The most interesting sights were the fortifications around Richmond. Out on the Mechanicsville turnpike about two miles beyond the Alms House was the inner fort on the North. This was manned by a battery composed of Norfolk men under command of a Captain Hendren, two deserters from the Union Army were placed in this battery. They were treated in a most friendly way by the men, but they seemed out of place themselves and awkward and strange. Why they should have deserted I could not understand, for an exchange of the ample fare of the Union soldier with their luxuries for the cornbread and bacon of the Confederates could not have been an attraction. This same pike while the Battle of Cold Harbor was in progress presented an intensely interesting appearance, clear from Richmond to the narrow Chickahomini River and beyond, it was lined with soldiers, horses and wagons hurrying to and fro and one of the most attractive sights was the stream of Union prisoners just captured and being marched into Richmond. One prisoner I recall as a common type, he was a German emigrant utterly unable to speak a word of English, dressed in a new Zouave uniform of gaudy colors and he evidently labored under the delusion that he was going to better his condition by exchanging from a fighter in the Union army to a prisoner in the Confederacy. I believe if he had had any conception of the restrictive diet of the prisoner or Confederate soldier, for both fared about alike, he would have been less easily captured, and the bounty and substitute money that no doubt had been securely disposed of by him at his enlistment were going to look less alluring in a Confederate prison than the future these pictured to him while he enjoyed his exceedingly brief army experience.