This involved a foreign journey. It was no less than to go to England to
sell to English buyers some hundred thousand bales of designated cotton to
be thus rescued from spoliation, acting under the supervision and indeed
the orders of the Confederate fiscal agency at Liverpool.

Of course I was ripe for this; but it proved a bigger job than I had
conceived or dreamed. The initial step was to get out of the country. But
how? That was the question. To run the blockade had been easy enough a
few months earlier. All our ports were now sealed by Federal cruisers and
gunboats. There was nothing for it but to slip through the North and to get
either a New York or a Canadian boat. This involved chances and disguises.



IV


In West Tennessee, not far from Memphis, lived an aunt of mine. Thither I
repaired. My plan was to get on a Mississippi steamer calling at one of
the landings for wood. This proved impracticable. I wandered many days and
nights, rather ill mounted, in search of some kind--any kind--of exit,
when one afternoon, quite worn out, I sat by a log heap in a comfortable
farmhouse. It seemed that I was at the end of my tether; I did not know
what to do.

Presently there was an arrival--a brisk gentleman right out of Memphis,
which I then learned was only ten miles distant--bringing with him a
morning paper. In this I saw appended to various army orders the name of
"N.B. Dana, General Commanding."