CHAPTER IX.
The muster-roll of the Grays, in camp near Fredericksburg, numbered, on the 31st day of December, for duty, two commissioned officers, four sergeants, four corporals, and thirty-eight privates; on detached service, six privates; sick (present), three privates; sick and wounded (absent) twenty-three privates; total present and absent, rank and file, eighty-nine.
On the third of January, 1863, we were ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to march, and about 10 o'clock we were on the road leading towards Richmond. The first day's march found us encamped on the Telegraph Road, 15 miles from Fredericksburg. We arrived at Richmond on the 6th, passed through the city, and made camp on the Richmond & Petersburg turnpike. The following day we registered at Petersburg, camping just outside of the city limits, and remaining there until the 14th. Next morning (15th) we boarded the cars for North Carolina, and reached the city of Goldsboro on the evening cf the 16th—being our first visit to the State since our summary expulsion from Newberne by Burnside.
The 19th found us on the outskirts of the straggling little village of Kenansville; thence onward, we marched through a sparsely-settled country to South Washington, where we remained until the 1st of February. From South Washington, we moved about 7 miles eastward to the scattered town of Burgaw, where we remained until the 20th.
It was here at Burgaw that our foot-sore and weary boys found realized those blissful dreams which sometimes hover over the hard couch of a soldier and lure him into the fable land of unknown joys from which he hears
"The horns of Elfland faintly blowing."
It was here that we found the sweet potato, the perfectly cultured sweet potato, as it only grows and ripens in that portion of eastern North Carolina. Imagine, if you can, the solid comfort—after the many hardships and adventures of the bustling year of 1862—it would afford a native Carolina "Cornfed," to be able to sit down under his own pines
"An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' West wind purr contented,"
and occupy his leisure moments in roasting a genuine yam. There were no armed blue-coats here, like little Miss Muffet's spider, to frighten us away. We were in a land untouched as yet by the foot of war; no war-dog had bayed here—it was still the domain of ancient peace; and the little villages slept in the hollows of the pine-clad hills, or perched in security upon the uplands. It was also at that delightful season of the year when the women and children were no longer vexed with the cares of agricultural pursuits. The sweet potato crop had been dug, the virgin dip had been scooped out of the last box, and nothing now remained but to enjoy in peace the products of honest industry.