ys, who had so far passed
our lives in a narrow circle in the backwoods. As for myself, before
enlisting in the army I had never been more than fifty miles from home,
had not traveled any on a steamboat, and my few short railroad trips
did not amount, in the aggregate, to more than about seventy-five
miles, back and forth. But now the contracted horizon of the
"Whippoorwill Ridges" adjacent to the old home had suddenly expanded,
and a great big wonderful world was unfolding to my view. And there was
the daring, heroic life on which we were entering! No individual boy
expected that he would be killed, or meet with any other adverse fate.
Others might, and doubtless would, but he would come out safe and
sound, and return home at the end of a victorious war, a military hero,
and as such would be looked up to, and admired and reverenced, all the
rest of his life. At any rate, such were my thoughts, and I have no
doubt whatever that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the other boys
thought the same.

On the afternoon of this day (March 27th) we arrived at Cairo, rounded
in at the wharf, and remained a short time. The town fronted on the
Ohio river, which was high at the time, as also was the Mississippi.
The appearance of Cairo was wretched. Levees had been constructed to
protect it from high water, but notwithstanding the streets and the
grounds generally were just a foul, stagnant swamp. Engines were at
work pumping the surface water into the river through pipes in the
levee; otherwise I reckon everybody would have been drowned out.
Charles Dickens saw this locality in the spring of 1842 when on a visit
to America, and it figures in "Martin Chuzzlewit," under the name of
"Eden." I never read that book until after the close of the war, but
have several times since, and will say that if the Eden of 1842 looked
anything like the Cairo of twenty years later, his description thereof
was fully warranted.

Our boat had hardly got moored to the wharf before the word went round
that some Confederate prisoners were on the transport on our right, and
we forthwith rushed to that side to get our first look at the "Secesh,"
as we then called them. It was only a small batch, about a hundred or
so. They were under guard, and on the after part of the lower deck,
along the sides and the stern of the boat. We ascertained that they
were about the last installment of the Fort Donelson prisoners, and
were being shipped to a northern military pri