Cairo. Writing
letters is getting to be harder work than drilling, and is more dreaded by the
boys. Lots of people are visiting the camp now, many of them ladies, but I tell
you that they use their fans more than their spy-glasses after a very few
looks.
I was up to Mound City yesterday with nine others of our
company on a United States boat that has three cannons on her. Mound City is a
beautiful little place, and takes it name from a mound about 30 feet in
diameter and 10 feet high, on which grow a dozen spindling locusts. I have been
about 12 miles up each river from the point here. At that distance the river
banks are, say 25 feet high, and slope down to the point, and run into a broad
wide sandbar that ends Illinois.
Fishing is a principal amusement or time-killer now. I have
fished about four days and caught nary a “minner.”
There is no outside influence used to induce a man to
re-enlist. Officers tell every man to use his own judgment, and each fellow
does his own thinking and — another long dash or words to that effect.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois
Soldier, p. 20
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