ter sixty hours on salt water, Carleton's ear caught the
boom of the surf on the beach. The sea-gulls flitted around, and after
the sun had rent the pall of fog, the town of Beaufort appeared in
view.

The harbor was full of schooners which had come from up North,
bringing potatoes, onions, apples, and Yankee notions for the great
blue-coated community at Newburgh. Carleton moved up the
poverty-stricken country through marsh, sea-sand, pitch-pine, swamp,
and plain. Here and there were the shanties of sand-hillers, negro
huts, and scores of long, lank, scrimped-up, razor-backed pigs of the
Congo breed, as to color; but in speed, racers, outstripping the
fleetest horses. Making his headquarters at Hilton Head, Carleton made
a thorough study of the military and naval situation. He visited the
New England regiments. He saw the enlistment of negro troops, and
devoted one letter to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson's first South
Carolina regiment of volunteers.

With his usual luck, that is, the result of intelligence and energy
which left nothing to mere luck, Carleton stood on the steamer
_Nantasket_, off Charleston, April 7, 1863. Both admiral and general
had recognized the war correspondents as the historians of the hour.
At half past one, the signal for sailing was displayed from the
flag-ship. Then the ugly black floating fortresses moved off in a
line, each a third or a half a mile apart, against the masses of
granite at Sumter and Moultrie, and the earthen batteries on three
sides. "There are no clouds of canvas, no beautiful models of marine
architecture, none of the stateliness and majesty which have marked
hundreds of great naval engagements. There is but little to the sight
calculated to excite enthusiasm. There are eight black specks, and one
oblong block, like so many bugs. There are no human beings in
sight,--no propelling power visible."

A few minutes later, "the ocean boils." Columns of spray are tossed
high in air, as if a hundred submarine mines were let instantly off,
or a school of whales were trying which could spout highest. There is
a screaming in the air, a buzzing and humming never before so loud.

"You must think the earth's crust is ruptured, and the volcanic fires,
long pent, have suddenly found vent."

"There she is, the _Weehawken_, the target of probably two hundred and
fifty or three hundred guns, at close range, of the heaviest calibre
rifled cannon, throwing forged bolts and steel-po