"faced about" and started again for Annapolis. Falling in with a countryman, he offered the man $1 for a lift, which was accepted. Being worn out with fatigue, he fell asleep in the bottom of the wagon, and thus reposed until the man arrived at his destination. Starting onward again, he overtook a boy plodding along, and after some conversation engaged him as a pilot. Thus they kept on until reaching the main road, when a drunken fellow, armed to the teeth, ordered Mr. Patton to "hold on." Mr. Patton said his name was Moore," and that he was going to Annapolis to collect some money which was owing him; but the fellow came to the conclusion that he was a "d-d Yankee spy," and must return to the tavern near by. Here were several other rebels armed to the teeth, and very drunk. They took Mr. Patton inside, and held a "Court Martial," but were diversified in their decision as to how they should dispose of him. Some wanted to shoot him, others to hang him, and others to lock him up. Meantime drinks were called for, in which all joined. It was finally decided to hang the "God damned spy," and Mr. Patton was marched out to the yard, where he saw a rope dangling from the limb of a tree. Pending the preparations for the "execution of the spy," a gentleman on horseback came up, and, ordering the men to fall back, took Mr. Patton one side, at the same time saying, "I know you, sir; you belong to the National Guard, and I drank with you in Baltimore." Some further conversation ensued, when the gentleman, who represented himself as the commander of that district, said he would release him if he, Mr. P., would pledge his word and honor to return to Washington. This pledge he readily gave, glad to escape from the hands of a drunken rabble, and forthwith took the road for Washington. About a mile away from this scene, he met his boy, who had watched the proceedings from a distance, and paying him handsomely, discharged him. After several stoppages upon the road by the rebel patrols, he arrived in Washington, and made report to Gen. Scott. Here he found his companions, who had also been arrested, and sent back. Determining to start again for Annapolis, he disguised himself completely, and in company with a friend, who had a fast team, set out on the journey-in search of a stolen horse. Every person whom they met upon the road was asked about a "stray horse," but no one had seen the animal. This ruse took well, and they got along without much interruption. Reaching a tavern at night, they took supper, and apparently went to bed. Mr. Patton, however, slipped out of the back door, and started off on foot. Presently he came to a piece of woods, but had not proceeded far before he heard the tramp of horses and the voices of men. He had barely time to conceal himself in a heap of underbrush, before they came up and halted near him. From their conversation he learned that the Seventh Regiment had moved toward Washingtona fact which he was most desirous of knowing. The horsemen directly moved away after hunting about the woods, when Mr. P. left his retreat, and safely reached his hotel again, where he overheard a conversation relative to the destruction of a bridge, over which the train containing the Seventh had to pass. The nuts had been taken off the bolts in the bridge, and had the train passed over it, all on board would have been killed. Mr. P. and his companions again got under way, and taking measures to prevent such a calamity, returned to Washington. Mr. Patton drove eighty miles, and walked thirty miles within

thirty hours, in order to accomplish all this.-Cor. N. Y. Tribune, May 4.

THE COCKADE BLACK DIAMONDS.-Quite a novel spectacle was witnessed in Petersburg, Va., as we are informed by a gentleman who arrived from that city. One hundred and twenty free negroes, uniformed with red shirts and dark pants, and bearing a flag of the Southern Confederacy, which had been presented to them by the ladies, marched through the city and embarked on the cars for Norfolk. They proceeded upon this excursion of their own free will, in response to the request made by Gen. Gwynn for the services of six hundred negroes from any portion of the State, to work upon the fortifications around Norfolk harbor. They were all in the finest spirits, and seemed anxious to "catch Old Linkum one time "— a desire which appeared to be foremost in their thoughts. They certainly deserve great credit for their disinterestedness, and will find that it is appreciated.-Charleston Evening News, May 1.

THE OCCUPATION OF CAIRO.-This audacious movement has had good effect in developing the purpose of our enemies to prosecute the war in earnest, and in its inspiring influence upon the Tennessee and Kentucky mind. It conveys a threat which the people of those States will join their brethren of the Confederate States in resenting with promptitude.

