My Cave Life in Vicksburg, with Letters of Trial and Travel

MY CAVE LIFE IN VICKSBURG.
WITH
LETTERS OF TRIAL AND TRAVEL .
BY A LADY.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 443 & 445 BROADWAY. LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 1864.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
TO ONE WHO, THOUGH ABSENT, IS EVER PRESENT, THIS LITTLE WAIF IS TENDERLY AND AFFECTIONATELY Dedicated.
MY CAVE LIFE IN VICKSBURG.

MY CAVE LIFE IN VICKSBURG.
OUR PARTY SET OUT FOR VICKSBURG—THE RIDE AND SCENERY—SCENES DURING THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT—VIEW OF THE CITY AND RIVER—OPENING OF A BATTERY—THE ENEMY.
It has been said that the peasants of the Campagna, in their semi-annual visits to the Pontine marshes, arrive piping and dancing; but it is seldom they return in the same merry mood, the malaria fever being sure to affect them more or less. Although I did not leave Jackson on the night of the 15th piping and dancing, yet it was with a very happy heart and very little foreboding of evil that I set off with a party of friends for a pleasant visit to Vicksburg. Like the peasants, I returned more serious and with a dismal experience. How little do we know with what rapidity our feelings may change! We had been planning a visit to Vicksburg for some weeks, and anticipating pleasure in meeting our friends. How gladly, in a few days, we left it, with the explosions of bombs still sounding in our ears! How beautiful was this evening: the sun glowed and warmed into mellow tints over the rough forest trees; over the long moss that swung in slow and stately dignity, like old-time dancers, scorning the quick and tripping movements of the present day! Glowing and warming over all, this evening sun, this mellow, pleasant light, breaking in warm tints over the rugged ground of the plantation, showed us the home scenes as we passed; the sober and motherly cows going home for the evening’s milking through the long lanes between the fields, where the fences threw shadows across the road; making strange, weird figures of the young colts’ shadows, lean and long-limbed and distorted; the mothers, tired of eating the grass that grew so profusely, were standing in quiet contentment, or drank from the clear runs of water. And so we passed on by the houses, where the planter sat on his veranda, listening to the voice of his daughter reading the latest paper, while round her fair head, like a halo, the lingering beams of the sun played.