trouble
was with the steamboat-hands, and I resolved to let them go ashore as
little as possible. Most articles of furniture were already, however,
before our visit, gone from the plantation-house, which was now used
only as a picket-station. The only valuable article was a piano-forte,
for which a regular packing-box lay invitingly ready outside. I had made
up my mind to burn all picket-stations, and all villages from which I
should be covertly attacked, and nothing else; and as this house was
destined to the flames, I should have left the piano in it, but for the
seductions of that box. With such a receptacle all ready, even to the
cover, it would have seemed like flying in the face of Providence not to
put the piano in. I ordered it removed, therefore, and afterwards
presented it to the school for colored children at Fernandina. This I
mention because it was the only article of property I ever took or
knowingly suffered to be taken, in the enemy's country, save for
legitimate military uses, from first to last; nor would I have taken
this, but for the thought of the school, and, as aforesaid, the
temptation of the box. If any other officer has been more rigid, with
equal opportunities, let him cast the first stone.

I think the zest with which the men finally set fire to the house at my
order was enhanced by this previous abstemiousness; but there is a
fearful fascination in the use of fire, which every child knows in the
abstract, and which I found to hold true in the practice. On our way
down river we had opportunity to test this again.

The ruined town of St. Mary's had at that time a bad reputation, among
both naval and military men. Lying but a short distance above
Fernandina, on the Georgia side, it was occasionally visited by our
gunboats. I was informed that the only residents of the town were three
old women, who were apparently kept there as spies,--that, on our
approach, the aged crones would come out and wave white
handkerchiefs,--that they would receive us hospitably, profess to be
profoundly loyal, and exhibit a portrait of Washington,--that they would
solemnly assure us that no Rebel pickets had been there for many
weeks,--but that in the adjoining yard we should find fresh
horse-tracks, and that we should be fired upon by guerrillas the moment
we left the wharf. My officers had been much excited by these tales; and
I had assured them, that, if this programme were literally carried out,
we would stra