CHAPTER XIV

THE SAME, CONTINUED

HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,
CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 28, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: I arrived here safely the day before yesterday, and I hope
that you will soon receive some of the letters I forwarded on that day.
It is an extraordinary place, this City Point; a military city sprung up
like a mushroom in a winter. And my breath was quite taken away when I
first caught sight of it on the high table-land. The great bay in front
of it, which the Appomattox helps to make, is a maze of rigging and
smoke-pipes, like the harbor of a prosperous seaport. There are gunboats
and supply boats, schooners and square-riggers and steamers, all huddled
together, and our captain pointed out to me the 'Malvern' flying Admiral
Porter's flag. Barges were tied up at the long wharves, and these were
piled high with wares and flanked by squat warehouses. Although it was
Sunday, a locomotive was puffing and panting along the foot of the ragged
bank.

High above, on the flat promontory between the two rivers, is the city of
tents and wooden huts, the great trees in their fresh faint green
towering above the low roofs. At the point of the bluff a large flag
drooped against its staff, and I did not have to be told that this was
General Grant's headquarters.