University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Friday, June 14th.—Last night with my good host from
his plantation to the great two-storied steamer General Quitman,
at Natchez. She was crowded with planters, soldiers
and their families, and as the lights shone out of her windows,
looked like a walled castle blazing from double lines of embrasures.

The Mississippi is assuredly the most uninteresting river in
the world, and I can only describe it hereabout by referring
to the account of its appearance which I have already given
—not a particle of romance, in spite of oratorical patriots and
prophets, can ever shine from its depths, sacred to cat and
buffalo fish, or vivify its turbid waters.

Before noon we were in sight of Vicksburg, which is situated
on a high bank or bluff on the left bank of the river,
about 400 miles above New Orleans and some 120 miles from
Natchez.

Mr. MacMeekan, the proprietor of the "Washington," declares
himself to have been the pioneer of hotels in the far
west; but he has now built himself this huge caravansary,
and rests from his wanderings. We entered the dining saloon,
and found the tables closely packed with a numerous company
of every condition in life, from generals and planters down to
soldiers in the uniform of privates. At the end of the room
there was a long table on which the joints and dishes were
brought hot from the kitchen to be carved by the negro
waiters, male and female, and as each was brought in the
proprietor, standing in the centre of the room, shouted out
with a loud voice, "Now, then, here is a splendid goose!
ladies and gentlemen, don't neglect the goose and apple-sauce!

Here's a piece of beef that I can recommend! upon my honor
you will never regret taking a slice of the beef. Oyster-pie!
oyster-pie! never was better oyster-pie seen in Vicksburg.
Run about, boys, and take orders. Ladies and gentlemen,
just look at that turkey! who's for turkey?"—and so on,
wiping the perspiration from his forehead and combating with
the flies.

Altogether it was a semi-barbarous scene, but the host was
active and attentive; and after all, his recommendations were
very much like those which it was the habit of the taverners
in old London to call out in the streets to the passers-by when
the joints were ready. The little negroes who ran about to
take orders were smart, but now and then came into violent
collision, and were cuffed incontinently. One mild-looking
little fellow stood by my chair and appeared so sad that I
asked him "Are you happy, my boy?" He looked quite
frightened. "Why don't you answer me?" "I'se afeered,
sir; I can't tell that to Massa." "Is not your master kind to
you?" "Massa very kind man, sir; very good man when
he is not angry with me," and his eyes filled with tears to the
brim.

The war fever is rife in Vicksburg, and the Irish and German
laborers, to the extent of several hundreds, have all gone
off to the war.

When dinner was over, the mayor and several gentlemen
of the city were good enough to request that I would attend
a meeting at a room in the railway-station, where some of the
inhabitants of the town had assembled. Accordingly I went
to the terminus and found a room filled with gentlemen.
Large china bowls, blocks of ice, bottles of wine and spirits,
and boxes of cigars were on the table, and all the materials
for a symposium.

The company discussed recent events, some of which I
learned for the first time. Dislike was expressed to the
course of the authorities in demanding negro labor for the
fortifications along the river, and uneasiness was expressed
respecting a negro plot in Arkansas; but the most interesting
matter was Judge Taney's protest against the legality of the
President's course in suspending the writ of habeas corpus in
the case of Merriman. The lawyers who were present at this
meeting were delighted with his argument, which insists that
Congress alone can suspend the writ, and that the President
cannot legally do so.

The news of the defeat of an expedition from Fortress
Monroe against a Confederate post at Great Bethel, has
caused great rejoicing. The accounts show that there was the
grossest mismanagement on the part of the Federal officers.
The Northern papers particularly regret the loss of Major
Winthrop, aide-de-camp to General Butler, a writer of promise.
At four o'clock, p. m., I bade the company farewell, and
the train started for Jackson. The line runs through a poor
clay country, cut up with gulleys and watercourses made by
violent rain.

