Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[101] which floated lazily on its tide, or sometimes shooting one, to admire the great pouch, into which one of the soldiers could insert his foot, as into a boot. “He hold one quart,” said the admiring experimentalist. “Hi! Boy,” retorted another quickly, “neber you bring dat quart measure in my peck oa corn.” The protest came very promptly, and was certainly fair; for the strange receptacle would have held nearly a gallon.

We went on shore, too, and were shown a rather pathetic little garden, which the naval officers had laid out, indulging a dream of vegetables. They lingered over the little microscopic sprouts, pointing them out tenderly, as if they were cradled babies. I have often noticed this touching weakness, in gentlemen of that profession, on lonely stations.

We wandered among the bluffs, too, in the little deserted hamlet once called “Pilot town.” The ever-shifting sand had in some cases almost buried the small houses, and had swept around others a circular drift, at a few yards' distance, over-topping their eaves, and leaving each the untouched citadel of this natural redoubt. There was also a dismantled lighthouse, an object which always seems the most dreary symbol of the barbarism of war, when one considers the national beneficence which reared and kindled it. Despite the service rendered by this once brilliant light, there were many wrecks which had been strown upon the beach, victims of the most formidable of the Southern river-bars. As I stood with my foot on the half-buried ribs of one of these vessels,--so distinctly traced that one might almost fancy them human, --the old pilot, my companion, told me the story of the wreck. The vessel had formerly been in the Cuba trade; and her owner, an American merchant residing in Havana,