RUBY. 37 



received such direct appeals, and I am entirely 

 conscious of the fullest measure of happiness 

 that my circumstances would allow ; not an ec- 

 stasy of delight, — far from that, — but a com- 

 fortable sense of such well-fed, well-paid, well- 

 encamped, and pleasantly occupied virtue as had 

 left nothing undone that my subordinates could 

 be made to do, and did nothing that my condi- 

 tions rendered difficult. My own good-humor 

 was equalled by that of the regiment at large, 

 and the beetling sides of the Ozark valleys no- 

 where sheltered a happier campful of jolly good 

 fellows than the Vierte Missouri Cavalry. 



We lay on the marvellous Roubie d'Eaux, at its 

 source ; no such babbling brook as trickles from 

 the hillside springs of New England, but a roar- 

 ing torrent, breaking at once from a fathomless 

 vent in the mountain. The processes of forma- 

 tion with these South Missouri rivers are all hid- 

 den from sight, but, far away in the topmost 

 caves of the Ozark hills, the little streamlets 

 trickle, and unite for a larger and ever larger 

 flow, gorging at last the huge caverns of the lime- 



