"Delighted;"
and was received at the terminus by Captain Foster of the Staff, who
conducted me in an ambulance to headquarters, which were at the house of
the Roman Catholic bishop. I was received there by Colonel Debray and
two very gentlemanlike French priests.

We sat down to dinner at 2 P.M., but were soon interrupted by an
indignant drayman, who came to complain of a military outrage. It
appeared that immediately after I had left the cars a semi-drunken Texan
of Pyron's regiment had desired this drayman to stop, and upon the
latter declining to do so, the Texan fired five shots at him from his
"six-shooter," and the last shot killed the drayman's horse. Captain
Foster (who is a Louisianian, and very sarcastic about Texas) said that
the regiment would probably hang the soldier for being such a
_disgraceful bad shot_.

After dinner Colonel Debray took me into the observatory, which commands
a good view of the city, bay, and gulf.

Galveston is situated near the eastern end of an island thirty miles
long by three and a half wide. Its houses are well built; its streets
are long, straight, and shaded with trees; but the city was now
desolate, blockaded, and under military law. Most of the houses were
empty, and bore many marks of the ill-directed fire of the Federal ships
during the night of the 1st January last.

The whole of Galveston Bay is very shallow, except a narrow channel of
about a hundred yards immediately in front of the now deserted wharves.
The entrance to this channel is at the north-eastern extremity of the
island, and is defended by the new works which are now in progress
there. It is also blocked up with piles, torpedoes, and other obstacles.

The blockaders were plainly visible about four miles from land; they
consisted of three gunboats and an ugly paddle steamer, also two supply
vessels.

The wreck of the Confederate cotton steamer Neptune (destroyed in her
attack on the Harriet Lane), was close off one of the wharves. That of
the Westfield (blown up by the Yankee Commodore), was off Pelican
Island.

In the night of the 1st January, General Magruder suddenly entered
Galveston, placed his field-pieces along the line of wharves, and
unexpectedly opened fire in the dark upon the Yankee war vessels at a
range of about one hundred yards; but so heavy (though badly directed)
was the reply from the ships, that the field-pieces had to be withdrawn.
The attack by Colonel Cook upon a Massachusetts re