made under circumstances of the greatest advantage to those who advocate emancipation, and insist upon its success.

Of the many thousand negroes, not soldiers, in the department of this General, the majority is concentrated immediately around Fortress Monroe. It is almost impossible to persuade them to remove to the North, as they have the strongest prejudice against a higher latitude, and cherish those local attachments peculiar to the negro, deriving a vague satisfaction from the thought that they are still on the soil of the South. Many of them express the greatest desire to remain in Virginia "after the war is over."

The point of land here is black with negroes. You see what one of Mr. Charles Reade's heroes describes as a "mixellaneous bilin' of darkies.” You find the shivering old crones lining the beach with cake stands; negroes shuffling along the wharves hoping for somebody to give them a job; negroes thick as crows in the open lofs around the fort; negroes poking their black heads through every open window for a mile around.

I had an opportunity of making an excursion through the whole negro settlement here. I had no sooner got into the Hygeia breakfast room than I was recognized by three or four black servants who had escaped from Richmond a few months ago, and had found employment at the hotel. They expressed boundless delight to see me; came up to shake hands; overwhelmed me with obsequious attentions, and crowded my plate with every delicacy in the larder. There were two Yankee chaplains sitting opposite me in undisguised and whispering amazement at such a demonstration of Virginia negroes to a "Reb," as they had no doubt been taught to suppose that such a character, in coming in contact with disenthralled Africans, was much more likely to have his throat cut than otherwise. All the negroes I have referred to had their budgets of experience to open to me. They were doing very well, as they were trained house servants; but "their people," "who hadn't larnt much," were doing very badly, and were "monstrous sorry" that they had come over to "de free side." One meets here, but only occasionally, a fungus of negro gentility that is very amusing. I went out to the "Freedmen's Village" in a horse car. Seated opposite to me in the car was a fat-lipped mulatto woman, who had wonderful airs and graces. She languished; ogled one or two Yankee officers on the platform; was indignant because "dat man" (the white conductor) wanted to charge her extra for a band box, which she had placed beside her. I discovered from her conversation that she was employed as a sempstress in General Butler's family, and had just been out on a shopping excursion for herself

through the stores on the wharf. Sich mixed places," she said, addressing with a very patronizing air a coloured female, who was a shade darker, "dey ain't nice or 'spectable a bit; I gwine do my shoppin' in Baltimore next time." The "ginger-bread" female obsequiously wished to know if General Butler was made "Secerrerry of War," if her friend would deign to follow in his suite to Washington. "Oh, dear, no," was the reply; "can't leave de fort; and den you know-ha, ha, ha!-dese officers is sich sinners."

At the Freedmen's Village, and all along the road to it, there were invariable houses of scantling crowded with black people. I found several barracoons reeking with squalour, and with clusters of naked bodies of little black negroes hanging in the windows. Those wretched homes were stuffed with the meaner class of blacks, the poor "scrubs," who have no qualifications for sempstresses, barbers or waiters, and such "genteel" employments, and are content to pass their lives in animal riot and laziness, as long as the Yankee Government feeds them. What will they do after that? God only knows. Some of the more adventurous had built up quite a little outer town of "pie and cake" establishments "pies and cakes"-nothing else, their enterprise had not got beyond that. There are hundreds of these establishments within a mile of Fortress Monroe. Many of these must have been open all day without taking in a copper. It was a melancholy pretence of doing something-those poor creatures sitting behind rows of stale and shrivelled pies, and waiting for impossible customers. Alas! what must the future have in reserve for these wretched and helpless people! Some of them have already a dim dawning in their minds of the fate that awaits them. One notices that they are amused for a time by the surprise of freedom and the new scenes into which they are introduced; that they run after the drums and glitter of the Yankee soldiers; that, like children, they are excited and pleased by new spectacles, which are suddenly presented to them. But they soon relapse into blank helplessness.

1

CHAPTER XVI.

A DAY WITH GENERAL BUTLER.-The Civilization and Poetry of the "Sanitary Commission"-General Butler's Philosophy and "Little Stories."

Within thirty-six hours after reporting at Fortress Monroe a dispatch was received from General Butler, dated "Before Richmond," summoning me to his headquarters. I went up the river without any guard, being on parole. I had not passed up the James before for many years, and with melancholy interest, standing on the decks of the "River Queen," my eye traced along the banks. the ravages of war. On the lower part of the river there were shrivelled spots on the bluffs where houses had formerly stood and where the destroyer had done his work; now nothing to be seen but naked chimneys pointing upward into the pale winter sky. I could see no signs of human habitations-nothing but here and there some squalid encampments peering over the banks, and soiled tents rocking in the winters' wind.

