of the brave and uncomplaining sufferers, was a spectacle of
the most touching character. If you had experienced the debilitating
influence of the Pamunkey climate, you would be filled with wonder at
the mere physical endurance of our corps, who certainly could not have
been sustained in the performance of duties, involving labor by day and
through sleepless nights, without a strong sense of their usefulness and
success.

"At Savage's Station, too, the Commission had a valuable depot, where
comfort and assistance was dispensed to the sick when changing from the
ambulances to the cars. I wish I could do justice to the subject of my
hasty narrative, or in any due measure convey to your mind the
impressions left on mine in observing, even casually, the operations in
the care of the sick at these two points.

"When we remember what was done by the same noble band of laborers after
the battles of Williamsburg and Fair Oaks, in ministering to the wants
of _thousands of wounded_, I am sure that we shall join with them in
gratitude and thankfulness that they were enabled to be there."

But the end of it all was at hand; the "change of base," of which the
Commission had some private intelligence, came to pass. The sick and
wounded were carefully gathered up from the tents and hospitals, and
sent slowly away down the winding river--"The Wilson Small" lingering as
long as possible, till the telegraph wires had been cut, and the enemy
was announced, by mounted messengers, to be at "Tunstall's;" in fact,
till the roar of the battle came nearer, and we knew that Stoneman with
his cavalry was falling back to Williamsburg, and that the enemy were
about to march into our deserted places.

"All night we sat on the deck of 'The Small' slowly moving away,
watching the constantly increasing cloud and the fire-flashes over the
trees towards the White House; watching the fading out of what had been
to us, through these strange weeks, a sort of home, where all had worked
together and been happy; a place which is sacred to some of us now for
its intense living remembrances, and for the hallowing of them all by
the memory of one who, through months of death and darkness, lived and
worked in self-abnegation, lived in and for the suffering of others, and
finally gave himself a sacrifice for them."[F]

[Footnote F: Dr. Robert Ware.]

"We are coaling here to-night ('Wilson Small,' off Norfolk, June 30th,
1862). We left White House Saturday nig