LV
JUST where we are camped now I cannot tell, except that it is in the woods, within four miles of the enemy and nineteen from Richmond. We left our camp at Williamsburg last Thursday morning and got in here this afternoon. This is a heathenish country, swarming with unpleasant neighbors other than rebels. Day before yesterday when I aroused from a wayside nap, one of the little snakes—common here, but harmless—slid out from under me. I gave a yelp and killed him as if he had been a rattlesnake.
I thought I wrote you at the time about Solon Porter. He died at Camp Beaufort, some time before we left there, of apoplexy. He was sitting on his bunk, cracking a nut between his teeth, when he fell back, unconscious, and lived but a short time. I was not tenting with him at the time. He was the third of my Camp Sullivan tentmates to die.
This ink is simply awful, and Gunnison, who is writing out of the same bottle, is expressing his opinion very freely. That sprig of geranium you sent me was a fragrant reminder of home. I will inclose a sprig of cedar from a tree just in front of my tent. When I can I gather a quantity of these cedar branches for a bed.
A dear little baby rabbit just came running into this tent and we caught him. The little rascal’s confidence—if that was what led him here—was well placed. When I get through petting him I’ll take him out into the woods and turn him loose in the safest place I can find.