A Moonlight Rainbow
While traveling through the West Virginia Mountains, I stopped all night at the famous Old Blue Sulphur Springs, in Greenbrier County.
The buildings were erected along about 1835 and stood until just before the war, when they were partially burned, and afterwards, about 1864, almost totally destroyed by the Federal soldiers.
In 1861 however the Confederates had established a hospital in the buildings, where something near one hundred soldiers died.
That August night the moon was full, and rose about ten o’clock.
I had strolled out upon the lawn to see the old ruins of the hotel, over which the ivy has grown and clustered in such leafy bowers that you almost expect to see a ghost of the past looking out at you.
A misty fog was rising from the low lands and had partially wrapped itself around the tall white columns of the spring house. The moisture seemed to be falling fast in fine particles, or perhaps there may have been a stray fleecy cloud caught by the tree tops of the mountain point above. At all events as I looked down towards the lower end of the lawn, I saw a moonlight rainbow, the first I ever saw.
One end seemed to curve just under the eve of the old spring house down to the spring itself and the other apparently rested upon the point of the mountain, just above the lawn.
“There’s a treasure buried there, by old tradition,” I said to myself, and a boyish fancy seized me to go and find it.
But I did not go to the beam that rested in the spring, I knew there could be no treasure there, unless indeed it was in the life giving waters that were flowing away at the rate of thirty gallons per minute; but the other end, Ah; that must be the place when the treasure was buried perhaps long, long ago by some rich invalid who lugged his treasure here to bury, one whose life even these good waters could not save; or perhaps by some Indian chief, before he moved on to the far west, never to return; or may be put there by the forces of nature, by the Great God Himself, just that His Bow might rest upon it.
I crossed the lawn and ascended the point of the mountain, pulling up by the scattered shrubbery, while I kept my eyes steadily fixed upon the rainbow. Gaining the top, I entered the taller timber that was growing on the flat, but had not gone far when someone halted me.
Not only was it a distinct command to halt, but it was delivered in the tone of a sentry on guard.
Startled as I was, I looked around to see that trouble I had foolishly gotten into.
Among the shadows, and in fact it was one of the shadows, stood a sentinel dressed in the old Confederate uniform.
“Why do you come to this encampment?” he said.
“I did not know it was an encampment, and I must confess ‘twas a foolish notion only, to see what treasure is buried under the rainbow whose beams are resting here.”
“It’s not harm,” he said, “and there is a treasure buried here, but not what you expected. Inside this enclosure, the old post and rail fence as you see, as you see, has rotted down, there’s something near a hundred Confederate soldiers buried, it’s nigh forty years since they were put here.”
“Walk along with me and you will see that the graves have not only sunken in, but the young trees have grown tall, while their roots are bedded among our bones:
“We loved this spring water, for many a day it cooled our fevered tongues in the hospital.”
“Now look and listen,” he said, I saw riding along on the rays of the rainbow, a line of Confederate soldiers, and as they noiselessly alighted upon the ground, each one would sprinkle the shrubbery on his grave with fresh spring water.
“I like to water this pine and make it grow over my grave,” said the tall young soldier, it reminds me of my own mountains of North Carolina, that I marched away from when I was a boy and never saw again.”
“This grapevine I’ve trained from a seed,” said another, “for it climbs among the bushes and shades of my grave, it makes me think of the scuppernong that clustered round my old mother’s home way down in Georgia.
“Let me water the wild flowers and the fern that have covered me over, said a South Carolinian,” Ah boys, there was a pretty sweetheart left behind who loved the flowers, and I’ll take care of them for her sake.”
“My old headstone has fallen over on top of my grave,” said a Louisiana man, so nothing can grow on it, but I’ll fill this little basin with water, so the birds can come and drink, and as they sing, I’ll think I’m listening to the mocking birds of my old home.”
A sturdy West Virginia boy poured his canteen full of water, at the roots of a tall white oak sapling, “It don’t need it,” he said, “but I want it grow tall and strong and send its roots down until they bind my bones to the mountains that I loved so well.”
A cloud was covering the face of the moon, the rainbow faded away and so did the Confederate forms, but the graves – they were there still.
God! What a world Eternity must be, when the spirit of the dead can ride on the beams of a rainbow and water the flowers that bloom on their graves.
This story was published in the Greenbrier Independent, September 15, 1898. The writer was identified only as “X.”
Photo from the Greenbrier Historical Society.