ur eye from the time it leaves the storehouse in
Beaufort till it is put in your mule-cart, on Ladies Island. Then you
must be at home when the team arrives and see everything brought into
the storeroom. There is a good deal of red tape, too, at Beaufort, the
untying and retying of which is a tedious and vexatious operation.[52]
They are becoming more strict here in Beaufort in several respects;
passes are needed by every one. There is a great deal of running to
Hilton Head and Bay Point, which is to be stopped as far as possible.

_July 30._ I ride right through the morning, from nine till four,
without suffering from the heat so much as in one trip to town and
back one of our warm, still days at home. I have my white umbrella,
there is usually some breeze, often a very cool one; the motion of the
sulky puts me to sleep, but the heat of the sun has not been
oppressive more than once or twice on this island. If I had attempted
to follow all the directions I received before leaving, concerning my
health, I should have been by this time a lunatic.

Rust is such a common thing here that we get used to it. Mrs.
Philbrick's needles rust in her work-bag; our guns, even after
cleaning and oiling, are soon covered with a thin coating. Food moulds
here very rapidly, crackers soften and dried beef spoils. Hominy, of
course, is the chief article of food. I think it tastes best hot in
the negro cabins, without accompaniment of molasses, sugar, or salt.

Our life here is, necessarily, very monotonous: the hired people come
and go, or we go and come to and from them, and the mosquitoes and
flies do very much as we do. Mosquitoes are really a great annoyance
at times. They introduce themselves under the netting at night in a
very mysterious way, and wake us up early with their singing and
stinging. My theory is that those that can lick the others get
themselves boosted through the apertures; the animal is smaller than
ours at the North. I think that they are unaccustomed to human
treatment; they will not be brushed away, and slapping, if not fatal,
only excites their curiosity. There is also a small fly which appears
on warm days after a rain in great numbers. Driving on my beat the
other day, and holding my umbrella in one hand and newspaper scrap in
the other, I was driven nearly wild by their continuous attentions. It
is very easy to read driving here; the roads are so sandy that the
horse has to walk a great part of the way and