Yet in the Gulf of
Mexico. Company C lost a man last night. Company G has been turned out of their
quarters and a hospital made of it. That crowds the others still more, but at
the rate we go on the whole ship will soon be a hospital. 10 a. m. We have
stopped at a sandy island, which they say is Ship Island. The man who died last
night has been taken off and they are digging a hole in the sand to put him in.
Ship Island so far
as I can discover is only a sand bar with a small fort on it, and with some
soldiers about it the only live thing in sight. We weighed anchor about 4 P. M.
and the next morning, Dec. 14th, stopped off the mouth of the Mississippi for a
pilot. I am told this is called the South West Pass, being one of several
outlets to the great Mississippi river. It looks like a mud flat that had been
pushed out into the Gulf farther in some places than others. As far as the eye
can reach the land is covered with a low down growth of grass or weeds that are
but little above the water. We passed a little village of huts near the outlet,
where the pilots with their families live and which is called "Pilot
Town." What they live on I did not learn. The huts are perched on piles driven
in the mud, with board walks from one to the other and water under and about
the whole.
SOURCE: Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, pp. 71-2
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