Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[134]
O de road am sandy,
De bell done ringing;
Hell been open,
De bell done ringing ;

The little drum-corps kept in advance, a jolly crew, their drums slung on their backs, and the drum-sticks perhaps balanced on their heads. With them went the officers' servant-boys, more uproarious still, always ready to lend their shrill treble to any song. At the head of the whole force there walked, by some self-imposed preeminence, a respectable elderly female, one of the company laundresses, whose vigorous stride we never could quite overtake, and who had an enormous bundle balanced on her head, while she waved in her hand, like a sword, a long-handled tin dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music I believe no white regiment in the service could have shown; and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road,--beneath jasmine clusters, and great pinecones dropping, and great bunches of misletoe still in bloom among the branches. Arrived at the station, the scene soon became busy and more confused; wagons were being unloaded, tents pitched, water brought, wood cut, fires made, while the “field and staff” could take possession of the abandoned quarters of their predecessors, and we could look round in the lovely summer morning to “survey our empire and behold our home.”

The only thoroughfare by land between Beaufort and Charleston is the “Shell Road,” a beautiful avenue, which, about nine miles from Beaufort, strikes a ferry