the Confederates "greybacks."

[18] German dragoons, much despised by the Texans on account of their
style of riding.

* * * * *

_8th May_ (Friday).--We reached Marshall at 3 A.M., and got four hours'
sleep there. We then got into a railroad for sixteen miles, after which
we were crammed into another stage.

Crossed the frontier into Louisiana at 11 A.M. I have therefore been
nearly a month getting through the single state of Texas.

Reached Shrieveport at 3 P.M., and after washing for the first time in
five days, I called on General Kirby Smith, who commands the whole
country on this side of the Mississippi.

He is a Floridian by birth, was educated at West Point, and served in
the United States cavalry. He is only thirty-eight years old; and he
owes his rapid rise to a lieutenant-general to the fortunate fact of his
having fallen, just at the very nick of time, upon the Yankee flank at
the first battle of Manassas.[19]

He is a remarkably active man, and of very agreeable manners; he wears
big spectacles and a black beard.

His wife is an extremely pretty woman, from Baltimore, but she had cut
her hair quite short like a man's. In the evening, she proposed that we
should go down to the river and fish for cray-fish. We did so, and were
most successful, the General displaying much energy on the occasion.

He told me that M'Clellan might probably have destroyed the Southern
army with the greatest ease during the first winter, and without running
much risk to himself, as the Southerners were so much over-elated by
their easy triumph at Manassas, and their army had dwindled away.

I was introduced to Governor Moore, of Louisiana, to the
Lieutenant-Governor Hyams, and also to the exiled Governor of Missouri,
Reynolds.

Governor Moore told me he had been on the Red River since 1824, from
which date until 1840 it had been very unhealthy. He thinks that Dickens
must have intended Shrieveport by "Eden."[20]

Governor Reynolds, of Missouri, told me he found himself in the
unfortunate condition of a potentate exiled from his dominions; but he
showed me an address which he had issued to his Missourians, promising
to be with them at the head of an army to deliver them from their
oppressors.

Shrieveport is rather a decent-looking place on the Red River. It
contains about 3000 inhabitants, and is at present the seat of the
Louisianian Legislature _vice_ Baton Rouge. But only twenty-ei