July 24, 1864
The appearance of
the sky is what the sailors term “greasy,” though whether that betokens rain or
not I don't venture to guess. Mayhap we will have a storm, which indeed would
serve to lay the dust, which already begins to return, in force. This drought
has been in one respect beneficial: it has kept the soldiers from using surface
water and forced them to dig wells, whence healthy water may be got. One well
near this was productive of scientific results, as they got from it a quantity
of shells which I shall send to Agassiz. All this country is underlain more or
less by “marl beds,” which are old sea-bottoms full of a good many different
shells. The good Colonel de Chanal took a ride with me. He is so funny, with
his sentimental French ways. He, with a true French appreciation of wood, looks
with honest horror on the felling of a tree. As we rode along, there was a
teamster, cutting down an oak for some trivial purpose. “Ah,” cried De Chanal,
"Ah! encore un chêne;
encore un beau chêne!” If you tell him twenty men have been killed in the
trenches, he is not interested; but actually he notices each tree that falls. “Ah,”
he says, "when I think what labor I have been at, on the little place I
have at home, to plant, only for my grandchildren, such trees as you cut down
without reason!" As he has always lived in the South of France, where
greenery is scarce, he is not offended by the bareness of the soil; but when
riding through a dreary pine wood, will suddenly break out: “Oh, que c'est
beau, que c'est beau!”
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 194-5
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