A gaunt man in a swaggy suit of black-a member of the "Army Sanitary Commission "--scemed very much inclined to enter into conversation with me. He had not the least idea he was talking to a "rebel"; he evidently imagined me to be an Englishman, judging my nationality, perhaps, from a round hat and red whiskers. I asked him what kind of people had formerly lived on the banks of the river. He proceeded to describe them, as he thought, for the benefit of a foreigner: very uncivilized; Vandals in agriculture, who wore out thousand acres of land to make as much in the way of profit as Yankee could raise on a ten-acre farm; men who had been "raised with niggers" and were dirty "slouching" creatures, who had now made way for the pioneers of Yankee civilization. "Ah," he said, "you ought to see the banks of the Hudson by the side of this puddle. There's American civilization for you, Mister." We were detained at City Point, which place I could hardly recognize. It looks so much like the wharves of New York, the river so choked with shipping, and the shore so covered with storehouses, that one might imagine himself here on the threshold of a great metropolis. I had to sleep on a hard bench on board

the boat. A wretched night! Soldiers over my head singing camp songs and all sorts of dirty scraps of blackguard and blasphemy, alternated with sentimental ditties, furnished them by the Sanitary Commission! Think of a Yankee "scab," reeking with filth, a "bounty-jumper," perhaps, trolling out the verse which the sentimental writer of camp, songs puts in the mouth of “the dying soldier"

"Soon with Angels I'll be marching

A crown of glory on my brew!"

The next morning, that of the 3d of December, dawned brightly through the forests of masts and mesh of transports into which the "River Queen" had inserted herself; and as the sun rose, we were moving up to Bermuda Hundred. Arrived there, I sought out the quartermaster's office, and was furnished with transportation in a comfortable ambulance to Gen. Butler's headquarters, about seven miles distant.

The road was not very good; but I had a charming ride in the bracing morning air, through a pretty forest of second growth of pine and oak. Before crossing the river on the pontoons the road ascends a table land on the south side, from which was spread out a lovely and picturesque scene in the hazy morning air, that alike ravished the senses and inspired the most vivid emotions of the heart. The high land stands in a bend of the James, thickly thronged with transports, tugs, men-of-war, with here and there a gloomy monitor; while above the banks floated the beautiful tri-color of the French frigate Adonis, a visitor to this scene of war. Stretching across the landscapes, were the picturesque dioramas of a great army: tents gleaming in the woods; long lines of white-covered wagons toiling across the brown fields; horsemen flying hither and thither; human figures dotting the pontoon bridge; and now and then the train of some general's staff, in lustrous uniform, wending its way along the edges of the forest. I passed a file of nine or ten men with wounded arms or bandaged faces. "Them," said the driver of the ambulance, "is some of our boys what was in the fight last night with the rebs."

I reached Gen. Butler's headquarters about nine in the morning-a common 'frame building, probably an overseer's house, on the Aiken farm, flanked by rows of neatly constructed log cabins with brick chimneys and glass windows. I found at the door of the General's quarters two orderlies, one of whom required me to send in my "card" for the audience I solicited. Not being provided with the preliminary pasteboard, I substituted a dirty scrap of paper, and patiently awaited the General's pleasure to see me.

I had to wait several hours. At last the orderly called my name; and with a sudden effort I strung up my nerves for an interview with the man whom I had been accustomed to regard as the Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones of the war. After all, a surprise awaited me much greater than anything I could imagine. I had expected a storm of wrath to be exploded upon my head, without even the ceremony of salutation. Imagine my surprise when General Butler rose, saying very pleasantly, "Take a seat, Mr. P.," and then offering me a fragrant Havana, asking me "if I would not take what he could recommend as a very good cigar!" I excused myself from smoking, on the ground of "nerves.” "Perhaps you would like to look over the Richmond morning papers; here they are, all five of them," said the General, sweeping a pile of newspapers towards "Ah, the Examiner is not there; that Gov. Bradford, who was just in to see me, would have."

me.

The face of General Butler is familiar to the public in innumerable engravings, wood-cuts and photographs. But his large head and bust give one the idea of a bulky and unwieldy figure. On the contrary, he has a compact figure and a French quickness in his movements; he is short and well put up. His head is peaked with a forehead that slants rapidly, but just over his eyes shows a remarkable development of what phrenologists call "the organs of perception." He has small, muddy, cruel eyes; and there is a smothered glower in them, curtained in one of them by a drooping lid, which is very unpleasant. The other of his features are almost covered up in enormous chops, with little webs of red veins in them. But the expression of the face is by no means sluggish. He talks with a perpetual motion of his features, and has the Johnsonían puff in his conversation. When he essays to be pleasant he smiles; but as he performs this operation on one side of the mouth, and shows by it some bad projecting teeth, the effect is not re-assuring

After giving me time to make a cursory examination of the newspapers, General Butler opened the subject of my exchange. He said he was quite willing to send me through his lines to effect my exchange for Mr. Richardson, an attache of the New York Tribune, or whatever other equivalent was available; but in view of certain military movements on foot, it would not be prudent to do so at that time, and he would require me to remain inside of Fortress Monroe, until a proper opportunity to send me to Richmond should occur. polite enough to say that personally he was quite sure that I would honorably observe the conditions of my parole and give no improper information in Richmond with respect to what I might learn in passing through his lines; but he

He was