the Sibley tent quite a little, a tent of the same form as the Indian tepee and doubtless designed from it, but they have evidently been given up, for from this time on we saw no more of them. The tents we were supplied with there were the wall tent used by the officers, hospitals and for commissary stores, and the small shelter tents for the men. The snakes were rather thick and too neighborly to suit some tastes. It was not at all uncommon to find one comfortably asleep in one’s pocket or shoe as he dressed in the morning, or sunning himself under the edge of the tent in the afternoon, but they were not dangerous. I never heard of any one being bitten by one of them.

A party of us boys built a trapeze and a vaulting bar, and started quite a little interest in athletics and had a lot of good fun there.

We had been at Newbern but a few days when Miss Carrie Cutter, the daughter of the surgeon died of spotted fever. She went south with us from Annapolis to assist her father in the care of the sick and wounded men of the regiment. She was a delicate girl of eighteen years and could not withstand the exposure incident to army life. Her body was taken to Roanoke Island and buried beside that of her friend, Charles Plummer Tidd.

There was a good deal of sickness in the regiment at this time. The water we drank was surface water: many of the boys had chills and fever and a great deal of quinine and whiskey was taken. Some of the boys used to turn out quite regularly and go up to the surgeon’s tent for the quinine and whiskey. Others of the fellows were unkind enough to intimate that they really went up for the whiskey, which was, of course, unjust and wrong.

We had been here but a few weeks when a batch of recruits arrived at the regiment, two of which were assigned to our company. One of them had a few locks of rusty red hair hanging down over his shoulders, while his face was partially covered with a faded yellowish red beard. He was at once dubbed the Collie. The day after his arrival he was met by a friend of Harding Witt. This friend suggested to the newcomer that he could not have been informed of the regulations of the service or he would have been to the barber-shop and that soldiers who did not have their hair cut and their whiskers trimmed within forty-eight hours after joining the company were liable to imprisonment for five days. Our friend with the yellow hair innocently fell into the trap and begged his comrade to conduct him to the company barber. This was precisely what was wanted, and the newcomer was escorted to the tent occupied by Harding Witt and his friend, which had been ordered to give the impression of a barber-shop. A large chair had been placed in the center of the tent with a mirror in the front of it, and near the chair was improvised a table on which was arranged a razor, scissors, cologne water and perfumery. Harding impersonated the barber, with coat off, a large white towel pinned in front of him like an apron. He sat reading a novel as the two entered. On seeing them he sprang to his feet and shouted “Next!” The recruit took the chair and Harding commenced operations. He took out his watch and laid it on the table, explaining as he did so, that the time was short but he would try and have him shaved and his hair cut by parade time. He had trimmed the beard from one side of his face and had cut the hair from one side of his head, when the drum beat. The recruit was dismissed till after the parade when he was told to return and the job would be finished.

When the Captain took command of the company his eyes fastened on the recruit instantly, and he ordered him three paces to the front. As the man lumbered forward, for he was as awkward in actions as he was rustic in looks, the boys were ready to burst with laughter. Indeed some of them did shout. The captain took in the situation, saw the poor fellow was the butt of some one’s joke, smiled and ordered him to his quarters. After parade, Harding finished his job.

Later Tom Winn and I found a large cotton field a mile and a half or two miles to the west of the camp, where the ground was just covered with running blackberries. We noised it around the camp and directly a fourth of the regiment could be seen out there picking blackberries. Dr Cutter heard about the berries and believing them beneficial to the health of the boys, recommended the giving of passes liberally, and extra large rations of sugar were also served to eat with them and for a while we had all the berries to eat we wanted.

April 17, we went on board the old “Northerner” again. We were told we were going on a special expedition to the rear of Norfolk, Va. We moved down the river along Pamlico Sound, past Roanoke Island up Albermarle Sound to near Elizabeth City and landed on the opposite side of the sound near Camden at just sunrise April 19. We started off into the country. At eleven o’clock we had marched a distance of eighteen miles through the dismal swamp, parts of the way over a corduroy road in a terrific heat. A number of the boys were sunstruck. E. B. Richardson of our company received a partial sunstroke. At eleven o’clock we struck the Johnnies at a place near South Mills. Our errand was the destruction of the stone locks of the Dismal Swamp Canal at that place. At four o’clock we had accomplished our purpose, the Johnnies had been driven away and the locks of the canal destroyed. From four to eight o’clock we rested, had coffee and supper, then started back and arrived at the boat and went aboard at sunrise the next morning.

Soon after we started on our return trip it began to rain and it rained in torrents all the first part of the night. That return march was something indescribable. The logs of the corduroy road became very slippery when wet and if I fell flat once I did twenty times that night. That march of thirty-six miles between sunrise and sunrise, fighting a battle, destroying a canal, eighteen miles through a swamp in a terrific heat, and the return eighteen miles in a dark, stormy night, part of the way over a corduroy road, was a test of our powers of endurance we never exceeded during the whole four years of our service.

We clambered aboard the boat, threw off our knapsacks and dropped, and I do not think I moved during the whole day. At night the cook came around and woke us up and we had a cup of coffee and something to eat. After that I unrolled my blanket and lay down on it and went to sleep again and slept straight on until the next morning. We arrived at Newbern early in the forenoon and at mid-day of the 22d we were back in our camp again.

That was the time when the dread Merrimac was receiving her finishing touches at the Gosport Navy Yard. The whole north quaked with fear of that huge iron monster. Government officials at Washington were very much disturbed about the mighty ironclad that so much was being written about in the public press. They were concerned lest she should steal down Dismal Swamp Canal from Norfolk to Elizabeth City, destroy our squadron in the sound, then escape to the high seas through Hatteras Inlet, hence our expedition, and destruction of the locks of the canal at South Mills.

Had the officials at Washington known then that the Merrimac drew 22 feet of water, that source of anxiety would have been dispelled at once, for no ship drawing such a depth of water could have manoeuvred in the shallow water of Albermarle and Pamlico Sound, much less passed over the bar at Hatteras Inlet where there is only eight feet of water at high tide.

I brought back from South Mills in my knapsack one thing I did not carry up there,