General Hébert
is a good-looking creole.* He was a West-Pointer, and served in the old army,
but afterwards became a wealthy sugar-planter. He used to hold Magruder's
position as commander-in-chief in Texas, but he has now been shelved at Munroe,
where he expects to be taken prisoner any day; and, from the present gloomy
aspect of affairs about here, it seems extremely probable that he will not be
disappointed in his expectations. He is extremely down upon England for not
recognising the South. †
He gave me a passage down the river in a steamer, which was
to try to take provisions to Harrisonburg; but, at the same time, he informed
me that she might very probably be captured by a Yankee gunboat.
At 1 P.M. I embarked for Harrisonburg, which is distant from
Munroe by water 150 miles, and by land 75 miles. It is fortified, and offers
what was considered a weak obstruction to the passage of the gunboats up the
river to Munroe.
The steamer was one of the curious American river boats,
which rise to a tremendous height out of the water, like great wooden castles.
She was steered from a box at the very top of all, and this particular one was
propelled by one wheel at her stern.
The river is quite beautiful; it is from 200 to 300 yards
broad, very deep and tortuous, and the large trees grow right down to the very
edge of the water.
Our captain at starting expressed in very plain terms his
extreme disgust at the expedition, and said he fully expected to run against a
gunboat at any turn of the river.
Soon after leaving Munroe, we passed a large plantation. The
negro quarters were larger than a great many Texan towns, and they held three
hundred hands.
After we had proceeded about half an hour, we were stopped
by a mounted orderly (called a courier), who from the bank roared out the
pleasing information, “They're a-fighting at Harrisonburg.” The captain on
hearing this turned quite green in the face, and remarked that he'd be “dogged”
if he liked running into the jaws of a lion, and he proposed to turn back; but
he was jeered at by my fellow-travellers, who were all either officers or
soldiers, wishing to cross the Mississippi to rejoin their regiments in the
different Confederate armies.
One pleasant fellow, more warlike than the rest, suggested
that as we had some Enfields on board, we should make “a little bit of a fight,”
or at least “make one butt at a gunboat.” I was relieved to find that these
insane proposals were not received with any enthusiasm by the majority.
The plantations, as we went further down the river, looked
very prosperous; but signs of preparations for immediate skedaddling were
visible in most of them, and I fear they are all destined to be soon desolate
and destroyed.
We came to a courier picket every sixteen miles. At one of
them we got the information, “Gun-boats drove back,” at which there was great rejoicing,
and the captain, recovering his spirits, became quite jocose, and volunteered
to give me letters of introduction to a “particular friend of his about here,
called Mr Farragut;” but the next news, “Still a-fightin’,” caused us to tie
ourselves to a tree at 8 P.M., off a little village called Columbia, which is
half-way between Munroe and Harrisonburg.
We then lit a large fire, round which all the passengers
squatted on their heels in Texan fashion, each man whittling a piece of wood,
and discussing the merits of the different Yankee prisons at New Orleans or
Chicago. One of them, seeing me, called out, “I reckon, Kernel, if the Yankees
catch you with us, they’ll say you're in d----d bad company;" which sally
caused universal hilarity.
_______________
* The descendants of the French colonists in Louisiana are
called Creoles; most of them talk French, and I have often met Louisianian
regiments talking that language.
† General Hébert
is the only man of education I met in the whole of my travels who spoke
disagreeably about England in this respect. Most people say they think we are
quite right to keep out of it as long as we can; but others think our
Government is foolish to miss such a splendid chance of “smashing the Yankees,”
with whom we must have a row sooner or later.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863, p. 87-90
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