| THE FAIR MESSENGER. |
| HOW TOM JONES LOST HIS PROMOTION. |
| THE CRUISE OF THE "GHOST." |
| WHAT ROBIN TOLD. |
| RECKLESS SPARROWS. |
| LANDING A RIVER-HORSE. |
| THE DAISY COT. |
| OUR POST-OFFICE BOX. |
| Vol. II.—No. 86. | Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. | PRICE FOUR CENTS. |
| Tuesday, June 21, 1881. | Copyright, 1881, by Harper & Brothers. | $1.50 per Year, in Advance. |
THE FAIR MESSENGER.
BY BENSON J. LOSSING.
On a warm, hazy day in January, 1849, I was at Orangeburg, SouthCarolina, eighty miles west of Charleston. My purpose was to visit thebattle-ground of Eutaw Springs, on the right bank of the Santee River,forty miles distant. I hired a horse and gig for the journey. The steedwas fleet, and the road was level and smooth most of the way. It laythrough cultivated fields and dark pine forests, and across dry swampswherein the Spanish moss hung like trailing banners from the live-oakand cypress trees.
At sunset I had travelled thirty miles. I lodged at the house of aplanter not far from Vance's Ferry, on the Santee, where I passed theevening with an intelligent and venerable woman (Mrs. Buxton)eighty-four years of age. She was a maiden of seventeen when the armiesof Greene and Rawdon made lively times in the region of the UpperSantee, Catawba, Saluda, and Broad rivers. She knew Marion, and Sumter,and Horry, and other less famous partisans, who were frequently at herfather's home, on the verge of a swamp not far from the High Hills ofSantee.
"We were Whigs," she said, "but the Tories were so thick and cruelaround us, when Rawdon was at Camden, that father had to pretend he wasa King's man to save his life and property. Oh, those were terribletimes, when one was not sure on going to bed that the