The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-07-26
60 MEN IN so MINUTES
Killing Record of Kentucky Major in
Civil War.

Louisville, KY, July 26.-One of the
unique and picturesque characters
who attended the Confederate reunion
here was Major Lamar Fontaine, a
survivor of the immortal 600 who
were under fire. forty-two days at
Morris island camp, and who for forty
one days existed on meal and pickles.
| OF the 500 prisoners only 21S sur
vived the storm of shot and shell
hurled from Confederate batteries, the
| federals having placed the prisoners in
a howell between the conteading
armies. Major Fontaine was the
only one to make his escape. and ac-
complished it by swimming seventeen
miles in forty-nine hours.
He bears a letter from General Rob
ert E. Lee, settisay forth shat on one
occasion he killed sixty men III sixty
minutes. his prowess as a marksman
having been unexcelfed on the FIELD of
battle-or on-the siEiElnish line. He was
wounded sixty-sevrn times, and has
scarcely a bone in his body that Goes
not bear the mark of u bullet. - He is
|seventy-six years st6, and rarely misses
a reunion
Lamar Fontaine took part in TWEEN
ty-seven pitched battles, ffty-seven
heavy skfrmishes and a hundred indi-
vidual skirmishes, in which he left
from one to five men killed or wound
ed behind him, an individual record
unequalled perhaps in the annals of
civilized warfare.
the federals, and was placed for two
months or more in the dungeon of
Fort Delaware in solitary confinement.
He was sent from that prison, with six
hundred comrades, to Charleston Har-
Dor, where the entire six hundred
prisoners were placed under fire of the
Confederate batteries that surrounded
Charleston. These prisoners were sub
sequently removed to Fort Pulaski,
where they were fed for forty-one DAYS
n Y77aaI and ninlxlnC "a nj
wounded were taken to Beaufort and
Hilton Head.
For more than fifty years Major
Fontaine has been a close student of
archaeology and anthropology, visit
ing in his researches China, Burmah,
India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, every
point of Mexico, and Central and
South America, besides most of the.
surveyed and made sketches of 200
miles of the great Chinese wall; ex-
pored the head waters of the Indus,
the Ganges, Barmahpoutra and the
Yang-tse Kiang.
He was with Rollingbroke in his
treaty with China. with Lynch in the
Holy Land, with Maury in the famous
congress of maritime nations at BruS-
sells, and with Herndon in his scientific
exploration and survey of the Amazon
river.
Major Fontaine is the possessor of a
curiosity in the shape of a carte
federate state. which illustrates the
confidence that was feposed in him.
The carte blanche reads as follows:
1.-The Confederates States Treasurer
will honor any draft presented to him
signed by Lamar Fontaine."
This document is properly executed
and bears the seal of the Confederate
states. He also has certificates from
General r. E. Lee, General Stonewall
Jackson General r. S. Ewell, General
J. E. johnson and General J. E. &.
Stewart testifying to his deadly marks
manship on the field of battle and on
the skirmish line. The certificate
from General Robert E. Lee shows
that he killed sixty men in one hour.