RAILWAYS AND REVOLVERS IN GEORGIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IX, Issue 559, 13 March 1858, Page 3

RAILWAYS AND REVOLVERS IN GEORGIA.

[From the ' Times ' Special Correspondent -in

the South Seas.]

In going from Augusta to Savannah, and thence to Macon, the traveller passes over the v/hole of the line on which Mr. AiTowsmith had that dreadful vision of revolver fights, duels, murders, and infanticide, by the description of which he made this Georgian railroad more talked of for a time than if it had paid a 20 per cent, dividend. The story startled the British public, and considerably amused the Americans. It excited some curiosity to know on what it could be founded. It is quite useless to inquire; the narrative has no foundation whatever; it is a mere hallucination. It is not easy to prove a negative, but not difficult to ascertain that a waking dream is not a realit} T, however vivid it may have appeared to the person visited by it. The officers of the line and the conductor of the. train in which the series of tragedies is supposed to have occurred have already formally denied the truth of the statement ; two of the passengers by the same cars, on the same night, are still reskl'ng in Macon, respectable and intelligent men of business, and their direct testimony as to the utter baselessness of the narrative would satisfy any court of law or jury in the world. It is a mere waste of time to pursue the absurdity further in the way of disproof. Nothing of the kind Il.as occurred on the line from the day it was opened ; the nature of the delusion and the motive for publishing such a monstrous tissue of fiction remain wholly unintel-

ligible, and are as incapable of being explained in any reasonable manner here, in the locality, as in England. It is supposed that the author of it may on some occasion have been told a dreadful tale, which so forcibly impressed him that he reproduced it with the slight addition of making himself an eye-witness of facts, instead of an author of fables; that he somewhere supped full of horrors, and, having a good digestion for such diet, so thoroughly assimilated them that they became part of himself, and were recorded as experience.

The dreadful night ride, with its pistol fights and massacres, was in reality a quiet ordinary journey between two commercial towns, with the average number of peaceable citizens, and involved no more alarming incidents than would be likely to occur on the same number of miles by the Great Western. One of my informants was in the baggage-car, in which one of the duels I believe is supposed to have been fought, during the whole trip and was not disturbed by any terrific combat. The baggage-car is the smoking room of the trains, and parties occasionally retire thither with "refreshments." It should be stated also that a bottle of champagne is known in these parts as a " Monte Christo pistol," a brand of that wine bearing the name of Dumas's hero. In the narrative this pleasant and harmless article figures as a lethal weapon, making but a slight report, and therefore used by the hostile parties as convenient for quiet fighting. With the addition of as many " dead men " stretched on the boards as there are empty bottles left behind some traces of a prior mystification or mistaking figurative language for literal description become apparent; and some of the sanguinary horror is -wiped out of the story. Encounters with the i Monte Christo weapon in the baggage wagon are, I understand, not uncommon on the line. The courteous president of the company has, I believe, more than once been engaged in them ; but he assures me no fatal results have ever occurred.

Bnt whatever may have been the origin of the narrative, with its public, murders without witnesses, and bodies that never seem to have been buried by the friends of the defunct, the whole thing has very nearly been fully confirmed, with additions; and in this mannerIt amused excessively a select circle of youth in Savannah who have more time on their hands than billiards can occupy: feeling that the author of the tale rather required backers, one of them invented a clergyman, and in his name wrote to Mr. Arrowsmi'th in England, tendering corroborative testimony as a fellow-passen-ger. The offer was gratefully accepted, and in performance of it documents and affidavits testifying to the truth of the well known details were prepared, which would have deepened the mystery. But or.c of those cross accidents that defeat the best laid conspiracies, large or small, -intervened.; the device _of the fictitious clergyman beeameHcnown to some persons--?rb—K-^..-. pool before his documents could be despatched. and the scheme was necessarily abandoned. This additional incident is of little importance, except that the correspondence connected wiui it proves the delusion under which Mr. Arrowsmith labours to be complete, whatever may be its cause, for he would have received the proffered confirmation seriously, and produced in support of the creations of his fancy a mass of proof that would have been equally baseless. It was to have passed in Savannah as excellent fun, though most people would be inclined to call it deliberate forgery.