tation from twenty-five to fifty miles in breadth, and upwards of six hundred miles in extent. The flanking parties driving the light-footed Rebel cavalry before them; bridges fired by the fugitives; pontoon trains hurrying to the front of the advancing columns, when streams were to be crossed; the hasty corduroying of bad roads; the jubilant foraging parties sweeping the surrounding country of whatever was needful to support life and vigor in those immense crawling and bristling creatures, called army-corps; the amazing quantity and variety of plunder collected together on the routes of the wagon-trains, -the soldiers sitting proudly on their heaped-up stores, as the trains approached, then, in lively fashion, thrusting portions into each wagon as it passed, for no halt was allowed; the ripping up of railroads, the burning and plundering of plantations; the encampment at evening, the kindling of fires, the sudden disappearance of fences, and the equally sudden springing up of shelter-tents, like mushrooms, all over the ground; the sleep of the vast, silent, guarded hosts; and the hilarious awakening to the toil and adventures of a new day; such are the scenes of this most momentous expedition, which painters, historians, romancers, will in future ages labor to conceive and portray.

Warned by the flying cavalry, and the smoke and flames of plantations on the horizon, the panic-stricken inhabitants thought only of saving their property and their lives from the invaders. Many fled from their homes, carrying with them the most valuable of their possessions, or those which could be most conveniently removed. Mules, horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, were driven wildly across the country, avoiding one foraging party perhaps only to fall into the hands of another. The mother caught up her infant; the father, mounting, took his terrified boy upon the back of his horse behind him; the old man clutched his money-bag and ran; not even the poultry, not even the dogs were forgotten; men and women shouldering their household stuffs, and abandoning their houses to the mercies of the soldiers, whose waving banners and bright steel were already appearing on the distant hill-tops.

FLIGHT OF THE INHABITANTS.

481

Such panic flights were often worse than useless. Woe unto that house which was found entirely deserted! To the honor of Southern housewives be it recorded, that the majority of them remained to protect their homes, whilst their husbands and slaves ran off the live stock from the plantations.

The flight from Milledgeville, including the stampede of the Rebel State legislators, who barely escaped being entrapped by our army, the crushing of passengers and private effects into the overloaded cars, the demand for wheeled vehicles, and the exorbitant prices paid for them, the fright, the confusion, the separation of families, - formed a scene which neither the spectators nor the actors in it will soon forget.

The negroes had all along been told that if they fell into the hands of the Yankees they would be worked to death on fortifications, or put into the front of the battle and shot if they did not fight, or sent to Cuba and sold; and that the old women and young children would be drowned like cats and blind puppies. And now the masters showed their affection for these servants by running off the able-bodied ones, who were competent to take care of themselves, and leaving the aged, the infirm, and the children, to the "cruelties" of the invaders. The manner in which the great mass of the remaining negro population received the Yankees, showed how little they had been imposed upon by such stories, and how true and strong their faith was in the armed deliverance which Providenco had ordained for their race.

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CHAPTER LXVII.

PLANTATION GLIMPSES.

In travelling through the South one sees many plantations ruined for some years to come by improper cultivation. The land generally washes badly, and where the hill-sides have been furrowed up and down, instead of being properly "horizontalized," the rains plough them into gulleys, and carry off the cream of the soil. Or perhaps neglect, during four years of war, has led to the same result. Many worn-out plantations are in this condition, the gulleys cutting the slopes into ridges and chasms.

In Georgia, as in parts of Alabama, one becomes weary of tracts of poor-looking country, overgrown with sedge-grass, or covered with oaks and pines. The roads, never good, in bad weather are frightful. Never a church steeple relieves the monotony of the landscape. Occasionally there is a village, its houses appearing to be built upon props. If standing upon a ridge above the highway or railroad by which you pass, the sight of the blue sky under them gives them a singular appearance.

It is customary, all through the South, to build countryhouses in this manner, and rarely with cellars. The props, which are sometimes of brick, but oftener of fat pine, which makes an underpinning almost as durable as brick, lift the building a few feet from the earth and allow a free circulation of air under it. This peculiarity, which strikes a stranger as unnecessary, is not so. A Northern man of my acquaintance, settled in North Carolina, told me that he built his house in the New-England style, with a close underpinning; but soon discovered that the dampness of the earth was causing the lower timbers to rot badly. By opening the underpinning, and ven