Headquarters First Br1gade,
Fourth Div., Seventeenth Army Corps,
Department Of The Tennessee,
“Camp Kilby,” Miss., Dec. 13, 1863.
My Dear Wife:
My command has been
ordered from Natchez and thrown to the front. I am encamped farthest to the
front and close to the enemy's lines near Black River. In a future letter I
will send you map upon which you can locate my position. The country is very
wild and broken, and has always been sparsely inhabited. It is now wild and
desolate in the extreme. I am upon a chain of bluffs cut up by the most
extraordinary fissures. The subsoil has no tenacity, not sooner does the upper
crust give way than the substratum dissolves like sugar, making the most
hideous chasms and rents. The soil is bare and apparently barren save where the
forest is undisturbed; but this is only in appearance, for here the best cotton
has been grown.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 345
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