Geography has made Cairo a strategetical position of the utmost consequence. It is the key to the upper, as New Orleans and the Lake and the Balize are the key to the lower Mississippi. It can blockade St. Louis on the one hand, and Louisville on the other; while, if in possession of a considerable force, possessing heavy ordnance, and commanding the railroad leading south of that point, it would menace the city of Memphis, and open the way for an invading army to make that an advanced post of occupation. It is not pleasant to contemplate such a possibility. But it is good policy to face it fairly, if we would defeat it effectually.—Jackson Mississippian, April 26.

THE FIRST GUN in the present conflict was fired at Fort Sumter on Henry Clay's birthday. The fort surrendered on Thomas Jefferson's birthday. The contest began in the streets of Baltimore on the anniversary of the battle of Lexington and Concord.— Charleston Mercury, May 6.

NEW YORK, May 6.-A flour merchant of this city, who has just returned from Charleston, states that he was impressed into the rebel service, and was in Fort Moultrie during the whole battle. He confirms previous reports of the destructive effect of Major Anderson's fire, and adds:

The very first shot from Fort Sumter came booming into one of the port-holes near which I was stationed, dismounted the gun, and shivered the carriage into thousands of splinters. These splinters were scattered with terrible force throughout the fort, killing thirty-three men instantly, and wounding many more. This was the most destructive single shot we received, but throughout the entire cannonading the havoc in Moultrie was terrible. The dead and dying lay about us in every direction, and were trampled under foot by the soldiers in their arduous labors. We had not surgeons enough to attend to them all, and the groans of the dying and their piteous cries for help were distressing in the extreme. When Sumter finally capitulated, without losing a

man, thank God, the relatives of our dead and wounded hastened to Moultrie to learn their fate. Mothers came asking for their sons, sisters for brothers, sons for fathers, and all were told that all were well-that none were killed, but that confusion prevailed, and the soldiers could not be seen.

That night the bodies of the dead were boxed up and conveyed on shore, where they were buried in trenches in the negro burying-ground. One hundred and sixty bodies were conveyed to the burialplace on a small schooner, and the others by various other conveyances. On the following day, when relatives inquired for those who were dead, they were told that they had been sent away to other points to recruit their energies. Every possible means were resorted to, to keep the truth from being known. I myself counted over two hundred dead bodies in Moultrie, and know that there were others which I did not see. I have no means of knowing the extent of the slaughter at the other fortifications, but heard, incidentally, that it was serious, although not so great as at Moultrie. I was told that one shot at Stevens's Battery dismounted a cannon and killed several persons.-N. Y. Evening Post, May 6.

THE furore of war which absorbs the North to that degree that Yankees have ceased to calculate, will not, and cannot, be a long-lived sentiment. Invasion of the South is simply la mode, the fashion, the excitement of the hour. Just as they ran mad after Jenny Lind, the Japanese Tommy, Kossuth, Morus Multicaulis, Spirit Rappings, and every other new bubble, so they now unite in the great delirium of civil war, and intoxicate their brains with thoughts of blood and plunder. When all the individuals of a nation have been occupied from their birth with ledgers and cash-books, dollars and cents, the humdrum existence of trade or traffic, a "sensation" becomes a necessity to their mental constitution. No people on earth need temporary excitement like the Yankees, are more eager to get it, or will pay more for it. Their newspapers, their books, their theatres, their cities, furnish daily illustrations of their thirst after excitement. But it never lasts long. The taste is gratified, the want supplied, and Yankees become Yankees again until the next season. Once used, they never take up the cast-off fashion, and that which ran them mad with coarse and gregarious enthusiasm, becomes in a few weeks mere caputmortuum, stale champagne,-old clothes. Kossuth coming, was greater than Washington; Kossuth leaving, attracted no more attention than the dustcart on which all the filth of the newspaper offices was emptied. The whole city of New York, men, women, and children, the upper ten and the b'hoys, assembled in one dense and shouting multitude, to see an ugly, vulgar, money-loving Swedish opera woman land from a steamboat, to sing to them to the tune of half a million of dollars; but three months later she walked and travelled with as little notice as any other strong-minded woman and unprotected female. As with these trifles, so with mania of a character more serious. The North blazed with rage for war with England in 1812, with Mexico in 1846, and after a few weeks no more soldiers could be got ten out of it for either. The tremendous outburst of ferocity that we witness in the Northern States, is simply the repetition of one of the most common traits of their national character. It is the fashion of the day, the humbug of the hour, and it will cease as suddenly as it has commenced. Like straw on

