April 4 — Left camp this morning on a fifteen-day furlough, the first thing of the kind I have had since the war commenced. There is a charming euphony and sweet music in the words, “Going home,” such as those who never soldiered nor roamed ever yet have heard.
I took the train at Gordonsville. It was raining very hard then, and before the train reached the Blue Ridge the rain had changed to snow, and here at Staunton gentle spring is reveling under a mantle of snow four inches thick. When we were coming up the eastern side of the Blue Ridge it was snowing very fast, and the snow scene was beautiful and grand; every evergreen bush and shrub and the branches of the trees were gracefully bending and drooping under a burden of beautiful snow, and in a thousand places on the mountain side the shiny green leaves of mountain laurel peeped out from under the glittering crystal shroud that was spread and hung over the mountain’s rocky, irregular, and slopy breast.
The Central Railroad passes through the Blue Ridge in a tunnel seven-eighths of a mile in length; when the train shot suddenly into the little black hole to-day from the dazzling white outside it was like leaping from the brightness of midday and plunging into the blackness of midnight. The train arrived in Staunton this evening at six o’clock, and we furloughed men, of whom there are five, put up for lodging at the Virginia Hotel; we all slept in one room and our lodging cost us five dollars each. A meal here costs five dollars, and I will have to browse in order to satisfy the longings of the inner man or else I will not have enough Confed. to get me back to my command; five dollars for a nap and five dollars for a meal will soon, all too soon, clean up the contents of my pocketbook and ruin my credit.
Staunton, the county seat of Augusta County, is peculiarly situated in a kettle-like depression, environed nearly all around by abrupt and undulating hills in close proximity. The town contains some three or four thousand inhabitants, and is located ninety-two miles south of Winchester, and at the southern terminus of the Valley pike.
