As the train left the northern suburbs of Savannah we came upon a scene of busy activity, strongly contrasting with the somnolent lethargy that seemed to be the normal condition of the City and its inhabitants.  Long lines of earthworks were being constructed, gangs of negros were felling trees, building forts and batteries, making abatis, and toiling with numbers of huge guns which were being moved out and placed in position.

As we had had no new prisoners nor any papers for some weeks—­the papers being doubtless designedly kept away from us—­we were at a loss to know what this meant.  We could not understand this erection of fortifications on that side, because, knowing as we did how well the flanks of the City were protected by the Savannah and Ogeeche Rivers, we could not see how a force from the coast—­whence we supposed an attack must come, could hope to reach the City’s rear, especially as we had just come up on the right flank of the City, and saw no sign of our folks in that direction.

Our train stopped for a few minutes at the edge of this line of works, and an old citizen who had been surveying the scene with senile interest, tottered over to our car to take a look at us.  He was a type of the old man of the South of the scanty middle class, the small farmer.  Long white hair and beard, spectacles with great round, staring glasses, a broad-brimmed hat of ante-Revolutionary pattern, clothes that had apparently descended to him from some ancestor who had come over with Oglethorpe, and a two-handed staff with a head of buckhorn, upon which he leaned as old peasants do in plays, formed such an image as recalled to me the picture of the old man in the illustrations in “The Dairyman’s Daughter.”  He was as garrulous as a magpie, and as opinionated as a Southern white always is.  Halting in front of our car, he steadied himself by planting his staff, clasping it with both lean and skinny hands, and leaning forward upon it, his jaws then addressed themselves to motion thus: 

“Boys, who mout these be that ye got?”

One of the Guards:—­“O, these is some Yanks that we’ve bin hivin’ down at Camp Sumter.”

“Yes?” (with an upward inflection of the voice, followed by a close scrutiny of us through the goggle-eyed glasses,) “Wall, they’re a powerful ornary lookin’ lot, I’ll declah.”

It will be seen that the old, gentleman’s perceptive powers were much more highly developed than his politeness.

“Well, they ain’t what ye mout call purty, that’s a fack,” said the guard.

“So yer Yanks, air ye?” said the venerable Goober-Grabber, (the nick-name in the South for Georgians), directing his conversation to me.  “Wall, I’m powerful glad to see ye, an’ ’specially whar ye can’t do no harm; I’ve wanted to see some Yankees ever sence the beginnin’ of the wah, but hev never had no chance.  Whah did ye cum from?”

I seemed called upon to answer, and said:  “I came from Illinois; most of the boys in this car are from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa.”