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Chapter 5: out on picket.
One can hardly imagine a body of men more disconsolate than a regiment suddenly transferred from an adventurous life in the enemy's country to the quiet of a sheltered camp, on safe and familiar ground.
The men under my command were deeply dejected when, on a most appropriate day,--the First of April, 1863,they found themselves unaccountably recalled from
Florida, that region of delights which had seemed theirs by the right of conquest.
My dusky soldiers, who based their whole walk and conversation strictly on the ancient
Israelites, felt that the prophecies were all set at naught, and that they were on the wrong side of the
Red Sea; indeed, I fear they regarded even me as a sort of reversed
Moses, whose
Pisgah fronted in the wrong direction.
Had they foreseen how the next occupation of the
Promised Land was destined to result, they might have acquiesced with more of their wonted cheerfulness.
As it was, we were very glad to receive, after a few days of discontented repose on the very ground where we had once been so happy, an order to go out on picket at Port Royal Ferry, with the understanding that we might remain there for some time.
This picket station was regarded as a sort of military picnic by the regiments stationed at
Beaufort, South Carolina; it meant blackberries and oysters, wild roses and magnolias, flowery lanes instead of sandy barrens, and a sort of guerilla existence in place of the camp routine.
