July 4 — Renewed our march this morning, still moving southward. We passed Dinwiddie Court House and came very near not seeing it as such, for it stands in the woods and looks like an isolated school building. There may be a village scattered around it somewhere, but I did not see it. The court house is about fifteen miles southwest of Petersburg, and in a poor and brushy portion of the county. All the country that we passed through to-day looks like as if the land is very poor and unproductive; some of it is nothing but white sand with a few briers trying to creep over it. The woodland is composed of low squatty pines on the little ridges, with oak timber in the low places, standing in an undergrowth of bushes so thick that a twisty wind can hardly creep through it.
We marched till midday, then camped in a forlorn, desolate-looking place where we can see nothing but the sun and bushes. This camp is about three miles from the Nottoway River, and about twenty-five miles south of Petersburg. Weather, boiling hot.
