their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the
graves. Just before the coffins were lowerd, an old man whispered to me
that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the
west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods that
either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted
gin-house,--a fine well of our own digging, within the camp lines,--a full
allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every company,
with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial wooden
guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off
duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards. We
have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty
feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in
Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our aggregate has increased
from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred and forty, besides a
hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and we have practised
through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since
my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps,
and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like re-entering the
world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred
to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other
camps were white.


January 8.

This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary business, and by