There were a number of volunteer soldiers in the train;
and their presence no doubt attracted the girls and women
who waved flags and cheered for Jeff Da vis and States' Rights.
Well, as I travel on through such scenes, with a fine critical
nose in the air, I ask myself, "Is any Englishman better than
these publicans and sinners in regard to this question of
slavery?" It was not on moral or religious grounds that our
ancestors abolished serfdom. And if to-morrow our good
farmers, deprived of mowers, reapers, ploughmen, hedgers
and ditchers, were to find substitutes in certain people of a
dark skin assigned to their use by Act of Parliament, I fear
they would be almost as ingenious as the Rev. Dr. Seabury in
discovering arguments physiological, ethnological, and biblical,
for the retention of their property. And an evil day would it
be for them if they were so tempted; for assuredly, without
any derogation to the intellect of the Southern men, it may
be said that a large proportion of the population is in a state
of very great moral degradation compared with civilized Anglo-Saxon
communities.

The man is more natural, and more reckless; he has more
of the qualities of the Arab than are to be reconciled with
civilization; and it is only among the upper classes that the
influences of the aristocratic condition which is generated by
the subjection of masses of men to their fellow-man are to be
found.

At six o'clock, the train stopped in the country at a railway
crossing by the side of a large platform. On the right was a
common, bounded by a few detached wooden houses, separated
by palings from each other, and surrounded by rows of trees.
In front of the station were two long wooden sheds, which, as
the signboard indicates, were exchanges or drinking saloons;
and beyond these again were visible some rudimentary streets
of straggling houses, above which rose three pretentious spires

and domes, resolved into insignificance by nearer approach.
This was Jackson.

Our host was at the station in his carriage, and drove us to
his residence, which consisted of some detached houses shaded
by trees in a small enclosure, and bounded by a kitchen garden.
He was one of the men who had been filled with the
afflatus of 1848, and joined the Young Ireland party before it
had seriously committed itself to an unfortunate outbreak;
and when all hope of success had vanished, he sought, like
many others of his countrymen, a shelter under the stars and
stripes, which, like most of the Irish settled in the Southern
States, he was now bent on tearing asunder. He has the
honor of being mayor of Jackson, and of enjoying a competitive
examination with his medical rivals for the honor of attending
the citizens.

In the evening I walked out with him to the adjacent city,
which has no title to the name, except as being the State capital.
The mushroom growth of these States, using that phrase
merely as to their rapid development, raises hamlets in a
small space to the dignity of cities. It is in such outlying expansion
of the great republic that the influence of the foreign
emigration is most forcibly displayed. It would be curious to
inquire, for example, how many men there are in the city of
Jackson exercising mechanical arts or engaged in small commerce,
in skilled or manual labor, who are really Americans
in the proper sense of the word. I was struck by the names
over the doors of the shops, which were German, Irish, Italian,
French, and by foreign tongues and accents in the streets; but,
on the other hand, it is the native-born American who obtains
the highest political stations and arrogates to himself the largest
share of governmental emoluments.

Jackson proper consists of strings of wooden houses, with
white porticoes and pillars a world too wide for their shrunk
rooms, and various religious and other public edifices, of the
hydrocephalic order of architecture, where vulgar cupola and
exaggerated steeple tower above little bodies far too feeble to
support them. There are of course a monster hotel and blazing
bar-rooms—the former celebrated as the scene of many a
serious difficulty, out of some of which the participators never
escaped alive. The streets consist of rows of houses such as
I have seen at Macon, Montgomery, and Baton Rouge; and as
we walked towards the capital or State-house there were many
more invitations "to take a drink" addressed to my friend and

me than we were able to comply with. Our steps were bent
to the State-house, which is a pile of stone, with open colonnades,
and an air of importance at a distance which a nearer
examination of its dilapidated condition does not confirm. Mr.
Pettus, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, was in the
Capitol; and on sending in our cards, we were introduced to his
room, which certainly was of more than republican simplicity.
The apartment was surrounded with some common glass cases,
containing papers and old volumes of books; the furniture, a
table or desk, and a few chairs and a ragged carpet; the glass
in the windows cracked and broken; the walls and ceiling discolored
by mildew.

