Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

“ [175] ” wind, commencing to blow at the Gulf, as some imagined; that its rate of progress was from thirty to forty-five miles per hour; and that it had its origin in the Rocky Mountains or on the Plains. He surmised that a great snow-fall, evolving an enormous amount of heat, produced a rising, moving column of air, with a southward tendency, which drew after it the arctic blasts that made the norther.

General Johnston's interest in animals-what might be called his friendliness to them — has been mentioned. There was along our road a tract many square miles in extent, reaching from Bluff Creek to Fort McKavitt, which was called the Prairie Dog City. Here dwelt in large communities these lively little marmots. Most of them occupied plain holes in the ground; these, General Johnston called the plebs. Others, who seemed to enjoy consideration on account of the broad, elevated terraces around their dwellings, from which they harangued the multitude with great chatter, he said were the magistrates and orators. He speculated amusingly on the analogies here to human government, and called attention to the common lot by which they fell victims to the rattlesnakes, which in turn became the prey of the owls that infested the city.

General Johnston noted closely the habits of birds. I remember well the infinite patience with which he reared a nest of red-birds for me near Shelbyville, Kentucky, when I was a boy. They had an incessant, metallic clack, and were always hungry. The same year he brought up by hand, in like manner, two orioles which became great pets. On our frontier journey, he continually called attention to the ways of the animals that we saw. A blue, swallow-tailed hawk kept near us all one day, allowing us to flush the small birds for him. General Johnston knew not which most to admire, the poise and swoop of the aerial hunter, or the intelligence that made him avail himself of our aid in getting his dinner. “That hawk,” he said, “doubtless considers himself the centre of creation, and that our place in it is to play jackal to him.”

In his study of Nature, General Johnston combined scientific exactness with aesthetic gratification. A flower was viewed by him in more than one aspect. Grouped with others it was a piece of color, or a feature in the landscape; and again, as a single study, it became in turn an index of the soil, a sign of the season, or, with its wonderful arrangement of stamen and petal, an evidence of design and a symbol of order in the universe. He showed me the distinctive features and the relative practical values of the white mesquite, the curly mesquite, and half a dozen other nutritious native grasses. His acquaintance with plants was very intimate. In the cultivation of this taste, he had the aid and encouragement of his wife, who possessed remarkable talent and skill in painting flowers. In his various tours he collected for her a large number of varieties of cactus — as many as sixty, I believe.