My Cave Life in Vicksburg: With Letters of Trial and Travel |
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ambulance American Cyclopædia amid batteries battle field battle of Corinth Black River boats brave bright April carpet bag cars cave CHAPTER child Confederate corduroy road Corinth courier cried danger dark dear depot dressed earth entrance eyes face falling fear Federal troops feel firing friends fright gentlemen George gunboats guns head hear heard heart Holly Springs horse intrenchments Jackson ladies laugh leave light LL.D looking loud ments miles Minié balls moans morning mortar shells mother mule negroes night officers Parrott shells passed passion vine Pemberton pleasant POLITE SOLDIER poor quiet ravine rience rifle pits road rode seemed sent servants shell fell shore side siege of Vicksburg Sky Parlor Hill soldiers soon sorrow stood suffering tell thought told town trees turned veranda Vicksburg wagons walked Warrenton Water Valley weary wounded York young
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Page 56 - I endeavored by constant prayer to prepare myself for the sudden death I was almost certain awaited me. My heart stood still as we would hear the reports from the guns, and the rushing and fearful sound of the shell as it came toward us. As it neared, the noise became more deafening; the air was full of the rushing sound; pains darted through my temples; my ears were full of the confusing noise; and, as it exploded, the report flashed through my head like an electric shock, leaving me in a quiet...
Page 62 - s servant cooked for us under protection of the hill. Our quarters were close, indeed; yet I was more comfortable than I expected I could have been made under the earth in that fashion. We were safe at least from fragments of shell — and they were flying in all directions; though no one seemed to think our cave any protection, should a mortar shell happen to fall directly on top of the ground above us.
Page 136 - I tried to overcome the languid feeling of utter prostration. My little one had swung in her hammock, reduced in strength, with a low fever flushing in her face. M was all anxiety, I could plainly see. A soldier brought up, one morning, a little jaybird, as a plaything for...
Page 72 - which surrounded Vicksburg during the memorable days of April and June, wrote an entertaining volume on the scenes and incidents which there transpired. Like most of her companions, she was compelled to seek shelter from the deluge of iron hail in the caves — these being the fashion — the rage — over besieged Vicksburg. Negroes, who understood their business, hired themselves out to dig them, at from thirty to forty dollars, according to the size. Many persons, considering different localities...
Page 60 - And so I went regularly to work, keeping house under ground. Our new habitation was an excavation made in the earth, and branching six feet from the entrance, forming a cave in the shape of a T. In one of the wings my bed fitted; the other I used as a kind of dressing room; in this the earth had been cut down a foot or two below the floor of the main cave; I could stand erect here; and when tired of sitting in other portions of my residence, I bowed myself into it, and stood impassively resting at...
Page 44 - Stand your ground, boys. Your General Pemberton is with you;' and then, bless you, lady! the next we see'd of him, he was sitting on his horse behind a house — close, too, at that; and when we see'd that, we thought 'tain't no use, if he's going to sit there.
Page 16 - The cave was an excavation in the earth the size of a large room, high enough for the tallest person to stand perfectly erect, provided with comfortable seats, and altogether quite a large and habitable abode (compared with some of the caves in the city), were it not for the dampness and the constant contact with the soft earthy walls.