CX
THE men who like to fish are having the time of their lives. My particular passion is crab fishing. The outfit consists of a boat, a piece of fish or meat on the end of a string, and a dip-net. Three or four of us coast along the shore, and when a crab is sighted the bait is thrown to him, he fastens onto it and is tolled up within reach of the dip-net. There is a big sea turtle here in the cove. We see him every day. Some of the boys say they are just dying to get hold of his tail or flippers and be towed out a piece.
What some negroes will risk for liberty was well illustrated by a slave family that came over last night from Virginia. There were a man and his wife and three children. They traveled all day, on foot, to reach the river. Then, although the water was very rough, they all packed into a little “dugout” canoe and got safely across the six or eight miles of tossing waters that to them was the highway to liberty. A syndicate of us bought the canoe, and Sam. Oliver and I tried it out today.
Day before yesterday we were reinforced by a company of regular cavalry that came down from Washington on the boat. They were from the same regiment so many of our boys went into a year ago, and we have learned the fate of some of them. Rod. Manning was killed, a few days ago, in a cavalry fight near Culpepper, and Nich. Biglin—our “Heenan”—is supposed to have been killed, as he had a bad saber cut and a bullet wound and could not be carried away. [He died in Andersonville.] Father will remember Rod. Manning as my tentmate at Alexandria. I am glad I did not blunder into the regulars with the other boys, for although we have had a rough time of it, they have had a rougher. A third of those who went from Company I are dead. When the boys went off to get transferred they urged me to go with them, and perhaps the only thing that saved me was the fact that I had come off a hard picket turn the night before and hated to crawl out of my warm nest.
Several more rebel prisoners have escaped, and in consequence of the growing propensity to run away they have had their watches, money and other valuables taken away from them, and they have been restricted in many privileges they formerly enjoyed. I understand a board fence is to be put around the prison camp, and that will help some; but the crying need is for more men to do guard duty. Some of the men who ran away have been recaptured.
Most of our married officers have their wives here and are keeping house in the little tenements on “Chesapeake Avenue.”