Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1896-10-22
ChOctaw's Letter from the Indian
Territory.


Perhaps some of your readers
would like to know something oi
this land of cotton, persimmon trees
and sandy bottoms. A man from
the North would have found many
things in the streets of Ardmore to
interest and entertain him. The U.
S. court was in session, and litigants,
witnesses, jurors, prisoners, lawyers
and a multitude of people, white,
red and black, were about the court
house and in the streets. Hundreds
of wagons of cotton in the send and
in bales were In the streets, and a
score or more of buyers were going
quickly from wagon to wagon rip
ping the bagging, sampling the cot
ton and bidding on it.
Many farmers were in with corn,
wood and baled hay. Horse traders
and auctioneers were out in full
force, and while auctioneers and
street fakirs were crying off goods of
all kinds-save of good quality
children in great numbers followed
the band and procession of diminu-
tive, spotted ponies, trained mon
keys and dogs, and mothers with
their little ones, fiocked to the great
tent to hear the music and see the
show, which will stay and reap
rich harvest for weeks.
The gins, with whir, roar and dust,
separating lint from the seed and
baling the cotton; the compress,
with below and buster and mighty
pressure reducing the bale to less
than half its original size; and the
oil mill, with it's great engines, COM
plex machinery and hot fires, cook
ing, hulling and pressing the seed,
filling huge tanks with the rich,
sweet oil, and making meal that will
fatten thousands of beeves; and the
ice plant with its pumps and fires
and smell of ammonia, turning the
water into steam and thence into
beautiful blocks of purest crystal;
and the Touring mill, with its bins,
elevators, rollers, dusty millers and
stacks of sacks of highest patent, all
doing perfectly the will of man,
would instruct and please the stran-
ger.
And he would marvel at the hardi-
ness of the cotton plant, when to
think that for forty days in July and
August mercury was at hundred or
higher, rarely going as low az eighty
five at night. That in three months
there had seldom been dew enough
to dampen a sheet of paper. that
about one or two inches was the
measure of the rainfall i'm four months
and that for days hot, scorching,
blistering winds which, to the planter,
seemed to blow the very breath of
hell, had dried up the corn prema-
turely, reduced growing milIet to
powder, parched, twisted and DESC
lated the great fields of sorhgum,
and sorely tried the endurance of
Milo maize, Kaffir and Jerusalem
corn, and still the pretty, dark-green
cotton grew on, smiling defiance in
the face of the blazing sun, tanning,
shading and cooling the burning
earth, delight to the eye, and the
joy and hope Of the needy farmer.
And now three, four, five and six
hundred bales come in daily to be
sold in the streets, the whole land is
glad, and rejoices in the God.given
snow storm of the South, thousands
are picking and handling, scores OF
gins are busy, and the planter laughs
at the fierce struggle between gold
and silver for supremacy or parity,
for cotton Is his currency, 1t pays
his debts, buys his supplies and its
seed feeds his flocks and herds.
In this remarkable season forest
trees have died by the thousands,
many orchards have been blasted
ponds, creeks, wells and rivers have
literally boiled dry. In approaching
the Red and Canadian rivers to the
distance of fifteen miles their out
line is plainly discerned by the clouds
of sand. Early in the summer birds
forsook the country, doves, larks,
paradise and mocking birds, the In.