the movements of troops, and so
forth, but the war correspondents had full rein to write as they
pleased, and the efforts of some of them stand out in my memory today as
marvels of word-painting and penned rhetoric.

When Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac I left the army,
three or four days before reinforcements for General Sherman, who was
then making preparations for his famous "march to the sea," left for
Kentucky. At Aguire Creek, near Washington, I purchased a cargo of
apples for $900--my first of two exceedingly profitable ventures in the
apple-selling industry--and, after selling them at a handsome profit,
followed Sherman's reinforcements as far as Cincinnati. I did not at
this time stay long in the city of my birth, going in a few days to Camp
Nelson, Ky., where I obtained work driving artillery horses to Atlanta
and bringing back to Chattanooga condemned army stock. Even at that
time--1864--the proud old city of Atlanta felt the shadow of its
impending doom, but few believed Sherman would go to the lengths he did.

After the close of the war in 1865 I enlisted in Cincinnati, on October
12, in the California Rocky Mountain service. Before this, however, I
had shipped in the Ram Vindicator of the Mississippi Squadron and after
being transferred to the gunboat Syren had helped move the navy yard
from Mound City, Ill., to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Mo., where it
still is.

I was drafted in the First United States Cavalry and sent to Carlisle
Barracks in Pennsylvania, from which place I traveled to New Orleans,
where I joined my regiment. I was allotted to Company C and remember my
officers to have been Captain Dean, First Lieutenant Vail and Second
Lieutenant Winters. Soon after my arrival in New Orleans we commenced
our journey to California, then the golden country of every man's dreams
and the Mecca of every man's ambition.

FOLLOWING THE ARGONAUTS

_So it's Westward Ho! for the land of worth,
Where the "is," not "was" is vital;
Where brawn for praise must win the earth,
Nor risk its new-born title.
Where to damn a man is to say he ran,
And heedless seeds are sown,
Where the thrill of strife is the spice of life,
And the creed is "GUARD YOUR OWN!"_
--WOON.

When the fast mail steamer which had carried us from the Isthmus of
Panama (we had journeyed to the Isthmus from New Orleans in the little
transport McClell