and a maximum of dinner. Bill of fare: two beef-cattle and a thousand
oranges. The oranges cost a cent apiece, and the cattle were Secesh,
bestowed by General Saxby, as they all call him.


December 1, 1862.

How absurd is the impression bequeathed by Slavery in regard to these
Southern blacks, that they are sluggish and inefficient in labor! Last
night, after a hard day's work (our guns and the remainder of our tents
being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready
in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those
captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I
wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat
arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it.
Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and
heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then across the slimy beach
at low tide, then up a steep bank, and all in one great uproar of
merriment for two hours. Running most of the time, chattering all the
time, snatching the boards from each other's backs as if they were some
coveted treasure, getting up eager rivalries between different
companies, pouring great choruses of ridicule on the heads of all
shirkers, they made the whole scene so enlivening that I gladly stayed
out in the moonlight for the whole time to watch it. And all this
without any urging or any promised reward, but simply as the most
natural way of doing the thing. The steamboat captain declared that they
unloaded the ten thousand feet of boards quicker than any white gang
could have done it; and they felt it so little, that, when, later in the
night, I reproached one whom I found sitting by a campfire, cooking a
surreptitious opossum, telling him that he ought to be asleep after such