a very great delicacy at best, but when four days’ old, and green with mold, it is anything but palatable.  But the soldiers got around this in the way “cush” was manipulated.  Now it has been said “if you want soldiers to fight well, you must feed them well;” but this is still a mooted question, and I have known some of the soldiers of the South to give pretty strong battle when rather underfed than overfed.

For the benefit of those Spanish-American soldiers of the late war, who had nothing to vary their diet of ham and eggs, steak, pork, and potatoes, biscuits, light bread, coffee, and iced teas, but only such light goods as canned tomatoes, green corn, beans, salmon, and fresh fish, I will tell them how to make “cush.”  You will not find this word in the dictionaries of the day, but it was in the soldier’s vocabulary, now obsolete.  Chip up bacon in fine particles, place in an oven and fry to a crisp.  Fill the oven one-third or one-half full of branch water, then take the stale corn bread, the more moldy the better, rub into fine crumbs, mix and bring the whole to a boil, gently stirring with a forked stick.  When cold, eat with fingers and to prevent waste or to avoid carrying it on the march, eat the four days’ rations at one sitting.  This dish will aid in getting clear of all gestion of meat, and prevent bread from getting old.  A pot of “cush” is a dish “fit for a king,” and men who will not fight on it would not fight if penned.

The forest and farms around abounded in sheep and hogs.  In fact, Tennessee and North Georgia were not the worst places in the South in which to live through a campaign.  We had strict orders to protect all private property and molest nothing outside of camp requirements, but the men would forage at night, bring in a sheep or hog, divide up, and by the immutable law of camps it was always proper to hang a choice piece of mutton or pork at the door of the officers’ tent.  This helped to soothe the conscience of the men and pave the way to immunity from punishment.  The stereotyped orders were issued every night for “Captains to keep their men in camp,” but the orders were as often disregarded as obeyed.  It was one of those cases where orders are more regarded “in the breach than in the observance.”  Officers winked at it, if not actually countenancing the practice, of “foraging for something to eat.”  Then again the old argument presented itself, “If we don’t take it the Yankees will,” so there you were.

Most of the soldiers took the opportunity of visiting Lookout Mountain and feasting their eyes upon the finest scenery of the South.  While they had crossed and recrossed the Blue Ridge and the many ranges of lesser note in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania—­had gazed with wonder and admiration at the windings of the Potomac and Shenandoah from the Heights of Maryland overlooking Harper’s Ferry—­yet all these were nothing as compared to the view from Lookout Mountain.  Standing on its brow, we could see