fire, the periodical sensations of the North make a great flame, but to sink to the ashes and the dust of indifference as swiftly as they sprang. It is easy, and to them amusing, to indulge their tastes of this sort in bloody talk about invading the South, in mobbing a few of them hitherto suspected of sympathy with us, in joining volunteer companies, running off to cities like Washington, by way of Annapolis, where no brickbats are on the road; but in three or four weeks the superfluous gas will be gone, and Yankees will be Yankees again.-Richmond Examiner, May 3.

NEW YORK, May 3.-The mate of the schooner D. B. Pitts, lately arrived from Charleston, says that there is no doubt that nearly 200 men were killed in the batteries during the engagement, and that most of them were buried on the beach. He says that on the nights of the 15th, 16th, and 17th instant, the steamboat which plied between the city and the batteries took down an aggregate of about 200 coffins. He was informed also by a gentleman who had a brother and brother-in-law in the garrison of Fort Moultrie, that after writing to them repeatedly without obtaining any answer, he finally received a note from one of the officers, stating that they had both been killed, and that their bodies could be sent for, which he was about to do. He learned from various sources that the number killed in Fort Moultrie was 39, but could not ascertain the number in the other batteries. He is positive as to the shipment of a large number of coffins on board the steamboat on the nights mentioned, having seen them taken on board himself.-N. Y. Tribune, May 3.

WASHINGTON, May 2.-Some two or three months since, seven negroes, who had been slaves, effected an escape from their masters, and appeared at Fort Pickens, then commanded by Lieutenant Slemmer. That officer returned them to the rebel troops, by whom they were given up to their owners, by whom they were mercilessly punished for the attempt to gain their liberty. At the time of their surrender, Fort Pickens was greatly in need of men to defend it, and down to this moment there has been no day when these negroes would not have been of great use in the various labors about the fort. Just such laborers have since been carried thither at a great expense to the Government. Their fidelity was guarantied by every circumstance, and was beyond question.

When General Jackson defended New Orleans, he pressed every thing that had any fighting quality about it,-Barataria pirates, free negroes, whatever came to hand, into the service.

One of the Secessionists is reported to have said, that if Lieutenant Slemmer had not returned these men, "a nigger would not have been left in all that part of Florida."-N. Y. Evening Post, May 6.

NOVEL CHARGE.-The Newberry Conservatist says: "The secession of Virginia was hailed with great enthusiasm at this place on Friday, by firing off the cannon, charged with powder and tobacco. Hurrah for the Old Dominion State."-Charleston Evening News, May 3.

"REGIMENTS IN BUCKRAM."-A very funny article appears under this title in the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin. That paper pretends to have heard the news from Massachusetts, but it evidently is still

in the dark concerning the achievements of the men of the Bay State in Maryland. We make a choice extract:

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Massachusetts, the telegraph so reports, is all alive with the war spirit. Her regiments, according to this authority, are pouring over the North in such vast numbers, as to induce the idea that the descendants of the men who refused to go out of their own State to fight the battles of the Revolution, were really a fighting race. But those who know these Puritan fanatics will never believe that they intend to take the field against Southern men. They may muster into service to garrison posts comparatively free from attack, and when they can be sheltered within impregnable walls, but the hereafter will have little to tell of their deeds in the tented field, or the 'imminent deadly breach.'

