seen in the dimness; and when I rode forward and looked
back there was only visible the long, moving, shadowy column, seeming
rather awful in its snake-like advance. There was a swaying of flags
and multitudinous weapons that might have been camels' necks for all
one could see, and the whole thing might have been a caravan upon the
desert. Soon we debouched upon the "Shell Road," the wagon-train drew
on one side into the fog, and by the time the sun appeared the music
ceased, the men took the "route step," and the fun began.

The "route step" is an abandonment of all military strictness, and
nothing is required of the men but to keep four abreast, and not lag
behind. They are not required to keep step, though, with the rhythmical
ear of our soldiers, they almost always instinctively did so; talking
and singing are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly
availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of exhilaration.
There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it
might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the
ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned
the tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments. At cross-roads and
plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one
found a friend and a greeting. "How you do, aunty?" "Huddy (how d'ye),
Budder Benjamin?" "How you find yourself dis mor-nin', Tittawisa (Sister
Louisa)?" Such saluations rang out to everybody, known or unknown. In
return, venerable, kerchiefed matrons courtesied laboriously to every
one, with an unfailing "Bress de Lord, budder." Grave little boys,
blacker than ink, shook hands with our laughing and utterly unmanageable
drummers, who greeted them with this sure word of prophecy, "Dem's de
drummers for de nex' war!" Pretty mulatto girls ogled and coquetted,
and made eyes, as Thackeray would say, at half the young fellows in the
battalion. Meantime the singing was brisk along the whole column, and
when I sometimes reined up to see them pass, the chant of each company,
entering my ear, drove out from the other ear the strain of the
preceding. Such an odd mixture of things, military and missionary, as
the successive waves of song drifted byl First, "John Brown," of course;
then, "What make old Satan for follow me so?" then, "Marching Along";
then, "Hold your light on Canaan's shore"; then, "When this cruel war
is over" (a new favorite, sung by a few);