The Governor is a silent man, of abrupt speech, but easy of
access; and, indeed, whilst we were speaking, strangers and
soldiers walked in and out of his room, looked around them,
and acted in all respects as if they were in a public-house, except
in ordering drinks. This grim, tall, angular man seemed
to me such a development of public institutions in the South as
Mr. Seward was in a higher phase in the North. For years
he hunted deer and trapped in the forest of the far west, and
lived in a Natty Bumpo or David Crocket state of life; and he
was not ashamed of the fact when taunted with it during his
election contest, but very rightly made the most of his independence
and his hard work.

The pecuniary honors of his position are not very great as
Governor of the enormous State of Mississippi. He has simply
an income of £800 a year and a house provided for his
use; he is not only quite contented with what he has but believes
that the society in which he lives is the highest development
of civilized life, notwithstanding the fact that there are
more outrages on the person in his State, nay, more murders
perpetrated in the very capital, than were known in the worst
days of mediæval Venice or Florence;—indeed, as a citizen
said to me, "Well, I think our average in Jackson is a murder
a month;" but he used a milder name for the crime.

The Governor conversed on the aspect of affairs, and evinced
that wonderful confidence in his own people which, whether it
arises from ignorance of the power of the North, or a conviction
of greater resources, is to me so remarkable. "Well, sir,"
said he, dropping a portentous plug of tobacco just outside the
spittoon, with the air of a man who wished to show he could
have hit the centre if he liked, "England is no doubt a great
country, and has got fleets and the like of that, and may have

a good deal to do in Eu-rope; but the sovereign State of Mississippi
can do a great deal better without England than England
can do without her." Having some slight recollection of
Mississippi repudiation, in which Mr. Jefferson Davis was so
actively engaged, I thought it possible that the Governor might
be right; and after a time his Excellency shook me by the
hand, and I left, much wondering within myself what manner
of men they must be in the State of Mississippi when Mr.
Pettus is their chosen Governor; and yet, after all, he is honest
and fierce; and perhaps he is so far qualified as well as
any other man to be Governor of the State. There are newspapers,
electric telegraphs, and railways; there are many educated
families, even much good society, I am told, in the State;
but the larger masses of the people struck me as being in a
condition not much elevated from that of the original backwoodsman.
On my return to the Doctor's house I found some
letters which had been forwarded to me from New Orleans
had gone astray, and I was obliged, therefore, to make arrangements
for my departure on the following evening.

June 16th.—I was compelled to send my excuses to Governor
Pettus, and remained quietly within the house of my
host, entreating him to protect me from visitors and especially
my own confrères, that I might secure a few hours even in
that ardent heat to write letters to home. Now, there is some
self-denial required, if one be at all solicitous of the popularis
aura, to offend the susceptibilities of the irritable genus in
America. It may make all the difference between millions of
people hearing and believing you are a high-toned, whole
souled gentleman or a wretched, ignorant and prejudiced John
Bull; but, nevertheless, the solid pudding of self-content and
the satisfaction of doing one's work are preferable to the praise
even of a New York newspaper editor.

When my work was over I walked out and sat in the shade
with a gentleman whose talk turned upon the practices of the
Mississippi duello. Without the smallest animus, and in the
most natural way in the world, he told us tale after tale of
blood, and recounted terrible tragedies enacted outside bars of
hotels and in the public streets close beside us. The very air
seemed to become purple as he spoke, the land around a veritable
"Aceldama." There may, indeed, be security for property,
but there is none for the life of its owner in difficulties,
who may be shot by a stray bullet from a pistol as he walks
up the street.

I learned many valuable facts. I was warned, for example,
against the impolicy of trusting to small-bored pistols or to
pocket six-shooters in case of a close fight, because suppose
you hit your man mortally he may still run in upon you and
rip you up with a bowie-knife before he falls dead; whereas
if you drive a good heavy bullet into him, or make a hole in
him with a "Derringer" ball, he gets faintish and drops at
once.

