March 29. — This forenoon, we are encamped at Donaldsonville, — a point fifty or sixty miles below Baton Rouge, on the western bank of the great river. It is the pleasantest camp we have ever had. The neighborhood of this town, and the country along the bayou La Fourche, which here opens out of the Mississippi, is said to be the garden of Louisiana.
The landscape just about the camp here must be very like Holland. The tents are pitched in a perfectly level field, — stretching, without a fence, far and wide, with only here and there a tree. Along one side of the field runs the bayou, behind its Levee. The water now brims up nearly to the edge of this Levee, though on the land side there must be a slope of six or eight feet from the top of the bank to the surface of the land. If an opening were made in the Levee, our camp would be instantly drowned by the rush of waters. Sloops and schooners of considerable tonnage sail up and down the bayou, and one full-sized clipper-ship lies at anchor just opposite us. To see these craft, we are obliged to look up. The water-line of the bayou is about on a level with our eyes; so that the hulls and rigging of the vessels are in the air, over our heads. At the mouth of the bayou is a fort, with pointed angles, smoothly cut, and turfed with green. It is very regularly built, with ditch, counterscarp, bastion, and berme. This again, I imagine, is a feature which this landscape has in common with that of the Low Countries. Vauban himself might have built this little fort; and Marlborough and Villars would feel quite at home manœuvring here.
Of course, we have very little idea where we are going, or what we are to encounter; for we are the soldiers of a general who keeps his own counsel. In a day or two, we expect to march from here to Thibodeaux, and thence onward to Berwick Bay. We have left Baton Rouge, probably not to see it again during our term of service. We marched in the moonlight aboard the transport that was to bring us here, two or three nights ago. I lay on the upper deck, propped up by my knapsack, and took my farewell of the buildings on the Levee. I have taken my farewell of Ed.’s grave. I have done my best for it. The cross stands firm and straight at the head: the mound above it is high and smooth, and green with clover. The vine above, now full of blossoms, has snowed down upon the turf a whole deep drift of white petals; and sweet baby-buds, cradled among the whispering leaves and sprays, rock to and fro over it constantly in the wind of spring.
