tution vulgarly known as
"nigger dogs" was not as widely diffused as its popular derivative, and
far too fossilized in its structure to submit to any merely sentimental
changes in types of government. So far as that phase of the subject may
tend to obtrude difficulties upon the reader, the writer will volunteer
the information that he was recently placed by accident at a point where
his sensorium covered three large well-trained kennels of these brutes;
and that it has been his good fortune, on more occasions than one, since
liberty resumed its old-time inheritance in the "land we love," to follow
the panting "Ketch," where none dare go before, along the redolent trail
of the criminal--black or white. Nor is there anything more remarkable
about the circumstance that the body of men known as Ku-Klux should, upon
certain contingencies, avail themselves of the services of this sagacious
brute, than that the same men, by accident or otherwise, should be
employed on a righteous mission like the following:

In the year 1862, in that portion of Telfair county where the _Elk_ river
has its confluence with the Ocmulgee, a larger stream, a negro slave of
Mr. ---- committed a brutal rape on one of his master's household, and
fled to the neighboring wilderness. He was not pursued at the time, as, in
view of the recent conscript levies and the unsettled state of the
country, there were no available means at hand; and, aided by individuals
of his own color, whose race prejudices at this time had reached a state
of savage excitement, he found safe harborage and a precarious livelihood
in the river-swamps during the entire period of the war. Pending his
exile, and soon after it began, he was joined by an only brother, a
brother-criminal likewise, who had been forced to fly the settlements;
and, having formed an alliance--_sun_ and _ek_--the predatory excursions
of this twain became thereafter the special terror of dwellers in that
exposed region. Nothing, however, particularly worthy of mention marked
their exploits until the year following the close of hostilities, when
they emerged from their fastnesses, and having made their way to a
neighboring settlement, occupied by an old gentleman and an only son, a
youth of twelve years, put them both to death with every circumstance of
horrible detail. This affair occurred in the latter part of the year
1865, and, as was to have been expected, created a wide-spread sensation.

Within a few ho