Business had already shown signs of revival. For the very best part of the cotton-growing region, Memphis, since the completion of her railroad system, had been the natural center and the only serious rival to New Orleans. All this trade was likely to be renewed. Business men were trying to resume, capital was everywhere in demand, and the streets showed more of the life and bustle of a Northern community than those of any Southern city we had seen. Returned Rebel soldiers swarmed everywhere, in the parlors, at the liquor-shops, about the hotels, in the theaters. A blue uniform attracted attention; the gray flowed all about it in the unbroken stream of the street. If there was any regulation preventing returned Rebels from wearing the buttons and insignia of their rank, it was utterly a dead letter. * * * * * At Bolivar, a single standing chimney, as seen from our hurricane-deck, was all that marked the former site of a once bustling town. It was the solitary monument left to tell the tale of the ruin rebellion had brought to that community. Further up, Fort Pillow showed no signs of either massacre or defense. In fact, one could see nothing but a blank bluff, whence artillery might command a fine range up or down the river. One evening we landed just as a magnificent sunset was casting an amethyst sparkle over the water, while great banks of orange and yellow were reflected from above, and purple and scarlet, partly concealed by a misty blue veil floating over them, spread across half the sky. At a little distance beyond the wood-yard stood a row of the rudest cabins, ranged after the fashion of the negro quarters on a plantation. Entering one, I found a block serving as a chair for a middle-aged negress, who sat on it before the big fire, holding a sick baby, with its little woolly head turned toward a blaze that seemed hot enough to roast it. An old bedstead, nailed together by pieces of rough boards and covered with a tattered quilt, stood in one corner. In the opposite one was a rough table, on which were the fragments of a half-eaten, heavy, sodden “corn-pone.” In the fire-place stood a skillet covered by a broken lid, and on an old box were piled some broken dishes. I have enumerated absolutely everything gathered here to make comfortable the happy home of an American freeman.