"Our men are not heroes in battle alone," he writes. "Three months without shelter, drenched by rain or scorched by the sun, tormented by mosquitoes, tainted with fever, shaking with the ague, they appear stoically indifferent to all hardships but their lack of tobacco. Out of the four hundred men whom we brought to this poisonous hole [Brashear City], forty are dead and one hundred and sixty are in hospital. We can hear their screams a mile away as they go into the other world in their chariots of delirium. The remainder, half sick themselves, thin and yellow ghosts in ragged uniforms, crawl out of their diminutive shanties and go calmly to their duties without murmuring, without a desertion. What a scattering there would be in a New England village, in which one tenth of the inhabitants should die in six weeks of some local disease! Yet these men are New Englanders, only tempered to steel by hardships, by discipline, by a profound sense of duty. How I have seen them march with blistered and bleeding feet! march all night after having fought all day! march when every step was a crucifixion! Oh, these noblemen of nature, our American common soldiers! In the face of suffering and of death they are my equals; and while I exact their obedience, I accord them my respect."
The mud of Louisiana appears to have been as troublesome a footing, as the famous sacred soil of Virginia.
"It is the most abominable, sticky, doughy stuff that ever was used in any country for earth," he says. "It 'balls up' on your feet like damp snow on a horse's hoofs. I have repeatedly seen a man stop and look behind him, under the belief that he had lost off his shoe, when it was merely the dropping of the immense mud-pie which had formed around his foot. It is like travelling over a land of suet saturated with pudding sauce.
"Just now the rain is coming down as in the days of Noah. I am under a tent, for an unusual mercy; but the drops are driven through the rotten canvass by the wind. The ditch outside my dwelling is not deep enough to carry off all the water which runs into it, and a small stream is stealing under my bedding and forming a puddle in the centre of my floor. But I don't care for this;—I know that my rubber-blanket is a good one: the main nuisance is that my interior will be muddy. By night I expect to be in a new tent, enlarged and elevated by a siding of planks, so that I shall have a promenade of eight feet in length sheltered from the weather. I only fear that the odor will not be agreeable; for the planks were plundered from the molasses-vats of a sugar-mill and are saturated with treacle; not sticky, you understand, but quite too saccharinely fragrant."
It appears that the army, even in field service, is not altogether barren of convivialities. In the letter following the one, quoted above he says, "My new dwelling has been warmed. I had scarcely taken possession of it when a brother officer, half seas over, and with an inscrutable smile on his lips, stalks in and insists upon treating the occasion. I cannot prevent it without offending him, and there is no strong reason why I should prevent it. He sends to the sutler for two bottles of claret, and then for two more, and finishes them, or sees that they are finished. It is soon evident that he is crowded full and can't carry any more for love or politeness. At dress parade I do not see him out, and learn that he is in his tent, with a prospect of remaining there for the next twelve hours. Yet he is a brave, faithful officer, this now groggiest of sleepers, and generally a very temperate one, so that everybody is wondering, and, I am sorry to say, giggling, over his unusual obfuscation."
In another letter he describes a "jollification by division" on the anniversary of the little victory of Georgia Landing.
"All the officers, not only of the old brigade but of the entire division, were invited to headquarters. Being a long way from our base, the eatables were limited to dried beef, pickles and hard-tack, and the only refreshments to be had in profusion were commissary whiskey and martial music. Such a roaring time as there was by midnight in and around the hollow square formed by the headquarter tents. By dint of vociferations the General was driven to make the first speech of a life-time. He confined himself chiefly to reminiscences of our battles, and made a very pleasant, rambling kind of talk, most of it, however, inaudible to me, who stood on the outside of the circle. When he closed, Tom Perkins, our brave and bossy band-drummer, roared out, 'General, I couldn't hear much of what you said, but I believe what you said was right'."
"This soldierly profession of faith was followed by three-times-three for our commander, everybody joining in without regard to grade of commission. Then Captain Jones of our regiment shouted, 'Tenth Barataria! three cheers for our old comrades at Georgia Landing and everywhere else, the Seventy-Fifth New York!' and the cheers were given. Then Captain Brown of the Seventy Fifth replied, 'There are not many of us Seventy-Fifth left; but what there are, we can meet the occasion; three cheers for the Tenth Barataria!' Then one excited officer roared for Colonel Smith, and another howled for Colonel Robinson, and another screamed for Colonel Jackson, in consequence of which those gentlemen responded with speeches. Nobody seemed to care for what they said, but all hands yelled as if it was a bayonet charge. As the fun got fast and furious public attention settled on a gigantic, dark-complexioned officer, stupendously drunk and volcanically uproarious; and twenty voices united in shouting, 'Van Zandt! Van Zandt!'—The great Van Zandt, smiling like an intoxicated hyæna, plunged uncertainly at the crowd, and was assisted to the centre of it. There, as if he were about to make an oration of an hour or so, he dragged off his overcoat, after a struggle worthy of Weller Senior in his pursiest days; then, held up by two friends, in a manner which reminded me obscurely of Aaron and Hur sustaining Moses, he stretched out both hands, and delivered himself as follows. 'G'way from th' front thar! G'way from the front thar! An' when say g'way from th' front—thar——'
"He probably intended to disperse some musicians and contrabands who were grinning at him; but before he could explain himself another drunken gentleman reeled against him, vociferating for Colonel Robinson. Van Zandt gave way with a gigantic lurch, like that of an overbalanced iceberg, which carried him clean out of the circle. Somebody brought him his overcoat and held him up while he surged into it. Then he fell over a tent rope and lay across it for five minutes, struggling to regain his feet and smiling in a manner incomprehensible to the beholder. He made no effort to resume his speech, and evidently thought that he had finished it to public satisfaction; but he subsequently addressed the General in his tent, requesting, so far as could be understood, that the Tenth might be mounted as cavalry. Tom Perkins also staggered into the presence of our commander, and made him a pathetic address, weeping plentifully over his own maudlin, and shaking hands repeatedly, with the remark, 'General, allow me to take you by the hand.'
"It was an All Fools' evening. For once distinctions of rank were abolished. This morning we are subordinates again, and the General is our dignified superior officer."