The sun fairly parboiled us, and, coming into this tropical heat so suddenly—for the night before, on the deck of the “Wayanda,” at sea, we were wearing overcoats—it was so oppressive as to produce a sickening faintness on some of the party; but we patiently followed everywhere, clambered over the shapeless sea wall, inspected the sand gabions, worked our way into the snugly-protected little out-looks for the sharpshooters, ran down the inside of what had been the walls, and dived into the subterranean regions where the casemate guns stood all the time of the bombardment, uninjured, but not deigning to waste their ammunition in useless replies. The contracted but comparatively comfortable quarters here remain almost as the Rebels left them. A long, damp hall, with a few cots still standing in it, was the place for the garrison, where they slept in comparative indifference to the explosion of shells overhead; a rather more airy hall still contained the old, split-bottom arm-chairs, which the officers had collected; on another side were the hospitals, and—ghastly sight—there, on a shelf, were half a dozen coffins, which had been all ready for the reception of the next victims to Gillmore’s shells! Fresh from Fort Fisher, which had been stormed, it was natural that one should look on Fort Sumter with surprise, when told that it could not be stormed. The officers say the garrison would have retreated to the casemates, from whence they could have made the occupation of the interior area of the fort impossible; but surely the men who swarmed over that northern end of Fort Fisher, and fought through the whole afternoon and far into the night, from traverse to traverse, down to the Mound battery, would have needed little time to establish themselves here. They say, too, that the fire from the Rebel works on Morris Island would have rendered Sumter untenable, but that fire could not have been more powerful than ours had been from James Island. Yet the Rebels did not find Sumter untenable on account of our fire. Whether an assault upon Sumter—necessarily bloody beyond precedent—could have been justified by the maxims of war, is a question; but that such men as took Fort Fisher could have taken Fort Sumter, if aided by a proper naval force, seems to me clear. It is said that the Rebels had a similar idea—long in fact before Fort Fisher had been attacked. It was one of the strange personal complications of this war, that the regular Rebel officer who had command of Sumter when our terrific bombardment began, had no faith in its defensibility, and had been replaced by a young nephew of the very Dominie of our party, who has been walking with us over the ruins. The Doctor is as glad as any of us that the fort is reduced, but his eye kindled as Admiral Dahlgren gave the tribute of honest admiration to the splendid bravery and tenacity of his Rebel nephew.