aboard !"
The gang-plank once withdrawn, we were soon mid-stream, and I retired to my stateroom to make myself more comfortable for the journey. The first discovery was that the transom, as well as the outer door, stuck fast. Vain was the endeavor to coun- teract the effect of that paint. No human power could alleviate its stickiness, and the problem of enduring, without curing, was left for future solu- tion. No other stateroom was available, as I had choice of the best at the start, being the only woman passenger on board. My discomfort was only begin- ning, as other discoveries quickly disclosed. The nettings around the berths were like a cloudy drapery, charged with intense heat, and the mos- quitoes swarmed in countless numbers, ready to begin their nightly attack. Though the river had been poetically styled "The Father of Waters" from time immemorial, it was more literally inter- preted, by experience, as the prolific "Mother of Mosquitoes." If they had possessed the qualifica- tions for business that others of a later date were credited with, I doubt if I should now be recording their ravages on my defenseless body. The sole
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MY ARMY LIFE
relief was to sit for a few brief moments at a time at the bow of the steamer where occasionally a slight breeze was felt, but even this was so conducive to sleep that the very effort to keep awake made one positively miserable. It was simply existence, with no joy to anticipate the dawn, for that heralded another day of intense heat, with no welcome for the setting sun and no suggestion of repose or relief from this persistent mosquito pest.
I confess to utter lack of patriotic impulse or fervor, when the morning of the Fourth of July dawned, as we slowly sailed down the sluggish river. The pen cannot adequately describe this journey in all its details. The brush would be equally ineffec- tive. There was not life or energy sufficient for posing, if such a medium for delineation had been offered. Perhaps Mark Twain might give a humor- ous turn to the situation from familiarity with river travel in his earlier years, and yet, more consonant with my own feelings, Dante might prove equal to the task and add another circle to his "Inferno," with the description of a real rather than an "imag- inary journey."
The historical siege of Vicksburg itself counted for naught at that time in comparison with our siege on the journey thither. General Grant could not have been more anxious to terminate hostilities, nor indeed that devoted city itself, than were we when the city "set on a hill" loomed up before us. "Every lane has its turning," "every journey has its ending," every steam-boat has its landing, and so did ours, and at last we disembarked to enter
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the garrison in various mental moods and stages of physical suffering, hors de combat, every soul of us. Being tired, hungry, and thirsty is the probable reason why the first object of interest that greeted my eye on entering the post was a fig-tree, a novelty surely, as my knowledge hitherto had included only the packed variety. The development of this speci- men had passed beyond the leafy stage, and I par- took of some of its unpalatable fruit, an arrested development probably, and for all practical pur- poses the tree might well have been withered leaves, branch, and root with no great loss.
Compensation was, however, in store for us in the gracious reception accorded by General Nathan A. M. Dudley and his charming wife, who made our sojourn delightful, seconded as it was by the other officers and their wives, who contributed to the pleasant social amenities of garrison life and made us forget, for the time being, our misery, as "waters that have passed away."
All bore part in restoring the mental equilibrium, however tardy the process might be from a purely bodily point of view. Recovering so much of former elasticity of spirits as possible under this pleasant environment, with the aid of headquarters friends, I felt equal to the pleasant task of singing some of the old songs I had sung in the long ago, with a conscious reciprocal pleasure on the part of those who so kindly ministered to my comfort.
Mrs. Dudley was the possessor of some beautiful white pigeons of which she was very proud, and they were an unfailing source of pleasure. Their prox-
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MY ARMY LIFE
imity, as they fed from her hand, produced far different sensations than did those winged things that had so recently occupied my entire attention.
Reluctantly we parted with our genial hosts and retraced our steps to the landing, where we found a much more comfortable steamer for our return to St. Louis, there to await orders for further move- ment. These reached us without delay, and we exchanged both steamers and rivers, continuing our journey up the Missouri to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
CHAPTER II.
FORT LEAVENWORTH TO FORT McPHERSON.
IT was my good fortune during our sojourn at Fort Leavenworth to be domesticated temporarily in the house of an officer of General Hancock's staff. His wife was a charming little German woman who could not speak a word of English, and, being unac- quainted with German myself, our conversation was carried on mainly by a sort of sign language in quite a primitive manner. It was sufficient, however, to indicate our mutual kindly feeling and interest, as she, in social hours, drank her mild beer and kept industriously at work at her knitting, while I, for want of a beer taste and inclination, was relegated to lemonade and fancy work.
This respite doubtless strengthened me in a measure, at least, for future activities immediately at hand.
When the hour arrived for my departure, this sympathetic, considerate friend, on bidding good-by, handed me two "Prayer Books, " a "Life of Benjamin Franklin, " and one of "Thaddeus of Warsaw " for my diversion along the way. Pos- sibly she did not know the Prayer Books as such, and that they might prove otherwise than a diver- sion on the journey. And then, on the turbid Mis- souri, my husband and myself were bound for Omaha, not the Omaha of to-day with its teeming population and commercial importance, but an
25
MY ARMY LIFE
ordinary river town ambitious to become the gate- way to a future magnificent State.
We Americans already treat as a matter of course the union of the two oceans by the construc- tion of the Panama Canal, and cease to wonder at such a mighty project, but at the close of the Civil War the idea of uniting the Atlantic slope to the Pacific slope by rail had not been conceived, but its execution was put in hand, through the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha as its initial point, conceded by all concerned to be a great step in national expansion and a colossal event in the history of American railroad enterprise. That wizard of practical science, the civil engineer, had faith, ability, and the backing of patriotic citi- zens with ample money at their command, so that if he did not remove the Rocky Mountains he went over them and through them, until he constructed a steel railway to transport a resistless tide of humanity westward, such as never before had been deemed within the reach of many coming genera- tions. And if, as has been stated, there lingered in the public mind at the close of the Civil War the possibility of the far west being dissatisfied with a Union of States so entirely cut off from compen- satory advantages by high mountain barriers and broad barren plains that it would also secede from the old Union and form an independent government of its own, it remains a fact that to the patriotism of a few rich men who furnished the capital, and not alone to the Government, we are largely indebted for this gigantic enterprise.
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The
