started. Instead of mud he found dangerous quicksands, into which
his army plunged and sank almost out of sight. And there was no
better weather on the Peninsula than at Manassas. His cavalrymen,
when they had got their sea-legs off, and mounted, cut a sorry
figure in the quicksand. And his artillery sunk above its boots.
Indeed it was with the greatest difficulty his army could be kept on
the surface. There was no getting a firm understanding.

When George had got his army "all ashore," he set out on his grand
journey to Richmond. But when he had waded for twenty miles or so
through quicksands, he halted before a little old town called
Yorktown. Now the old women along the road told George that he had
better have nothing to do with Yorktown, that Yorktown was not much
account anyhow, and not worth spending much powder on. They told him
also that although Mr. Beauregard had not been seen, there was one
General Johnson, who had just come to town with a large army; and
had made no end of sand heaps, and put mighty big guns on them. That
he would not find it so easy to get into Yorktown while General
Johnson sat smoking his pipe behind them big sand heaps. And so it
proved.






CHAPTER VI.

NOBODY HOME AT YORKTOWN.