he appearance, at that
time, of that celebrated stronghold. There is good reason for it;
namely, it so happened that we never were in the place. We were close
to it, on the north and on the east, but that was all. And I never yet
have seen Vicksburg, and it is not probable now that I ever shall.

We arrived at Helena, Arkansas, on July 31st, debarked and went into
camp near the bank of the river, about two miles below the town. There
were no trees in our camp except a few cottonwoods; the ground on which
we walked, sat, and slept was, in the main, just a mass of hot sand,
and we got water for drinking and cooking purposes from the Mississippi
river. The country back of the town, and in that immediate vicinity
generally, was wild and thinly settled, and had already been
well-foraged, so we were restricted to the ordinary army diet, of which
one of the principal items, as usual, was fat sow-belly. I never
understood why we were not allowed to camp in the woods west of the
town. There was plenty of high, well-shaded space there, and we soon
could have sunk wells that would have furnished cool, palatable water.
But this was not done, and the regiment remained for about two weeks
camped on the river bank, in the conditions above described. A natural
result was that numbers of the men were prostrated by malarial fever,
and this time I happened to be one of them. I now approach a painful
period of my army career. I just lay there, in a hot tent, on the
sand,--oh, so sick! But I fought off going to the hospital as long as
possible. I had a superstitious dread of an army hospital. I had seen
so many of the boys loaded into ambulances, and hauled off to such a
place, who never returned, that I was determined never to go to one if
it could be avoided in any honorable way. But the time came when it was
a military necessity that I should go, and there was no alternative.
The campaign that was in contemplation was a movement westward against
the Confederates under Gen. Sterling Price at Little Rock, with the
intention of capturing that place and driving the Confederates from the
State. The officer in command of the Union forces was Gen. Frederick
Steele. Marching orders were issued, fixing the 13th of August as the
day our regiment would start. All the sick who were unable to march
(and I was among that number) were to be sent to the Division Hospital.
So, on the morning before the regiment moved, an ambulance drove up to
my tent, an