It was on such a day, under the grateful shade of a mulberry tree, that Col. Whittington told us of his trip to Napoleon. I can not state is as a fact, but I seem to recall that the object of his trip through the wilderness and swamps was to secure his license to practice law. Just why this should have been necessary I do not know. It was some years before I was born, and Napoleon was destroyed two years before I came into the world. The "Book of the United States" (1834) does not mention Napoleon in its list of Mississippi Valley towns, but Mark Twain knew it well. In his "Life on the Mississippi" (1874) he says: "These performances (Marquette and La Salle) took place on the site of the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation cross was raised on the banks of the great river. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse (modern historians and women's societies who have erected memorial stones at various De Soto "crossing" points from Natchez to Memphis will please take notice) of the river, away back in the dim early days, he took it from that same spot - the site of the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four memorable events connected with the discovery and exploration of the mighty river occurred; by accident, in one and the same place." Further along in the same volume the author of "Tom Sawyer" and Huckleberry Finn" says Napoleon had "Banks, churches, jails, newspaper offices, court house, theatre, fire department, livery stable - everything", and he closes the chapter with this paragraph: "Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of a great and important county; town with a big United States marine hospital; town of innumerable fights - an inquest every day; town where I used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed news of the Pennsylvania's mournful disaster a quarter of a century ago; a town no more - swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!" Note the disjointed phrase in the middle of Mark Twain's paragraph: "town of innumerable fights - an inquest everyday." It fits admirably into Col. Whittington's story of his journey to Napoleon on horseback. I can not repeat it in his own words, so I use my own: He left Monticello early in the morning of a summer day to ride sixty or seventy miles through swamps and wilderness to the river town situated on what is now Big Island country, but which at that time (probably in the early 1850's) was the Arkansas mainland. At noon the first day he came to a large log house, back of which was a corn field. A wide veranda ran the full length of the side toward the road, and a man appeared to be stretched out asleep on the floor of the shady end. The Colonel was hungry and in need of a drink of water, so he stopped at the gate and gave the usual "halloo" of the time. Nobody answered, and the man on the porch did not move. The Colonel "hallooed" again with the same result, although he could hear voices far out in the cornfield. Puzzled a bit, he got off his horse and walked toward the house with the intention of waking the man on the veranda and requesting food and water for himself and his horse. The man had been shot. There was blood on his clothing, and a pool of it on the floor. He was dead. Astonished and perhaps a bit fearful, although he had plenty of courage, the Colonel stood and looked at the man. He could hear the voices in the corn field coming nearer, so he waited eventualities. Presently three other men emerged from the corn field and came toward the house. Two were supporting a third between them. He, too, had been shot. Col Whittington had arrived on the very heels of a crisis in an Arkansas feud between the Bledsoes and the Watsons. He offered his assistance in caring for the wounded man, but this was declined. So he accepted a drink of water, mounted his horse and rode on. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online! http://photos.yahoo.com/