rces under rebel General Hardee in the works around Savannah
numbered about fifteen thousand men.

The face of the country in this vicinity, was level and swampy, so that
a large force well handled would make a formidable resistance.

Our works were built close up to the enemy's, and constant skirmishing
went on.

On the 13th, two days after the siege began, the 2nd division of the
15th Corps, charged on Fort McAllister and took it. This gained us
communication with our fleet, and a short time after we eat hard tack
from the great sea.

During the siege, the Eighty-sixth did not go on the front lines, but
remained in camp in the rear, spending most of its time pounding rice
or seeing it well done by the natives.

In the siege of Savannah, the 20th Corps held the left of our lines,
resting on the Savannah river; the 14th Corps was on its right; the
17th Corps next, and the 15th Corps on the extreme right, with its
flank resting on the Gulf railway, at station No. 1. The army remained
in this position until the 21st, ten days from the commencement of the
siege. In the meantime there was a deal of foraging done, as the
country began to fail to supply the demands made upon it.

The last few days of the siege, the foragers were compelled to go a
long distance to the rear in order to procure the necessary quota of
rice, for this was eminently a rice country. The soldiers always had
regular meals of rice and pork for breakfast, pork and rice for dinner,
and _vice versa_ for supper.

Up the Savannah river from the city of Savannah, and bordering on it
upon either bank, were large and nourishing rice plantations,
cultivated by great numbers of negroes of every hue of the skin and
brogue of the tongue, some of them direct from Liberia, some from New
Guinea, and others from the swamps of Florida. It was amusing to see
the soldiers act the place of master and overseer over these deplorable
creatures. One soldier would crowd together thirty or forty of them,
and march around them at right-shoulder-shift arms, keeping them at
work pounding rice with mortar and pestle. Great ricks of this precious
produce, in every way resembling oats, were stacked on each plantation,
and from ten to twenty thousand bushels in a single stackyard. Our army
made use of it in various ways, much of it being threshed and hulled,
and then used by the soldiers, but a greater part fed to mules.

Thus, things passed merrily on, until the memorable 21s