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CHAPTER XX.

LIBBY, CASTLE THUNDER, AND BELLE ISLE.

STROLLING along a street near the river, below the burnt district, I looked up from the dirty pavements, and from the little ink-colored stream creeping along the gutter, (for Richmond abounds in these villanous rills,) and saw before me a sign nailed to the corner of a large, gloomy brick building, and bearing in great black letters the inscription, —

LIBBY PRISON.

Passing the sentinel at the door, I entered. The groundfloor was partitioned off into offices and store-rooms, and presented few objects of interest. A large cella room below, paved with cobble-stones, was used as a cook-house by our soldiers then occupying the building. Adjoining this, but separated from it by a wall, was the cellar which is said to have been mined for the purpose of blowing up Libby with its inmates, in case the city had at one time been taken.

Ascending a flight of stairs from the ground-floor, I found myself in a single, large, oblong, whitewashed, barren room. Two rows of stout wooden posts supported the ceiling. The windows were iron-grated, those of the front looking out upon the street, and those of the rear commanding a view of the canal close by, the river just beyond it, and the opposite shore.

There was an immense garret above, likewise embracing the entire area of the floor. These were the prison-rooms of the infamous Libby. I found them occupied by a regiment of colored troops, some sitting in Turkish fashion on the floor, (for there was not a stool or bench,) some resting their backs against the posts or whitewashed walls, and others lying at length on the hard planks, with their heads pillowed on their knapsacks.

But the comfortable colored regiment faded from sight as I ascended and descended the stairs, and walked from end to end of the dreary chambers. A far different picture rose before me, the diseased and haggard men crowded together there, dragging out their weary days, deeming themselves oftentimes forgotten by their country and their friends, - men who mounted those dungeon-stairs, not as I mounted them, but to enter a den of misery, starvation, and death.

On the opposite side of the same street, a little farther up, was Castle Thunder, a very commonplace brick block, considering its formidable name. It was still used as a prison; but it had passed into the hands of the United States military authorities. At the iron-barred windows of the lower story, and behind the wooden-barred windows above, could be seen the faces of soldiers and citizens imprisoned for various offences.

Belle Island I had already seen from the heights of Richmond, a pleasant hill rising out of the river above the town, near the farther shore. The river itself is very beautiful there, with its many green islets, its tumbling rapids sweeping down among rocks and foaming over ledges, and its side-dams thrown out like arms to draw the waters into their tranquil embrace. My eye, ranging over this scene, rested on that fair hill; and I thought that, surely, no pleasanter or more healthful spot could have been selected for an encampment of prisoners. But it is unsafe to trust the enchantment of distance; and after seeing Libby and Castle Thunder, I set out to visit Belle Island.

I crossed over to Manchester by a bridge which had been constructed since the fire. As both the Richmond and Danville, and the Richmond and Petersburg railroad bridges were destroyed, an extraordinary amount of business and travel was thrown upon this bridge. It was shaken with omnibuses and freight-wagons, and enveloped in clouds of dust. Loads of cotton and tobacco, the former in bales, the latter in hogsheads, were coming into the city, and throngs of pedestrians were passing to and fro. Among these I noticed a number

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of negroes with little bundles on their backs. One of them, a very old man, was leaning against the railing to rest. "Well, uncle, how are you getting along?"

"Tolerable, mahster; only tolerable." And he lifted his tattered cap from his white old head with a grace of politeness which a courtier might have envied.

"Where are you going?"

"I's go'n' to Richmond, mahster."

"What do you expect to do in Richmond?"

"I don't know right well. I thought I could n't be no wus off than whar I was; and I had n't no place to go."

"How so, uncle?"

"You see, mahster, thar a'n't no chance fo' people o' my color in the country I come from."

"Where is that?"

"Dinwiddie County."

"You have walked all the way from Dinwiddie County?" "Yes, mahster; I'se walked over fo'ty mile. But I don't mind that."

"You 're very old, uncle."

"Yes, I've a right good age, mahster. It's hard fo' a man o' my years to be turned out of his home. I don't know what I shall do ; but I reckon the Lord will take keer of me."

