etfully, "S'pose we leave dem Secesh at Fernandina, General Saxby
won't see 'em,"--as if they were some new natural curiosity, which
indeed they were. One soldier further suggested the expediency of
keeping them permanently in camp, to be used as marks for the guns of
the relieved guard every morning. But this was rather an ebullition of
fancy than a sober proposition.

Against these levities I must put a piece of more tragic eloquence,
which I took down by night on the steamer's deck from the thrilling
harangue of Corporal Adam Ashton, one of our most gifted prophets, whose
influence over the men was unbounded. "When I heard," he said "de
bombshell a-screamin' troo de woods like de Judgment Day, I said to
myself, 'If my head was took off to-night, dey couldn't put my soul in
de torments, perceps [except] God was my enemy!' And when de
rifle-bullets came whizzin' across de deck, I cried aloud, 'God help my
congregation! Boys, load and fire!'"

I must pass briefly over the few remaining days of our cruise. At
Fernandina we met the Planter, which had been successful on her separate
expedition, and had destroyed extensive salt-works at Crooked River,
under charge of the energetic Captain Trowbridge, efficiently aided by
Captain Rogers. Our commodities being in part delivered at Fernandina,
our decks being full, coal nearly out, and time up, we called once more
at St. Simon's Sound, bringing away the remainder of our railroad-iron,
with some which the naval officers had previously disinterred, and then
steamed back to Beaufort. Arriving there at sunrise, (February 2, 1863,)
I made my way with Dr. Rogers to General Saxton's bed-room, and laid
before him the keys and shackles of the slave-prison, with my report of
the good conduct of the men,--as Dr. Rogers remarked, a message from
heaven and another from hell.

Slight as this expedition now seems among the vast events of the war,
the future student of the newspapers of that day will find that it
occupied no little space in their columns, so intense was the interest
which then attached to the novel experiment of employing black troops.
So obvious, too, was the value, during this raid, of their local
knowledge and their enthusiasm, that it was impossible not to find in
its successes new suggestions for the war. Certainly I would not have
consented to repeat the enterprise with the bravest white troops,
leaving Corporal Sutton and his mates behind, for I should have expected