The Confederates passed through Petersburg in silence and dejection. Huge bolts from the enemy's batteries were crashing through the buildings, but they marched heedlessly on without hurry or trepidation. No one but soldiers were in the streets, and but few houses gave evidence of being inhabited. Sometimes females would approach at the windows of different houses and ask, in a plaintive and supplicative tone, "Boys, are you going to leave us?" And you could see signs of sorrow and distress in their countenances. Some two or three were disposed to be merry, and changed our sympathies and fears in their behalf into carelessness, as they would tell us, "Good-bye, boys, we'll drink pure coffee with sugar in it to-morrow!--'hard times come again no more!'" My command was one of the last that crossed the Pocahontas bridge, and by the time we had ascended the bluff, and stood upon high ground, the bridge across the Appomattox was in flames--rockets were ascending high in the air along the Federal lines, and loud huzzas from the trenches made the welkin ring. At that time none knew or could guess at the intentions of Gen. Lee, and the darkness prevented us from knowing that the balance of our forces were already on the march, up the Appomattox. We rested a short while by the roadside in the vicinity of the bridge, and at the signal gun from a piece of artillery near by, which startled us by its suddenness and proximity, we were called to attention and followed our comrades who had preceded us up the river. That signal gun was a notice to others besides ourselves. By the time we had got under weigh, the heavily charged magazine of Cummins' battery of siege guns, blew up, first lighting up the deep darkness of the night with its fierce and vivid glare, and then shaking the earth under our feet like the shock of an earthquake.--Fort Clifton's magazine in a moment followed, and then it was taken up all along the line to Richmond. The scene was the fiercest and most imposing I ever witnessed. We left the light and pierced the midnight darkness of the rear. At each step we took some new explosion would occur, seemingly severer than the one that preceded it; the whole heavens in our rear were lit up in lurid glare, that added intensity to the blackness before us. It was as if the gases, chained in the earth, had at last found vent, and the general conflagration of the world was at hand, while we were retreating into the blackness of uncertain gloom and chaos. We then knew that Richmond had been left to the fate of Petersburg, and we were on a retreat to a new base.