SOME EXPERIENCES IN CAMP LIFE. 



BY P. C. KENNEDY. 



IT WAS IN June, 1882, that a telegram reached me at my house iu 

 the Valley of Virginia, directing me to report at once for duty at 

 Wytheville; so, having packed my trunk, I started on what proved 

 to be the most enjoyable epoch of my life. 



I traveled down the Shenandoah Valley, past the famous Luray 

 Caves; close to the battlefield of Port Republic; within a mile or so 

 of the great Natural Bridge, and under the shadow of the Peaks of 

 Otter, in Roanoke, which had then just changed its name from the 

 more suggestive "Big Lick." Transferring myself and belongings 

 to the Norfolk & Western railroad, we steamed on to Wytheville, 

 which was reached about ten o'clock at night, and where there was 

 still a ride of a mile in a rattling omnibus before supper and bed 

 could be enjoyed. In due time however, we reached the Hancock 

 House and supper, and soon slept the sleep of the tired in spite of 

 protests from certain uninvited bed-fellows. 



The next morning I found that my journey would be extended 

 over the mountains into the New River Valley, where several corps 

 of Engineers were at work; as it was a long and tedious trip we 

 started at once. My one fellow-traveler was a young man named 

 Lawrence from my native town, and being packed into a "road 

 wagon"' (a vehicle whose only spring is that obtained from the ver- 

 tical motion of a board stretched from side to side,) we bore with 

 Spartan fortitude the agonies of that forty miles ride over the 

 mountains. For twenty miles our team of two raw-boned horses 

 toiled up the steep ascent, going at a funeral pace and pausing every 

 mile to rest and blow. It was horribly monotonous, but when we 

 began to descend the other side we would have been glad of that 

 monotony. The road was very rough, and sometimes ran close to 

 the edge of a precipice down which it made us dizzy to look. 



The driver had gotten a stout piece of fence rail, which he ran 

 between the spokes on each hind wheel of the wagon and thus effee- 



