The poor horses, and mules, too, were a sad sight, for they had fared even worse than the soldiers—for there was no place of safety for them—not even entrenchments, and they had scarcely anything at all to eat for weeks, except mulberry leaves.
One man, in speaking of the state of affairs in the city, during the siege, said: “The terror of the women and children, their constant screams and wailings over the dead bodies of their friends, mingled as they were with the shrieks of bursting shell, and the pitiful groans of the dying, was enough to appall the stoutest heart.” And others said it was a strange fact that the women could not venture out of their caves a moment without either being killed or wounded, while the men and officers walked or rode about with but little loss of life comparatively.
A lady says: “Sitting in my cave, one evening, I heard the most heart-rending shrieks and groans, and upon making inquiry, I was told that a mother had taken her child into a cave about a hundred yards from us, and having laid it on its little bed, as the poor woman thought, in safety, she took her seat near the entrance of the cave. A mortar-shell came rushing through the air, and fell upon the cave, and bursting in the ground entered the cave; a fragment of the shell mashed the head of the little sleeper, crushing out the young life, and leaving the distracted mother to pierce the heavens with her cries of agony.”
How blightingly the hand of war lay upon that once flourishing city! The closed and desolate houses, the gardens with open gates, and the poor, starving mules, standing amid the flowers, picking off every green leaf, to allay their hunger, presented a sad picture.
I will give the following quotation as a specimen of cave life in Vicksburg: “I was sitting near the entrance of my cave about five o’clock in the afternoon, when the bombardment commenced more furiously than usual, the shells falling thickly around us, causing vast columns of earth to fly upward, mingled with smoke. As usual, I was uncertain whether to remain within, or to run out. As the rocking and trembling of the earth was distinctly felt, and the explosions alarmingly near, I stood within the mouth of the cave ready to make my escape, should one chance to fall above our domicile.
“In my anxiety I was startled by the shouts of the servants, and a most fearful jar and rocking of the earth, followed by a deafening explosion, such as I had never heard before. The cave filled instantly with smoke and dust. I stood there, with a tingling, prickling sensation in my head, hands and feet, and with confused brain. Yet alive! was the first glad thought that came to me—child, servants, all here, and saved!
“I stepped out and found a group of persons before my cave, looking anxiously for me, and lying all around were freshly-torn rose bushes, arborvitæ trees, large clods of earth, splinters, and pieces of plank.
“A mortar-shell had struck the corner of the cave; fortunately, so near the brow of the hill, that it had gone obliquely into the earth, exploding as it went, breaking large masses from the side of the hill—tearing away the fence, the shrubbery and flowers—sweeping all like an avalanche down near the entrance of my poor refuge.
“On another occasion I sat reading in safety, I imagined, when the unmistakable whirring of Parrott shells told us that the battery we so much dreaded had opened from the entrenchments. I ran to the entrance to call the servants in. Immediately after they entered a shell struck the earth a few feet from the entrance, burying itself without exploding.
“A man came in, much frightened, and asked permission to remain until the danger was over. He had been there but a short time when a Parrott shell came whirling in at the entrance and fell in the center of the cave before us, and lay there, the fuse still smoking.