This seems
to be the system now with regard to officers since the enlistment of
negroes by the Northerners.

My fellow-travellers were mostly elderly planters or legislators, and
there was one judge from Louisiana. One of them produced a pair of boots
which had cost him $100; another showed me a common wideawake hat which
had cost him $40. In Houston, I myself saw an English regulation
infantry sword exposed for sale for $225 (L45).

As the military element did not predominate, my companions united in
speaking with horror of the depredations committed in this part of the
country by their own troops on a line of march.

We passed through a well-wooded country--pines and post oaks--the road
bad: crossed the river Trinity at 12 noon, and dined at the house of a
disreputable looking individual called a Campbellite minister, at 4.30
P.M. The food consisted almost invariably of bacon, corn bread, and
buttermilk: a meal costing a dollar.

Arrived at Crockett at 9.30 P.M., where we halted for a few hours. A
_filthy bed_ was given to the Louisianian Judge and myself. The Judge,
following my example, took to it boots and all, remarking, as he did so,
to the attendant negro, that "they were a d----d sight cleaner than the
bed."

Before reaching Crockett, we passed through the encampment of
Phillipps's regiment of Texas Rangers, and we underwent much chaff. They
were _en route_ to resist Banks.

* * * * *

_6th May_ (Wednesday).--We left all the passengers at Crockett except
the Louisianian Judge, a Government agent, and the ex-boatswain of the
Harriet Lane, which vessel had been manned by the Confederates after her
capture; but she had since been dismantled, and her crew was being
marched to Shrieveport to man the ironclad Missouri, which was being
built there.

The food we get on the road is sufficient, and good enough to support
life; it consists of pork or bacon, bread made with Indian corn, and a
peculiar mixture called Confederate coffee, made of rye, meal, Indian
corn or sweet potatoes. The loss of coffee afflicts the Confederates
even more than the loss of spirits; and they exercise their ingenuity in
devising substitutes, which are not generally very successful.

The same sort of country as yesterday, viz.--large forests of pines and
post-oaks, and occasional Indian-corn-fields, the trees having been
killed by cutting a circle near the roots.

At 3 P.M., we took in four more pass