Crossed the Sabine river at 11.30 p.m.
[17] The Union soldiers are called "bluebellies" on account of their blue uniforms. These often call the Confederates "greybacks."
[18] German dragoons, much despised by the Texans on account of their style of riding.
8th May (Friday).—We reached Marshall at 3 a.m., and got four hours' sleep there. We then got into a railroad for sixteen miles, after which we were crammed into another stage.
Crossed the frontier into Louisiana at 11 a.m. I have therefore been nearly a month getting through the single state of Texas.
Reached Shrieveport at 3 p.m., and after washing for the first time in five days, I called on General Kirby Smith, who commands the whole country on this side of the Mississippi.
He is a Floridian by birth, was educated at West Point, and served in the United States cavalry. He is only thirty-eight years old; and he owes his rapid rise to a lieutenant-general to the fortunate fact of his having fallen, just at the very nick of time, upon the Yankee flank at the first battle of Manassas.[19]
He is a remarkably active man, and of very agreeable manners; he wears big spectacles and a black beard.
His wife is an extremely pretty woman, from Baltimore, but she had cut her hair quite short like a man's. In the evening, she proposed that we should go down to the river and fish for cray-fish. We did so, and were most successful, the General displaying much energy on the occasion.