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Vallombrosa.
Colonel De Russey, chief engineer, also reported the spot to me as malarious and unhealthy.
When General Scott gave me the envelope containing my orders, he seemed to have entirely forgotten our late interview, and became quite companionable.
He told me all about the fort, congratulated me upon my assignment to that position with my quarters in the fort, and gave me special congratulations, which while they were very kind in him were eminently characteristic.
“General,” he said, “you are very fortunate to be assigned to duty at Fortress Monroe; it is just the season for soft-shelled crabs, and hog fish have just come in, and they are the most delicious pan fish you ever ate,” --as indeed I found them to be.
From that time I never had the least objectionable communication from General Scott.
We always met in the most friendly manner, and when he was retired from the army,--after McClellan had quarrelled with him, and abused him until he got the old general removed from his path to the chief command, and then wrote a very florid general order in his praise,--I felt it my duty to ask leave, as senior major-general, to attend, with other officers, as escort to his home.
I met him but once afterwards, and that was when I was in command in New York, in 1864.
I took possession of the Hoffman House, where he had rooms, for my headquarters.
I waited upon him and assured him that he should not be disturbed.
At that time he gave me the history of his life in two volumes, subscribed with his own hand, “From the Oldest to the Youngest General in the United States Army.”
I certainly had no cause to complain of the territorial extent of my jurisdiction.
It was the geographical department of Virginia and North Carolina, and was subject to my military rule as far as I could possess myself of it, with headquarters at Fortress Monroe.
The fort was one of the strongest and best in the United States, and certainly the largest.
It was a bastion fort about sixty-five acres in extent, with a water battery casemated on its sea front, and some guns mounted en barbette. Its ramps and ramparts were in good condition.
Its only weak point as far as construction was
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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