three volleys were fired above the
graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me
that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the
west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods
that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted
gin-house,--a fine well of our own within the camp-lines,--a
ful-allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every
company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial
wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the
men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks
afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned
canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian
lodges I saw in Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our
aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred
and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and
we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since
my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps,
and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like reentering the
world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred
to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other
camps were white.

_January 8._--This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary
business, and by good luck happened upon a review and drill of the white
regiments. The thing that struck me most was that same absence of
uniformity, in minor points, that I noticed at first in my own officers.
The best regiments in the Department are represented among my captains
and lieutenants, and very well represented, too; yet it has cost much
labor to bring them to any uniformity in their drill. There is no need
of this, for the prescribed "Tactics" approach perfection: it is never
left discretionary in what place an officer shall stand, or in what
words he shall give his order. All variation would seem to imply
negligence. Yet even West Point occasionally varies from the
"Tactics,"--as, for instance, in requiring the line officers to face
down the line, when each is giving the order to his company. In our
strictest Massachusetts regiments this is not done.