rovised a hospital of the
steamer on which they went, which came up from Vicksburg loaded with
wounded men, under the care of the surgeons. The dressing of their
wounds and the amputation of limbs going on during the passage, made the
air exceedingly impure, and yet these noble women did not flinch from
their duty, nor neglect their gentle ministrations, which were as balm
to the wounded heroes who lay stretched on the cabin floors from one end
of the boat to the other.

On the renewal of the siege of Vicksburg, by General Grant, and while
our army lay encamped for miles around, Mrs. Colt made a second visit to
the scene of so much suffering and conflict, and visited the camps and
regimental hospitals, where the very air seemed loaded with disease. Men
with every variety of complaint were brought to the steamer, where it
was known there were ladies on board, from the Sanitary Commissions, in
the hope of kinder care and better sustenance. It was amidst dying
soldiers, helpless refugees, manacled slaves, and even five hundred worn
out and rejected mules, that their path up the Mississippi had to be
pursued with patience, and fortitude, and hope.

In a note recently received from Mrs. Colt, she thus speaks of her
visits to the hospitals, and of the brave and noble bearing of the
wounded soldiers:

"I visited the Southwestern hospitals, in order to see the benefits
really conferred by the Sanitary Commission, in order to stimulate
supplies at home. Such was my story or the effect of it, that Wisconsin
became the most powerful Auxiliary of the Northwestern Branch of the
United States Sanitary Commission. I have visited seventy-two hospitals,
and would find it difficult to choose the most remarkable among the many
heroisms I every day witnessed.

"I was more impressed by the gentleness and refinement that seemed to
grow up and in, the men when suffering from horrible wounds than from
anything else. It seemed always to me that the sacredness of the cause
for which they offered up their lives gave to them a heroism almost
super-human--and the sufferings caused an almost womanly refinement
among the coarsest men. I have never heard a word nor seen a look that
was not respectful and grateful.

"At one time, when in the Adams' Hospital in Memphis, filled with six
hundred wounded men with gaping, horrible, head and hip gunshot wounds,
I could have imagined myself among men gathered on cots for some joyous
occasion, and except