had gone to the Plains to fight the
Indians. He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains.
After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had
got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and
scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one
barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold
navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept
like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W.
Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died:

THE UNITED STATES

In account with JOHN WILSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey,
deceased, . . . . . . . . . . Dr.

To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100, $3,000
To traveling expenses and transportation . . . . . 14,000

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $17,000
Rec'd Pay't.

He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to
collect it, but died before he got through. He left it to Barker J.
Allen, and he tried to collect it also. He did not survive. Barker J.
Allen left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got
along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great
Leveler, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also. He left the
bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who
lasted four weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming
within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor. In his will he gave the
contract bill to his uncle, by the name of O-be-joyful Johnson. It was
too undermining for joyful. His last words were: "Weep not for me--I am
willing to go." And so he was, poor soul. Seven people inherited the
contract after that; but they all died. So it came into my hands at
last. It fell to me through a relative by the name of, Hubbard
--Bethlehem Hubbard, of Indiana. He had had a grudge against me for a
long time; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me
everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract.

This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the
property. I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation
in everything that concerns my share in the matter. I took this beef
contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President
of the United