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a closer view of the city which we have for near a month been observing over the river, not three hundred yards wide, without the power of visitation.
As the rebels were in very considerable force on the heights back of the city, one could not extend his perambulations beyond the street fronting on the river.
Every one of the houses which I here entered, a dozen or more, is torn to pieces by shot and shell, and the fire still hotly rages in a dozen parts of the city.
A few citizens — a score or two, perhaps — male and female, presently made their appearance, emerging out of the cellars, whither they had taken refuge during the bombardment.
Three women — white — whom we found in a cellar, told us that they, with a majority of the inhabitants, had moved out of Fredericksburgh a fortnight or so previously, but that, growing reassured by our long delay, they, with a good many others, had come back the evening before.
The former inhabitants, they report as now living in various parts of the environs, some in negro huts, and others in tents made with bed-clothes, etc.
During the afternoon of the bombardment we observed a couple of white handkerchiefs waved out of the windows in a house in the city.
This was taken by some for a flag of truce, and the Chief of Artillery was on the point of causing the shelling to cease.
General Burnside, however, decided that it was probably merely only the wonted rebel ruse, and ordered operations to be continued.
We found out that the demonstrations were made by two of the women referred to, with the desire that we should send over a boat and convey them away from Fredericksburgh.
Among other prominent objects during the bombardment was a large British flag, flying over the house of the English Consul.
This personage, however, was not found in his house when we entered the city, and the flag was taken possession of and brought away.
A number of rebel dead were found in various parts of the city, some exhibiting frightful mutilations from shells, and I took as a trophy, a rifle, still loaded, out of the grasp of a hand belonging to a headless trunk.
The infantry in the city appear to have been Mississippians, South-Carolinans, and Floridians.
Those of them that we took prisoners were wretchedly clad, and mostly without blankets or overcoats, but they generally looked stout and healthy, and certainly in far better condition than they could have been were there any truth in the report of some deserters the other day, to the effect that for three weeks they had nothing to eat but the persimmons they were able to pick up.
Although we are not yet fully informed of the present positions of the enemy, there seems to be good ground to claim that General Burnside has succeeded in outgeneralling and outwitting them.
His decoys to make them believe that we were about to cross our main force at Port Conway, seem to have succeeded admirably.
I suppose there is no harm now in my mentioning that among the ruses he employed was sending down, day before yesterday, to Port Conway, three hundred wagons, and bringing them back by a different road, for the sole purpose of making the rebels believe that we were about to cross the river at that point.
To the same end, workmen were busily employed in laying causeways for supposed pontoon-bridges there, while the gunboats were held as bugaboos at the same place.
Completely deceived by these feints, the main rebel force, including Jackson's command, seems to have been, two or three days ago, transferred twenty or twenty-five miles down the river.
It must be remembered, however, that without the utmost celerity on our part, they can readily retrieve this blunder by a forced march or two.
Signal-guns, at five o'clock this morning, gave them the cue to what was going on, and doubtless they have not been idle during the intervening hours.
To-morrow will disclose what unseen moves have been made on the chess-board.
W. S.