ck our little party crossed White Oak
Creek. There was a corduroy bridge upon which the teams travelled, and a
log bridge of perilous unsteadiness for foot passengers. But the
soldiers were fording the stream in great numbers, and I plunged my
horse into the current so that he spattered a group of fellows, and one
of them lunged at me with a bayonet. Beyond the creek and swamp, on the
hillsides, baggage wagons and batteries were parked in immense numbers.
The troops were taking positions along the edge of the bottom, to oppose
incursions of the enemy, when they attempted pursuit, and I was told
that the line extended several miles westward, to New Market Cross
Roads, where, it was thought, the Confederates would march out from
Richmond to offer battle. The roadway, beyond the swamp, was densely
massed with horse, foot, cannon, and teams. The latter still kept toward
the James, but the nags suffered greatly from lack of corn. Only
indispensable material had been hauled from the Chickahominy, and the
soldiers who fought the ensuing protracted battles were exhausted from
hunger. Everything had an uncomfortable, transient, expectant
appearance, and the feeble people that limped toward the _ultima thule_
looked fagged and wretched.

There were some with balls in the groin, thigh, leg, or ankle, that made
the whole journey, dropping blood at every step. They were afraid to lie
down, as the wounded limbs might then grow rigid and stop their
progress. While I pitied these maimed persons, I held the sick in
greater sympathy. The troubles of the one were local; the others were
pained in every bone. Bullets are fearful tenants, but fevers are worse.
And some of the flushed, staggering folk, that reeled along the
roadside, were literally out of their minds. They muttered and talked
incoherently, and shouted ribald songs till my blood curdled to see
them. At the first house on the right of the road, a half-mile past the
Creek, I noticed many idle soldiers climbing the white palings, to watch
something that lay in the yard. A gray-haired man was expiring, under
the coolness of a spreading tree, and he was even now in the closing
pangs. A comrade at his side bathed his brow with cool water, but I saw
that he would shortly be with Lazarus or Dives. His hands were stretched
stiffly by his sides, his feet were rigidly extended, and death was
hardening into his bleached face. The white eyeballs glared sightlessly
upward: he was looking in