owner $4-1/2
a-week to be allowed to work on his own account. He was quite as vain as
and even more amusing than Tucker. He said he "didn't want to see no
Yanks, nor to be no freer than he is;" and he thought the war had
already lasted four or five years.

Every traveller we met on the road was eagerly asked the questions,
"Are the Yanks in Brookhaven? Is the railroad open?" At first we
received satisfactory replies; but at 6 P.M. we met an officer driving
towards Natchez at a great pace; he gave us the alarming intelligence
that _Jackson_ was going to be evacuated. Now, as Jackson is the capital
city of this state, a great railroad junction, and on the highroad to
every civilised place from this, our feelings may be imagined, but we
did not believe it possible. On the other hand we were told that General
Joseph Johnston had arrived and assumed the command in Mississippi. He
appears to be an officer in whom every one places unbounded confidence.

We slept at a farmhouse. All the males were absent at the war, and it is
impossible to exaggerate the unfortunate condition of the women left
behind in these farmhouses; they have scarcely any clothes, and nothing
but the coarsest bacon to eat, and are in miserable uncertainty as to
the fate of their relations, whom they can hardly ever communicate with.
Their slaves, however, generally remain true to them.

Our hostess, though she was reduced to the greatest distress, was
well-mannered, and exceedingly well educated; very far superior to a
woman of her station in England.

* * * * *

_16th May_ (Saturday).--We started a little before daylight, our team
looking so very mean that we expressed doubts as to their lasting--to Mr
Nelson's great indignation.

We breakfasted at another little farmhouse on some unusually tough
bacon, and coffee made of sweet potatoes. The natives, under all their
misery, were red-hot in favour of fighting for independence to the last,
and I constantly hear the words, "This is the most unjust war ever waged
upon a people by mortal man."

At 11 A.M. we met a great crowd of negroes, who had been run into the
swamps to be out of the way of the Yankees, and they were now returning
to Louisiana.

At 2 P.M. a wounded soldier gave us the deplorable information that the
enemy really was on the railroad between Jackson and Brookhaven, and
that Jackson itself was in his hands. This news staggered us all, and
Nelson became