The Far Land

Hinkle's Swampers were a SOUTHERN unit that took part in two major actions in the American Civil War, those of Olustee and Cold Harbor. They were drummed into battle by Peter Gray, the false name adopted by a Scottish boy who had fled his Highland home to escape a miscarriage of justice likely to end his young life on the gallows. Stranded ashore in the wild land far away across the Atlantic Ocean, the side-drum skill taught him by an uncle, a former seaman of the Royal Navy, enabled Peter to find sanctuary, comradeship and a kind of home among the swamp hunters and Sharpshooters of Colonel's Hinkle's Regiment. Three years of hard service saw the boy harden into a man. The end of the war found him with a party of Swampers seeking new homes in the British islands of the Bahamas - which is where he was caught up with by news that persuaded him on a dangerous return to the land of his birth.