Many illustrations, too, were given of the value of practical
lessons of this sort. One particularly struck me. If a gentleman
with whom you are engaged in altercation moves his
hand towards his breeches pocket, or behind his back, you
must smash him or shoot him at once, for he is either going to
draw his six-shooter, to pull out a bowie-knife, or to shoot you
through the lining of his pocket. The latter practice is considered
rather ungentlemanly, but it has somewhat been more
honored lately in the observance than in the breach. In fact,
the savage practice of walking about with pistols, knives, and
poniards, in bar-rooms and gambling-saloons, with passions ungoverned,
because there is no law to punish the deeds to
which they lead, affords facilities for crime which an uncivilized
condition of society leaves too often without punishment,
but which must be put down or the country in which it is tolerated
will become as barbarous as a jungle inhabited by wild
beasts.

Our host gave me an early dinner, at which I met some of
the citizens of Jackson, and at six o'clock I proceeded by the
train for Memphis. The carriages were, of course, full of
soldiers or volunteers, bound for a large camp at a place called
Corinth, who made night hideous by their song and cries, stimulated
by enormous draughts of whiskey and a proportionate
consumption of tobacco, by teeth and by fire. The heat in
the carriages added to the discomforts arising from these
causes, and from great quantities of biting insects in the sleeping
places. The people have all the air and manners of settlers.
Altogether the impression produced on my mind was
by no means agreeable, and I felt as if I was indeed in the
land of Lynch-law and bowie-knives, where the passions of
men have not yet been subordinated to the influence of the
tribunals of justice. Much of this feeling has no doubt been
produced by the tales to which I have been listening around
me—most of which have a smack of manslaughter about
them.

June 17th.—If it was any consolation to me that the very
noisy and very turbulent warriors of last night were exceedingly
sick, dejected, and crestfallen this morning, I had it to
the full. Their cries for water were incessant to allay the internal
fires caused by "forty-rod" and "sixty-rod," as whiskey
is called, which is supposed to kill people at those distances.
Their officers had no control over them—and the only authority
they seemed to respect was that of the "gentlemanly"
conductor, whom they were accustomed to fear individually,
as he is a great man in America and has much authority and
power to make himself disagreeable if he likes.

The victory at Big or Little Bethel has greatly elated these
men, and they think they can walk all over the Northern
States. It was a relief to get out of the train for a few minutes
at a station called Holly Springs, where the passengers
breakfasted at a dirty table on most execrable coffee, corn
bread, rancid butter, and very dubious meats, and the wild
soldiers outside made the most of their time, as they had
recovered from their temporary depression by this time, and
got out on the tops of the carriages, over which they performed
tumultuous dances to the music of their band, and the great
admiration of the surrounding negrodom. Their demeanor is
very unlike that of the unexcitable staid people of the North.

There were in the train some Texans who were going to
Richmond to offer their services to Mr. Davis. They denounced
Sam Houston as a traitor, but admitted there were
some Unionists, or as they termed them, Lincolnite skunks, in
the State. The real object of their journey was, in my mind,
to get assistance from the Southern Confederacy, to put down
their enemies in Texas.

In order to conceal from the minds of the people that the
government at Washington claims to be that of the United
States, the press politicians and speakers divert their attention
to the names of Lincoln, Seward, and other black republicans,
and class the whole of the North together as the Abolitionists.
They call the Federal levies "Lincoln's mercenaries" and
"abolition hordes," though their own troops are paid at the
same rate as those of the United States, This is a common
mode of procedure in revolutions and rebellions, and is not
unfrequent in wars.

The enthusiasm for the Southern cause among all the people
is most remarkable,—the sight of the flag waving from the
carriage windows drew all the population of the hamlets and

the workers in the field, black and white, to the side of the
carriages to cheer for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy,
and to wave whatever they could lay hold of in the air.
The country seems very poorly cultivated, the fields full of
stumps of trees, and the plantation houses very indifferent.
At every station more "soldiers," as they are called, got in,
till the smell and heat were suffocating.

