From the Seacoast.
[our own correspondent] Savannah, Ga., Jan. 15, 1862.
My last letter has been read, and no doubt since forgotten, but my failure to write has been entirely compulsory.
Your humble correspondent, after detailing the disposition of the Yankees on the first of the present month, has been sadly attached with the mumps, and he has received but one consolation in the meantime, in the assurance that Gen. Sherman and his Yankees have been in the dumps from that encounter.
The Yankee press, it appears, has a very full account of the affair, and, as usual with these veracious chroniclers, it is heralded as a great victory on their side.
They lie so promptly and so freely that the next news brought invariably has the refutation along with it. After having driven us within our entrenchments, within six miles of the railroad, they, alas incontinently abandon their hard won victory, and retire from the face of the vanquished foe.
If the Yankee Government has achieved and will achieve honor during this war, at least the Yankee nation may claim to have established their reputation for clean and whole-cloth lying worthy of their Chinese exemplars.
Did ever the world present such a spectacle of national mendacity?
Could the mind of a sane man conceive a people who would lie for the pleasure of lying solely and who would concoct their falsehoods with so little congruity that they would be blown to the winds by the first blush of truth ? You know the value of the three thousand bags of cotton which were received by the Vanderbilt from Port Royal, and the great figure made over them you have read think of the Lilliputian result of so much labor !--forty bales of cotton, and that a very good allowance for the poor and depreciated gatherings from the fields.
Since the attempt of the 1st ult., no movement has been made either in Carolina or along our coast.
Sherman has apparently learned the futility of any attempt to move on the Main with a large and well appointed Army Whether he awaits reenforcements or simply wishes the health of his troops to improve it is impossible to say — The reported evacuation of Port Royal Island was, I judged at the time, entirely unfounded; very probably the detached camps about the island have been brought into town with the object of preventing the further increase of disease among them.
I have the assurance of one who has had communication with the island that the enemy's hospitals have been very much crowded, and it might readily be inferred from the fact that in many localities the acclimated residents will not remain during the night, even in this season of the year.
A report prevailed that Gen. Lee had been communicated with, asking the removal of the negroes from the island, as small pox raged there among them.
I believe there is no foundation for the report; but I shall be very much surprised if the negroes will be retained much longer, as they will necessarily become a burden and charge upon the Government, the crops of grain having been very largely destroyed.
Savannah has been as usual very quiet, and scarce news enough arrives in the evening from the Charleston railroad to keep the people at all well informed of the attitude of the troops at the latest moment.
While you are in the midst of a reluctant winter, and by last reports visited by snow and the rude blasts of floras we are still fortunate in open skies and a genial sun, too fortunate indeed, for we fear that the ‘"heavenly climate"’ may find too ardent admirers in the prowling villains that infest our coast.
The weather has been mild enough for the month of April, and the ‘"oldest inhabitant"’ cannot instance another such winter in thirty years. It is feared, however, that a late spring may give trouble to the coming crops.
Among the many deficiencies produced by the war, and which an energetic public might have in a great measure remedied, is the want of paper.
Occasionally I have seen influential journals, in different portions of our country, appearing in a sober russet hue, betokening the difficulty of obtaining the necessary printing material.
And yet this might be easily remedied.
The capitalists of the South are neglecting one of the safest and most lucrative means of investment; one that peace will not cripple, but greatly enlarge, and which would become the first step to those factories of the finer papers for which we are entirely indebted to the North.
The Morning News, of this city, appears to-day in this disguise, and has attracted my attention to a subject which has been noticed in various papers throughout the country but seems yet to have received but a tithe of its merited consideration.
The financial prospects of the Lincoln Government seem to be in a very precarious way at present, and if the Herald's schema is resorted to, to tax to the amount of four hundred millions the already depreciated property of the North, it will inevitably break up the semblance of the Government remaining at Washington.
The recourse of an irredeemable paper currency to support the war expenses of Lincoln would be utterly futile.
It is difficult to see any other way in which the position can be relieved than by heavy taxation.
The Yankees apparently have just taken an inventory of stook, and posted their accounts, to find that their receipts are nowhere, while their expenditures are enormous.
The Banks begin to perceive the futility of a war that drains every resource from the country and leaves it but the more impoverished.
The report from the Herald makes the importation New York, for the best year, $48,646,000 exalt $103, 297,000 for 1800; and from this service of figures he derives the cons the they must he layit a favor on the other side.
exists on the other side of the water, and on the other side of the ledger also, which he will soon find to his cost will afford no opportunity for consolatory deductions.
Our blockading enemies remain quiet.
Upon Charleston bar they are more vigilant as well as numerous since the late evasion of its effectiveness.
Mercury 