Man Hunt on the Chilhowee.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1695, 24 July 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

Man Hunt on the Chilhowee.

On the Cliilhowee a man with strong personal peculiarities, or, if you will, idiosyncracies has no more chance than a mad dog. John Barton Horan, who said he was a Canadian, went from Richmond, Va., to Atlanta, Ga., to get a job of carpentering. Ihere was no work for him in town, and he resolved to foot it back to Richmond. He begged a plug of tobacco to subsist on during the journey, and was about to start, when a man took pity on him and gave him a job. He proved himself to be an excellent carpenter and a fast workman, but he conceived an idea thai the other men were trying to poison him. So he quit work and started on his tramp. He proposed to pass the Chilhowee mountains by the Hiwassee gap. He was seen washing his clothes in the Hiwassee river Two men who had not been trained in the art of minding their own business accosted him, and Horan resented their meddling with his concerns and nterrupting his washing. He had with him a hatchet and threatened to make buzzard's meat of thtm if they did not go away and let him alone. He drove them off with the hatchet, aud they alarmed the country round with the report that there was a madman in the Chilhowee mountains washing his clothes in the Hiwassee. The people armed themselves with rifles and shotguns and pistols and knives and went hunting for a lunatic. '1 he citizens' brigade found Horan asleep high on a precipice by the side of the river under a shelving rock. They woke him by hallooing, and at a distance demanded his surrender. He brandished his hatchet and refused to comply, stating that he had done no crime to be arrested for, and would not submit. That remark was sane and sensible enough, but the dignity of the hunting rabble was now insulted. Three of them fired on the poor fellow. The balls took deadly effect, passing through his breast and abdomen. The hatchet fell from his nerveless grasp, and he was surrounded by his hunters He took a prayer-book from his pocket and desired one of his murderers to read from it. And the murderer read while John Barton Horan's soul was passing ont of his body on the heights of Chilhowee. Before dying he stated that he had a wife in IS ew York, and d«sired tba&she be informed ofjbowhe had been butchered while resting, tired and footsore, on the banks of the Hiwassee. The people buried him in the gap and returned in peace to their homes- A more exciting hunt never occurred in that part of the country. It was better than any wild-cat or mad-dog chase that could be started. It is not likely there will be any legal investigation of the bloody and most barbarous affair.

A female justice of the peace in Wyoming had to stop to pin up her hair while solemnly sentencing a prisoner to three months in jail.

What kind of robbery is not dangerous ? A safe robb&ry, of course.