These men were as fanciful in their names and dress as
could be. In the train which preceded us there was a band
of volunteers armed with rifled pistols and enormous bowie knifes,
who called themselves "The Toothpick Company."
They carried along with them a coffin, with a plate inscribed,
"Abe Lincoln, died—," and declared they were "bound"
to bring his body back in it, and that they did not intend to
use muskets or rifles, but just go in with knife and six-shooter,
and whip the Yankees straight away. How astonished they
will be when the first round shot flies into them, or a cap-full
of grape rattles about their bowie-knives.

At the station of Grand Junction, north of Holly Springs,
which latter is 210 miles north of Jackson, several hundreds
of our warrior friends were turned out in order to take the
train north-westward for Richmond, Virginia. The 1st Company,
seventy rank and file, consisted of Irishmen, armed with
sporting rifles without bayonets. Five sixths of the 2d
Company, who were armed with muskets, were of the same
nationality. The 3d Company were all Americans. The
4th Company were almost all Irish. Some were in green
others were in gray,—the Americans who were in blue had not
yet received their arms. When the word fix bayonets was
given by the officer, a smart keen-looking man, there was an
astonishishing hurry and tumult in the ranks.

"Now then, Sweeny, whar are yes dhriven me too? Is it
out of the redjmint amongst the officers yer shovin' me?"

"Sullivan, don't ye hear we're to fix beenits?"

"Sarjent, jewel, wud yes ayse the shtrap of me baynit?"

"If ye prod me wid that agin, I'll let dayloite into ye."

The officer, reading, "No. 23. James Phelan."

No reply.

Officer again, "No. 23. James Phelan."

Voice from the rank, "Shure, captain, and faix Phelan's
gone; he wint at the last depôt."

"No. 40. Miles Corrigan."

Voice further on, "He's the worse for dhrink in the ears,

yer honor, and-says hell shoot us if we touch him;" and
so on.

But these fellows were, nevertheless, the material for
fighting and for marching after proper drill and with good
officers, even though there was too large a proportion of old
men and young lads in the ranks. To judge from their dress
these recruits came from the laboring and poorest classes of
whites. The officers affected a French cut and bearing with
indifferent success, and in the luggage vans there were three
foolish young women with slop-dress imitation clothes of the
Vivandiéere type, who, with dishevelled hair, dirty faces, and
dusty hats and jackets, looked sad, sorry, and absurd. Their
notions of propriety did not justify them in adopting straps,
boots, and trousers, and the rest of the tawdry ill-made costume
looked very bad indeed.

The train which still bore a large number of soldiers for the
camp of Corinth, proceeded through dreary swamps, stunted forests,
and clearings of the rudest kind at very long intervals. We
had got out of the cotton district and were entering poorer soil,
or land which, when cleared, was devoted to wheat and corn,
and I was told that the crops ran from forty to sixty bushels
to the acre. A more uninteresting country than this portion
of the State of Mississippi I have never witnessed. There
was some variety of scenery about Holly Springs where
undulating ground covered with wood, diversified the aspect of
the flat, but since that we have been travelling through mile
after mile of insignificantly grown timber and swamps.

On approaching Memphis the line ascends towards the
bluff of the Mississippi, and farms of a better appearance
come in sight on the side of the rail; but after all I do not
envy the fate of the man who, surrounded by slaves and shut
out from the world, has to pass his life in this dismal region,
be the crops never so good.

At a station where a stone pillar marks the limit between
the sovereign State of Mississippi and that of Tennessee,
there was a house two stories high, from the windows of
which a number of negro girls and young men were staring
on the passengers. Some of them smiled, laughed, and chatted,
but the majority of them looked gloomy and sad enough.
They were packed as close as they could, and I observed that
at the door a very ruffianly looking fellow in a straw hat, long
straight hair, flannel shirt, and slippers, was standing with his
legs across and a heavy whip in his hand. One of the passengers

walked over and chatted to him. They looked in
and up at the negroes and laughed, and when the man came
near the carriage in which I sat, a friend called out, "Whose
are they, Sam?" "He's a dealer at Jackson, Mr. Smith.
They're a prime lot of fine Virginny niggers as I've seen this
long time, and he wants to realize, for the news looks so
bad."

