move her, only broke their hawsers and wasted precious time.
Fortunately, the sea continued smooth, so that the ship escaped a
pounding. On Saturday, at eleven, twenty-eight hours after we struck,
all hope of getting off without discharging cargo having been abandoned,
we passengers were landed on Sullivan's Island, to make our way back
to Charleston. Our baggage was forwarded to the ferry in carts, and
we followed at leisure on foot. In company with Georgian First and a
gentleman from Brooklyn, I strolled over the sand-rolls, damp and
hard now with a week's rain, passed one or two of the tenantless
summer-houses, and halted beside the _glacis_ of Fort Moultrie. I do not
wonder that Major Anderson did not consider his small force safe within
this fortification. It is overlooked by neighboring sand-hills and by
the houses of Moultrieville, which closely surround it on the land side,
while its ditch is so narrow and its rampart so low that a ladder of
twenty-five feet in length would reach from the outside of the former to
the summit of the latter. A fire of sharp-shooters from the commanding
points, and two columns of attack, would have crushed the feeble
garrison. No military movement could be more natural than the retreat to
Fort Sumter. What puzzles one, especially on the spot, and what nobody
in Charleston could explain to me, is the fact that this manoeuvre could
be executed unobserved by the people of Moultrieville, few as they are,
and by the guard-boats which patrolled the harbor.

On the eastern side of the fort two or three dozen negroes were engaged
in filling canvas bags with sand, to be used in forming temporary
embrasures. One lad of eighteen, a dark mulatto, presented the very
remarkable peculiarity of chest-nut hair, only slightly curling. The
others were nearly all of the true field-hand type, aboriginal black,
with dull faces, short and thick forms, and an air of animal contentment
or at least indifference. They talked little, but giggled a great deal,
snatching the canvas bags from each other, and otherwise showing their
disbelief in the doctrine of all work and no play. When the barrows were
sufficiently filled to suit their weak ideal of a load, a procession of
them set off along a plank causeway leading into the fort, observing a
droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing a passage
through lounging unmilitary buckras with an air of, "Out of de way, Ole
Dan Tucker!" We glanced at the