and was rendered useless; the other, however, did good service, throwing shot with accuracy at great distances.  I saw much that was interesting here, but more able pens than mine have already described fully the details of that long siege, where on one hand all modern appliances of war that ingenuity could conceive or money purchase were put into the hands of brave and determined soldiers; on the other hand were bad arms, bad powder, bad provisions, bad everything; desperate courage and unheard-of self-denial being all the Southerners had to depend upon.

These poor Southerners never began to open their eyes to the hopelessness of their cause till Sherman’s almost unopposed march showed the weakness of the whole country.  Even strangers like myself were so carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment, that we shut our eyes to what should have been clearly manifest to us.  We could not believe that men who were fighting and enduring as these men were could ever be beaten.  Some of their leaders must have foreseen that the catastrophe was coming months before it occurred; but, if they did so, they were afraid to make their opinion public.

On returning to the hotel, I found it full of people of all classes indulging in tobacco (the only solace left them) in every form.  It is all very well to say that smoking is a vile habit; so it may be, when indulged in by luxurious fellows who eat and drink their full every day, and are rarely without a cigar or pipe in their mouths; it may, perhaps, be justly said that such men abuse the use of the glorious narcotic supplied by Providence for men’s consolation under difficulties.  But when a man has hard mental and bodily work, and barely enough food to support nature, water being his only drink, then give him tobacco, and he will thoroughly appreciate it.  Besides, it will do him real good.  I think that at any time its use in moderation is harmless and often beneficial, but under the circumstances I speak of it is a luxury without price.

During the evening I met at the hotel a Confederate naval officer who was going to attempt that night to carry havoc among the blockading squadron by means of a cigar-shaped vessel of a very curious description.

This vessel was a screw steamer of sixty feet in length, with eight feet beam.  She lay, before being prepared for the important service on which she was going, with about two feet of her hull showing above the water, at each end of which, on the shoulder as it were of the cigar, was a small hatch or opening, just large enough to allow a man to pop through it:  from her bows projected a long iron outrigger, at the end of which there was fixed a torpedo that would explode on coming into contact with a vessel’s side.

When the crew were on board, and had gone down into the vessel through one of the hatches above mentioned, the said hatches were firmly closed, and by arrangements that were made from the inside the vessel was sunk about six inches below the water, leaving merely a small portion of the funnel showing.  Steam and smoke being got rid of below water, the vessel was invisible, torpedo and all being immersed.