July 16, 1863.
Donaldsonville, La. Thursday. We landed here about midnight last night. A heavy shower overtook us on the way and wet us to the skin, consequently what sleep we had was on wet ground and in wet clothes. This has been a very pretty place. The levee hides it from view from the river, but the place and the country around it is beautiful. It has been fortified, and when the gunboats fought their way up the river a year ago they were obliged to mar its beauty somewhat. There is a sugar mill near by with lots of sugar and molasses in it. The best thing is an immense cornfield right beside us, and the corn is just right to roast or boil. It is the southern variety, great big stalks, with great big ears on, and we can get a mouthful at every bite. There are a lot of troops here—I should think at least 10,000. Just what we are here for none of us have yet found out. The colored population is all I have yet seen. I visited the sugar mill and from an old darkey learned all about making sugar and molasses. There is a long shed, and under it is an endless chain arrangement upon which the sugar cane is laid as it comes in carts from the field. This carries the cane into the mill, where it passes between heavy iron rollers, which squeeze the cane so dry that it is used for fuel under the boilers that furnish steam to drive the rollers. The juice runs into a big copper kettle, where it is boiled awhile and then dipped into another and so on, until when it comes from the last it is run into what I should call a cellar under the sugar house. This is made tight in some way, probably with cement, and in it the sugar settles to the bottom. I was told that the bottom of this cellar slopes from the sides towards the center, so that the sugar settles in the center. Over this cellar is a floor that slopes from the sides to the center just as the cellar bottom does. The getting of the sugar into hogsheads is the next operation. Hogsheads are placed on the sloping floor, with one head open. Holes are bored in the lower head and into these sugar canes are stuck before any sugar is put in. They have immense great hoes, with long handles, and with these the men dig up the sugar and dump it into the open-ended hogshead. The molasses drains out through the holes in the bottom and runs back into the cellar, "vat," he called it. The men are all barefoot, and when I asked him if they washed their feet before beginning work, he said the molasses did that just as well as water. The hogsheads are left as long as any molasses drains out, when they are headed up and are ready for market. The molasses is scooped up with long-handled scoops and the barrels filled, any waste there may be running back into the vat.
It is said we are here to attract the attention of the Rebs until Grant can get in their rear, and so force them to a fair field fight. A New York paper has been going the rounds until it is worn out. When I got it I made out that General Lee got the worst of it at Gettysburg, and that he himself was wounded. Also that his line of retreat is cut off. Good enough, if true, and I hope it is. But General Lee ought to pattern after some officers I know and keep out of danger, when danger is near. After the danger is past then he can come out and shout as loud as any.