Arrived at Atlanta at 3 A.M., and took three hours' sleep at
the Trouthouse hotel. After breakfasting, I started again for Augusta at 7 A.M.
(174 miles); but the train had not proceeded ten miles before it was brought up
by an obstruction, in the shape of a broken-down freight train, one of whose
cars was completely smashed. This delayed us for about an hour, but we made up
for it afterwards, and arrived at Augusta at 5.15 P.M.
The country through Georgia is undulating, well cultivated,
and moderately covered with trees; and this part of the Confederacy has as yet
suffered but little from the war. At some of the stations provisions for the
soldiers were brought into the cars by ladies, and distributed gratis. When I
refused on the ground of not being a soldier, these ladies looked at me with
great suspicion, mingled with contempt, and as their looks evidently expressed
the words, “Then why are you not a soldier?” I was obliged to explain to them
who I was, and show them General Bragg's pass, which astonished them not a
little. I was told that Georgia was the only state in which soldiers were still
so liberally treated — they have become so very common everywhere else. On
reaching Augusta, I put up at the Planter's-house hotel, which seemed very
luxurious to me after so many hours of the cars. But the Augusta climate is
evidently much hotter than Tennessee.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863, p. 174-5
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