drelly looking men, who in the
general ruin were sneaking from the holes they had been hiding
in--not, though, in the numbers that might have been expected, for the
great crowd, as we soon saw, were hard at it, pillaging the burning
city. One strapping virago stood on the edge of the pavement with her
arms akimbo, looking at us with intense scorn as we swept along; I
could have touched her with the toe of my boot as I rode by her,
closing the rear of the column; she caught my eye--"Yes," said she,
with all of Tipperary in her brogue, "afther fighting them for four
years ye're running like dawgs!" The woman was either drunk or very
much in earnest, for I give her credit for feeling all she said, and
her son or husband had to do his own fighting, I will answer for it,
wherever he was, or get no kiss or comfort from her. But I could not
stop to explain that General Longstreet's particular orders were not
to make a fight in the city, if it could be avoided, so I left her to
the enjoyment of her own notions, unfavorable as they evidently were
to us.

On we went across the creek, leaving a picket at that point to keep a
lookout for the enemy, that we knew must now be near upon our heels.
It was after seven o'clock, the sun having been up for some time.
After getting into Main street and passing the two tobacco warehouses
opposite one another, occupied as prisons in the early years of the
war, we met the motley crowd thronging the pavement, loaded with every
species of plunder.

Bare-headed women, their arms filled with every description of goods,
plundered from warehouses and shops, their hair hanging about their
ears, were rushing one way to deposit their plunder and return for
more, while a current of the empty-handed surged in a contrary
direction towards the scene.

The roaring and crackling of the burning houses, the trampling and
snorting of our horses over the paved streets as we swept along, wild
sounds of every description, while the rising sun came dimly through
the cloud of smoke that hung like a pall around him, made up a scene
that beggars description, and which I hope never to see again--the
saddest of many of the sad sights of war--a city undergoing pillage
at the hands of its own mob, while the standards of an empire were
being taken from its capitol, and the tramp of a victorious enemy
could be heard at its gates.

Richmond had collected within its walls the refuse of the war--thieves
and deserters, mal