A tavern contiguous to the
railway was also a hospital, but in the basement I found the
transportation agents at breakfast, and they gave me a bountiful meal.

It was here arranged between myself and an old friend--a newspaper
correspondent who had recently married, and whose wife awaited him at
Willard's in Washington--that he should proceed at once to New York with
the outline of the fight, and that I should follow him next day (having,
indeed, to report for duty and fresh orders at Head-quarters of the
army in Washington,) with particulars and the lists of killed. I
commenced my part of the labors at once, employing three persons to
assist me, and we districted Culpepper, so that no one should interfere
with the grounds of the other. My own part of the work embraced both
hotel-hospitals, the names and statements of the prisoners of the Court
House loft, and interviews with some of the generals and colonels who
lay at various private residences. The business was not a desirable one;
for hot hospital rooms were now absolutely reeking, and many of the
victims were asleep. It would be inhuman to awaken these; but in many
cases those adjacent knew nothing, and with all assiduity the rolls must
be imperfect. I found one man who had undergone a sort of mental
paralysis and could not tell me his own name. However, I groped through
the several chambers where the bleeding littered the bare floors. Some
of them were eating voraciously, and buckets of ice-water were being
carried to and fro that all might drink. Some male nurses were fanning
the sleeping people with boughs of cedar; but the flies filled the
ceiling, and, attracted by the wounds, they kept up a constant buzzing.
I imagined that mortification would rapidly ensue in this broiling
atmosphere. A couple of trains were being prepared below, to transport
the sufferers to Washington, and from time to time individuals were
carried into the air and deposited in common freight-cars upon the hard
floors. Here they were compelled to wait till late in the evening, for
no trains were allowed to leave the village during the day. At the
Virginia Hotel, I visited, among others, the room in which I had lodged
when I first came to Culpepper. Eight persons now occupied it, and three
of them lay across the bed. I took the first man's name, and as the man
next to him seemed to be asleep, I asked the first man to nudge him
gently.

"I don't think he is alive," said the man; "he hasn't