circumstances in some Northern cities.

The army wagons are large, with great white cotton coverings, and generally drawn by six mules: the driver, usually a colored man, rides the first nigh mule, and has one rein, called the 'jerky rein,' running over the head of the mule before him, through a ring fastened to his headstall, and dividing on the back of the leader, and fastening to his bit. The mule is directed to one side or another by the driver twitching the rein and shouting. There were some few wagons driven from the box, but in all these cases that we noticed, the animals were horses, four in number, and their drivers were white. The mules and horses were generally in good condition, and quite a contrast to those in the cavalry service, which, even in a crack regiment, like the sixth regular, presented a most sorry appearance of overwork and terribly hard usage. The baggage trains and camp followers are a necessary portion of every army, and its efficiency depends in a great measure upon the perfect organization of this essential part. In the French army this organization is carried to a high degree of perfection. A small army of ten or twenty thousand men can get along with a fewer proportional number of followers, as it lives more upon the country, than a great army of one hundred thousand.

Every regiment has its own baggage wagons to carry its tents, cooking apparatus, officers' mess chests, and personal baggage. At the beginning of the war, each of the Massachusetts regiments was fitted out with from fifteen to twenty-four wagons. A recent United States regulation has limited the number to six for one regiment. The personal baggage of the regiments, however, forms a small part of the great transportation of an army. The spare ammunition is no small matter; every cannon having a supply of round shot, shell, canister, and grape: all these may be needed by each piece in a battle, as the shot used depends upon the distance of the foe. A full regiment of infantry may fire in one battle sixty thousand rounds of ammunition, weighing nearly three tons. The pontoon trains, the baggage of the staff, the forage for the horses of the artillery and of the generals, field officers, and their staffs, the food of the army, and the food and forage for this further army of camp followers—all have to be transported. The cavalry are expected to forage for their horses from off the country; all the rest have to be provided for. To carry the subsistence of a regiment of nine hundred men for one day, requires one of the six-mule teams: for a march of twenty days there must be twenty wagons. One will see from this that, next to the general, the quartermaster has the great post of responsibility. He has to see that all the supplies are obtained and forwarded to the right place. He commands all these countless wagons with their teamsters. It is also his duty, when on the march, to pick out the camp, unless the general may take it from out of his hands. The army, as a general thing, will not fight well unless it is well fed and well cared for. To assist him, the quartermaster has his necessary clerks, for he carries on a large business, with Uncle Sam as his principal, and he must account to him for every pound of coffee, bacon, flour, and hay, barrel of vinegar, keg of nails, tent or tent pin that he receives, and finally return them, or tell him satisfactorily where they have gone, and produce his vouchers; or he and his bondsmen must pay their value. All this is done by system and rule: there are mounted wagonmasters to look out for every small string of wagons, and some sort of discipline prevails among these non-enlisted men. A great army must be a moving city, capable of subsisting itself in the uncultivated and desert regions through which it often passes. Every cavalry soldier carries his spare horseshoes and nails; and every cavalry regiment and every battery of artillery has its own forge, tools, and materials for shoeing its horses and making repairs: even the quartermaster's train must have its blacksmiths and their supplies.