all the hardships
imaginable. We traveled night and day, sleeping mostly in the woods,
and subsisting on wild grapes, chestnuts, hickory-nuts, walnuts, and
some few sweet potatoes. Occasionally, we got a little corn-bread from
the poor class of whites and the negroes. It was miserable stuff.
Several times we slipped into the fields where the negroes were at
work, and stole the provisions they had brought out for their dinner.
Once we were seven days without a bite of bread, and often went
without for two or three days.

"We suffered much with cold, for our clothes were very poor. We slept
but twice in houses during the whole journey. One night we traveled
till we became chilled and weary; it was very late, and we were nearly
frozen, when we fortunately discovered _a nest of hogs_. Immediately
we routed them up, and, lying down in the warm retreat they had left,
slept till morning!

"Many streams were in our way, which we were obliged to wade, or float
across on logs. After twenty-two days of such privations, we reached
the Tennessee river, twenty-seven miles below Bridgeport. Here we
pressed a canoe into the service, and started down the river. We would
run the canoe at night, and hide it and ourselves in the day time.
When we arrived at the head of the Muscle Shoals, we were compelled to
abandon our canoe on account of low water, and make a circuit of forty
miles around. When we reached the foot of the Shoals, we procured a
skiff, and continued our voyage until within twelve miles of Pittsburg
Landing. Here we left the river, and striking across the country to
Corinth, reached there in safety. Thus, after six months of suffering,
we were once more under the glorious flag of the free."

These[7] will serve as specimens of what the brave boys endured in
the truly herculean task of penetrating for hundreds of miles--in
fact, from the very center of the Confederacy to its circumference--in
different directions. It is an achievement I can not look upon without
wonder, and in dangers to be encountered, and difficulties to be
overcome, is at least equal to the proudest exploits of Park or
Livingstone!

[7] Hawkins and myself associated, and made good our escape. We think
all our party escaped to the woods. Whether any were afterward caught
by the rebels, we know not. We traveled by starlight for more than
three weeks. After twenty-one days of fatigue and hunger--living most
of the time on corn or persimmons--occasionally