It was 1·40 p. m. when the train arrived at Memphis, I
was speedily on my way to the Gayoso House, so called after
an old Spanish ruler of the district, which is situated in the
street on the bluff, which runs parallel with the course of the
Mississippi. This resuscitated Egyptian city is a place of importance,
and extends for several miles along the high bank
of the river, though it does not run very far back. The
streets are at right angles to the principal thoroughfares,
which are parallel to the stream; and I by no means expected
to see the lofty stores, warehouses, rows of shops, and
handsome buildings on the broad esplanade along the river,
and the extent and size of the edifices public and private in
this city, which is one of the developments of trade and commerce
created by the Mississippi. Memphis contains nearly
30,000 inhabitants, but many of them are foreigners, and
there is a nomad draft into and out of the place, which
abounds in haunts for Bohemians, drinking and dancing-saloons,
and gaming-rooms. And this strange kaleidoscope
of negroes and whites of the extremes of civilization in its
American development, and of the semi-savage degraded by
his contact with the white; of enormous steamers on the
river, which bears equally the dug-out or canoe of the black
fisherman; the rail, penetrating the inmost recesses of swamps,
which on either side of it remain no doubt in the same state
as they were centuries ago; the roll of heavily-laden wagons
through the streets; the rattle of omnibuses and all the phenomena
of active commercial life before our eyes, included in
the same scope of vision which takes in at the other side of
the Mississippi lands scarcely yet settled, though the march
of empire has gone thousands of miles beyond them, amuses
but perplexes the traveller in this new land.

The evening was so exceedingly warm that I was glad to
remain within the walls of my darkened bedroom. All the
six hundred and odd guests whom the Gayoso House is said;
to accommodate were apparently in the passage at one time
At present it is the head-quarters of General Gideon J. Pillow,

who is charged with the defences of the Tennessee side
of the river, and commands a considerable body of troops
around the city and in the works above. The house is consequently
filled with men in uniform, belonging to the General's
staff or the various regiments of Tennessee troops.

The Governors and the Legislatures of the States view with
dislike every action on the part of Mr. Davis which tends to
form the State troops into a national army. At first, indeed,
the doctrine prevailed that troops could not be sent beyond the
limits of the State in which they were raised—then it was
argued that they ought not to be called upon to move outside
their borders; and I have heard people in the South inveighing
against the sloth and want of spirit of the Virginians, who
allowed their State to be invaded without resisting the enemy.
Such complaints were met by the remark that all the Northern
States had combined to pour their troops into Virginia,
and that her sister States ought in honor to protect her.
Finally, the martial enthusiasm of the Southern regiments
impelled them to press forward to the frontier, and by delicate
management, and the perfect knowledge of his countrymen
which Mr. Jefferson Davis possesses, he is now enabled to
amalgamate in some sort the diverse individualities of his
regiments into something like a national army.

On hearing of my arrival, General Pillow sent his aide-de-camp
to inform me that he was about starting in a steamer up
the river, to make an inspection of the works and garrison
at Fort Randolph and at other points where batteries had
been erected to command the stream, supported by large levies
of Tennesseans. The aide-de-camp conducted me to the
General, whom I found in his bedroom, fitted up as an office,
littered with plans and papers. Before the Mexican War
General Pillow was a flourishing solicitor, connected in business
with President Polk, and commanding so much influence
that when the expedition was formed he received the nomination
of brigadier-general of volunteers. He served with distinction
and was severely wounded at the battle of Chapultepec
and at the conclusion of the campaign he retired into civil
life, and was engaged directing the work of his plantation till
this great rebellion summoned him once more to the field.

