--that
guarded the passes below the city. These were composed of the
stevedores and workingmen generally, and were officered by such young
men as the governor and council deemed best fitted. The Levee had been
scoured and a battalion of "Tigers" formed from the very lowest of the
thugs and plugs that infested it, for Major Bob Wheat, the well-known
filibuster.

Poor Wheat! His roving spirit still and his jocund voice now mute, he
sleeps soundly under the sighing trees of Hollywood--that populous
"city of the silent" at Richmond. It was his corps of which such wild
and ridiculous stories of bowie-knife prowess were told at the Bull Run
fight. They, together with the "Crescent Rifles," "Chasseurs-a-pied"
and "Zouaves," were now at Pensacola.

The "Rifles" was a crack corps, composed of some of the best young men
in New Orleans; and the whole corps of "Chasseurs" was of the same
material. They did yeomen's service in the four years, and the last one
saw very few left of what had long since ceased to be a separate
organization. But of all the gallant blood that was shed at the call of
the state, none was so widely known as the "Washington Artillery." The
best men of Louisiana had long upheld and officered this battalion as a
holiday pageant; and, when their merry meetings were so suddenly
changed to stern alarums, to their honor be it said, not one was
laggard.

In the reddest flashings of the fight, on the dreariest march through
heaviest snows, or in the cozy camp under the summer pines, the
_guidon_ of the "W.A." was a welcome sight to the soldier of the
South--always indicative of cheer and of duty willingly and thoroughly
done.

It was very unwillingly that I left New Orleans on a transport, with a
battalion of Chasseurs for Pensacola. Styles was to stay behind for the
present, and then go on some general's staff; so half the amusement of
my travel was gone. "The colonel" was _desole_.

"_Such_ a hotel as the St. Charles!" he exclaimed, with tears in his
voice--"such soups. Ah! my boy, after the war I'll come here to
live--yes, sir, to live! It's the only place to get a dinner. Egad,
sir, out of New Orleans _nobody_ cooks!"

I suggested comfort in the idea of red snapper at Pensacola.

"Red fish is good in itself. Egad, I think it _is_ good," replied the
colonel. "But eaten in camp, with a knife, sir--egad, with a knife--off
a tin plate! _Pah!_ You've never lived in camp." And in a hollow,
oracular whisper, h