From Hilton Head to Savannah, an inner passage among the Sea Islands is practicable for all vessels of light draught. General Gillmore, who accompanied us to Savannah with his staff, took our whole party on board his headquarters boat, a spacious side-wheel river steamer; and, about the middle of the afternoon we pushed off from the Hilton Head wharf, and were soon steaming rapidly along Scull Creek. On either side was the lush vegetation and low, flat scenery of the islands. Cultivated plantations were nearly always in sight; but they were mainly given over to the negroes, and but few of the former residences of the planters could now be seen. A magnificent beach on our left extended, apparently, half way from Fort Pulaski to Hilton Head; and the staff officers talked appetizingly of gallops along its entire length. During the whole afternoon we did not see one white man on the plantations; nor, probably, would we if we had searched them carefully. They have all fled to the misty, undefined “interior,” and abandoned the islands to the “niggers.” * * * * * It was something to be shown over Fort Pulaski, by the one who had revolutionized gunnery in reducing it. General Gillmore pointed out——by the way, I have neglected to tell what the hero of Pulaski is like. Fancy a fine, wholesome-looking, solid six-footer, with big head, broad, good-humored face, and a high forehead, faintly elongated by a suspicion of baldness, curly brown hair and beard, and a frank, open face, and you have him. A quick-speaking, quick-moving, soldierly man he is, an accomplished engineer, one of the finest practical artillerists in the world, and, withal, a man whose ideas are not limited by the range of his profession, wherein he forms a notable contrast to some other regular officers one might name. The garrison of Pulaski—apparently a company, with, I believe, a young artillery Captain in command of the post—were on the look-out for the party, and a salute was firing from the barbette guns of the fort before our vessel had rounded to, at the rickety and almost inaccessible wharf. The low, flat ground on which the fort is situated, is grassy and firm as a well-kept lawn; and as the sinking sun, lit up with sloping rays the distant woods and the rippling river, gilded the burst columbiad (which had been set upright over the graves of the soldiers killed in the bombardment, and with its terse inscription, constituted a monument as beautiful as unique,) flashed from the bayonets of the slow-pacing guard on the parapet wall, and brought dimly out beyond the wood the spires of Savannah, one could readily credit the declaration of an engineer officer on General Gillmore’s staff, who had been stationed there for a month or two, that it was the pleasantest place he had found on the whole South Atlantic coast. An hour’s conflict with the mosquitoes, however, would be apt to cause a hasty retraction (and retreat.)