How this will affect our movements is the problem now. The old rumor factory is working overtime, and one man’s guess is as good as another’s. The story that appears to find most favor is that we are going to New Mexico, where troops are much needed just now. Another wise man has it that we are going down to reinforce Burnside. Sickles’ brigade is actually on board steamers now, ready to be transported somewhere.
The frogs are “peeping” now in every brook and mudhole. Damon shakes his head wisely, and says if we could only stay here till they get a little bigger and fatter, we’d live on frogs’ legs. For dinner today Slade, Damon, Haynes & Gunnison had a great pile of fried oysters.
XLVII
Camp Beaufort,
Charles County, Md., March 23, 1862.
NOT a mail has reached us since last Monday. The Government has chartered all the boats within reach for troop transports, and none can be spared for side shows. Two expeditions have passed here this week. Yesterday about thirty large steamers went down the river. These fleets carried parts of Heintzelman’s corps, and have probably gone down below Acquia Creek and landed. We are now a part of this corps, and will probably be the next to move—as soon as the steamers can go back to Washington and coal up.
We will have to make pack-horses of ourselves when we do go. Are to carry sixty extra rounds of ammunition in our knapsacks, and will be equipped with some new-fangled French tent. This tent is in four pieces, each man to carry a piece, and when put up it only makes a screen from the dew and the sun, being open at both ends.
I talked yesterday with a contraband who ran away from the rebels over in Virginia. He says they are fortifying at Fredericksburg, a place about twenty miles from Acquia and about thirty from here. Very likely that is where we will first run into them; and it will probably be a hard place to take, as they have a great many guns in position there and a large force of soldiers.