A Good-bye to a Friend.
A RATHER BAD NIGHT
WE were living in the deserted village. That is to say, our battery of light artillery was stationed at Bluffton, South Carolina.
At ordinary times Bluffton had a population of about three thousand souls. At the time of which I write it had no population at all.
It was a town built upon a high bluff overlooking an arm of the sea, or more properly a great bay, broken by multitudinous islands into various inlets. Hilton Head lay within sight, twelve miles away, and all the waters of the great island-studded bay were navigable.
Bluffton never had any business to do. It had no shops, no factories, no anything but planters’ residences. Its houses were all elegant and all comfortable. Its streets were shaded by great spreading trees, not planted in symmetrical rows, but growing wherever they pleased, in the midst of the thoroughfares.
Bluffton was exposed to the direct assault of gun-boats or expeditions of any sort. So, early in the war, its entire population left and went to points in the interior. At the time I write of, in 1863, there was not a soul in the town except the men of the battery to which I belonged.
Our captain was commandant of outposts. I was adjutant of the same.
Our support consisted of two or three small troops of cavalry. Their camps were several miles in rear of our own. These cavalrymen did all the picketing. In the event of an attack we and they were charged with the duty of harassing the advance of the enemy and delaying him on his march to the railroad, seventeen miles away, long enough for troops to be sent down from Charleston or up from Savannah.
It was a wild, free, gypsy-like life. We lived in the handsomely furnished houses, made free use of the very rich libraries, fished, played at chess, shot deer and turkeys in the woods, dozed upon “joggling boards” in sea-breeze-swept piazzas, and altogether did nothing most industriously and delightfully.