Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-07-15
BURNING THE FLAG.

N'AN Aic NeA . AACclAho W ChetN A'A"Al n
slough one hot afternoon in June. The
slough is a bayou of the upper Missis-
sippi. Fishermen sometimes find corpses
there attached to their lines.
See said Bristow, the story teller.
pointing to a bay on the western shore OF
the river, "SebastoDol was there once a
bloody town that went out in the night.
How do / know who laid it out or what
became Of those who were there? Per-
h9ps the river swallowed it up, perhaps
the lightning blasted it out. I wasn't
there. Blu right where the waters break
ing on the bank now the town stood, and
because the bluffs and the hills bound it
in they call it Sebastcpol, and the SUGAR
and wheat boats come and go, and the
women and children kidded about the
streets, and the men waited for the town
to make EN- all m"illiOnairos. All towns
in that Sioux and Winnebago country
were gold mines in those days-days
when everybody had d dream.
"A boat throws out her lines one night
and ties up, and when the captain comes
ashore and the best of the town was go
ms down in his outlet he tells as how the
South is for secession and going to quit
the North. He says in the cotton fields
men were working with guns by their
sides, and that there was a new flag, one
with stars and bars, what was put up
over the other with Stars and Stripes.
And it was all about the niggers. Sebas-
topol didn't care for niggers: there wasn't
one in the town, and those what come up
on the boats stayed on 'em when at Sc
bastopol. One what came ashore they
put at a foot of a hill with the oak and
the elm so thick you couldn't see the top,
and they started him on the climb up
with the hounds after him.. And it was
music to the ears below when the hounds
reached him and the yell of despair was
.I,,t &c ,-:%1. %l~ .,zy. - ~ rA
he get away? Nobody went to see. He
didn't come back, but the dogs did.
Fifteen hundred miles away from
Washington SebastOpol learns of seces-
sion and decides it'll go out of the Union,
too, and on a vote there was seventy-one
men for destroying the town flag, what
was q proper banner OF stripes and stars.
There was one man.. a Vermonter. whose
name was Jessup, who voted for the flag,
and he got his notice that night to follow
the niger over the hills. only they didn't
set the dogs after him. He takes his rifle
and he goes to the top of the highest
bluff what overlooks Sebastopol, so high
up he could look right down Into the
town, and he sets right there all night. I
heard as how when morning come some
people, maybe women, sees him kneeling
as if he had prayers to say.
Ten o'clock that morning the town
folk all meet in the little square what
u u 1AlAiA pAaNC " LuC q IA
there's some wood piled up there. and
over the top of the wood two men
stretched the old flag. And then, to show
they wasn't afraid, they brings out a lit
tie girl all dressed in white, and she a
torch and she puts that to the wood and
it lights up. Perhaps in ten or twenty
minutes the flag M the wood is all gone,
and Sebastopol is satisfied that it's se-
coded. The men was SO excited they
didn't work., and the women hung about
the doorways and wondered what would
come next. Somebody said as how the
along the river from NrOrleans to st. AM
thony, and as how Jeff Davis would be
king. Some of the Sebastopol people
knew him, because he'd been at Fort
Prairie du Chen when he was in the
regular army.
While they were all speeulating. some
body looks up to the top of the hill where
old Jessup had gone, Inc there they sees
the Stars and Stripes waving from q pole,
| and Jessup standing by it, leaning on his
gun and looking down. Nobody knew
how he got the f1ag-suppose he must
have had it in his kit for a long time. It
wasn't a big flag. but big enough for all
sebastopol to see it and get redhot mad.
The men goes for their guns, the women
got inside the houses, and there's going
to be trouble sure. There was just one
way to get up to Jessup, and that was a
straight climb through the brush to
where he was. A couple of men took a
moved, and the first fellow that got any
| where near him. Jessup gave him warn
ing and shot him dead. That stopped
the others, and they went to specializing.
They specialized all day and night, and
for several days, but Jessup and the flag
didn't move until they got ready to.
when they did go nobody saw. and
the next word What comes to SebaS-
topol was that the regulars at Fort SHELL
ing had been notified of what the town
had done. and there was going to be
trouble. Sebastopol laughed, but just
like a woman what has the lung trouble,
not bad, but coming slow and gradual,
the town fades away. This family goes
and that one, the docks break way, the
Hood comes, the houses tumble in, the
timber wolves get nearer. there's a fresh
ct, Lake Pepin backs up, and one morn
ing there amt anything where Sebastopol
was but sand and wood grass and some
birds and squirrels. OF course, God does
some queer things, and l don't never
NEEDLE with His business. It's enough
for me to know that He's around, saving
wood, but I just have kept ~a-thinking
ever since I knew about that flag that
somehow what Sebastopol did didn't
agree with the Almighty, and he put out
His hand and laid it upon the town, and
that was enough"
The boat swung outward to avoid q
sandy bar, and we passed from sight OF
the town upon which the whitening blight
Of an unknown power had fallen, after
the destruction of the flag.
RAGING TORNADO.
In 1850 Grenada, in the West Indies,
was visited nv a tornado with singular