Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/31



Childhood—"Billy Bowlegs"—The Choctaws—Blowing up and burning of the steamboat Princess—Throwing the lasso—Buck-jumpers.

in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1845,—the youngest of nine children,—my parents indulged me as only the youngest of a large family or an only child is spoiled, and they were very ably assisted by my elder brothers and sisters. My old black nurse, Katish, played no unimportant role in the coddling process.

According to the family legends I commenced my adventures at an early age. When I could barely toddle I strayed away from the house and was found stranded in a gutter and brought home in a most sorry plight. In this day, when it is considered the proper thing to boast of one's lowly beginnings, that story ought at least to have secured me a seat in the halls of Congress, but it didn't. Another thriller told me of the adventures of my babyhood was that once, when I was playing near a pond at Pascagoula, a huge alligator was seen slowly creeping toward me when my French governess rushed to the rescue and bravely bore me out of danger. She was ever afterwards regarded as a heroine.

When I was five years of age, my father, Judge Thomas Gibbes Morgan, with his family returned to Baton Rouge, where he had lived prior to his having been appointed Collector of the Port of New Orleans. Baton Rouge at that time was a pretty little town of some three thousand