This morning we again move early. We cross the Hatchie to-day, entering the great Mississippi pineries. We find it a barren wilderness. All day we keep sending prisoners to the rear. Nothing but a wreck is seen on the war path. The road is lined with old, broken wagons, tents, cooking utensils and blown up caissons. The exhausted rebels fall by the way, hundreds are being picked up and are found in a pitiful condition, being half starved; but none are found who fell in love with Corinth, and by the way they don't like to talk about this subject, or at least they don't seem inclined to introduce it. About dark we go into camp the boys make a raid upon a flock of sheep close by, and the Seventh have mutton chops for supper. It is over now and they are cheerful, and many a soldier sits round the camp fires enjoying hugely his pipe and “legal tender.” We know by experience that it is an earthly heaven for a soldier and his comrade to sit by the camp fire's glimmering embers, and while from each other's pipe the spiral festoons are forming in air to talk of home and the halcyon days that have flown. And then, going to sleep, dream of glory, and wreaths, telling of fame that will not vanish, but wreaths that are as fadeless as the stars in the canopy above.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 111-2
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