"It has been wittily and very truthfully observed, in reference to Massachusetts' share in the Revolution, that she built the Bunker Hill Monument, and went on the Pension List.' The history of the coming struggle will not be quite so brilliant even as that, for the achievement of her arms will win no monuments-except those that commemorate her slain."-Boston Transcript, May 2.

A PRIVATE correspondent of The Independent, writing from Washington, gives the following interesting incident:

a Government for itself, the South, so far from objecting, would have hailed it as an immeasurable blessing and relief. They would have said to the North, If you want to go, go in peace, and Heaven speed you." When we propose to go, however, it is all different. The North wishes to keep us, unwilling and reluctant though we be, in a Union which we have repudiated, and to compel allegiance and tribute from a people known to be galled and almost maddened by the association.

There is no justice in this, no liberty, no humanity, no Christianity, no sense. It is the silliest and most ridiculous enterprise ever undertaken by a Government professing to be founded on the consent of the governed. It is not only senseless, but wicked, cruel, inhuman, and barbarous.-N. O. Crescent, May 4.

THE members of the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment were put to various useful purposes in forcing the passage through Maryland. It seems that the Annapolis Railroad was for a time entirely managed by members of the Cushing Guard. Lieutenant Hodges, a machinist, after assisting to repair the engine, was made superintendent of the road; Joseph Batchelder, son of Constable Batchelder, who was formerly an employé on the Newburyport road, and is standard-bearer of the regiment, was made engineer; and private Joseph Jewett, who will be remembered as the lecturer on music, was employed as fireman. It is believed that he is admirably adapted to firing up! The entire road was in the hands of men from that company. After the war, railroad corporations will know where to look for employés.

CHARLESTON, May 3.-A Northern paper informs us that "there is hardly a house (in Philadelphia) from which the triune colors are not floating, and woe betide the unfortunate householder whose colors are wanting when called for."

When the Commonwealth of Rome was subverted, the people were compelled to worship the image of the despots whom the brute force of the mercenary soldiery had elevated to brief authority. So it seems the Black Republican mobs of the Northern cities compel the people to worship striped rags as evidence of their obeisance to the Abolition despots who now desecrate the seats of power in the Federal city.

It is also stated, that "every window-shutter is tied with the inevitable red, white, and blue. Canary cages are trimmed with the national colors, and dogs perambulate the streets wrapped in the star-spangled banner."

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Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!" The "star-spangled banner" has gone to the dogs. "Babylon the great has fallen, and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.”— Charleston News, May 3.

THIS attempt to put down the South by fire and the sword, is one of the most curious and incomprehensible things that ever occurred in the history of the world. If the case were reversed-if it were the North which had seceded from the Union, and set up

days they had nothing to eat but poor pork and a little hard bread. In their ranks are two butchers from this city-Messrs. Merrill and Cilley. They took a tramp into the pastures, and were shortly seen driving an ox to a part of the railroad where the men were at work. A sturdy blow upon the head brought the animal down; the body was strung up to a tree and flayed, and in a little while the whole gang were feasting from the best cut of beef-steak. The manner in which the men of the Eighth Regiment have turned their hands to all kinds of employment, will render them famous throughout the world, and for all time. Some of them could even keep a hotel, which every man cannot do.-Newburyport (Mass.) Herald, May 4.

NEW YORK, May 1.-A party of Congressmen who came up to-day from Annapolis to Perryville, Md., on a Government steam-tug, had an amusing adventure. While on their trip, a suspicious-looking craft was discovered in the distance. There was a good revolving howitzer on board the tug, and it was instantly got ready for action. Twenty-five marines on board were drawn up, but their services were not needed. A shot brought the craft to, when it turned out to be a schooner deeply laden with provisions. She was sailing under papers drawn up by General Trimble, of Baltimore, who is the commander of the secession troops in Baltimore. Undoubtedly the provisions were intended for the rebels in some part of the South. The name of the schooner was the Lioness. She was brought into Perryville, and her Trimble papers taken from the captain. This General Trimble will soon be taken care of by the Gov