30 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



lie round in a most uncomfortable state, with everything 

 packed up, expecting to start every day. You can't think 

 how beautiful everything is now. Cherokee roses, jessa- 

 mines, jonquils, and a great variety of flowers, are in blos- 

 som. We live out under the trees, with the rain pattering 

 down upon us, and you shiver by your fires. We are greatly 

 pestered with wood-ticks and it is almost impossible to 

 pick them off. They stick so closely to the skin and burrow 

 in. lam quite comfortable; campaigning evidently agrees 

 with me. I have gained ten pounds since I left New York. 

 The only thing I could wish for would be a havelock, — 

 it's so fearfully hot; but it would be a good two months 

 before I should get it, so I will try and make one for myself. 



From Bayou Bceuf, seven miles from Brashier City, 

 writing on April 3, he continues his story : — 



"We have had some terribly hot and fatiguing marches, 

 and the boys are many of them so foot-sore and blistered I 

 doubt whether they could march much further. I have held 

 out wonderfully. Have not so much as raised a sign of a 

 blister, though carrying a rubber blanket and a thick over- 

 coat in a sling on my shoulders, my canteen full of water, 

 a haversack with two days' rations — provisions — in it, 

 and my sword and revolvers; by no means a small load as 

 you can imagine and as I found after the first few miles. 

 My nose and cheeks underwent one skinning operation in 

 our Port Hudson expedition and it grieves me to relate 

 that they are again peeling. I am writing on a wooden 

 mallet which I have improvised into a writing-table for the 

 occasion. But I will return to Donaldsonville and write up 

 the march. — March 30, we crossed over the Bayou La 



