The wither and poles that grew in the swamp were bent into the shape of the semi-circular bows that support the canvas covers of army wagons, and both ends thrust in the ground.  These formed the timbers of our dwellings.  They were held in place by weaving in, basket-wise, a network of briers and vines.  Tufts of the long leaves which are the distinguishing characteristic of the Georgia pine (popularly known as the “long-leaved pine”) were wrought into this network until a thatch was formed, that was a fair protection against the rain—­it was like the Irishman’s unglazed window-sash, which “kep’ out the coarsest uv the cold.”

The results accomplished were as astonishing to us as to the Rebels, who would have lain unsheltered upon the sand until bleached out like field-rotted flax, before thinking to protect themselves in this way.  As our village was approaching completion, the Rebel Sergeant who called the roll entered.  He was very odd-looking.  The cervical muscles were distorted in such a way as to suggest to us the name of “Wry-necked Smith,” by which we always designated him.  Pete Bates, of the Third Michigan, who was the wag of our squad, accounted for Smith’s condition by saying that while on dress parade once the Colonel of Smith’s regiment had commanded “eyes right,” and then forgot to give the order “front.”  Smith, being a good soldier, had kept his eyes in the position of gazing at the buttons of the third man to the right, waiting for the order to restore them to their natural direction, until they had become permanently fixed in their obliquity and he was compelled to go through life taking a biased view of all things.

Smith walked in, made a diagonal survey of the encampment, which, if he had ever seen “Mitchell’s Geography,” probably reminded him of the picture of a Kaffir village, in that instructive but awfully dull book, and then expressed the opinion that usually welled up to every Rebel’s lips: 

“Well, I’ll be durned, if you Yanks don’t just beat the devil.”

Of course, we replied with the well-worn prison joke, that we supposed we did, as we beat the Rebels, who were worse than the devil.

There rode in among us, a few days after our arrival, an old man whose collar bore the wreathed stars of a Major General.  Heavy white locks fell from beneath his slouched hat, nearly to his shoulders.  Sunken gray eyes, too dull and cold to light up, marked a hard, stony face, the salient feature of which was a thin-upped, compressed mouth, with corners drawn down deeply—­the mouth which seems the world over to be the index of selfish, cruel, sulky malignance.  It is such a mouth as has the school-boy—­the coward of the play ground, who delights in pulling off the wings of flies.  It is such a mouth as we can imagine some remorseless inquisitor to have had—­that is, not an inquisitor filled with holy zeal for what he mistakenly thought the cause of Christ demanded, but a spleeny, envious, rancorous shaveling, who tortured men from hatred of their superiority to him, and sheer love of inflicting pain.