, and spread it so that I was actually not able
to see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles
to see me fan myself with it.'

Chapter 35 Vicksburg During the Trouble

WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, down-stream; but we
cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a country town of it, like
Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There is currentless water
--also a big island--in front of Vicksburg now. You come down the river
the other side of the island, then turn and come up to the town; that
is, in high water: in low water you can't come up, but must land some
distance below it.

Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg's tremendous war
experiences; earthworks, trees crippled by the cannon balls, cave-
refuges in the clay precipices, etc. The caves did good service during
the six weeks' bombardment of the city--May 8 to July 4, 1863. They
were used by the non-combatants--mainly by the women and children; not
to live in constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They were
mere holes, tunnels, driven into the perpendicular clay bank, then
branched Y shape, within the hill. Life in Vicksburg, during the six
weeks was perhaps--but wait; here are some materials out of which to
reproduce it:--

Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand non-
combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world--walled solidly in,
the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no
buying and selling with the outside; no passing to and fro; no God-
speeding a parting guest, no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of
world-wide news to be read at breakfast, mornings--a tedious dull
absence of such matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see
steamboats smoking into view in the distance up or down, and plowing
toward the town--for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed; no
rush and turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over
bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen--all quiet
there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten
dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a
gallon; other things in proportion: consequently, no roar and racket of
drays and carriages tearing along the streets; nothing for them to do,
among that handful of non-combatants of exhausted means; at three
o'clock in the morning, silence; silence so dead that the measured tramp