indian-meal mixed with water and dried before the fire, and that without even a condiment. This was our common fare in times of scarcity. Bacon and molasses, and tea without milk or sugar, were our luxuries in times of plenty.

For months, in the summer of '56, the men in our settlement never had their clothes off, day or night, unless torn or worn off. On a trip early in the summer mentioned, made by a companion and myself to Kansas City for provisions, we chanced to come across John Brown and his company encamped in the woods on a river-bank. After we made ourselves known as friends we were invited into their camp. A more ragged set of men than we found were rarely, we believe, ever seen,—Brown worst off of all, for he would not fare better than his men. They had no shirts to their backs, and their outer clothing was worn or torn to tatters. While in camp, they were going barefoot to save the remnants of their worn-out shoes for emergencies. And withal, they were, they said, on short rations, having no bread, but only Indian-meal and water. They were glad of the opportunity to engage us to bring them provisions on our return, but they confessed they were as short of money as they were of provisions, which simply meant that we must share ours with them.

The men of our company worked hard by day to raise crops, with their rifles near at hand, and slept in the "bush" at night to avoid surprise and capture in their cabins. Only the women and children ran the risk of remaining in the houses, in their defenselessness trusting to the mercy of the enemy. That border life invited sickness, especially the malaria of the low prairie. Our cabins were roughly made, and so open that when it rained it was about as wet inside of them as outside.

We had not time to dig wells, and in mid-summer the rivers were low and the water so stagnant that we had to brush the green scum from the surface when we dipped the water to drink or for other uses. Every man, woman, and child of the settlement was ill with the "fever and ague," so termed. There came near being an exception to the rule. One man kept so full of whiskey, continuously, that the ague didn't seem to have even a fighting chance; but at length the liquor fell short, and the ague then found its opportunity and even made up for lost time.As for fire-arms with which to defend ourselves, we were not well off. The famous Sharpe's rifles—"Beecher's Bibles," so-called, from the great preacher's contribution of them—won Kansas to freedom in large measure; but more by their terrible name than by virtue of any large number of the weapons themselves. The Free State men in Kansas actually had few of them.

When my older brother, with whom I went to the territory, and myself called on Theodore Parker in Boston,—for one thing to ask him if those going to Kansas would be helped to fire-arms,—he said he was sorry that his previous contributions had left him "nary red" which he could give for the purpose, and he referred us to the Aid Society. We concluded, however, to depend on our own means, though slender, and so bought, to use between us, one Sharpe's rifle for twenty-five dollars. We thought it might be useful to bring down prairie hens and wild turkeys, if not needed for more serious use.

This was the only Sharpe's rifle owned in our settlement of thirty-six men and youth able to bear arms. The members of our company, in fact, at this early period in the Kansas troubles of which we write, were very slimly accoutered for warfare, and the writer actually went into the battle of Sugar Mound, described in previous pages, with an old, worn-out flint-lock rifle, being a boy put off with the poorest weapon, which, with the greatest care, he could not discharge more than once in a half-dozen times' trying. And it was the only weapon he had until he made prisoner a Missourian and possessed himself of better arms.