Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[249] they were very cheap. The garrison of the fort, especially the officers, occupied quarters largely in the casemates, which were built into the walls of the fort under the ramparts, and had embrasures pierced in the outside walls for guns. These openings overlooked the moat, and also served the occupants of the casemates as windows when the guns were withdrawn. Through these narrow windows the shells of the oysters were easily thrown into the moat and as the larger shells had small oysters attached to them, there was quite an oyster bank in the bottom of the moat and one which filled it up very considerably.

As soon as possible the moat was cleared and the water was afterwards kept in it at its full height.

But the question of drinking water was one of the most pressing, as warm weather was coming on. There was quite a spring on the opposite side of Mill Creek, the bridge of which was picketed, and I proposed to Colonel De Russey, who was the engineer officer in charge, a very old and therefore a very formal officer, that we should bring water from there into the fort. He informed me that pipe could only be put there by contract after advertisement and after authority had been obtained from the chief of engineers at Washington. I told him to take it in charge. Against his protest, however, I insisted upon having an artesian well sunk in the fort. The old well, even if it had reached water, was only a four-inch pipe, and unless it should happen, of which there was but one chance in a hundred, to be a very heavy flowing well, it would by no means furnish the post with a sufficient supply of water.

Upon examining the topography of the country and its geological formation, I came to the conclusion that at one time the sea flowed up to the hills near Richmond in a straight line between fifty and sixty miles and that the substantial plateau between those cliffs and the fort was formed by concretion from the ocean, and that it was probable we should have to bore our well until we got down some six hundred feet because the trend of the whole coast was to rise about a fathom in a mile. The well was begun, and I had got down some four hundred feet at the time when I was relieved from command of the fort for some months or so. Then the work was stopped and never has proceeded any further, and I have never