16th May (Saturday).—We started a little before daylight, our team looking so very mean that we expressed doubts as to their lasting—to Mr Nelson’s great indignation.
We breakfasted at another little farmhouse on some unusually tough bacon, and coffee made of sweet potatoes. The natives, under all their misery, were red-hot in favour of fighting for independence to the last, and I constantly hear the words, “This is the most unjust war ever waged upon a people by mortal man.”
At 11 A.m. we met a great crowd of negroes, who had been run into the swamps to be out of the way of the Yankees, and they were now returning to Louisiana.
At 2 P.M. a wounded soldier gave us the deplorable information that the enemy really was on the railroad between Jackson and Brookhaven, and that Jackson itself was in his hands. This news staggered us all, and Nelson became alarmed for the safety of his wretched animals; but we all determined to go on at all hazards and see what turned up.
We halted for dinner at a farmhouse in which were seven virgins seated all of a row. They were all good-looking, but shy and bashful to a degree I never before witnessed. All the young women in this country seem to be either uncommonly free-spoken, or else extremely shy.
The further we went the more certain became the news of the fall of Jackson.
We passed the night in the verandah of an old farmer. He told us that Grierson’s Yankee raid had captured him about three weeks ago. He thought the Yankees were about 1500 strong; they took all good horses, leaving their worn-out ones behind. They destroyed railroad, Government property, and arms, and paroled all men, both old and young, but they committed no barbarities. In this manner they traversed all the State of Mississippi without meeting any resistance. They were fine looking men from the Northwestern States.
