But there came a time of drought and great anxiety, for men, and women too, for women toiled in the fields in those heroic days. They watched the clouds with sinking hearts, as they sailed carelessly by, giving never a drop of rain to revive vegetation and moisten the parched earth.
Every one felt as much interest in the potato-field the women had planted as though it had been their own.
There are, perhaps, a score or more of men and women still living in that loyal town, who will remember that “Sanitary Potato-Patch;” and the remarkable fact, that one day a cloud sailed over it and drenched the field with rain, scattering only a few sprinkles over the fields adjoining.
The yield of that potato-field was immense; and the entire crop was in time shipped to me at St. Louis, and distributed in camps and hospitals.
I do not now remember how many bushels they raised on that patch of ground, but I distinctly remember that they sent me by one shipment fifteen hundred bushels of potatoes.
Never were potatoes more needed, or more acceptable to men suffering from that army scourge, “scurvy,” than were those fifteen hundred bushels, distributed to Iowa soldiers and to all in the general hospitals. To me the supply seemed inexhaustible.
One of the first stops made by the steamer sent down with them was at Island No. 10, above Memphis, Tenn., where one hundred bushels were put off, with the injunction that they must be divided equally among the men and officers of an Iowa regiment stationed there.
There were over one thousand men in all.
On my return trip the steamer stopped again at Island No. 10. My feet had scarcely touched the shore till I was surrounded by soldiers, who reported that the officers had eaten up most of the potatoes, and that they had been given only about three messes.
I was indignant, and went directly to the colonel’s headquarters with the complaint. He was greatly surprised, and sent for the quartermaster and other officials, who listened to the complaints very serenely. When they had heard all I had to say the quartermaster said,—