The tore of patience and cheerfulness in which he spoke was very touching. I leaned on the bridge beside him, and drew out from, him by degrees his story. His late master refused to give wages to the freedmen on his lands, and the result was that all the able-bodied men and women left him. Enraged at this, he had sworn that the rest should go too, and had accordingly driven off the aged and the sick, this old man among them.

I

"He said he 'd no use fo' old wore-out niggers. I knowed I was old and wore-out, but I growed so in his service. served him and his father befo'e nigh on to sixty year; and he never give me a dollar. He's had my life, and now I'm old and wore-out I must leave. It's right hard, mahster!”

"Not all the planters in your county are like him, I hope?"

"Some of 'em is very good to their people, I believe. Bu none of 'em is will'n' to pay wages a man can live by. Them that pays at all, offers only five dollars a month, and we must pay fo' ou' own clothes and doctor's bills, and suppo't ou' families.'

"It seems you were better off when in slavery," I suggested. "I don't say that, mahster. I'd sooner be as I is to-day." And cheerfully shouldering his bundle, the old African tramped on towards Richmond. What was to become of him there?

I kept on to Manchester, passed the great humming mills by the river-side, and turning to the right, up the Danville railroad, reached Belle Island bridge after a brisk fifteen minutes' walk. Crossing over, I entered the yard of a nail-factory, where some men were breaking up heavy old iron, cannons, mortars, and car-wheels, by means of a four-hundred pound shot dropped from a derrick forty feet high. Beyond the factory rose the pleasant hill I had viewed from the city. I climbed its southern side, and found myself in the midst of a scene not less fair than I had anticipated. Behind me was a cornfield, covering the summit; below rushed the river among its green and rocky islands; while Richmond rose beyond, picturesquely beautiful on its hills, and rosy in the flush of sunset.

But where had been the prisoners' camp? I saw no trace of it on that slope. Alas, that slope was never trodden by their feet, and its air they never breathed. At the foot of it is a flat, spreading out into the stream, and almost level with it at high water. Already the night-fog was beginning to creep over it. This flat, which was described to me as a marsh in the rainy season, and covered with snow and slush and ice in winter, was the "Belle Isle" of our prisoners. Yet they were not allowed the range even of that. A trench and embankment enclosing an oblong space of less than six acres formed the dead-line which it was fatal to pass. Within this as many as twelve thousand men were at times crowded, with no shelter but a few tattered tents.

As I was examining the spot, a throng of begrimed laborers

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crossed the flat, carrying oars, and embarking in boats on the low shore looking towards the city. They were workinen from the nail-factory returning to their homes. One of them, passing alone after his companions, stopped to talk with me at the dead-line, and afterwards offered me a place in his boat. It was a leaky little skiff: I perched myself upon a seat in the bow; and he, standing in the stern, propelled it across with a pole.

"Where were the dead buried?" I asked.

"The dead Yankees? They buried a good many thar in the sand-bar. But they might about as well have flung 'em into the river. A freshet washed out a hundred and twenty bodies at one time."

"Did you see the prisoners when they were here?"

"I was n't on the Island. But from Richmond anybody could see their tents hyer, and see them walking around. I was away most of the time."

"In the army?"

"Yes, sir; I was in the army. I enlisted fo' three months, and they kept me in fou' years," he said, as men speak of deep and unforgiven wrongs. "The wa' was the cruelest thing, and the wust thing fo' the South that could have been. What do you think they 'll do with Jeff Davis?"

"I don't know," I replied; "what do you think?" "I know what I'd like to do with him: I'd hang him as quick as I would a mad dog! Him and about fo'ty others:

old Buchanan along with 'em."

"Why, what has Buchanan done?"

"He was in cohoot with 'em, and as bad as the baddest. If we had had an honest President in his place, thar never 'd have been wa'."

From the day I entered Virginia it was a matter of continual astonishment to me to hear the common people express views similar to those, and denounce the Davis despotism. They were all the more bitter against it because it had deceived. them with lies and false promises so long. Throughout the loyal North, the feeling against the secession leaders was natu