From Sumter we steamed off to Sullivan’s Island, and in a few moments were clambering among the mazes of the Rebel works. Here, four years ago, the first fortifications of the war were thrown up. Here the dashing young cavaliers, the haughty Southrons who scorned the Yankee scum and were determined to have a country and a history for themselves, rushed madly into the war as into a picnic. Here the boats from Charleston landed every day cases of champagne, _pâtés_ innumerable, casks of claret, thousands of Havana cigars, for the use of the luxurious young Captains and Lieutenants, and their friends among the privates. Here were the first camps of the war, inscribed, as the newspapers of those days tell us, with such names of companies as “The Live Tigers,” “The Palmetto Guards,” “The Marion Scorpions,” “The Yankee Smashers.” Here, with feasting, and dancing, and love making, with music improvised from the ball room, and enthusiasm fed to madness by well-ripened old Madeira, the free-handed, free-mannered young men who had ruled “society” at Newport and Saratoga, and whose advent North had always been waited for as the opening of the season, dashed into revolution as they would into a waltz. Not one of them doubted that, only a few months later, he should make his accustomed visit to the Northern watering places, and be received with the distinction due a hero of Southern independence. Long before these fortifications, thus begun, were abandoned, they saw their enterprise in far different lights, and conducted it in a far soberer and less luxurious way. The works stretched along the sandy shore of Sullivan’s Island almost as far as the eye can reach. They consist of huge embankments of sand, revetted with palmetto logs, and were evidently planned throughout by a skillful engineer. Coupling these with the works on the other side of the harbor, and with Sumter, one readily believes them to constitute the strongest system of harbor defenses on the coast. Strolling around one of the works, we came upon a little slab, near a palmetto tree, under the shade of the embankment, “To Osceola, Patriot and Warrior.” It is the grave of one of the last of the Florida chieftains, who died here in confinement, and for whom some white enemy, but admirer, had done these last tender honors. Shall the latest warriors of this island ever find similar admirers? * * * * * After our fatiguing trip, the Admiral spread out, on our return to the flag-ship, a lunch of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, and other tropical fruits, brought over from Havana. At the end of his table hung the only Union flag, or trace of anything resembling it, which the naval officers have been able to find anywhere in South Carolina or Georgia—a long, narrow strip of coarse bunting, containing two stripes, red and white, and a few stars in a ground of blue—taken from a deserted cabin near Savannah.