Beyond those white tents our soldiers, in gray shirts and blue pants, are busily plying the spade. They throw up a long rampart notched with embrasures for cannon. We have already built fifty miles of breastworks.
A little in the rear are the heavy siege-guns, where they can be brought up quickly; a little in front, the field artillery, with the horses harnessed and tied to trees, ready for use at a moment's notice. Near the workmen, their comrades, who do the more legitimate duty of the soldier, are standing on their arms, to repel any sortie from the enemy. Their guns, with the burnished barrels and bayonets glistening in the sun, are stacked in long rows, while the men stand in little groups, or sit under the trees, playing cards, reading letters or newspapers. More than twenty thousand copies of the daily papers of the western cities and New York are sold in the army at ten cents each. The number of letters which go out from the camps in each day's mail is nearly as large.
When this parapet is completed, we shall go forward a few hundred yards, and throw up another; and thus we advance slowly toward Corinth.
Ride still farther, and you find the infantry pickets. The vedettes are drawn in, if there is any skirmishing going on. From the extreme front, you catch an occasional glimpse of the Rebels—"Butternuts," as they are termed in camp, from their cinnamon-hued homespun, dyed with butternut extract. They are dodging among the trees, and, if you are wise, you will get behind a tree yourself, and beware how you show your head.
Experiences among the Sharp-shooters.
Already one of their sharp-shooters notices you. Puff, comes a cloud of smoke from his rifle; in the same breath you hear the explosion, and the sharp, ringing "ping" of the bullet through the air! Capital shots are many of these long, lank, loose-jointed Mississippians and Texans, whose rifles are sometimes effective at ten and twelve hundred yards. Yesterday, one of them concealed himself in the dense foliage of a tree-branch, and picked off several of our soldiers. At last, one of our own sharp-shooters took him in hand, and, at the sixth discharge, brought him down to the ground. This sharp-shooting is a needless aggravation of the horrors of war; but if the enemy indulges in it, you have no recourse but to do likewise.
Horses Stolen Every Day.
Stealing is the inevitable accompaniment of camp life—"convey, the wise" call it. I have a steed, cadaverous and bony, but with good locomotive powers. There was profound policy in my selection. For five consecutive nights that horse was stolen, but no thief ever kept him after seeing him by day-light. In the morning, he would always come browsing back. My friend and tent-mate "Carlton," of The Boston Journal, had a more vaulting ambition. He procured a showy horse, which proved the most expensive luxury in all his varied experience. The special aptitude of the animal was to be stolen. Regularly, seven mornings in the week, our African factotum would thrust his woolly head into the tent, and awaken us with this salutation:
"Breakfast is ready. Mr. Coffin, your horse is gone again."