Of course there is, and must be, always an inclination to deride
these volunteer officers on the part of regular soldiers;
and I was informed by one of the officers in attendance on the
General that he had made himself ludicrously celebrated in

Mexico for having undertaken to throw up a battery which,
when completed, was found to face the wrong way, so that the
guns were exposed to the enemy. General Pillow is a small,
compact, clear-complexioned man, with short gray whiskers,
cut in the English fashion, a quick eye, and a pompous manner
of speech; and I had not been long in his company before
I heard of Chapultepec and his wound, which causes him
to limp a little in his walk, and gives him inconvenience in
the saddle. He wore a round black hat, plain blue frock-coat,
dark trousers, and brass spurs on his boots; but no sign of
military rank. The General ordered carriages to the door,
and we went to see the batteries on the bluff or front of the
esplanade, which are intended to check any ship attempting
to pass down the river from Cairo, where the Federals under
General Prentiss have entrenched themselves, and are understood
to meditate an expedition against the city. A parapet of
cotton bales, covered with tarpaulin, has been erected close to
the edge of the bank of earth, which rises to heights varying
from 60 to 150 feet almost perpendicularly from the waters of the
Mississippi, with zigzag roads running down through it to the
landing-places. This parapet could offer no cover against
vertical fire, and is so placed that well-directed shell into the
bank below it would tumble it all into the water. The zigzag
roads are barricaded with weak planks, which would be shivered
to pieces by boat-guns; and the assaulting parties could
easily mount through these covered ways to the rear of the
parapet, and up to the very centre of the esplanade.

The blockade of the river at this point is complete; not a
boat is permitted to pass either up or down. At the extremity
of the esplanade, on an angle of the bank, an earthen
battery, mounted with six heavy guns, has been thrown up,
which has a fine command of the river; and the General informed
me he intends to mount sixteen guns in addition, on
a prolongation of the face of the same work.

The inspection over, we drove down a steep road to the
water beneath, where the Ingomar, a large river steamer,
now chartered for the service of the State of Tennessee, was
lying to receive us. The vessel was crowded with troops—
all volunteers, of course—about to join those in camp. Great
as were their numbers, the proportion of the officers was inordinately
large, and the rank of the greater number preposterously
high. It seemed to me as if I was introduced to
a battalion of colonels, and that I was not permitted to pierce

to any lower strata of military rank. I counted seventeen
colonels, and believe the number was not then exhausted.

General Clarke, of Mississippi, who had come over from
the camp at Corinth, was on board, and I had the pleasure of
making his acquaintance. He spoke with sense and firmness
of the present troubles, and dealt with the political difficulties
in a tone of moderation which bespoke a gentleman and a
man of education and thought. He also had served in the
Mexican war, and had the air and manner of a soldier. With
all his quietness of tone, there was not the smallest disposition
to be traced in his words to retire from the present contest, or
to consent to a reunion with the United States under any circumstances
whatever. Another general, of a very different
type, was among our passengers,—a dirty-faced, frightened-looking
young man, of some twenty-three or twenty-four
years of age, redolent of tobacco, his chin and shirt slavered
by its foul juices, dressed in a green cutaway coat, white jean
trousers, strapped under a pair of prunella slippers, in which
he promenaded the deck in an Agag-like manner, which gave
rise to a suspicion of bunions or corns. This strange figure
was topped by a tremendous black felt sombrero, looped up at
one side by a gilt eagle, in which was stuck a plume of ostrich
feathers, and from the other side dangled a heavy gold tassel.
This decrepit young warrior's name was Ruggles or Struggles,
who came from Arkansas, where he passed, I was informed,
for "quite a leading citizen."

Our voyage as we steamed up the river afforded no novelty,
nor any physical difference worthy of remark, to contrast it
with the lower portions of the stream, except that upon our
right-hand side, which is, in effect, the left bank, there are
ranges of exceedingly high bluffs, some parallel with and
others at right angles to the course of the stream. The river
is of the same pea-soup color with the same masses of leaves,
decaying vegetation, stumps of trees, forming small floating
islands, or giant cotton-tree, pines, and balks of timber whirling
down the current. Our progress was slow; nor did I regret
the captain's caution, as there must have been fully nine hundred
persons on board; and although there is but little danger
of being snagged in the present condition of the river, we encountered
now and then a trunk of a tree, which struck against
the bows with force enough to make the vessel quiver from
stem to stern. I was furnished with a small berth, to which
I retired at midnight, just as the Ingomar was brought to at
the Chickasaw Bluffs, above which lies Camp Randolph.