would not listen to their prayers, but carried us instead on board
the "Pensacola," a sloop-of-war which was now lying in the river,
ready to go to sea, and ready also to run the gantlet of the rebel
batteries which lined the Virginian shore of the river for many
miles down below Alexandria and Mount Vernon. A sloop-of-war in
these days means a large man-of-war, the guns of which are so big
that they only stand on one deck, whereas a frigate would have them
on two decks, and a line-of-battle ship on three. Of line-of-battle
ships there will, I suppose, soon be none, as the "Warrior" is only
a frigate. We went over the "Pensacola," and I must say she was
very nice, pretty, and clean. I have always found American sailors
on their men-of-war to be clean and nice looking--as much so I
should say as our own; but nothing can be dirtier, more untidy, or
apparently more ill preserved than all the appurtenances of their
soldiers.

We landed also on this occasion at Alexandria, and saw as melancholy
and miserable a town as the mind of man can conceive. Its ordinary
male population, counting by the voters, is 1500, and of these 700
were in the Southern army. The place had been made a hospital for
Northern soldiers, and no doubt the site for that purpose had been
well chosen. But let any woman imagine what would be the feelings
of her life while living in a town used as a hospital for the
enemies against whom her absent husband was then fighting. Her own
man would be away--ill, wounded, dying, for what she knew, without
the comfort of any hospital attendance, without physic, with no one
to comfort him; but those she hated with a hatred much keener than
his were close to her hand, using some friend's house that had been
forcibly taken, crawling out into the sun under her eyes, taking the
bread from her mouth! Life in Alexandria at this time must have