Thus passed Christmas Day, 1863, and an anxious day it was to all of us.  We might have landed our cargo where we were lying, but it would have been landed in a dismal swamp, and we should have been obliged to go into Wilmington for our cargo of cotton.

When night closed in we weighed anchor and steamed to the entrance of the river, which, from our position being so well defined, we had no difficulty in making out.  We received a broadside from a savage little gun-boat quite close inshore, her shot passing over us, and that was all.  We got comfortably to the anchorage about half-past eleven o’clock, and so ended our second journey in.

I determined this time to have a look at Charleston, which was then undergoing a lengthened and destructive siege.  So, after giving over my craft into the hands of the owner’s representatives, who would unload and put her cargo of cotton on board, I took my place in the train and, after passing thirty-six of the most miserable hours in my life travelling the distance of one hundred and forty miles, I arrived at the capital of South Carolina, or rather near to that city—­for the train, disgusted I suppose with itself, ran quietly off the line about two miles from the station into a meadow.  The passengers seemed perfectly contented, and shouldering their baggage walked off into the town.  I mechanically followed with my portmanteau, and in due course arrived at the only hotel, where I was informed I might have half a room.

Acting on a hint I received from a black waiter that food was being devoured in the coffee-room, and that if I did not look out for myself I should have to do without that essential article for the rest of the day, I hurried into the salle-a-manger, where two long tables were furnished with all the luxuries then to be obtained in Charleston, which luxuries consisted of lumps of meat supposed to be beef, boiled Indian corn, and I think there were the remains of a feathered biped or two, to partake of which I was evidently too late.  All these washed down with water, or coffee without sugar, were not very tempting; but human nature must be supported, so to it I set, and having swallowed a sufficient quantity of animal food, I went off to my room to take a pull at a bottle of brandy which I had sagaciously stored in my carpet-bag.  But, alas! for the morals of the beleaguered city.  I found, on arriving there, a nigger extended at full length in happy oblivion on the floor, with the few clothes I had with me forming his pillow, and the brandy bottle rolling about alongside of him, empty.

I first of all hammered his head against the floor, but the floor had the worst of it; then I kicked his shins (the only vulnerable part of a nigger), but it was of no use; so pouring the contents of a water jug over him, in the hope that I might thus cause awful dreams to disturb his slumbers, I left him, voting myself a muff for leaving the key in my box.