, we were not treated very
cordially, but we were not insulted, we were just left severely alone.
Personally, after I got a taste of the peaches and cantaloupes, I
thoroughly enjoyed myself there. Those peaches and cantaloupes were of the
finest kind and so cheap, I ate to my heart's content--rather to my
stomach's content. August 29th we went to Annapolis, where we were
quartered in the Naval School buildings. The cadets and everything that
was movable had been taken to Newport, R. I. The grounds of the academy
supplied us with a fine drill field and we utilized it constantly and
became, as we thought, quite proficient. But one fine day as the troops
assembled there to go on the Sherman expedition to Bufort and Port Royal,
S. C., there came two German regiments from New York City. Every man was
by birth a German and they had evidently been through the military
training incident to all native German boys. Well, the evolutions of those
regiments as they drilled were a revelation to us. None of us had at the
time seen anything comparable with it and it made us feel as provincial as
you please.

At Baltimore we had a glimpse of negro life,--but it was only a glimpse.
We were there so short a time, and not being allowed to leave camp, all we
saw was the glances we got as we marched through the city on our way to
the camp and as we went away. But at Annapolis and on the railroad out in
the country we had a chance to see something of the negro and negro life.
Those we saw on the street and about the town at Annapolis were fairly
well dressed and looked a little poorer only than those one would see in a
northern city. One day, however, while out rowing with a crowd of the boys
we landed at the wharf of a man in the oyster business; boat loads of
oysters were arriving at the wharf, brought in by negroes who raked them,
and in a small building were a number of negro men and women opening
oysters. These last were a sight to be remembered. The negroes were
hardly dressed at all, and the few clothes they had on were of the very
coarsest material, and they looked about like the kind one would expect to
see in Africa. Our cattle and horses in the North have the appearance of
being better cared for, and as those negroes worked, there was no
intimation of intelligence; they worked like horses in a treadmill. Later
on, while doing picket duty out on the railroad, I saw a lot of cornfield
negroes at a negro husking. There was a long pile