My companion seemed to relish the whisky much better than I did, and its effects soon made him very communicative, so that I was enabled to draw out a great deal of information concerning his business as a spy. He told me that he was engaged in getting dispatches through the Federal lines at Vicksburg to Generals Johnston and Pemberton.
During his visits to the Federal camps at Memphis, to purchase Confederate money, he had noted down the names of the officers in the different regiments, and the companies to which they belonged.
With that knowledge, whenever he wanted to get from Chickasaw Landing into our lines, he would go to the Provost-marshal and represent himself as belonging to Captain such-a-one's company, in such a regiment, on detached service, and get a pass to visit his regiment, and with it he could pass our lines.
The dispatches of General Johnston were brought across the country, by cavalry, to a point on the Yazoo River above Haines' Bluff. There the spy received them, and crossed over to the opposite side of the river, and then came down the river opposite to Snyder's Bluff; there he would manage to cross at night in a canoe, and land inside of our lines, without being seen. There he would get on board a dispatch-boat and come down to Chickasaw Landing, and there he would procure a pass, as I have explained. From there he would go to Mr. Smith's, who lived between the picket lines at the landing and the troops at the rear of Vicksburg.
He would give the dispatches to Mr. Smith's daughter, and she would give them to a servant of hers, a smart, intelligent colored boy, rather small of his age, who would carry them to the river above Vicksburg. He described to me the route the colored boy would take to get to the river.
At the river, the colored boy would give them to a fisherman, who staid there, and was engaged in catching fish and selling them to the gun-boatmen and the soldiers. The fisherman had lost a hand while in the rebel army, in the battle of Shiloh, and had been discharged.
He had represented to Admiral Porter that he had belonged to the Federal army, and had been wounded, as before stated, and discharged, and had succeeded in getting permission from him to fish in the river and visit his lines at all hours of the night. He had managed to make himself a favorite at the picket-post near the river, and his frequent visits to his lines near the post, at all hours of the day and night, had ceased to excite any suspicion whatever.
The fisherman would take the dispatches, and at night, while visiting his lines, pass the pickets, and carry them to the rebel pickets and then return.
In the same channel, General Pemberton's dispatches went out. How long communication had been kept up in that way I did not learn.
After having drank the most of the whisky, we returned to the landing and separated. I went to the Provost-marshal, and told him that there was one of General Johnston's spies there, and requested him to send some guards and arrest him.