Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/157

 soldiery of all arms. From the seat of the wagon he had a prospect of the great hills,—Appalachian brothers of those amidst which he was born, had made his home at North Elba, and had already ordered that his body should be buried. He paid no attention to the crowd and the soldiery, but those hills filled him with new emotion. "This is a beautiful country," he exclaimed to his attendants. "I have not cast my eyes on it before; that is, in this direction." The best Virginian account of his execution is that written by Parke Poindexter, then a soldier in the Richmond company of militia, who held the "post of honor" at the gallows, and was afterward a colonel in the Confederate army. "I witnessed the whole proceeding," says Poindexter. "Brown mounted the scaffold as calmly and quietly as if he had been going to his dinner. He did not exhibit the slightest excitement or fear.