s. At the rear
of the quarters of each company was the company kitchen. It was a
detached, separate frame structure, and amply provided with
accommodations for cooking, including a brick furnace with openings for
camp kettles, pots, boilers and the like. Both barracks and kitchen
were comfortable and convenient, and greatly superior to our home-made
shacks at Carrollton. The barracks inclosed a good sized tract of land,
but its extent I do not now remember. This space was used for drilling
and parades, and was almost entirely destitute of trees. The commander
of the post, at that time, was Colonel Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, an
old regular army officer, and who had been a noted western explorer in
his younger days. I frequently saw him riding about the grounds. He was
a little dried-up old Frenchman, and had no military look about him
whatever. All the same, he was a man who had, as a soldier, done long
and faithful service for his adopted country. Should you ever want to
post up on him (if you have not already done so), read "Adventures of
Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West,"
by Washington Irving. You will find it deeply interesting.

We remained at Benton Barracks about four weeks. Life there was
monotonous and void of any special interest. We drilled but little, as
I now remember, the reason for that being it rained the most of the
time we were there and the drill grounds were oceans of mud. The
drainage was wretched, and the most of the rain that fell stayed on the
surface until the ground soaked it up. And how it did rain at Benton
Barracks in March, 1862! While there, I found in some recently vacated
quarters an old tattered, paper bound copy of Dickens' "Bleak House,"
and on those rainy days I would climb up in my bunk (an upper one), and
lie there and read that book. Some of the aristocratic characters
mentioned therein had a country residence called "Chesney Wold," where
it seemed it always rained. To quote (in substance) from the book, "The
rain was ever falling, drip, drip, drip, by day and night," at "the
place in Lincolnshire." 'Twas even so at Benton Barracks. When weary of
reading, I would turn and look a while through the little window at the
side of my bunk that gave a view of the most of the square which the
barracks inclosed. The surface of the earth was just a quagmire of mud
and water, and nothing stirring abroad could be seen save occasionally
a mounted orderly, spla