December 6th. Last evening G___ was at our headquarters, and the conversation turning on the relative value of the greenback and confederate money, G___ loudly asserted that confederate money was just as good as federal money, and stuck to it against the arguments of Broom, La Valley, and others. The next day, accompanied by an orderly I rode over to his store house, and bargained for a ten pound bag of Lone Jack smoking tobacco, which he said was worth ten dollars. I handed him out a ten dollar confederate bill, which he pocketed without a word, and the orderly rode home with the tobacco. I told the colonel when I returned how G___ had practiced what he preached, which greatly amused him. The joke is that one can buy confederate money for about fifty for one and it is doubtful if it is worth as much as that even. An order was issued to-day prohibiting communication between the pickets, our men have communicated with the enemy by means of little boats, rigged to sail across alone and in this way have swapped coffee for tobacco, newspapers, etc., and perhaps other things, and so we have had to put a stop to it.
That great desideratum in campaigning, viz. soft bread, is now happily furnished in abundance, the Fifty-seventh having established ovens large enough to bake for a brigade.
