Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1894-06-14

federate. With characteristic Ken
lucky impulse, b young men of the
school held an indignation meeting
and offered the eight hundred dollars
to anyone who would capture him and
turn him over to the authorities. This
reward put upon his trail several
western deputy sheriffs who tracked
him to Cairo, Ill, where it was sus-
pected that he had changed his boat,
bought ammunition and supplies and
set off down h Mississippi, travelling
generally in the night and hiding in
the bayous during the day.
Deputy Sheriff Col. Abner Petingin,
of Frankfort, published in the Louis
vile Journal a year later a communi-
cation setting forth that his party had
tracked Bench to a bayou, somewhere
between T~iptonville and Fulton, on
the Tennessee shore, where the fugi-
tive had sunk his boat and struck
through the wild tract of country ex-
tending to whati is known as the 'High-
land RIM" in Henderson county. This
communication Is curious in one state
ment. 1t says: 1--WE discovered, after
much tedious searching, the sunken
boat and then struck his trail in the
woods. We had not followed it far be-
fore we came to the conclusion hat he
was accompanied by a woman"
Col. Petingi1l then states that it was
his belief and the belief of his party
that Bench met with an accident some
where on the Rim, for all traces of him
disappeared, and after camping out for
two weeks in the wilderness and dis
covering no new trail the party re-
turned.
The fact is Bench had accidentally
discovered the Laran cave.
In his endeavor to escape from his
p~ursuers, he had struck straight up the
rim and in jumping from n of the
upturned cretaceous strata he had
landed upon a depression which gave
way beneath his weight and he fell
perpendicularly into a ~crevice twelve
feet deep. This crevice has since be-
come famous as the Laran portal.
At its bottom he discovered the de-
scent which led to the arena and hav-
ing exploited the place, he and his
companion lived there until the follow
ing winter. AS soon as he felt salts
fed that the search was given over, he
vent the woman out for supplies and
built a brush house over the opening
to conceal it from the negroes who
brought them game and provisions
They must have remained in and
about the Laran cave very nearly three
months.
In thai time Bench made a very
thorough investigation of it and pre-
pared maps and typographical dia-
grams of the surrounding country.
Some of these drawings may now be
seen at the Government museum at
Rock Island, and, considering the rude
means at Bench's command, they are
singularly careful and accurate speci-
mems of c~artography.
In those three months Bench had
conceived and worked out one of the
most astounding and gigantic schemes
with which the history of audacity and
indomitable will makes us acquainted.
CHAPTER IL
He is not heard of again until five
years have elapsed, and the second
event OF which it is necessary briefly
to make mention here occurred exact
" three months before he came to the
surface in the furtherance of his vast
project.
In the winter of 1S- occurred the
revolution in Venezuela known as the
Vargas rebellion. A Spanish bark,
the Valencia, carrying arms and sup
plies for the insurgents which had been
bought in England, encountered a
heavy storm while off the Gulf of Mar
acabo, and springing a leak ran off
past Point G%allinas, and the captain,
in order to relieve his craft, threw over
1T 6ood-tide two four-inch breech-
loading rifed steel guns, at a point
called the Bahiata Bank. The mate o.
this vessel claimed to be an American
and when the Valencia was captured
w days later he managed to escape
by c~onnivance of the authorities anC
went straight to New Orleans. 1t il
supposed that he met Bench there. A
all events, he went back to Caracas a.
soon as the revolution was over and il
known to have bought up, on som
plea or other, the shells and ammuni
ton originally shipped with the gum
that were lost and for which the gov
eminent had no use.
The guns, however, were not lost
They lay in plain sight on the Bahiat;
bank at low water, and, having beef
carefully sealed, had suffered littl
damage.
Ill
Three months later Bench comes t.
the surface at the Moyamensing prison
now a federal penal establishment
He arrived there as the representative
of an influential New York paper witt
a letter to the governor-the office
that under the old system we knew a
the warden.
And nero the story Cd the great con
spiracy properly begins.
A card was brought to the officia
bearing the name of ''Andrcw Kent,
with the title of the New York news
paper in the corner, and it was fol
lowed by a well-dressed man of abou
thirty. whose easy dignity and in
formal heartiness impressed the wardel
f~avorably.
You are Gov. Ixtel. / presume?'
The governor smiled and said he was
IL am from the New York newspape
whose name you saw on the card
have been sent on an errand which thi
letter will explain"
The governor put on his glasses ant
read the letter that was handed to him
It ran as follows: -
zG--