humored! Orderly!"

"General!"

"Whose horses are these?"

"I don't know, General!"

"Cut every ---- ---- one of 'em loose. Wake up these ---- ---- loafers
with the point of your sabre! Every ---- ---- one of 'em! That's what I
call ---- ----boldness!"

He strutted off like the great Bomba or the Czar, and I thought I never
beheld a more exceptional person in any high position.

With a last look at Savage's white house, the abandoned wretches in the
lawn, the blood-red hospital flag, the torn track and smouldering cars,
I turned my face southward, crossed some bare plains, that had once been
fields, and at eight o'clock passed down the Williamsburg road, toward
Bottom Bridge. The original roadway was now a bottomless stretch of
sand, full of stranded wheels, dead horses, shreds of blankets,
discarded haversacks, and mounds of spilled crackers. Other routes for
wagons had been opened across fields, over bluffs, around pits and bogs,
and through thickets and woods. The whole country was crossed with
deeply-rutted roads, as if some immense city had been lifted away, and
only its interminably sinuous streets remained. Near Burnt Chimneys, a
creek crossing the road made a ravine, and here I overtook the hindmost
of the wagons. They had been stalled in the gorge, and a provost guard
was hurrying the laggard teamsters. The creek was muddy beyond
comparison, and at the next hill-top I passed "Burnt Chimneys," a few
dumb witnesses that pointed to heaven. A mile or two further, I came to
some of the retreating regiments, and also to five of the siege
thirty-twos with which Richmond was to have been bombarded. The main
army still lay back at their entrenchments to cover the retreat, and at
ten o'clock I heard the roar of field guns; the pursuit had commenced,
and the Confederates were pouring over the ramparts at Fairoaks. I did
not go back; battles were of no consequence to me. I wanted some
breakfast. If I could only obtain a cup of warm coffee and a fragment of
meat, I thought that I might recover strength. But nothing could be
obtained anywhere, for money or charity. The soldiers that I passed
looked worn and hungry, for their predecessors had swept the country
like herds of locusts; but one cheerful fellow, whom I addressed,
produced a lump of fat pork that I tried to eat, but made a signal
failure. All my baggage had been left at Michie's, where it remains to
this moment. None cared to be hospitable to correspondents